The Broadbelters Read online

  THE BROADBELTERS

  The Broadbelters

  Maxine Schnall

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  M.Evans

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  http://www.rlpgtrade.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1970 by Maxine Schnall.

  First Rowman & Littlefield paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  ISBN 13: 978-1-59077-392-5 pbk: alk. paper)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  1 THE AUTHOR

  2 THE PUBLISHER

  3 THE COLLABORATOR

  4 THE BEGINNING

  5 THE MIDDLE

  6 THE END

  7 THE PARTY

  8 THE CAMPAIGN

  9 THE CELEBRITY

  10 THE ULTIMATE

  THE BROADBELTERS

  Chapter 1The Author

  DISORDER BLOOMED in the Ehrlich penthouse that Sunday morning like a neglected garden. Cigarette ashes, gauzy as the ghosts of dandelions, dotted the ankle-deep rugs. Smeared caviar crunched underfoot like fallen berries. Half-eaten canapes lingered, mossy, in the crystal ashtrays. Liquor glasses, planted like trees atop the antique coffee tables, took root and pushed out rings. And in the fireplace that stood like a great abandoned barbeque pit an unconscious go-go girl lay entwined with a sodden musician in a post-orgasmic funk.

  It was the sound of the maid knocking over the andirons as she attempted to rouse the stuporous couple that awakened Bonnie Ehrlich. She was enwombed with her husband Manny in their vast canopied bed, gently vibrating on the motorized mattress. Stirring, she rubbed at her eyes with her fists and pried open the false eyelashes she had forgotten to take off the night before. She writhed and stretched in a kind of agonized slow motion. Then her lips parted, and her voice revved up in her throat and roared out of her mouth like an outboard motor.

  “Who’s making that goddam noise?”

  “I am, Mrs. Ehrlich,” the maid’s dulcet voice purred, stealing in on little intercom feet. “Good morning.”

  “Go to hell,” Bonnie muttered.

  Wearily her head sank back onto the pillow again. She lay there for a while, narcotized with drowsiness. But she couldn’t sleep. A vague uneasiness tugged at her, a troubling sense that something was wrong.

  And then she remembered. The subliminal message bubbled through her hangover-harried brain and surfaced to consciousness with a sick thrust: her press agents had bombed out.

  For almost two years now, ever since they had come East and settled in Manhattan, she’d been shelling out a fortune to the biggest p.r. firm in New York—Pitchman, Flackery & Hocum—to get her into Society. They had tried everything: big donations to charity, masked balls, cocktail parties, clambakes, lunches, junkets, cruises. There had even been a Big Game Hunt in Africa where she had narrowly missed getting her ass shot off by some near-sighted shvartze with a rifle.

  And now the party last night with that crazy rock-and-roll group, Lysergic Larry and the Hallucinogens, blasting out everyone’s eardrums and stinking up the whole apartment with their marijuana cigarettes. But the worst of it was Hocum himself, with his sad fag’s face, coming over to her on the last break and saying, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ehrlich. It’s no use. We notified all the society editors, but the only reporter who showed up is from the Yonkers Gazette.”

  “You schmuck!” she all but screamed. “Do you think I’m paying you five hundred bucks a week to get me in the Yonkers Gazette?”

  Hocum, flushed, spoke with that clenched control of someone desperate to avoid a scene. “But it’s not my fault, Mrs. Ehrlich. All we can do is ask the press to come; we can’t force them. The truth of the matter is you’re just not … not …”

  “Not what?” she demanded.

  “Not newsworthy.”

  “Don’t give me that crap!” she said, angrily gulping down the drink in her hand. “The women’s pages are loaded with pictures of horse-faced bitches no one ever heard of before.”

  “Yes,” Hocum said in a tone of exasperation, “but they’re people with old money. They were born into Society. With the New Rich, it’s a different proposition.”

  Bonnie put down her empty glass and snatched another drink from a passing tray. “And what about that seventeen-year-old Cockney scarecrow who’s on the cover of every magazine?”

  “That’s something else. The kid has talent. She’s a model.”

  “Model, my ass. She hasn’t got a tit to her name.”

  “But at least she does something,” Hocum insisted. He gesticulated imploringly. “You’ve got to understand, Mrs. Ehrlich. Today you can’t make it in Society any more just by having money. To be one of ‘The Beautiful People’ you’ve got to achieve. You’ve got to do something.”

  Bonnie drained her drink and glared at him. “Don’t worry, Hocum. I’m gonna do something, all right.” She put her face close to his and waggled a finger at him, a triumphant look in her eye. “You know what I’m gonna do?” she asked.

  He waited.

  “I’m gonna fire you, you shithead! Right now!” she shouted.

  Hocum blanched and backed away. “But really, Mrs. Ehrlich …”

  “No buts about it.” She pointed imperiously ahead of her and ordered, “Now get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”

  Hocum slumped in resignation. “All right, Mrs. Ehrlich, if that’s your decision,” he said quietly. He drew himself up, determined to have the last word. “But remember, you won’t get anywhere in Society unless you do something to deserve it.” Then he turned and left with all the dignified sorrow of a grey flannel mourner who has just buried a deceased account.

  Bonnie sighed, remembering the fiasco last night, and arranged the pillows behind her as she sat up in bed. Damn that fool, Hocum. What did he know? She looked down at her full aging showgirl’s figure and patted herself appreciatively. At forty-one she was still a good-looking broad: “strikingly attractive in a direct, sexual way,” as one of Pitchman, Flackery & Hocum’s better press releases had described her. She was in the prime of life, with connections and enough money to buy and sell The Beautiful People. There was no reason, no reason in the world, why she couldn’t break in.

  Disconsolately, Bonnie toyed with the Gibraltaresque diamond on her finger and picked up an issue of Modern Screen lying on her night table. She leafed through the magazine absent-mindedly, too disturbed to concentrate on its malicious complexities. It rankled her to think, as she glanced at the pictures of the stars, that twenty years ago she, too, in her own way had conquered Hollywood. And yet today all of these people were celebrities while she, still hungering after fame, was never more unknown.

  But she remembered, her mind hurtling down the long staircase of the years, how little she had started with in Hollywood—and how incredibly far she had gone. And even then, there had always been the grim dissuaders, the practiced dealers in discourage
ment, telling her it couldn’t be done.

  The receptionist at the Barracuda Booking Agency glanced at Bonnie’s application form, then tossed it into the wire basket on her cluttered desk. “I’m sorry, kid,” she said brusquely. “We ain’t got any openings for eighteen-year-old girls with no experience.” She turned back to her typing. “If anything turns up, we’ll call ya.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Bonnie said bitterly. “That’s what they all say.”

  The receptionist glanced up sharply. “Whaddya expect?” she snapped. “Every week a hundred new faces pour into Hollywood lookin’ for work in the movies. There must be a thousand extras tryin’ out for the same job.” Her head bent back to her typewriter. “You’re wastin’ your time, kid,” she said sourly. “Go to Woolworth’s. Maybe they need a counter girl.”

  Dejected, Bonnie turned to leave when Tony Barracuda, a dark, wiry man with oily skin and a sharklike smile, appeared in the doorway of his inner office. He watched Bonnie’s rounded buttocks, underscored by her clinging dress, jiggle as she walked to the door.

  “Hey, wait a minute, kid,” he called out.

  Bonnie stopped and turned around. She looked questioningly at Barracuda while his eyes flicked over her sensuously pretty face, her bombular bustiine, her shapely calves.

  “You’re in luck today, kid,” he said, smiling. “I just got an emergency call for a job, and I think you could handle it pretty good.”

  He walked over to Bonnie and handed her a slip of paper with an address scrawled on it. “Get over there right away and ask for Gus Panders. Tell him Tony Barracuda sent you.”

  Bonnie stared at him, transfixed by his messianic presence. At first she was able to manage only small grateful noises. Then, mastering her voice, she bubbled effusively, “Oh, thanks, Mr. Barracuda. I’ll never forget you for this.”

  Barracuda nodded mechanically. “It’s okay, kid,” he said, his mind already on other things. Quickly he wheeled around and returned to his office.

  Bonnie watched him retreat. Then, clutching the scrap of paper in her hand, she floated to the door on a raft of elation. The smirk on her face as she turned and glanced at the receptionist’s bent head was superbly eloquent.

  It was obvious Barracuda had made a mistake. For a half hour Bonnie trudged up and down Lankershim Boulevard, searching in vain for the address the agent had given her. Down the road she had passed Universal’s lot and Warner’s. But here, where the busdriver had insisted she get off because it was the end of the line, there was nothing but a desolate, hilly tract of short, coarse scrubgrass.

  Bonnie was on the verge of tears. She was hot and thirsty in the afternoon sunlight, and her feet ached unbearably in her platform, high-heeled shoes. In desperation, she planted herself in the middle of the road and flagged down a car heading back in the direction of Warner Bros. There was a “Studio Executive” sign, she noticed, in the windshield of the car.

  The driver stopped, and Bonnie shoved her scrap of paper with the address on it under his nose. “Please, mister,” she begged, “can you tell me where this is?”

  The man studied the piece of paper for a minute, then shook his head. “No, I’m sorry,” he said politely. “I don’t know where that would come in. Is it a studio lot you’re looking for?”

  Bonnie hesitated. “I…I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m supposed to get in touch with a Gus Panders there.”

  The man’s face broke into a smile of recognition. “Oho,” he said. “Why didn’t you say you were looking for Gus?” He stared at Bonnie with a curious, almost leering expression on his face. “That Gus sure knows how to pick ’em,” he said softly, more to himself than to Bonnie.

  Bonnie was enormously relieved. “Then you know where it is?” she cried hopefully.

  “Who doesn’t?” the man countered. “Hop in and I’ll give you a lift.”

  He leaned over and opened the door for Bonnie, and she climbed in, gushing gratitude.

  The man reversed the car, then drove a few miles down the road to a secluded pathway so narrow and overgrown with brush it was barely visible from the highway. He turned onto the path and followed its winding course until they came to a big gate. Instead of the usual uniformed guard stationed at most studio entrances, they were met by a blowzy, broad-hipped redhead in a flowered dress who sat in a booth, idly filing her nails. As their car pulled up, she slid off her stool and lounged in the doorway, grinning lazily at the driver.

  “Knockin’ off a matinee today, Sam?” she asked.

  The driver laughed. “No such luck, Gertie. I’m just delivering a new girl.” He turned to Bonnie. “Well, miss, here you are.”

  Bonnie thanked the man and got out. As the car drove off, she stood in the driveway and looked around her in qualmish bewilderment. Certainly this was like no studio lot she had ever heard of before. To begin with, there was no billboard out in front announcing the name of the studio and the picture currently underway. And up ahead there were no signs of shooting anywhere—no trucks, no camera equipment, no big lights, no actors in costume. All she could see was a vast desert of black asphalt stretching away endlessly. Like a parking lot, the asphalt was dissected into spaces by white lines, and there was a metal meter of some kind in each space. On the opposite side of the road, mushrooming carelessly from the grass, stood a building that looked uncannily like an overgrown rooming house.

  Bonnie turned to the woman at the gate and fought to control the uncertainty in her voice. “Where the hell am I?” she asked.

  The woman threw back her head and laughed. “Don’t you know, honey?” she asked. “You’re at Gus Panders’ Drive-in Brothel, the only one of its kind in L.A.”

  Bonnie clapped a hand to her forehead. Of course! The famous “Auto-Erotica,” as they called it in the trade. The exclusive outdoor whorehouse that catered only to the highest ranking studio officials—directors, producers, and the like. Mother! If she landed a job here as a car hop, the possibilities were unlimited.

  “Where can I find Mr. Panders?” she asked anxiously. “Tony Barracuda sent me.”

  The woman pointed to the large building. “He’s over there in the dorms, auditioning.”

  Her strength replenished by hope, Bonnie walked the short distance to the house and found Panders in his ground floor office. He was a sallow-skinned, gap-toothed man with a thin mustache and a lean, athletic body.

  He listened patiently to the story Bonnie told him, a story depressingly similar, despite certain minor differences, to the hundreds he had heard before. She had been born and raised on New York’s Lower East Side. Her mother had died in her infancy, and her father, a peddler, had been so poor he was reduced to renting his empty pushcart out for illegal assignations. She had gone to work on the pushcart as soon as she was old enough, but the lack of space had been ruinous and the business failed. She had seen her father die a penniless and broken old man, unaware he would some day be hailed as the founder of the modern motel. Badly shaken by the old man’s death, she had been goaded into leaving New York by ambition and the local police force. She had come to Los Angeles to get into the movies, having crossed the country by befriending a series of railroad conductors and promising them unlimited access to her free lower berth.

  “So you see,” Bonnie concluded confidently, “I’ve had lots of experience in moving vehicles.”

  Panders leaned back in his chair. “Sounds good,” he said laconically, “but you’ll have to take our aptitude test.” He pointed to an adjoining room. “Go in there and get undressed.”

  Bonnie found the room bare to the point of institutional drabness. It contained only a sequestered double bed and a big sign on the wall that bore the legend, “Curb Your Sex Drive at Auto-Erotica.” The starkness of her surroundings intimidated Bonnie, but she gamely took off her clothes and lay down on the bed, assuming a carefully conceived erotic pose.

  When Panders walked in he slowly circled the bed a few times, mentally checking out Bonnie’s parts like a garage mechanic ins
pecting a car. Then he abruptly pulled down his trousers and got into bed with her.

  She was concerned that her anxiety might impair her performance—after all, she had never had so much at stake before. But her fears were groundless. Panders was pleased, so unequivocally pleased in fact, that he told her she was hired on the spot. Cosseted into a rare mood of conviviality, he even stayed in bed with her for a little while, smoking a cigarette and talking. He told her about the wife who had left him years ago, about the children he had but never saw, about how he had buried himself in his work, hoping some day to break into the movies himself as a director.

  When he ran out of words they fell into an awkward silence, staring absently at the only adornment in the room, the sign on the wall. Panders pointed to it casually. “How do you like our new slogan?” he asked.

  “It’s very clever,” Bonnie said. Hoping to further ingratiate herself with a compliment, she asked, “Did you think it up?”

  “Nah,” Panders said somewhat reluctantly. “It’s by some guy in our publicity department—Manny Ehrlich. He’s from New York, too.” He patted her playfully on the thigh and grinned. “They sure got a lot of talent in New York, don’t they?”

  Bonnie smiled. She thought she was going to like working at “Auto-Erotica” very much.

  It wasn’t until a year had passed that dissatisfaction began to burrow wormily into Bonnie’s mind. Hard-working and aggressive, she had built up an enviable popularity. But taking stock at the year’s end, she saw that except for a handful of worthless promises, she was still no closer to moviedom.

  Then one hot summer night, when activity at the drive-in was even steamier than usual, the great Greek producer, Hercules Fokis, pulled up in his black Rolls-Royce. Flushed with success and ouzo, he had come straight from a party celebrating the completion of his brilliant sex farce, Tit for Tat, in which Errol Flynn’s portrayal of Tat was certain to win an Academy Award nomination.