All the Stars in the Heavens Read online

  The set designer had built the small hills and footpaths of Central Park, the statues, park benches, and rock gardens. In the distance there were glints of light in the windows of the skyscrapers that surrounded the park, their walls made of faux sandstone and brick. Borzage’s genius was in the details; a real squirrel ran up a tree, before he was retrieved and placed back in his cage by an animal trainer until the cameras rolled. Another cage full of pigeons, which would be used in the first scene, was positioned by the park bench. A bag of bread crumbs was placed on the park bench for Spencer Tracy to feed them.

  Loretta smiled and nodded as the crew acknowledged her respectfully with greetings of “Good morning, Miss Young,” “Nice to see you again, Miss Young,” “Lovely as always, Miss Young.”

  Loretta’s team surrounded her, yanking at the hem of her dress, dusting off the hat, powdering her face. Loretta greeted her stand-in, who was exactly her size.

  “I guess I need a hat,” the stand-in murmured.

  “It’s a sweat box in here,” Loretta commented.

  “Gonna get worse. It’s going to break a hundred by eight this morning, and only going up from there,” the stage manager said as he passed.

  “You’re gonna cook in those coats,” the wardrobe assistant clucked.

  “Snow scenes in July,” a man’s voice said behind her, dropping to a whisper. “Tells you something about the common sense of studio executives.”

  Loretta turned to find herself face to face with Spencer Tracy. In two-inch heels, she was almost as tall as he was. Tracy was stocky and broad-shouldered, a body more suited to a workingman than a leading man. She liked his face. He was blue-eyed Irish in the stevedore fashion, with a strong nose, wide cheekbones, and a smile that had a sly curve. He leaned in conspiratorially. She waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t. Loretta pulled back and busied herself watching the crew add some snow around a park bench. Spencer Tracy shifted toward her again.

  “I saw Midnight Mary,” he said softly.

  Following his cue, Loretta leaned in and whispered in his ear, “How did I do?”

  “You killed every bum in the picture.”

  “It was in the script.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” he teased.

  “Did you read the script?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I save you in the end.”

  “Tough job. Are you up for it?”

  “You’ll soon find out. We’re starting with scene one. Where’s your tuxedo?”

  “They’re pressing it.”

  “We start at seven.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  He stood next to her, rocking back and forth on his feet and up on his toes. She didn’t know what else to say, and he said nothing. She half smiled, looking straight ahead, thinking, Something is wrong with this poor man. He had to be the most socially awkward actor she had ever met.

  Spencer must have sensed her feelings, because he turned and walked away, leaving her standing alone. She watched the oddball as he wove back through the crew, unrecognized.

  “He looks like my uncle,” the wardrobe assistant commented. “I’m all Irish on my mother’s side.”

  “Mr. Tracy is as Irish as a boiled potato.” LaWanda shrugged. “But there’s something about him, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yeah. Something,” Loretta said. She was too polite to say what she was really thinking.

  “Okay, Sis, this is where you work.”

  A production assistant, pencil-thin with a mustache to match, showed Alda the mail room, a dusty, ramshackle closet with a broken-down worktable and a few metal folding chairs placed around it.

  “You sit there and you answer the mail.” He put boxes on the worktable along with a stack of envelopes. “You can read ’em or not. If one of ’em makes you cry, you put it to the side for Miss Young. She enjoys a weepie. She likes to peruse a few here and there, but don’t crush her with a bunch. Everybody, everybody that writes in gets a photograph. Columbia front office orders. The audience pays our salaries when they buy tickets, don’t forget it.”

  “I won’t,” Alda promised. She looked at the windows, closed shut. The production assistant read her mind and opened them.

  “It’s hot in here.”

  “Thank you,” Alda said.

  He hoisted an oversize burlap bag full of mail onto the table. “Miss Young is popular.”

  “That is a lot of mail.” Alda wondered how she could possibly answer all the letters.

  “There’s thirteen more bags where this one came from.”

  Alda opened the box on the table. A black-and-white photograph of her boss in a voile dress, with a matching umbrella shading her from the sun, was duplicated in a stack in the hundreds.

  “Here’s Miss Young’s autograph stamp.” The young man showed Alda how to stamp Loretta’s signature on the photograph. “Easy peasy. Can you handle it? Stamp the photo, mail it to the return address. Write neatly. The boys in the front office don’t like returns. Costs them money.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The assistant left, leaving Alda alone with the bundles of letters. She opened the first one, with the return address Red Lodge, Montana. Alda began to read the story of a young woman whose husband had left her with three young children. She came upon the sentence “If you could please send me five dollars, it would go a long way to help.”

  Alda placed the paper off to the side, creating a stack for charity, and opened another. She took a deep breath, slipped off the shoes that Polly Ann Young had handed down to her, and settled in to read. This one made her laugh. It was from a man who had invented non-fade lipstick. She made another stack for inventors who wanted Loretta to represent their products.

  Loretta peeked in the door. “Anything good?”

  “I was told to send your photograph, but what they’d really like is a five-dollar bill.”

  “If we sent everybody money, I couldn’t take care of my family.”

  “Should I send a picture anyway?”

  “Just make a stack, and we’ll figure it out. I’ve given letters to Father McNally, and he contacts the local parish if there’s a real need.”

  “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “I’m going to lie down during my break with an ice bag. I don’t have any pain, mind you, I want to cool off.” Loretta laughed. “LaWanda will come and get you and take you to the commissary for lunch. It’s fun. You’ll see lots of stars over there.”

  Loretta peeled off costume pieces as she made her way back to her dressing room. The crew was rigging lights for the scene after lunch. She was about to turn to enter her dressing room when she saw her costar sitting alone on an extra park bench that hadn’t made it into the scenery. Spencer Tracy was reading the newspaper, which he had folded into a square about the size of a page in a book.

  “I could use a cold beer, how about you?”

  Spencer looked up at her and smiled. “Only if I could take a bath in it.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Loretta sat down next to him on the bench. “Did you have lunch?”

  “Jell-O.”

  “You must be starving.”

  “I had a cup of grapes with it.”

  “That must have been filling,” Loretta said wryly.

  “They tell me that the only other leading man with my waist size is W. C. Fields.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “According to wardrobe, it’s right on the money. These are his pants.”

  Loretta laughed. “I was about to pay you a compliment.”

  “What for?”

  “I think leading men should look like real men. And you do.”

  “You call that a compliment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I was about to tell you that you’re not half bad looking.”

  “I can’t take any credit for it. I look like my mother. And she looked like her mother.”

  “That’s usually how it goes.�
� Tracy rolled his newspaper into a tube. “You’re a fine actress.”

  “You’re only as good as who you act with—”

  “How do you think it went this morning?”

  “All right.”

  “Borzage knows what he’s doing.”

  “We’ll see.” Loretta stood and smiled. “I’m going to take a rest.”

  “What about that beer?” Spencer grinned.

  “What are you doing for dinner?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Would you like to come to my house?”

  “I figured you liked me, but I didn’t expect you to like me this much so soon.”

  “I don’t mean to give you the wrong impression.”

  “Too late for that.”

  “Dinner at my house. It’s a loony bin. I have three sisters, Mama, our priest, Father McNally, Alda, my new secretary, two cats, one dog, and a canary that can’t sing.”

  “What time?”

  “Seven.”

  “Right after work.”

  “Does that suit you?”

  “I live at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and I’m sick and tired of room service.”

  “You theater people. Always in hotels. Movie people? We’re homebodies. Home-cooked all the way. My family is on Sunset. A few blocks from the hotel. You can walk home after dinner.”

  “That close?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Thank you. It’s a date.”

  “It’s dinner,” she corrected him.

  Spencer Tracy watched Loretta Young walk back to her dressing room. She was slender, but there was nothing small about her. She was a talented actress, which was important to Tracy. A pretty girl was one thing, but pretty and talented, that was preferable. If he was going to sell out by acting in the movies, he hoped to at least bring serious skill to the proceedings.

  The deep roots of respect are fed by admiration, and Tracy held Loretta in high regard already. He liked the way she worked. She was specific, kept her focus, and didn’t fool around. She didn’t seem to fear Borzage, and she didn’t ask a lot of questions. She appreciated the work of the crew, treating them as she wished to be treated. She was without airs, and yet there was a distance between her and others; for sure there was one between her and him. Tracy was a man who couldn’t abide artifice, on or off the set, but it was here, at work, that he sensed a conundrum regarding his costar.

  For all of Loretta Young’s warmth and professionalism, there was something aloof about her. In her company he got an odd sensation of simultaneous hot and cold. It reminded him of the magic hour in the desert, the brief interlude of twilight. The sun was going down, but there was still heat, and in an instant it was gone, as the world turned lavender and a chill set in. Loretta was mysterious, which intrigued him; she was sensual, which stirred him up. He was lonely, but he felt none of it in her presence. This was a girl who would matter to him, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  Father McNally, the fresh-scrubbed young priest and pastor of Our Lady of Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills, sat at the head of the dining room table at Sunset House. Ruby, the family cook since boardinghouse days, placed a pork roast at the center of the table. Like her boss, Ruby was from North Carolina. Ruby was a black woman who had the same goal in Hollywood as the Young family. She wanted to make it big. When she wasn’t working for Gladys Belzer, she made cakes and pies for some of the popular restaurants on the strip. Ruby wanted to retire young and rich.

  “May I help?” Father asked.

  “Reverend, I don’t need help in the kitchen. I need help everywhere else. Just keep me in your prayers,” Ruby said wearily.

  Gladys entered from the kitchen, carrying a basket of fresh biscuits.

  “Mrs. Belzer, let me serve the table,” Ruby groused. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Many hands make light work, Ruby.”

  “Many hands also make a mess, Mrs. Belzer. A mess that I have to clean up later.”

  Loretta and Polly came in, laughing, while Sally chased Georgie around the table. The girls greeted the priest before taking their seats. Alda sat at the far end of the table, the farthest seat from Father McNally.

  “Who’s the extra plate for?” Polly wanted to know.

  “I invited a new friend.”

  “Is it a man?” Georgie complained.

  “Yes. My fellow actor, Spencer Tracy.” She checked her watch. “He should be here by now.”

  “Never heard of him.” Sally poured herself a glass of ice tea.

  “He’s from the theater.”

  “Ugh. If you’re going to invite actors to dinner, I wish you’d bring Clark Gable home.” Sally unfolded her napkin on her lap. “Theater people have lousy clothes and bad teeth.”

  “There’s some Christian charity for you, Father,” Polly said drily.

  “Sal, I hate to disappoint you,” Loretta said. “I don’t know Clark Gable. And I never will. He just signed a big contract at Metro.”

  “You could get loaned out.”

  “Won’t happen,” Loretta promised.

  Alda’s head was swimming. People didn’t talk in the Belzer home, they prattled like the keys of a typewriter being hit by a crack secretary at a hundred words a minute. Words richocheted around the room like stray bullets, and when one of the girls made a point, she didn’t stay in her seat—she stood up, as though called upon for her opinion.

  “Alda, this is quite a household.” Father McNally smiled.

  Alda was surprised at how young Father McNally was—when she thought about Mother Superior dismissing her, Alda had imagined Father McNally as one of those older, imposing, autocrat priests, but here he was, the opposite. She couldn’t believe that a man this young out of the seminary had changed the course of her life.

  “Are you enjoying your work?” the priest asked.

  “It’s interesting. I like it, and I hope I’m doing well.”

  “What is she supposed to say, Father? We’re all sitting here,” Sally joked.

  “You have all been very kind to me.” Alda turned to the priest. “The girls shared their clothes with me.”

  “Lucky we’re the same size.” Polly grinned.

  “I didn’t want to leave Saint Elizabeth’s because I felt useful there, but there’s plenty of work for me here. Gretchen’s fan letters are like reading the great novels.”

  “Really?” Loretta was surprised.

  “People tell their stories when they write to you. They can be heartbreaking, but sometimes they’re just ordinary bread and butter notes. People write to someone they don’t know, but based on what they’ve seen on the movie screen, they feel they know you and assume you possess the qualities of your characters.”

  “Only the good ones, I hope,” Loretta said.

  Her sisters roared with laughter.

  “If only they knew the real Gretch,” Sally joked.

  “Maybe they do. They consider you their confidante.”

  “What an honor for you, Gretchen,” Father McNally said. “God gave you a talent that allows people to see your soul. You invite them in, so they want to share their stories with you.”

  “Sally and Polly get fan letters too,” Gladys interjected.

  “Oh, Mama, we don’t care,” Polly said. “We’re happy for Gretchen.”

  “Besides, she wants it more,” Sally teased.

  “Mr. Tracy Spencer is here,” Ruby announced from the doorway.

  The girls laughed.

  “It’s Spencer Tracy,” Loretta corrected her.

  “That don’t sound right. Tracy is a first name. Your momma got your name backward.”

  “That may very well be, Miss Ruby. Regardless, here I am.” Spencer entered the dining room. He gave Mrs. Belzer a box of candy, greeted the priest, and took a seat.

  As Father McNally said grace, Gladys watched with interest as Spencer made the sign of the cross. “Mr. Tracy, you’re a Catholic?”

  “All my life, Mrs. Belzer. Please don’t as
k me if I’m a good one.”

  “Alda was almost a nun,” Georgie piped up.

  “Your sister will tell you that I’m almost an actor.”

  “She only said you were intriguing.”

  Loretta blushed as Spencer laughed. Polly and Sally chided Georgie.

  “Intrigue can mean a lot of things.”

  “No kidding.” Loretta glared at Georgie.

  “Alda, it must be a big change from the convent to a mansion in Beverly Hills,” Spencer said.

  “It’s not that different from the convent. It’s all girls, they just have better clothes and bigger rooms.”

  “And ice cream,” Georgie said.

  “And ice cream. Well, to be honest, we had ice cream at the convent on Christmas.”

  “We have it whenever we want it here,” Georgie said.

  “How do you stay so slim?” Spencer teased Georgie.

  “I swim. You should try it.”

  “Georgiana!” Loretta shot her a look.

  “She’s right. I could stand to lose a few,” Spencer said.

  “You’re just fine the way you are,” Loretta assured him.

  “Alda is Italian,” Georgie interrupted. “What are you?”

  “I’m from Milwaukee,” Tracy said.

  “Tracy is an Irish surname, Georgie,” Gladys said.

  “The statues at Good Shepherd came from Italy,” Georgie announced.

  “Who told you that?” Her mother smiled.

  “We learned it in Catechism. Miss Spadoni said if we were going to spend every Sunday in church, we ought to know where the beauty came from.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Spencer said. “You know no one is sure where beauty began—am I right, Father?”

  “Let me guess. You’re a Jesuit.”

  Spencer Tracy laughed. “How could you tell?”

  “Only a Jesuit would ask that question. Why don’t we assume everything beautiful comes from God?”

  “Fine with me, Father. Evidently, God was busy in this house.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tracy.” Gladys nodded.

  “How’s the roast?” Ruby asked Spencer.

  “Did you prepare it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Good answer, Mr. Tracy. I might cut you a big slice of pie.”