“Vivian, hurry,” said Olive. “Go get ready. Remember—you are a modest girl, so dress like one. And tidy up your hair while you’re in there. Take off some of that makeup, too. Clean up as best you can.
And wash your hands with a generous amount of soap. You smell like a brothel, and that won’t do.”
—
It’s incredible to me, Angela, to realize that so many people these days have forgotten Walter Winchell’s name. He was once the most
powerful man in American media, and that made him one of the most powerful men in the world. He wrote about the rich and famous, to be sure, but he was just as rich and famous as they were. (More, in most cases.) He was loved by his audience and feared by his prey. He built up and tore down other people’s reputations at will—like a kid toying about with sandcastles. Some even claimed that Winchell was the reason FDR got reelected—because Winchell (who was passionate about America joining the war and defeating Hitler) outright commanded his followers to vote for Roosevelt. And millions obeyed.
Winchell had been famous for a long time by doing nothing more than selling dirt on people, and for being a pretty snappy writer. My grandmother and I used to read his columns together, of course. We hung on his every word. He knew everything about everyone. He had tentacles everywhere.
Back in 1941, the Stork Club was essentially Winchell’s office. The whole world knew this. I certainly knew it because I’d seen him there dozens of times when I was out on the town with Celia. I would see him holding court from the throne that was always reserved for him: Table 50. He could be found there every night between 11:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M. This is where he did his dirty work. This is where the denizens of his kingdom would come slithering forth like Kublai Khan’s ambassadors, from every corner of the empire—to ask for favors, or to bring him the gossip he needed to feed the monstrous belly of his newspaper column.
Winchell liked to be around pretty showgirls (who doesn’t?), so Celia had sat at his table a few times. He knew her by name. They danced together often—I’d seen it. (No matter what else Billy said about him, the man was a good dancer.) But despite all the nights I’d
been at the Stork, I’d never dared to go sit at Winchell’s table myself. For one thing, I wasn’t a showgirl, an actress, or an heiress, so I wouldn’t have been of interest to him. For another thing, the man scared me to death—and I didn’t even have a reason back then to be scared of him.
Well, I had a reason now.
—
Olive and I didn’t talk in the cab. I was too consumed by fear and shame to make conversation, and she was never one for casual chitchat. I will say that her demeanor toward me was not degrading. She was not giving me a dose of schoolmarm disapproval—although
she had cause. No, Olive’s attitude that night was all business. She was a woman on a mission, and her focus was solely upon the task at hand. If I’d had my wits about me, I might have been touched and amazed that it was Olive—not Peg, or even Billy—who was putting her neck on the line for me. But I was too distraught to register this act of grace. All I could feel was doom.
The only thing Olive said to me as we were getting out of the taxi was, “I don’t want you saying a word to Winchell. Not a word. Be pretty and be quiet. That’s your only task. Follow me.”
When we reached the entrance to the Stork, we were stopped by two doormen whom I knew well. James and Nick. They knew me, too, although they didn’t realize it right away. They knew me as a glamour girl who was always hanging around Celia Ray, and that’s not even close to how I looked this evening. I wasn’t dressed to go dancing at the Stork. I wasn’t wearing an evening gown or furs, or jewels that I’d borrowed from Celia. On the contrary—as per Olive’s directions for sartorial modesty, which, thankfully, I’d had the good sense to obey—I was wearing the same simple frock I’d worn on the train to New York City all those many months ago. And I had on my good school coat. My face was scrubbed clean of makeup. I probably looked about fifteen years old.
What’s more, I was keeping a different sort of company that night (to say the least) than what the doormen were used to. Instead of being on the arm of the luscious showgirl Celia Ray, I was in the company of
one Miss Olive Thompson—a dour lady in steel-rimmed spectacles and an old brown overcoat. She looked like a school librarian. She looked like a school librarian’s mother. We certainly did not look like the sort of guests who would elevate the tone of a place like the Stork, and so both James and Nick put up their hands to stop us, just as Olive was marching in.
“We need to see Mr. Winchell, please,” she announced, briskly. “It’s rather an emergency.”
“I’m sorry, madam, but the nightclub is full, and we are not accepting any more guests for the evening.”
He was lying, of course. If Celia and I had been trying to get in— dressed in all our glory—those doors would have flung open so fast they might have lost their hinges.
“Is Mr. Sherman Billingsley here this evening?” Olive asked, undeterred.
The doormen exchanged glances. What did this homely librarian know of Sherman Billingsley, the club’s owner?
Taking advantage of their hesitation, Olive pressed on.
“Please tell Mr. Billingsley that the manager of the Lily Playhouse has come to speak with Mr. Winchell, and that it’s a grave emergency. Tell him that I come on behalf of his good friend Peg Buell. We haven’t much time. It’s regarding the potential publication of these photographs.”
Olive reached into her unassuming plaid satchel and pulled out the ruination of my life—that manila folder. She handed it to the doormen. This was a bold tactic, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Nick took the folder, opened it, looked at the photos, and let out a low whistle. Then he looked from the photos to me, and back to the photos. Something changed in his face. Now he knew me.
He gave me a raised eyebrow and a lewd grin. He said, “We haven’t seen you around here in a while, Vivian. But now I see why. I guess you’ve been busy, huh?”
I seared in shame—while at the same time understanding: This is just the beginning of it.
“I will ask you to take care with how you speak to my niece, sir,” said Olive, in a voice so steely it could have drilled a hole through a bank safe.
My niece?
Since when did Olive call me her niece?
Nick apologized, cowed. But Olive wasn’t done. She said, “Young man, you can either bring us to see Mr. Billingsley—who will not appreciate your rude treatment of two people he essentially considers to be family members—or you can bring us directly to Mr. Winchell’s table. You will do one, or you will do the other, but I will not be leaving. My suggestion is that you bring us directly to Mr. Winchell’s table because that’s where I’ll be ending up this evening—regardless of what it takes me to get there, or who has to lose their job along the way for trying to stop me.”
It’s amazing how frightened young men will always be of dowdy, middle-aged women with stern voices—but it’s true: they are terrified of them. (Too much like their own mothers, or nuns, or Sunday-school teachers, I suppose. The trauma from those old scoldings and beatings must run very deep.)
James and Nick exchanged a glance, looked at Olive one more time, and then decided as one: Give the old bird whatever she wants.
We were delivered straight to Mr. Winchell’s table.
—
Olive sat down with the great man, but gestured at me to remain standing behind her. It was as though she were using her squatty
little body as a shield between me and the world’s most dangerous newspaperman. Or maybe she just wanted to put me at a far enough remove from the conversation that I wouldn’t speak and ruin her strategy.
She pushed Winchell’s ashtray aside and placed the folder in front of him. “I’ve come to discuss these.”
Winchell opened the folder and fanned out the photos in front of him. For the first time, I could see the photos—though I wasn’t close
enough to make out the details. But there it was. Two girls and a man, all entwined in each other. You didn’t need the details to understand what was going on.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen these. Already bought them. Can’t help you.”
“I know,” said Olive. “I understand you’ll be publishing them tomorrow in the afternoon edition.”
“Say, lady, who the hell are you, anyhow?”
“My name is Olive Thompson. I’m the manager of the Lily Playhouse.”
You could see the abacus of his mind doing a quick calculation, and then he landed on it. “That dump where City of Girls is playing,” he said, lighting a new cigarette off the still-burning ember of his last one.
“That’s correct,” confirmed Olive. (She took no issue with the word “dump” as applied to our theater—though, honestly, who could have debated it?)
“It’s a good show,” Winchell said. “I gave it a rave.”
He seemed to want credit for this, but Olive wasn’t the sort of woman to hand out free credit—not even in this situation, when she was essentially coming before Winchell on bended knee.
“Who’s the little rabbit hiding behind you?” he asked.
“She’s my niece.”
So I guess we were sticking to that story.
“A bit past her bedtime, ain’t it?” said Winchell, giving me the onceover.
I’d never been this close to him before, and I didn’t like it one bit. He was a tall and hawkish man in his midforties, with baby-smooth pink skin and a twitchy jaw. He was wearing a navy blue suit (pressed to lacerating creases), with a sky blue Oxford shirt, brown wingtips, and a snappy gray felt fedora. He was wealthy and powerful, and he looked wealthy and powerful. His hands never stopped fidgeting, but his eyes were disconcertingly still as he took me in. His was a predator’s stare. You might have said he was good-looking, if you could release your concerns about when he was going to eviscerate you.