Belinda Read online

  And even before we left the terrace that first morning, Mother got me in the picture just by pointing me out to Susan and saying, “Hey, put Belinda in it somewhere if you can. Isn’t she pretty? She is just real pretty, don’t you think?”

  Mom had gotten me into movies all over Europe in just that way. “Hey, put Belinda in this scene,” she’d say, right when we were shooting. And I had always loved it. But it never occurred to Mom to ask anybody to give me a credit on a movie. So I’m in twenty-two films with no credit. And in some of them I talk and I act, and in one I even get shot to death. No credit.

  That is, until Final Score.

  Susan took one look at me and decided she would use me. And overnight the part started to grow in Susan’s head. She woke me up at four in the morning to ask me if I could speak Greek. Yes, I could, I told her, but I had an accent. OK. Few words. Then the next morning we started shooting on the beach.

  Now understand I’d worked with all kinds of film crews but Susan’s working methods were a revelation to me. The entire crew was five people and Susan herself got behind the camera. And she edited in her head as we shot so that not much would have to be cut away. I mean, it was very deliberate, everything that she did. And nobody had a script either. Susan just explained things to us before every take.

  When we got to the little house and Sandy Miller and I got into bed together, I think the love scene really upset Sandy. She and Susan were lovers though I didn’t know it then. But Sandy wants to be a great actress, and Susan said this was an important scene and Sandy had to play it and there couldn’t be any cheating, and Sandy did what Susan said.

  I didn’t actually make love to Sandy, I don’t know if you noticed that. It was Sandy making love to me. And Sandy is gorgeous, if you didn’t notice. Sandy makes you understand why men used to call women tomatoes. She is like a big tomato. And frankly not a whole lot like anything else.

  Later in Rome, however, I did make love to a woman, and it was Susan, of course. And that was pretty wild for me. But Sandy and Susan turned out to be inseparable really. And Susan had a hard time making Sandy overlook what happened. And, of course, I hadn’t known at all that they were lovers and I was mad at Susan for a while.

  But Susan and I only did it once. If you can call an entire afternoon once. Susan was in bed in the flat in Rome smoking a cigarette and I came in and sat on the bed by her. And then I saw that she was undressed. She kicked the sheet off her and she sat there smoking her cigarette and just looking at me. And I came closer and closer and then I reached out to touch her and she didn’t do anything and I slipped my hand down between her legs.

  This was like touching a flame and not being burned. And I did it. And then I kissed her breasts. I think it was very important to me to do it, after just lying there with Sandy, and the truth was, I could have been Susan’s lover, at least for a while.

  But it never happened after that on account of Sandy, and the truth is, I didn’t have to sleep with Susan to love her. We stayed the best of friends. We got a Vespa, like the one I’d left at home, and we went everywhere on it together. We went as far south as Pompeii riding all night.

  Sandy is not the kind of woman to take off on a Vespa. I mean, Sandy would not want to get her hair messed up. But she accepted me as long as there was no sex anymore.

  Sandy is like Mother actually. She is not only passive, she has almost no language of her own. I could see that Susan not only did all the talking, she did the expressing of ideas for Sandy. Sandy was one of those people like Mother who can not think well on her own. I don’t mean Sandy is dumb. She is not. But I have met many Sandys. Susan was the new thing to me.

  But it really didn’t dawn on me until the picture was entered at Cannes that Susan regarded me as something new, too. She saw me as her personal discovery, and she wanted me for other pictures. Frankly I was so enthralled with Susan that I didn’t think much about how Susan saw me. There was always that feeling of lightness and speed with Susan, like we had put on the five-league boots of the fairy, tales when we were together.

  Next time I had that feeling it was with you. When you are painting, you are like Susan was in the editing room, you are just focused on that and no one can distract you, but when you stop painting, there is a light feeling about you as if you are very young and you don’t care what anybody thinks of you, and we could just walk and talk on the beach or go anywhere and it didn’t matter, just as long as you got back to the canvas at some point.

  Now Mother is the very opposite. Mother is as professional an actress or movie person as I have ever seen. I mean, everybody who has ever worked with Mother loves her because she is just really perfect on the set and nothing stops her from doing her job. She can repeat lines perfectly on cue, she can find her mark always, she can go into a retake in exactly the right attitude each time. She may be drunk and crazy by seven in the evening, but somehow she manages to shut down before midnight. She is always on time.

  But Mother has always been somebody’s ticket to ride. Mother is as helpless as she is valuable. You have to write the part for her, shine the light on her, tell her what to do. She’s no good without somebody else’s energy at all.

  Well, Susan wasn’t just a director. She was the producer, the writer, the financier. She edited in twelve-hour stretches at Cinecittá with me watching her, she set up places for us to shoot more footage and blend it in. Then she was on top of the cinematographer in the lab getting the prints just perfect. She put her own money into making four terrific prints. And the sound track, that was almost entirely Susan, because we did not have a good sound engineer.

  When we talked about the next film, the Brazilian film, she wanted input. She didn’t need the total passivity of Sandy either. She could use you no matter what way you were. She is sort of omnivorous. She consumes everything. And I never made up my mind about the degree of ego in Susan. Is it possible to have so much faith in yourself that you have no ego at all?

  When I came back from Rome to Saint Esprit, I told Mother all about the Brazil picture Susan wanted to make, and Mother said all that was just fine but somebody ought to go to Brazil with me to look after me but sure it was OK with her. She also said with a little bit of a sneer that if Susan didn’t find a distributor at Cannes, Susan was dead.

  OK. Susan understood that, of course. That is what Cannes was about. It wasn’t just winning the awards or having fun at the Carlton, it was getting the distributors to take the picture both in Europe and the United States. And Mother said she would go to Cannes and she would hold a press conference with Susan and she’d do what she could to launch the film.

  Well, Mother had not been off Saint Esprit since I was twelve years old. I was thrilled. This meant everything to Susan, and maybe with Mother backing us and me being Mother’s daughter we could at least get an independent distributor in the States. Susan didn’t think the film had enough conventional impact for the studios to touch it, but an independent distributor, that would be just fine.

  The Brazil picture, that would be the big time. Sandy would play an American journalist in Brazil sent there to write travel articles about the beaches and the bikinis, and I’d be a prostitute that Sandy met, a white slave shipped there by a big-time crime ring, and Sandy would be determined to save me and get me out of Brazil. Of course, my pimp would be this big-time gangster and Susan had a guy to die for to play the part, I’m telling you, and he would really love me and all, sort of, I mean, Susan wanted things complicated the way they are in Final Score.

  Susan can not stand to have things black and white. Susan feels that if you have a villain in a movie, then you have failed somewhere.

  Anyway Final Score would be the debut film and then Of Will and Shame would be the breakout film. And Susan started writing press releases about us and about Cannes and sending them back to the United States.

  My happiest memories of Saint Esprit are those last few days. Well, while we were shooting the movie earlier, that too, I guess. But for
some reason those last few days are more vivid, things are better in focus for me, and I really knew Susan and Sandy by then.

  Nothing yet had changed with Mother and Jill and Trish. They were still having the never-ending sorority girl beer bust on the terrace, and Susan was in her room with the door open and all the lights on typing away on her portable computer making up these press releases and then printing them out on her little thermal-paper printer and sticking them into envelopes and sealing them up.

  I don’t know what I was doing. Maybe brushing my hair and trying to be a white slave prostitute in the mirror, trying to figure out how to project the sensuality Susan wanted, I don’t know. just grooving on the energy in the house, the sense of people having a good time, of there being these areas of light and happiness between which I could navigate. And, above all, the sense that we were going, we were leaving Saint Esprit for Cannes and then Brazil after that—and me on my own down there with Susan and Sandy. Oh, I couldn’t wait to get to Brazil. Well, let me tell you, Jeremy. I never got to Brazil.

  OK. So Mother was going to get the cameras on us at Cannes. But Mother was three sheets to the wind when she said all this. And about two weeks before we were to leave for the festival, things began to happen, and it began to hit Mother that she was going to Cannes.

  First off Gallo, her old lover and most-admiring director, sent a telegram, then her old European agent wrote, then Blair Sackwell, who’d started his whole Midnight Mink campaign years ago with Mother, sent his usual white roses and a note saying, “See you at Cannes.” (By the way Blair knows that white roses meant funerals to most people, but Blair just doesn’t care; white flowers are his signature and they are just fine.) Then a couple of Paris magazines called to confirm that Mom was going, and finally the festival people themselves called, wanting to know, was it true Bonnie was coming out of hiding? Would she make an appearance? There were strong indications they wanted to give Mother some special tribute, show one of her old Nouvelle Vague films.

  And somehow or other it got through to Mother: she was supposed to go to Cannes.

  I mean, one minute we had Mom snoozing and drinking as usual. And the next we were pouring all the booze down the drain. Mother had to have vitamin shots, a masseuse had to be flown in, there couldn’t be anything but protein on the table, Mother was going swimming three times a day.

  Next a hairdresser had to be found and sent to the Carlton ahead of time. Now my dad used to be my mother’s hairdresser, because that is what he is by profession, a very famous hairdresser, known to all the world as G.G., but they had had a fight two years before I went to Saint Esprit, for which I blamed myself. It is a long story, but the important thing is that Mom did not now have a hairdresser and this is a very big thing to an actress like Mom. I will tell you more about my dad later, but for now let me say this was a crisis. And also Mom had to have new clothes.

  When we finally checked into the hotel in Paris, she wanted me with her every minute. Trish and Jill just weren’t enough. She wasn’t eating anything now. She was half crazy. She’d wake me up at three and make me sit with her so she wouldn’t call room service for a drink. She’d talk about her mother dying and how, when she was seven and her mother died, all the lights in the world went out. I’d try to get her off that, talk to her, read to her even. And meantime we couldn’t find a decent hairdresser. As for the clothes, there was no time to have anything specially made.

  Well, all this worked out for Mother finally, but what happened to me basically is that I couldn’t get away from her long enough to get what I might need. And finally Trish said, “Look, Bonnie, she’s got to buy some things, really,” and while Mother was crying and saying she couldn’t have me wandering off now, Trish just shoved me out the door. And there I was, running all over Paris in one rainy afternoon trying to find some clothes for Cannes.

  I honestly think that by the time we got on the plane Mother had forgotten why we were going. I don’t think she even remembered Susan or Final Score. She kept telling me over and over that the big American directors would be there and they were the ones who were important now.

  We had booked a big suite on the front of the Carlton with a wonderful view of the sea and the Croisctt›. Uncle Daryl, my mom’s brother, whom you know of, had it filled with flowers, but he needn’t have worried because Gallo sent four-dozen roses and Blair Sackwell sent more white roses and then there were a dozen arrangements easily from a Marty Moreschi at United Theatricals, I mean, flowers everywhere that you looked.

  I don’t think Mother expected all this. Even with the talk of the tribute I think she had expected to be patted on the head and no more. But as always happens with Mom, the attention only made her more afraid. Trish and Jill had to make her eat something and then she couldn’t hold it down. The vomiting started, and I had to be in the bathroom with her till it was over. Then she tried again.

  Finally I told her I had to find Susan. And she told me straight out that she didn’t know how I could think of things like that at a time like this.

  I tried to explain Susan was expecting to hear from us, but she was crying by this time, and that meant her makeup was ruined, and she told Jill that I was changing towards her, that I wasn’t my old self, and Jill said that was her imagination and that I was not going anywhere, was I?

  I didn’t know what I would have done then, but Susan came at that moment, knocking on the door. She looked terrific in her silver satin tasseled shirt and silver pants, but Mother did not even look at her, she was sick again, and I took Susan into the bedroom and found out from her that our showing was tomorrow morning and we’d have a press conference right after and that is when Mother had to be there.

  I told Susan that everything was just going to be fine. Mother was sick right now, but she’d be OK in the morning, that’s how it was with Mother. She was always on time. As for me, I’d meet her before the screening, but I couldn’t leave right now.

  Meantime Trish had taken Mom into her room for her nap. And Uncle Daryl and a new Hollywood agent named Sally Tracy were having a drink in the parlor of the suite, and I brought Susan in to meet them.

  They smiled at Susan but almost immediately told her very tactfully that they didn’t think Mother would be doing the press conference after all. Lots of people wanted to see Mother. And the press conference about Susan’s movie just wasn’t the kind of exposure that Mother should have. Surely Susan understood that they have to orchestrate things.

  Well, boy, did Susan not understand. Her face went dark as she looked at these two. And then she turned and looked at me. I said immediately that whatever the case I’d be at the screening and the press conference as Bonnie’s daughter, and we could get some mileage out of that.

  Susan nodded, then she got up, said, Real nice meeting you, Texas-style, to Daryl and Sally Tracy and she split. As for me, I was in a state of shock, but not so much that I didn’t snap out of it and light into Uncle Daryl. Didn’t he realize why we were here?

  But he and Sally Tracy smoothly and almost cheerfully explained to me that the sort of films that Susan did were not going to find an audience in America and the smart thing to do was not get any deeper in. I said, Mom owes Susan, you know that. There isn’t any ethical way to back out on Susan. But I could feel my face getting red.

  What I was thinking basically was, this is my film, too, goddamn it, I’m in it and, damn it, we came here to support it. But what stopped me from arguing was realizing that this might make me sound just like Mother, as self-centered as she always was. I was just silent thinking about that, not wanting to sound like Mother, and then Uncle Daryl took me aside and told me all kinds of people had been contacting him about Mother. He was sure I understood.

  Then Sally Tracy asked me about Susan’s film, if there was a love scene with me in it and what kind of scene. I told her it was tasteful and it was sort of revolutionary because it was between two women, and she just shook her head and said, “I think we have a problem.”

&
nbsp; I said, “What’s the problem?” And then Daryl said I wouldn’t be at that press conference in the morning, no sir. “Like hell,” I said.

  I was just about to light out for Susan’s room when out of the other room of the suite there came this man. Now this is Marty Moreschi I’m talking about, but at the time, of course, I didn’t know him at all. And let me explain how he came across.

  Marty is not handsome, the way you are. He doesn’t have your poise and cool, and even when he is as old as you are, he will never have your charm. Marty is self-made and what you call a loud, vulgar New York kid in a lot of ways. He has rather ordinary features and plain straight black hair. Nothing particular about him except everything seems particular, especially his deep, kind of purring voice, coming out of his chest, and his eyes, very brilliant and feverish eyes.

  But like Susan, Marty is very impressive and very sexual, too. He is sinewy and hard all over, one of those wiry guys who is incredibly strong. And he is always suntanned black and is always in motion and always talking. So you respond as much to the way he glides up and takes your hand and to the way he laughs and says: “Belinda, honey! Bonnie’s daughter, well, isn’t this sensational, this is Bonnie’s daughter, come here, honey, let me look at you?’—you respond as much to this as to his looks.

  He is very hot. I mean, you feel it with everything. It isn’t just sexuality with Marty, though Marty is practically compulsive on that score, it is that Marty just takes charge.

  He was wearing an exquisite silver gray three-piece suit, and he had gold all over him—gold watchband, gold rings, gold cuff links, and I have to say that he looked very good to me, very good. He really has a fine body, really fine. I mean, the chest and the way the pants fit him, he looked very good right off.

  Anyway, he came gliding out of Mother’s room, and he said just what I just said, and he gave me his immediate lock-on attention, which usually means attraction, though, of course, it could have been flattery, just flattery. Of course, Marty swore later that it was not. Whatever the case, he said my mother was sensational, unbelievable, incredible, unreal, and all that and it was the thrill of his life to meet her and she was the dream star, the superstar, the star like they didn’t make stars anymore and all that.