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Back The Great Pretenders
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The Great Pretenders
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. PART I
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. PART II
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. PART III
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. Chapter Twenty-two
  30. Chapter Twenty-three
  31. Chapter Twenty-four
  32. Chapter Twenty-five
  33. Chapter Twenty-six
  34. PART IV
  35. Chapter Twenty-seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-one
  40. Chapter Thirty-two
  41. Chapter Thirty-three
  42. Chapter Thirty-four
  43. Chapter Thirty-five
  44. PART V
  45. Chapter Thirty-six
  46. Chapter Thirty-seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. Readers Guide
  52. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
  53. Acknowledgments
  54. About the Author
  55. What’s next onyour reading list?

“Can’t ever live around it, Liza. It’s there, like a great big pothole in the road of life.” He put his hand over mine. “Loving someone, it’s like you dance along this fine, smooth, paved road, and then, oh shit, you stumble, you fall into a pothole, and the person you love helps you out, and you’re both the stronger for it. And if you’re not stronger for it—the both of you—then you might as well pull up your pants and go home.”

PART III

The Red and the Black

1955

Chapter Eighteen

They say that all the world loves a lover, so perhaps that’s why that summer of 1955 everything I touched seemed to glow. No longer Granville’s Folly, my little agency enjoyed a spate of good news, sale after sale for my clients who were moving out from Poverty Row productions. (Poverty Row itself was rapidly withering, thanks to television.) Television was still my writers’ bread and butter, but I snagged a fine coup with Maurice Allen’s—that is, Nelson Hilyard’s—The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. I sent it to MGM, to Jonathan’s odious father, Mr. Moore. (I still think of him as Mr. Moore, though I’ve known him all my life.) When he called to say he wanted to meet to discuss the script, I insisted on meeting him at a restaurant—and not one that was part of a hotel. (From the actresses he’d invited to his hotel suites, to the script girls he’d accosted in on-set trailers, his reputation was whispered among women all over Hollywood.) We met at Ciro’s, and I must say, he treated me with nothing worse than dripping condescension. However, he was brimming with excitement for The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. He had a director in mind! Ambitious casting in mind! He wanted to meet the writer, Maurice Allen.

When we all three had lunch, Maurice conducted himself like one cool cat, which is to say, the jaded New Yorker he truly is. After that, of course, it was all hurry up and wait, but the contract with MGM did wonders for Maurice’s generally caustic personality. He rented a house in the Hollywood Hills with a pool and a view. His mother left New York and moved in with him. Kathleen Hilyard (whom I called from a phone booth) was so delighted she wept with joy.