After the premiere of Fly Me to the Moon, Denise retreated to Summit Drive, where (Irene told me) she spent her days raging through all thirty-five rooms, rampaging at the servants, lashing out at Leon, and being cruel to Elsie. She put on some forty pounds in a matter of weeks, and when she wasn’t making others miserable, she ate or cried or slept or read the reviews of Fly Me to the Moon. They were good, cheering. Critics praised the lively script, the wry performances. Denise, personally—astonishingly really—collected applause from none other than Bosley Crowther, the influential critic for the New York Times. Crowther was not usually kind to Empire Pictures, but here he said that Maisie’s struggle with words like oscilloscope was part of her charm, indeed, part of her character. Fly Me to the Moon did well at the box office too. Max and Marian—I heard via Susan Strassman relaying messages with pseudonyms—were just as pleased as they could be. I heard nothing at all from Charlie, who, I assume, was in the Empire Pictures Writers’ Building sulking. Had I guessed he was such a bundle of resentment and insecurity, I would have asked a chimpanzee to front for Max before I’d asked Charlie Frye.

And Jonathan? In the past four or five years, Jonathan had appeared in probably twenty films, and nobody had noticed him. With Fly Me to the Moon, effervescent fare that it was, critics and audiences suddenly woke up to his gifts; his comedic timing was impeccable. Superlatives rained down; the praise that washed over him was universal, and adoring. He wasn’t Laurence Olivier (or Rowland Granville, for that matter) but he’d never have to wear another toga. He stood poised to be the next Cary Grant. To continue his winning streak, his agent insisted on another light comedic picture for his next venture, asking five times what he’d been paid by Empire. (Empire had not bothered to put him under contract for more than one picture.) With all these shimmering prospects, Jonathan terminated his Casa Fiesta lease in bohemian Laurel Canyon and rented a house in respectable Brentwood. I went to see it, not altogether surprised to find that it had been furnished by a designer, that it had a pool, a patio, a housekeeper, and glamorous neighbors. Variety gave him a big, fat headline when he signed for a film called Aloha Express with Paramount. They would start shooting in Hawaii in early summer, and ironically, Jonathan would have to learn to surf, at least enough to fake it before the stunt double took over.