beautiful thirties house, long, low, L-shaped, high up in the hills, kind of English meets Mediterranean, simple and well built. Blue shutters, jasmine crawling over the walls, Art Deco French doors leading out to a scallop-shaped pool.
I love it, but it has a special connection that means I love it even more.
‘I bought the house because it belonged to Eve Noel. She lived there after her marriage.’
Artie’s lying back against the couch. He scrunches up his face. ‘Who? The … the movie star? The crazy one?’
‘She wasn’t crazy.’
Artie scratches his stomach. ‘Well, she disappeared. She was huge, then she vanished. I heard she was crazy. Or dead. Didn’t she die?’
‘She disappeared,’ I say. ‘She’s still alive. I mean, she must be somewhere. But no one knows where. She made those seven amazing films, she was the biggest star in the world for five years or so, and then she vanished.’
‘OK, so what?’ Artie puts his hands behind his head.
‘I want to make a film about her.’
From my bag I pull out a battered copy of Eve Noel and the Myth of Hollywood, the frustratingly slim biography of her that ends in 1961. I must have read it about twenty times. ‘So … it’d be a film about where she came from, about her starting out in Hollywood, what happened to her, why she left.’
‘I never knew you were into Eve Noel. Old movies.’ Artie makes it sound like I’ve told him I love anal porn.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘My whole childhood was spent on the sofa watching videos. It’s a wonder I don’t have rickets – I never saw the sun.’
Artie grunts. He doesn’t much like funny women. ‘So why the big obsession with her?’
‘She’s the best. The last real Hollywood star. And she … She grew up near me, a little village near Gloucester?’ I can hear the edge of the West Country accent creep into my voice, and I stutter to correct it. ‘It’s crazy, no one knows what happened to her, why she left LA.’
The first time I saw A Girl Named Rose, I was ten. I remember we had a new three-piece suite. It was squeaky, because Mum didn’t want to take off the plastic covers in case it spoiled. I was ill with flu that knocked me out for a week and I lay on the sofa under an old blanket and watched A Girl Named Rose, and it changed my life. I never thought about being an actress before then, even though Mum had been one, or tried to, before I was born, but after I saw that film it was all I wanted to do. Not the kind Mum wanted me to be, with patent-leather shoes and bunches, a cute smile, parroting lines to TV directors, but the kind that did what Eve Noel did. I’d sit on the sofa while Mum talked on the phone or had her friends over, and Dad worked in the garage – first the one garage, then two, then five, so we could afford holidays in Majorca, a new car for Mum, a bigger house, drama school for me. The world would go on around me and I’d be there, watching Mary Poppins and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, anything with Elizabeth Taylor, all the old musicals, Some Like It Hot … you name it, but always coming back to Eve Noel, A Girl Named Rose, Helen of Troy, The Boy Next Door. I even cut out pictures of my favourite films and made a montage in my room: Julie Andrews running across the fields; Vivien Leigh standing outside Tara; Audrey Hepburn whizzing through Rome with Gregory Peck; Eve Noel walking down the road smiling, hands in the pockets of her flared skirt.
Everyone else at school thought I was weird. It was weird, probably. But Eve Noel and that film opened a world up for me. It seemed magical. It isn’t, any more, and I should know. Back then it was all about glamour and artifice, these gods and goddesses deigning to appear on a screen for us. Whereas I know what it’s like now. It’s a business, less profitable than online poker, but a profitable business still, until the Internet kills it totally dead.
Mum and I used to drive past Eve Noel’s old house. It’s in ruins now. It’s funny – everyone knows that’s where a film star grew up. But no one knows the film star any more, or even where she is now. Her last picture was Triumph and Tragedy, in 1961, and it was a big flop. There’s a picture of her at the Oscars, the year she didn’t win and her husband did. She’s smiling, so lovely, but she doesn’t look right. Her eyes are odd, I can’t describe it. And then – nothing.
I try and explain all this to Artie. He nods enthusiastically. ‘Give me the pitch then,’ he says.
‘The pitch?’
He’s grinning. ‘Come on, Sophie. You know it’s you, but you’re gonna have to get some big guys to put big money up if you want this thing made. Give me the one-line pitch.’
‘Oh …’ I clear my throat. ‘Kind of … A Star is Born meets … um … Rebecca? Because the house burns down. I suppose maybe it’s more The Player set in the fifties meets A Star is Born, or—’
‘Boorrring!!’ Artie buzzes. My head snaps up – I’m astonished.
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘You are my number one client. You are so important to me. This could be amazing. I’m talking Oscar-amazing. But it could be career suicide. Again. And you can’t afford that. Again.’
He stands up again and pats his stomach. ‘I’m a pig. I’m a pig! Listen to me, sweetheart. Go home. Think up a great pitch. We have to get this thing made.’
‘Really?’ I stand up, stumbling slightly.
‘Really. But you’re totally right. If we can’t do it properly we should forget all about it.’
‘That’s not—’
‘And you’ll read the dog script? For me? Think about who’d be good, who you’d like to work with?’ I must have nodded, because he gives a big smile. ‘Thank you so much. Take the other scripts. Read them. I wanna know what you think of them all. I’m interested in your opinion. Sophie Leigh Brand Expansion. We’re big, we need to go bigger, and you’re the one who’s gonna lead us there. Capisce?’
‘Thanks, Artie,’ I say, aware that something is slipping from my grasp but unsure of how to take it back. ‘But also the Eve Noel project, let’s think—’
‘Sure, sure!’ He pats me on the back and squeezes my shoulder. ‘I think with the right project and a good writer we could have something wonderful. And listen, I spoke to Tommy, did he tell you?’ I shake my head. Tommy’s my manager, and he rings Artie roughly ten times a day with ideas, most of which Artie rejects. ‘It’s fantastic news!’
‘What?’
‘He tested the line we discussed for the Up! Kidz Challenge Awards on a focus group and it came back great. So that’s what you’re saying. OK? Wanna give it a try, for old times’ sake?’
I smile obligingly, hold up my bare left hand, then scream, ‘I LOST MY RING!!!’
This is the line I’m famous for, from The Bride and Groom. It’s a cute film actually, about a wedding from the girl’s point of view: bitchy bridesmaids, rows with parents – and from the guy’s point of view: problems at work, a bachelor party that ends in disaster. The bride, Jenny, loses her ring halfway through in a cake shop, and that’s what she screams. I don’t say it often, because I don’t want to have a catchphrase. Tommy would sell dolls
