a depression – that’s there for nothing.’
She glanced at the LA Times on the sideboard.
‘All those millionaires jumping out of skyscrapers just because they lost some of their precious money. All they had to stop doing was being so dramatic and get a job.’
I had eaten so much at supper that my new pink organza dress split its stitches. I heard it tear as I stretched for the salt cellar. My cheeks burned hot, and I could feel the sweat under my waist and my arms. Mother was too absorbed in her new friend to notice. I asked permission to leave the table, and scarpered. On the way to my bedroom, I played my daily game of dodging all the mirrors.
Back on the hot set, Mo was displeased with his star. He barked out his criticisms, called her ‘a fat cow’ in German.
‘Drop your voice an octave and don’t lisp.’
‘Look at that lamp as if you could no longer live without it.’
‘You are the Empress of Russia, not a German milkmaid.’
He made her descend a staircase forty-five times, over and over again, until she got it right. She did it without demur. Her velvet crinoline, so magnificent, was heavy, and the intense heat of the lamps burned onto her face, but she didn’t perspire, and never once complained of fatigue. She was so courageous. Didn’t flinch, despite the insults, and the pain etched on her lovely face. Over and over and over again. Up and down. Down and up. Such a soldier, such a queen. She had 10,000 men. He marched her up to the top of the hill, and he marched her down again.
But I was furious. Why was Mo being so cruel to my mother? What had she done that was so bad?
That gorgeous tart-face and her garter belt launched a legend. But, more than this, Madou knew how to sustain a legend.
The reflection is of a movie star, but as I know all too well, she is also a woman who reads. Knut Hamsun, Selma Lagerlöf, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Friedrich Hölderlin. She worships Rilke; she knows, by heart, the writings of Erich Kästner. Very fancy, very modern.
According to her myopic critics, her acting talent isn’t supreme, her singing voice at best mediocre; she can’t dance for toffee. None of that matters a jot. She isn’t a celebrity; she is a Movie Star.
Here’s what I think about Moses von Goldberg. He saw her as someone who could take his direction, someone pliant, and ready to be moulded. Poppycock! I once heard him say, ‘I can turn you off and on like a spigot.’ Their first film together set the tone for their professional relationship: the clever, gentle, sophisticated, older gentleman dominated and humiliated by a crass showgirl. He would return to this theme over and over again.
Lola Lola had to be able to inspire obsession in an intelligent man, and that was exactly the quality he was looking for. Madou had it naturally. It couldn’t be faked. Eventually, inevitably, the girl destroys him. He should have known. But how could he have known that Professor Unrat’s descent into a grinning cuckolded stage clown would mirror his own doomed relationship?
As I say, he wasn’t counting on her intelligence. She was no statue, or puppet. When he deserted her, to save himself, she found her own way. He left Hollywood to make another picture, telling her that she’d be better off without him, that she would develop as an actress. But she was terrified of losing his light. Then she had an idea. She would steal his light.
For days, she watched Herr Direktor’s films in the projection room, over and over again. The others thought she was vain, but she was mastering his art. Light and shadow. Shadow and light. Another director was found, and on the first day of shooting she asked for her mirror.
She looks at him scornfully when he brings her a hand mirror. She points her finger, and I am wheeled in front of her: an eight-foot mirror on castors, dotted with light bulbs. She looks around the set at the crew, who are half mesmerised, half shocked. She is terrified, but, always the warrior, she sets about her job. She instructs the electricians to plug in the lights, and the grips to position me, so that she can see herself exactly as the camera will see her.
Then she makes her next move.
‘With your permission, gentlemen,’ she issues instructions to the electricians high up.
‘You on the right, come down, but slowly, there stop, set it.’
Then it is the turn of the small wattage lights, and then the all-important key lights. The spotlight near her face, but high, high above it, and a little to the right. She raises her finger, until she feels the exact amount of heat.
All the time, she stares at me, the mirror, and, like a miracle, shadows begin to appear. She is moulding, shading, highlighting. Then the face appears, in all its luminous beauty. A small butterfly shape flutters under the nose. She is ready for the camera to roll.
The crew, hardened and tough, begin a slow, appreciative, clap. She smiles: ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’
She has taken control of Joan Madou, the Movie Star.
Mo was vanquished, and he knew it. Vanquished by a mirror.
A bad day at the studio.
The crew was pale. Nobody said a word.
‘Do it again.’
‘Why are you so incapable of doing anything correctly?’
‘Clear the set.’
This was the third time Mo had cleared the set. I waited outside in the blazing Californian heat while he screamed and shouted at her. Mother stayed silent.
This was the final scene. Madou was to ring the great cathedral bell, proclaiming herself the Empress of Russia. A huge steel crucifix had been attached to the end of the rope, which was weighted with sandbags, rigged onto a pulley. Every time she pulled the rope, using the full force of her body, the crucifix whacked against her inner thigh. She was required to ring the bell eight times.
‘Cut! Miss Madou, what on earth are you doing. You are not ringing for the butler at an elegant dinner in Paris, you are ringing the bells of the Kremlin. Do it again!’
On the fourteenth take, he cried: ‘Miss Madou. Try for a little expression on that beautiful face of yours. You are seizing a throne, not calling in the cows like an Austrian milkmaid.’
On the twenty-fifth take, her hands trembled and she began to perspire. The crew looked on in shocked silence. The tension in the air was unbearable. At that moment everyone on-set despised Mr von Goldberg.
On the fiftieth take, she could take no more. Her pale, lovely face was contorted, like the agonised screams of those gargoyles. She was not the Empress of Russia, triumphant, victorious, ringing the bells of her success. She was a hollow shell. And that’s the one he chose.
‘Cut! Print! Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.’
And with those words he left the set.
Nellie
