Who Put The Fingerprints On Joan Crawford’s Wall?

My index finger was pointed at the bell marked “Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Steele,” but before I could make contact, the door flew open. A suntanned man stood before me and he looked like the sort of man who, if I’d seen him on the subway, I’d have been sure he was taking the ride because he was thinking of buying the company. He had that look.

“Darling!” came a cry from behind him. “It’s so good to see you.”

It was Joan Crawford. She waved me into the striking white foyer and I tried not to stare. I’d only met Joan once before and I still hadn’t gotten over being dazzled. Seeing her here, in the $100,000 duplex apartment that had made even her Fifth Avenue neighbors gasp, I began talking real fast, hoping she wouldn’t see that I was a little nervous.

“Gosh, would you believe it? It’s March, the end of March,” I said as I unbuttoned my coat, “and it’s snowing outside! The elevator man blames it on the H-bombs. Imagine, snow at this time of year.”

“I know, darling,” Joan said. “So why don’t you take off your shoes as well as your coat.”

“Oh, they’re not wet,” I said, flattered that Joan would be so interested in whether I might catch cold. “I was wearing a pair of galoshes, I left them right outside the door.”

“Yes, but why don’t you take off your shoes anyway, Joan suggested. “It’s really better that way.”

I looked at Joan, puzzled, and she beamed a smile at me. Well, if Joan Crawford smiles at you, what can you do? I started to take off my shoes. I started to lean up against the wall to balance myself while I unlaced the right shoe.

“Oh, no,” Joan said, so suddenly that I almost lost my balance and fell at her feet, which is where I really wanted. to be anyway. I do admire her so. “Don’t lean on the wall,” she said. “Fingermarks show up so easily on the white.” She smiled at me again and I was melting like the snow outside when I noticed three men sitting on a white-carpeted suspended staircase.

“Oh, I see,” I said weakly, and I walked—on tip-toe—to join the triumvirate who were de-shoeing themselves. The man on the lowest step moved over to make room for me.

“Hi,” he said. “Did Joan tell you you could take your socks off, too, if you wanted? Look at her, she’s absolutely barefoot!”

I looked. She was. Joan was wearing a scooped neck black dinner dress with its waistline marked with a gossamer scarf whose long ends billowed and trailed after her. Her chunky gold bracelets and necklaces jingled as she walked barefoot over the soft, deep-piled white carpet. She’s magnificent, I thought. What other woman could manage to look so beautiful and elegant and, yes, statuesque without the help of a pair of high heels?

I parked my shoes—I’d left on my socks—in the hallway, next to a pair of pointed-toed, red-silk slippers. Then, enjoying the tickling sensation of the white carpet on my arches, I entered the living room. Al took my elbow and I staggered after Joan’s smile and that’s how we somehow circled the room and got me introduced to the other guests. There were fourteen of us who’d been invited and most of the men seemed to be important business executives, like Al himself.

“Masterpiece,” who tried to eat the flowers Joan was arranging, has the run of the house, but that’s ’cause he has the cleanest paws in New York.

And what a room! Brilliant white with a flowering dogwood tree that made me think I was in California.

“Does it really remind you of California?” Joan asked. “Good, then it’s a success. Even though we’re on the thirteenth floor of a New York apartment building, I wanted the light, open feeling of California.”

The sofa, upholstered in a bright, sun-yellow silk, must have been at least fourteen feet long and one wall of the living room was completely mirrored. The room looked double its size, and it was enormous to begin with. Sixteen people pattering barefoot over that incredible white rug hardly filled it at all.

“Now,” Joan said, “what will you have to drink?”

“Oh,” I stumbled, a bit awed and flustered, “anything will do.”

“But darling,” she explained, “you can have anything your heart desires.”

“Scotch and soda,” I murmured, “if it’s not too much trouble.” Joan smiled her marvelous smile, and with her wide sash trailing after her like a cloud, she seemed to float towards the small cubicle off the living room, where I could still see her mixing my drink at a sideboard.

I was looking around for Joan’s Oscar when her adopted daughter, Christina, came downstairs. Joan poked her head around the alcove. “Everybody,” she called out, “I want you to meet my Tina.” Then she laughed. “Al, would you do the more formal honors?”

As nineteen-year-old Tina took Al’s arm, she was beaming with a smile very like Joan’s. I’d followed her poodle-like haircut halfway around the room when Joan returned and handed me my drink in a tall crystal glass.

Joan’s white rug is usually untouched by human shoes, but she and Al broke their own house rule to pose for this picture on their suspended staircase.

Then she walked toward the center of the room and with great style sat majestically down on the white pouf. Just watching Joan sit can be an experience. She pauses for a moment, holding herself very stiff, glances at everyone to see that all’s well, then slowly—but so slowly you can hear the seconds ticking—she lowers herself into the seat.

Joan’s airy sash fell over the rear of the pouf and onto the floor. Then, with a nonchalant flip of her head, Joan said, “Al’s taking me off to Texas for the next weekend. Or maybe I should say, I don’t like him going alone so I’m going with him!” While my friend from the staircase was busy laughing, I out-maneuvered him for a seat near Joan.

“It’ll be good for her,” Al was saying. “She’s been working so hard. The other night,” Al went on, “we were up till three in the morning because Joan just wouldn’t settle for less than perfection. She had a bunch of writers up here, going over the TV scripts with them, helping them decide what scenes needed changing, what dialogue wouldn’t play. And they couldn’t believe it. They told me when they left they never had any actress ever take the time to work with them like that!”

“Al—really!” Joan laughed.

“Say, Al,” one of the guests said, “I’ll bet that’s why you told me you were sort of tired at lunch the next day. Joan, I’ll bet he stayed up every last minute with you.”

“Does my dogwood tree really remind you of California?” Joan asked. “Now she knows it’s a success,” Al laughed.

“He sure did,” Joan answered. “And he loved it!” She took a sip from her long glass of vodka-on-the-rocks. “You know, if I ever felt my work was getting in the way of my marriage, believe me it would go right out the window.” She smiled over at her husband. “I love Hollywood, but I love my husband more! Luckily, Al gets fun out of being part of show business, too.”

Joan got up again and walked over to us, pointing to the long walnut coffee tables where there were tempting platters of hors d’oeuvres.

There was a quiet pause while we sampled the different hors d’oeuvres. Then we all heard Tina’s voice explaining to one of the guests about the difficulties of showbusiness today and how hard it is for a young person to get a lucky break. Tina was saying how she had performed at an off-Broadway theater which was actually no more than an old rundown Slavic meeting hall, and had been happy to get the experience.

“It’s so discouraging,” Tina said sadly. “You make the rounds of producers’ offices and casting agents and everyone says, ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you!’ And then hey never do. It’s such a struggle to get a part, even a small one. it’s worse now than it’s ever been.”

Then Joan teased, “We had to struggle too, the older generation, I mean. We even used to go without eating.” The bantering note had gone out of Joan’s voice and she went on thoughtfully. “When I was in my teens I left Kansas City for Chicago, all alone, to look for a job as a chorus girl. I went to a producer’s office and it was full of pretty girls, all slim and terribly chic. And there I was, chubby, scared and not pretty at all, watching the pretty girls file into the producer’s inner sanctum, one by one. I got panicky. I didn’t have any money. What was I going to do? If he saw all those lovely girls first, I’d never get to first base.

“I had to think quickly. When you need money your mind really thinks! I mustered up all my nerve and rushed to his door, opened it wide, ran inside and knocked over a chorus girl who was auditioning for him. I didn’t even bother to introduce myself. All I said breathlessly was, ‘I’m not tall and I’m not pretty but I have to have a job!’ ”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Some sweet woman—the only other plumpish woman in the place—came over to me. Later I found out she was his wife. And she said, ‘Come on, honey, cry it out! Don’t be ashamed. I’ll bet you haven’t had a decent meal in days!’ ”

They took her out to dinner, Joan told us, and then gave her a night-club job where she sang and danced.

“When I worked those night clubs, I weighed a hundred and forty-five pounds! Baby-fat, all of it. Then I went to New York and starved myself. And you know,” Joan laughed, “you might think it’s easy to diet when you’re broke and looking for a job. But it isn’t. Spaghetti, after all, is so filling, and so much cheaper than steak. But I remember Jack Oakie and I would ride up Riverside Drive in a bus or stroll along Fifth Avenue window-shopping, dreaming of paychecks, dreaming of the day when we’d be polished performers. We knew we’d have to fight for it and we were willing.”

“I’m willing to fight, too,” Tina said.

“I know you are,” Joan smiled at her, “but then I keep getting the feeling that nobody’s willing to fight enough today,” Joan sighed. “Everybody wants a shortcut, and I’m afraid there aren’t any, honey. Most of those kids in the movies now—they’re here today, gone tomorrow. Nobody stays up on top like the old days. Nobody wants to fight!”

We listened to her, all of us hypnotized by Joan’s throaty voice. I looked at her. This was a star—that magic quality was in the way she looked, the way she held herself, the way she spoke. Yet I couldn’t help thinking about Joan’s life and what she’d said about fighting and struggling. Joan had struggled. It had been no overnight success that brought Joan to the top. It had been a hard climb and I remembered, too, the terrifying words “box-office poison” that had been pinned on her and that had forced her to begin the climb all over again. I looked at the way Joan held her head, straight and high, and I thought that that sort of courage was something to be proud of.

I looked around the room again, but I still couldn’t find the Oscar Joan had won—in 1946. Well, she must have some very special place for it, I thought, remembering the stories ’’d heard of how she treasured it almost above everything else.

I knew the stories must be true, for Joan had fought so hard to get there, to win all the things the Oscar stood for. It must have been awful for her, I thought, to have gotten sick just the night of the awards . . . so sick that her doctor had to come and sit by her bed to make sure she wouldn’t try to somehow get to the theater and . . .

A new voice cut through my thoughts and I looked up to hear a brunette woman whose red dress matched the shoes next to mine saying, “Joan, I’m just dying to see the rest of the apartment. Could we have a tour?”

“Oh, I love showing people through the place,” Joan said. “Maybe, though, the men wouldn’t be too interested. I guess we can leave them here with Al.”

“Hey, no fair,” I said.

“Well, I’d like to have you along,” Joan said. “I just didn’t think you . . . All the men who want to come are welcome.” Then, when all fourteen of her guests stood up and started to follow her into the dining room, Joan laughed, half with surprise, I guess, and half with pleasure.

“We used to have eighteen rooms, all rather small,” Joan explained, “so we remodeled the place into eight large, sunny ones.”

“What an unusual table!” one of the guests exclaimed, running her hand over the inlaid gold and silver discs of the first diamond-shaped table I’d ever seen.

We moved on to her kitchen which was immaculate. It could have served as an operating room in a pinch. In a corner, one of Joan’s French poodles waited for her to call him. “Here, Masterpiece,” she called and he bounded over to her to have his ears scratched playfully. When Joan told him to sit, he obeyed her instantly.

Then she led us through the hallway to her writing corner with its carved desk and chair. A sheet of her silver-monogrammed letter paper was centered on the white desk pad.

Upstairs, she took us into her bedroom which is the most feminine room I’ve ever seen in my life: all pink and white with one wall covered with soft drapes. “That’s my garden,” Joan laughed, pointing to a collection of tall rubbery plants in the far corner.

“Oh,” she said excitedly, “I must show you the bed!”

And with a wonderful carefree abandonment, Joan stretched out on the pink bedspread. Leaning over to one side, she turned a knob, and the head of the bed noiselessly rose to a forty-five degree angle, the way hospital beds do. Then she fiddled with another knob and the lower part of the bed rose to a sharp angle. Now both Joan and the bed were in a V-position.

She’s a good sport, too, I thought, as we stood watching, and laughing as she jerked back and forth.

Toying with the knobs, Joan returned the bed to its normal position. “I want you all to see my view,” she said. “It’s my California in New York.”

Joan walked toward the curtained wall, paused for a long moment to heighten the dramatic effect, then parted the curtains in the middle with one hand and whispered, “Look!”

Outside, the snow sparkled in the air; millions of jewel-like snowflakes glittered all over Fifth Avenue and Central Park—probably the last snowfall of the season. The island of Manhattan, with its own island of park at its heart, lay spread out before us.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she whispered.

We stood there, all of us, watching quietly, and, for the first time that evening, I realized Joan was just one of us, a simple human being awed by the beauty before her.

“What about coffee?” Joan asked, breaking the spell. We nodded and she led the way back to the living room, then glided out towards the kitchen.

It was Al’s turn to take the stage. “She’s a wonderful woman,” he said. “You’ve no idea what she does for people . . . and she’ll never talk about it. She probably wouldn’t like my telling even you, but did you know she’s been financing eight beds in the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital for more than twenty years? They’re for show people who aren’t able to pay their own way. Well, one day, when she went down on a visit and found a plaque had been put up commemorating her generosity, she ordered it to be pulled down immediately.

“She looks after the beds with her own doctor who takes personal care of the patients.”

Soon we had our coffee and not long after that it was time to leave. Then I found myself back in the hallway and almost couldn’t find my own plain black shoes. The red-silk landmark I’d parked them next to had already departed.

It had been a most unusual evening. As I left I thanked Joan and Al, shook hands with the few guests who were still putting the final knots to their shoelaces and walked down the hall to the elevator. I was practically the last to go.

Just as the elevator man swung the doors open I overheard Joan’s dramatic voice saying, “Oh, Al, look! Someone’s left fingerprints on my lovely white wall.”

“I wonder who could have put them there,” I heard Al say just before the door shut.

Everyone in the elevator had heard and somehow I felt they were all looking at me. Gosh, I thought, did I do it? Am I the one who put the fingerprints on Joan Crawford’s wall? I stuffed my hands into my coat pockets and hoped hard that it wasn’t.

THE END

—BY STEPHEN KAY

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE APRIL 1959