Free The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

out of the building, probably the audience for Dodsworth . I moved with a small chattering crowd of women, young girls, and a few men, two of them sailors, to the side of the building. It was dark but I felt the winter threat of returning rain. A few of the women gave up after five minutes. A few others held out with me.
    “Where’s your book?” asked the guy at my side, all teeth and smiles and far from young.
    “Book?”
    “Autograph book,” he said, holding up his book to show me. “I don’t have Walter Huston,” he explained. “I could always use another Bette, anyone could.”
    “I agree,” I said.
    “Here they come,” said a woman in the front of the group.
    The door, up two concrete steps, opened. Two men and a couple of women stepped out, ignored the crowd, and kept walking. Then Huston appeared. He grinned broadly, acted surprised at the gathering, and moved down to sign autographs. The guy at my side lumbered toward him with his book open and his Parker pen at the ready.
    Bette Davis came out a few steps behind Huston and the crowd split. About ten people, including the sailors, surrounded her. She smiled gently, exchanged a few words as she signed.
    Davis was wearing a gray dress with a silver necklace. Over the dress she wore a matching cape, its hood covering her head and shading her eyes.
    Autograph seekers moved from her to Huston as a few were doing the reverse. Huston finished first, waved at Davis who blew him a kiss, and moved briskly into the parking lot as the guy I had been talking to tried to follow him.
    “Sorry,” said Huston, turning back. “Another appointment.”
    The guy stopped and hurried back toward Davis, who was just finishing the last woman and now turned her attention to the sailors. She was interrupted by Autograph Harry, politely signed, and continued talking to the sailors as Harry waddled away with his prize.
    I was about six feet away when she looked up at me. Recognition took a few seconds. She turned back to the sailors.
    “And what are you two planning for the rest of the evening?” she asked.
    Neither boy knew what to say.
    “Movie, maybe a beer, and back to the hotel.”
    “Shipping out tomorrow,” the second one said.
    “I have an idea,” Davis said. “I’m on my way to the Hollywood Canteen. Are you familiar with it?”
    “I think … I don’t know, Cal?”
    “I don’t think so,” said Cal. “Maybe I think I’ve heard of it.”
    “You have a car?” she asked.
    “No,” said Cal.
    “Good,” she said, taking their arms. “Come with me. I’ll drive.”
    Both kids were beaming as they moved into the lot, locked to Bette Davis. They gave me wait-till-we-tell-the- guys-on-the-ship grins as they moved past me. Davis slowed half a beat and looked at me again, trying to place me, maybe wondering what I was doing there, and then she moved on.
    I gave them time to get to her car and drive off. I didn’t have to tail them. I knew where the Hollywood Canteen was.
    Fifteen minutes later I was driving down Sunset, worrying about all the gas I was using and how few gas ration stamps I had left.
    The location of the Hollywood Canteen, about a block off of Sunset, was fine unless you wanted to park a car. According to Shelly Minck, the myopic dentist, the Canteen had been started the year before by Davis. John Garfield, who was 4F and feeling guilty about it, had come to Davis while she was making Now, Voyager and suggested that she head a drive of movie people to run a place where soldiers and sailors about to ship out to the Pacific or just coming in for leave could meet stars like Davis, Dietrich, and Grable, dance with starlets, and be entertained by acts like Bob Hope and the Mills Brothers.
    The place, an old theater and dance hall, was refurbished by movie-studio craftsmen donating their time and movie studios donating paint and parts. Business boomed from the start. Supposedly two thousand movie people did shifts serving, dancing, entertaining, and