Free All That Glitters by Thomas Tryon Page B

put King Kong in the hall closet “and don’t forget to feed him.” That kind of stuff. They lapped it up.
    The young actress who played the other half of the love interest was cute and pert and we began sleeping together right off. Her name was Jenny Burton and she simply moved into my room at the inn where we were staying. But when Babe got word of this arrangement she didn’t like it and made no bones about it. I stood my ground. She could steal my flower-smelling onstage, but offstage my life was my own. “Besides,” I told her prophetically, “we plan to get married.”
    “What’re you talkin’? You just met her.”
    “Haven’t you ever heard of love at first sight?”
    Her fuse began to sputter. “Never mind the hell about love at first sight or anything else, just you don’t let anything get in the papers you’re shacked up with this piece-goods.”
    Thereafter our relationship grew more and more icily polite. By now I wasn’t so sure but that she remembered the Super Chief and didn’t want to let on, which was okay with me, since I didn’t want Jenny to get wind of my brief relationship with the star.
    It was during that initial week’s run that I met Frank Adonis for the first time. He’d come up to Westport to catch Babe’s show and he stuck his head in my dressing room while I was making up. He gave me this maybe/maybe-not look of appraisal, then told me I was going places. “Maybe I’ll catch you in Hollywood, kiddo.” I didn’t want him to catch me in Hollywood, I wanted him to catch me now—and sign me and make me a goddamn star! But he shot me with his finger and was gone, whistling a tune. I caught him passing my window and hollered that he’d been whistling in my dressing room and we were in for nothing but bad luck.
    I wasn’t wrong, either. Our concerted efforts would never see the bright lights of Broadway. Yet as we continued our tour, every management insisted we fulfill our obligations, and because of Babe’s name we played to packed houses at every performance. Even the blue-haired matinee ladies tittered at the risqué lines she had interpolated into the script, and some of her ad libs brought down the house. We never, any of us, lost track of the fact that we were on a stage with the famous Babe Austrian.
    When we traveled, the rest of the cast, myself included, went by bus or train, while Babe rode alone in her car, always with the trusty Sluggo at the wheel and with her little Chihuahua, Tiny, in her lap. Everywhere we played, it was a scandal among the theatre apprentices that the star was doing it with her chauffeur, which managed to add a certain frisson to what was otherwise a boring, in fact embarrassing, tour. Only once or twice did she allow her reserve to break down. It was just hello, good morning, good night, have a nice day off, and that was about it. Everyone called her “Miss Austrian,” including myself, who’d known her more intimately. She never mingled, either with the cast or the backstage crews, never gave a party, never bought anyone a token good-luck present. Never let her hair down—except once.
    Passing her dressing-room door one night, I glanced in and saw her at her makeup table, staring into the mirror at herself. Her robe was partly open and those major boobs were hanging out. Without looking at me she extended a hand to halt me; then, covering herself, she asked me to come in. “Sit down,” she said, “take a load off. You know, you’re pretty funny out there. I ought to squash you like a bug, but I let you have your head. You know why? There’s only one star in a show, but the star’s got to have support. The better the support, the better the star; the better you are, the better I am, get it?”
    I said I got it, and soon we were getting along better. She wasn’t so bad, when you got to know her. Problems—she had problems, like all those ladies, wanting love and acting neurotic as hell. She needed someone around to talk to, to