The Devil May Dance by Tapper, Jake (the reading list .TXT) 📕

blocking off the red carpet. She didn’t want to interrupt her work, so she stood next to her quietly as she talked with Kubrick.

“But didn’t you shoot the film in England to escape American censors?” Goode asked.

Kubrick looked to his right, hoping someone would rescue him, but alas, the MGM public relations escorts were tending to the needs of Peter Sellers, James Mason, and Sue Lyon, the teenager who played the eponymous nymphet. The paparazzi and fans called out to her by the name of her character. “Lolita!” they cried. “Lolita! Over here!” The actress swiveled seductively and it broke Margaret’s heart. A teenage girl given so much immediate short-term fame in exchange for unnamed sacrifices was just plain wrong. It made Margaret wonder where Violet was and whether Goode would ever be of any help. She kept asking, and Goode kept saying she hadn’t found anything yet.

“No,” Kubrick said. “Shooting it over there was more about control. It’s nice to have the studio an ocean away.”

“What were you worried about them controlling?” Goode asked. “The degree to which you put a twelve-year-old girl in perverted situations?”

Kubrick turned his head toward the theater as if someone had called his name. He took a subtle step in that direction, signaling that the interview was coming to an end. “Sue is fifteen,” he said uncomfortably. “And we made some adjustments to the book so it would be less shocking. Look, if you see the film, I mean, Lolita is one of the great love stories, isn’t it? If you consider Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, they all have this in common, this element of the illicit! And in each case, it causes the couple’s complete alienation from society.”

“I saw the film, Stanley,” Goode said. “And it doesn’t matter whether she’s twelve or fourteen—how do you think the National Legion of Decency is going to respond to the reference to Camp Climax for the girls or that line about ‘Your uncle is going to fill my daughter’s cavity on Thursday afternoon’?”

Kubrick coughed and took another step away from Goode. “The general public is a good deal more sophisticated than most censors imagine and certainly more than these groups who get up petitions believe,” he said. “I have to move on now, thank you for your questions!”

Goode tried to squeeze in another but Kubrick had escaped. She turned to Margaret.

“When you were twelve, were you interested in getting your jollies with grown men?” she asked. “Men in their fifties?”

“When I was twelve I had a slight crush on a boy in the eighth grade, but even he seemed too old for me,” recalled Margaret. “I was busy with school and a job at the local grocer’s.”

“The men in this town,” Goode said. “They should be put in a hospital for the criminally insane, not given Oscars. Look at the poster! The little girl barely has breasts and she’s all sultry in a bikini, the lollipop in her mouth.” She exhaled like she was blowing her anger out of her body. “What are you doing here?”

“You haven’t been returning my calls.”

“I haven’t gotten any messages.”

“I left several with that creepy guy, what’s his name, Tarantula.”

Goode laughed. “Tah-ran-too-la,” she corrected her. “Ick. A toad. And a horrible colleague.”

A small ruckus sounded as costar Shelley Winters emerged from her limo and eagerly posed for pictures and waved to fans. Red Buttons, Joan Fontaine, Hugh O’Brian, and other stars slow-walked into the theater, stopping to grin for cameras, sign autographs, and offer up quotes to the press.

“Can we talk somewhere?” Margaret asked as an usher with a brass gong and a rubber mallet alerted any celebrities still on the red carpet that the film was about to begin.

Goode nodded. “Come with me,” she said. She led Margaret out of the crowd, down Hollywood Boulevard, and onto North Orange. The neighborhood immediately turned seedier, with vagrants, hucksters, and star-maps salesmen. Storefronts advertised ALCOHOL and SOUVENIRS.

“Everything in New York is jake?” Goode asked. “Kids good?”

“All well,” Margaret said. “Growing like weeds. It was wonderful to be home. And it looks as though Charlie will have the challenger of his dreams this November, a city councilman who’s been indicted like three times.”

Goode grunted supportively, turned down an alley, and walked up to a sturdy green metal door sealed by three different locks she needed three separate keys to open.

“Welcome to Hollywood Nightlife,” Goode announced as she hit the light switch and led Margaret in. Much to Margaret’s surprise, the square, windowless newsroom was relatively immaculate. The walls were covered in calendars, posters, and schedules pinned on floor-to-ceiling corkboard. At the far wall stood ten filing cabinets, different colors, each secured with a thick padlock. Goode walked to her desk in a nook in the far left of the room, Margaret following closely behind.

“It’s shockingly organized,” she said.

“You mean for a crappy scandal sheet?” Goode asked, reaching into one of her desk drawers.

“For any press outlet,” Margaret said, though Goode had read her correctly. Charlotte took a long swig from a silver flask sitting on her desk, then began perusing her reporter’s notebook, occasionally marking passages with a felt-tip marker.

“It’s not usually this empty,” Goode said, distracted.

Margaret walked to the file cabinets, which were thick metal, almost safety-deposit-box quality. The drawers were marked with anodyne labels—years, the names of film studios, awards, and some that didn’t make sense to Margaret, like TOYS and TOTS and TULIPS and DAISIES.

“So where’s Charlie this evening?” Goode asked, not looking up from her task. “Rancho Mirage?”

He was, in fact; he’d been picked up by Lawford in the late afternoon. “How did you know that?”

Goode shrugged. “We know everything.” She leaned back in her chair and stretched like a cat in the sun. “We have this whole town wired. Cops. Nurses. Bartenders. Doormen.”

“I’m impressed.”

“The proletariat work for scraps, but the tsars have other motivations,” Goode said, “ones contained in those file cabinets.” She pointed vaguely in their direction. “Feel free to take a look around