It was also during this period that Babe, needing a place in town, moved to the Sunset Towers, a notably glamorous landmark on the Hollywood scene. As you drove west along Sunset Boulevard toward the section known as the Strip, you passed, among other remarkable sights, Schwab’s Drugstore (where Lana Turner was not discovered), Frascatti’s of happy memory, the Garden of Allah and the Villa Lorraine, and farther west, on the south side of the street, the Sunset Towers. Financed by a prominent industrialist and motorcar magnate, its moderne style and extravagant exterior embellishment were pure Art Deco, and its eleven stories were surmounted by a spacious penthouse where for a number of years the industrialist had housed his inamorata, a celebrated beauty and ex-chorine. The apartment had a marvelous view of the hills to the north and the flats to the south, and to the east and west the Sunset Strip snaked like a well-trafficked ribbon between Hollywood and the old Beverly Hills bridle path.
In a later epoch, movie fans driving past would point aloft to where Babe Austrian was at home, as though the late-burning lamp in her bedroom were a beacon—a beacon that declared to the world that Babe Austrian was alive and well, living in sin with no one knew which, or how many, oversexed studs.
By the mid-thirties, with her easy, freewheeling style, her unblinking candor, her high humor, her oft-quoted wit, she was the hottest thing to hit Hollywood since Lupe Velez. In addition, she had stuffed her head with all sorts of information and if she played dumb, believe me, it was only playing. Along with Connie Bennett and Claudette Colbert, she was one of the top female moneymakers in the years 1934–37. Only Maude Antrim beat her out in ’37. And by then she’d become a fashion plate as well; Adrian was dressing her, in a much more subdued style than her former gaudy image, and when he got her out of those long skirts, she was discovered to possess two of the most shapely legs God ever gave a woman, legs that a Grable might envy.
During the war years she easily maintained her position as a mainstay of the studio, and by the time June Allyson came on the lot in 1942, Babe had been there for eight years, and the Marxes were long gone to Eagle-Lion and film oblivion. In the famous Life shot of the celebrations of twenty-five years of MGM, it is a startling omission that Babe Austrian is not among the luminaries. “More stars than there are in heaven” was the slogan, and she was assuredly one of those. The fact was, Babe is in many of the shots from that Life sitting—she is positioned on the left, next to Arlene Dahl, wearing a navy-blue tunic and skirt and surrounded by ostrich feathers—but the shot that was used in the magazine and became famous doesn’t show her. Promptness was never Babe’s long suit; people had been waiting for her all her life, and she figured they’d wait for her that day to begin. They didn’t, the editors chose one of the early shots, and here is the result.
Meanwhile, the redoubtable Vi Ueberroth was greatly responsible for the new Frank Adonis who was emerging, chick from embryo. To look at her today, it’s not easy to imagine Vi as ever having been physically attractive or having had a high-tech sex life, but the chances are strong that for a period she and Frankie enjoyed intimacies, though neither of them was the type to kiss and tell. Whatever the real relationship, theirs was a friendship of long standing, and as the secretary from AyanBee on lower Sunset rose in the eyes of the industry and became the doyenne of North Carmel Drive, she continued to enjoy a special friendship with the Black Wolf, as Frank was sometimes called.
In 1932, when he first arrived in Hollywood, Frankie Adano had one client, Babe. In just a few years he had changed his name to Frank Adonis, had formed the Adonis Actors Agency, and had a client list the length of your arm. He hadn’t, however, done it entirely on his own. And he’d had strong support from others besides Vi. One of these, an unlikely benefactor and sometime mentor, was none other than the kingpin of MGM, Mr. Louis Burt Mayer himself. No one knew how this strangely matched combo had got its start; some say it was because of their frequent meetings at the track, some claim it was because Frankie knew the prettiest ladies in town. But however it began, from Mayer Frankie went on to enjoy the acquaintanceship of much of Hollywood’s royalty, and to see him making an entrance at one of their parties in a well-cut suit of tails was a sight to behold. In the early thirties every movie actor worth his salt wore white tie and tails in his parlor, bedroom, and even bath pictures. Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Georgie Raft, Warren William, Edmund Lowe, Astaire, Gable, all sported their best soup-and-fish, but few of these idols of the silver screen were ever so dashing as Frankie Adonis in his evening rig. He was in fact buried in his, and why not, since he’d lived so much in it?
But the major change in Frank’s life at this time was in relation to Babe. There was a series of public quarrels, soon he was looking for surcease elsewhere, and he found it in the arms (and bed) of Claire Regrett, née Cora Sue Brodsky, who had in just a few years become one of MGM’s leading female stars.
Cora Sue’s miraculous transformation from lingerie salesgirl to chorus cutie to ranking star was the start of what was to become one of the great screen legends. After Frankie split for Hollywood with Babe, Cora Sue grew more determined than ever to make it big “out there,” so she quit the chorus line and hopped a train. And on that train, the story goes, she met a Hollywood producer, our friend Vi’s brother, Sam, who said he could make Cora Sue a star as well as Frankie Adonis could. She let him. How much she let him or how often remained a matter of conjecture for some years, but the fact remained that in not too long a time Cora Sue Brodsky’s dreams came true. Claire Regrett was born, and before long she left Sam’s AyanBee Studios for Metro, eventually won the Oscar, and stayed a reigning Hollywood star for almost forty years until she retired and died, alone and all but forgotten, in a New York penthouse.
Certainly there’s no denying that Claire formed an important, even integral, part of Frank’s life, and it’s a matter of record that their liaison continued off and on for more than thirty years. The embarrassing scene she made at his funeral has become part of Hollywood lore, and the rivalry between her and Babe has passed into the pages of the town’s history.
As far as Babe was concerned, Claire Regrett had stolen her lover, if not exactly out from under her then possibly from on top of her. Babe was a faithful soul: if she liked you, she liked you for good, no matter what others might say. By the same token, if she didn’t like you, nothing was going to change her mind. And that’s how she felt about Claire. She’d disliked Cora Sue Brodsky when they were both back in New York, and she hated Claire Regrett even more. Though she was then enjoying a huge personal success of her own, it rankled in her breast that Cora Sue had managed to become this larger-than-life Hollywood figure already on her way to having her own cult and her own legend. When Frank came into a room now he went first to Claire, then to Babe, and then, most important, back to Claire again—during a highly public dinner they were observed by Louella to be holding hands and twice he leaned to kiss the back of her neck. Babe, seated with a pair of studio flacks and a hairdresser, pretended not to notice, but it was plain that she was furious and could easily have taken an axe to Miss Regrett’s scalp.
Claire took much pride in the fact that she had got her old lover back, and at Babe’s expense. When Frank visited her set, Claire would wait for a break, then haul him off to her portable dressing room, where she’d tell her maid to get lost and lock the door; then she and Frank would go at it while people op the set joked at the way the trailer rocked as Frankie gave her the same business he used to give Babe. One day someone walked past and, through a window whose curtains Claire had neglected to close, glimpsed her feet shod in spike heels sticking straight up in the air while she moaned, “Oh, Daddy, give baby that big lollipop.”
But the day came when Babe had the last laugh, for Frank’s interest in Claire again dwindled down to the last of the wine. He refused all invitations to join her in her trailer, having started dallying with a little Latin tootsie he’d brought to Mayer, who’d given her a part in a low-budget picture; her sensational bust wa
s already attracting attention. Her name was Julie Figueroa, a girl he’d found checking hats at the Florentine Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard. Now Babe and Claire had something in common; they were both yesterday’s news and might have enjoyed commiserating, but they still would have nothing to do with each other, while la señorita Figueroa was lapping up the cream.
Frankie’s reputation as a swain, lover, and general, all-round Hollywood cocksman increased in direct ratio to the large number of females he was servicing at this point. Some twenty years hence, he would engage in a rivalry with Sam Ueberroth over the affections of a pretty UCLA coed, and Frank would get one of his testicles shot off for his trouble, but until then he was letting no grass grow under his feet; at least not until he met Frances, who would be the one to get him to the altar.
Yet even though in this period he no longer shared Babe’s bed, Frank still played an important part in her life. There were no recriminations; she kept the jewelry he’d bought her—a not inconsiderable treasure—as well as the famous Reo motorcar. And soon she began her search for a new man, a search that took her through a motley series of lowbrow types, consisting in the main of prizefighters, pool sharks, muscle-enhancers, and the like. There was even a bullfighter or two. Occasionally these athletic figures gave way to even lesser-lifes, to known frequenters of Mafia hangouts, dese, dem, and dosers with scars and police records. Babe never had pretensions about herself (unlike Claire Regrett, who had many and hoarded them all), and, being the queen of Cicero, she’d had plenty of exposure to gangland types. Now it seemed as if, having had Frank Adonis, there was no other man for her, no one of any class. Give her a jug-eared welterweight any day, or a blackjack dealer with a diamond on his pinkie finger. She always claimed “Moonskin” Spaccifaccioli was, despite his bad complexion, a great lay, and maybe he was.
These were the wide-open, lusty days of moviedom, and when Babe wasn’t at the studio, her greatest passion was playing the ponies. Each morning she perused her Daily Racing Form, even before she checked out her stocks and securities in The Wall Street Journal. She toured the racing circuit every season, from Hollywood Park to Santa Anita, and ended by making the sporting trip to Agua Caliente. (Caliente was outside scruffy, crummy Tijuana, and it was generally conceded that a prominent movie figure could go there and play fast and loose in private, or not so private, and not be pilloried for scandalous behavior.)
When the familiar Reo appeared, people would note that Babe was on hand to watch the track. Her driver and general factotum these days was the middleweight ex-prizefighter Sluggo McGurk, who’d been punched so hard so many times that his head sloshed, but when Sluggo was on tap no one messed with Babe, not if he was smart. Unless, of course, he happened to be one of Bugsy Siegel’s lieutenants, that duke by the name of Al “Vegas” da Prima, of whom Babe was rumored to be currently enamored. She and Al were known to have shacked up at the Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego on several occasions, and when his yacht, the Black Star, was anchored in Catalina harbor, a pair of binoculars could discern at the rail a figure that certainly resembled Babe Austrian; though no one could actually prove it was she, it was reported that way in the press.
Penned Louella:
What in the world are things coming to around here, anyway? What famous film blonde has lately been seen aboard the yacht of what friend of what well known gangland figure and real estate investor? Naughty, double naughty, little miss, you ought to have your bottom spanked!
Ironically, there wasn’t much truth in these rumors, since at that time Babe hadn’t ever been aboard a gangster’s yacht. The truth was, the woman on the Black Star was another person altogether.
Back in her old New York days Babe had a close friend with whom she’d appeared in a couple of shows. The friend’s name was Patsy Doyle, and the two girls were not dissimilar in looks. Men occasionally mistook Patsy for Babe, or vice versa, and once Babe even dispatched Patsy on a date in her place. When her movie career took off, Babe sent for Patsy to be her stand-in. Patsy jumped at the chance, and soon there were two Hollywood blondes riding side by side in the back of the Reo, one the star, the other not.
Patsy Doyle was a good-time girl all the way. She was made for Hollywood; maybe not stardom Hollywood, but girls like Patsy always helped fill out the fringes of the place. She was without ambition, caring nothing for the art of the cinema, though she was apparently well versed in other, less esoteric arts.
Eventually she married a high-roller type they called Snake-Hips, who wore a white fedora and took all her money for gambling. Given Patsy’s deliberate aping of Babe’s peroxided hair and flamboyant dress, it was understandable how the two women might be confused in the public eye, and Babe didn’t care enough about what people thought to clear the matter up. To hell with Louella and all her tribe!
This is how I reencountered Babe Austrian: in the spring of 1952, she returned to Broadway, an event that proved to be a triumph. The revival of Lola Magee was her own idea, though her career was still being masterminded by Frank. I was brand new in New York at the time, having graduated from college and playing a small part in my first Broadway show. My days of pinching movie sex symbols were long behind me, though the intervening years had done little or nothing to dull the memory of those pretty feet, those baby-blues, that shapely shape, as exhibited in the car of the Mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. (Actually, I’d encountered her one other time, on a moving train. But more of that anon.)
Over the years I’d followed her glittering career with interest, she then being the only star of magnitude with whom I had ever scraped acquaintance. I’d seen her Lola at a Sunday-night Actors’ Fund Benefit, a raucous evening if ever there was one, and a performance that served only to rub up a keener appreciation on my part for her comedic talents. With due respect to both Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand, I thought she was one funny lady.
Months later I was working with Tallulah Bankhead in a revival, and when I came offstage one night early in the run there were some people waiting in my dressing room. One of them was Max Hollywood (his real name), an up-and-coming Broadway hotshot agent who said he had “plans” for me. These plans involved the person of Miss Babe Austrian. Lola having closed, she was going to tour a new play around the summerstock barns, and she was looking for someone to fill out her cast. Max turned me over to the tall, lantern-jawed young woman, Beata Saggiter, who had just begun as his assistant.
Though it was only May, that week the temperature soared freakishly, day after day hovering in the high eighties. My appointment with the star was postponed twice, but finally Beata confirmed the date as locked in for Friday at 2:00 p.m. and said I should meet her at Sardi’s. I arrived in loafers, khaki slacks, and a navy polo shirt. “Jesus, Charlie,” Beata greeted me, “what’s this?”
“What is what?” I countered.
“You can’t go see Babe Austrian looking like Joe College. Don’t you own a dark suit?”
Sure I had a suit. One. Blue serge. Hot.
“Go put it on. I’ll wait,” Beata decreed. I hopped the subway down to the Village, pulled the suit out of the cold-storage bag, and was back at Sardi’s in forty-five minutes.
“Jesus, Charlie,” Beata wailed, “what is that smell?”
Mothballs.
We cabbed up to Babe’s hotel. First we waited downstairs in the lobby, then in about an hour were allowed to head on up to the suite. It was big Sluggo McGurk who greeted us, and we sat around on the horsehair sofa for about ten hours, with only a drugstore fan and a pitcher of lukewarm “ice” water for cooling purposes. I was sweating bullets while we waited; I felt nervous, my mouth was dry, I drank the water, I sweated more. Finally Sluggo reappeared and told me to get up and follow him. “Not you,” he said to Beata, and preceded me into an adjoining room.
In a large, tall-backed armchair sat Babe Austrian, looking me up and down as I trod in, wiping my brow. “Pleased ta meetcha,” she said as I approached the throne. She seemed a little nervous, even shy, as I gave
my name.
“Charlie, huh? I used to know a Charlie.” She rolled her eyes and ventured a tiny smile. “Charlie Peekoe. Smoked Cubano-Cubanas. Ran a numbers bag. Good guy, had a club foot, but he was a dancin’ fool. Sit down, honey, take a load off. How you been?”
I said I’d been fine, exerting whatever charm I could muster, all of it damp.
“Max says you’re gonna be a big star. Whaddya think? You want to be a star?”
I guessed I’d like to, “if I could find the right parts.”
“You look like you already got good parts,” she replied without missing a beat. Sluggo was standing by the window, staring out at the view. The room was hot and he was sweating the same way I was, but Babe sat there cool as a cucumber. The blue eyes again raked me tip to toe and she asked me how tall I was.
I told her.
“Umm. I like six-footers. And you probably have a couple extra inches to boot, hm?” She asked me to stand up and turn around; as I obliged her she made suggestive noises. “I suppose I could get you the right part if you could come up with the right parts for me. Whadda ya think?”
Jesus.
All the time she was sitting on that throne, vibrating—like an Oldsmobile warming up a bad battery. I thought the whole thing was some big put-on, but no, she was dead serious. She was still a sexy dame, I was a young stud to her, and it was play and pay all the way. This was no act, this was Babe.
“You seem nervous,” she said. “Are you?”
I blamed the heat and mopped my face with my soggy handkerchief. The suit weighed ninety pounds if an ounce.