Bombshell by Max Collins (most life changing books .TXT) 📗

commissary began filling up—bobbing with more famous faces than the Hollywood wax museum, and alive with the chatter and laughter of dueling egos—Marilyn managed to catch Frank Sinatra’s eye.

In a sharp gray suit, the singer—who had briefly been her lover, after the break-up with Joe—threw Marilyn a dazzling smile, his blue eyes twinkling, obviously happy to see her. She adored him, at least when he was in a good mood; depressed, he was no prize. But she considered him a genius in his way, and knew what kind of pressure he endured, and so cut him all the slack in the world.

The statuesque, flat-chested redhead on his arm, however, was not happy to see her. Marilyn nodded at Juliet Prowse—who had a part in Frank’s current movie, Can-Can—and bestowed the dancer her warmest smile. No sense in starting a feud.

Marilyn knew she could have Frankie, any time she wanted him. But even if she could have put up with his mood swings, she couldn’t handle his hypocritically old-world view of matrimony. He’d told her that he only wanted a wife who wasn’t in show-business … someone who would stay at home and take care of him and the kids.

And she had said to him, “Hmmm … didn’t you already have that once?”

Sinatra hadn’t talked to her for two months, after that; such a child. Nobody could pout like Frankie. But, also, nobody could sing like him…

Anyway, for the moment at least, Sinatra served her best via her phonograph.

Relieved to be out of the clutches of the press—she hadn’t always felt about them that way, there’d been a time when she longed for such media attention—Marilyn stopped occasionally for a chat with the likes of Judy Garland or Louis Jourdan, as she ambled her way to the front of the room, where a long banquet table was elevated on a small riser, setting itself apart from the tables on the floor.

While she was not to be seated at the head table with Khrushchev, the other dignitaries, and studio bosses, Marilyn had been carefully positioned at the round table nearest the premier.

As the only Hollywood star the premier had wished to meet, Marilyn had been told by Skouras that she would have the “best seat in the house.”

“You bet I will,” she’d said.

And Skouras had said, “No, no, not that kind of seat”; he had placed her thus, “so the Russian, he can gaze upon your beauty.” The rest of the actors and actresses were scattered around, more stars than in any nighttime sky, but out of her immediate orbit. She had insisted that no other screen personalities, particularly female ones, be seated with her; the men at her table were writers and directors, including Walter Lang, whose Can-Can set would be visited later by the guests.

Marilyn noticed Henry Fonda, sloppily dressed, seated at a back table, facing the wall, legs spread lazily over the next chair, sullenly listening to a transistor radio, probably a ballgame. She had heard, through the studio grapevine, that Fonda had been required to come—even though he despised Khrushchev; this had surprised Marilyn, at first, since Fonda was openly left-leaning in a time when that was dangerous. She’d admired him for that, and maybe this bad behavior today came from Fonda feeling dictators like Khrushchev gave leftists a bad name.

Even so, Marilyn felt this was short-sighted, even immature. How was America supposed to thaw the cold war with bad manners like that?

After all, Hollywood stars were America’s royalty. She believed that; she had aspired since childhood to such a throne. And with that came responsibility … from small things like being thoughtful to your fans, to bigger things like taking meaningful political stands, and improving yourself, your mind, your craft.

Marilyn stood quietly by her chair, feeling a tingle from the excitement in the air, drawing on it to sustain her movie-star persona. Five hundred people had been invited to the luncheon, honoring the premier of Russia. In this room were some of the most important, influential people in Hollywood—not just the royalty of stars, but the powers behind the thrones.

Suddenly, the crowd hovering about the front door stirred … and made a pathway, like God parting the Red Sea (or anyway Cecil B. DeMille) as the most influential, important person in this room trumped all of the show business bigshots.

Nikita Khrushchev had entered.

He was a short, rotund man, bald, except for a silver fringe of hair rimming elf-like pointed ears. Round-faced, with an upturned nose and several chins, his eyes hard black marbles, the dictator seemed peeved, as if he’d been turned down for a job as a department store Santa. He was wearing a tan suit, well-tailored, a cream-colored shirt, silk chocolate-colored tie, and brown wing-tipped shoes.

Flanking Khrushchev, an entourage of perhaps twenty-five formed a protective, moving barrier: bureaucrats, agents from the FBI, CIA, and Russia’s own uniformed KGB, and what appeared to Marilyn to be some of the premier’s family members.

Finally, trailing behind the entourage came the mayor of Los Angeles—she couldn’t recall his name, only that she hadn’t voted for him—his lips a thin tight line, like a cut in his face that was refusing to heal. Frowning, Marilyn wondered if perhaps something had gone wrong at the airport, because Khrushchev was scowling back at His Honor, eyebrows knitted together, thick bottom lip protruding like a pouting child’s.

Then—across the glittering panorama of jewels, furs, and suntans—Khrushchev spotted something; he froze, and his face exploded into a grin.

And at once she knew that she was the cause of his change of disposition. Standing in front of the dais, shoulders back, breasts out, Marilyn smiled at him with a fondness one might reserve for a favorite uncle. Still grinning, a strangely infectious grin at that, Nikita Khrushchev rolled toward her like a friendly tank.

With chest heaving, lips in her open smile aquiver, Marilyn extended one hand—not like a queen expecting a kiss and a bow, but one person ready to shake hands with another person. He