The Barbizon by Paulina Bren (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📗

by the hotel’s social director, a former Barbizon resident herself, and slipped under each hotel room door at the start of the week. She had spoken to some guests; others she recognized only by sight. There was one young woman she had seen leaving the Barbizon: a round-faced teenager with light brown wavy hair, in a black coat and matching hat with blue flowers attached. She saw her again as she was unlocking her room on the ninth floor. In fact, the young woman was in the room right next to Carolyn’s: they were neighbors.

Carolyn reached out her hand. “I’m Carolyn from Ohio, Steubenville,” she introduced herself.

“I’m Grace, Grace Kelly, from Philadelphia,” said the other girl. She said she was studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Grace and Carolyn became fast friends. Grace had arrived at the Barbizon two months earlier, in September. Yet she already seemed like a New York native, in part because her uncle was a playwright in Manhattan and she had often come up from Philadelphia to visit him, to see the latest Broadway shows, from which she kept all the ticket stubs and Playbills, organized by date, pasted carefully into a scrapbook alongside her meticulous notes. Grace followed theater obsessively, just as Carolyn did fashion, studying sewing patterns and making her own clothes—a wardrobe of skirts and blouses and a pair of gloves that were, admittedly, a bit too tight but still manageable if she didn’t try to move her fingers about too much.

They were a case of opposites attract. Counter to the always fashionable Carolyn, Grace Kelly wore horn-rimmed glasses, without which she could not see; later in her short but enormously successful film career, by taking off her glasses, she exuded a sensuous dreaminess that was in fact plain old myopia. Her favorite go-tos were tweed suits, skirts, and cardigans, echoes of her upper-class Philadelphia upbringing.

Yet the two friends also dressed in opposition to their personalities; while the fashionable Carolyn was quiet and shy, the frumpy Grace was poised and boisterous. Her parents had wanted her in college instead of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts but, as luck would have it, the influx of GIs back from the war meant college placements were in high demand, and the GIs got priority. So when Grace failed to get into Bennington College, it was her chance to break away from her parents’ expectations. She eventually convinced them to let her go to New York. Her father, Jack Kelly, stipulated one condition, which was nonnegotiable: she would have to stay at the Barbizon Hotel for Women.

Each day, Grace headed to class, intent on impressing her teachers. Carolyn had to do something too. The day after she met that photographer, she made her way to 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, just behind Grand Central Terminal. It could have gone terribly wrong: part of the reason for staying at the Barbizon, even if you paid a bit more, was that the doormen, along with the rest of the staff, protected you from “wolves,” those men on the prowl on the streets of New York. But when Carolyn came into the office, she was indeed introduced to Harry Conover, his dark black hair slicked back (was it dyed? she wondered). She had heard he’d once been a disc jockey, and then a model-actor with the Powers Agency, who had figured out the real money was in the management of models—not in being one. Much like his former boss, John Powers, Conover sought out the natural “clean-scrubbed” beauties, not the emaciated models of the runways. He famously advised his models to eat what they wanted because “returning servicemen want a good, well-rounded bundle, not a matchstick.” To find the all-American girl, he had scouts at all the East Coast college campuses during fraternity weekends and relied heavily on regional festivals and beauty contests.

Carolyn, at five foot four inches, was too short for high fashion, but her petite size and delicate features made her perfect for modeling “junior fashion,” a segment of the market that was just then exploding. Teenagers and young adults had begun to define themselves separately, distinct from those a decade older, a phenomenon very much fueled by Mademoiselle and editor-in-chief BTB’s discovery of the lucrative “youth market.”

Harry Conover sat Carolyn down and explained to her that there were pretty girls all over New York, but it was those who were willing to pound the pavement, to do the time, who had a chance at getting somewhere. Carolyn already knew how to persevere; that’s how she had gotten herself out of Steubenville. And so she gladly did the rounds, taking anything that was given to her, making her way through dark halls, narrow staircases, eerily empty lobbies. It didn’t faze her; none of it felt worse than home. At the client’s office or showroom, or wherever they had asked the Conover agency to send her, she presented herself for a no-holds-barred evaluation. It would have broken down a dozen other young women, hearing what they had to say about her, speaking as if she were not standing right there, but Carolyn listened carefully and learned what to correct, such as the dark circles under her eyes.

Her first serious job was a two-page spread in Junior Bazaar, where she was surrounded by the accoutrements deemed necessary for a young wife—dirty laundry, laundry basket, iron, ironing board. This first big modeling job quickly led to more bookings, until she was working steadily. Carolyn’s comp card, the card she handed out to clients with her exact sizes and measurements, had a photograph of her in a fitted suit and hat looking up at a shop window of Lord & Taylor’s department store—and in that window was another photograph of her, wearing a wedding dress. It was very clever. When she again encountered the photographer who had first approached her at the automat, he asked her point-blank if she would go away with him—not for a date, but for a weekend.

“No,”