Read Online Getting Garbo by Jerry Ludwig - Free Book Online Page A

California. It’s better for me, too, living closer to the stars on a full-time basis, instead of being dependent on their occasional visits to the Big Apple. We’re in a two-bedroom apartment, which is like Windsor Castle compared to what we had in Brooklyn. I wish my daddy could’ve lived to see it. But somehow my personal space hasn’t changed much since I was a tiny kid. Still a closet-size room with one window facing a blank wall. Same Army cot with bargain basement headboard. The Nancy Drew decals I stuck on the redwood-stained bureau drawers—and got smacked for when they wouldn’t come off—are still there. The undersized desk, where I did my grade-school homework and where I first wrote penny postcards to Hollywood for autographed pictures of the stars.
    Under the window next to my bed there’s a low bookcase made of wooden planks and cinder blocks, and my rows of autograph books are all lined up there. Plus several picture albums containing snapshots of various stars that I either took or bought from other collectors. The Romanoff’s ashtray on my nightstand is comparatively new. I don’t smoke, but I liberated the ashtray from a trash barrel behind the restaurant and I keep it overflowing with stubbed-out butts. Yeah, that’s right. Cigarettes that once were in his mouth, then in his car ashtray, are now on my desk. Below what Mother calls the sacred altar.
    Why does she have to make fun of everything? It’s just a shelf with odds and ends on it. Memorabilia. Don’tcha love that word? It means that each object contains a memory, all related to Roy. Ticket stubs, Broadway Playbills , a scrapbook filled with clippings from newspapers and fan magazines, several scripts rescued from network and studio dumpsters, and a framed 8x10 glossy, autographed “To Reva, who was there for me from the beginning, with warmest affection, Roy Darnell.”
    It’s a funny thing, the star a fan picks to be her top favorite. Sometimes it seems like opposites attracting: the overweight chick from Bensonhurst who thinks the sun rises and sets on super-skinny Audrey Hepburn. Or maybe it’s a similarity that’s the pull: the tongue-tied boy who picks bashful Gary Cooper as his favorite. I also know a prissy gal from Tarzana who’s the head of the national Olivia de Havilland fan club. Those are not hard to figure out. But what do you say about this refugee kid in New York who does imitations in his native Bulgarian accent of his favorite, Jerry Lewis? All a mystery of personal tastes and quirks, I guess. Some of the collectors are kinda fickle, changing favorites from year to year. Always looking for a new face. But that’s not me, of course.
    For me, it’s always been Roy. Sometimes I’ve tried to figure out why. Sure, he’s a good actor, handsome and all. And we have a history in common, like I feel we both started out together and he was sort of my discovery, though I can’t ever say that to him. But from the beginning, just listening to him on the radio on Let’s Pretend, there was this special connection. Like I could hear something, and then see something not everybody gets. I mean, even now when he’s playing a tough guy (sort of elegant and all, but Jack Havoc does clobber Bad Guys in every episode), that’s not the real Roy—inside of him, there’s a gentle little boy who’s been hurt, but he keeps plugging away. That’s the essential Roy. I can see it in his eyes—in close-ups on the screen, or sometimes the way he smiles at me when I come up to him, particularly if it’s somewhere he didn’t expect me to find him.
    In the beginning, Mother thought my collecting autographs was cute. But then one of the neighbors in Brooklyn told her it was strange, and she always worries what people think, so Mother’s been ragging on me ever since. Running wild in the streets. That’s what she calls it. And