American Blonde by Jennifer Niven Read Free Book Online

stay in jail a night or two because they felt it was good for him.”
    “When was the last time you saw your father?”
    “I haven’t seen him in years.”
    He sat back in his chair. “So for all you know he may actually be dead.”
    “I—well. I suppose he could be.” Even after all Daddy had done and not done, even after all these years of not seeing him, it wasn’t something I liked to imagine.
    Mr. Strickling said, “Is that everything?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “If there’s anything you’re holding back, anything that might prove embarrassing if the media gets hold of it, now is the time to let me know. If you tell me now, I can make sure that anything like that stays out of the press. Or if we can’t keep it out of the press, I can make sure it’s revealed in the most positive light possible. I don’t want any surprises when I open my morning paper.”
    “That’s everything.”
    “Good. When were you born, Miss Hart?”
    “November 5, 1922.”
    “We’ll need to change the date. Shave two or three years off your age, maybe give you a more patriotic birthday. Not July fourth because that belongs to Mr. Mayer, but perhaps Lincoln’s birthday.” He pressed a button on a little box on his desk.
    A woman’s voice said, “Yes, sir?”
    “Get me a list of patriotic days of the year, please, Doris, disregarding July four.”
    “Certainly, sir.”
    He handed me a stack of pages, longer than my contract.
What does your father do for a living? Where did you grow up? What are your hobbies? What is your favorite food? Where did you go to school? Who is your ideal man/woman? What are you most afraid of? What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
    He said, “Once you fill out the questionnaire, we can create your studio biography.” He pressed the button on the box again. “Doris, get me Bernie Hanser.” To me, he said, “Bernie will be your personal publicist. Good guy. Southern. From West Virginia, like myself.” He wrote something in my file and then closed it. “Talent is like a precious stone, Miss Hart. Like a diamond or a ruby. You take care of it. You put it in a safe, you clean it, polish it, look after it. There’s only one of you, one of Nigel Gray, one of Barbara Fanning, and because of that you have to be protected. It’s what we do here.”

    At wardrobe, they measured every inch of me. I learned that my hands and feet were too big, my chest too small, and that I was, at five feet six inches (and three-quarters), too tall, but “thankfully not as tall as Ingrid Bergman.” The woman who weighed me said I could stand to lose five pounds, “preferably on the hips and not the chest,” because it would make my cheekbones “more prominent.” She asked me what my regular diet was and when I said, “I eat anything I want to,” she scribbled something down on an index card and handed it to me.
Prescribed diet: eight glasses of water a day. Breakfast: plain toast. Lunch: cottage cheese and fruit. Dinner: boiled vegetables and one small piece plain fowl, fish, or beef. No desserts!
    In the makeup department, I sat in a barber’s chair under bright lights while my teeth, smile, nose, eyes, eyebrows, ears, and cheekbones were examined by a team of men in lab coats. They talked about me like I wasn’t even there, discussing what to do about my freckles (violet-ray treatments) and my teeth (caps for the front two to make them more even) and the little scar on my lip, which had been given to me by a Nazi officer. My eyes and cheekbones were my best features, even if my eyes were a darker green than they would have chosen, and my eyebrows needed to be plucked and arched. One of the men drew on my face with a fat black pencil, and when I asked him what on earth he thought he was doing, he said, “Trying out the possibilities.”
    In the hair department, the one and only Sydney Guilaroff—the man responsible for the most glamorous heads in Hollywood—stood back and studied me, his own head