American Blonde by Jennifer Niven Read Free Book Online Page B

another piano started up, but instead of fighting each other, the notes from the three different melodies merged together into a symphony of promise.
This is why you’re here, Velva Jean
. I closed my eyes and listened for as long as I could.
    Inside Sam Katz’s office, the walls were covered in framed posters of the more famous MGM musicals. I strolled down these like an avenue, taking in every one.
    Mr. Katz asked me to sing anything I wanted, and I chose one of my own songs, one written years before called “Yellow Truck Coming, Yellow Truck Going.” While I sang, he perched on a desk and listened with no expression at all.
    When I finished, he said, “Do you read music?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you play piano?”
    “Guitar and mandolin, but I’d like to learn.”
    Mr. Katz pulled a stack of sheet music off the desk and handed it to me. “Pick one of these and sing it.” I chose “Begin the Beguine,” from
Broadway Melody of 1940.
    Afterward, he said, “You’re a very promising diamond in the rough. You’ve got one heck of a voice, but we can help it be even better. Where did you study?”
    “I didn’t. But everyone in my family is musical. We kind of picked it up as we went along. I came here to train.”
    “You’ll have to unlearn things as well as learn. I want to warn you that it’s going to feel like starting from scratch. I’ve seen people come in here who think they know all there is to know about music, maybe they’ve had years of training, only to discover they don’t know anything at all.”
    “In the end, all I care about is my voice, and what’s good for it.”
    “All right then. We’re going to assign you to Bobby Tucker to work on your phrasing. You’ll work with Harriet Fields for pop singing, Earl Brent for jazz singing, and Arthur Rosenstein for vocal form. It will take a team, but that’s what we’re here for. With some hard work MGM might—just might—be able to turn you into a singer.”

    The office of Louis B. Mayer was on the ground floor of the Thalberg Building, and was the largest room I’d ever seen. Everything was white—walls, ceilings, lamps, chairs, sofa, grand piano, and an enormous leather crescent-shaped desk, which stood fifty or so feet from the door and was built on a platform. A man sat behind the desk wearing a dark three-piece suit and round wire-rim glasses.
    At first I thought I was dreaming. Maybe I had died and gone straight to heaven and here was God himself to greet me, looking not like God at all but like the president of a bank or a stout little owl. The man’s secretary, Ida Koverman—who had two assistants and a secretary of her own—looked like a kindly grandmother, but didn’t act like one. She announced me, her tone clipped and disapproving, as if she was afraid I would track dirt onto the thick white carpet.
    He said, “Thank you, Ida.” She bristled out.
    I began the long walk to the desk. I was wearing my new green dress and suddenly I felt gaudy and too bright. In the midst of all that white, the color of my own dress hurt my eyes.
    The man stood and I could see that, even on the platform, he was short. He called out, “Miss Hart, lovely to see you. I’m sorry it’s taken us so long to be introduced.” He held out his hand. “Louis B. Mayer. Welcome to MGM.”
    He punched a button on his desk and from a great distance, there was the sound of a lock clicking into place, and I thought, Uh-oh. He waved to me to sit in one of the white chairs. After I’d taken my seat, on the edge of my chair, ready to outrun him or knock him down if he made a pass, Mr. Mayer sat, beaming. He was sixty, round, and balding, and didn’t look at all like the most powerful man in Hollywood.
    The windowsill behind him was covered in framed photographs—three women who, by the looks of it, were his wife and daughters, and J. Edgar Hoover. A pitcher of orange juice and a glass sat on one end of the desk, along with a white telephone, a day-by-day