She hated regular newspapers. She hated facts. She also hated club meetings, housework, politics, business, and her mother-in-law. She was not civic. She adored shopping, friends, cooking, gardening, dancing, children and babies and kittens (all little helpless things, actually), and my father. Especially she adored my father. Mama’s favorite word was “sweet.” She’d cry at the drop of a hat, and kept a clump of pink Kleenex tucked into her bosom at all times, just in case. She called people “poor souls.”
That spring, Elizabeth Taylor was the poorest soul around, when Mike Todd was killed in a plane crash one week before the Academy Awards. Elizabeth, clutching their tiny baby, Liza, was in shock as her Hollywood and New York friends rallied to her side. The industry had never seen such a dynamo as Todd, whose electric energy sparked everyone. Just a few weeks before Todd’s death, he had celebrated Elizabeth’s twenty-sixth birthday by giving her a dazzling diamond necklace at the Golden Globe Awards dinner.
Not a “poor soul” was Ava Gardner, who had divorced Frank Sinatra for the Italian actor Walter Chiari and now was trying to steal Shelley Winters’s husband, AnthonyFranciosa, playing opposite her in
The Naked Maja
, currently being filmed in Rome.
“Can you
imagine?
” My mother, clutching
Photoplay
, was outraged. “Isn’t Ava ever satisfied? Just think how Shelley Winters must feel!”
“It’s terrible,” I agreed.
If you only knew
, I thought. I sat down on the edge of the chaise longue to peer at the pictures of Ava and Shelley and Tony in a Roman nightclub.
“Look at that
dress
.” Mama pointed to Ava.
“What a bitch,” I said loyally.
If you only knew
, I thought.
“Honestly, Jenny, such language!” But Mama was giggling. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
Nothing
, was the answer to that, already clear to both of us. The fact is, I was just too much for Mama, coming along to them so late in life (a “surprise”), after my two older sisters had already “sapped her strength” and “lowered her resistance,” as she said, to all kinds of things, including migraine headaches, asthma, and a heart murmur. These ailments required her to lie down a lot but did not prevent her from being perfectly beautiful, as always.
My mother was widely known as one of the most beautiful women in Virginia, everybody said so. Previously she had been the most beautiful girl in Charleston, South Carolina, where she had grown up as Billie Rutledge and lived until she married my father, John Fitzhugh Dale, Jr., a naval officer stationed there briefly during the war. “Just long enough to sweep me off my feet,” as she put it. He was adivine dancer, and my most cherished image of my parents involved them waltzing grandly around a ballroom floor, she in a long white gown, he in a snappy uniform, her hair and the buttons on the uniform gleaming golden in the light from the sparkling chandeliers.
Thus she became Billie Rutledge Dale, in a ceremony I loved to imagine. It was a wedding of superlatives: the handsomest couple in the world, a wedding cake six feet high, a gown with a train fifteen feet long, ten bridesmaids, a horse and buggy—not to mention a former suitor’s suicide attempt the night before, while everybody else was dancing the night away at the rehearsal dinner. I was especially fascinated by this unsuccessful project, which had involved the young man’s trying to hang himself from a coat rack in a downtown men’s club, after which he was forever referred to as Bobby “Too Tall” Burkes.
Some people said Mama looked like Marilyn Monroe, but I didn’t think so; Mama was bigger, blonder, paler, softer, with a sort of inflatable celluloid prettiness. She looked like a great big baby doll. People also said I took after Mama, but this wasn’t true, either, at least not yet, and I didn’t want it to become true, at least not entirely, as I feared that taking
That spring, Elizabeth Taylor was the poorest soul around, when Mike Todd was killed in a plane crash one week before the Academy Awards. Elizabeth, clutching their tiny baby, Liza, was in shock as her Hollywood and New York friends rallied to her side. The industry had never seen such a dynamo as Todd, whose electric energy sparked everyone. Just a few weeks before Todd’s death, he had celebrated Elizabeth’s twenty-sixth birthday by giving her a dazzling diamond necklace at the Golden Globe Awards dinner.
Not a “poor soul” was Ava Gardner, who had divorced Frank Sinatra for the Italian actor Walter Chiari and now was trying to steal Shelley Winters’s husband, AnthonyFranciosa, playing opposite her in
The Naked Maja
, currently being filmed in Rome.
“Can you
imagine?
” My mother, clutching
Photoplay
, was outraged. “Isn’t Ava ever satisfied? Just think how Shelley Winters must feel!”
“It’s terrible,” I agreed.
If you only knew
, I thought. I sat down on the edge of the chaise longue to peer at the pictures of Ava and Shelley and Tony in a Roman nightclub.
“Look at that
dress
.” Mama pointed to Ava.
“What a bitch,” I said loyally.
If you only knew
, I thought.
“Honestly, Jenny, such language!” But Mama was giggling. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
Nothing
, was the answer to that, already clear to both of us. The fact is, I was just too much for Mama, coming along to them so late in life (a “surprise”), after my two older sisters had already “sapped her strength” and “lowered her resistance,” as she said, to all kinds of things, including migraine headaches, asthma, and a heart murmur. These ailments required her to lie down a lot but did not prevent her from being perfectly beautiful, as always.
My mother was widely known as one of the most beautiful women in Virginia, everybody said so. Previously she had been the most beautiful girl in Charleston, South Carolina, where she had grown up as Billie Rutledge and lived until she married my father, John Fitzhugh Dale, Jr., a naval officer stationed there briefly during the war. “Just long enough to sweep me off my feet,” as she put it. He was adivine dancer, and my most cherished image of my parents involved them waltzing grandly around a ballroom floor, she in a long white gown, he in a snappy uniform, her hair and the buttons on the uniform gleaming golden in the light from the sparkling chandeliers.
Thus she became Billie Rutledge Dale, in a ceremony I loved to imagine. It was a wedding of superlatives: the handsomest couple in the world, a wedding cake six feet high, a gown with a train fifteen feet long, ten bridesmaids, a horse and buggy—not to mention a former suitor’s suicide attempt the night before, while everybody else was dancing the night away at the rehearsal dinner. I was especially fascinated by this unsuccessful project, which had involved the young man’s trying to hang himself from a coat rack in a downtown men’s club, after which he was forever referred to as Bobby “Too Tall” Burkes.
Some people said Mama looked like Marilyn Monroe, but I didn’t think so; Mama was bigger, blonder, paler, softer, with a sort of inflatable celluloid prettiness. She looked like a great big baby doll. People also said I took after Mama, but this wasn’t true, either, at least not yet, and I didn’t want it to become true, at least not entirely, as I feared that taking
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