Maisie Spits in the Eye of Impossibility (to no avail).

Then, she and Bea finish off the Amaretto.

“Sweetie,” said Bea. “Walter’s on my back. I’m not dancing, not teaching. I’m not on the lecture stage. What am I doing with myself? I’m writing another book on technique, I tell him. Not, I’m holed up with your damn mouse writing a damn screenplay that will never sell, probably. I’m his screwball sister who spent her growing-up years hunkered in her room reading silly romances. Here am I at thirty-five, dug in again. Dump your entourage, he says. The longer they insulate you from the world, the harder it’s going to be to jump back in. Your talent is to teach. I was wrong to drag you away from it. It’s back to Paris for you.

“I came out here when Walter recommended me as a consultant on The Nymph’s Revenge. A good experience for me professionally, and I might meet someone and settle down. Good-looking men out here, said he. That’s a laugh. No marriage in the cards for me. I’m not the least bit interested. I’m a loner. I‘m happiest by myself, haven’t you noticed?”

“I have,” admitted Maisie.

“And, I’m a leaner. I lean on books. I lean on dance. I lean on you.”

“I’ve noticed that also. I suppose I’ve encouraged it. Encouraged, and used it. You’ve been good to me. I owe it to you to try to protect you from my worse inclinations.”

Bea gave her a look that, put into words, would be something like Crap! What’s she up to now?

“I’m having an altruistic moment here, said Maisie. “No joke. I mean that. It comes to me that it might be good if we were to take a vacation from each other.”

“I lean on you–Bea sighed–more than I should, it’s so easy to do. I’m not a good mixer. In Europe you were the attraction. I didn’t have to be charming. Charming is tough for me. It wears me out, and the longer I’m with you the worse I get. I’m happy to hide out with you here, you’re fascinating company. Annoying, but fascinating. And it’s a lovely thing to play Lady Bountiful to a houseful of geniuses. It’s lovely to be the queen bee in her hive. They manage to make me feel I’m fascinating myself, but, of course, it’s my money that’s fascinating.” Bea scowled. “Walter’s money!”

“Stop that! You’re a beautiful, accomplished woman. Stop running yourself down.”

“Everyone I’ve ever gotten close to has tried to help me. It’s a trap door I fall through again and again. I go along, until I can’t. Then I snap, and there’s no picking up the pieces. You, you’ve seduced me into being a screenwriter. Silly me, I thought, maybe. You saw them tonight. The merest hint of what we’re up to had the pros–yes, pros, compared to us–were chuckling their heads off. I don’t dare mention it to Walter, he’d blow his stack. ‘You’re what? You’re writing a what? That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.’ You seem to think you can talk, or trick, anybody into anything. Girl, I’m done. We’re chasing an impossible dream.”

Maisie had listened politely to Bea’s outpour of anguish. This last statement she couldn’t let by without an argument. “Bea-zy! If I didn’t believe in impossible, where would I be? I’d be back in my cornfield. Impossibility, I’ve lived with it my whole life. Impossibility, I spit in the face of impossibility.”

“Well! I don’t have your strength of character, do I?” Bea reached for the Amaretto. Miranda had brought up the bottle with the dishes of ice cream. The best cough medicine, she’d declared, with a wink.

Maisie shrugged. “Ship me east to Giselle. I’ll pick up doing the Cha-cha-cha with ol’ Mr. Wiggles, making a fool of myself two shows a night for leftovers and a bunk in the manager’s office. Poor Wiggy, I hope she didn’t throw him out. Me, the big movie star, on the lam from a failed career in Talkie-town, mopping the bar with a felt rat, bucked off my high-horse in sweet style. Hope she takes me back. Me and my moods, Giselle knows them well.

“The silents were my big chance. There’s no place for me in the new Hollywood. We both oughta beat it. I won’t go to Paris with you, not that you’ve asked me. I agree, ours is not the healthiest of relationships. Jeez, kid, you’re sure guzzling the Amaretto. Spill me out another splash before you suck it dry.”

She sat, twiddling her toes. Should she, or shouldn’t she? Would it be taken as a bid to be invited along to Paris? Not her intention at all. But, Bea needed to hear it.

Bea lay back, eyes shut. Had she fallen asleep? Maisie scaled the pillow, perched next to her ear. “Babe!” she squealed. No response. “Babe!” she squealed louder. “Got something to tell ya.”

“Ummmm?” Bea was awake. Good.

Hmmm. Better make certain. “Hon! You awake?”

“Umm-ummmm.”

“You sure?”

Bea opened her eyes. “Christ Almighty! What is your problem? Yes! I’m awake!”

She’s woke now. No doubt now. “Hey, lady, ever wonder why I never popped out a brood of brats?”

“You could have. I know you, what? Three years?”

“I never was a mom. Never. Does that strike you odd?”

“Not too.”

“Look kid, me and Rodentino . . . the stud and the seductress, we worked it, good for the image. It wasn’t him made my heart jump. Fact is, I went for his sweetie. When I reported to Wardrobe for fittings–Tasha toiled there under the great Travis Banton–we were never allowed to be alone. We made eyes at each other, that’s as far as it got. Schulberg made damn sure of that. I swear to God, that creep could read my mind.”

— — — — — — — — BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES — — — — — — ——

MARCELLINE MULOT returned to her nightclub act, the venues featuring her decreasing in prestige as the years passed. In 1940 she was spotted doing the mambo for a promotion of the scent Reckless in Rio atop the perfume counter at Macy. Thereafter, she dropped out of sight.

Everything Old Is New Again at some point, we are told. In the Psychedelic Sixties she turned up as a novelty guest at commercial events, on one occasion, at a candy convention in Atlantic City, donning a Peachy-style get-up and handing out samples of product to attendees who remembered the Paramount Junior Star of their childhoods. In the seventies she tried her hand at writing. Unfortunately for her (but not for the rest of us) her lesbian mouse fantasies drew little interest. After that, she withdrew from the public eye, living quietly in Greenwich Village with a companion.

Maisie Mulot is loosely based on the actress Louise Brooks. I’ve pulled details of her life from a collection of her essays, Lulu in Hollywood, published by Alfred A. Knopf ©1974.

BEATRICE WANGER returned to Paris, where she created and performed recitals at Théâtre Esotérique and other locales. Back in New York post 1937, she taught at the studio of Albertina Rasch. She resided in New York until her death in 1945.

Wanger went on to publish a string of romance novels under the name Victoria Kanne, to ensure that her reputation in the dance world would not be sullied by her sensational storytelling. As Carlotta Cross she wrote even more extreme material (with lesbian leanings) which were published in small editions by an underground press. I have not come across the latter. I have read a number of her mainstream works, and I have located a few reviews.

AS YOU DESIRE ME
Percival Pollard in Town Topics: “Be as sad and as sane as you like, for all the other days of your life, but steal one mad day, I adjure you, and read As You Desire Me.” The Detroit Free Press: The world has felt upon its hot lips the perfumed kisses of the beautiful heroine of As You Desire Me. The brilliant flame of this novel of consuming emotion has made the name Victoria Crass known world-wide.

A MARRIAGE OF EXTREME INCONVENIENCE
This tale tears the garments of conventionality from woman, presenting her as she must appear to the Divine Eye. Mesmerizing, as always.

DAUGHTERS OF DESIRE
As life cannot be described, but must be lived, so this book cannot be revealed — it must be read. Its daring situations and tense moments will thrill you.

BELOW
is an overview pulled from a site dedicated to women writers of the early twentieth century. Alas, I am unable to supply the name of the author; none is given.

Bea Wanger wrote under the pseudonyms Victoria Kanne and Carlotta Cross.

A wanton disregard for propriety took her deep into forbidden territory, in work characterized by vulgarity, implausibility and sheer nuttiness. Her novels were denounced as pornographic but were widely read over many years.

She wrote mainstream romance as Victoria Kanne. The main theme of the fiction she published under the name Carlotta Cross was the welling-up of sexual feeling between women, typically, in a hectic, hashish-scented atmosphere. Marcelline (the heroine of With My Whole Heart), a demure young lady is hungry for unbridled experiences. Cross chronicles the girl’s frisky explorations in her extravagant prose.

One suspects that Marcelline is an idealized self-portrait. The author’s personal journey was less carefree. After a series of unhappy love affairs, she threw herself off a balcony at the Tower Terminal Inn in Niagara Falls. The attempt to live honestly, Kanne-Cross implies in book after book, was something which society was not yet able to digest.

Her raucous fiction — combining her capacity for absurdity and her skill destroying dearly held assumptions about social and sexual behavior, speaks to us in a beguiling voice, once you get past the over-depiction of interior decoration and come to terms with an overabundance of adverbs.

Various circumstances conspired to bring a once notorious novelist to near-total oblivion. Her work was eclipsed by that of even more daring writers, and literary merit, which might have fixed her in our collective memory, had never been her forte. Her reclusiveness, combined with a peripatetic existence, ensured that she acquired no committed circle of intimates who could have provided her with a bedrock of emotional support, to counter a love-life full of ups and downs. She passed in 1945, estranged from a legion of former lovers and from her disapproving family.

MIMI SPEIKE (Author/Illustrator)
I went to art school at Syracuse University, graduated 1968, and immediately sank into the counterculture, engaged in various chaotic activities popular at the time. In the early eighties, realizing it was time to grow up, I started in graphic production and kept at it for forty years, all the while writing my interminable pieces in a genre I call Animals in Pants.

This is the final installment of Maisie. The story will continue in the print edition. When it is ready, I will announce it here.