Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

magazine reader—knew all about the glitzy club in the heart of Hollywood frequented by John Barrymore, Rudy Vallee, and many other movie stars. Live radio shows were broadcast from the Gardens. Unlike other clubs on Sunset Boulevard, the Florentine catered to the “meat and potatoes” crowd, compared to the caviar set over at Earl Carroll’s, a nightclub west on Hollywood Boulevard.

      The Gardens was a spacious supper club with floor shows featuring beautiful girls. There was a revolving stage and seating for 1,160.

      The three girls arrived at the appointment, a little wrinkled and dusty after transferring buses from Eagle Rock. One can imagine the scene that confronted them: a vast club where they would be swallowed up by its current emptiness, dimly lit, a couple of boys sweeping the outer edges of the floor, sticky with spilled drinks. Various long-limbed girls sitting around the unadorned square tables. And the tangy smell of all nightclubs, old smoke, sour fruit, liquor, and sweat. The smell the girls would grow to love. It would be the smell of work and good times and carefree nights of their youth.

      Interior of the Florentine Gardens. Barbara’s nude is prominently displayed.

      SINCE LILI WAS NOT THERE TO AUDITION SHE SAT IN THE AUDIENCE and opened her Vogue while a stage manager assembled Dardy and Barbara among the other girls. Lili had to be feeling turbulent, no matter how cool she acted. She was between boyfriends and jobs, drifting aimlessly, wasting afternoons doodling costumes and outfits in a notebook, listening to Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky or Tommy Dorsey and Judy Garland on the radio. She toyed with the idea of designing clothes. She was excellent at sewing and loved pretty things. She would later claim that something told her—on this very day—to pay attention to what was going on around her. She felt luck was in the air.

      NTG was scrutinizing the lineup of girls. He stopped and gave the Vogue-reading, long-legged blonde a look up and down, wanting to know why she wasn’t on the stage.

       Barbara, on the left, easily outshone Lili—at the Florentine Gardens

      Though elegant, he was hardly handsome, with a sagging chin, receding hairline, and large nose. But NTG was very good at producing live entertainment.

      Did he ask if she could dance? Did he care? With her almond-shaped eyes, wide cheekbones, and statuesque body, she was made for the stage. He could hire three sisters as easily as two. No one else was as tall as the trio.

      He insisted they call him Granny.

      It looked as if all three sisters had a job until someone asked Dardy her age.

      “Well, I was wearing my school outfit,” she later admitted, apparently including skirt and ankle socks. They needed to fill out some paperwork and though she lied and said she was fifteen, it was obvious Dardy was underage.

      “Get off the stage,” someone yelled at her. Dardy was devastated, possibly jealous. Her time onstage would have to wait.

      At the time, hiring girls under eighteen was prevalent in the clubs. However, the Board of Equalization was stepping in and preventing the practice. Though Barbara was only sixteen she was deemed safe to hire. By the following year both NTG and nightclub king Earl Carroll were “stripped of” the practice of hiring underage girls. Carroll was forced to fire a fifteen- and a seventeen-year-old.¹¹²

      Lili and Barbara were exactly what NTG had been looking for. He positioned each one on either side of the ponies—chorus girls—who were shorter. They would be his bookends.

      AT LEAST THAT IS THE BASIC STORY LILI TOLD OF THE BEGINNINGS OF her show business career. There would be variations over the years as if she was embarrassed to have wanted a career. In her telling it would always happen accidentally.

      But according to Dardy, all three sisters took four buses to arrive at their mutual audition for a Harry Howard–produced show. The Blackadder/Klarquist girls were literally heads above the others. As in Lili’s version, Dardy was shouted off the stage and Barbara and Lili were hired.¹¹³

      Barbara and Lili were now officially in show business. They signed contracts for a whopping $25 a week.

      The girls began rehearsals. Barbara and Lili shimmied into skimpy outfits wearing tall gossamer headdresses, net pants, and rhinestone-covered bras across their nearly flat bosoms.

      If anyone worried what Alice would think about the girls parading about nearly nude, it didn’t seem to be a concern. None of the girls were self-conscious about their bodies. Idella, of course, would thrill that her girls—especially Barbara—were in the spotlight. And in fact, Alice loved it too. She thought her granddaughters were spectacular and they should enjoy the adventure, the attention, and the paychecks.

      The money seemed to go a long way toward soothing any concerns.

      The reality of making money—real money—during the Depression was slim. Especially for young, not especially well-educated women. There were teaching jobs and secretarial jobs. Both mundane and not suited for girls who wanted adventure.

      Burlesque, an outgrowth of (or stepchild) of vaudeville, could and did afford single young women the chance to travel, earn decent—if not really good—money. And if they weren’t quite “stars,” they did make fans and generate publicity and were for a while “someone” in that circle. They, like Lili, felt “necessary.”¹¹⁴

      And though strictly speaking the Florentine Gardens was not a burlesque house, the acts were similar and would have played both vaudeville and burlesque.

      In the beginning Lili didn’t move anywhere near as gracefully as she would in the coming years, but she had a sparkle and a beautiful body, not to mention stunning features with a cleft chin, wide jutted cheekbones, and green eyes that were both mischievous and wholesome. She was fresh and nervous, occasionally tripping over her own feet, not exactly sure what to do with her hands. But she was endearing and delightful, eager to please, anxious to be liked. Barbara was equally stunning with an easy smile and enthusiasm for everything.

       Barbara

      LILI WOULD FOREVER REMEMBER HER FIRST NIGHT AT THE FLORENTINE, the smell of tomatoes and garlic and sweet cocktails. The sounds of the band and laughter. It seemed to be the happiest place on earth. Barbara and Lili were deliriously nervous, stomachs in knots, but also electrified too.

      Backstage was chaos; girls running around in various stages of undress, stagehands lugging props, lifting furniture. Music soared through the club along with the tinkling of glass and silverware. There were many dressing rooms for a show that included an enormous cast of twenty chorus girls, jugglers, dance teams, and more.

      For her first bit Granny had Lili walk around in net panties and bra. Years later she recalled the terror. She couldn’t feel her feet and hands. Her lips stuck to her teeth. The audience scared her. All those eyes on her.

      To assure the girls didn’t get into trouble, Ian drove them to and from the club each evening, a thirty-minute car ride that any number of new admirers would have been willing to do. And soon were offering. Dardy was left at home to cry at the injustice of it. After all, NTG had spotted Barbara and her, not Lili.¹¹⁵

      The shows at the Gardens were “built around NTG,” who meandered from table to table between the shows, bantering with the audience, sometimes telling crude double entendres and ribbing his celebrity