Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

Robert Taylor, and Barbara Stanwyck packed the place.¹¹⁷ The show had comedians and chorines, dozens of scantily clad girls who slithered and slinked across the wide stage or gathered on the dance floor for spectacular and elaborate dance numbers. NTG was big on audience participation, sometimes asking soldiers up, inviting patrons to hula-hoop. Between 1940 and 1942 an astounding two million patrons enjoyed Granlund’s show at the Florentine.¹¹⁸ For Lili and her sister it was a huge opportunity.

      The Florentine employed dozens of pretty girls who came and went. Lili gathered that if she wanted to stand apart from the ambitious showgirls clogging backstage, it was advantageous to be as naked as the law allowed. She was determined to get noticed and was bare-bosomed often. Ironically, as her career progressed, Lili would learn the value of clothing and cloaking, becoming less nude as she danced up the ladder of success. But for now she needed the attention of an audience jaded by the plethora of beautiful girls shaking across the floor. Competition was fierce.

      Just west on Sunset Boulevard loomed the cavernous Earl Carroll Theatre, a supper club that showcased the same type of starlets as the Florentine, billed as having “the most beautiful girls in the world.” Not a unique claim. In Hollywood there was the Trocadero, Mocambo (opened in 1941), and Ciro’s (opened in 1940), all snazzy clubs vying for the attendance of movie stars. There was the Coconut Grove downtown and Sebastian’s Cotton Club. La Conga on Vine was a dance club that featured the recent Rumba craze. Clara Bow’s “It” Café was lush, with an elegant art deco interior. Hollywood nightlife was at its finest.

      NTG treated the beauties with respect. Many of the girls lived with Granny in his big house on Fountain Avenue. “And never any hanky panky,” the girls swore, since he had a beautiful showgirl girlfriend, Sylvia McKaye.¹¹⁹

      Lili watched and wondered and wanted the audience to single her out. She had bleached her hair about as white-blonde as it would go, and she wore thick Max Factor foundation that made her break out. She had even darkened her arched eyebrows. Along with Barbara, she had nude photographs taken. They were beautiful and artistically shot. Barbara sat modestly on the floor, Lili standing behind her, arching her slender torso, brazenly bare-breasted, her arm in the air.

       This rare photo of Lili at the Florentine Gardens clearly shows she hadn’t yet chosen a stage name

      BARBARA DANCED UNDER A PSEUDONYM, BILLED AS BARBARA Moffett.^3*** Granny took credit for naming her after his two dear friends, heiress Barbara Hutton and Adelaide Moffett Brooks, a “society songstress” who was the daughter of a former vice president of Standard Oil and the widow of David “Winkie” Brooks, who “fell” out of his fourteenth-floor apartment in 1936.¹²⁰

      Undecided as to her perfect name, Lili remained Marie Van Schaack (and occasionally Mary Van Schacht). Possibly she wanted people to know of her success and didn’t yet want to hide behind a pseudonym.

      WHETHER FROM SHYNESS OR SNOBBISHNESS, LILI WOULD NEVER become chummy with the other showgirls backstage. In return most would feel threatened by her. Many of the girls were younger than Lili. There was competition for boyfriends and prominent positions in the show.

      Barbara and Lili were moderately friendly with “Dingbat,” a tall, raven-haired girl who had renamed herself from the ordinary Margaret Middleton to the more exotic Yvonne de Carlo. Barbara and Yvonne had much in common, such as ruthlessly ambitious mothers. Dingbat’s mother made Idella look modest in her plans for her daughter.

      Yvonne, who would go on to become a star in both film and television, was pushed by a stage mother who showed up regularly at the club. They lived together in a small apartment downtown. Yvonne’s mother had always wanted to be a ballerina and forced her daughter into dance, though Yvonne lacked the ballerina’s body, with too long a trunk and too-short legs.

      “She had a screwy figure,” Dardy recalled. “But she was sweet and charming.” Yvonne’s father had left home when she was three. For a while she too had lived with her grandparents. Like Lili she had dropped out of high school. It was unfortunate they never became friends. Yvonne too longed to escape her past and become a sophisticate. Her path would cross with Dardy’s one day at Earl Carroll’s. Lili, however, remained—not yet aloof as she would become—separate from the other girls. Women were and would remain a threat.

      By March of 1940 Barbara and Lili were enjoying a variety of numbers in the show. “The ‘Bookends’,” Granny teased.¹²¹

      DARDY MARVELED AT THE TRANSFORMATION OF HER SISTERS INTO glamorous “showgirls.” They learned to bead their eyelashes, which was an elaborate process of melting black makeup from a round metal tube in a spoon and then carefully glopping little balls onto the end of each eyelash with an orange stick. There is a famous photo by Man Ray, a close-up of a woman’s eyes with both rows of lashes holding tear-like dots on the end of the lashes. The effect is, though dated today, stunning. “It made the eye pop,” Dardy explained. The showgirls wore thick red lipstick. They attached falls to their hair for volume and length. The girls wore platform shoes. Dardy viewed them as exotic creatures and she couldn’t wait to become one.

       Barbara at the Florentine Gardens

       Barbara and Lili (on the right) as bookends

      Lili, who still pined for her traveling days, declared working in the club to be the next best thing. She was becoming entranced by this show business life. Yet the girl who wore black on her wedding day to be “different” still searched for an opportunity to stand out. She wasn’t meant to be one of a dozen. She felt stymied in her personal and professional life. She studied lighting and dressing. She looked for an opportunity.

      IAN CONTINUED TO ARRIVE PROMPTLY AFTER THE LAST SHOW TO escort the girls home. They would bundle up against the cold night and ride home drained, though excited, usually falling asleep before they reached Eagle Rock.

      In the beginning Grandma and Idella stayed up wanting to hear all the details of the night. Barbara and Lili relayed stories about the other showgirls and the famous faces in the audience, singer Rudy Vallee, restauranter Steve Crane, producer Pat de Cicco. Errol Flynn would stagger in with an even more inebriated John Barrymore.

       “Queen of the Orient”

      The two sisters spent the better part of the next eight or nine months performing nightly. They were eager to do anything Granny asked of them. One night Lili was a “Southern Peach,” another a “Chinese queen” held aloft by a flank of girls. Her high moment came crashing to the floor as she was accidently tipped over. Another night Lili wore a green wig, which she occasionally wore out “as long as her dates didn’t protest.”¹²²

      BARBARA STARRED IN THE ANNUAL COLORADO RODEO, WINNING THE title of California’s Loveliest Cowgirl and in 1941 she would have several pictures published in Life magazine. Barbara, who others called “buoyant,” seemed to be the sister with the most promising future, much to Idella’s delight.¹²³ Barbara was more nervous than her sisters. Barbara had a fragile personality. A brilliant girl who took her varied interests to extremes. Barbara was sensitive and delicate, easily hurt and easily influenced