Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

       Lili’s bird act

      Faith, with her big blue eyes and white hair, still young but disillusioned, perhaps on drugs, having lived some desperately unproductive years, her salary slipping, injuries to her beautiful body tearing at her, snarled her lip and flounced away.

      Later still, Lili made a special trip to Texas to see Faith perform. The aging stripper had a palpable smell of desperation about her by then. After a horrific accident onstage she had scars and pain in her legs. She was coming to the end of the road, unsure where her next $100 or her next job was coming from. She had lost the inner beauty that had driven her dance. She was just another down-and-out stripper.

      Not long after, Faith would sail—possibly in a cloud of drugs—out her hotel window seeking relief from her life. Without work, without admirers, without money, the former “inventor of the fan dance” who was once billed as “the most beautiful woman in the world” had nothing left to keep her on the ground.¹⁴⁰ It was a story that terrified Lili. She thought, “This is how we push great artists” to tragedy.¹⁴¹ Lili too would dance to the highest peak of a career that depended on her beauty. When her looks faded, what would become of her?

      Faith’s death would not be an easy one. Her body wrecked and broken when retrieved from a second-story awning that broke her fall, she expired after a few agonizing hours. Faith’s lungs were punctured, her ribs broken, her face mangled. Lili couldn’t imagine it.

      ANOTHER SEMINAL MOMENT IN LILI’S LIFE WAS ATTENDING A PERFORMANCE of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles. The Monte Carlo was a famous offshoot of the Ballets Russes, which had performed under the genius leadership of Sergei Diaghilev. After Diaghilev’s death in 1929 several companies formed, one being the Monte Carlo Ballet. The Monte Carlo toured mostly in the United States, debuting in Los Angeles in January of 1935.

      In her Canadian biography Lili would claim she was seventeen and it was 1934 and Ian took her alone as a special treat. This was pure fiction. Maybe it was something the kindhearted Ian would have done. But the particular show she saw wasn’t until 1945 (dates would never be important to or remembered accurately by Lili). By then Lili was a twice-divorced woman, not a schoolgirl who needed an escort.

      Lili thought the performance magnificent. The troupe danced to Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faun.” (She would later create her own version of “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”)

      The choreographer and lead dancer that profoundly impressed her was twenty-four-year-old David Lichine, a handsome Russian “poet-choreographer.”

       Performing at the Florentine Garden

      He danced to Scheherazade (Lili too would include this in her repertoire), which incorporated a “protracted orgy” scene.¹⁴²

      Lili was mesmerized by the graceful ballerinas in “sensuously skimpy” costumes, with their elegant arm movements, their haughty manner as they danced as if there was no audience.¹⁴³ The male dancers were strong and sensual. It was a thrilling, artistic experience that deeply moved her. The dance (though it did not include Nijinsky’s infamous and controversial masturbatory scene) opened Lili’s eyes to the possibility that dance could be not only erotic or lustful but also artistic, despite the half-nude costumes. And more importantly Lili had been dancing to and for the audience. She had been seeking their approval and their eyes. This would soon change. She noticed most of the acts at the Florentine sought approval from the audience. Something about that bothered her. Later she equated it with dating. She felt once a man thought a woman was interested in him, the less interested he became. She would learn the same was true of audiences. They had to want her and not the other way around. Lili would make the audience seek her. She would perform privately as if there were no one to please but herself.

      When Nijinsky had originated “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faun” in the 1920s he had been roundly condemned because of the subject matter, shocking the audience by rubbing himself. No matter when or where Lili saw the performance and Lichine, it would change her ideas about dance and give her a taste of emotion through movement. She would often deny it but Lili did strive to elevate her work to be on par with the highest level of the artists of her day.

      *** Remember her real name was Ruth

      CHAPTER TEN

      The girls never feared misbehaving at the nightclub because Alice had sternly instructed them on how to behave. She told the girls to not do anything they couldn’t tell her about.¹⁴⁴

      Idella, who once had her own aspirations for the stage, sidetracked either by polio or children, perhaps tried to dissuade the girls from mingling with other showgirls, because Lili did not make friends. Maybe it was part of the conflict she felt about the career. Dardy later would complain about the strippers and burlesque performers, “They weren’t necessarily the people you wanted to hang out with.”¹⁴⁵ Other chorus girls couldn’t help Lili’s career, so she would feel no need to make friends with any of them. By now she had taken a small apartment in Hollywood and was enjoying her space and privacy away from Idella’s nagging and Alice’s worry.

      EVERY NIGHT LILI WALTZED INTO THE NIGHTCLUB, PAST A SWEEPING staircase winding up to the second floor. She would stroll past the bar looking for Dick to say hello. In a short time the place was packed with mink-clad women in jewels, men in tuxedos. Everyone was laughing, drinking champagne, and watching a terrific night of entertainment.

      Errol Flynn and John Barrymore were regulars. Lana Turner was spotted wearing a dress of beige crepe and a white fox. Texan Rex St. Cyr impressed Lili, sweeping in regularly with Lady Furness (the former Thelma Morgan), the Prince of Wales’s former paramour before her friend Wallis Simpson stole him. Furness’s identical twin, Gloria Vanderbilt (mother of fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt), clung to St. Cyr’s other arm. He threw $100 bills around as if they were confetti.

      The self-styled Texan had been born Jack Thomas. He was a generous supporter of the Hollywood Canteen and made sure his name was in the entertainment trades lauded for his efforts. St. Cyr hosted numerous parties attended by celebrities, despite the fact that no one knew exactly who he was. When hosting the 13th Academy Awards, Bob Hope opened his monologue with, “Who is Rex St. Cyr?”¹⁴⁶

       Lili at the Florentine; Barbara is in the background

      In June of 1942, St. Cyr’s name was important enough to be included as one of the guests at Errol Flynn’s birthday party (which got out of hand when a butler was injured) along with Jack Warner, Ava Gardner, Tyrone Power, and Dinah Shore.

      Lili was fascinated by him. His name would stay tucked in her head, associated with grandeur, flamboyance, and wealth; it sounded French and Lili loved all things French. She admired—and later emulated—anyone who was generous, mysterious, and glamorous.

      Barbara’s sometime beau was the tall and handsome Hearst columnist Harry Crocker who invited her swimming at San Simeon. As a regular part of the newspaper magnate’s circle (he had done a film with Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies, Tillie the Toiler, in 1927), Crocker had a distinguished pedigree. His father was an oil tycoon, his grandfather a railroad builder, and his uncle an important banker in San Francisco.

      Crocker snapped a picture