Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

       Barbara at San Simeon—Inscribed by Harry Crocker “For the nicest mother in the world”

      BARBARA ALSO HAD DATES WITH THE FRENCH-SOUNDING FRANCHOT Tone, who in reality had been born in New York as Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone. The thirty-five-year-old movie star would send his limousine to wait for Barbara at the Florentine’s artists’ entrance and drive her back to his house in Beverly Hills for dinner. If Lili didn’t have plans, she would show up too. All three would sit at one end, “dwarfed by the table.” He was a good sport and would have his uniformed houseman serve the hungry girls a sumptuous meal under a chandelier lit with candles.

      He had a large English-style home, with formal dining room as “big as a ship” that looked out on beautiful gardens, the windows swathed in sheer lace curtains.¹⁴⁷ Tone’s butler would serve lavish seven-course meals. The sisters could eat; they weren’t dainty, nor did they pick at their dishes, despite being rail thin. Franchot would tell the butler to call the driver and made sure the sisters were returned to the Florentine in plenty of time so as not to miss the next show. He didn’t want them fired on account of him.

      One night a handsome, round-faced actor with a deeply dramatic way of pontificating asked the twenty-four-year-old Lili out.

      His name was Orson Welles, theatre director, actor, and current Hollywood boy wonder, hot off his controversial production of War of the Worlds that for a short time sent radio waves of panic across America with his faux invasion of aliens taking over the earth. Hollywood came calling with a contract offering him almost (this would later be debated) complete artistic control. Welles was fully enamored of himself and his enormous talents.

      Backstage at the Florentine, Granny interrupted Lili. He watched her dip a damp cloth in a jar of Ponds and rub it over her face to remove the heavy pancake. Other girls in the crowded dressing room were doing the same.

      “Someone wants to meet Miss Champagne. Hurry up. I’ll wait to introduce you.”¹⁴⁸

      Granny had nicknamed Lili because of all the bottles purchased on her behalf.

      Lili favored masculine-looking pants and button-down shirts offstage and slipped into a pantsuit. Granny complained, “Why do you wear that, Lili?” And he left her to finish getting dressed.

      Dressed, Lili entered the front of the club and found Granny waiting for her. He led her to a small table.

      “Marie, this is Mr. Orson Welles,” Granny said, wearing a satisfied grin on his face. The place was packed and even among the many celebrities all eyes turned to Welles’s table where the striking dancer stood in her very unshowgirl-like outfit.

      Welles stood and took her hand. “Pleased,” he said in his deep-timbered voice and bowed. He was conservatively dressed in a dark suit and tie. His voice was distinctive, but Lili thought it “domineering.” “Join me?”

      Lili, knowing he was the “important man of the year,” slid into the banquette.

      “Champagne?” he asked.

      Welles poured a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck that sat in a silver ice bucket at his table.

      “Mr. Welles—”

      “Orson.”

      In the middle of the table was a small vase of fresh flowers. He plucked a rose from the arrangement and put it in his buttonhole. Then he did the same for her.

      They made idle chatter but didn’t stay long, not even to finish the bottle.

      “Do you drive?” Orson asked.

      She smiled sheepishly. “I do . . . but not well,” she admitted. Driving made her nervous. She found it a difficult task and had a hard time concentrating behind the wheel.

      Orson stood up. Lili stood nearly as tall as the director. They were two distinct figures as they strolled arm and arm across the crowded club and out the front doors. Lili could feel jealous eyes boring into her, which made her stand even taller, basking in the glow of envy. It was a different kind of attention, and one she didn’t mind. She had stopped caring that women sent daggers her way. Recognition of any kind was paramount for Lili.

       Lili and her first car

      Welles slid into the big Pontiac that another admirer of Lili’s had lent her. It was a beautiful black convertible, big enough for her to feel safe behind the wheel. Lili took the steering wheel in hand.

      WELLES WANTED TO TAKE HER “SOME PLACE SPECIAL” AND INSTRUCTED her to head east on Sunset Boulevard, then west toward Watts, south of downtown, which was at the time only just becoming a predominantly black neighborhood.¹⁴⁹

      Lili nervously parked on what she thought was a rather dodgy street, hoping nothing would happen to her borrowed car.

      They got out of the convertible and walked to a nondescript one-story building. Welles knocked on the door.

      The door opened a crack and a man’s narrow face poked out. There was an exchange Lili didn’t hear but immediately the door was hinged open.

      It was a big room, grand, yet dark, with many tables filled with laughing and drinking couples and heat. There was a tiny stage with a black pianist playing jazz. They were ushered to a table near the piano. The black man acknowledged Orson and continued playing with a big grin on his face.

      Interestingly, Lili’s fifth husband, Ted Jordan, would make note of a “Brothers Club” that Orson liked to go to about this time, which was surely the same club he took Lili to. One knocked on the door and a “mean-looking man glared at you through a porthole” until you said the password, “Brother, let me in.”¹⁵⁰

      To Orson the place was hip. They ordered sloe gins. Orson ordered BBQ chicken and ribs. They didn’t speak much, just listened to the loud music as it filled the room. Orson liked it more than Lili. But she was enjoying herself. Jazz would never be her favorite music nor places like this her thing. Still she loved the illicit feeling of it, the hipsters in their bright clothes. Hepcats. The men wore shiny high-waisted, tight-cuffed zoot suits, pinstriped or brightly colored. Others wore shiny tuxedos with opera scarves trailing off them. Watches dangled on chains down to baggy-panted knees.

      It was nearly 4 a.m. when Lili dropped Orson at the Garden of Allah, the hotel where he was staying at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. He chastely kissed her goodnight.

      “Tomorrow?”¹⁵¹

      They agreed and she drove to her tiny apartment in Hollywood. Still not tired, she undressed, washed her face, and leaned her head against the window sill looking down on the side of the opulent Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. A cool breeze lifted her hair.

      The next night she met Orson at his hotel. He had been renting an apartment at the former residence of silent-screen actress Alla Nazimova. And, in fact, he’d broadcast several live episodes of his radio series Campbell Playhouse from the Garden of Allah.

      The Allah was the place where a multitude of celebrities found refuge, both short-term and long. Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald lived there, as would Dietrich, Garbo, and writer Robert Benchley. There was the main hotel, Nazimova’s former mansion, with twenty-five individual villas built around the three and a half acres of gardens. It was Spanish Moorish and exotic like the former actress herself. There was a central pool where many recovered from hangovers. The parties flowed endlessly. It was charmingly decadent, just what Lili approved of.

      Lili thought the setting incredibly romantic and ideal for a rendezvous.

      For