“Sure I’ve heard of him.”
“Yeah. Well, chances are you wouldn’t have if some bright boy hadn’t pulled the same stunt back in ’26.”
“What stunt?”
“Valentino went up like a skyrocket, but he was coming down fast. Then, just when he’d finished The Son of the Sheik — bingo! he gets appendicitis or something and croaks. So there the studio sits — with a dead star and a dead flicker. That’s when some genius pulled a rabbit out of the hat.”
Jimmy Powers snapped his fingers again. “They staged the most sensational funeral you ever saw. Poured out the puffs about the passing of the screen’s Greatest Lover. Filled the newspapers, jammed the magazines, flooded the country with Valentino. Made out that all the dames who used to flip over him on the screen were soaking their handkerchiefs now that he was gone. By the time his picture was released they had everybody so hot to see it there was no holding them. The picture and the re-releases made so much dough that even the Valentino estate paid its debts and showed a profit. How did they do it? Women weeping at the grave, rumors cropping up that Rudy was still alive — publicity. Publicity — with a capital P.”
Jimmy Powers grinned. “Well, I guess you get my angle. M.P. sure latched onto it! And I pointed out to him that we had an even better deal going for us. Because we had this Miss Mystery gimmick to play with, and a real mysterious death. We can even start a story that Betsey Blake is still alive — stuff like that.”
“But she was positively identified—”
“I know, I know! So was Booth, and Mata Hari, and this Anasthesia dame, or whatever her name was, over in Russia. But the suckers go for that angle. Is Betsey Blake Still Alive? We plant articles in all the rags. Maybe even pony up some loot to get out special one-shots. The Betsey Blake Magazine. You know, like they did on this kid Presley, and a lot of others. Hire some kids to start Betsey Blake fan clubs. Get some of the high-priced talent to write sob stuff for the women’s magazines. Like how Betsey Blake was a symbol of American girlhood.”
“But she wasn’t a symbol,” Steve objected. “And she wasn’t exactly a girl, either.”
“Sure, sure, she was past forty. And I happen to know M.P. was going to axe her the minute her contract ran out. But she was well-preserved, you got to admit that, and. a lot of the kids still went for her. We can build it up — yes sir, man, we can build it up!”
No doubt about it, Jimmy Powers was very excited. “And think of what we can do with her past! Nobody has dope on her real name, or just how she got started in show biz back in the Thirties. Wait’ll we get to work on The Real Betsey Blaise and The Betsey Blake Nobody Knows.”
The excitement was contagious. In spite of himself Steve found himself saying, “Say, that’s a possibility, isn’t it? You might be able to uncover all sorts of things. Didn’t I once hear a rumor that she’d had an illegitimate child by some producer? And that she was once married to—”
Jimmy Powers shook his head.
“No, that isn’t the kind of stuff we want at all! You hear that stuff about everybody in the Industry. I’m giving strict orders to lay off any investigation, get me? We’ll cook up our own stories. Make any kind of a past we want. Maybe get her mixed up with some of these mystic cults, you know what I mean. Hint foul play, too. Oh, we’ll have a ball!”
“We? I thought this was just your baby.”
“It is — M.P. gave me the green light all the way. But it’s a big job, Steve. That’s why I thought of you, sweetheart. You’d be a natural on this kind of promotion — doing some of the high-class stuff — like, say, for those women’s rags I mentioned. So how’s about it, Stevie-burger? How’d you like to be a great big legend-maker?”
Steve sat there for a moment without opening his mouth. And when finally he did open it, he had no idea what was going to come out.
“You know Betsey Blake when she was alive?” he asked.
“Of course I did. Handled most of her promotion — Stalzbuck was in charge, really, but I did a lot of the work. I thought you knew that.”
“I wasn’t sure.” Steve hesitated. “What kind of person was she, really?”
Jimmy Powers shrugged. “An oddball. What difference does it make?”
“Was she friendly? Would you say she was a kind person?”
“In a way. Yes, she was. So why the District Attorney bit?”
“Because she’s dead, Jimmy, Dead and gone, in a tragic accident. And the dead should be allowed to rest in peace. You can’t just go and pitch a sideshow over her grave.”
“Who says I can’t?”
It was Steve’s turn to shrug. “All right. I suppose you can. And nothing I say is going to stop you, is it?”
“Damned right it won’t!”
Steve nodded. “Then go ahead. But, in the classic phrase, include me out. And thanks all the same. I can’t be a ghoul.”
Jimmy stared at him. “So I’m a ghoul, huh?” he muttered. “Well, I’ve got news for you. I’m a ghoul and you’re a fool. A damned fool.”
“Knock it off, please.”
“Okay.” Jimmy paused at the door. “You were always asking me what it takes to get along in this racket. Well, Stevie, it takes guts, that’s what it takes. Guts to see your big opportunity when it comes along, and guts to follow through. Guts that you haven’t got, Stevie-boy.”
“Maybe I was brought up differently.”
Jimmy laughed harshly. “You can say that again! Brother, if you only knew how differently! I got the perfect training for this particular job, believe me. And just you watch how I make good on it.”
Then he was gone, and Steve tried to go back to work.
Jimmy stayed away from the beach for a long time — right through the height of the summer season. Steve figured he was working on his promotion, but there was no word from him.
Then the news started trickling in. The trickle became a stream, the stream became a flood.
The Betsey Blake legend burst open the American public during the latter part of August. By September the first magazines hit the stands, carrying their planted stories. By October the specials were out, the fan clubs were formed, and the television people were combing their files for old kinescopes of Betsey Blake’s few live shows.
The whole thing was just as Jimmy Powers had outlined it, only more so. I Was Betsey Blade’s Last Date vied for attention with The Loves of Betsey. And there was The Truth About—, and The Real—, and What They Don’t Dare Print About—, and a hundred others. The studio, meanwhile, was doing an indefatigable job tying in Splendor. Betsey Blake in her last and greatest performance! The greatest actress of the American screen!
On a different level there was the Betsey Blake — The Woman Nobody Knew approach. In this series it was possible to learn that Betsey Blake had herself been the daughter of a reigning celebrity of the silent screen, or of royal European blood, or merely a youngster out of Hollywood High School who deliberately set out to fashion a career for herself.
There were as many, and as conflicting, details as to her love fife. And there was much speculation about why she had maintained such an air of secrecy concerning her personal affairs. She was a devout churchgoer, she was a freethinker, she was a secret Satanist, she dabbled in astrology, she attended Voodoo ceremonies in Haiti, she was really an old woman who had discovered the secret of eternal youth. She was secretly an intellectual and her lovers included most of the celebrated literary figures of our generation; she was actually a shy, sensitive person who couldn’t face her own image on the screen; she was a devoted student of the drama who had planned to retire from the screen and establish her own repertory theater. She loved children and wanted to adopt half a dozen, she had been jilted as a girl and still cherished the memory of her one real love, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and spent all her money on psychiatrists.