The Mansions of Limbo by Dominick Dunne

Author:Dominick Dunne [Dunne, Dominick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Reading list I, Non-fiction
ISBN: 9780307815019
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1991-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

JANE’S TURN

Remember, I’ve been in this business fifty-four years. I made eighty-six pictures and 350 television shows. I have not been idle.” As she spoke, she leaned forward and her forefinger tapped the table to emphasize her accomplishment. The speaker was Jane Wyman, a no-nonsense star in her mid-seventies, who is one of the highest-paid ladies in show business. Her immensely successful television series for Lorimar, “Falcon Crest,” is in its ninth year, and it is she, everyone agrees, in the centerpiece role of Angela Channing, that the public tunes in to see. She got an Academy Award in 1948 for Johnny Belinda, in which she played a deaf-mute who gets raped. She was nominated for Oscars on four other occasions, and she has also been nominated twice for Emmys. She has behind her what can well be called a distinguished career.

We met in a perfectly nice but certainly not fashionable restaurant called Bob Burns, at Second Street and Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California, not far from where she lives. Bob Burns is her favorite restaurant, where she has her regular table, a tufted-leather booth. It is one of those fifties-style California restaurants that are so dark inside that when you step in from the blazing sunlight you are momentarily blinded and pause in the entrance, not sure which way to go. When she arrived, I was already at the table. My eyes had become accustomed to the dark, and I was able to watch her getting her bearings in the doorway. It was twelve noon on the dot, and we were the first two customers in the restaurant. Even to an empty house, though, she played it like a star. She is taller than I had expected. Her posture is superb. Her back is ramrod-straight. She is rail-thin, too thin, giving credence to the speculation that she is not in good health. She walks slowly and carefully. Some people say she is seventy-two, some say seventy-five, others say older. What’s the difference? She looks great. Her hairdo, bangs over her forehead, is the trademark style she has worn for years. “Is that you?” she asked, peering.

“Yes.” I rose and walked toward her.

She held out her hand, strong and positive. The darkness of the restaurant was flattering to a handsome woman of a certain age, but that is not her reason for liking the place. “The three people who own it went to school with my kids,” she said. The words “my kids” were said in the easy manner any parent uses when talking about his or her children. She happens not to be close to either of hers, but we didn’t talk about that.

She is private in the extreme, almost mysterious in her privacy, a rich recluse who chooses to live alone, without servants even, in an apartment in Santa Monica overlooking the Pacific Ocean. She is a woman in control at all times. There is not a moment off guard. What you see is the persona she wants you to see, and she reveals nothing further.

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