One day Tallulah begged Salka Viertel to bring Garbo to her "party", and she put her best chums on alert. Of course, she carefully excluded both Mercedes and Marlene.
Party night arrived; Salka arrived; the dinner hour arrived. But Garbo, out riding with Mercedes, did not. Tallulah's secretary shook cocktails ceaselessly.
"I don't care if she doesn't come," blared Tallulah after several bracers–just about the time that longed-for low voice was heard in the hall. "I am very dirty. I have been riding. May I come in like this?"
In well-cut jodhpurs and a sweatshirt Garbo looked, Tallulah re-marked later, "...as though she had stepped straight from the pedestal of a Greek statue."
They danced and drank! |
"My job was to get her high," Edie Smith said of that evening, "which I succeeded in doing very nicely." One duty was to escort both Tallulah and Greta to the bathroom.
Tallulah took the most turns–both stoking up on stimulants and phoning more girlfriends to come over and meet the catch of the day. Before introducing them, she kept them stacked up in the kitchen like airplanes waiting for takeoff. Even Ethel Barrymore–who normally wouldn't cross the street to meet God, as Tallulah noted–was among latecomers admitted to "the Presence."
When the group played charades, both Bankhead and Barrymore turned on their hamming as though they were playing by royal command. "You are all so gifted here," said Garbo shyly, "I have nothing to offer you."
They danced to the phonograph and drank like fish. At one point, when Garbo complained that bleach and a perm had frizzed her hair, Tallulah grabbed her scissors, ready to cut off the offending tresses; only a ringing phone stopped her from hacking at Hollywood's best-paid head.
They gabbled until dawn, when Tallulah had to leave for the studio.
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