-
10 Honor Among Thieves
- The University Press of Kentucky
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Chapter 10 HONOR AMONG THIEVES ERNEST HAD A MONTHS REPRIEVE from fox, and we had planned our honeymoon carefully. After a week in New York and a week spent in train travel. we had two precious weeks left after returning to Los Angeles. The first thingwe did was pick up Ernest's Chrysler roadster, which Lucy Carter had taken care of in our absence. My Moon, stored in a commercial garage, caught the eye of a Rolls-Royce chauffeur who made me a good offer, and I sold it for cash. Lucy Carter had some interesting news. She was leaving the Mayfair and taking over the management of the Villa Carlotta, newly built on franklin Avenue near Beechwood Drive. Half of her Mayfair tenants were leaving, including the Maases, and she offered to oversee moving Ernest's effects , as well as mine, which I had parked in his place while we were gone. On a perfect day in mid-August. we took off in our maroon roadster for San francisco. Choosing the winding scenic highway paralleling the Pacific Ocean, we passed Hearst's San Simeon Castle, where I had once been invited to stay. Big Sur, Pfeiffer State Park. was our first overnight stop. We were just in time to catch the last remnants of the setting sun as it spread over the Pacific and to tramp through the pine woods and the redwoods before darkness and supper. What a place to meditate, so quiet and serene, except for the chattering squirrels and the calls of the birds flying about us as they always do at the end of the day. Ernest and I returned many times to Big Sur in later years. 138 Honor Among Thieves 139 The next afternoon, we registered at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco and had dinner with some old friends of Ernest's. Mamie Stevens was a department store buyer of oriental art objects and jewelry . She took us to some Chinese wholesalers, and I had a ball. If I had not stopped him, I do believe my husband would have cleaned out the trays of fine gem jewelry that were put out for us to see. As it was, we purchased a set of apple-green jade ring, bracelet, and pin; a set of blood-red carnelian beads and pin to match; and a selection of loose semipreciousstones to be mounted when fancy dictated. Iwas enthralled with these purchases. Unlike Ona Brown, who preferred diamonds, this brunette preferred jade, carnelian, opal. amethyst-any of nature's semiprecious lovelies. After a few days in San Francisco, we returned home by way of Highway 101, stopping first at Carmel and leaving the next day for Santa Barbara and the Miramar Hotel. There, we spent two restful. precious days walking the length of Cabrillo Boulevard skirting the blue Pacific. After stopping in Los Angeles overnight, we headed south to Laguna and La Jolla, where our honeymoon ended at Casa Manana, a new hostelry with a series of private bungalows built around a central edifice, and furnished with fine art, tapestries, heavy oriental rugs, and two baby grand pianos. We read and walked and talked a lot, and made love moderately; our intellectual appetites were more insatiable. Today, the Casa Manana has been converted into a home for senior citizens, in whose company, more than seventy years later, this senior citizen now includes herself-you might say she has come full circle. Back in Los Angeles, we settled into our new home-a duplex apartment at the elegant Villa Carlotta, with a flower-painted beamed ceiling, a fireplace, and a Spanish-tiled kitchen. The Villa Carlotta was a fun place to live. Adolphe Menjou lived there, and Myron Selznick and Irwin Gelsey headed the list of tenants outstanding in the film business. Louella Parsons, Regina Crewe and Herb Cruickshank. Dorothy Herzog, Riza Royce (after her divorce), and Frederica and Ernest Maas all lived on the third and fourth floors. We were chummy neighbors, running freely into each others' apartments borrowing this or that. We had a soup marathon going and jokingly said that we made "soup in a bathtub" because we made enough for everyone on both floors for a week. Each of us had a specialty. Ours (Ernest made it) was lentil; [44.200.23.133] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:18 GMT) 140 The Shocking Miss Pilgrim Louella's was chicken; Dorothy Herzog made a mean chowder of clam, corn, or shrimp...