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132 S C H A P T E R 1 5 “Age cannot wither” (but Hollywood Can) At thirty-one Loretta looked as porcelain-skinned as ever. When she endorsed a beauty soap, like Lux, it was as if she had bestowed beauty upon the product, not vice versa. But to remain a star, rather than a working actress who once knew stardom and was now reduced to playing leads in minor films (Virginia Bruce, Kay Francis), or who was relegated to supporting cast status (Fay Wray, Anna Lee, Mae Clark), a dewy complexion was not enough. Loretta had not yet been nominated for an Oscar, although she should have been for Man’s Castle and Midnight Mary. The situation would change in 1947, six years before she left Hollywood, where an Oscar nomination, or even an Oscar, is just an annual honorific that is often forgotten the next year. “You’re only as good as your last picture” was the mantra. Loretta was always good, even though some of her pictures were only adequate. Billing varied with her costars. In China, Loretta was billed first, Alan Ladd, second. In her next and last film with Ladd, the billing was reversed ; now it was Alan Ladd and Loretta—Paramount’s pride and a freelancer in the second of her four-film contract with Paramount—starring in And Now Tomorrow (1944). With a script by Frank Partos and Raymond Chandler adapted from Rachel Field’s novel, And Now Tomorrow should have been an outstanding film. Partos was a respected screenwriter (Jennie Gerhardt, Thirty Day Princess, Cradle Song), although his script for A Night to Remember might have fared better with actors who could don a bit of the motley (Jean Arthur and Fred MacMurray, or Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, instead of Loretta and Brian Aherne). Chandler’s reputation rested on novels that are paradigms of detective fiction: The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Lady in the Lake. But he was a novice screenwriter, whose other 1944 script was Double Indemnity, coauthored “ A G E C A N N O T W I T H E R ” ( B U T H O L LY W O O D C A N ) 133 with writer-director Billy Wilder, who admired Chandler’s fiction, but deplored his inability to grasp the differences between writing a novel and writing a film script. Chandler, who found working with Wilder an “agonizing experience,” at least acknowledged Wilder’s “genius” as a director . Chandler’s voice is heard intermittently in And Now Tomorrow, a “woman’s film” about a deaf heroine (Loretta) cured by a street-smart surgeon (Alan Ladd). Loretta played Emily Blair of Blairstown, where the railroad tracks were the line of demarcation between the haves and the have-nots. The surgeon, Merek Vance (Ladd), revels in coming from the “wrong side of the tracks,” known as “Shantytown,” and delights in baiting Emily. The two no sooner meet than they start sparring, each trying to outdo the other in put-downs and behaving like people who do not know they are in love, until they realize they have armed themselves with verbal ammunition to keep from declaring it. Ladd and Loretta play these scenes as if they were veterans of the mating game—Ladd talking tough and Loretta unflappably genteel. It is in these scenes that Chandler’s voice comes through, as it did in Double Indemnity, when Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray meet for the first time and launch into sexually encoded dialogue. In And Now Tomorrow, Chandler’s voice is discernible in Merek’s opening line. Emily is returning to Blairstown from Boston, where she has learned that her deafness, brought on by meningitis, is incurable. While waiting for the train, she stops at a coffee shop. Vance enters, sitting near, but not alongside her at the counter. His order comes straight from the pulps—hardboiled, terse, clipped: “Coffee. Hot, strong, and made this year.” Chandler was probably the one who punched up Vance’s dialogue, which Ladd delivered with the self-assurance of a man who worked his way to the top without ever having to say “thank you.” Vance may be a noted otologist, but he is still blue collar to the core. Alan Ladd was the main draw; it was he who contributed to the film’s financial success, despite hostile reviews. Loretta gave the more demanding performance, always remaining in character. Edith Head’s wardrobe was a...

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