Cinestar, Gil Hopkins, Reporter
Some days, he could scarcely believe his luck. Here he was, Gil Hopkins, just some kid from upstate New York, hopped off the Greyhound bus three years back still knocking the snow out of his shoes. Now he’s strutting around the Warner Brothers lot like he owns the place. From writing crop reports for the Syracuse Post-Standard to interviewing Lana Turner for the reading pleasure of just under one million starstruck housewives—all in a few easy steps. God bless this crazy country.
Sure, he wasn’t exactly fulfilling anyone’s youthful ideal of the muckraking reporter, including his own. But he’d tried the newshound gig for the better part of a year and it never really took. Turned out he was born to this, not so much reporter as candyman, spinning knots of sugar into cotton candy so fine you could see through it. And yes, sometimes it was as routine as working the line at Ford Motors. Some days, he’d be counting the seconds before he could finish the frothy on-set interviews and escape to the back lot with the grips and, occasionally, some hep outcast actor like Bob Mitchum or John Ireland, to smoke reefers and shoot crap. And yes, his editor might not be pleased to know his star reporter was spending more time shaking dice out of his trouser cuffs than coaxing verbal bonbons from the mouth of yet another leading lady. But everyone at Cinestar liked the results, the airy cream puffs he bestowed with sticky fingers. And he wasn’t one to take things for granted. He loved this god-awful burg, this frontier mirage, the kind of place where a fellow like him, saved from the salt mines of Onondaga County, could end up in a job where he’s having a heartto-heart with June Allyson about her trademark bangs one minute, and the next he’s joining her husband, star Dick Powell, at an after-hours gambling den in Santa Monica. What a story. Like something he’d spun himself from so much cane sugar.
And then that day, a day that seemed like one more flossy strand of gossamer, easily flung off. A ten-minute interview with Lauren Bacall about her wardrobe choices for Key Largo, then Gil Hopkins —”Hop”—was back in the makeshift alley with Moe and Leo and Stu, throwing dollars down and losing big.
Two girls were hanging around smoking and watching the dice. A colored girl, Iolene, who sang in the movie, and an extra, a sloe-eyed white girl wrapped tight in a palm-frond bra. Next to Iolene’s sly grin and browned-butter looks, the white girl nearly disappeared, save the crinkling hula skirt and the brick-red pout—a little bored, a little agitated. They were complaining about being summoned for an evening shoot that ended up being called off on account of a leading lady in the hospital with a bad case of the DTs. Both girls had canceled dates for nothing.
“Take some, nice and easy, honey.” Iolene passed the joint that one of the boys had offered her to her friend. “You look like you need it.”
The white girl took the joint and jabbed it between her lips, but her eyes were on Hop.
“You’re the pits,” she said, shaking her head. “I never saw a worse crap shooter.”
Hop rose from a half-squat and shrugged. “The one thing your mother never taught me.”
She laughed, joint cradled daintily in her mouth. “I guess I could show you a thing or two.”
“That’s all you need,” Iolene said, taking the joint back. At first Hop wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or the girl. “You got enough trouble with fellows number one, two, and three.”
“Maybe,” the girl repeated, stroking her fronds with a mix of meditation and provocation.
“I don’t have to be number four,” Hop said, throwing down the last of his bills. “I’d settle for three and a half.”
Iolene grinned. “Only a half, huh? That sure is a pity,” she said with a wink.
“It’s my secret shame.” Hop grinned as Stu threw the dice. He came up empty again.
The girls both laughed, but he wasn’t sure if it was at his joke or his loss.
“So, which one of you is buying me a drink,” Hop said, eyeing them.
Stu smirked. “It ain’t gonna be me,” he said, picking up his money.
“Why just one of us?” the white girl said, eyes glazing over from the reefer.
“Okay, but I only cadge drinks from friends. Or at least acquaintances,” Hop said, pulling on his suit jacket.
“Jean,” she said, the joint dropping her voice a register, turning it throatier. “I’m Jean. And you know Iolene.”
“That I do.”