Tell-All

bed.
    “ ‘We made a special point to pamper each other,’ ” says the voice-over.
    In the continuing ironic montage, the pretty girl puts a cigarette between her own lips, and the ugly girl leans forward to light it. The pretty girl drops a dirty towel on the floor, and the ugly girl picks it up for the laundry. The pretty girl sprawls in a chair, reading a screenplay, while the ugly girl vacuums the rug around her.
    The voice of Miss Kathie reads, “ ‘And as our careers began to bear fruit, we both savored the rewards of success and fame.…’ ”
    As the montage progresses, we see the ugly girl become a woman, still plain-looking, but aging, gaining weight,turning gray, while the pretty girl stays much the same, slender, her skin smooth, her hair a constant, rich auburn. In quick cuts, the pretty girl weds a man, then weds a new man, then weds a third man, then a fourth and fifth, while the ugly woman stands by, always burdened with luggage, shoulder bags, shopping bags.
    In voice-over Miss Kathie says, “ ‘I owe everything I’ve become, really everything I’ve attained and achieved, to no one except Hazie Coogan . …’ ”
    As the ugly woman ages, we see her pretty counterpart laughing within a circle of reporters as they thrust radio microphones and photographers flash their cameras. The ugly woman always stands outside the spotlight, offstage in the wings, off-camera in the shadows, holding the pretty woman’s fur coat.
    Still reading from the manuscript of
Paragon
, Miss Kathie’s voice says, “ ‘We shared the trials and the tears. We shared the fears and the greatest joys. Living together, shouldering the same burdens, we kept each other young.…’ ”
    In the montage, an adoring crowd, including Calvin Coolidge, Joseph Pulitzer, Joan Blondell, Kurt Kreuger, Rudolph Valentino and F. Scott Fitzgerald , looks on as the ugly woman places a birthday cake before the beauty. At that beat, we cut to the ugly one presenting another cake, obviously a year later. With a third quick cut, yet another cake is presented as Lillian Gish, John Ford and Clark Gable applaud and sing. With each successive cake, the ugly woman looks a bit older. The beauty does not. Every cake holds twenty-five blazing candles.
    The reading continues, “ ‘Her job title was not that of secretary or acting coach, but Hazie Coogan deserves credit for all of my finest performances. She was not a spiritual guideor swami, but the best, truest adviser any person could ever treasure.’ ” Her voice rising, my Miss Kathie says, “ ‘If posterity finds continuing value in my films, humanity must also recognize the obligation of respect and gratitude owed to Hazie Coogan , the greatest, most talented friend for whom a simple player could ever ask.’ ”
    With this statement, the beauty inhales deeply, surrounded by the beaming countenances of celebrities, everyone bathed in the flickering light from the birthday cake. Leaning forward, she blows out the birthday candles, and the festive scene drops to total and complete black. A silent, blank void.
    Against this darkness, Miss Kathie’s voice says, “ ‘The end.’ ”

ACT III, SCENE SEVEN
    My life’s work is complete.
    For one final time we open in the crypt below the cathedral, where the veiled figure of a lone woman enters carrying yet another metal urn. She sets the urn alongside the urns of Terrence Terry, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq. , and Loverboy , then lifts her black veil to reveal her face.
    This woman dressed in widow’s weeds is myself, Hazie Coogan . Unescorted.
    Miss Kathie was mine. I invented her, time and time again. I rescued her.
    After lighting a candle, I pop the cork on a bottle of champagne, one magnum still frothing, overflowing and alive in the company of so many dead soldiers. Into a dusty glass, milky with cobwebs, I pour a bubbling toast.
    This is love. This is what love is. I’ve rescued her, who she was in the past and who she will be to the future. Katherine Kenton will never be a demented old woman, consigned to the charity ward in some teaching hospital. No tabloid newspaper or movie magazine will ever snap the kind of ludicrous, decrepit photographs that humiliated Joan Crawford and Bette Davis . She will never sink into the raving insanity of Vivien Leigh or Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth or Frances Farmer . Here would be a sympathetic ending, not a slow fade into drugs, a chaotic Judy Garland spiral into the arms of younger men,