Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [15]
My next step—and I suppose you could call it a leap, not a step—was to move out of my aunt and uncle’s home and into the fabled Hollywood Studio Club, dubbed by cynics the “Hollywood Nunnery.”
A little background here: Formed in 1916 by a group of aspiring actresses so they could read plays together, the Hollywood Studio Club first met in the Hollywood Public Library. However, in 1925, with the backing of Mary Pickford and Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille, as well as donations from Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd, and Howard Hughes (you’ll hear more about him later), the Studio Club later moved into a three-story Spanish-style steel-and-concrete building on Lodi Place, not far from Sunset and Vine, that was filled to the brim with antiques and overstuffed furniture.
From then on, the Studio Club, which was run by the YWCA, became sought after as a home for young Hollywood women who were involved in all aspects of show business. Provided that they could supply bona fide references, actresses, script girls, makeup artists, casting directors, secretaries, and anyone else in the business could live in the Studio Club, where they were easily able to pool information about auditions, rehearse, study, and in general network in order to further their burgeoning careers.
On my first day at the Studio Club, as fate would have it, I encountered one of the most famous Studio Club residents of all: Kim Novak, who’d lived there for the past five years but was moving out that very day. A silvery blond vision clad from head to foot in lilac, Kim had a handsome man trailing in her wake. I thought then that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.
And there I was, grubby, sweat-stained, and worn out from moving box after box containing most of my worldly possessions—plaid dresses, patent leather shoes, white gloves, my best blue leather jewelry box (which would have pride of place in my room, although I didn’t have anything in it except my tiny Miss San Francisco diamond ring), plus literally scores of books—into the Studio Club.
The dramatic contrast between Kim and me didn’t make my first day at the Studio Club any easier. Quite the reverse. And by the time I had moved everything into my room, I couldn’t have felt more lost and lonely. A few weeks later I gained a roommate, a beautiful brunette actress named Barbara Wilson, who was a lot of fun.
My only pleasure came at the very end of the night when I called my aunt Margie and my uncle Grandville because I missed them so much. That call became a daily ritual because I couldn’t afford to call my parents long-distance in San Francisco.
Years later, at the height of I Dream of Jeannie’s success, Aunt Margie let slip that she hadn’t ever approved of my going into acting, because she didn’t think the business would be good for me. I guess that my many evening calls from the Studio Club, in which I must have sounded extremely depressed, only served to reinforce her feelings. Nonetheless, she was encouraging and supportive, and stayed that way until she died in her nineties. I still miss her today.
Residence at the Studio Club included the use of the library, the laundry room, the sewing room, and the sundeck. In the midst of everything was the crucial notice board, where agents, producers, and directors posted news of upcoming auditions, and aspiring actors and actresses advertised for girls to read with them at auditions.
In my day, over a hundred girls lived at the Studio Club. Each of us paid fourteen dollars a week for a room, a telephone answering service, a cleaner twice a week, and two meals a day (generally breakfast and dinner, because no one had time for lunch), at which we all ate home-style food served on a buffet in a large dining room where we could all meet and gossip.
The only memorable thing about the Studio Club mealtimes is that one day when I was eating dinner in the dining room, all of a sudden—and I never discovered why he was there—John Wayne swaggered across the room, larger than life.
The only other celebrity