Brenda was sitting in bed, wearing a shorty nightgown and crying. And everybody else was more or less standing around and watching her cry.
My bio of Brenda Conrad—age unspecified, but for you it’s thirty-four—simply mentioned her starring performances inWhite Heat,The Beautiful Dream, and her Oscar nomination for the role of Katie inSands of Time. I had strict orders from Greenblatt to play Brenda classy, which meant to concentrate on her reputation as an actress.
Brenda Conrad was, in fact, not a bad actress for a beautiful woman with deep blue eyes, a world-famous mouth, high breasts, a narrow waist, and superb legs. Brenda had something that could be called range, and she could cry convincingly, which is what usually passes for acting. I don’t mean to sound snide. It’s just that you make allowances, in the movie business, for that rare woman the camera instantly falls in love with.
Brenda sniffled at me through her tears and said, “Isn’t it awful? That poor unhappy man.”
“It’s a great tragedy,” I said.
“Oh, I’m so sad, so very sad,” Brenda said. And she sniffled some more.
“It’s really very sad,” I agreed.
Now, part of me was finding all this a little crazy. Brenda Conrad hated McDougall worse than anybody else in the production. I mean, she really loathed him. She would never speak to him when he was on the set. Whenever she had trouble with her lines, she’d fling the script to the ground and say, “I can’t say this crap.” She never referred to him by name. She always called him “McDunghill.” She’d say, “Has McDunghill done the revisions yet?”
Now here she was, sobbing. I looked at Athletic Department and said, “I’d like to talk to Miss Conrad alone, if you don’t mind.”
The kid shot a questioning look at Brenda. She nodded, and he was out the door. Probably damned glad to get out of there. Of course, Brenda had made that kid’s day and maybe his year. He’d slept with Brenda Conrad. How many pole-vaulters at the University of Arizona could say that? Not many at the moment, but we’d only been in town for a few weeks.
Anyway, when the kid was gone, Brenda looked at me and said, “I suppose you’re wondering about why he was in my room last night.”
I nodded to the closed door, through which the kid had just made his escape. “Who you entertain in your room is none of my business.”
“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about McDougall.”
So now, in memoriam, it was McDougall. I might have had a sarcastic chuckle over that, but I was stunned by what she had said. It seemed to be my morning to be stunned.
“McDougall was here last night?”
“He was drunk,” Brenda said, wiping more tears away. “The poor man was drunk and very upset. He had just had a fight with Clete, and he was humiliated and he was yelling at me. It was not pretty.”
Somehow she had switched to her British accent. A strange thing about Brenda is that she will occasionally adopt a British accent for a couple of sentences and then drop it again just as fast. It’s like she can’t remember what accent she’s supposed to be doing.
“When did all this happen?” I asked.
“Last night.”
“He means what time,” Mrs. Maloney said, in a genuine British accent.
“About eleven,” Brenda said. “I was studying my lines, and he knocked on the door and I let him in. I didn’t know he was drunk. As soon as he got in, he started yelling. You see, he saw...” She gestured vaguely at the same closed door. “That I had company.”
“Ted,” Mrs. Maloney said.
“He saw Ted”—Brenda nodded—“and that made him madder, and he said a lot of nasty things. I told him to get out.”
Another tear ran down her cheek. She let it get almost to her chin before she wiped it away. Even her harshest critics, even John Simon, know she has a good sense of timing.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Brenda continued. “I mean, a drunken man in my room at eleven o’clock at night. I was afraid he’d wake up Lisa next door. He was shouting so much. I didn’t know how to get him to leave. And Ted, poor thing, was not much help.”
I guessed that poor thing Ted probably had his clothes off and was in bed.
“Then Clete came up,” Brenda said.
Uh-oh, I thought. “Clete came up to the room?”
“Yes. The door was open. He heard the shouting and looked in. He asked me if McDougall was bothering me, and I said he was... Well, hewasbothering me. So Clete told McDougall to beat it. I thought they were going to have another fight right then and there, but McDougall finally left, and Clete said good night and shut the door. That’s all I know.”
I sighed. Why the hell hadn’t Williams told me he’d seen McDougall again after the fight? I was sure to find out sooner or later.Actors, I thought.
