Archive of Our Own ^beta

PAPER DOLLS OF 1929

“they know how to dress!”

with KATHY SELDEN

“Well I thought that was dreadful,” Kathy said, wrapping a scarf around her neck. “Not much for a first leading part, huh?”

“You looked beautiful,” Don said. “You sounded beautiful. Maybe the rest of the picture just couldn’t match.”

“They’d better find something that does match me soon, or I’m going to be sent to the back of the chorus line,” Kathy said. “And I can’t go back to jumping out of cakes. I just can’t.”

“It’s not so bad,” Cosmo said. He’d arrived a few minutes late and had seen the crowds in the lobby. He’d also heard the applause at the end of the film, as Kathy got her man. Not Don, not in this one. But a fair enough dupe. Cosmo was almost moved -- to try and get his number.

“I bet you fifty that in six months, maybe even six weeks, fifty dollars a week will be a distant memory. And if not, you’ll have my last fifty bucks.”

“Thanks Coz,” Kathy said, and briefly took his hand in hers. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He smiled. The year was just beginning. 1928 had been a year for learning, trying new things out. At times it felt like they’d barely been able to see each other outside of hurried breakfast and afternoon weekends spent at the movies, catching up on what everyone else was doing. 1929 had to be better than that.

--

It was shortly after Kathy returned from filming the latest Cecile B. Demille picture that Cosmo had the idea. “When I convinced R.F. to lend me to MGM, I thought it was going to be one of his epics,” she said, spooning too much sugar into her coffee. “He promised me adventure, fireworks, the whole ball of wax. I thought it'd be something with class, Cosmo. But you know what? I've spent all day being ejected from an exploding zeppelin. And for what, an unfaithful husband second-chance romance? My hair is practically singed.”

“You smell as fresh as ever, dear,” Cosmo said, half-distracted by the mass of letters he'd spread out over his best friends’ breakfast table. “Barely the tiniest hint of burning.”

“Don't tell me you've received more of them,” Kathy said. She leaned over the table to peer down at the letter on top. “This one came second in the junior world tap dancing championships in 1926. Wowee. And he can play the trombone.”

Cosmo grimaced. “If Fred Astaire himself is being sent away by Paramount after one lousy screen test, I doubt junior is going to get very far. Maybe R.F. could go for a series of musical stories about a precocious youth, but I’m not going to be the one to pitch it.”

Kathy looked around the room. The sun was setting, it was Saturday night, and her husband was nowhere to be found. “Have you seen Don?”

“Don’s been held up at the studio all afternoon,” Cosmo said. “I believe he had some opinions about the dance scenes.”

“Heaven forbid,” Kathy said. “Well, maybe this coffee will keep me awake until he makes it home.”

And that's when Cosmo had the idea. Letters from starving musicians spread out around him, Kathy splashing coffee on the papers as she fanned them out. Don late at work on his day off again. And all Cosmo really wanted to do was dance with his friends.

“I think you should throw a big party,” Cosmo said. “You could get in a house band. I've got a whole orchestra’s worth for you.”

“Are you asking me to deprive my husband of the joys of being the center of attention?” Kathy asked, a thoughtful twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, of course,” Cosmo said. “Retain their services, they can lightly serenade you over brunch, and afternoon tea. Who needs a husband when you've got first and second violin.”

--

“Did you know that movie theaters were the biggest employer of musicians in this whole country?” Cosmo said one lunchtime, around a cold chicken-and-pickle sandwich. He was eating at his keyboard again, in the windowless closet that had recently become his office.

“No kidding,” Don said, flicking through an old fan magazine from Cosmo’s faintly ironic stash of them. “I guess the traveling circuit can only take so many trick violinists, even now we've hung up our hats.”

“Think the studio needs its own orchestra?” Cosmo asked, then thought about it for a second, and amended with: “Maybe we need two orchestras.”

“Oh, it's always good to have a spare,” Don said, and lazily nudged Cosmo’s shin with one of his shiny Italian leather shoes.

What's that supposed to mean?

“I just think that now the talking picture industry has put them out of business, we could do with hiring a few more. What's life without a bit of music now and then? Aren’t I supposed to be the head of music at this studio? Maybe it’s time I got hold of some arms and legs.”

“Life without music is like peanut butter without jelly. It's nothing.” Don stared through the sandwich in his hands. “Do you think my nails need a trim? I'm shooting a scene this afternoon where I'm getting half a manicure.”

“How romantic,” Cosmo said. “And you, a fine upstanding married man, falling for a lowly hotel manicurist.”

Don shook his head and finished the sandwich. “At least they're letting me include a new dance number in this one. Just you wait, Cos. I'm going to demand a whole extra microphone just for my shoes.”

“How about an on-set percussionist,” Cosmo said, quietly. But then Don was due on-set. It was a week before the October 24th stock crash. And the letters had barely even started to arrive.

--

Kathy capitulated quickly on the party front. “But not in my own house. You think I want to find people canoodling and dancing and doing god knows what else in the place that I have to live? Let’s just find a barn somewhere.”

Don didn’t take much more persuading. He spent a while locked in an office with R.F. organizing a studio-wide paid vacation for the two days over the new year, which seemed like the perfect time for a fancy dress ball. “It’s going to be 1930,” he said. “A new decade, which I fancy seeing land in style.”

Cosmo didn’t, in fact, find a barn. But there was the next best thing: an empty mansion, available to rent out for cheap. It was a venerable Hollywood original - It was at least thirteen years old, and three different silent film stars had called it home before Ramon Novarro had bought it as an investment around the time he was moving into his own beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills. “Maybe you could buy your own house,” Novarro said to Cosmo, over cocktails and canapes. “Move out of Don Lockwood’s guest suite.”

Cosmo didn’t really want to confront why that idea made him so unhappy. Not right now, and not in company. “I didn’t know you were looking for a career change to real estate,” he said, mildly. “The fanclub will be very disappointed. For now I think a short rental will be plenty. Want to party with us at new year? There’ll be live music. Lots of it. And plenty of gorgeous men on the dance floor.” Okay, perhaps Cosmo was dreaming. But he’d seen the prospective guest list. And the hosts. There’d be at least one or two.

Novarro shook his head. Cosmo fancied he had a wistful air about him. Something about the way he moved his hand on the table, something about his dark eyes. But didn’t he always seem wistful? Wasn’t that the way with these big stars? Wistful about the real lives they were missing out on, and the unreal ones they had. “I’ve got a villa at the Garden of Alla,” he said. “Good for me to get away.”

--

Cecil B. DeMille’s

MISSES SATAN

“You’ve never seen anything like this!”

with Kay Johnson;
Reginald Denny;
Kathy Selden;
Roland Young

“I feel like maybe I should have turned this one down,” Kathy said. “Maybe DeMille should just stick to the epics.”

“I think the poster is right,” Cosmo said, carefully prying one off the theater wall. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s a true unique.”

“Just like you, Kathy,” Don said. “How did he film you in that zeppelin?”

“You don’t want to know,” Kathy said.

--

“Darling, we have to invite Frank Tuttle,” Kathy said. “Give him a theme and he’ll run with it.” They’d all heard the stories about Frank Tuttle turning up to a youth-themed party dressed as a fetus, umbilical cord and all. Don had even been there, dressed up in a more modest costume - a cub reporter, with a pair of lensless glasses frames perched on his nose and a notepad stuffed in his jacket pocket.

“Do we have a theme?” Don said. “I thought it was just an excuse to dance.”

“Of course we have a theme,” Cosmo said. “The theme is: Hollywood Babylon. Debauchery and sinning will abound.”

“You’re as bad as each other,” Kathy said. “Our theme is Heaven and Hell. It’s on the invitations, you pair of blockheads.”

“That’s what I said,” Cosmo said.

--

Hollywood is good at throwing parties, Cosmo thought, because they know the best people for everything. Decorations? Pay a set designer for a day. Food? Pay your favorite on-set caterers. Clothes? Find a costume designer who likes you and they’ll let you rent whatever you need.

It’s a good idea to part with your money some of the time. Keep a whole village in business, and you get to have fun while doing it.

Cosmo looked at himself in the mirror and tugged at the cravat he’d just finished tying. He was dressed as some kind of angel, in a white suit with wings. Maybe he should have hired something less showy. He wasn’t a movie star; he was at best a glorified hanger-on who played the piano and knew a funny dance or two.

The car horn tooted again. He was meeting the others there - they had been in situ for hours. He hoped they’d missed him at least a little.

--

“Why does somebody have a camera here?” Kathy hissed, pulling Cosmo into a small room off the main hall as they peered out at the man with the camera. “Cosmo, who is that man, do I need to send my husband after him?”

Maybe she had a point. A couple of months after a major stock market crash maybe wasn’t the time for your decadent party to end up on the cover of the newspapers, after all. No matter how many musicians you were paying handsomely for their troubles. Income redistribution isn’t supposed to look so… extravagant.

Not that Kathy and Don were much for flouting prohibition. Well. Not usually.

But. “I think that’s Monumental’s new in-house documentarian,” Cosmo said. “He makes little home movies. No talking. Quaint, really. This party is part of the studio’s legacy.”

“As long as nobody is going to screen it in public for at least thirty years,” Kathy said. She still had an arm looped around Cosmo’s waist.

“How did you know it was me, anyway?” Cosmo said. He was wearing a delicate white domino mask as part of his costume.

“I know those feet,” Kathy said. She was an angel too, in a white silk dress covered in lace, and wings almost down to the back of her knees. Cosmo couldn’t wait to spin her across the dancefloor. So when the next song started up with strains of string and brass, that’s exactly what he did. Lace billowing in the wind.

“You know, I think you were right,” Kathy said. Her cheeks were pink and her voice was warm and throaty from all the dancing. She leaned one shoulder on Cosmo as she stretched out her opposite foot, wincing with a bit of cramp. “Tonight might bankrupt us, but two bands really are better than one.”

--

Cosmo may have had other reasons for wanting to party. Maybe he should have just given in, bought his own place, and stopped turning the best guest suite at Don and Kathy’s -- “If you ever call it LockSel again I'm evicting you myself,” Kathy said, once -- into his own personal office, boudoir, lounge. Bedroom.

But the thing was that he maybe didn’t want to. And maybe if he could be fun -- maybe if he helped to organize their lives better, helped them see more of each other, helped them see how good life could be with music and dancing -- maybe they'd let him stay.

--

A couple of weeks before the party, Cosmo sat down in a journalist’s office and patted his pockets for a cigarette. A nervous habit that didn’t do him any favors when it came to his lung capacity. And to keep up with Don and Kathy he needed big lungs. For flapping his mouth, for dancing with the speed and precision of someone who deserves to be there, on Don’s arm, taking Kathy’s hand.

“I'm not going to be much use, I fear,” Cosmo said. He was happy to be saying it.

“Have a stick of gum,” the journalist said, and offered him an open packet. His secretary was fiddling with some kind of gramophone. She didn't seem thrilled about the gum. Cosmo turned it down and stopped looking for a cigarette.

“I don't have any interesting Hollywood gossip,” Cosmo said, which was a bald-faced lie, and everyone knew it. “Us little people are below the notice of the great stars in this town, you know.” As if he hadn't agreed to this interview largely in the hopes of learning some new information, some new stories, some new rumors to slot into his mental catalog.

And of course he was also there to find out exactly what it was that Joe wanted to know. Whenever Cosmo got a note from a journalist who wanted to talk to him, he felt a pang of danger. Who had been talking, and what was he going to have to deny in such a way that he didn’t just make the reporter more intrigued?

Joe spat his wad of gum into a paper towel, which he promptly dropped out of the window.

“Do I look like Louella Parsons,” he said, distinctly unimpressed. “I'm doing something big here. I'm writing down the story of Hollywood talkies. How they came to be. No more newspapers for me, I’m going to write the greatest book on movies this country has ever seen.”

“Nobody’s going to care about that,” Cosmo said. “They like the stars and how they talk, as long as they’re refined or funny. They don’t care about the machinery of it. You'll send them running away in horror. Maybe back to Broadway.”

“One day they just might care,” Joe said. “So let’s get this thing rolling, Fletch. Mr Brown is going to tell us all about the early days of recording music for the movies.”

“But Joseph, I’m an artist, not an engineer,” Cosmo said, pressing a hand to his forehead. But he could see the secretary poised to start recording, and he hated to put all that vinyl to waste. He cleared his throat.

“One day you're playing a simpering take on Wagner on the piano so that Zelda has the mood she needs for a drawn-out death scene, and the next thing you know you’re in a basement waving a baton at a house band who keep playing the theme of Glorifying the American Girl at the wrong speed.”

--

“I know those feet,” Don said, taking him by the elbow as the song faded into the night, brass players opening their valves to let in some air. “Cosmo, they want you to sing next.”

“I’m wearing shoes,” Cosmo said. “Nice ones, too.” It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t help but dance in them. It wasn’t his fault his costume didn’t work as any kind of disguise.

Don, of course, was the Devil. Red tights and all. There was lots of thigh on display. A glass of wine in his other hand. Cosmo had been right: sinning and debauchery. Don’s hand was warm on his arm, and Cosmo wanted to turn around, and take the glass from Don’s other hand, and.

“Have you seen Frank Tuttle?” Cosmo asked.

“Is that your new song?” Don asked.

“Don’t answer me with questions,” Cosmo said.

“Do you want to sing or not?” Don asked. His hand was still on Cosmo’s elbow. “They’ve got ‘Be A Clown’ all ready for you.”

“Eh,” Cosmo said. “I’ll pass. I always felt like that song was missing something.”

“Fair enough,” Don said. “And what about Frank Tuttle?”

“I don’t think he can sing,” Cosmo said.

Then he had to make it up to Don by singing ‘You Do Something to Me’ instead.

--

HANDS ON THE TABLE

“they met in the middle”

with Don Lockwood;
and Kathy Selden

“I’m glad we got Millard to see reason and cast you in the lead,” Don said.

“But only after Lina flounced out on you after three days filming,” Kathy said. “I think you can still see her in one of the wide shots. That’s why Webb made me wear such a horrible scratchy wig.”

“Baby, I can only ever see you,” Don said.

“That’s why you’d make a terrible director,” Cosmo said.

--

Kathy and Don found him together in the middle of the dancefloor, a few songs later.

Kathy had almost lost her voice singing three encores of Singin’ in the Rain. “Cosmo, you’re a genius,” Don said, while she gestured around the room. “And it’s almost midnight. Who do you want to kiss?”

Both of you, Cosmo wanted to say. He looked away. But then he looked back. The band were playing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. His best boy and best girl were both holding out a hand. He reached out. They were standing in a kind of circle, streamers shooting above their heads.

“I’ve had a very good idea,” he said. His mouth was dry, and he stopped talking, the room reeling around his head. Maybe they could just stay like this, and maybe nothing would have to change, and maybe he would be fine with it.

"Me too," Kathy said, and kissed him on the mouth.

"Me three," Don said, and then he followed Kathy's lead, and kissed Cosmo too. They were in public, holding hands, kissing each other -- but Monumental's cameraperson was drinking whiskey on the roof, their friends didn't care, and the band -- well, it was midnight, and they were playing love songs.

--

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN

Don Lockwood
Kathy Selden

Monumental Pictures

“Cosmo, you’re a star,” Don said.

“And look at my name on the poster,” Cosmo said. He gestured to the space between Kathy’s name, and the Monumental Pictures logo.

“Oh, who cares about that,” Kathy said. “But did you see us all dancing together? Up there, on the big screen?”

“My head is going to blow up like a balloon,” Cosmo said. “Get ready with a pin.”

--

“Maybe we should throw another party to celebrate,” Cosmo said. He was lying across the couch, an arm thrown over his head to keep out the light.

“You have a headache,” Kathy said.

“What are we celebrating?” Don said. He was bent over, taking a tray of mini cherry pies out of the oven.

“Our success,” Cosmo said. He sounded miserable even to himself.

“You know we don’t just keep you around as our party planner,” Kathy said. She put a glass of water down on the coffee table and pressed a hand to Cosmo’s forehead. “We don’t have to celebrate anything right now. Sleep and then you can eat one of these delicious pies, and you don’t even have to sing or dance to earn it.”

Cosmo dreamed of dancing cherries, three to a stem, and he woke up in time for midnight pie. He ended up singing even if it wasn't required as payment for his dinner. Because he was in love, and didn’t know how to keep quiet about it.