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  Two other roles followed. Neither play lasted long, but her name appeared favorably in Variety. By February 1946 she had her first Broadway role—all forty-three lines of it as a saucy, impertinent, leggy French maid—in a raucous comedy entitled Halfway to Heaven. There were sixty-eight new productions on Broadway that buoyant postwar year. Opportunities were there to be had. Sadly, it was during her twenty-week run in Halfway to Heaven, when everything else seemed to be going right, that she met Jesse Chadwick, the film director.

  Chadwick, who had actually been born in Flatbush under the name of Bernard Cherkasky thirty-seven years earlier, had missed the world war for reasons that were unclear to everyone. His contribution to the Allied victory had been to roam the back lots of RKO, where during the war years he had churned out three second features, better known as “B” movies, a year. Inevitably one would be a western with an admirable, patriotic moral for boys and girls. The other two were usually contemporary wartime potboilers with some romance, some veiled sex, and a heavy propaganda message for adults.

  RKO was actually RKO Radio Pictures. It had once been one of the so-called Big Five Studios in Hollywood, but these days, following years of inconsistent management, it was a maverick operation, part of the financial empire of tycoon-aviator Howard Hughes, who was increasingly a presence in the film world.

  Hughes’s contributions to the film industry and American postwar culture were already part of a growing legend. As a producer, his films The Racket and The Front Page had been nominated for Oscars. Ten years earlier, Hughes had designed the steel underwire “push-up” bra for the prodigiously endowed sweater girl, Jane Russell, to wear under a sheer silk blouse in The Outlaw, another Hughes production.

  Hughes, an airplane designer, had adopted modern wing-support technologies to uplift Miss Russell’s ample bosom, with great commercial results. The film's release had been delayed for three years because of Russell's wardrobe and sensuous portrayal. Hughes finally decided to release the film without a Motion Picture Code seal, marking the beginning of the end of film censorship. Billboards pockmarked Hollywood and the nation with the film’s release, all of them featuring Miss Russell suggestively facing the viewer. George S. Kauffman dubbed the film and its promotion as, “A Sale of Two Titties.” The unofficial name stuck among Hollywood smart alecks.

  But by 1950, RKO had no big name stars on its own roster other than up-and-coming actor Robert Mitchum, who had recently served a two-month prison sentence for marijuana possession, and Cary Grant, whose services were shared with Columbia Pictures.

  Lacking in-house stars, RKO convinced other studios to farm out their biggest names to short-term deals. John Wayne had starred in 1943's A Lady Takes a Chance while on loan from Republic Pictures. By the late 1940s, he was soon working regularly with RKO, making nine more movies for the studio. Gary Cooper had recently appeared in RKO releases and Claudette Colbert starred in a number of RKO co-productions. Ingrid Bergman appeared on loan from David Selznick in The Bells of St. Mary’s in 1945, the biggest RKO hit during the decade. In a similar fashion, many leading directors made films at RKO during this era, including Alfred Hitchcock who made Notorious in 1946.

  But more than anything, RKO relied on B pictures to fill up its schedule. Two of the top RKO earners, Cat People in 1942 and I Walked with a Zombie in 1943, had set the tone for what was to follow - Bing Crosby, Alfred Hitchcock and John Wayne notwithstanding.

  Into this swampy world of low budgets, low quality and low morality, Jessie Chadwick fit perfectly. It was a world custom tailored for him. Post-World War Two Los Angeles was an anything-goes type of place, where the struggles between good and evil were felt on the streets every day, complete with many shady accommodations. It was also the time when the snitches began to rat out the accused leftists in the film industry. As if this mix weren’t combustible enough, ambitious underworld players like Chadwick’s pal Mickey Cohen came west from Chicago and New York to set up business.

  In response, LA Police Chief William Parker created his unofficial “Intelligence Division.” Beginning in 1946 its members had been assigned to root out mob influence in Southern California. Their means were often extralegal, including warrantless wiretaps and physical abuse of suspects in alleys, on hilltops above Hollywood, or private houses set aside for those purposes.

  Jesse Chadwick was coarse and crude, but not stupid enough to get on the wrong side of either the William Parkers or the Mickey Cohens of his world. Additionally he had a feeling for what would sell to the American public. And in the actress who became known as Lisa Pennington, he saw the woman he had hoped would come along at least once in his lifetime. With her freshness, her delicately fragile but perfectly formed body, her straightforward, wholesome, blond American beauty, Lisa was to Jesse Chadwick exactly the woman whose appeal could be magnified on film. He was so sure of this that he paid for her transportation by train from New York to the West Coast in July 1946.

  He met her on her arrival at Union Station in Los Angeles. Immediately he turned on the charm. He had friends in town that week and arranged for Lisa to take a screen test. Afterwards, he took her on a guided tour of the RKO studios as well as Paramount. Cashing in a few favors and eager to impress her, Chadwick arranged for Lisa to briefly meet Robert Donat and Leo Gorcey. He even got a distant nod from the surly, aloof Orson Welles, who would nod to anyone if it meant a debt was removed. At a party in Beverly Hills, Lisa met her idol, Ingrid Bergman, and actually struck up a friendship. Their paths crossed from time to time at RKO, and Lisa had lunch with her in the commissary as often as once a month.

  All this time Chadwick kept a tight rein on Lisa. To keep the other Hollywood wolves away from her, he never let her out of his sight. And to make sure that his can't-miss discovery wouldn't jump ship on him, he continued to pour on the rough-hewn charm. She fell for it. Once smitten, it bothered her little that the consensus in the movie community was that Jesse Chadwick had the eyes of a cobra and morals to match. No matter. When he proposed marriage in April 1948, she accepted.

  For marriage vows, Lisa Pennington insisted on something quick, quiet, and nonsectarian. She had intentionally never told Chadwick much about her family. They weren’t invited to the wedding. They would have disowned her. Chadwick figured that no respectable parents could possibly like him no matter what he did, so he was happy not to have to run the gauntlet of future in-laws. Thus, while both parties remained in the mood, a quick civil ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace in Burbank, California, that same April. A honeymoon followed in Acapulco, spent mostly indoors. After that Chadwick had plans for his discovery.

  He took her to France, where the film industry was reawakening after the nightmare of the war. On the beaches of Nice and Monaco, Chadwick shot a low-budget, English-language murder mystery complete with American financing, a Brazilian producer, a French cast, a Hungarian cinematographer, an Italian crew, and a Serbo-Croatian director. The film was called, among other things, A Pretty Time to Kill, depending on the language in which it was being mentioned. It featured an ample number of shots of Lisa nearly nude going in and out of the water on the French beaches.

  Swimwear was gradually disappearing in 1949. The suit that Lisa would wear in her husband's film had two pieces, neither of which covered very much by the standards set by Betty Grable.

  Lisa was appalled the first time she saw it.

  "Jesse, I can't do it," she protested.

  "You'll be a pin-up all over the world," Jesse Chadwick promised his wife.

  "I'm not sure I want to be."

  "Do it," he said smoothly, "for both of us."

  The first time she tried on the suit and had to step out of her dressing room in it, she felt like crying. Her husband nursed her along with a stiff bourbon and water. Out she came, blushing crimson, and began eight days of beach shooting. On the final day, in a scene shot in a hotel bedroom, she removed her top before the appreciative leer of the film's male lead. Even though she kept her bac
k to the camera, the scene took more courage than she knew she had. Somehow she lived through that, too.

  All of this was in June 1949. The film turned out well and was distributed around the world. It might have drawn the predictable Condemned rating from the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, which would have limited its American distribution. But Chadwick had some friends back in Brooklyn who paid the right people in the right archdiocese. So the film pushed the limits of decency, made a lot of money for both of them but flew under the radar of official censorship. It did not make Lisa the pinup star her husband hoped for, but it put her on the right track. Lisa did not blush much anymore, at least not over what she was asked to do in films. And Jesse Chadwick still had plans for her.

  They returned to California. Lisa completed a part in one of her husband's final back-lot epics. The talk was that Chadwick, with sexy Lisa under his wing, was about to move up a notch in Hollywood.

  Jesse's brother, Harry Cherkasky, who operated a talent agency, negotiated a deal with a producer named Joe Preston at RKO. Preston was loathsome, inarticulate, apelike and obnoxious. Aside from that, he was not a bad fellow and helped friends navigate the tricky new Hollywood blacklist. He was also famous in the film colony for cheap, financially successful movies and a legendarily hyperactive libido.

  Chadwick signed to direct three features for Joe Preston over the next eighteen months. The first of them, a light romantic comedy tentatively titled Hold the Phone! would star Lisa. Preston's brother-in-law, a guy named Michal Curtis, was currently finishing the script. Only a few details remained to be worked out between Chadwick and Preston, mostly of the sort that did not appear on paper.

  All this accomplished, Jesse Chadwick had an emerging star on his hands, a studio contract in his pocket, and a beautiful woman named Lisa Pennington in his bed whenever he so desired. Thus it was a perfect time, from Chadwick's viewpoint, to start hedging his bets for the future.

  Nightly Chadwick prowled the nightclubs, bars, and various other meat factories of Hollywood where fellow directors and producers swapped introductions to other young starlets who also wanted to ingratiate their way into films. The first time that Lisa suspected that her husband had slept with another woman she had been disbelieving. The second time she had been emotionally shattered. The third time she confronted him.

  "Men are men," Chadwick had replied with complete calm. "It's just sex. The other broads don't mean nothin’.”

  "Please stop it, Jesse," she begged him.

  "Forget it," he said. "I need a lot of girls. I don't expect you to understand. But I do expect you to shut up and accept it."

  Lisa threatened to leave. That's when Chadwick explained. His brother had her on a professional contract and he had her on a marriage contract. Much time, attention, and money had already been invested in her. If she tried to fight them or desert them, he explained calmly, or even if she persisted with this nonsense about divorcing him, he had some old friends from Bensonhurst who did odd jobs around the movie industry.

  These men would find her wherever she was, he said, no matter what sort of protection she thought she had. Then they would go to work on her beautiful face and body. When they were finished mutilating her no one, much less the American public, would ever want to look at her again, much less pay to see her. Further, if she ever went to court alleging adultery, he would produce a dozen studio lackeys who would testify that they had slept with her. She would be publicly branded an ungrateful slut in addition to what she had received from the thugs from Bensonhurst.

  This was how Jesse Chadwick did business. "Have I made this clear?" he asked.

  He had. Lisa was too stunned and terrified to respond.

  "Then don't ever again complain," he concluded. He finished the discussion by belting her hard - the first time he had ever hit her - across the side of the head. He was careful not to hit her in the face. The face might have to be photographed.

  It was not long afterward, as her husband spent more and more evenings out and around Los Angeles, that Lisa began to find solace in the bottle of Jack Daniel's. And it was just such an evening in January 1950 that found her lying awake in the garishly decorated bedroom that she shared with her husband, a paperback across her waist, fighting off fatigue and refilling her glass of bourbon and water.

  By quarter to three an uneasy sleep began to settle upon her. It grew deeper a few minutes later until finally she dozed. It was a quarter past four when she heard the door to the apartment open. She came awake instantly and was conscious of her own heartbeat. She recognized the rattle of her husband's keys, followed by the sound of the door shutting. Several seconds later the overhead light went on in the bedroom. She shielded her eyes.

  "Turn it off, would you?" she mumbled.

  He ignored her.

  "Where were you this time?" she asked.

  "You don't want to know," he said.

  "Tell me anyway."

  "I was with Joe Preston," he said.

  He undid his necktie and began to unbutton his shirt. She thought for a moment he might blow into one of his rages and come over and beat her across the arms and head. He did it about once a week now, often late at night, and she was used to it. It was like having to screw him. She wished that he did it to her while she slept. That way she would be less conscious of it as it happened.

  Instead, his attention settled upon the bourbon. He picked up the bottle that was next to her glass. He tried to remember how full it had been.

  "How much have you had?"

  "Enough," she said. "After a few months of marriage to you, Jesse, getting drunk is the only thing I enjoy."

  "Booze and no sleep," he said. "By the time Hold the Phone! starts shooting you'll look like you're fifty years old." He looked at her tauntingly as he set aside the liquor bottle. He pulled his shirt off. "Lisa, you're supposed to physically arouse the men of America. How are you going to do that if you look like somebody's grandmother?"

  "I don't know, Jesse. You have all the answers. You tell me, you bastard."

  "Of course, that's if there's a production of Hold the Phone!" he said. "I can do only so much. You're the one who has to make the deal final with Joe Preston."

  "What are you talking about?" she asked, coming awake. He sat down on the side of her bed.

  "Lisa," he said; "Joe Preston is doing you a tremendous favor. He's putting you in a role where you'll be noticed. Don't you think that's going to turn into a significant advancement for your career?"

  "Jesse," she said, sitting up. "Tell me what you're getting at. What did you promise him?"

  "I said you'd have dinner with him at his apartment next Friday," he said. "Just the two of you."

  She stared at him.

  “And I said that I wouldn't expect you back until the next afternoon.”

  For a moment their eyes locked, his completely calm, hers in horror. What kind of man bartered away his own wife's dignity for a step up in a world of celluloid? Before Lisa could fully comprehend that she had married just that sort of man, he rose and walked to the chair upon which he had draped his shirt. He removed the gold cuff links from the uncuffed sleeves.

  Lisa rose from the bed and walked to him. She was beyond tears now, but not beyond rage and indignation, at least for the moment. He turned and faced her squarely.

  "Yes?" he asked. With all her force she slapped him across the side of the face. The sound of the contact filled the room but barely fazed him.

  "I won't do it," she said. "Never!"

  "Yes, you will," he answered. Then suddenly he grabbed her arm and became very angry. "Listen, Lisa! If you had any schoolgirl prudery bottled up in you, you should have left it back home. There's a film contract involved here. There's big money. There's a career for you and me. Los Angeles is filled with girls who want to be stars. How the hell do you think one girl breaks away from the pack?"

  "I will not go to bed with Joe Preston," she said between clenched teeth. She yanked her arm and brok
e free. He let her go. She broke from him, charged drunkenly away, and knocked over a night table as she fled. She stomped through their living room and locked herself in the guest bedroom.

  Friday was five days away. There was plenty of time, Jesse Chadwick reasoned, for his wife to come to further understand the world beyond her irritating middle class values. For her part, Lisa tried to cry herself back to sleep, this time with deep, sobbing gasps. The moment was finally upon her when she had to admit to herself exactly what kind of man her husband was. But she also understood the seriousness of the threats of physical violence if she disobeyed Jesse Chadwick. He was in the habit of beating her - never in the face, where the evidence could be seen or where it would interfere with publicity photographs. But around the arms and the torso were fair game.

  Somehow she managed to pass out. Somehow she managed to sleep. When she woke up shortly before noon the next morning, she felt sick to her stomach. Then, for the first time in her life, she felt like killing herself.

  She rose from the sofa where she had slept and walked to the guestroom door. She was about to unlock it and come out, when she heard the telephone. Her husband picked it up after two rings. She stood and listened, realizing very quickly that he was talking with Joe Preston. She could tell because Jesse called him by his name and assured him that Lisa would be his dinner companion that following Friday night.

  It was not the easiest of times, Lisa knew, for anyone in La La Land. Golden careers could turn to dust overnight with just the wrong phone call or a bad tidbit in the press. She had seen a friend hounded and destroyed.

  In July 1946, William R. “Billy” Wilkerson, the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, had published a column entitled A Vote for Joe Stalin. The column named ten alleged Communist sympathizers in the movie industry, all writers or directors, including Dalton Trumbo and Howard Koch, who had written Casablanca. Lisa had met both of them and considered them friends. In the following months, Wilkerson published other columns containing a larger number of alleged Communists and sympathizers. Several people Lisa knew were named.