I can’t remember who first called her, ‘The Doll’. If
memory serves me well, I think it was her Aunt May
“You, young‘un, are the sweetest, kindest little doll, I
ever did see.”
So the name stuck, and although she had two more sisters
(just as sweet), she was the one always called The Doll.
When she was a kid, she’d watch ‘I Dream of Jeanie’ on
the television which stood in the corner of the lounge, and was never really
looked at, by anyone else in the family. This is probably where she got the
taste for the thing that would drive her on in later years - fame.
It was all she could think of, to be as famous as
Marilyn, or to be as well-dressed as Jackie. But her family weren’t the
wealthiest in town, so she had to think of a way to get up there, to get to the
top.
In High School, she started ‘putting-out’ for the
quarter-backs, who would take her to a party and have their way with her. The
only time she would be mentioned again, was in the locker room, when they were
having a show of hands on who had been there.
Somewhere along the way, she started dating the geeks, usually
the ones who lived up in Lovell Drive (where the mansions were) and whose daddies
ran the local industries. Their families were normally pleased to see that
their sons could get a girl like her. But soon some of the parents realised
that she was just working her way along the drive, and the invitations stopped.
She got what she was looking for – kind of – when she
was pointed at in school, but not in a good way. At home, she’d walk in the front
door, smile and laugh with gritted teeth. If she made it through a family meal,
she’d go upstairs and cry her heart away into the middle of the night.
She couldn’t understand where she was going wrong. All
she wanted to have happen, was folks to notice her.
In college, she started to grow into a real beauty and
some of the best of the men would ask her out on a date. But they didn’t make
her happy, because they couldn’t make her famous.
She started going to parties where she knew the better
looking kids hung out. Many times she’d just sneak in and given how good she
looked, she’d quickly fit in. But she’d always leave her personality behind at
home, and so she didn’t make the impression she felt she was due.
She thought she might be an actress and got herself an agent
(not the best of men) who got her parts in stage plays, and ‘walk-ons’ in
b-movies. Still, it got her a write-up in the local paper and that made her
feel good about herself.
She dated a couple of older actors whom she’d met on
set, and who were on the slide - on the other side of their careers. One
treated her well, but wasn’t into a physical relationship, the other had a lot
of money and took upon himself to beat her badly on several occasions.
It was the same week that she was released from hospital
with another broken bone that she decided to head for Hollywood and the big
time.
She met him the first day she arrived.
She’d bumped into him as he was carrying a cup of steaming
hot coffee. It burned and hurt, but she didn’t complain because she recognized
him as a runner who had just won several gold medals in the Olympics.
He looked good too, and she liked what she saw. They
looked great together.
Within a month, she had moved in with him up in the
Hills and she began to get photographed; some of them even made it into the
magazines.
She could deal with his anger rages, as long as she kept
getting her face seen about town. Sometimes she cried in the bath, sometimes
she didn’t. She was where she was, because she wanted to be.
He told the police that the gun had gone off
accidentally.
It had been the one he had used in the movie, ‘The
Silent Soldier’. He had been showing some close friends the gun at his mansion,
and when they’d left he’d only pointed at her as a joke. He didn’t know (swear
to God) it was loaded.
So in the end she got to be famous - especially at his
court case when her face was splashed around the world.
As the judge said in the summing up: “sometimes you got
to be careful what you wish for”.
bs2014
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