Alta Journal is pleased to present the first installment of a five-part original fiction series by author and Alta contributor David Talbot. Each week, we’ll publish online the next portion of “Murder on the Starlight Express.” Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading, and sign up here to be notified by email when each new installment is available.
This Alta Serial is a fictional account of a 17-day, cross-continental whistle-stop tour that carried Warner Bros. stars (including the author’s father, Lyle Talbot) from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The train journey took place during the depths of the Depression, and its purpose was to promote the new movie 42nd Street and entertain the public at each city along the route, spreading good cheer in the run-up to president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration.
Join us now as the train prepares to leave La Grande Station. Tickets, please!
Act 1
The studio was my family. It was more than my home away from home, because I didn’t have a home. My mother, Fatima, died in 1919, when I was seven, swept away in the Spanish flu epidemic. I still remember her soft laughter, like champagne bubbles, and the way she smelled of cardamom and rosewater, like her parents’ Turkish bakery in Pasadena. My father, Jack, drank more heavily after she died. He stopped being a father. Always a daredevil—he was a test pilot for Howard Hughes—he took more risks. I wasn’t surprised when I was told about the plane crash, only disappointed. Now I would never go to college. I would have to fend for myself.
When I was taken in by Herbert “Bertie” Swindell, Warner Bros.’ publicity whiz, it was not exactly a dream come true—I wanted to be a newspaperman, maybe someday try my hand at fiction. But good-paying jobs were hard to come by in those hard times, so when Bertie offered me a life raft, I grabbed it.
Bertie was a trim man in his early 40s, and he dressed as stylishly as the movie stars. But with his round face, exuberant speech, and fastidious manner, he never would be cast as the leading man.
Bertie had nicknames for everyone in the office. He called me Dark Irish. I didn’t like it at first—it drew attention to the cocoa tint of my skin. Everyone else called me Neal, or even Mr. Cafferty on the phone. But I grew to like Bertie’s swooshing affection. He flirted with everyone at the studio, especially young men like me. But he never tried anything on me. He was always the perfect gentleman.
We were in the Warners commissary eating lunch when Bertie first told us his bright idea. He ordered the same thing every day—the goose-liver pâté and toast with a dry martini. And he held forth at our table like he was dazzling the room at Perino’s or some other ritzy dining spot in town.
“We’ll put all of our brightest stars on a train to Washington, in time for Roosevelt’s inauguration. Bette Davis, Jimmy Cagney, even Busby Berkeley’s chorus girls—they’ll be in sable and black tie. The train will be covered in gold and silver leaf and lit up at night like a movie premiere.” Bertie waved his martini glass like a baton, without spilling a drop. Everyone at the table was properly excited by Bertie’s scheme, except me, of course. I always saw the downside, probably because I’d had so many setbacks during my short life.
“Gee, Bertie,” I ventured, “it’s the Depression and all that. Millions out of work, bank closings, people are pretty desperate. Won’t putting movie stars in tuxedos and gowns on a train and parading them through these hard-luck towns seem, I don’t know, kind of out of touch?”
But Bertie just waved away my concerns with his martini glass, motioning at the same time to the waiter that he needed a refill. I suppose that’s why he kept me around, why he made me his top assistant—I was his straight man.
“Dear boy, that’s the whole point!” he announced to the table. “These ragged people spend their last dollar at the movie theaters. They need to see their screen gods and goddesses. We give them hope!”
I started to make another point, but Bertie talked over me. “That’s why Roosevelt won. That’s why we close our new movie, Gold Diggers of 1933, with that big Busby Berkeley number, ‘Remember My Forgotten Man.’”
And he started making like Joan Blondell as the curvy streetwalker, talk-singing the tune by heart. “Because ever since the world began / A woman’s got to have a man / Forgetting him, you see, means you’re forgetting me / Like my forgotten man!”
He finished with a flourish of his empty hand, and everyone at the table burst into applause. Except me. Bertie’s little performances were fun, but they kind of embarrassed me.
Still, as Bertie intended, his antics got Humphrey Bogart’s attention. The studio’s big stars were always dropping by our table; they liked to bask in Bertie’s radiance. Bogie wasn’t a leading man yet. He’d appeared in only a few Warners movies, as a tough guy. But Bertie knew he’d be big someday.
“Bogie! I was just telling my retainers about my latest mad scheme. You’re an FDR fan, aren’t you?”
“I worked my ass off for him in the campaign.” Bogie had a way of sounding like a soft-spoken gentleman even when his language was crude.
“Will you join us, then, on our spectacular train ride?”
“Not on your life, Bertie. I’m getting the hell out of this crazy town. Going back to the stage in New York.”
Bertie just shrugged, like it was Bogie’s loss—he had other aces up his sleeve. He filled me in on his plan later, as we walked back to the office. I never got over the fantasy world the brothers Warner, or whatever their real name was, created on their studio lot. We walked through a dusty Old West town where Tom Mix had shot it out and saddled up his horse in Destry Rides Again. We passed the New York tenements that Bogie would later menace in Dead End. Bertie knew he’d come back to Hollywood; they always did.
Warners was the only studio that had backed Roosevelt in 1932, Bertie reminded me. I knew some of the backstory, but much of it was news to me. The brothers were reliable Republicans like the other movie moguls. But power broker Joe Kennedy convinced Harry Warner, the finance chief back in New York, that there’d be a revolution in America if FDR was not elected. So the studio rallied support in Hollywood for the Democratic candidate and helped deliver California for him.
Now Bertie planned to seal the Hollywood-Washington pact with his train trip—which he christened the Starlight Express. There would be stops along the way, where the Warner Bros. stars would dazzle the crowds and pack them into movie theaters for screenings of Gold Diggers. Following Roosevelt’s inauguration—which was still taking place in March in those years—Tom Mix would come riding down the parade route on his stallion, King, and would perform horse tricks for the new president.
Even I was impressed with Bertie’s Starlight Express scenario. But a dark thought gnawed at me. “It sounds swell, Bertie. But I don’t know…putting a bunch of actors on a cross-country train…it’s still the Prohibition. They’ll smuggle booze. They’ll have parties. It might, I don’t know, embarrass Roosevelt.”
“That’s why I’ll be on board too, Dark Irish! To keep my eye on them.” I thought he leaned a little heavily on the word dark.
Bertie put his arm conspiratorially around my shoulder. “And that’s why you’ll be there too—you’re young. You can stay up past my bedtime and babysit them. We want to be sure the Starlight Express does not become a rolling den of iniquity.”
Monitoring the behavior of lit-up movie stars on board a lit-up train? It sounded like a task far beyond my job description. I was only 21 and, to be honest, didn’t know much about human vicissitudes, or whatever you’d call them. But I was bound for the most demanding journey of my life.
I’m an old man now—I’ll be 88 on my next birthday, in the year 2000, the new millennium. But there’s nothing new about sexual scandal as a political weapon. President Clinton and his First Lady seem shocked by the severity, the cunning cruelty behind the current tempest. But it’s as old as human history.
I’m blessed—or cursed—with a long memory. The Starlight Express story I’m about to tell you made headlines at the time. But only the shiny parts, we made sure of that. I’m the only one still around who can tell the rest of the story. It came bobbing back to me, like a long-submerged corpse. My mind can no longer keep it below. Maybe it’s all the Clinton business, the tawdry, breathless news reports. It’s like the media are the Republicans’ wolf pack. Would it help the Clintons to know that a sex scandal—more than one, really—nearly derailed the Roosevelt presidency just as it was getting started in 1933?
I’m not a political creature, not really. A Democrat-versus-Republican kind of guy. But I am a gimlet-eyed observer of power. I figure what you don’t know about the men at the top, the way they operate, can kill you. Or somebody you admire.
Anyway, for the record, because I’m old and have nothing to lose, here’s the story of the Starlight Express. The real one.
Bertie picked me up at my little apartment off Fairfax on the way to La Grande Station. My neighbors gawked at the new Lincoln K roadster, a gleaming vision in royal blue, trimmed in white. His chauffeur jumped out and put my battered suitcase in the trunk. “I’ll brief you on the principal players when we get to the station,” Bertie told me in the back seat. He gabbed on as usual, but I was too consumed with my own thoughts to hear much of what he was saying. As we glided toward Downtown in Bertie’s luxury car, I gazed out the window. Dusk was falling, and the lights were coming on in Hollywood. I’d never been on a cross-country train ride before, much less one stuffed with movie stars.
Bertie’s roadster came to a halt outside the Moorish splendor of La Grande Station, and the chauffeur unloaded our luggage. We swiftly dodged clusters of waiting passengers in the cavernous hall, a porter at our heels pushing a baggage trolley. Bertie had packed a big theater trunk. “We’ll be traveling 17 days and nights, stopovers in at least 14 cities. Then, of course, the inaugural festivities in Washington. That’s a lot of wardrobe changes, dear boy,” he told me, laboring for breath as we rushed through the station. “And I always take a few…odds and ends,” he added, somewhat mysteriously.
When we reached the tracks, I was awestruck by the shining spectacle before me: a long, glittering chariot brightly illuminated by General Electric lights. There were the Busby Berkeley girls in matching outfits, including white-fur-collared coats, climbing on board. There was Joan Blondell, looking glamorous and batting her big eyes at the flashing cameras. There was Bette Davis, looking unimpressed, like she was doing the studio—and the new president of the United States—a favor. There was King, Tom Mix’s stallion, being escorted up a ramp to his own train car. Bertie stood for a minute to take it all in. It was his creation.
Mix himself strode by in his custom-made cowboy boots, tipping his big white Stetson hat at us. “Howdy, boys. Nice work, Bertie.”
Bertie just smiled at the cowboy star and then said under his breath to me, “He’s not really a hick at all. Grew up in Pennsylvania. Sharp political instincts—he’s the only star FDR asked to meet with in the Oval Office.”
Then he paused and sighed. “But he likes his booze. Too much. Keep an eye on him. He can do crazy things.”
I gave my boss a worried look. He read my mind. “Yes, the six-shooters are real.”
Just then, Lyle Talbot swept by, spun around when he noticed us, and said excitedly, “This is swell, Bertie. Thanks for inviting me on board.”
Bertie lit up as bright as the train. “It wouldn’t be a party without you, Lyle.” He always glowed around the studio’s leading men. Talbot had dark slicked-back hair and dancing blue eyes. He cut an elegant figure in his white tie and tails.
“Stay out of trouble, kid.” Talbot put up his dukes like Jack Dempsey and aimed a fake one at my jaw.
“God, he’s a good-looking man,” said Bertie, as Talbot climbed into the train. “Not a great actor, but the studio has big plans for him.”
“He always treats me like a kid. He calls me Kid Cafferty.”
“That’s because he’s fond of you! Someday he’ll make a good father.”
“But not anytime soon.”
“No…” Bertie mused aloud. “We’ll pitch him to the press as the Romeo of the Rails.”
“I heard he’s dating Toby Wing.” She was the platinum-haired star of the Berkeley troupe.
“This week…that story about Lyle we planted in Photoplay? ‘Wanted: A Wife.’”
“The one with the picture of him in a dressing robe, looking forlornly out of his bedroom window?” It was not my proudest accomplishment.
Bertie nodded. “It paid off big. He gets dozens of marriage proposals a day.”
Just then, the great Dorothy Parker made her appearance. The queen of criticism, short fiction, stage, and most of all bons mots had recently moved from her suite at New York’s Algonquin Hotel—which she had somehow managed to wangle for free—into the Writers Building at MGM, but Bertie had talked her into covering the Starlight Express for Vanity Fair. She was a petite 40-ish woman with bug eyes that seemed to take in everything. She wore her hair in a pageboy that had been fashionable in the 1920s and was swaddled in fur. She led a dubious dachshund by the leash, who promptly piddled at our feet when she stopped.
“Bertie, darling!” They kissed on the lips like the old friends they were.
Bertie glanced down to make sure his wing tips remained dry. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”
“I never miss one of your galas—do we, Fritzi?” she said, puckering her lips at her dog.
But as Mrs. Parker regarded the Starlight Express, a baleful look crossed her face. “Only for you, Bertie. I swore that the next time I crossed the goddamn continent in a train, it would be in a coffin draped with an American flag.”
Perhaps she recalled meeting me at a party at Bertie’s Beverly Hills house, I thought, mustering the nerve to address her. “I’m pleased to see you looking so well, Mrs. Parker,” I said brightly to her, but she quickly cut me down to size.
“Where the hell are you looking?”
I blushed crimson, while Bertie stifled a laugh.
A starry group began to gather on the Starlight Express’s rear platform, including Mix, Talbot, and Davis. (Cagney, who had the moxie of his screen characters, refused to go on the trip because he was in a contract dispute with the studio.) The stars on the platform were joined by none other than Jack Warner, head of the studio. The press cameras flashed and the reporters scribbled as the famous passengers spoke a few words about the journey on which they were about to embark. Warner orated the longest, of course. With his pencil mustache and his gleaming smile, he wanted to look like the swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, but he came off as the heel who gets dumped for the hero. Warner took all the credit for the Starlight Express and didn’t mention once that it was Bertie’s brainstorm.
“Thank God he won’t be joining us on the train ride,” Bertie whispered to Mrs. Parker. “He’s going on an ocean voyage.”
“Oh, God, make that ship sink,” she said, staring at Warner.
And with that, she and Fritzi boarded the train. “Be careful around our Mrs. Parker,” Bertie said. “I adore her, but she’s a combination of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth. She keeps a bottle of vitriol up her sleeve.”
“All aboard!” cried a conductor in a dark blue cap and military-style coat with brass buttons. Bertie and I were the last ones to view the Starlight Express from the train platform. He wanted to take in the glowing, steaming display one more time before we hoisted ourselves inside and the adventure began.
I would grow up on that trip across America. It was the college I never had. It taught me everything I needed to know about life. The best and the worst.•
ACT 2 »
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David Talbot's latest book is Between Heaven and Hell. He is the founder of Salon magazine; the author of Brothers, The Devil's Chessboard, and Season of the Witch, and a journalist and columnist who has written for the New Yorker, Time, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others.
