From
Reading Room/7:
The King of Paris
—Barbara Probst Solomon
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“Michal,” I complained after the novel came out. “You
always claimed that the girl in Tracks was me. I never wore a dumb necklace
with my name spelled out. Why Gene? Sounds like Gene Autry.”
“Ah, love, did I say Gene was you? Did I? Did I? Perhaps on another day...” he
mumbled, “perhaps I saw it differently. Not Autry, Tierney—Gene
Tierney.” He went on: “Laura was my first American movie. Our first
week in Munich the Joint arranged a film screening for the kids who had been
taken out of Poland in the big deal arranged by Antek and the Brikha. Can you
imagine, hundreds of thousands of Jews smuggled out of Poland en route to Israel?
We were being temporarily kept in Germany, because when the British seized
boats headed for Israel they were particularly rough on adolescent males. I
had seen posters of Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, but they weren’t
my type. Ah, but the face of Laura, with her huge slanting eyes, high cheekbones,
and straight dark hair beneath the cloches she wore, was a silent promise to
my future. Min, in that dark makeshift Munich theater that smelled of wet with
no heat, and kids screaming in Yiddish and Polish, her face said to me: Write
your novel, learn to speak American, and I will be waiting for you. I imagined
her at a great penthouse party for me—she would be wearing her Laura
trench coat and the little cloche, and in her kid-gloved hands she is holding
a copy of my first book. I identified with Dana Andrews, the detective, who
thinks Laura is dead and falls in love with her portrait. The idea that Gene
Tierney, or Laura, might be dead thrilled me. I was fourteen, the war was over.
I wanted to think the dead looked beautiful. Yes, Min, I confess, I was passionately
in love then with the dead and alive Gene Tierney. What more could I want?
Death and deliverance fused in Laura’s eyes, breathtakingly smoky moist
eyes with an optimistic cast, her look convinced me that she rinsed her face
daily in classy United States Truman sea water...”
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