Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis
couldn’t stand the thought of someone she was no longer head-over-heels in love with touching her. It was only a matter of time before the marriage would end.
LILI MADE AT LEAST ONE FRIEND IN ENGLAND, A SHOWGIRL WHO worked at the Windmill and had admired Lili’s body as she sat around a pool one afternoon. At her friend’s suggestion, Lili made her way to Piccadilly Circus. At Archer and Great Windmill Streets stood the Windmill Theatre. This would be the first of two important places in Lili’s life that would have a windmill as a beacon. Perhaps this first windmill, though briefly enjoyed, would be why she had such a huge affection and loyalty for the second, in Las Vegas, years later.
The Windmill was built in the exact spot where, in the eighteenth century, an actual windmill had stood during the reign of King Charles II. It was a small theatre with only one tier that hosted a variety of acts. Despite losing money the theatre manager boasted continuous entertainment from dancers, singers, and showgirls for nearly twelve hours every afternoon into the evening. After World War II the theatre would claim never to have closed during the war, not even at the height of bombing. In 2005 a movie about the manager and theatre would be made, starring Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins and titled Mrs. Henderson Presents.
Lili met the forty-nine-year-old producer Vivian Van Damm, known simply as “VD,” who copied the format of the Folies Bergère and Moulin Rouge in Paris by displaying nude girls, which was completely legal as long as the girls did not move, holding a pose without so much as wiggling a toe. Lili’s girlfriend was one of the “Windmill Girls” and Lili hoped to become one too. Girls in the shows posed in costumes as everything from Annie Oakley to mermaids to Indians. The numbers were theme-oriented, an important element that later influenced Lili. She would use themes throughout her career, dressing as a cowgirl and Indian, even a mermaid, as first seen at the Windmill.
One production at the Windmill featured a fan dancer, a girl who concealed her complete nudity behind a giant ostrich fan until the final moment. The prop-heavy ingredient of the show seemed to cement itself inside the ever-curious and clever mind of Lili. She quietly observed what was going on around her and would take from productions and performers to create her own iconic numbers.
The Windmill boasted a glass stage and an even more daring act as a nude girl held on to a spinning rope. The rope moved but not the girl, so no laws were broken. Lili delighted in technicalities that bent and twisted around the rules. There was always a streak of rebelliousness in Lili, who despised authority and being told what she could or could not do.
“I’ve got just the spot for you,” VD declared, taking one look at Lili.
“But I’ve no training. What do I have to do?”
“All you have to do is stand at a big stake, burning . . . nude of course.” Lili was to be Joan of Arc.91
Lili learned, when VD took over management of the theatre, that he had started a nonstop run of shows. Despite this, the theatre was still losing money. VD was hoping to change that and the prettier the girls he added, the better.
Lili would always claim Cordy stopped her before she had a chance to appear. But it is more than possible, even probable, by looking at what she did later in her shows, that Lili worked a night or two before she confessed to her preoccupied husband, who indeed would have told her to quit. There was much from the Windmill she would incorporate in her future onstage.
LILI AND CORDY’S CRAMPED RENTED ROOMS WERE TOO SMALL TO contain their opposing wills. Cordy came home one afternoon and told her the team was moving to Australia for six months. In his hands he held two second-class tickets. She was horrified. She told him she wasn’t going.
To Cordy, Lili was a wild thing he couldn’t control. He had better luck with his motorbikes than with his wife. He was forced to admit defeat. The relationship was over.
With Cordy out of the picture Maxwell should have taken his place, but when Maxwell didn’t come through on a marriage proposal or a plan for their future together, a despondent Lili decided it was time to return home.
By September of 1936, just four months since her maiden voyage, she was back on another luxury liner, this time the SS Ile de France, which was even grander than the Manhattan. It did much to lift her spirits. She would spend the rest of her life trying to recapture the experience of these crossings, free, feted, and fussed over, as if nothing could touch her while in the great ritzy cocoon on the sea.
For dinners Lili made her grand entrance down a sweeping staircase rising three decks high. The rooms were modern in décor. There was a grand foyer four decks high, a sun deck, merry-go-round, gymnasium, shooting gallery, and chapel. She felt at home enjoying the attention from crew and passengers. She was wined and dined at every turn. Men scribbled notes on dinner menus that she glued into a scrapbook. In them she refers to herself as “WVS” or “Willis,” never Marie, though she was called that by others.
There was no need to tell any of the attentive gentlemen she was heading for a divorce. She was simply a dancer leaving England after a season in London. She quickly got over any guilt she might have felt about Cordy and her affair with Maxwell. She wasn’t one to look back.
On board were members of the Ballets Jooss and it wasn’t long until a handsome young dancer by the name of Otto Struller won her attention. Feeling quite the woman of the world, Lili had a brief and passionate affair with Struller, who was twenty-five years old. His hair was short in back but with a long blond shock that fell over his eyes down to the middle of his aristocratic nose. He was muscular and graceful. Lili and Otto made a stunning and elegant pair on the dance floor, equally matched in beauty and grace.
OTTO TOO HAD BEEN DANCING IN LONDON. LILI HAD TO THINK, IF only Cordy had taken her to the show, or any shows, she might not be lying in Otto’s arms in his room on the Ile de France surrounded by art deco opulence. If only he hadn’t wanted to hold her back, she fooled herself into thinking, not for once admitting her desire for Cordy had already waned before she had set a heel on London soil. Lili was young and inexperienced in romance. She needed and wanted her head turned. She admitted she was immature, fickle, and easily believed the grass was greener elsewhere. There would be something about all of Lili’s subsequent romances, and even most of her marriages, that remained impulsive, and, as she admitted, “it was immaturity that doomed them to failure.”92 She discarded men after she outgrew them. She needed constant stimulation. The gypsy in her always longed to pack and go.
Alone in her room outfitted with a real bed, Lili dreaded the end of her voyage. She had hoped to return in triumph instead of with a short-lived marriage and dull Pasadena facing her.
On South Oak Avenue Lili settled back in among her family. Lili didn’t know how to put into words the hopelessness she felt.
Alice, who understood Lili and “had a gypsy soul,” told her “for the first and not the last time that life was too short to stay with a man unless she was crazy in love with him.”93 Alice told her that if something made Lili unhappy or stood in her way, to get rid of it as quickly as possible. This no doubt led to a sense of entitlement that Lili (and Barbara) had. Lili would callously disregard relationships when she no longer wanted them. No matter her actions, Lili was taught to believe it was okay. If someone opposed Lili, Alice let it be known she was against them. She would remain fiercely loyal to her granddaughter.
Idella was quite another matter and launched into many a stormy scene. “You are supposed to be an example for your sisters,” Idella screeched. Lili had tossed away stability. Lili didn’t need stability; what she needed was romance. Lili tried blocking out Idella’s ranting and ravings about her “wicked ways.”94
After the altercations, Lili admitted, “I kept away from my mother.”95
Lili had to feel as though she had failed. At night her heart pounded while she fought for sleep on the porch, right back where she had started. Except for blonder hair, tweezed eyebrows, and a thinner waist, she was the same, no closer to living an exotic life than before. It wasn’t long before she would begin waltzing to a very different dance step.
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