Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis
was mercurial, hard to get close to. Lili was hoping for her next serious romance but felt she was a mere dalliance for the shallow young man. The girls on the yacht were polite to Lili but offered no real friendship.
Lili was dissatisfied with everything. She complained about the people in Pasadena. The women had no panache. They were amateurs compared to the women in London. She was a fish out of water, postmarriage and post–multiple affairs, having seen and experienced things other girls her age had not even dreamed about. More than ever she was determined to make her mark on the world.
When not at the movies, Lili and her sisters went to tea at the Biltmore Hotel and danced with young men. The trio felt “powerful.” Though this would put Barbara and Dardy at only fifteen and fourteen, they had grown into nearly six-foot-tall beauties. When the girls walked into a room they turned heads. The three felt “enchanted” to be in the “adult world.”101 Lili felt confident with her gorgeous posse flanking her. Afternoons and evenings were filled with laughter as they readied for dates.
It was easy to see why the boys were swarming around Lili
Half-brother Jack was still fixing up old cars that hung in the yard like shipwrecked vessels. He was crazy for sports. Lili was most uncomfortable with Betty, that wicked scar cutting down her face. Lili would say she thought Betty was a “little crazy,” having suffered “brain damage” from the accident. Betty was eccentric, to say the least, taking on “causes” and befriending strange people, at least once ending up in jail for defending someone.102 Betty would never be a big influence on Lili, nor would Jack. Both would drift out of Lili’s life.
Despite Lili’s unease around Betty, Lili would be a witness at the second of Betty’s three marriages.103 In 1937, seventeen-year-old Bettalee Cornett married forty-one-year-old German-born Fred Schwarz. Then, in August of 1939, she married another older German gentleman. The last record of Betty marrying is in 1955 to thirty-one-year-old Angel Hernandez.
It was Barbara and Dardy who remained closest to Lili. Just fourteen months apart, Dardy and Barbara were so bonded that Lili nicknamed them Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (often spelled “Teedle” in letters). Like most sisters they shared clothes and stories and gossiped over boys and had their disagreements. They were experimenting as young women did. It had to seem as if they would remain close forever.
Sleeping at Bedlam Manner the sisters would chatter late into the night, ignoring Idella hollering up the stairs, “Girls! Go to bed. It’s late.”104
The year 1939 was a banner one for movies with the release of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and the romantic Wuthering Heights. Audiences flocked to the picture shows. The radio was filled with Glenn Miller’s band playing “Moonlight Serenade.” The highlight for the Blackadder girls that year would be the Saugus Rodeo, held just northwest of Pasadena. Nuts about horses, Barbara and Dardy couldn’t wait to attend. They had become expert riders at a young age, addicted to rodeo shows, which they entered every chance they could. Both learned dressage.105 Out of the arena, Dardy in particular thrilled at the speed with which she pushed her favorite horse Snoopy through the paths of Eagle Rock. She was invited to ride before the football games in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Lili wasn’t the least bit interested in getting on a horse. She would stay inside doing her nails and reading her “bible”—Vogue—dreaming of life beyond Eagle Rock.106 “She wasn’t outdoorsy,” Dardy explained.107
Dardy recalled a time she and Lili had gotten into an argument and Dardy stormed off up the hill in anger.
Bedlam Manner was remote, with only one neighbor close and a confectionary store at the end of the road. It was beautiful and wild. But not the place for lace and satin shoes.
After Dardy had been gone awhile, Ian asked Lili to go find her and bring her home.
Mad as a hell, Lili ran out wearing a pair of delicate shoes calling, “Rosemary! Where are you? Oh! My shoes! Oh, my shoes are being ruined. Come out now. My shoes! Rosemary! Come out now! If I ruin these shoes you are in so much trouble.”108
IDELLA WAS RESENTFUL OF HER GIRLS’ FREEDOM AND WATCHED AS they rode their horses away from all responsibility. The whole family had a reverence for freedom and unconventionality. Alice and Ian had ingrained into the children at a young age to seek independence, to do what they wanted. You can do anything.
Ian’s family had lived for centuries along the Blackadder River in Scotland. His father John had been an avid horseman who would joust for fun wearing full armor. In Germany he met the Scottish Norwegian beauty Anna Wilson. Both Barbara and Dardy would look strikingly similar to Anna.
JOHN AND ANNA MARRIED AND SETTLED ON HIS FATHER’S FARM (HIS father was now deceased) at Chirnside, Scotland. The Blackadder family prided themselves on the mix of languages spoken in the home: English, French, German, and Norwegian. The couple would have three children: Frederika (later known as “Erica Hunt”), born in 1898; Rosemary, born in 1901; and Ian, born a year later. According to Frederika, on coming to America Ian spoke with a broader Scottish accent. When Frederika asked him why, he told her, “It’s good business.’”109
Barbara and Dardy were beautiful to watch astride their mounts, hair streaming behind them. One brunette, the other blonde. They were happiest riding.
The Saugus show was filled with bareback riders, clowns, and steer wrestling. One hot and dusty afternoon, Dardy and Barbara were lounging on a fence sipping lemonades. They were wearing cute white-fringed short skirts, vests, and hats. At their full height they stood out in the bright hot sun. Their hats were slung down their backs, and their long hair shone. They looked several years older than the teenagers they were.
A roar from the crowd rose above the hot and dusty hills.
“Hello,” a fortysomething man said. He had a funny accent and was smartly dressed in a dark suit, not an ounce of sweat marring him.
The dark-haired man introduced himself as “NTG,” or Nils Theodore Granlund. He said he produced a show at the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood and he could always use a couple of beautiful girls like them. Would they be interested in trying out as showgirls?
The girls giggled. They had no idea what or where the Florentine Gardens was, but it sounded exotic. Sure, they said.
“How tall are you?”110 He asked.
Both girls stood up, and though he was tall himself he was impressed. “Six feet,” Dardy said, and in heels she was.
“Here’s my card. Here’s my address. Day after tomorrow we’re having auditions. You girls come on down.” He could just about guarantee he would hire them. He tipped his hat and left. NTG often sponsored rodeo beauty contests and most likely that is why he was in Saugus, scouting for girls.
The girls told Ian when he came back with hot dogs in hand what had happened.
Ian promised to personally call this Granlund.
Mr. Granlund assured Ian that indeed he was auditioning for girls and wanted the sisters to come down. It was a swanky nightclub and he meant no funny business. It was a class joint. Errol Flynn came nearly every night, enjoying the $1.50 fee that got a decent meal and an eyeful of beautiful showgirls parading by.
NTG, a former reporter, press agent, producer, and host, would be credited as being the “creator of modern nightlife.”111
Ian decided that if Lili, now twenty-three, chaperoned her sisters, they could go. Lili had been adrift since returning from London. She was no longer seeing Maury and his snobbish friends.
Things seemed to come easier for her half-sisters; Miss California, ribbons and titles in horse shows, now an offer of