Letter from Los Angeles
By Linda Sandoval
In which Linda looks for Marilyn in the mirror while contemplating the future both haunted and un-haunted.
Hollywood Gothic. The Roosevelt Hotel. A lobby full of tufted black leather coffins disguised as couches from which the dead arise each morning to look for what they hope can still exist. We want to see them. We want to hear what they have to say. We want them to find us. Some of the black leather coffins are actually beds. Do people or corpses lie together in this public lobby? Are we being invited?
The ceilings of the Roosevelt rise above, high and beamed and painted.
It used to be a black hole up there, the concierge explains, but they found the original stencils in the basement. They found the complete plans for the ceiling as it once was and they brought it back to life.
It is still very dark up there. And heavy. Those ceilings could come down.
In the center of the room is a black fountain, silent with a pool of black still water. No reflection. There are black wrought iron sconces with flameless candles, heavy drapery, and silent stone corridors. Hollywood Boulevard is outside but behind the thick glass, it is also silent.
I’m sitting in front of a stylish mirrored table where candlelight flirts with the undersides of my wine glass. Pinot Noir. The Spanish/Moorish/ Old Hollywood style arches lead to the Blossom Room where the first Academy Awards were held.
The whole ceremony only lasted around twenty-three minutes back then, the concierge tells me. About as long as the opening monologue now.
I can imagine sitting under this ornate ceiling watching the beautiful dresses glide by. Actors would gather up their awards and then go on to parties or love affairs. So much nicer. Not like now, where a soul has to nurse a pizza for hours just to hear horrible laundry lists of supposed gratitude.
But I’m not here for the ghosts of the Academy Awards. I’m here to find Marilyn Monroe’s mirror.
Because, as the concierge cheerfully confides, her ghost appears in this mirror.
Her image lives there still. Out of habit, perhaps, or a profound need to still be seen. If you want to see yourself you might just see the image of Marilyn Monroe. She accomplishes the actor’s ultimate artistry by literally holding her mirror up to nature.
The mirror should be by the elevator right before the doorway that leads to the swimming pool. Or so the legend goes. That’s where she used to meet people. She was a fixture there in a white bathing suit and black shades. The pool is still there, surrounded by a graceful expanse of palms and populated with deal- makers hiding under their cabanas. It would make sense, the mirror being hung by the entrance to the pool. Her ghost could check itself out before gliding about to eavesdrop on the living.
According to one story, the hotel took it from her room, and placed it by the pool. She lived there, in this room, or stayed there often, or met lovers there in the afternoon, so she was always dressing in front of this mirror. It was her mirror but she kept it in the hotel, and then left the mirror to the hotel in her will. Or it was a mirror she used so often that she felt she belonged in it after death even though it was just a hotel mirror like all the others. Something like that. There are different versions, of course.
Alas, it’s not to be found anywhere around the elevators or the pool, but I’m not giving up. I wander through the corridors of the hotel. Maybe it’s stationed in the hallway outside of this mysterious room. Perhaps on one of the upper floors. The Malibu tiles on the stairs are beautifully restored. The Spanish Revival arches line up, beckoning. There is an oblong gallery just under the painted ceiling where I am able to see the coffin/couches below. There are some hotel personnel at the end of the gallery, viewing me with knowing smiles. There is a tourist group with their guide, probably also looking for the mirror. Down another long hallway I see a jolly threesome with outrageously dyed hair, platform shoes and Hawaiian shirts taking publicity photos while faking it with a guitar. But no Marilyn or her mirror.
Finally, I find it on the mezzanine outside of the gift shop. Or the man in the gift shop claims it is her mirror, though he sighs with an absolutely undisguised, weary contempt. There is also a three-dimensional white-on-white portrait of Marilyn along with her mirror. Is this what the they mean by “her ghost’? If I stand at a certain angle I can see her image all right, but of course it’s not really her, it’s just the cheesy painting. I can also see all of the crap in the gift shop reflected there, as well as my rather ridiculous self, looking decidedly un-Marilyn like.
But, I’m told, she does appear. She has been seen by many times. Wearing white, of course.
Another story is that she stares out of the photograph that hangs on the wall near the mirror, where she holds a typed piece of paper that reads: MISTAKE NO SUICIDE
Her mistake? Our mistake? An accident after all? The coroner’s mistake? Her murder?
Is her real mirror locked away with her in it and all of her scandalous revealing knowledge? Somewhere in some sub-basement perhaps, she holds her little typed sign. She wears the same white dress, or different dresses or bathing suits. Her hair is cut short and curled and she is waiting to be seen. Like she was always waiting to be seen. Was seen, was photographed, was married, was seen, was filmed, was married, was seen, was dead, was seen after death. In life Marilyn Monroe traversed the whole city, from the sweltering burbs, to Beverly Hills, to San Pedro to Malibu. Many of these places are said to be haunted by her. So she could be anywhere. Or nowhere. Because this gift shop mirror seems as dull and empty and mute as that stone black fountain in the lobby.
Just to the north of the Roosevelt Hotel are the Hollywood Hills that stand crowned with that famous sign which is also said to be haunted. A disappointed starlet could not mend the exhaustion of her broken dreams and since 1932 she has been seen climbing up the steep hill to the Hollywood Sign where she jumped to her death. She jumped from the “H”. Like Marilyn, she is always appears in white and in this white dress she must claw her way through the mud, over and over. I used to live in an apartment near the sign when my husband and I first moved to Los Angeles. I never saw the starlet’s ghost but I always thought about her when I looked at that “H”.
We lived on Beachwood Drive. which was lush with crazy wild sprays of bougainvillea and hibiscus. There was rodent-filled spreading ivy instead of lawns that climbed up the steep terraces of fairytale like houses. And, at night we could smell this delicious scent, like a very intense grape Kool-Aid, and we learned it was night blooming jasmine, a little like death and a little like love. We were surrounded by the poetic and dangerous night blooming underside of Hollywood and its strange decadent, smog brilliant warmth. Heady stuff.
Our landlord told us that Marilyn, during her starlet days, lived in the French Chateau style building next door and that she had been spotted after her death, yes, in a white dress, peering from the front window on the second floor. The building was stately and romantic looking with leaded glass and turrets. It was pointed white with windows like black eyes looking down into our apartment. I watched for her shadow in those windows at night, and though there were many strange shadows along Beachwood Canyon, none belonged to Marilyn.
The man in the apartment below us was also haunted by the Hollywood Hills. In fact, he actually had a mail order business called Ghosts R Us. We would often hear him chanting in the night, trying to bring forth spirits, which he would then bottle up in pretty little glass jars. Included with the bottled ghost, would be a hand written history of the ghost, (ghost story). He claimed to be able to divine these histories through his high level of psychic sensitivity. He only asked for positive spirits who would not bring harm to his customers, but would function as sweet companions and protectors. He was completely sincere in this, not cynical at all. He searched and rooted for meaning in the past. Mysteries that lay beneath the all of the flower twisted verdure.
He once performed a past life therapy session for me. It was free of charge to friends and, I admit, I was curious. I was trying to have an acting career at the time and I thought it would an interesting way to “discover character.” But I also thought, what if? What if I was someone?
He lit white candles and burned incense and talked me through a detailed guided imagery exercise, like acting teachers and therapists use. During my “deeply meditative state”, I found myself in Kansas City, Missouri in the 1940s, with a little fox fur and pale blue-veined hands and lipstick bleeding into my wrinkles and grandchildren who were rude to me. I was sitting in a rather stuffy tearoom and the children were snarling with boredom and I wanted to give them something. I wanted them to know me and know my love for them and I wanted them to feel strong with this love. But I no longer meant anything to them, outside of nostalgia and embarrassment, and that made me very sad. I knew, in this vision, that the time to reach these grandchildren, was over. That they would never see me or know me and I would cease to see or know them. And that meant that soon I must die. I was not surprised to have conjured up this sad lady, as any actor could have done the same, but I was surprised at my overwhelming sense of grief. I wept hysterically and my Ghosts R Us friend had to turn on the lights and bring me out of it. He was impressed with me because, unlike most people, I had not been Nefertiti or Einstein or Simone de Beauvoir in my past life. This signified authenticity for him. I privately felt that my visitation was more from the future than the past. My own future.
An elderly lady named Lily also lived in this same apartment house. She was evicted by that strange breed of the 1980s known as Heartless Yuppies. They bought the apartment building and kicked her out. After her move, she fell over a stack of unpacked boxes in her dark, unfamiliar room. She never returned from the hospital. One of the Heartless Yuppies gleefully moved into her large apartment-with-a-view. But, every time he closed the shower door it would pop open. He complained about this to me one day and I told him it was the ghost of Lilly. Lilly had died after being forced to move out of her home, I explained, and she didn’t want him to use her shower. I completely made this up, of course. He looked at me, spooked as hell.
I had no idea that she would die, he said.
He moved out soon after. The HY really was not haunted by Lilly, but by his own guilt. (Echoes of a certain Scottish play we all know about where a certain queen could never quite get clean either.) He had not allowed himself to look beyond the present expediency of his actions in order to avoid future damage. He didn’t think that Lily’s future would matter to him because he was a Heartless Yuppie and she was in his way, living in an apartment for too many years and not paying enough rent. But it did matter. Perhaps that’s why we so readily believe in ghosts and seek them out. We need to imagine some world where the innocent are protected and unjust actions are punished.
The most direct experience I had with ghosts is Los Angeles is, paradoxically, another anti-ghost story and it too was all about responsibility and protection.
I was directing a play about a Cuban family during the revolution and I was sent by the playwright to interview a Santeria priest. Santeria is a complex and subtle Caribbean belief system. It combines aspects of Catholicism with tribal traditions from Africa. There are chants and spells and trances in Santeria. For example, one of the most powerful trances bestows knowledge of the moment and manner of the participant’s death. By knowing the details of one’s death a person will live the rest of their life, however long or short, with immense power and, hopefully, high moral purpose.
The play I was directing included a Santeria style séance. The actors were to summon a beautiful deceased woman, a family member, who was said to be haunting their mansion. I wanted this séance to have the right details so I wound my way into the Cuban community in Glendale to visit the Santeria Priest.
The front of the priest’s store/church was a lively, gaudy, cramped, bodega crowded with plaster saints, colorful candles, plastic flowers, and a loopy collection of aerosol cans claiming the ability to attract lovers, offer protection from curses, keep away nightmares, lots of useful stuff. But the priest’s private room is the back was quite different: White. Empty. Quiet. A few clear bowls of water. Some stones. He was dressed in white.
He listened patiently while I told him about the play and what I wanted. What would a ritual séance sound like, look like? The priest very gently told me that it would be dangerous and foolish to do any such thing. To summon spirits to an old building where innocent people have been corralled to watch some silly play? Very irresponsible. So instead he taught me to do the opposite. I learned a supposed “ghost blocking” ritual which included a mirror, a statue of Santa Barbara, bottles of Tres Flores perfume and a good deal of nonsensical chanting. The priest came to a performance of the play and watched with a big smile as actors recited prayers backwards, walked backwards, threw drops of Tres Flores behind their backs. The audience never knew they were being protected. He was a very wise priest and one who, I suspect, had quite a sly sense of humor. But whether our Santeria ritual was authentic or not, I think it was probably a good idea to not invite ghosts into a theatre.
I have to wonder whether LA is really a good place for ghosts. It’s a city of dreams and dreamers, true, but maybe it is not a city for the dead to hang out in. Things are too impermanent here, too new, too recent, too industrial. It truly is an “industry town” and behind the tinsel is not more tinsel but, well, Detroit. Everyone is in and of the present for the most part, grinding away in the money machine. Office buildings go up and a few years later are torn down and replaced by more office buildings. Parks become malls. Trolleys disappear. Earthquakes level entire blocks of houses. New immigrants become assimilated and traditions weaken. Even the beach erodes and washes away.
The Spanish Kitchen was a restaurant on Beverly Boulevard which inexplicably closed its doors in the 1960s and, just like Miss Havisham’s dinning room, was left with all the tables set, gathering dust for the next thirty-some years. It was the haunted kitchen, people said. There were lots of stories about mobsters and murders, not unlike the Marilyn stories, come to think of it. But finally some entrepreneurs tracked down the heirs, bought it and turned it into a high-end spa. The new owners actually used part of the old Spanish Kitchen sign. The first three letters. SPA. There was some very plausible and boring reason for that ghostly abandonment of the Spanish Kitchen. Even more boring, it now houses movie stars trying to regenerate their youth. I don’t think any ghost stories circulate there. The ghosts are gone, swallowed in commerce and botox.
There is a new Spanish Kitchen that actually is a restaurant on La Cienega. Los Angeles is big on cyclical replacement: the beautiful blondes, the all boy singing groups, Lassie. Another car fender on the assembly line. So maybe Los Angeles is more favorable to reincarnation. Perhaps that’s why I could reach and mourn the blue-veined lady in Kansas City but not see Marilyn in the mirror.
Yet, people want there to be ghosts. Especially here in Los Angeles. We don’t want this to be all. This rootless, vain life and then nothing? Not even a simple wafting of ether and spirit?
An acquaintance of mine is writing a book on the paranormal. He commented that in times of extreme community stress, like a war, vast migration, or sudden natural disaster, there is always a spike in a belief in Mediums. He surmises that this is because people who have lost loved ones abruptly, feel a terrible need to express love and to hear reassurances. With the crush of all of this frightening and anonymous impermanence we need to believe our loved ones are someplace. If not with us, then someplace better. Who knows the proper technique to find these lost ones? And we are always losing people in Los Angeles: through death, through chance, through expediency. Where are all of those friends I have known in this city without seasons? Is there someone who can find them for me? The mirror by the gift shop grows old and empty but somehow we hope Marilyn can still be found.
The Mexicans have a saying that we experience three deaths: the death of the body, another death when we are buried in the ground, and the third and most terrible death of all, when no one alive remembers us. Then we are truly dead. I was weeping for that lady in Kansas City because that the terrible third death would soon be upon her, upon me. Soon there will be that time when no one looks for me anymore, in a mirror, in a past life, in a play. I will be nowhere and I will be truly dead.
My great friend, William Hootkins, recently died of pancreatic cancer. He was told the time and manner of his death by a modern kind of priest. One who also dressed in white. One who was skilled in administering a ritual of painful tests and toxic potions. Bill cooperated. He wanted the information.
Bill was such a wonderful, brilliant man: generous, fun loving, talented, multi-lingual. But not a believer in spirits. He would snort at the mere mention. A rabbi came to comfort Bill in his dying. He asked if he believed in anything, anything that could help him in this most terrifying of transitions. Bill answered simply and courageously:
Before I was a baby I was nothing. And then I was a baby and I was here. When I am dead I will go back to not being here. And that’s okay with me.
William loved life. Every day that he remained alive, he rejoiced, no matter how weak he became and no matter how much pain he endured. But he was not afraid of that third and final death. He asked for nothing more. He expected nothing more. He could reach beyond the various versions of his life and be free, finally from ego. He was able to step off the Wheel of Fear and Desire and simply be no longer here.
We less evolved souls are busy drawing pictures, making lists, writing books, checking mirrors. We must remember and make sure that someone hears what it is we remember while we can still remember it and while they still want to listen. Those boxes and trunks that someday will be rifled through by estate lawyers or grandchildren have to be filled now with just the right stuff. We must get in as many photographs as possible from babyhood to the seniors’ banquet at Applebee’s. We populate stories about ourselves. We create interest, so that later, perhaps, who’s to say, we can hold our signs, shadow some corridor, drop the temperature right near the piano and whisper our secrets. If the ceilings crash down, if the torches blow out, if the fountain grows still, we can be blamed and by being at fault we buy a little more time in the consciousness of the living. We can thrill them still. And so, go on.