The Unforgettable Loretta Darling by Katherine Blake
Katherine Blake, a pseudonym for successful and prolific children’s author and publishing consultant Katherine Ball, has just written her first adult novel The Unforgettable Loretta Darling once met not soon forgotten!
A Con to Make It to Hollywood
Margaret Reynolds left more than her real name behind when she pulled a con that transported her by passenger liner from England to New York and then cross country by train to Hollywood. She lifted a passport from a spiv named Jimmie in Morecambe’s Winter Gardens during a big band performance. (Spiv was British slang for a small-time criminal dealing in black market goods during and after WWII while rationing continued.) Not long after, Margaret was accosted by Jimmie at the Liverpool docks where she awaited him, pilfered passport in hand.
Whilst illegally flogging nylons he had unwittingly attracted the attention of customs officials and needed to get his remaining stock back home to America. Jimmie required a plausible mule to offload those stockings and Margaret had a need to leave England quickly. Conveniently, he possessed a legitimate joint passport with his late wife Loretta.
Together the pair sailed through customs and across the Atlantic. The newly dubbed Loretta pinched his passport for a second time preventing Jimmie from abandoning her on the NY docks and persuaded him it was in his best interest to accompany her to his hometown, Hollywood. It was not the most cordial of journeys made worse for Jimmie who would discover too late his wallet was several large bills lighter. Thus ended his small but pivotal role in The Unforgettable Loretta Darling and Loretta’s coming to America origin story in late spring, 1950.
Dreams of Working with the Stars
Hollywood was and remains a beacon for aspirants with big dreams and high hopes of being discovered, breaking into films and becoming a major star. Twenty-year-old Loretta Reynolds was slender, shapely and pretty enough to become an actress but her ambition was to excel behind the scenes and not in front of a camera.
Working the cosmetics counter selling lipsticks at Woolworth’s in northwest England had made her an expert in lip care and competent in applying makeup. She desperately wanted to get out of Morecambe Bay known for its expanse of intertidal mudflats and, in her opinion, not much else into sunshine and air fragrant with orange blossoms in Los Angeles. She not only wished to become a studio makeup artist to the stars but also envisioned this as a stepping stone to becoming The Lip Girl with her own line of lipsticks.
Childhood and her teen years in England had been bleak during the war, exacerbated by a drunken physically abusive father who regularly beat her and her mother. He felt superior to her sweet mam who was a Romanichal; an English Gypsy traveler, who made a living making and selling lotions and potions. She was an accomplished herbalist, trained from birth in botany and plant lore, able to use their medicinal properties to heal or harm and had passed her knowledge down to Margaret.
Luck, Charm and Social Competence
The Unforgettable Loretta Darling is a riveting novel about the picaresque adventures of this enterprising young Englishwoman who charges into her new identity with gusto and takes on the heroes and villains of Tinseltown. As her soon-to-be mentor Makeup Studio Head Alecs Petrás, reputedly a Polish prince, exclaims, “You have chutzpah!” Loretta also has luck, charm and an ability to cultivate some real friends.
On her first day in Hollywood, she encounters Primrose, her first true friend, while searching for affordable lodging. Primrose is a highly intelligent, self-assured, resourceful brothel owner and prostitute with the proverbial heart of gold who seemingly knows everyone in Hollywood. With her assistance, Loretta finds an apartment in the same building and lands a job as a waitress in a popular diner down the block within a day of her arrival. In short order, she befriends a studio guard, a budding starlet and a successful but depressed screenwriter still in mourning for his wife.
Eventually, she even gets her longed-for break as a trainee makeup artist. Her motley crew of boon companions continues to expand over time as Loretta masters the art and craft of movie makeup and earns a reputation for competence and reliability. There is jealousy, rivalry and back-stabbing among the other makeup artists that requires alert avoidance. A couple of these women are also supplying a stream of news items to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper who wields sufficient power to make or break careers, whether they be cast or crew.
Loretta continues to have trouble with men who cruelly and readily wield money and power with evil intentions. Her first real boyfriend, Raphael Goddard, is a drop-dead gorgeous manipulator whose objective is to become a major star despite possessing very modest acting talent. Taking advantage of Loretta’s good nature and infatuation, he persuades her that studios prefer their leads to be married and reminds her that the strict Hays Code frowns on immoral relations.
He’d like them to live together but fears a gossip column item could derail plans for his career. He convinces her marriage to him merely needs to appear real but doesn’t actually have to be legal. Thus, on her 21st birthday, wearing a specially purchased oatmeal linen suit, Loretta goes through with a sham marriage.
Instead of an imagined romantic honeymoon weekend, she is shocked to find herself delivered as the unwilling intended tasty entrée du jour at a party turned orgy co-hosted by director Stanley Hughes and rising star Oscar Romero. Could it be a coincidence Raphael wants to be cast in Stanley’s picture? Screenwriter Scott Eliot rescues her from the two predators. They are destined to meet again.
Travel Back in Time to Old Hollywood
With Raphael hastily dispensed with, Loretta resumes her focus on studio makeup work and goal of developing her own lipstick line. Remembering her mother’s lessons in botany well including phytotoxicology (the study of plant poisons), she slowly, quietly plots her revenge. California boasts an extensive range of lush plant life including many common toxic plants that can induce a large range of effects from rash, vomiting, and shortness of breath to paralysis and death. Accidental or deliberate, poisoning by innocent vegetation can be hard to detect.
Readers will root for Loretta Darling, her budding romance with Scott Eliot and her intriguing friends but don’t get on her bad side! The Unforgettable Loretta Darling is in glorious Technicolor; fun-filled dark humor, surprises and an entertaining look back at the glamorous as well as seedy side of Hollywood in the early 1950’s. Katherine Blake has written a novel that could be a blockbuster film!
About Katherine Blake:
Katherine Blake is a pseudonym for Karen Ball, an author who has written over twenty-five children’s books and was a Bookseller Rising Star thanks to her publishing consultancy, Speckled Pen.
She regularly appears on podcasts, including The Bestseller Experiment and SJ Bennett’s PrePublished. She lives in London and runs a biweekly newsletter filled with fun news, book reviews, and regular updates about her miniature schnauzer.
