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charming, Amsteen was conned. “Derougemont” encouraged the mogul to look over the Zizi scenario, and a month later the picture went into production, Fedora starring, Moe directing. When Bluhm returned from Europe he was furious, since none of these proceedings had been made known to him, but when the picture was played in test dates, everyone started asking who Fedora was. They shortly found out. The picture made some money and its star created public interest, receiving sufficiently good notices to be given the important role in The Phantom Woman, which was directed by Moe Roseman, now known professionally as Maurice Derougemont. Together they did a number of her early American films. She rose to stardom at the same time as Talmadge and Normand, she was vamping along with Theda Bara and Valeska Suratt, she played Thaïs soon after Betty Blythe did Queen of Sheba, which Fedora far outgrossed, she worked cheek by jowl with Swanson, she beat Norma Shearer into talkies by one year. Barry now showed Marion some interesting documented facts in the Tole book. Shearer was listed as being seventy-four when the book was published. Swanson was seventy-seven. Normand had died forty-six years before at thirty-one, Talmadge had retired twenty-seven years before at thirty-three. Fedora’s birth date in the available studio biographies was given as June 1895; the date had been verified in yesterday’s obituaries. *
    “Are you implying the date’s not correct?” Marion asked.
    “I’m implying nothing, I’m merely stating so-called facts. What actress doesn’t lie about her age? But you have to remember, she was a patient of Vando’s. Now, here’s a little sidelight for you: I once heard some movie people talking about casting a part in a picture, that of an old courtesan. The name of Swanson came up; she would be perfect, they said—that brace of bared teeth, all those wrinkles…. A quiet voice from another corner, a woman friend of Swanson’s, said, ‘She hasn’t got them, you know.’ ‘Hasn’t got what?’ ‘Wrinkles.’ And she hasn’t; or damn few. It’s a remarkable quality about that face, and the tone of the flesh, that age hasn’t mangled it as it has so many other faces of equally famous but younger beauties. But if at seventy Swanson looked, say, fifty, what of Fedora, who at almost eighty looked forty!”
    Barry asked Marion what she thought of this, and all she could do was shrug, hold out her empty glass for more wine, and tick off on her fingers the items that had been repeated for years. Vegetarian diet, organic foods, no drinking, lots of sleep. Swanson subscribed to this regimen to guarantee her own agelessness. Dolores Del Rio was said to have maintained her youthful looks by various means, all probably fictional: eating gardenia petals; having wax injections under her skin, which required her being strapped to the bed so she couldn’t move or roll over, which would have made her face lopsided; sleeping until four and keeping herself supine when possible; avoiding sun and other strong light. As for Fedora, there was the obvious vote for a series of face-lifts, but a woman can go only so far with the plastic surgeon before she looks embalmed. Then there were the other theories, resulting from her connection with Dr. Vando. Sheep semen, monkey prostates, the Swiss sleep cure. Vando, they said, for years smuggled her biannually into his Basel institute, where she would be put to sleep by injection for periods upward of a month and a half, and fed intravenously, after which she would arise from her bed newly rejuvenated, a rebirth of Venus. But how many rejuvenations over the decades would it have required for Fedora to maintain her agelessness?
    Barry refilled Marion’s glass and then his own, carrying it to the window. The twilight had waned, the lights of the apartment beyond the garden wall had gone on, oblongs of orange in the gathering dusk. Barry held his glass up, squinting at the wine