I KNOW THE REAL MODEL BEHIND THE MYRNA LOY STATUE!

by Thomas Brennan

Take Lincoln Boulevard south from Santa Monica, California and you are guaranteed a crawl down the ugliest, harshest and most needlessly vicious street in America. At each stoplight you can't help but help mourn how Venice, a paradise-by-the-sea, has been converted into a true hellhovel of grime and debris in less than 60 years.

But, from the 1930's up until a few years ago, there stood a beautiful totem that symbolized the shining future that Venice as a community yearned for. This was the sylphlike statue of the Venice High School Goddess, arching her body with a slender suppulence, and taking delight in her own stone sensuality as she evinced Life and Grace for the students of the school and passers-by alike. For years, the identity of the model who posed for this famous statue has been the subject of historical dispute. Until now.

You see, the woman who posed for this statue is a friend of mine, and has kept the story of her involvment under wraps, so to speak , this entire time. She lives in seclusion in Bel Air, California, an heiress who has tended to a perenielly flowering, many-rooted trust fund left by one of California's First Families. A woman whose great-great-grandfather was one of the first mayors of Pueblo De Los Angeles, and who calls the legendary Five Star General George Patton simply "Godfather". Because, he was, quite simply, her "Godfather". A society-minted platinum blonde whose pale beauty flickers, but does not fade, through the long afternoons of Scotch highballs and unfiltered Pall Malls, as she looks down on a city she once owned and sighs at its inchoate sprawl.

A confidante of a wide social circle that has included Judges, Mayors, Police Chiefs, Studio Heads and Bigtime Crooks, this woman, whom I shall call Barbara Van Pelt, clasped my wrist at our last encounter and huskily whsipered, " I'm not long for this world , baby. Let 'em know who the real beauty was, hon. Give them enough hints, but don't drop my name. Save that for later, love". She pecked me drily with those lips that had once compelled Hurrell and many other acclaimed Hollywood photographers to beg her to sit for them. "Sit for them?", she harrumphed, "Hell! I couldn't even stand them!", and then guffawed lustily from the depths of her elegant smoker's cough.

So, here I sit . With a story on my shoulders that is itself, not unlike an unpredictable monkey. This story could leap down and crash open more exotic greenhouse mysteries of Old Money L.

A. than any of us would dare want to know.

I had met Barbara, through her daughter Moxie Van Pelt, a green-eyed Femme Fatale, who had led most of her Bel Air private school boypack to suicide, rehab, Zoloft, or God. ( OK, I admit I'm exaggerating, none of them ever turned to God). A graduate of the Pembroke School For Girls of Distinction, Moxie had been Queen of Campus, ruling over a slavetribe of Moxie-wannabes, and tormenting and debasing all who did not bend to her imperious whims. Think "Heathers" with Ilsa the Nazi She-Wolf in the lead.

Although, Moxie and I were as different as Ron and Nancy, we got along in similar fashion. I was the genial frontman and Moxie the Ironic Butterfly. Moxie had warned me long and hard about her Mother the Ice Goddess. She had inculcated in me the mental image of A Tippi Hedren Icicle of imperurbable elan.

"So you do PR? What kind of business is that?", Barbara asked on our first meeting, with discenible upset. "Oh, not the kind you are thinking of, my dear. We represent illustrious authors. I happen to despise Showfolk", I replied.

With that, I had won Barbara over forevermore. She and Moxie had spent their lives being pawed, slobbered on, and bored senseless by showfolk of both sexes and had come to a similar despisement. In fact, because of my response, Barbara actually took me for Old Money and not Noveau Riche. I was raised with good manners and elocuation, after all. In LA, if you know the word entropy, you can pass for Mayflower. If you can demonstrate entropy, you pass go and get a job running a studio.

Her second question was, in fact, "Did your people happen to come over on the Mayflower?", and I tried to amuse her with "Well, you might say , I belong to the people who actually came over under the Mayflower". Although smiling, Barbara peered at me quizzically until Moxie cut in with, "He means they came on the boat after the Mayflower!" "Oh", I see", Barbara said, leaning in with an Olympian intimacy for me to light the first of many Pall Malls. She performed all such gestures with a classical exactness. And when the Classics speak, I listen..

And that's exactly how I came to listen just enough to learn how one of LA's most desirable belles came to pose for a statue that, like its model, has been bruised and chipped by time, but never destroyed.

"Oh, God, it's so boring, and I mean BOR-ING just to sit for a so-called artist", Barbara had confided to me only weeks ago. "I mean, like that gorgeous statue I did for Venice High, that those scums keep ruining. What a task! Here, I was an accomplished equestrienne and world-traveller, and I have to sit, sit, sit, as a favor to ------(famous movie director) and God, what was the point?"

I did not answer, knowing that any remarks on my part would only propel her brilliant, but restive mind onto another tangent, but this was a mystery I wanted the answer to.

"Kinky bastards!"

"Huh?" Finally I spoke.

"Oh, honey, light my Pall Mall and I'll really tell you something". I reached over with the full-sized pearl-handled pistol that was acutally a Zippo lighter, and delicately torched her cig.

"Ooofff", she said, pulling her shawl tighter over her shoulders. "The whole thing was a favor to ------ (famous Hollywood director). He was a kinky bastard and could get away with stuff like this. Well, he was always trying to get my sister Mimi and me into movies, and Mama would never allow her two chaste and inviolate maidens such a fate, so we would tease him, and let him photograph us and screen-test us, but only take it so far. When he proudly announced one day, that he was taking time off from racing racehorses and designing airplanes, so that he could be the next Rodin, we thought that we'd finally indulge him and be his little models. After all, what damage could that dithering sot do to our reputations with just a little clay and water? We figured let him sculpt away, at least, we could sit with clothes on. You see, we suspected if he got the cameras out, he'd try to lace our drinks and get us tipsy enough to unveil.

"Believe me," she continues, "showfolk are not only scum of the earth, but never leave you alone. They always are whining for attention. So, to give---- (famous Hollywood director) his big thrill, we finally agreed to pose for him."

"This would be about early 1932. Well, little did we know, that the idea of the statues would turn out to be not what we expected. You see, it was typical", simulates a yawn with hand over mouth, " I should say…. Rahlly…. typical Hollywood decadence, kind of a von Stroheim naughtiness. Now, we were told the statues of us were going to be -------(famous Hollywood director's) exhibit at the 1932 Olympics at the Los Angeles Coliseum, which he owned a part of. Mimi and I had posed as Greek Goddessses in these beautiful diaphanous gowns. Well, I tell you, the first time Mimi and I clapped eyeballs on his so-called sculptures was we arrived at --- (famous Hollywood director's) house.

"Well, not only were the statues now naked and endowed with startlingly large breasts, nipples and aureole, but also the pubic mound itself, on each statue was, well…."Barbara pauses, searching for the words", beautifully realized itself. I mean, for heaven's sake, the in-depth definition of nether lips and everything!"

"---------(Famous Hollywood Director) had placed both statues on either side of his driveway,"

she continues, " so all the guests for his party could gape at them as they rode onto his big old ranch out in Sherman Oaks. Oh, that bastard. Everybody knew it was us girls, because of the faces, but the anatomy was a marvel. Well, wishing to quell the whole controversy right there, Mama pulled out her checkbook and bought the statues straight off.

"And immediately, I mean, the very next day, hired Augustus Tinsley-Slater, the famous British sculptor, who used to stay with us, the drunken layabout, to add gowns to the statues. This he did. Well, this time, the Scotch and water we served were top-drawer, and 'ol Tinsley-Slater was actually able to do representational art for once in his life, and not his usual abstract jib jab, so it worked. Mama, not one to dawdle, promptly donated the statues to two beach community high schools, figuring these schools were overrun with nature buffs and muscle beach types, anyway. One went to Venice High School, and one went to Santa Monica High. The one that went to Santa Monica High was never seen again, but as for the Venice one. I guess it's taken on a life of its own, God bless it!"

So, now you know. As much as we all love Myrna Loy, it was really Barbara Van Pelt, all this time.