The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

FATHER AND DAUGHTER WAS A huge hit. And as a show of just how excited Sunset was about my new persona, they credited me in the beginning of the movie as “Introducing Evelyn Hugo.” It was the first, and only, time my name was under the marquee.

On opening night, I thought of my mother. I knew that if she could have been there with me, she would have been beaming. I did it, I wanted to tell her. We’re both out of there.

When the movie did well, I thought Sunset would certainly green-light Little Women. But Ari wanted Ed Baker and me in another movie as fast as possible. We didn’t do sequels back then. Instead, we would essentially just make the same movie again with a different name and a slightly different conceit.

So we commenced shooting on Next Door. Ed played my uncle, who had taken me in after my parents died. The two of us quickly fell into respective romantic entanglements with the widowed mother and son who lived next to us.

Don was shooting a thriller on the lot at the time, and he used to come visit me every day when his set broke for lunch.

I was absolutely smitten, in love and lust for the very first time.

I found myself brightening up the moment I set eyes on him, always finding reasons to touch him, reasons to bring him up in conversation when he wasn’t around.

Harry was sick of hearing about him.

“Ev, honey, I’m serious,” Harry said one afternoon in his office when the two of us were sharing a drink. “I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with this Don Adler talk.” I visited Harry about once a day back then, just to check in, see how he was doing. I always made it seem like business, but even then I knew he was the closest thing I had to a friend.

Sure, I’d become friendly with a lot of the other actresses at Sunset. Ruby Reilly, in particular, was a favorite of mine. She was tall and lean, with a dynamite laugh and an air of detachment to her. She never minced words but she could charm the pants off almost anybody.

Sometimes Ruby and I, and some of the other girls on the lot, would grab lunch and gossip about various goings-on, but, to be honest, I would have thrown every single one of them in front of a moving train to get a part. And I think they would have done the same to me.

Intimacy is impossible without trust. And we would have been idiots to trust one another.

But Harry was different.

Harry and I both wanted the same thing. We wanted Evelyn Hugo to be a household name. Also, we just liked each other.

“We can talk about Don, or we can talk about when you’re green-lighting Little Women,” I said teasingly.

Harry laughed. “It’s not up to me. You know that.”

“Well, why is Ari dragging his feet?”

“You don’t want to do Little Women right now,” Harry says. “It’s better if you give it a few months.”

“I most certainly do want to do it right now.”

Harry shook his head and stood up, pouring himself another glass of scotch. He didn’t offer me a second martini, and I knew it was because he knew I shouldn’t have had the first one to begin with.

“You could really be big,” Harry said. “Everybody’s saying so. If Next Door does as well as Father and Daughter and you and Don keep going on the way you have been, you could be a big deal.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s what I’m banking on.”

“You want Little Women to come out just when people are thinking you only know how to do one thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You had a huge hit with Father and Daughter. People know you can be funny. They know you’re adorable. They know they liked you in that picture.”

“Sure.”

“Now you’re gonna do it again. You’re going to show them that you can re-create the magic. You’re not just a one-trick pony.”

“All right . . .”

“Maybe you do a picture with Don. After all, they can’t print pictures of the two of you dancing at Ciro’s or the Trocadero fast enough.”

“But—”

“Hear me out. You and Don do a picture. A matinee romance, maybe. Something where all the girls want to be you, and all the boys want to be with you.”

“Fine.”

“And just when everyone is thinking they know you, that they ‘get’ Evelyn Hugo, you play Jo. You knock everybody’s socks off. Now the audience is going to think to themselves, ‘I knew she was something special.’ ”

“But why can’t I just do Little Women now? And they’ll think that now?”

Harry shook his head. “Because you have to give them time to invest in you. You have to give them time to get to know you.”

“You’re saying I should be predictable.”

“I’m saying you should be predictable and then do something unpredictable, and they’ll love you forever.”

I listened to him, thought about it. “You’re just feeding me a line,” I said.

Harry laughed. “Look, this is Ari’s plan. Like it or not. He wants you in a few more pictures before he’s gonna give you Little Women. But he is gonna give you Little Women.”

“All right,” I said. What choice did I have, really? My contract with Sunset was for another three years. If I caused too much trouble, they had an option to drop me at any time. They could loan me out, force me to take projects, put me on leave without pay, you name it. They could do anything they wanted. Sunset owned me.

“Your job now,” Harry said, “is to see if you can make a real go of it with Don. It’s in both of your best interests.”

I laughed. “Oh, now you want to talk about Don.”

Harry smiled. “I don’t want to sit here and listen to you talk about how dreamy he is. That’s boring. I want to know if the two of you might be ready to make it official.”

Don and I had been seen around town, our photos taken at every hot spot in Hollywood. Dinner at Dan Tana’s, lunch at the Vine Street Derby, tennis at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. And we knew what we were doing, parading around in public.

I needed Don’s name mentioned in the same sentences as mine, and Don needed to look like he was a part of the New Hollywood. Photos of the two of us double-dating with other stars went a long way toward solidifying his image as a man-about-town.

But he and I never talked about any of that. Because we were genuinely happy to be around each other. The fact that it was helping our careers felt like a bonus.

The night of the premiere of his movie Big Trouble, Don picked me up wearing a slick dark suit and holding a Tiffany box.

“What’s this?” I asked him. I was wearing a black-and-purple floral Christian Dior.

“Open it,” Don said, smiling.

Inside was a giant platinum and diamond ring. It was braided on the sides with a square-cut jewel in the middle.

I gasped. “Are you . . .”

I knew it had been coming, if only because I knew Don wanted to sleep with me so bad it was nearly killing him. I’d been resisting him despite his very overt advances. But it was getting harder to do. The more we kissed in dark places, the more we found ourselves alone in the backs of limousines, the harder it was for me to push him away.

I’d never had that feeling before, physical yearning. I’d never felt what it is to ache to be touched—until Don. I would find myself next to him, desperate to feel his hands on my bare skin.

And I loved the idea of making love to someone. I’d had sex before, but it had never meant anything to me. I wanted to make love to Don. I loved him. And I wanted us to do it right.

And here it was. A marriage proposal.

I put my hand out to touch the ring, to make sure it was all real. Don shut the box before I could. “I’m not asking you to marry me,” he said.

“What?” I felt foolish. I’d allowed myself to dream too big. Here I was, Evelyn Herrera, parading around as if my name was Evelyn Hugo and I could marry a movie star.

“At least, not yet.”

I tried to hide my disappointment. “Have it your way, then,” I said, turning away from him to grab my clutch.

“Don’t be sour,” Don said.

“Who’s sour?” I said. We walked out of my apartment, and I shut the door behind me.

“I’m going to ask you tonight.” His voice was pleading, nearly apologetic. “At the premiere. In front of everyone.”

I softened.

“I just wanted to make sure . . . I wanted to know . . .” Don grabbed my hand and got down on one knee. He didn’t open the ring box again. He just looked at me sincerely. “Will you say yes?”

“We should go,” I said. “You can’t be late to your own movie.”

“Will you say yes? That’s all I need to know.”

I looked right at him and said, “Yes, you dumb fool. I’m mad for you.”

He grabbed me and kissed me. It hurt a little. His teeth hit my lower lip.

I was going to get married. To someone I loved this time. To someone who made me feel the way I was pretending to feel in the movies.

What could be any further from that tiny sad apartment in Hell’s Kitchen than this?

An hour later, on the red carpet, in a sea of photographers and publicists, Don Adler got down on one knee. “Evelyn Hugo, will you marry me?”

I cried and nodded. He stood up and put the ring on my finger. And then he picked me up and spun me in the air.

As Don put me back down, I saw Harry Cameron by the theater door, clapping for us. He gave me a wink.