Tales from a Pepsi Queen

Surviving

Apparently appearances are everything in Hollywood and America. Look like you are a success, people will assume you are a success. In Los Angeles and Beverly Hills especially. Not that people in those cities actually talk to each other but they do look at signs if you are slipping. Is your car new, or at least kept up, ditto your home and ditto your own physical self. Now the good news was that I was able to use the austerity of World War Two to mask my own period of austerity. With no job, really, and a young husband struggling to work at a factory, with two young children to support, I had to make everything appear to be fine. No easy task, what with paying the  bills, keeping up a twenty five room home, keeping up two cars and looking as if I was still in demand-all took plenty of money. I secured a job reporting on show business happenings that kept me in the forefront of Hollywood happenings and I worked at the Hollywood Canteen. People saw me and I was available for any kind of publicity. One thing wonderful did happen during this most challenging time was my work for the WACS. I was tasked with the renovation of an old house to convert to a school and to house children of defense plant workers who's employees were the mothers of those children who worked in those factories. It was just the kind of project that kept me focused on the bigger picture than just myself at my career's most vulnerable situation ever. Those mothers were so grateful and the children were so adorable that their appreciation fueled me with the kind of spiritual energy that sustained me through several challenging episodes in my life. This was when "appearances " became truth, because I could channel all that hyperactivity of my character into something really worthwhile. I really do believe that this project helped pave the way to Mildred Pierce, because it was gloriously selfless, and I think I was being rewarded. That joy I felt working with those mothers and the little ones made me a lifelong member of the charities that championed the USO and the WACS, of which I was very proud to be a part of.