Etc.

The End of Evelyn Smith (a very short story)

 The bitter realization that one’s performing career is over comes in the worst kind.  At first it’s subtle.  Copies of fan magazines aren’t being sold in as many amounts.  It then increases a bit.  Perhaps posters aren’t being sold.  And then the big time hits.  The success of movies start to fail.  It comes so quickly and yet ends so slowly and there isn’t anything one can do to prevent it.  Someone new, perhaps younger, prettier, curvier, comes along and one is moved to the dust.  It’s humiliating and embarrassing to even step out of one’s apartment.  You feel as if you have to hide your failures from the world.  It’s an awful, terrible feeling to know you’re over.  The career you worked so hard for is over.  Maybe it took you years and years to establish or perhaps you got lucky on a big picture.  Whichever way it comes it hardly ever ends peacefully and soundly without photographers and journalists coming after you with hundreds of questions.  

     I know how it feels to be kicked to the curb, unwanted.  I was Evelyn Smith!  At one time, the biggest, brightest start of all Broadway and Hollywood.  Living in the limelight was my life.  One couldn’t pass a street corner without seeing my face all over the tabloids.  I was the best in the business and I worked incredibly hard for it too.  Fans would pour over me as I walked down the street.  Telephones rang off the hook with producers and directors on the other line begging me to be in their pictures.  Life was excellent!  Every picture I made was a great success.  Men looked at me with adoration and admiration.  I had affairs with such stars as Robert Redford, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman.  The women and their wives despised me and who could blame them?  The public loved me and that was all that counted.  They loved the gossip, envy dripping from their lips.  I was twenty-two and on top of the world!  Nothing and no one could stop me from being Evelyn Smith, the Star!  The parties thrown were so extravagant and of course I was usually the guest of honor.  One day the telephones didn’t ring as much, the fans weren’t as excited to see me, I got invited to fewer parties.  I was rarely featured in the tabloids even in the back.  Men stopped chasing me.  I feared what was happening but it was too soon!  I was only thirty!  Someone new, perhaps younger, prettier, curvier came along and I was thrown to the dust.  Hollywood is notorious for make-believing everyone is young and beautiful, in their prime.  It’s a dirty lie. And only when finally exposed does the truth shine through.