Maddie Ellis and the Malibu Movie Colony is an old-fashioned mystery serial set during the end of the silent movie era. Chapter 1 debuted in TNT in April of 2025. All of the previous chapters are available online at topanganewtimes.com under the Storyland menu. In chapter 11, Maddie learns more about ingenue Clarice Auclair and romantic leading man Johnny Roberts, stars of the film Maddie was hired to rewrite. Join us as we travel back in time to January 1928.
Maddie contemplated the breakfast dishes on the kitchen table and sighed. She put them in the sink to soak and went to check on her young patient. Clarice was asleep.
Maddie wrote a note explaining that she was stopping in on a neighbor, left it on the table, and slipped out the kitchen door. She rejoiced in the beauty of the morning. The sky was clear, the ocean calm, and the color of each was as blue as the background in a Maxfield Parrish illustration. It was impossible to believe in midnight rescues and drunken pirates in the bright sunlight.
Maddie walked up the beach to Louise Fazenda’s house. She found her new friend still washing up from the previous night’s supper party. Dishes seemed an inescapable part of the morning, Maddie reflected ruefully.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“Yes, please!” Louise gratefully handed her a dish towel. “Hal found a whole mountain of dishes on the beach this morning. Just when I thought I was done. It’s too discouraging. He’s walking Tadpole and I’m still stuck with the washing up.”
Maddie set to work drying dishes.
“We’re planning to bring a maid with us when we come out for the summer, everyone does, but it’s a nuisance when we are just out for the weekend,” Louise told her. “And besides, I like to cook. I just don’t like to clean up. You are an angel to help. I don’t think anyone has ever offered to help before. How are you enjoying life in Malibu? I just saw an article that described us as ‘ fugitives from fame.”
Maddie laughed. “I love it, although I could have done without the chorus from Pirates of Penzance invading the beach last night.”
“My, dear! That’s exactly what they were like! How unkind. I’m sure poor Johnny fancied himself as the living incarnation of Blackbeard or some other famous pirate who inspires envy and fear. One thing’s for certain, they had plenty of grog and they didn’t get it here.”
“Milo and I rescued Miss Auclair,” Maddie said. “She’s staying with me for the rest of the weekend. I’ll give her a lift home tomorrow morning. She seemed to think that instead of grog they were drinking absinthe.”
“Where on earth would they get that?” Louise wondered. “There are plenty of tipplers in the Colony—the water supply ran low last summer, but the gin never did. As far as I know, their tipple is just gin and ordinary things like that. I can’t remember anyone ever drinking absinthe around here, although I’ve heard it’s popular in Paris, or is it Madrid?”
“Who supplies the tipplers?” Maddie asked.
“Are you planning to go on a bender?” Louise laughed.
“I’m just curious,” Maddie replied.
“Do you know, I’ve never asked. Isn’t it funny how it’s always just there, at any place you go to?”
“I’ve been in London for the past five years,” Maddie told her new friend. “They regard Prohibition as a quaint custom there and shake their heads about the colonies. And speaking of quaint customs, is Johnny Roberts always like that?”
“Drunk? No. Acting a role and being outrageous? Yes.” Louise rolled her eyes. “He’s a live wire, that one. You’ve seen his little Spanish castle, haven’t you?” She waved a soapy hand in the direction of the “biscuit tin with columns.” I would have said there’s no harm in Johnny. He’s fun to have around, or he used to be, before Isabel’s accident. The two of them were just like a pair of children. They loved practical jokes, outrageous costumes, and parties with silly themes, but it was all, well, fun things. Since then, he’s been wild—dangerous, almost. Not himself.”
“What has he done?” Maddie asked, thinking of Roberts’ strange performance the night before.
Louise stared critically at the dish she was washing for a moment and dunked it back into the sink. “It’s the Russian salad,” she lamented. “It’s dried to the consistency of concrete. Where was I? Oh, yes, well, last night wasn’t the first time he’s behaved badly in public. How he can carry on like that while poor Isabel Flores is still recovering from her injuries, is more than I can understand. She’s a darling.” She sighed. “Perhaps he’ll settle down when that film of yours is back in production. I’m glad you rescued little Clarice. She’s a nice child, and Johnny’s current crowd is entirely too fast for an innocent like her.”
“Who is the crowd?” Maddie asked. “Who is Billy Worthington? I hear he’s the one who capsized the dinghy last night.”
“He was the ‘Kittle-Cattle Kid,’” Louise said. “Do you remember that series of shorts? They were wildly popular during the war years. Billy was the precocious urchin who was the star of the show. The girl who was with him last night, Lulu Desmond, was a child star, too. She was here a lot last summer, although I’m not sure who she was staying with. Then Billy started hanging around, too, and they both seem to have hit it off well with Johnny, so then they would come out with him.
“This was the first time I’ve seen Billy or Lulu around here since the fall, but we haven’t been out to the Colony since before the holidays, and we don’t move in the same circles in town. Or in the same circles here, either. Hal and I aren’t much for cocktails and riotous living. Neither one of us was happy to have Johnny’s crowd turn up utterly plastered. We like a quiet life.”
“How about the other two who were with Johnny?” Maddie asked.
“The man was Bradley Row,” Louise said. “He’s from Australia and he’s starring in that new cowboy saga at Mammoth Pictures, The Dusty Trail, isn’t that what it’s called? So cliche, but Hal says he’s got real potential. He’s quite the rising star. I don’t know the girl who was with him. I haven’t seen her before. She was introduced as just ‘Coco.’ I wish Johnny had let us know he was bringing a boatload of partygoers. I was afraid there wasn’t going to be enough food.” Louise sighed.
“They really were a pirate crew, coming ashore to raid your supper party,” Maddie said. “I was told that all guests have to be on the gatekeeper’s list, but perhaps that doesn’t apply to pirates,” she added.
“When word got about the Colony everyone wanted in,” Louise said. “That’s why the management hired the gate guard and the watchman, for all the good that poor old man does. We really are fugitives. Almost everyone here is tired of being goggled at like a goldfish in a bowl, but, as you say, the authors of the bylaws probably forgot to include boats.”
“Bebe Daniels said that she loves it here because it’s free from public scrutiny, and that it is wonderful to do what you please,” Maddie quoted.
“That really does sum up what we all want from this place,” Louise said. “That’s why it’s worth all of the inconveniences to escape here for a weekend or a month or two in summer. A blessed escape from a world that watches all of us all the time.”
The conversation lapsed and Louise turned her attention back to scrubbing dishes.
“What happens to child stars when they grow up?” Maddie wondered out loud a moment later.
“Hollywood chews people up and spits them out,” Louise said vehemently. “But it’s worse for children. It’s simply brutal. Some of them make it, but most just go by the wayside. Bebe made the transition from child star to grownup one and is doing very well, but she’s smart and talented, a real go-getter.”
What about Lulu Desmond and Billy Worthington?” Maddie asked.
“Lulu’s done fairly well for herself, I think,” Louise said. “No starring roles but enough bit parts to keep body and soul together. Billy’s career has rather fizzled, although he had a good run of it and seems to have plenty of money. He has a youthful face, which probably helped, but sooner or later all children grow up, even child stars, and an awful lot of them wash out,” Louise said. “Some of the stories Hal could tell you would make you weep. At least, they make me weep.”
They finished the last of the dishes in amicable silence.
“Let’s have some tea,” Louise invited. “We deserve it. Cake, too. Sit right there while I get it. You’ve done enough scullery work for one morning.”
Maddie took a seat while her hostess filled the teapot and set out cups—blue and white with a pattern of shells.
They chatted idly about Malibu and Hollywood and had just reached the bottom of the teapot when the door burst open admitting Hal and the exuberant Tadpole. The little terrier immediately went into a frenzy of greeting, as if Maddie was his long-lost friend. She was charmed, and knelt to pet him. The pup rolled a roguish eye at her, then flopped over and waved all four stubby legs in the air, ears flapping.
“I’m worn out, but he isn’t,” Hal said, giving his wife a kiss. “He’s a dynamo.”
“Maddie’s been helping me with the dishes, Hal. You’re a true friend, Maddie. We’re headed back to town this afternoon, but we’ll be out again at the weekend if the weather’s nice. We’ll do something fun. Tennis, or do you know how to surf? Me neither, but we can watch the people who do.”
Maddie took her leave of her new friends, and walked back down the beach deep in thought. “‘All children but one grow up,’” she said as she walked past Herbert Brenon’s Peter Pan inspired house. “‘They know they must grow up.’” But perhaps some actors believe so much in their own power to inhabit a role that they don’t know they have to grow up?”
Johnny Roberts did not reappear. Around noon, the Bartholomew set sail, leaving the Digby in sole possession of the bay. He and his crew weren’t the only ones to leave. The “fugitives from fame” spent the morning engaged in one last round of sunbathing, surfing, swimming, one last phonograph record or visit with a friend or neighbor, before packing up and heading back to town. By four o’clock the houses were as empty as they had appeared on Maddie’s arrival. Even Milo departed.
“But I’ll see you tomorrow at the studio,” he told her. “No fair rescuing mermaids or being abducted by pirates while I’m away,” he said, only partly in jest.
Clarice Auclair slept most of the day. She was feeling well enough by evening to eat something more sustaining than toast, and revived enough to tell Maddie about her life over dinner. She was, she confessed, only eighteen.
“I ran away from home on my sixteenth birthday and found work in Hollywood almost at once,” she told Maddie, her brown eyes as candid and guileless as a child’s. “And then I worked my way up from bit parts as daughters and younger sisters.”
“What inspired you to do it?” Maddie asked.
“There were twelve of us,” Clarice said. “Mama and Papa weren’t unkind, but as soon as I was old enough my job was looking after the younger ones, and they expected me to leave school at sixteen and settle down. They had a husband all picked out for me.” She grimaced, “‘A respectable widower with a farm of his own and good prospects’” she said, hurt and anger in her voice. “That’s what my father said. He was the kind of husband who would have regarded me exactly the way he regarded his cows—something he’d get his money’s worth out of.”
“I would have done anything to escape that. And then I saw my first movie. It was called The Love Mask, and it was about California, and it starred Cleo Ridgely, and she was simply divine. I knew right then what I wanted to do, I wanted to be in movies, too, and somehow I just knew I could do it if I had the gumption to try, so I left. I just upped and left.”
“I had $20 saved. It took ages to make that much picking berries in the summer and doing mending. It was just enough to get me to Hollywood on the train with a bit left over for room and board. I got awfully tired of boarding house porridge and soup, but I went to every audition I could get to, and before the month was up I got cast in a bit part. I got $25 for that, all at once. It was the most money I’d ever seen!”
“Was it worth it?” Maddie asked.
“Was it ever! I still live in a boarding house—it’s a dormitory, really—but it’s a nice one now. They have classes you can take on acting in the evenings, and even a stage where you can practice and rehearse. It’s hard work but it’s everything I ever dreamed of. And then I landed the role of the handmaid in Sands of Afar. I couldn’t believe my good luck. It was my big chance and now I’ve muffed it.” Her voice quivered. Maddie thought she was going to cry.
“You have a lot of courage and sense, Clarice,” Maddie told her. “I admire you for it. Don’t give up, not now when you’ve come so far.”
They drove into town together the next morning. Clarice attired in a borrowed dress. Maddie was a small woman, but the dress was too big for the childlike Clarice. She looked like a little girl playing dress up in it, but she wasn’t, Maddie thought. Like Peter Pan’s Wendy, she had chosen to grow up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls.
Clarice’s “boarding house” turned out to be the celebrated Hollywood Studio Club, founded a decade earlier by Mary Pickford and Constance Adams DeMille—wife of Cecile B. DeMille—to be a safe and supportive environment for young women who aspired to a career in film. It was clearly thriving, and exactly the place for a young woman like Clarice Auclair. Maddie pulled up in front of the steps.
Clarice threw her arms around her. “Thank you! You and Mr Devlin are my own guardian angels. I won’t forget what you’ve done for me.”
Maddie smiled and watched the slight, childlike figure run up the steps of the imposing Italian Renaissance building. Clarice Auclair might be only eighteen, but she had the grit and determination to go far, and Maddie resolved to do what she could to help her get there.
