The Newspaper Pedalled A Really Good Yarn

The Age

Saturday May 26, 2007

Robert Drewe

A former Las Vegas showgirl, well-known for affairs with famous people, exercised the body and the imagination of a bike rider in a gym, writes Robert Drewe.

CLARE USUALLY READ the paper while she was on the exercise bike. She'd set the controls on the cardio setting for half an hour, which was the time it took to read the newspaper. Not sport or finance, but everything else. If she wasn't diverted while she pedalled, her body would announce it was tired after only five minutes. But if she was engrossed in something she could pedal away without noticing the exertion or the time.

Clare's 49th birthday was approaching and it had finally been time to lose that excess weight and try to get fit. But because she found stationary cycling boring, it had taken her a month to master this simplest of exercises. The gym was on the first floor, above a hair-removal clinic, Thai restaurant and discount book warehouse, and the bikes were lined up along the plate-glass window overlooking River Street.

For a short while it was interesting enough, while she pedalled, to gaze down at the muddy river streaming one way or the other - tide in, tide out. But it was not a busy river, the view of distant mangroves, elderly breakwater fishermen and emerging or disappearing sand banks soon palled, and she was bored and puffing after only a few minutes pedalling.

So she tried the diversion of the TV wall-screen on which Greg, the gym proprietor, continually ran an eclectic video, which mingled serious sporting accidents with crocodiles biting river-fording zebras, humorous wedding-day disasters (bride's tipsy mother falls into cake; nervous groom vomits over priest) and lionesses mauling a lone buffalo. However, there was something about weaker animals being systematically mauled that sat uneasily with the gym's ambience. She was soon too anxious to keep pedalling.

She tried the diversion of the street scene below. As she pedalled she'd guess which pedestrians were heading for the Brazilian wax, which ones for a remaindered novel or Thai meal. From their general age, shape and clothing, however, none of them ever seemed candidates for any of these experiences. The scene only accounted for 10 minutes pedalling, in any case.

But the newspaper diversion worked. Time and mock kilometres would fly by. Perhaps the day in question had been a slow news day; she was only 15 minutes into the exercise and already up to the obituaries. She was reading about someone called Liz Renay (1926-2007). "Liz Renay," she read, "was by turns a Las Vegas showgirl, gangster's moll, perjurer, cult actress, stripper, author and charm school instructor."

She read and peddled on. "Born Pearl Dobbins to fanatically religious parents in Mesa, Arizona, she was convicted of perjury in 1959 when her boyfriend, the racketeer Mickey Cohen, was tried for tax evasion. Her two years in jail were fatal to her Hollywood career."

Intrigued, Clare looked up from the page to wipe her damp hair from her eyes. Down River Street a white Toyota Prado was backing into a space by the breakwater. "Pearl ran away from home at 15 to enter and win a Marilyn Monroe lookalike contest, and became a Las Vegas showgirl and 44DD bra model. By the age of 18, she had married twice and had two children."

Clare pedalled on. She couldn't see the car's number plate. But, after all, there were lots of that particular model around. Clare read, "An inveterate attention-seeker, she came to notice in 1950 when her film-set antics earned her a five-page spread in Life magazine headed "Pearl's Big Moment". Working as a stripper, she was then involved with Albert Anastasia, head of the so-called Murder, Inc. A dark-haired woman sitting on the breakwater stood up then and walked towards the Prado.

A man got out of the Prado. He stayed close to the car as he and the woman kissed. Things were in the way - the woman's head, an oleander bush - and it was impossible to see any more. The woman got in the car and it drove away. Liz Renay, nee Pearl Dobbins, had boasted of affairs with 2000 men, including Joe DiMaggio and Cary Grant. The newspaper fell to the floor then. Clare was pedalling fast - so fast she thought she'd never stop.

NEXT WEEK KATE HOLDEN

© 2007 The Age

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