In 1942, I had never met my Aunt Ann or my four first cousins.  They’d moved in the 30’s from Jacksonville to Los Angeles, where Uncle Stuart worked for Walt Disney.  Among other things, he provided the voice for the hunter in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Every so often, Aunt Ann would send photographs—the children in the swimming pool on a sun-scorched day; the boys lined up in front of a stucco wall, grim-faced, like murderers facing a firing squad; deformed sister Jean, curled up in an overstuffed chair, listening to the radio, hopelessly in love with Nelson Eddy.

Then, with the War ginning away, we got a letter from Stuart, Jr., the oldest of the boys.  He was in the Army Air Corps, was stationed in Orlando, and wondered if maybe he could drive over for a visit.  My mother wrote back and urged him to come any time.  The following weekend he arrived, on a Saturday morning.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and carried himself like a soldier.  He had the kind of face you wouldn’t notice in a crowd; but if you analyzed it, feature by feature, you’d conclude he was handsome.  I remember him, sitting on the sofa, back straight as a broom handle, saying next to nothing.

My mother would ask him questions and he would answer in words and phrases rather than in sentences.

How was the family?

“Fine.”

Was his father still with Disney?

“Uh uh.”

How was poor Jean?

“Doing O.K.”

Not that he was sullen.  In fact, he kept an embarrassed grin on his face, as if he were the new boy in Third Grade, called on to recite for the first time.  When he went to the bathroom, my mother turned to me and said quietly, “Regular chatterbox, isn’t he?”

As the day wore on, some of his shyness dropped away, and he gave up a few more details about the family, now in Dobbs Ferry, New York.  When he mentioned his girl, my mother asked, “Is it serious?”

Stuart nodded.

“We were about to get married.  The war ruined that.  We decided to wait.  Maybe that was a good idea.  Maybe it wasn’t.  But we’re engaged.”

Then he added, with a quick grin, “She’s going to be in the movies.”

“That’s exciting,” my mother said.  “We’ll watch for her.  What’s her name?”

“Gail Russell.”

At one point in the conversation, my mother, said—somewhat tactlessly, I thought—“Don’t you worry that with such a glamorous life she might . . . change?”

He smiled and shook his head.  “Oh no.  She’ll never change.”

He didn’t volunteer additional information, but years later—after Gail had been in a number of films—we heard more details from Aunt Ann.

According to Ann, they must have been the two shyest teenagers at Santa Monica High School, though she was far shyer than he was.  Maybe that’s why they were drawn to each other: Because neither was confident enough to submit to small talk or to risk a kiss (to most teenagers, just the first stop on a longer journey).

Her fellow students, awed by her beauty, called her “the Hedy Lamarr of Santa Monica High School,” a nickname that caused her great embarrassment.  She begged them not to say it, and, like schoolkids everywhere, they did it all the more.  Later—when she was a star in her own right—she passed Lamarr on a studio backlot and quickly looked away, for some reason filled with shame.

Every hotshot in the class of 1942 had tried to get behind the hurt look on her face, if only because she was the nearest thing he’d ever seen to Helen of Troy.  When one would ask her out, she’d shake her head with a sad smile, terrified at the thought of talking to a boy for an entire evening.  She had allowed Stuart to slip past her defenses, only because he didn’t try.  They probably were drawn to each other in the middle of long silences as they worked side by side in Art Studio.

Like Stuart, she wanted to be a painter—in large part, perhaps, because it was something she could do alone.  Even a clerk in a grocery store had to smile at strangers and engage in small talk.  She wasn’t contemptuous of such people.  Far from it.  She was overwhelmed by them.  Somehow Stuart managed in his quiet way to convince her that he understood her fear, that he felt the same way.  It took a while, like training a squirrel to eat out of your hand.

She was terrified of public places, so they spent most of their time in Stuart’s old Chevrolet—driving around, parking in front of her house or his, just talking and, later, carefully kissing.  Occasionally they would go to a drive-in movie, where they would sit in darkness and watch the film without being watched.  Whenever they got out of the car, she would clutch his arm like a small child in an angry, adult crowd.

She was very uncomfortable in restaurants, so they usually ate in the front seat of the car.

“She was too shy to come into the house,” said my aunt.  “I would fix lunch or dinner for the two of them, and Stuart would take it out to her.  Finally, after months and months, he persuaded her to come in and meet us.  I felt awfully sorry for her.  She only stayed for maybe five minutes, and all she did was look down at the floor and wring her hands.  Her family was so poor, many days they didn’t have any food in the house.  I would fix more supper than we could eat, and Stuart would take them what he called ‘leftovers’—really that part of our meal cooked for them.  I would do that many nights.”

Then one December day came the sudden shock of war.  Stuart and Gail were both 18, just out of high school, making plans to get married.  In a single day of indignant rhetoric, the President and the U.S. Congress had wrecked their lives.

Stuart was classified 1-A and was drafted almost immediately.  They had only a few days to reassess their life together.  Gail was terrified and cried most of the time.  Stuart grew even quieter.  Within weeks, he had been inducted, and my uncle had quit Disney over a contract dispute and had moved the family to New York, where he had taken a job as a radio director.

With Stuart gone and the Russell family still on the brink of starvation, something catastrophic occurred.  Following up on a tip from one of Gail’s high-school classmates, William Meiklejohn—supervisor of talent and casting at Paramount Studios—tracked her down and offered her a contract, a mere $50 a week.  Her mother gave her no choice: “Take it.  We need the money.”  In those days, $50 bought 500 hamburgers.

Meiklejohn attempted to interview her on-camera, but she was too terrified to talk.  Frustrated, he dressed her in an evening gown for a screen test.  It was the first time she’d ever put on makeup or worn high heels.  But her beauty trumped her inability to answer Meiklejohn’s questions.  The following week she was given a small role in a teen movie—Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour.  Though she only spoke a few lines, she was highly decorative, and Paramount executives took note.

Soon—perhaps too soon—she was appearing in a major movie, one that critics and film historians now consider a classic: The Uninvited.  The billing: “Starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, and introducing Gail Russell.”  That was the first one we saw; and—like everyone else—we were struck by her beauty and the aura of innocence that floated around her.  Yet it was during the filming of this moody ghost story that she began to risk some of that innocence.

She had a script coach but had never been formally trained in acting; so she was terrified of the camera and dreaded each scene.  She felt awkward when she moved.  She didn’t know what to do with her hands.  She believed her performance was weak, stiff, and unprofessional.  So she began to drink on the set—just enough to get her through a scene.  She had never drunk alcohol before.  First it was a crutch, then a habit, finally an obsession—a way to deal with a life that was increasingly demanding and uncontrollable.

When she started making The Uninvited, she weighed 123 pounds.  When she returned to Hollywood following the New York opening, she weighed 106 pounds; and since she and the film pleased audiences, she was rushed into another movie, and another, and another.  She even costarred in major films with John Wayne.  Unfortunately, she never gained enough self-assurance from this growing experience to quit drinking.

Stuart was sent to London, where he flew combat missions over France and Germany.  I’m not sure whether he was a navigator, bombardier, gunner, or pilot.  He and Gail wrote each other—almost every day at the beginning, later at least once a week.  During that time, movie magazines occasionally mentioned the fact that she was waiting for her GI boyfriend, who was fighting somewhere in Europe.  Toward the end of the War, Louella Parsons would occasionally publish a sentence or two, saying Gail Russell was seen at the Brown Derby or Ciro’s with this or that young actor.  Aunt Ann assumed these outings were ordered by Paramount to keep Gail’s name before the public, SOP for movie studios during that era.  Maybe.

Eventually, the other two Buchanan boys would serve: Tommy in the Marines, Cliff in the Navy.  All three saw action.  All three made it through the War.  All three came home with arms and legs intact.  None suffered from nightmares or battle fatigue.

As soon as Stuart was discharged, he showed up at Gail’s doorstep, confident that she was unchanged.  Apparently nothing in the letters prepared him for what he found.  She wasn’t at home, so he left a note and his hotel number on her door.  As he was leaving, a car pulled up in front of the house and the driver hopped out—a man Stuart recognized.  He couldn’t place him exactly, but he knew the name was “Mel something-or-other.”

Gail was sitting in the passenger seat.  Their eyes met.  But instead of sudden joy, he saw surprise, followed by confusion.  For an instant, she sat there, motionless.  Then Mel came around, opened the car door, and she scrambled out and ran toward Stuart, arms open wide.  He caught her and held her tight for half a minute, but when he loosened his grip, he didn’t kiss her.

“You’re home!” she said, with a sigh; and for a moment he thought everything was fine.

“Stuart, this is . . . ”

“Hello, Mel,” Stuart said, and they shook hands.

“You know each other?” Gail asked.  She directed her question not at Stuart but at Mel.  She was clearly angry.  Stuart remembered now.  Mel had worked for Walt.  On the business side, foreign distribution.  Something like that.

Mel glanced at his watch and said, “Oh, gee.  I’m late.  You two have a lot of catching up to do.  See you later.”

Stuart looked into her eyes and saw something he had never seen before—the hurt and fear had been replaced by a hard, defensive glint.  They went inside and had a long talk.  When he left her, she was crying bitter tears, telling him to forget the past, to leave her alone.  And then, as the door closed behind him, “I’m sorry!  Oh, I’m so sorry.”

He never saw her again.

However, from time to time he read about her in the newspaper.  She married actor Guy Madison in 1949 and was known all over Hollywood as an alcoholic.  In 1953, the arrests for drunk driving began.  She rear-ended a car in North Hollywood and drove away, only to be apprehended and charged with hit-and-run.  In a new convertible, she crashed into Jan’s Restaurant on Beverly Boulevard and pinned the janitor under the car.  She failed to appear for a drunk-driving hearing, and the judge issued a bench warrant.  Police officers found her at home, passed out.

Then Esperanza, John Wayne’s wife, sued him for divorce and named Gail as corespondent.  People who knew them both were unanimous in saying that Wayne was a concerned friend merely trying to help her stay sober.  The trial made the front pages of newspapers nationwide, whereas the drunk-driving arrests were reported on back pages.

Alarmed, Stuart wrote her a long letter, and she replied.  They kept up the correspondence until she died.  She told him she’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous and had been dry for seven months.  She’d spent a year in a rehab clinic.  She’d gone back to the bottle and had almost died.  While under an oxygen tent for three months, she had asked God for help, and He had answered her.  She was painting and drawing and would occasionally send him some pen-and-ink sketches.  Once, when my mother and I were visiting the Buchanans, Stuart showed several to me.  They were precisely executed, the work of someone well trained and disciplined.

Then one morning in 1961 he opened the newspaper and saw that she had died.  A friend had found her, lying on the floor in her West Side home, wearing a blouse and pajama bottoms, surrounded by her paintings.  An empty vodka bottle lay beside her.  She was 36 years old, her face pinched and undernourished, but still quite lovely.

You have to wonder what kind of life she would have lived had she married Stuart Buchanan and became a painter instead of a movie star, that reticent beauty safe behind the curtains of an anonymous house.  That was all she ever really wanted—anonymity, a shy husband, maybe a couple of shy children, and one room on the sunny side of the house where she could set up her easel.  She was a civilian casualty of a long and brutal war.