Harry called me into his office and told me that he had discussed it with Ari, and they had two potential roles for me. I could play an Italian heiress as the fourth lead in a war romance. Or I could play Jo in Little Women. I knew what it would mean, playing Jo. I knew Jo was a white woman. And still, I wanted it. I hadn’t gotten on my back just to take a baby step. “Jo,” I said. “Give me Jo.” And in so doing, I set the star machine in motion. Harry introduced me to studio stylist Gwendolyn Peters. Gwen bleached my hair and cut it into a shoulder-length bob. She shaped my eyebrows. She plucked my widow’s peak. I met with a nutritionist, who made me lose six pounds exactly, mostly by taking up smoking and replacing some meals with cabbage soup. I met with an elocutionist, who got rid of the New York in my English, who banished Spanish entirely. And then, of course, there was the three-page questionnaire I had to fill out about my life until then. What did my father do for a living? What did I like to do in my spare time? Did I have any pets? When I turned in my honest answers, the researcher read it in one sitting and said, “Oh, no, no, no. This won’t do at all. From now on, your mother died in an accident, leaving your father to raise you. He worked as a builder in Manhattan, and on weekends during the summer, he’d take you to Coney Island. If anyone asks, you love tennis and swimming, and you have a Saint Bernard named Roger.” I sat for at least a hundred publicity photos. Me with my new blond hair, my trimmer figure, my whiter teeth. You wouldn’t believe the things they made me model. Smiling at the beach, playing golf, running down the street being tugged by a Saint Bernard that someone borrowed from a set decorator. There were photos of me salting a grapefruit, shooting a bow and arrow, getting on a fake airplane. Don’t even get me started on the holiday photos. It would be a sweltering-hot September day, and I'd be sitting there in a red velvet dress, next to a fully lit Christmas tree, pretending to open a box that contained a brand-new baby kitten. The wardrobe people were consistent and militant about how I was dressed, per Harry Cameron’s orders, and that look always included a tight sweater, buttoned up just right.