F ATHER AND DAUGHTER WAS A huge hit. And as a show of just how excited Sunset was about my new persona, they credited me in the beginning of the movie as “Introducing Evelyn Hugo.” It was the first, and only, time my name was under the marquee. On opening night, I thought of my mother. I knew that if she could have been there with me, she would have been beaming. J did it, I wanted to tell her. We’re both out of there. When the movie did well, I thought Sunset would certainly green-light Little Women. But Ari wanted Ed Baker and me in another movie as fast as possible. We didn’t do sequels back then. Instead, we would essentially just make the same movie again with a different name and a slightly different conceit. So we commenced shooting on Next Door. Ed played my uncle, who had taken me in after my parents died. The two of us quickly fell into respective romantic entanglements with the widowed mother and son who lived next to us. Don was shooting a thriller on the lot at the time, and he used to come visit me every day when his set broke for lunch. I was absolutely smitten, in love and lust for the very first time. I found myself brightening up the moment I set eyes on him, always finding reasons to touch him, reasons to bring him up in conversation when he wasn’t around. Harry was sick of hearing about him. “Ev, honey, I’m serious,” Harry said one afternoon in his office when the two of us were sharing a drink. “I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with this Don Adler talk.” I visited Harry about once a day back then, just to check in, see how he was doing. I always made it seem like business, but even then I knew he was the closest thing I had to a friend. Sure, ’d become friendly with a lot of the other actresses at Sunset. Ruby Reilly, in particular, was a favorite of mine. She was tall and lean, with a dynamite laugh and an air of detachment to her. She never minced words but she could charm the pants off almost anybody. Sometimes Ruby and I, and some of the other girls on the lot, would grab lunch and gossip about various goings-on, but, to be honest, I