Four months later, Harry Cameron, then a young producer at Sunset Studios, came in to meet with an exec from the lot next door. They each ordered a steak. When I brought the check, Harry looked up at me and said, “Jesus.” Two weeks later, I had a deal at Sunset Studios. kk * I WENT HOME and told Ernie that I was shocked that anyone at Sunset Studios would be interested in little old me. I said that being an actress would just be a fun lark, a thing to do to pass the time until my real job of being a mother began. Grade-A bullshit. I was almost seventeen by that point, although Ernie still thought I was older. It was late 1954. And I would get up every morning and head to Sunset Studios. I didn’t know how to act my way out of a paper bag, but I was learning. I was an extra in a couple of romantic comedies. I had one line in a war picture. “And why shouldn’t he?” That was the line. I played a nurse taking care of a wounded soldier. The doctor in the scene playfully accused the soldier of flirting with me, and I said, “And why shouldn’t he?” I said it like a child in a fifth-grade play, with a slight New York accent. Back then, so many of my words were accented. English spoken like a New Yorker. Spanish spoken like an American. When the movie came out, Ernie and I went to see it. Ernie thought it was funny, his little wife with a little line in a movie. I had never made much money before, and now I was making as much as Ernie after he was promoted to key grip. So I asked him if I could pay for acting classes. I’d made him arroz con pollo that night, and I specifically didn’t take my apron off when I brought it up. I wanted him to see me as harmless and domestic. I thought I’d get further if I didn’t threaten him. It grated on my nerves to have to ask him how I could spend my own money. But I didn’t see another choice. “Sure,” he said. “I think it’s a smart thing to do. You'll get better, and who knows, you might even star in a picture one day.” I would star. I wanted to punch his lights out.