Hollywood Husbands Read Online Free PDF Page A

career goals rather than their colourful sex-lives. Howard was a walking hard-on. Mannon had looks and humour to lure them between the sheets. Jack had everything.
    One thing Jack never advertised was his famous sister. Howard knew, but kept it to himself. Mannon found out, and thought it was a hoot. ‘Why the secret?’ he asked.
    Jack shrugged. ‘I hardly know her. Who needs the connection?’
    Fortunately, Silver, at the start of her career, had chosen to use her mother’s maiden name, which was Anderson. Jack preferred the more dramatic family surname – Python.
    And so the Three Comers’ careers rose.
    Howard by the age of twenty-six became a fully fledged agent, and at twenty-eight he was hot. Along the way he got married, took out a mortgage on a too-expensive house in Laurel Canyon, purchased his first Mercedes, and gave great meeting.
    Mannon hit the road to big stardom via a centrefold in a popular woman’s magazine. He out-Reynolded Burt Reynolds, starred in several sure-fire hits, bought the requisite beach house and cream Rolls-Royce, and supported a constant stream of beautiful ditsy girlfriends.
    Jack went off to Arizona and worked on a local television news station. After two years he was hosting everything they had to offer. He got an anchor position in Chicago, then Houston. He tried his hand at everything from serious news to fluff pieces, covering politics, film festivals, murders, movies, child molestation. You name it – he knew something about it. In Houston they gave him his own show, The Python Beat . He out-rated everyone and everything in the vicinity. His fan mail was legion. By the time he hit New York to host a nightly network show, Silver was on her way to Hollywood to star in a movie version of one of her Broadway hits. He often wondered if she would make contact to congratulate him. After all, like it or not, they were brother and sister, and maybe they could forget the past and start again.
    He never heard a word from her.
    The movie Silver starred in bombed. It wasn’t just an ordinary bomb, it was a mega-explosion, a nuclear disaster, wiping out all connected with it. Silver fled to Europe, humiliated. Everyone seemed to blame her. As far as she was concerned she was the best thing in it.
    She went through what she now delicately referred to as her ‘nervous breakdown’ period. Actually it was a serious flirtation with booze and drugs which very nearly ended her life – let alone her plummeting career.
    That’s when Jack heard from her. Well, not from her exactly, he got a call from London, and a ten-year-old girl named Heaven. ‘Are you my uncle?’ she demanded. ‘Can I come and stay with you? Mama’s sick. They’ve taken her away.’
    Jack cancelled a week’s interviews and took the Concorde to London. He found Heaven living with a transvestite in Chelsea. Silver was locked up in a mental institution.
    ‘She tried to take her own life, poor dear,’ the transvestite whispered. ‘Can you imagine what it must be like when the looks go, and the talent. I did what I thought was best. Oh, and by the way, she owes me two thousand pounds. I’d like cash, please.’
    Jack took care of everything. He paid the bills, arranged for Silver’s transfer to a private nursing home, hired twenty-four-hour nurses and the best psychiatrists.
    When he visited his sister she stared at him blankly. Without makeup she looked like a pale white shadow, but her eyes burned with heat. ‘How’s George?’ she asked. Forty years old and she was finally asking after her father – the father she had abandoned at sixteen.
    ‘He’s doing okay,’ Jack replied. ‘I’m taking Heaven to stay with him. If that’s all right with you.’
    ‘Yes,’ she replied listlessly, her tapered fingers plucking at a loose strand of hair. ‘I’m finished, you know,’ she continued matter-of-factly. ‘All washed up. In Hollywood they can’t see real talent for shit. All they want is twenty-year-olds with