Carol Yorke the unknown woman.
Letter from an Unknown Woman.
Carol Yorke. Born Pittsburgh 1929. Died of leukemia in New York at thirty-eight. This was her only film and I wrote this in memory of her.
By the time you read this, I may be dead.
That’s how it started. I was eighteen at the time. Imagine. It was 1948, the war was over, I was eighteen and there I was in Hollywood at Universal Studios.
I hadn’t heard of Max Ophuls before, though that may have been because nobody had – nobody I knew anyway. Some Jewish director from Europe – that’s all I knew. Nor had we heard of Louis Jordan who had just arrived in the States. But Fontaine we all knew. Rebecca, Suspicion, This Above All, The Constant Nymph. She was thirty then and looked lovely. How could I have imagined when I watched Nymph in my last year at school that the following year I would be acting alongside her?
It was such a sad story. Joan, back then in the movie, was the unknown woman. Unknown by the man she worshipped all her life. She meets him three times; as a girl, then when she’s about eighteen and she conceives his child, and later as a married woman. He never remembers her. He never remembers. And she loved him always.
Her son, his son, dies as a child (he never knew of the boy) and she too falls ill. And it is from her death bed that she writes to this man who has been the focus for her whole life and yet never knew her. Why? Why do we want to tidy up the loose ends of our lives before we fade away?
If this reaches you, you will know how I became yours when you didn’t know who I was or even that I existed.
I was eighteen and there I was in Hollywood at Universal Studios. I was Marie. I was Joan Fontaine’s childhood friend. We were twelve year old girls together in the Vienna of 1900, built for us on the set of Universal Studios. I was eighteen, Joan was thirty. We were both twelve year olds together.
I saw the film three times – not counting the premier – in the first week after it was released. I was eighteen and my name was there outside the movie theatre. Just four names below Joan and Louis. Imagine.
The film bombed in America, though they liked it in Europe I heard, and I never saw it again. I never again was on a set or attended a premier or saw my name outside a movie house.
Eight years later Joan starred in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. She was thirty-eight; I was twenty six. Twelve years later still and Joan had just finished The Witches and it was my turn to be thirty eight. It was her last movie. It was the Summer of Love in California, flower power and dope, but I was in New York and it was my last summer. Vases of flowers and drugs.
What can you say in a letter to tie up those loose ends? What matters? You will never know the joys and disappointments of my life. You can never know the real me.
I have been dead now for over thirty years but the Letter has been found. Now students study it in film schools. It is "culturally significant". You can see it in film festivals. You can buy it on video. You can see my name in the credits.
I was eighteen and beautiful and on a set with Joan Fontaine. You can see me move. You can hear me talk. I was alive.
If this reaches you, you will know how I became yours when you didn’t know who I was or even that I existed.
My name is Carol Yorke. I was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in 1929. I was once in a Hollywood film and died of leukemia in New York when I was thirty-eight.
If you get the chance to see the film, remember me, the unknown woman. I was Marie.
Bob Ridge-Stearn. email - [email protected]
May 2003.