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    Norell, Betty. Betty Norell spends summers with her family in California, but through an exchange with British Equity, she
     winters in repertory at Chichester, the theater started by Laurence Olivier. Writes Betty: “It’s theater just as we’d all
     once hoped it would be. And many of our glorious productions move on to the West End.”
    She read that one over three times. Looks like good old Betty was the only one who was living up to the vow. Doing the kind
     of things they all swore they’d do some day. Making the rest of them seem as if they’d gone the way of the glitz. Sold themselves
     down the old L.A. river. Well, Betty always was the best actress in her class, and the most serious one about her work, she’d
     give her that
.
    O’Malley, Jan. Jan is now in her fifteenth year of playing the part of Maggie Flynn on the daytime drama “My Brightest Day.”
     In 1991, Jan, still single, adopted a baby son, Joey, and tells us in her letters, “As a result, I am finally alive.”
    That one made her close the magazine and fling it across the room. A baby. They gave Jan O’Malley a baby. See whatbeing a star can get you? I lose custody of my kids, and she gets to buy a baby! Look at these women’s lives! Look at mine!
     I graduated from the same school! I was the best one, and now I have nothing to show for it. And they have it all. Money,
     babies, their pictures in
TV Guide
and the paper. And the clothes. That sequined dress Jan O’Malley wore on the Daytime Emmys had to cost at least five thousand
     dollars
.
    She got up and walked over to the window of her apartment, the window with the view of the back alley and the trash cans from
     the building next door. I’m forty-nine years old, she thought. When do I get mine? When do I get to have a decent life? And
     why don’t they help me? The tears of jealousy that had been burning behind her eyes finally came and rolled down her unhappy
     face
.
    I have to get them to help me. I know they will, she thought. If only I can get them on the phone
.

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    E llen’s Donna Karan control-top panty hose were a little too controlling, and the waistband was cutting into that bulging place
     around her middle where her waistline used to be before she ate all those power lunches at Le Dome. She always got so pumped
     up at those meetings, brainstorming new projects, courting the talent, hearing their ideas, that most of the time she gobbled
     her lunch without thinking about what she was eating. Lost her head and devoured all the bread, ordered too much food and
     then ate it too fast.
    Once in the middle of a story pitch, over lunch at the Ivy, she noticed the writer was frowning uncomfortably at her, and
     when she looked down she realized it was because her fork was spearing a roasted red potato she’d been about to remove from
     his plate. Usually by the time the valet brought her BMW to the curb of those restaurants, after the big goodbyes and hyped-up
     promises everyone made to one another, she couldn’t wait to drive away alone so she could reach back, unbutton the back of
     her skirt, and breathe.
    Today’s meeting in the conference room had been going on for four hours, and it threatened to keep going on for afew more. She had to pee, but she didn’t dare get up and go to the bathroom again, since she’d already excused herself twice,
     and not one of the men had left room once.
    As usual, there was more testosterone in the air than at a fraternity party on a Saturday night, and the late-adolescent arbiters
     of America’s taste in film were really going at it.
    “Even Shakespeare couldn’t polish this turd of a script,” Bibberman said.
    “He could,” Schatzman said. “But Ovitz told him he’s not available ‘til July.” A blast of a laugh from Richardson.
    “He’s doing Last Action Hero Two,” he said, which got an even bigger laugh from the boys, and Ellen thought how lucky it was
     for her that she’d once