But her increased consumption of vodka during production did not help, as she admitted: “After Alfred died, I was really alone, and the vodka controlled me. It dulled the morning, the afternoon and the night.” When a writer from Life asked why she drove herself so relentlessly—returning to work in a movie just six weeks after Steele’s death—she was forthright: “I don’t kid myself. I do it to keep from being lonely.” But her anxieties, her
