sees that Norma refuses to accept that her fame has evaporated, and he learns that her butler Max secretly writes the fan letters she receives. At her New Year's Eve party, he realizes she has fallen in love with him. Joe tries to let her down gently, but Norma slaps him and retreats to her room. Joe visits his friend Artie Green and again meets Betty, who thinks a scene in one of Joe's scripts has potential. When he phones Max to have him pack his things, Max tells him Norma cut her wrists with his razor. Joe returns to Norma and their relationship becomes non-platonic. Norma has Max deliver the edited Salome script to her former director Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount. She starts getting calls from Paramount executive Gordon Cole but refuses to speak to anyone except DeMille. Eventually, she has Max drive her and Joe to Paramount in her 1929 Isotta Fraschini. DeMille welcomes her affectionately and treats her with great respect, tactfully evading her questions about her script. Max learns that Cole merely wants to rent her unusual car for a film. Preparing for her imagined comeback, Norma undergoes rigorous beauty treatments. Joe secretly works nights at Betty's office room, collaborating on an original screenplay. His moonlighting is found out by Max, who reveals that he was a respected film director who discovered Norma, made her a star, and was her first husband. After she divorced him, he abandoned his career to become her servant. Norma discovers a manuscript with Joe's and Betty's names on it and phones Betty, insinuating that Joe is not the man he seems. Joe, overhearing, invites Betty to see for herself. When she arrives, he pretends he is satisfied being a kept man. However, after she tearfully leaves, he packs for a return to his old Ohio newspaper job. He bluntly informs Norma there will be no comeback; her fan mail comes from Max, and she has been forgotten. He disregards Norma's threat to kill herself and the gun she shows him to back it up. As Joe leaves the house, Norma shoots him three times, and he falls into the pool. The flashback ends. The house is filled with police and reporters. Norma, having lost touch with reality amid her arrest, believes the newsreel cameras are there to film Salome. Max and the police play along. Max sets up a