THE WHOLE TRUTH
  AND NOTHING BUT




  _The Whole Truth
  and Nothing But_

  [Illustration]

  _HEDDA HOPPER
  and
  JAMES BROUGH_


  DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
  GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK




  COPYRIGHT © 1962, 1963 BY HEDDA HOPPER
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




DEDICATION


_To my son, Bill, who never took any sass from his mother and never
gave her any._

I’m told that when you write a book with a title like this, you must
let your readers know something about your life. Well, I was born into
the home of David and Margaret Furry, one of nine children. Seven of
us grew up. Three of us are still here, including my sister Margaret
and brother Edgar, who played a good game of football when he attended
Lafayette quite a while back.

I first saw the light of day in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, a
beautiful suburb of Altoona, which used to live off the Pennsylvania
Railroad and its affiliates. Since railroads have fallen on lean and
hungry years, I don’t know what’s feeding the place today.

My mother, an angel on earth whom I worshiped, named me Elda, from
a story she was reading at the time. Years later, after I’d married
DeWolf Hopper, a numerologist changed Elda to Hedda. My husband,
Wolfie, was much older than my father and had been married four times
before. The wives’ names all sounded pretty much the same: Ella, Ida,
Edna, and Nella. His memory wasn’t as sharp as it had been, and he
couldn’t always remember that I was Elda.

As time went on, this started to irk me, so the numerologist came up
with _Hedda_ Hopper. I asked how much. “Ten dollars.” That’s exactly
how it happened; it changed my whole life. It was the best bargain I
ever made. Wolfie never forgot it, and I’ve never regretted it.

My sister Margaret was my father’s pet. He and I didn’t get on well.
He thought women should be the workers; I believed my brothers should
share the burden. Mother was ill for six years after Margaret’s birth,
and I took on her duties as well as my own, since my older sister Dora
had married. I had to catch a brother by the scruff of the neck to get
any help, but they all helped themselves three times a day to the meals
I prepared. I also did the washing, ironing, cleaning, and helped Dad
in his butcher shop.

When I couldn’t take it any more, I ran away--to an uncle in New York.
I found a stage door that was open, walked in, and got a job in a
chorus, which started a career.

My family now consists of my son Bill, who plays Paul Drake on the
“Perry Mason” TV show without any help from me. When he went off to
war, he’d already attained stature as an actor. On his return--with
a medal for valor which I’ve never seen--not one soul in the
motion-picture industry offered him a job. Hell would have frozen over
before I’d have asked anyone for help for a member of my family.

So Bill went to work selling automobiles for “Madman” Muntz. One day
he woke up to the fact that he was an actor, got himself a part with
director Bill Wellman in _The High and the Mighty_--and asked Wellman
not to tell anybody who his mother was. Bill has a beautiful daughter,
Joan, who’ll be sixteen next birthday.

I don’t like to dwell on death, but when you reach my age (and I’m
still not telling) you realize it’s inevitable. I’ve left instructions
for cremation--no ceremony--with my ashes sent to an undertaking
cousin, Kenton R. Miller, of Martinsburg, Pennsylvania. I’d wanted a
friend to scatter them over the Pacific from a plane, but California
law forbids that. You have to buy a plot.

A salesman from Forest Lawn told me they’d opened a new section and I
could rest in peace next to Mary Pickford for a mere $42,000. “What do
I get for that?” I asked.

“Well, a grave, picket fence, and a golden key for the gate.”

“How do you figure I could use it?”

“Oh, Miss Hopper, that’s for the loved ones who will mourn you.”

That’s when I decided on my cousin.




_One_


I knew Elizabeth Taylor was about to dump Eddie Fisher in favor of
Richard Burton soon after _Cleopatra_ started filming in Rome. Because
in forty years in Hollywood I’ve told the truth--though sometimes only
in part for the sake of shielding someone or other--I wrote the story.
This was in February 1962, one week before the news burst like a bomb
on the world’s front pages.

But Elizabeth, Burton, and I have something in common: Martin Gang,
a topnotch attorney, has us as clients. He saw my column, as usual,
before it appeared, and came on the telephone in a hurry. “Oh, you
couldn’t print that,” he said. “It would be very embarrassing for me to
sue you, since I represent all three.”

I was in Hollywood at the time, not in Rome, so I was wanting the
firsthand information, the personal testimony, which would be important
in self-defense. I deferred to his judgment--and kicked myself for
doing it when the news from the Appian Way began to sizzle.

I’ve known Elizabeth since she was nine years old, innocent and lovely
as a day in spring. I liked, and pitied, her from the start, when her
mother, bursting with ambition, brought her to my house one day to have
her sing for me. Mrs. Sara Taylor was an actress from Iowa who had
appeared just twice on Broadway before she married Francis Taylor, who
worked for his uncle, Howard Young, as a manager of art galleries on
both sides of the Atlantic. When World War II came along, she was in
raptures to find herself with a beautiful young daughter, living right
next door to Hollywood--her husband came to manage the gallery in the
Beverly Hills Hotel.

Sara Taylor had never gotten over Broadway. She wanted to have a
glamorous life again through her child. She had the idea at first
that Elizabeth could be turned into another Deanna Durbin, who had
a glittering name in those days. “Now sing for Miss Hopper,” she
commanded her daughter as soon as our introductions were over and we
were sitting by the baby grand in my living room.

“Do you play the accompaniment?” I asked. “I can’t.”

“No, but she can sing without any. Elizabeth!”

It struck me as a terrifying thing to ask a little child to do for a
stranger. But in a quivering voice, half swooning with fright, this
lovely, shy creature with enormous violet eyes piped her way through
her song. It was one of the most painful ordeals I’ve ever witnessed.

I remembered seeing the four-room cottage--simple to the point where
water had to be heated on the kitchen stove--in which Elizabeth was
born. Little Swallows was its name, and it sat in the woods of her
godfather, Victor Cazelet; his English estate, Great Swifts, was in
Kent. She had a pony there and grew to love animals like her chipmunk,
“Nibbles,” which ran up my bare arm when she brought it around on
a visit one day. I screamed like a banshee, but Elizabeth was as
patronizing as only a schoolgirl can be.

“It’s only a chipmunk; it won’t hurt you,” she promised scornfully.

You couldn’t have wished for a sweeter child. She would certainly have
been happier leading that simple life close to woods and wild things to
be tamed, maybe through all her years. But her mother had been bitten
by the Broadway bug, and few women recover from that.

Once the family was settled in Hollywood, Mrs. Taylor maneuvered the
support of J. Cheaver Cowden, a big stockholder in Universal Pictures,
to get a contract for her daughter at that studio. Elizabeth was there
for one year, but studio chieftains always resent anybody who’s brought
in over their heads through front-office influence. They made sure the
girl got nowhere fast. Her mother tried everything to find her another
job, but it was her father who happened to land her at MGM through a
chance remark he made to producer Sam Marx when they were patrolling
their beat together as fellow air-raid wardens. She was given a bit in
_Lassie Come Home_, then blossomed in _National Velvet_ with Mickey
Rooney.

I remember the day she cinched in her belt, which showed her charms to
perfection, and Mickey turned to me and said: “Why, she is a woman.”

“She is fourteen,” I replied. He started toward her. I caught him by
the seat of the pants. “Lay a hand on her, and you will have to answer
to me. She is a child.”

He looked hard at me and said, “I believe you would beat me up.”

“I sure would.”

Victor Cazelet, on a wartime mission for the British Government to New
York, wanted desperately to get to California to see the godchild he
adored. Though he was a millionaire in his homeland, strict currency
controls meant that he hadn’t any dollars to pay the fare. He was
staying as a house guest of Mrs. Ogden Reid, owner of the New York
_Herald Tribune_ in those days, but he had qualms about borrowing from
her.

When he telephoned me, I had what I thought was a brain wave: “What
about Victor Sassoon? He’s rich as Croesus, and he’s holed up through
the war at the Garden of Allah.” I wanted to call him at that exotic
sanctuary on the Sunset Strip, where the likes of Scott Fitzgerald,
Robert Benchley, and Humphrey Bogart used to frolic before it was
demolished to make way for Bart Lytton’s bank.

“He doesn’t do anything for anybody,” Victor warned me, but I couldn’t
be convinced until I spoke to Sassoon myself. Lend Cazelet dollars just
to visit his godchild? “Certainly not,” growled the old tightwad. “He’s
got plenty of money of his own.”

So I booked Victor into the Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles to give a
lecture to earn his passage money west. He stayed with the Taylors
for a week, which was the last he saw of Elizabeth. Several months
later the Nazis shot down the plane he was in, believing that Winston
Churchill was aboard. They were halfway right. Victor was on a mission
for his friend Winston Churchill.

I remember Elizabeth visiting my house with Jean Simmons when she was
on her way back from the South Seas and the filming there of _Blue
Lagoon_. They sat together on the long settee in the den, bright as
birds and chattering nineteen to the dozen. I thought I had never seen
two more beautiful young girls.

As the years went by, I saw Elizabeth through many romances and four
marriages, starting with Nicky Hilton. He was a boy, and I don’t
believe he’d had too much experience. On their European honeymoon he
left her too much alone, though everyone wanted to meet his beautiful
bride. When she came home, she took a second-story apartment in
Westwood with a back entrance on an alley. Before she had a chance to
sort out what had happened to her, the parade of suitors began--married
men, stars. Did any of them love her and try to help? No. They used
her. I’m making no excuses for her, but I’m trying to be objective.

Then she was put into another picture. She was exhausted from working
too hard and too fast in the rat race on the sound stages. She was
swamped with advice from everybody. She couldn’t tell true from false.
Thus it went from one man to another, one picture to another, until she
fell in love with Michael Wilding, who was twenty years older than she.
Was she unconsciously looking for a strong father? She loved her own,
but he didn’t stand up to his wife.

When I spoke to her about Michael, she exclaimed, “I love him, I love
him, I love him.”

“You don’t know what love is. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
He’s sophisticated, he’s gracious, but I beg you not to marry him.”

She didn’t listen then or later. She drove Wilding into marriage. “I
_am_ too old for you,” he’d argue. “It will never last, Elizabeth.”

“I love you, and you’re going to marry me, that’s all,” she would say.

Then Mike left for England and Liz followed him. From that marriage
came two sons, Michael and Christopher. After each birth she had to go
to work too soon. Before she could face the cameras, she had to take
off pounds in a hurry, just as Judy Garland did, and it weakened her
health.

Mike was given a contract at Metro, her studio, but when it ran out
it wasn’t renewed. During this time she bought two homes, the second
because the first wasn’t big enough for two children, a nurse, and
Mike’s eighty-six-year-old father, whom she brought over from England
to stay with them. The studio paid for both houses, deducting the money
from her salary, which was standard practice.

I knew the marriage was over when Mike started to criticize her in
public--before strangers, before anyone. She never stopped working. She
was a lady, America’s queen of queens, who loved her children and was a
good mother to them.

She played in _Giant_ with Jimmy Dean, whom she respected and loved
like a brother. His senseless death shattered her nerves. Her director,
George Stevens, was mad about her and had been since she made _A Place
in the Sun_ for him.

I saw her on her good days and bad. In _Raintree County_ and _Suddenly,
Last Summer_, she got to know Montgomery Clift and admired him. Then he
raced his car down the hill from her home after a drinking bout with
Wilding there, ran into a telegraph pole, and nearly died. Elizabeth
sped after him, crawled into the wrecked car, and held his head in her
lap until the ambulance arrived. Soaked with blood, she rode to the
hospital with him and stayed long enough to know that he’d live.

Then along came Michael Todd, who taught her an awful lot about love
and living. He was one of the most sophisticated and ruthless men in
show business. He had gone through the jungle of Broadway and come out
with many scars.

After Mike had made _Around the World in Eighty Days_, he wanted
someone to help sell it. Who else but the queen of the movies? I don’t
think he needed her more than she needed him, but they fell in love,
and he taught her everything he knew about sex, good and bad. He
proposed to her in the office MGM gave him at the studio when he was
shooting _Around the World_. He said: “Elizabeth, I love you, and I’m
going to marry you, and from now on you’ll know nobody but me.” Only he
didn’t say “know.”

They were married in Mexico, and they started one of the craziest,
fightingest, most passionate love matches recorded in modern times.
She appeared in the newspapers and magazines every day, every
issue. Every facet of their lives was exploited for the benefit of
love-starved fans. Gold poured into the box office for her pictures and
his _Around the World_.

He bought her the world, or as much of it as he could lay hands on: a
new jewel or a half dozen of them every Saturday; a plane; a villa in
France; dresses by the hundred. Whatever she wanted, she got. He knew
he was spoiling her rotten, but he loved to see her face light up when
she saw his presents. For the Academy Award show where he expected her
to collect an Oscar for _Raintree County_, he bought her a diamond
tiara. “Hasn’t every girl got one?” he asked blandly. He gave her a
Rolls-Royce and a $92,000 diamond ring.

“Don’t spoil her,” I told him time and again. “She’s impossible enough
already.”

In return she gave him a daughter. Her pregnancy was heralded like
Queen Elizabeth’s or Princess Margaret’s. She had an operation that
almost took her life. She has two vertebrae in her back that came from
a bone bank. I didn’t know about that until she told me. The baby
arrived, Liza, a dark-eyed witch who at three months could read your
mind.

Mike used to say: “If you want to be a millionaire, live like one.”
For the London opening of his picture, Elizabeth was draped in a
ruby-and-diamond necklace, with bracelet and earrings to match. It was
an occasion straight out of the Arabian Nights.

In London for all the high jinks, I watched Eddie Fisher’s maneuvers to
pay court to Elizabeth in the enormous suite at the Dorchester where
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Todd were registered. Debbie lingered in the
Fisher suite several floors below. I had missed Elizabeth and Mike like
the dickens when they left Hollywood in advance. They made me promise
I’d be in London with them for the _Around the World_ hullabaloo.

When I checked into the hotel, there was a message from Mike inviting
me to see them. I unpacked, changed, then went on up to the top floor,
which was taken up entirely by their double suite. I happened to walk
first into Liz’s half. There she sat, bulgingly pregnant in a white
lace robe, with her bare feet on a coffee table, drinking Pimm’s No. 1
from a pitcher at her side, with the diamond tiara hanging out of a
pasteboard box.

I left Elizabeth and went into Mike’s suite. He was talking to four of
the most prominent newspaper publishers in London about the opening
of the picture, and they were laying out the seating of the theater,
since royalty would attend. Crawling around the floor were Elizabeth’s
two sons, picking caviar sandwiches off a low table and stuffing
themselves. I gathered the children up, took them back to Liz, and
closed the door firmly. Just then Eddie Fisher came in to pay his
respects to Liz. He was in and out all the time.

Mike was frantically busy with two spectacular shows to put on, on
the screen for his premiere and at Battersea Festival Gardens, where
he threw a champagne-and-fun-fair shindig for two thousand people to
celebrate his picture, scoring a triumph that gave him every front page
in London, except _The Times_.

He gave us plastic raincoats, to save us from the pelting rain, but
we didn’t use them. We slithered in mud and scooped coins by the
fistful from ash cans he’d had filled to provide fares for all the
rides. The Duke of Marlborough stood patiently in the rain with Jock
Whitney, waiting to climb on a carrousel. I rode around on my painted
charger with Ali Khan and Bettina ahead of me and, in back, a gaitered
bishop with his wife. Liz wore a Christian Dior gown in ruby red
chiffon. The Doug Fairbankses were there, Deborah Kerr, financier
Charles Glore. Debbie and Eddie showed up together. And the Duchess
of Argyll, classically understating it, observed as the fun began: “I
hear that this is going to be just an intimate little gathering for a
few friends.” The Gilbert Millers, with Cecil Beaton, left before the
fireworks. It was too damp for them.

It was one of the few times I saw Mr. and Mrs. Fisher side by side.
Every time Mike asked me to the top floor, Eddie would be there
but never Debbie; she might just as well have been sitting home in
Hollywood.

The pitcher of Pimm’s, the white lace robe, bare feet on a coffee
table--and Eddie. That was the pattern. Eddie had latched onto Mike.
“You’re just like a son to me,” Mike used to say, sincerely attached
to the hero from Philadelphia, happy that Liz had company during her
pregnancy.

The first time I’d ever seen Eddie he’d come sauntering into
Romanoff’s, Beverly Hills, for luncheon surrounded by ten characters
who seemed more familiar with punching bags than pianos. “Who in
the name of God is that?” I asked my table mate. “And who are those
terrible-looking men with him?”

“That’s Eddie Fisher; they’re his handlers.”

“Handlers?” said I. “Is he a prize fighter? I’d heard he was a singer.”

I took him to the Fourth of July garden party at the United States
Embassy in London a few days after Mike’s opening. Jock Whitney, our
ambassador then, sent the invitation, and I invited Mike. But he was
too busy and suggested his protégé, who was standing by, as usual. We
were offered a glass of champagne before leaving, but Eddie declined.
“You know I never drink,” he told Mike blandly. “Nothing but Coca-Cola.”

In my rented Rolls we drove to the embassy. Making our way through the
crowds, I introduced Eddie to Jock and Betsy Whitney, who was looking
very frail after a recent operation. She and I sat for a few minutes
chatting, while Eddie hung around. As we walked away he asked: “Who’d
you say those people were?”

“I introduced you to Mr. and Mrs. Jock Whitney.”

“Who are they?”

“He just happens to be our Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.”

“Oh,” said Eddie, “_oh_.”

In one of the marquees put up for the occasion I was offered some
bourbon and water. “I’d like some champagne,” Eddie told the waiter.

“Sorry, sir, but we’re not serving champagne.”

“Then I’ll take a dry martini.”

“I’m afraid we can’t mix drinks--too many people here today, sir. We
can offer you whisky, gin, vodka, or bourbon.”

“Well, then, I’ll have a scotch and soda,” said my nondrinking
companion.

As we left he walked over to the U. S. Air Force Band, which was
playing there, borrowed the baton, and conducted the orchestra. What
some of the London newspapers said the next morning about that bit of
ham-handed showmanship would have driven a more sensitive man into a
knothole.

Back in Hollywood, Liz started on another picture, _Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof_. Then came the spring day when the plane, _Lucky Liz_, dived into
the desert in New Mexico; the end of Mike Todd was almost the end of
her.

She finished the picture like a trouper only weeks later. The following
July I flew with her to New York. We sat up aboard the airliner until
3 A.M. talking about the happiness she had known with Mike. She showed
me his wedding ring, taken from his finger after death. “I’ll wear it
always,” she said. “They’ll have to cut it off my finger before they’ll
get it off my hand.”

I took her to the first party she went to after Mike’s death. Though
Arthur Loew, Jr., the producer, had her children in his home, she then
had a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When I went in, it looked as
though a cyclone had hit her bedroom. Every dress she owned had been
pulled out of the closets and thrown onto tables, chairs, bed or floor.
She was wailing, “What shall I wear?” as soon as I opened the door.

I picked up a red dress. “This.”

“But it’s the first time I’ve been out. I can’t wear red.”

“Wear it,” I said. On the bathroom window sill, by an open window with
no screen on it, I saw the big diamond ring Mike had given her, left
there unnoticed. I took it in to her. “Did you miss this?”

She glanced at her fingers. “Oh yes. My ring. Thanks.”

“You’ve got to watch things like this, Elizabeth.”

There was not much else to be said then and there to do her any good.
We rolled down to Romanoff’s in her Rolls an hour and a half late.
Everybody clustered around her as though she were a queen. I am sure
she believed she was.

That night she’d taken me up to see Liza, who was quartered in a crib
in a room of Arthur Loew’s house no bigger than a closet, with its only
ventilation provided by a skylight that could be pulled open by a thin
chain. The room was sizzling. “Good Lord, Liz,” I cried. “She can’t get
enough air in here.”

“Oh, she’s all right,” her mother said, turning on the light to wake
her. The baby woke silently--I have never heard her cry. She opened
her eyes wide and looked straight into mine. It was impossible to
believe she didn’t know what I was thinking. My own eyes lowered in
self-protection.

Liz spread the word that she was getting ready to go off on a long
vacation in Europe with Mike’s long-time Japanese secretary, Midori
Tsuji. Eddie talked about having business to attend to that kept him in
New York. Debbie Reynolds believed both of them. Through the closeness
of Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth and Debbie had become what
Hollywood called “best friends.” Liz, in fact, looked down her nose at
Debbie and usually referred to her as “that little Girl Scout.”

Debbie and I went together to an “all young” party at Arthur Loew’s
home in a new car Eddie had bought her. Elizabeth was away in New York,
restless, without the remotest idea of what she really wanted. One
thing she was sure of--she didn’t want Arthur Loew much longer, though
she knew he was deeply in love with her.

The only guests at that party who would acknowledge to being
middle-aged without a battle were Milton Berle and myself. The house
rocked to the blare of records by Sammy Davis, Jr. There was nothing
else to play. He had sneaked in early and hidden every other album.
Most of the girls had squeezed themselves into Capri pants as tight as
their skins and a hundred times more brilliant.

“Wonder if they can sit down without splitting ’em back and front?”
said Milton.

“Doubt it,” said I--whoever invented Capri pants had his mind on rape.

I left early with Debbie. “What’s keeping Eddie so long in New York?” I
asked, suspicious nature showing.

“Oh, he’ll be back here tomorrow,” she answered dutifully. Of course he
wasn’t. He took a detour by way of Grossinger’s, that Catskill haven
of rest and romance, where he had married and honeymooned with Debbie.
There, he and Liz had arranged a rendezvous.

Then Liz arrived back in town, and every newspaperman was combing the
thickets trying to find her. Eddie, too, was back home with his wife
and two children, though reporters camping outside their house could
safely assume that the marriage was breaking up, if the shouts they
heard through the walls were any clue. Newsmen looked in vain for Liz
after she whisked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, then ducked out through
the Polo Lounge into a waiting car. I had an idea she would be hiding
out in the house of Kurt Frings. He is her agent, and can take credit
for finishing off the revolution begun by Myron Selznick, a pioneer in
the business of squeezing producers dry and making the stars today’s
rulers of Hollywood. I’d put an earlier call in to her, which she
returned.

“Elizabeth,” I said, “this is Hedda. Level with me, because I shall
find out anyhow. What’s this Eddie Fisher business all about? You’re
being blamed for taking Eddie away from Debbie. What have you got to
say?”

I flapped a hand furiously for Pat, one of my secretaries, who had
picked up the extension, to start taking shorthand fast. Elizabeth’s
voice was innocent as a schoolgirl’s. “It’s a lot of bull. I don’t
go about breaking up marriages. Besides, you can’t break up a happy
marriage. Debbie’s and Eddie’s never has been.”

“I hear you even went to Grossinger’s with him.”

“Sure. We had a divine time.”

“What about Arthur Loew, Jr.? You’ve known he’s been in love with you
for the past six months, and your kids are still living in his house.”

“I can’t help how he feels about me.”

I sighed--I sometimes do. “Well, you can’t hurt Debbie like this
without hurting yourself more, because she loves him.”

“He’s not in love with her and never has been.”

“What do you think Mike would say to this?”

“He and Eddie loved each other,” she said.

“No, you’re wrong. Mike loved Eddie. Eddie never loved anybody but
himself.”

“Well,” she said calmly, “Mike’s dead and I’m alive.”

My voice was rising with my temper. “Let me tell you, my girl, this is
going to hurt you much more than it will Debbie Reynolds. People love
her more than they love you or Eddie Fisher.”

“What am I supposed to do? Ask him to go back to her and try? He can’t.
Now if he did, they’d destroy each other. Well, good luck to her if she
can get him. I’m not taking away anything from her because she never
really had it.”

We went at each other for a minute or two longer before we hung up.
By then, she had said something that sent my anger soaring like a
rocket. I didn’t include that quote in the story I snapped out in five
minutes flat and got it out on the news wires before I could start to
simmer down. I had been very fond of Mike Todd, who had been dead not
quite six months. This is what Elizabeth Taylor had to say that set me
alight: “What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?”

The story ran front page in the Los Angeles _Times_ and many more
newspapers that syndicate Hopper. The Hearst papers, at least in Los
Angeles and San Francisco, paraphrased my scoop and lifted the quotes
without giving me as much as a nod by way of credit.

One of the first people to read it was Elizabeth. She called the next
day, naturally furious, storming over a portrait in print which she
believed pictured her as being as cruel and heartless as a black-widow
spider. I must say I had no regret. If she’d been my own daughter, I’d
have done it. Without a sense of integrity you can’t sleep nights.

“Of course, I didn’t think you’d print it,” she said. “You betrayed
me.”

“You didn’t say it was off the record,” I answered. “And it had to be
printed.”

That was the last time we spoke to each other for a year. At the office
the mail started arriving in stacks, all in Debbie’s favor.

Another call came that day from Debbie. She hadn’t seen a newspaper,
she said. “You can’t stick your head in the sand,” said I.

Debbie, who is as shrewd as she is pretty, knew she had been cheated.
She needed no prodding to be frank. “Obviously, the man loved me. We
had lots of problems the first year and a half we were married. We went
to a marriage counselor for advice. We both wanted to make it work.
When he left for New York, he kissed me good-by and we were very close.
It didn’t mean anything that my husband had to go to New York on a
business trip. I had no reason to be suspicious.”

It wasn’t the moment to tell her once again that Eddie had never
wanted to marry her. In my book, the little baritone from Philadelphia
wanted a reputation as a great lover. He preened in the publicity that
marrying her brought him, but I believe she forced that marriage. His
Svengali, Milton Blackstone, didn’t want it--the men who steer any
entertainer’s career always scheme to keep him single because a wife is
an interfering nuisance in their plans. After Debbie had received an
engagement ring, plus barrel loads of publicity, Eddie answered a call
to Grossinger’s. A friend advised Debbie: “Pack your wedding gown and
trousseau. Get on a plane quietly and go after him, then he’ll marry
you.” She accepted the advice, and Eddie accepted her. At least she got
what she wanted, then.

The storms continued to blow for months. Liz complained to one
reporter, Joe Hyams, that I had “betrayed” her, and swore for the
dozenth time that she wanted to quit Hollywood, though work for the
time being was “therapeutic”--and her pay was rocketing up toward a
million dollars a picture. Debbie applied for a divorce, but that
wasn’t fast enough for Eddie. He got a quick end to their marriage in
Las Vegas. Liz and he were married in that paradise of syndicates and
slot machines on May 12, 1959, after she had embraced his religion and
dragged her parents out of the background to lend a look of dignity to
the proceedings.

Elizabeth’s hatred lasted for a year. But when she had packed to leave
for England and the first disastrous attempt to make _Cleopatra_, she
called. “Hedda, don’t you think we ought to be friends again?”

“Yes, I should like that.”

“So should I. Let’s get together as soon as I’m back.”

Before she returned, she had nearly died in London with the lining of
her brain inflamed by an infected tooth. The first of the millions that
Twentieth Century-Fox was going to pour down the drain had vanished
in _Cleopatra_. But the women of America, who’d been ready to all but
stone her, forgave everything because of her illness. She had been back
in town forty-eight hours when the telephone rang: “Will you come over,
Hedda?”

“I’d love to. Will Liza be there? I’m anxious to see her.”

Before I left, I wrapped a gift Mike had given me one Christmas along
with other things--a music box that played the theme of _Around the
World_. I took a present for each of the two boys, too. Liz and her
sons were drawing pictures for each other when I arrived. The children
accepted their gifts graciously, then Liza wound her box, the first
she’d ever seen.

After she had played the tinkling little tune over and over, she
gravely allowed each brother one turn apiece. Then she wound it again
and danced with each of them around the room. At last it was my turn.
We held hands tight and waltzed until everyone but Liza was completely
exhausted. But she still went on winding and winding the key to play
the tune again.

Liz looked pale, quite different from the woman I’d last seen. “You
won’t know me,” she said. “I came so near death I’m just thankful to be
alive. I lie out in the sun, listen to the birds sing, look at the blue
sky, and say: ‘Thank God for letting me live.’”

I believed her. She felt in that mood that day. Later, inevitably, we
talked about the telephone call she had made one shattering September
morning in 1958 and how she was “betrayed.”

“I considered you my second mother,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I
loved you better than I loved my mother. You were kinder to me than she
was. That you could do what you did nearly killed me.”

“That one line you spoke did it, Liz. I couldn’t take it. That was why
it was done.”

We had several visits after that before I went on a visit to New York
and she whirled off on a trip to Moscow. When we were both back in
Hollywood again, she was another creature entirely, out most nights
instead of resting and restoring herself to health for her next stab at
_Cleopatra_, in Rome this time.

Champagne was ruled out during her convalescence, so she drank beer.
She’d send her chauffeur down to Dave Chasen’s restaurant to pick up
two quarts of chile, which she’d eat to accompany the beer. When she
left for Italy, she was too fat to fit any of her costumes. Her doctor
had to be flown out from Hollywood to put her on a crash diet so she
could be photographed as the Serpent of the Nile in the most balled-up
motion-picture production of all time.

She won her Academy Award not for _Butterfield 8_ but for nearly dying.
And her studio joined in by putting on a terrific public-relations
campaign against Debbie--with planted stories in fan magazines and
loaded interviews for the newspapers--to clinch sympathy for Liz.

       *       *       *       *       *

She has become Cleopatra to the life now, and the world is her oyster.
What she wants, she takes, come hell or high water--and this includes
Richard Burton. In the huge Roman villa which she made her home during
_Cleopatra’s_ making, she reigned like an empress, reclining on a
chaise, summoning Eddie to bring guests up to her for an audience. The
honored guest would sit on one side of her with Eddie on the other;
Liz would delicately place a hand on her breast before she spoke a
regal word of greeting.

In the old days the scandal of the past four years would have killed
her professionally. In these changed times it seems only to help her
reputation. The million dollars and more which her _Cleopatra_ contract
gave her was doled out, at her insistence, in installments on every
morning of shooting. She consented to work only after the day’s check
for $9000, drawn on a United States bank, lay snugly in her hand. While
he lasted, Eddie drew $1500 a week for getting his wife to the set
on time. Yet she spends money faster than she makes it. If Twentieth
Century-Fox had gotten ruined, putting more than $35,000,000 into the
picture before there was any hope of completing it, she didn’t give a
damn.

At Liz’s say-so, Eddie had adopted Liza Todd, though Michael Wilding
wouldn’t let him take over the two boys. Even after he knew what
was going on in Rome, Eddie hung on. Allegedly, he’s the one who
told Richard Burton’s wife, Sybil, the truth and drew the Welshman’s
question: “Now why did you have to go and spoil everything?”

Eddie wasn’t his smiling self when he flew to Rome to try to quash the
news of the romance. Liz was in the hospital again; the newspapers said
“food poisoning,” but the real diagnosis was too many sleeping pills.
Even after he landed back in New York, he was still declaring the
marriage to be a happy one--until Liz spelled it out for him in three
words over the telephone.

At last she finished the picture and gave herself the asp, and I
predict that Burton will turn his back on her, after every woman in the
world blamed her once again for taking somebody else’s husband. But
Burton didn’t have to submit in the first place.

Can you picture him passing up Liz and simultaneously collecting more
publicity than ever Mark Antony and Caesar combined received in their
prime? He started the romance with Liz just as Eddie did in his day,
when he was sitting at her feet before Mike Todd was dead.

Men are supposed to be the stronger sex. I do not condone what Liz has
done. I do condemn these fellows who followed her around like puppy
dogs. They took her favors as long as she’d give, then each and every
one of them wanted more.

What’s left for Liz but to go on repeating her mistakes? What’s to
become of her? I’m not a prophet, but I have a terrible suspicion.




_Two_


Right from the beginning, when Hollywood was a sleepy, neighborly
village of white frame bungalows and dusty roads cutting through the
orange groves, every top-rank woman star has been fated to regard
herself as Queen of the Movies in person. It’s as invariable and
inevitable as the law of gravity or income taxes, so you can’t blame
them for it. When an irresistible force, which is flattery, meets
a readily movable object, which is any pretty girl who finds she’s
clicked, then she starts to behave as though draped permanently in
sable with a crown perched on her head.

She is mobbed by crowds, wooed by the world, and flattered without
shame or mercy from the time she puts her dainty feet in the front
gates of the studio in the morning to the time she leaves at night.
She’s surrounded by her own special set of courtiers, all busy
lubricating her ego--hairdresser, make-up man, script girl, wardrobe
girl, still photographer, press agent, drama coach, and interviewers.

Liz Taylor is only one more deluded figure in the scintillating
succession that stretches back to Pola Negri, who liked to go walking
with a leopard on a golden chain, and Gloria Swanson, who rode from her
dressing room to the set in a wheelchair pushed by a Negro boy. But I
once discovered that while movie queens aim to live like royalty, there
was one young and adorable princess who enjoyed living it up, at least
for a day, like the movie stars.

In London soon after V-E day I received an invitation to go down to
Elstree to meet Queen Elizabeth, as she is now known, and Princess
Margaret. They were going to watch the filming of Charles Dickens’
_Nicholas Nickleby_, which starred Cedric Hardwicke. I looked forward
to seeing the princesses, but I admitted to a slight bewilderment about
what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to do it. But there
were daily columns I had to write, and the day before the visit I was
having tea in the Savoy Hotel with Jean Simmons and her mother.

Jean, a schoolgirl of sixteen, had heard that day that she’d been given
the role of a seductive native girl in _Black Narcissus_, with Deborah
Kerr, and her head was spinning like a top. “I simply can’t believe
it,” she was gasping. “I simply don’t believe it’s true,” when Noël
Coward came in. Noël, a friend for years, was reassuring. “I know the
part,” he told her, “and you’ll be darling in it.”

“Oh, I wonder,” she persisted. “I don’t think I’m old enough.”

Noël turned blandly firm. “My dear, if they chose you, they know you
can do it. So do it. You’re going to be absolutely wonderful, so please
don’t say another word.”

I needed some of his confidence for my own venture next day. I told him
about the invitation. “What do I do when I meet the princesses?”

“You say ‘ma’am’ and you curtsy,” said Noël with all the authority of a
prince of royal blood.

“‘Ma’am’? I’m old enough to be their grandmother, and I’ve never
curtsied in my life.”

“It’s time to learn then,” he said. “Here, I’ll show you. Watch me,
and then you try.” He got up and, with Jean and her mother watching
goggle-eyed, proceeded to stick back his left foot, flex his knees,
and bow his head as gracefully as a dowager duchess. The next day when
I was introduced, I remembered the “ma’am” but decided that maybe I
hadn’t had as much practice as Noël, so I’d better not risk the curtsy.

Strict and stringent food rationing was in force in Britain, yet
everybody on the set had contributed ration coupons for butter,
meat, eggs, and every conceivable delicacy so that the young
visitors--Elizabeth was nineteen, Margaret fifteen--could be served
high tea.

I have never seen two girls dig into food the way they did. You could
swear they hadn’t had a decent meal in years. There was cold lobster
with mayonnaise, white-meat sandwiches of chicken, little French
pastries, strawberries big as golf balls. The princesses tucked into
the lot.

Elizabeth was already very regal and dignified, but Margaret was not
that way at all. Through the windows, we could see a mob of people
waiting outside the studio’s big iron entrance gates. “Just look at
those people out there,” I said. “Don’t you get tired of crowds?”

“Oh, you’ve no idea,” Margaret said. “This goes on every day. You know,
because people have to be able to see us, we can wear only white, pink,
or baby blue. And I’m so sick of baby blue and pink. I can never put on
anything like black, for instance.” She was obviously itching to try
dressing like a _femme fatale_.

“It’s exactly like being a movie star,” I said.

“Do movie stars have to go through this in the same way?”

“Every day. They have mobs around them wherever they go.”

She babbled on like a brook, ignoring the icy looks her sister flashed
her across the table. “We’ve never been to a motion-picture studio
before, and I think it’s fascinating. I do hope we’ll be allowed to
come again.” She helped herself to another strawberry. “And this
tea--delicious! Do they have food like this in the studio every day?”

I explained as tactfully as possible that everyone had donated ration
cards. “They did?” exclaimed the princess. “Well, I don’t care. It was
wonderful, and I’m glad I ate everything.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The day I’d arrived in London for my first trip stays fixed in my
memory because every church bell in town was pealing. Like the ham
actress I was then--and still am--I wondered if they were ringing for
me. I wasn’t quite correct. It happened to be the day Queen Elizabeth
was born. I thought about it when I went back to London again as a
newspaperwoman covering her coronation. Seeing the standards emblazoned
with “E.R.,” for Elizabeth Regina, that covered London, an American
acquaintance of mine, a Democrat to the hilt, remarked appreciatively:
“I didn’t realize they were so fond of Eleanor Roosevelt over here.”

At the Savoy that coronation evening I got a telephone call from
Reuter’s. The New York _Daily News_ was asking for a special story on
my reactions to the gilt and glamour of London town. “Certainly,” said
I. “Get your typewriter ready.”

“Don’t you want to think about it?”

“No, I don’t have to think. I just want to tell it as I saw it.”
So I talked about the crowds who had slept in the streets, about
the pomp and pageantry of the greatest show since P. T. Barnum. “It
makes President Eisenhower’s inauguration,” I judged--and I’d been
there--“seem like sending off your impoverished relations to the
poorhouse.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Hollywood’s own candidate for ermine, Her Serene Highness Princess
Grace, was much more stiff and starchy than Her Royal Highness
Princess Margaret, at least for the first five years after marriage
to Prince Rainier. Her husband was struck well-nigh speechless by all
the publicity that went with the wedding. He took a back seat while
the daughter of a millionaire bricklayer from Philadelphia reigned as
regally as Queen Victoria in the comic-opera palace at Monaco, with its
toy-soldier guards parading solemnly outside like bit players in an old
Mack Sennet movie. Any moment I expected a fat tenor to come out on the
balcony and start singing.

In Monaco I saw Grace succeed in cooling off in one cold spell Noël
Coward, Somerset Maugham, and an assorted press corps from England,
Europe, and the United States. We were all there to mark the Monte
Carlo premiere of _Kings Go Forth_ with Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis,
and Natalie Wood, which its producers had decided needed every line of
publicity it could get, since it was no great shakes as a picture.

Frank leveled the toy kingdom like a Kansas tornado. At the movie
opening, Grace, in a simple pale pink dress, couldn’t pull her eyes
off him, while he tore up “The Road to Mandalay” and laid it down
again. A champagne supper was served afterward with the Serenities
in attendance. At the top table, where they sat among a gaggle of
celebrities, there were three empty places. Noël Coward had come from
the Riviera with Somerset Maugham, whom he’d been visiting. But Coward
and Maugham found themselves consigned to sit alone at a side table,
out of Her Serenity’s range.

Grace and Rainier danced until three in the morning. While I was taking
a turn around the floor with Jim Bacon of the Associated Press, the
prince and I felt our bumpers collide, and he promptly marched off the
floor. _Lèse majesté_, no doubt.

Newsmen who’d been flown in for the opening fared worse than Noël.
Not a one was asked into the palace for as much as a cup of tea or a
handshake. Little starlets you never heard of were nervously practicing
curtsies in the hotel lobby, but they didn’t get close enough to Grace
to try them out.

A word or two about the peculiar hospitality you could expect in
Monaco, which is a beautiful spot but with its old glamour lost
forever, appeared in my column some days later.

The next time around, three years afterward, Grace made amends,
proving that a little of the column medicine can do a lot of good. I
was amazed to be invited by Rainier and his princess to attend the
opening of a new hotel, the Son Vida, nestled on a hilltop outside of
Palma de Mallorca. This time, she couldn’t have exercised more charm.
She arrived off Aristotle Onassis’ yacht dressed in white, carrying a
lavender parasol, looking like a billion, though I detected a bit of
restlessness in her, as if the gilt on the gingerbread was losing its
luster.

Rainier was a different man, too, outgoing and chatty where he’d been
withdrawn and shy. He had some money invested in the place, along with
Charles (_Seventh Heaven_) Farrell, of the Palm Springs Racquet Club.
I told the prince what I’d heard from Howell Conant, the New York
photographer who had been taking pictures of the Serenities since they
were engaged: “A lot of people around the palace like Rainier almost
more than Grace now.” The prince loved it. We had a high old time
chuckling over that.

He told me about their children, who were entertained aboard the train
from Monaco by Winston Churchill, whom four-year-old Caroline insisted
on calling “Mussolini,” which Britain’s grand old man took as an
enormous joke.

In return I passed along Bob Considine’s account of how he covered
the wedding of Grace and Rainier in Monte Carlo. Each group of
reporters was assigned a spot to work in; Bob’s crowd drew a showroom
for bathroom equipment. “I found it difficult,” he told me, “to peer
across a bidet at Dorothy Kilgallen and write romantically of love and
marriage.”

Grace badly wanted to latch onto some favorable publicity again.
Throughout her engagement to Rainier she’d had her own publicity agent
to advise her. Rupert Allen, who had taste plus tact, had done the
same job for her while she was at MGM. He left the studio for the
engagement, sailed with her when she went to Monaco, and stayed on at
the palace. Last spring her purpose, which may have stuck in the back
of her mind all along, showed itself: She signed to work for Alfred
Hitchcock, then canceled out because the people of Monaco didn’t like
the idea. I guess when you’ve been a queen, if only in Hollywood, you
find it hard to believe it’s promotion to play a princess, even in
Monaco.

Thanks to her own shrewd sense, or to sound advice from outside,
Grace’s timing was good. The people who go to movies still wanted to
see her. So on top of satisfying her own ego, she could command so much
money from Hitchcock that she finally couldn’t turn him down. She has
inherited some of her father’s respect for a dollar.

I believe Grace caught the movie-making bug again after Jacqueline
Kennedy went off without John F. on her triumphant trip to India and
Pakistan. After all, if a great lady who can’t match Grace for beauty
can score a hit, why shouldn’t Grace get back into the limelight? I’d
bet that if Jackie had the chance to star in a picture, she’d take it.
Wouldn’t you if you were in her shoes?

With one possible exception, there’s been a streak of exhibitionism a
mile wide in every actress I’ve known, starting with Ethel Barrymore,
who set my soul and ambition on fire when I saw her play in _Captain
Jinks of the Horse Marines_. The possible exception is Garbo, who laid
down an iron rule that she would work only on a closely screened set,
and she’d freeze in her tracks the moment her privacy was invaded,
especially if her boss at MGM, Louis B. Mayer, dared intrude with
bankers or visitors from New York.

A movie queen has to be a born show-off before she wants to act, and
when she finds she can get paid for it too, her joy is unconfined.
Most of the breed don’t hesitate for a second if today’s producers of
soiled sex on celluloid call on them to do a Bardot, without benefit of
bath towel. I’m sure Liz enjoyed doing her bathe-in-the-nude sequence
for _Cleopatra_. Jean Simmons didn’t object to playing stripped to the
waist in one _Spartacus_ scene that Kirk Douglas ordered to be shot in
a spiced-up version for European distribution. And those calendar poses
didn’t bother Marilyn Monroe. “I was hungry,” she explained, wide-eyed,
when I asked her once why she’d sat for them.

Even Garbo had some odd quirks when the cameras stopped rolling. She
used to go regularly to the house of some friends who had a big,
secluded pool. Before she arrived, all the servants would be dismissed,
and her host and hostess would take themselves off for an hour or so,
too. Then Garbo undressed and, naked as a jay bird except for a floppy
hat, swam gravely round and round in the water. Katharine Hepburn is
another home nudist, presumably finding it better than air conditioning
for keeping cool in summer. After all, it’s nature’s way. Didn’t we all
come into the world stripped to the pelt?

Under stress, the deep-down desire to show themselves to an audience
can take strange turns. Once in front of the crowded long bar of the
Knickerbocker Hotel, an actress whose career had run into trouble--she
was happily remarried in 1958--began to strip. This was Hollywood,
remember, so hot-eyed stares were the only help she got from anybody
in the room. When she was down to her shoes and stockings, and the
rest of her clothes lay discarded on the barroom floor, she gave a
shriek and ran down the front steps out onto Ivar Avenue. Then at last
somebody remembered to telephone the police.

More recently an agent from one of the big television studios called
at the hotel apartment of a much-married woman whose name still spells
glamour to any serviceman of World War II. His mission was to sound her
out about doing a TV show. She greeted him in a bathrobe and asked him
to run the hot water for her before they talked business. She locked
the outside door behind him. The following morning his conscience began
to stir. “I’d better leave now,” he said. “The office will think I
died.”

“You can’t go,” she cried. “I’m so lonely.” She kept him there three
days.

The town has always been full of lonely, frustrated women who have let
their few years of basking in the sun as movie queens blind them to
reality forever. You can start with Mary Pickford, who used to talk a
blue streak about a wonderful girl protégé whom she said she was going
to make over into a movie sensation. I had to try to disillusion her.
“You’re fooling yourself, Mary. What you should do is hire a press
agent. All you really want is to keep your name alive.”

Gloria Swanson is another who can’t see straight today where her career
as an actress is concerned. As a businesswoman in the dress industry
she’s not nearly as sharp as Joseph P. Kennedy was when he was a movie
tycoon and she was his reigning queen. She’d made a hit in _Sunset
Boulevard_ and her reputation was on the rise again when I suggested
she might do a movie version, written by Frances Marion, of Francis
Parkinson Keyes’ _Dinner at Antoine’s_. Not a chance. “I couldn’t
possibly play the mother of an eighteen-year-old daughter,” she
snapped. “The part’s too old for me.” At the time, she was the mother
of two daughters and a son, and she had two grandchildren.

Most of the unhappy ones have no husbands. One unfailing cause of that
brand of misery is lack of female charity. They turn their backs on
the facts of life and refuse to forgive their husbands a single act of
infidelity--I believe every man married to a movie queen deserves one
break in that department.

Barbara Stanwyck lives in a two-story mansion with her only company
an elderly maid, the books she reads by the score, and the television
set which hypnotizes her into watching old movies into all hours of
the night. You don’t see her around town much any more because people
forget to ask her down from the ivory tower in which she’s locked
herself. When you do invite her out, there are roses from her the next
day and thank-you notes so pathetically grateful they’d melt a stone.

Up to the day in 1951 that she divorced Robert Taylor, she was one of
the happiest women alive. He was such a handsome slice of man, highly
desirable, a full-size star. When he went to Rome for eleven months to
make _Quo Vadis_ with Deborah Kerr, women everywhere mobbed him. But
Barbara loved to act. The Taylors didn’t need the money, but she worked
all the time, going straight from one picture into another, instead of
taking time out to join her husband in Italy.

When he arrived home after nearly a year, Barbara disposed of him,
while he found a much younger bride, Ursula Thiess. She has now had two
children by him, although now they’re having difficulty with an older
child by a former husband.

At fifty-five, Barbara remains a talented actress and a mighty
attractive woman, though she gets thinner all the time. She’s kept her
appetite for work, but suitable parts aren’t easy to find--I don’t rate
her last role as a Lesbian madam of a New Orleans brothel in _A Walk on
the Wild Side_ as worthy of her. I have begged her to kiss Hollywood
good-by and go to Europe. “There’s nothing for you here. I guarantee
you wouldn’t be over there twenty-four hours without having at least
two offers for pictures.”

But Barbara stays on; with her maid, her books, and Helen Ferguson, her
press agent and one of her closest friends.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dinah Shore used to say, in one of those standard quotes that queens
come up with when life is sunny, “My family means more to me than
anything in the world--nothing will ever interfere with that.” Then
George Montgomery, her husband went off to work on his own, and
seventeen years and 362 days of a good marriage went out the window.

Her place of purgatory now is an oversized mansion, built on a $75,000
lot, near that of Richard Nixon. There she sits in melancholy, alone
much of the time, by the pool, which is equipped with a waterfall; or
perhaps in the living room, which is proportioned somewhat like Grand
Central Station. It’s a great spot for brooding, but nevertheless she
kept on singing on her shows “It’s Great to Have a Man Around the
House.”

On the face of it, this used to be a couple that could never be
divided. Certainly her reputation overshadowed George’s, a situation
which usually creates continual problems. It’s hard on a husband when
his house is invaded most nights by writers and directors who’ve come
to discuss the new picture or new TV show with his wife. He has to sit
and listen to them fuss over her with: “Now, darling, you’re looking a
little tired and you have to work tomorrow, so you’d better take a pill
and go to bed early to catch up on your beauty sleep.”

George, however, didn’t resent Dinah’s success. Though he never quite
made film stardom and his own Western series died young on TV, he had
his furniture factory, where he worked alongside his employees, and he
went on making low-budget pictures. He steered clear of the parasitic
life so many husbands enjoy when the woman is combination breadwinner,
wife, mother, and working head of the family.

When the husband carries the title of “agent” in Hollywood, it’s a safe
bet that he knows next to nothing about the business and is living off
his wife. It’s also odds that he has a mistress to while away those
long afternoons when he isn’t at the race track or propping up a bar.
What can the wife do about it? If she wants to keep her home and family
together in some semblance of order, she’s powerless. Daddy must be
allowed to continue as “agent,” even if it ruins her.

When you’re a wife as well as an actress, you have to think of your
husband, too, not only about your career. Maybe Dinah didn’t think hard
enough. George, who in the past had given up several jobs to travel
with her, went to the Philippines alone to make a picture and was gone
three months. While he was away, she heard rumors that he was seeing a
great deal of his leading woman. He hadn’t been back in Hollywood long
before she released the announcement that she was filing for divorce.

Only minutes after she’d finally decided on that step, she went on the
air with no detectable strain showing as she sang and clowned in her TV
show.

She is a forty-five-year-old woman with two children still in school.
She is up to her ears in work most of the time. The fact that good
men don’t grow on trees is something most women don’t realize until
it’s too late. Chances are that a new husband would be second-rate by
comparison with George. Could be that thought has struck home with
Dinah, too.

       *       *       *       *       *

Inside the blonde head of tragedy’s child, Marilyn Monroe, fame and
misery were mixed up like tangled skeins of knitting wool. She was
an unsophisticated, overly trusting creature whose career was always
professionally and emotionally complicated beyond her power to control
it. She was used by so many people.

She let herself be surrounded by such a clutch of nudgers, prodders,
counselors, and advisers that the poor child developed an inferiority
complex so ruinous that she was terrified to walk onto any movie set
for stark fear she’d fluff a line or miss a cue. She never did have
confidence in herself. Toward the end of her life, she couldn’t sit and
talk to you without her fingers twisting together like live bait in a
jar.

That wasn’t surprising in light of the words of wisdom her confidantes
poured into her ears: “You cannot worry about unhappiness. There is no
such thing as a happy artist. They develop understanding of things that
other people don’t understand.”

Marilyn wasn’t visibly suffering from anything the night she stopped
off at my house for a last-minute talk on her way to Los Angeles
Airport and New York for _The Seven Year Itch_. Her husband of that
era, and one of the real men in her life, Joe DiMaggio, drove her over,
but he wouldn’t come in. “I’ll knock on the door when it’s time to go,”
said Joe, whom I’d known long before Marilyn.

She was wearing beige--beige fur collar on her beige coat, beige dress,
beige hair. “You look absolutely divine,” said I. “Are you beige all
over?”

She had started to lift her dress before she murmured: “Oh, Hedda,
that’s _vulgar_.”

“Just thought I’d ask.”

I was a booster of Marilyn’s as far back as _All About Eve_, when
she came on for a few minutes with George Sanders and glowed like
the harvest moon. She had an extraordinary power of lighting up the
whole screen. No one in my memory hypnotized the camera as she did.
In her brain and body, the distinctions between woman and actress
had edges sharp as razor blades. Off camera, she was a nervous,
amazingly fair-skinned creature almost beside herself with concern
about her roles, driven to seek relief in vodka, champagne, sleeping
pills--anything to blunt the pain of her existence. When the camera
rolled, everything was as different as night from day. Then she became
an actress using her eyes, her hands, every muscle in her body to
court and conquer the camera as though it were her lover, whom she
simultaneously dominated and was dominated by, adored and feared.

She was the original Cinderella of our times, the slavey who’d washed
dishes, swept floors, minded babies, been pushed around from one foster
home to another without anybody caring for or loving her. But she was
always as honest about her whole ugly past as an ambitious actress can
be who smells good copy in her reminiscences. She was simultaneously
lovely and pathetic most of the time, but she kept a sense of humor. I
asked her once about a man alleged to be looming large in her life. “Is
this a serious romance?” was the question.

“Say we’re friendly,” she said, “and put that ‘friendly’ in quotes.”

The girl who was rated as the sex goddess supreme used to fight tooth
and nail to hang onto the career which she was afraid might slip away
from her at any moment. But there was an air of impregnable innocence
about her in those calendar pictures. The innocence showed, too, in
shots very much like them that her first husband used to carry around
when he worked in an aircraft plant in World War II, to flash them in
front of his workmates. One of the workmates was Robert Mitchum.

In the first great picture she made, _The Seven Year Itch_, the same
charm of ignorance let her spout double-meaning lines as though she
didn’t know what they implied. She had that superb director Billy
Wilder telling her what to do. “You had the innocence of a baby,” I
told her. “We knew the words were naughty, but we didn’t think you did.”

“I didn’t know?” she said, bewildered. “But I have always known.”

Soon after that picture, she lost the little-girl quality. She was
surrounded by people all telling her how to act. They worked up her
dissatisfaction with her studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. It’s an old
pitch that sycophants make to a star: “You don’t need your studio.
You’re bigger than they are. You can have your own production company.”
She believed it. Basically simple women like Marilyn, who rise as fast
as she did, are pushovers for this kind of mad propaganda.

A leading figure in her new circle was Milton Greene, the New York
photographer who set up Marilyn as a one-woman corporation to do battle
with her studio, meantime driving himself close to bankruptcy. Milton
could take credit for getting her on Ed Murrow’s “Person To Person”
television program. After that painful evening I asked her: “How could
you possibly go on TV looking like that?”

“Everybody said I looked good.”

“Everybody lied then. You were a mess. You don’t look well in skirts
and heavy sweaters because you’re too big in the bust. On that show you
should have been the glamour girl you always are. But the glamorous one
was Mrs. Milton Greene. This kind of thing will destroy you.”

She spent part of the time during those rebellious days living in
Connecticut with the Greenes, the rest in a three-room suite at the
Waldorf Towers. She told me about the joys of adventuring around New
York in dark glasses and turban with built-in black curls, going off on
a cops-and-robbers round of cafes, theaters, the Metropolitan Museum.
Meantime stupid rumors circulated that she was being kept in fantastic
luxury by one millionaire or another, but nobody bothered to deny them.

“Didn’t it occur to you,” I wrote, “that great stars pursue their
careers in conventional fashion, accepting the experienced judgment of
good producers?... How did you rationalize the idea that a photographer
who’d had no experience in making theatrical pictures could do better
by you than the men who had made you famous?”

Then along came Arthur Miller, a writer held in awe by most of
Hollywood, who ended a fifteen-year-old marriage to marry her. They
were deeply in love and happy at first. When that ended, she came
and sipped a martini in my home. He was, she said, “a charming and
wonderful man--a great writer.” And Joe DiMaggio? “A good friend.” I
believe Miller loved her, though it was Joe who turned up trumps in the
end when she lay dead and deserted in Westwood Village Mortuary. One
other man loved her, too--Miller’s father, Isadore.

She said: “I have only married for love and happiness. Except perhaps
my first one, but let’s don’t discuss that ever.... I still love
everybody a little that I ever loved.” And about being the ex-Mrs.
Miller? “When you put so much into a marriage and have it end, you feel
something has died--and it has. But it didn’t die abruptly. ‘Died’
isn’t the right word for me,” she said when we talked. But I think she
was already dying inside her heart.

She went into _Let’s Make Love_,--it was a terrible script, in her
opinion--out of shape physically and mentally. As her leading man, she
had Yves Montand, who was Lucky Pierre himself in getting the role,
being choice number seven after Yul Brynner, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant,
Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, and Jimmy Stewart had all turned down
the part. Montand had performed beautifully in his own one-man theater
show, though three quarters of his American audiences obviously hadn’t
the least idea what he was talking about, since it was all in French.
Opposite Marilyn, he thought he had only a small part after Arthur
Miller had been asked to write additional dialogue for the heroine.

During shooting I detected that something strange was happening to
Mrs. Arthur Miller, who hadn’t announced yet that she was going to get
a divorce. She was falling hard for this Frenchman with the carefully
polished charm. Between the end of that picture and the start of her
next, _The Misfits_, the stories spread that he would divorce his wife,
Simone Signoret. M. Montand scored high in the publicity sweepstakes.
The gossip spread all over town, with some help from the Twentieth
Century-Fox promotion department and no hindrance from himself.

Before the prophetically titled _Misfits_ was finished, she became so
ill she was flown in from Reno and put into the Good Samaritan Hospital
for a week’s rest. She couldn’t even reach Montand on the telephone,
and she called him repeatedly, day after day.

The night before he left to rejoin his wife in Paris, I received a tip
that he could be found in a certain bungalow in the grounds of Beverly
Hills Hotel. “Just knock on the door; he’ll let you in.”

I did precisely that. He was astonished to see who had rapped on
his door, but I was invited in. The telephone started to ring almost
immediately. He wouldn’t accept the call. “I won’t talk to her,” he
told the switchboard operator.

“Why not?” said I. “You’ll probably never see her again. Go on. Speak
to her.” But he couldn’t be persuaded. He suggested a drink, and I
offered to mix them. I stirred up one hell of a martini to get him
talking.

“You deliberately made love to this girl. You knew she wasn’t
sophisticated. Was that right?”

“Had Marilyn been sophisticated, none of this ever would have happened.
I did everything I could for her when I realized that mine was a very
small part. The only thing that could stand out in my performance were
my love scenes. So, naturally, I did everything I could to make them
good.”

I’m sure that he knew what he was saying no more than half the time.
She was “an enchanting child” and “a simple girl without any guile.” He
said: “Perhaps she had a schoolgirl crush. If she did, I’m sorry. But
nothing will break up my marriage.”

The last time I talked with Marilyn, there was no new man in sight. She
owed Twentieth Century-Fox another picture, _Something’s Got to Give_,
under her old contract, but even if she’d finished it it would have
paid her only $100,000, where she could have made at least $500,000
elsewhere. Her courtiers made her feel sore over that, though the only
thing on her mind should have been the need to make a movie that was
good for her after _Let’s Make Love_ and _The Misfits_. Three flops
in a row, and anybody’s out. Marie Dressler said it best years ago:
“You’re only as good as your last picture.”

I believe Marilyn realized that the end of her acting career was
waiting for her just around the corner. The last scenes she did in
_Something’s Got to Give_ looked as though she was acting under water.
She was sweet as ever, but vague, as if she were slightly off center.
She did little more than the near-nude bathing shots, and she gave a
still photographer who was on the set exclusive rights to pictures
of the scene because “I want the world to see my body.” Newspaper
and magazine readers around the world were promptly granted that
opportunity, needless to say.

Arthur Miller once called her “the greatest actress in the world.” She
was far from that, in my book. In spite of all her talk about playing
Dostoevski heroines or some of Duse’s roles, the sex-appealing blonde
remained her stock in trade. And there was something else missing among
her ambitions. She ached to have children, though she was physically
incapable of it. Twice she lost babies through miscarriages when she
was Mrs. Miller. She told friends that she longed for a baby on whom
she could shower the attention she never had.

On June 1, 1962, she reached her thirty-sixth birthday, married three
times, with still no baby and no husband. Two months later the end
came, and all the sob sisters of the world fell to work explaining why.
Of course, we shall never know. She took that secret with her. When
you’re alone and unhappy, the past, present, and future get mixed up
in your brain. You say to yourself: “What’s the use of it all? Nobody
loves me. Perhaps I shall never find happiness again.”

She seemed to be touched by forces that few human beings can bear, and
her life turned into a nightmare of broken dreams, broken promises, and
pain. In a way, we were all guilty. We loved her, yet left her lonely
and afraid when she needed us most. Now she is gone forever, leaving
us with bitter memories of what might have been. Dear Marilyn, may she
rest in peace!

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the men I loved most above all others was Gene Fowler. He once
wrote me a letter from London. “What is success?” he asked. “I shall
tell you out of the wisdom of my years. It is a toy balloon among
children armed with sharp pins.”

How can anyone say it better than that?




_Three_


Much as I regret it afterward, I all too often speak before I think.
And too many years have gone by for much to be done about it now. For
better or worse, I’m doomed to shoot from the hip, to be a chatterbox
who’ll fire off a quip if one comes to mind, without much thought about
the consequences.

I love to laugh and to make other people laugh. That’s what we’re put
in the world for. But I sometimes don’t realize how thin some skins can
be. I talked my merry way out of a tête-à-tête with Frank Sinatra, whom
I’ve always liked, and I’ll be sorry to my dying day for what was said
on the spur of that moment.

The place was Romanoff’s penthouse; the occasion, the crushingly dull
farewell party that Sol Siegel, then head of MGM, and his wife gave
Grace Kelly before she sailed off to be a princess.

To start with, the arrangement for welcoming guests was peculiar, to
say the least. Instead of standing beside Mr. and Mrs. Siegel to say
hello, Grace stood in solitary state in the middle of the floor. She
was dressed up, rightly, for the fray--white gloves, a beautiful coat
and dress. But she stood with her handbag hanging over her arm as
though poised for take-off at the flash of a tiara.

Like all the rest of us, I went up alone to wish her well for her
future in Monaco. She was regal already, smiling as benignly as Queen
Mother Elizabeth opening a charity bazaar.

“If you’ll excuse me,” said I, after three minutes of nothing much, “I
think I’ll go and have a glass of champagne.”

That party never did pick up. As the hours dragged by, it grew stiffer
and duller and colder, though the champagne flowed and the orchestra
played its head off.

Come eleven o’clock I was dancing with Frank. _Confidential_, the
scandal sheet which was the scourge of Hollywood in those days, had
very recently printed the doleful reminiscences of one young woman
whose expectations, she confided, had been aroused when Frank whisked
her off to his Palm Springs hideaway. But hope had crumbled when he
spent the night constantly getting up to eat Wheaties.

As the Siegels’ guest, he was as bored as I was. “Let’s blow this
creepy party,” he said, “and go down to my Palm Springs place.”

“Why, Frank, I couldn’t do that; I didn’t bring my Wheaties.” The
wisecrack popped out without a second’s consideration, and he nearly
fell down on the floor. So ended the chances of getting the name of
Hopper on the roll call of Sinatra dates, which has included Marilyn
Maxwell, Anita Ekberg, Gloria Vanderbilt, Kim Novak, Lady Beatty (who
became Mrs. Stanley Donen), and, according to witnesses, a master list
of conquests among the female stars at MGM that he used to keep behind
his dressing-room door.

He continues to send me gorgeous flowers for Christmas and Mother’s
Day, so I guess I’ll be content with that. I got asked up to his
handsome new house on top of a Beverly Hills mountain, equipped with
lights that fade at the touch of a switch and a telescope through
which he studies the stars (celestial variety) in their courses. But I
haven’t been invited to Palm Springs again.

Maybe it’s for the best. I consider Frank the most superb entertainer
of this age. When he’s in good voice and a good mood, he’s ahead of
the field, and nobody can equal his charm. Like almost everybody, his
nature has many sides to it--more than most people, because he has
more talent than most. But on a host of subjects, we’re far apart, not
omitting politics. If I’d gone to his desert house and written about
it, we might have seen a beautiful friendship dented.

When Charles Morrison, owner of our best night club, the Mocambo,
died, he left a mourning wife, Mary, with a mountain of debt. Like
Sinatra, he’d spent it when he had it and also when he hadn’t. Frank
telephoned Mary and said he’d like to bring in an orchestra and sing
for her, free for a couple of weeks. On opening night he caught fire,
and his quips were as good as his singing.

He never worked harder than he did for two months arranging President
Kennedy’s inaugural ball. He wanted Ethel Merman and Sir Laurence
Olivier for the show, but they were playing on Broadway in _Gypsy_
and _Becket_, respectively. So Frank closed the two theaters for a
night and refunded the price of the tickets to every disappointed
theater-goer. After the inauguration Frank and most of his
co-workers--including Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Roger Edens, and Jimmy
Van Heusen--went to Joe Kennedy’s Palm Beach home for a weekend’s rest.
I don’t think the President has fully repaid Frank for that memorable
evening.

Sinatra swears his private life is his own. Until the recent era of
peace with the press dawned, he’d let fly with his fists to prove his
point with some reporters. He once told me: “If a movie-goer spends
$2.00 to see me in a motion picture, or $10 to watch me perform in a
night club, then he has the right to see me at my best. I do not feel,
however, that I have any responsibility to that movie-goer or that
night-club-goer to tell him anything about my private life.”

He likes to quote something said by Humphrey Bogart, one of his good
friends: “The only thing you owe the public is a good performance.” He
must have remembered that when Bogey’s widow, Betty Bacall, announced
that she was going to marry Frank. A pal with him at the time--he was
staying in Miami Beach--told me: “He was so angry he blew the roof off
the hotel.” That marked the end of that romance.

Frank has let his temper and temperament explode too often for his
relations with many newspapermen and women to be anything but spotty.
Believe it or not, that has him chewing his fingernails sometimes.
“There are a handful of people who won’t let go of me and won’t try to
be fair,” he said, defending himself one day. “And after a thing is
over and I fly off the handle, I feel twice as bad as when I was angry.
You get to think, ‘Jeez, I’m sorry that had to happen!’”

He isn’t the man he’s usually painted to be. The brandy drinker who
shrugs off advice? He was a guest of mine at a small dinner party for
Noël Coward, along with the Bill Holdens, Clifton Webb, and one or two
others. Over the liqueurs Noël, who’d spent the previous weekend with
Sinatra at Palm Springs, said: “I’m very worried about you, Frank.
You’re the finest singer since Al Jolson. But unless you cut down on
drinking, your career won’t keep going up--it’s going to start running
downhill.”

Frank listened as attentively as a new boy getting the business from
his headmaster. “I think you’re right, Noël,” he said quietly. And for
a long time his drinking tapered off.

Is he the headstrong egomaniac who thinks he owes nothing to anybody?
“You know, there’s one thing I wanted to say when I accepted the
Oscar for _From Here to Eternity_,” he said on another day. “I wanted
to thank Monty Clift personally. I learned more about acting from
Clift--well, it was equal to what I learned about musicals from Gene
Kelly.”

He sits up to take notice of his children, too, if they criticize him.
There are three of them, Nancy, Jr., Frankie, Jr., and Tina. He drove
up to see me once in a new fish-tail Cadillac that, he said, his son
despised. “Frankie wondered what I wanted with all that tin on the
back.” Father Frank dragged me out to take a look. I knew he couldn’t
live with the car after his boy’s jeers. He sold it one month later.

Can he be at heart the willful, adult version of Peck’s Bad Boy that
millions of women have adored since those days when he had them
swooning by their radios? Bet your boots he can. As for example ...

Earl Warren was still governor of California when Frank was working
at Metro on _Take Me Out to the Ball Game_. The studio boss was Louis
B. Mayer, a big Republican with ambitions to be bigger. Louis was
thrilled to bits when a spokesman for Warren asked if Frank could go to
Sacramento to attend a convention of governors of all the states which
was meeting there. They were eager to have him sing for them as the
sole representative of the motion-picture industry. Warren would have
his own private plane fly Frank there and back if he’d agree to the
trip.

Louis went to work on everybody who was close to Frank, pressuring
them to persuade him that the honor of Metro--and the ambitions of
Louis--demanded his presence at Sacramento. Frank, for once, seemed
reasonable about it. Be glad to go, he said.

Louis was delighted. He gave orders that the picture was to be closed
down at two o’clock on the auspicious afternoon. That would give Frank
plenty of time to clean up and change out of his baseball suit to
catch the governor’s plane, which would be waiting for a three o’clock
take-off. “Get a picnic basket made up,” Frank told Jack Keller, his
press agent, “with cold chicken and wine, silver and napkins and
everything, so we can eat on the plane.”

Keller and Dick Jones, Frank’s accompanist, were ready early, waiting
with the basket in his dressing room. Two-thirty came, but no Frank.
Three o’clock; not a sign of him. A worried call to Dick Hanley,
Mayer’s secretary, established that work on the picture had stopped
punctually at 2 P.M. A check of all the gates showed that Frank hadn’t
left; his car was parked outside the dressing room.

“He’s probably up in some dame’s dressing room having a little party,”
somebody suggested. So a squad of security guards, standing on no
ceremony, went bursting in on the stars and starlets, searching for
him. Not a trace. By four-thirty Louis was having apoplexy. By five
o’clock all hope of delivering Frank to Sacramento had vanished.
An hour later Louis was swallowing his rage and his pride, to call
Governor Warren and explain that Frank had suddenly and inexplicably
taken sick.

The following morning the mystery was solved. Sinatra, in make-up and
uniform, had decided at two o’clock that Sacramento wasn’t for him. So
he hid in the back of a workman’s truck and rode unseen through the
studio gates, hopped off at a stop light, and flagged down a cab to
take him home.

After _The Miracle of the Bells_, which he made for RKO on loan from
Metro, he was ordered to San Francisco for a charity opening of that
hunk of religious baloney. Frank, who harbors an almost fanatical
resentment against being told what to do, went to Jesse Lasky, the
producer, whom he admired, and asked: “You won’t be paying the bills?”

“Not I. RKO.”

“That’s all I want to know. I’ll go for you.”

Frank hadn’t taken off his hat and coat after checking into his
four-bedroom suite at the Fairmont Hotel before he called room service.
“Bring up eighty-eight manhattans right away.” Jack Keller, manager
George Evans, and composer Jimmy Van Heusen, who’d all gone along
on the trip, were determined not to ask Frank why he’d ordered the
cocktails, and he never explained. Four days later, when they checked
out, the eighty-eight manhattans stood untouched on the waiter’s wagon.

Meantime, he’d taken the three of them on a shopping spree in the most
expensive men’s shop in San Francisco, to buy them alpaca sweaters,
$15 neckties, and socks by the box, while the cash register clicked up
a score of $2800 for one member of the party alone within forty-five
minutes. “Send the lot up to the Fairmont and have ’em put it on my
bill,” Frank said.

Fog covered the city the morning they were due to leave, and every air
liner was grounded. Mad as a caged bear, Frank tried to argue Jimmy,
who is a trained pilot, into chartering a private plane. “You think I’m
nuts? Take a look outside,” Jimmy said.

“Forget it then,” Frank snarled. “I know what to do.”

He had one of his favorite picnic baskets assembled by the Blue Fox
restaurant, then hired a car and chauffeur to drive Jimmy and himself
to Palm Springs, five hundred miles away. But the limousine got stuck
in the mountain snows and Frank and party were marooned in a farmhouse
for three days. Jack Keller and George Evans caught a noontime plane
when the fog lifted and were home in Los Angeles by mid-afternoon.

The car-hire bill by itself ran to $795. Like everything else in the
trip, it was charged to RKO.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Frank originally moved out to California, he picked up his own
bills. They ran high. He had a weakness for showering his friends and
hangers-on with such trinkets as gold cigarette lighters lovingly
inscribed. He imagined that every thousand dollars of salary was worth
that much money in the bank, never realizing that in his tax bracket,
and with his agents’ cuts, a thousand dollars probably gave him no
more than ninety to spend. The more he made, the more he owed the
government, until the total tab ran to nearly $110,000. It took his
switch from Columbia to Capitol Records to settle the tax score. That
was part of the price Capitol paid out for him.

His first full-length picture, _Higher and Higher_ for RKO, brought him
out to live in the Sunset Towers apartments as a grass widower, leading
a life as respectable as a church warden’s. No girls, no drinking
except an occasional beer. When his wife, Nancy, arrived and they
bought the house at Toluca Lake that Mary Astor once owned, they kept
up the same, small-town ways. Their wildest parties were devoted to gin
rummy at half a cent a point. Frank was as happy with Nancy as he could
be with anybody for long.

Fireworks usually start to sizzle in a marriage when the husband pulls
himself ahead and the wife lags behind. But Nancy, the plasterer’s
daughter from Jersey City, kept pace with Frank’s growth as an
entertainer. She’s maintained her patience and her dignity over the
years, saying not a malicious word about any of the women who’ve
cluttered up Frank’s life.

The first feet of film in which he appeared were actually shot for
Columbia Pictures in a little low-budget item entitled _Reveille for
Beverly_. Harry Cohn, boss of Columbia, thought so poorly of him that
he let him escape without optioning him. Frank couldn’t let him forget
that.

At the Toluca Lake house, Frank, Nancy, and their friends used to stage
little Christmas Eve revues, running for an hour and more, complete
with scenery, costumes, props, original score by Sammy Cahn and Julie
Stein, sketches and performances by anybody with a mind to pitch in and
work. The jokes were all “inside” humor, drawing a bead on the members
of the group.

One sketch set its sights on Peter Lawford, a celebrated party-goer
from the day he arrived in Hollywood and an actor whose performances in
some pictures would scarcely show up under a microscope. On the stage
built in the Sinatra living room, he sat at a table entertaining a girl
while Frank, dressed as a waiter, served drinks to the pair. “Give me
the check,” said Peter as the skit ended. “I’ll take care of it.”

Frank’s eyeballs revolved. “You mean you’ll _pay_?” he gasped as he
dropped his tray on Peter’s head and staggered offstage.

When the bigwigs at Columbia heard about the shows, they asked Frank
to put on a similar affair at Harry Cohn’s house to celebrate his
birthday. It turned out to be quite a party. The guest list included
Rita Hayworth, José Iturbi, Al Jolson, and the Sinatra regulars. On the
temporary stage, Phil Silvers acted the part of Cohn. Al Levy, Frank’s
manager who went on to found Talent Associates, took the role of agent
and Frank played himself. “Mr. Cohn,” said Al, introducing Frank, “I
have a boy here I think has great talent.”

“Can’t use him,” growled Phil Silvers.

“But at least listen to him. Give him a chance.”

“No. Too Jewish.”

Al (bewildered): “He’s too _Jewish_?”

“No, you are. Get out of here.” Everybody had a wonderful time ...
except Harry Cohn, who didn’t crack a smile.

       *       *       *       *       *

The woman who came within an ace of wrecking Frank Sinatra sat on my
patio fresh from Smithfield, North Carolina. “What do you do down
there?” I asked Ava Gardner, as beautiful then as she was frank about
how dirt-poor she’d been until Hollywood whistled at her.

“Oh, I just went around picking bugs off tobacco plants,” she said.

The earliest matrimonial picking she made was Mickey Rooney. She was
twenty and he was a year older when they married. He had what she
wanted, which included his limousine, the first she ever rode in.
Though they were separated some frantic years later, they remained
friends and he couldn’t break old habits. They were sitting side by
side and directly behind me at a premiere after their divorce. I heard
her whispering: “Don’t do that. Stop it. People will see.”

Turning around, I spotted that he had his hand down the low-cut neck of
her dress. “Aw, let him play,” I said. “It’ll keep him quiet.” He gave
a grin as broad as a barn door and left his hand where it was.

Frank’s passion for Ava dragged him halfway around the world: to
Mexico, Spain, Africa, England, France. It broke up his marriage to
Nancy in 1951; it plunged his spirits and his bank balance so low that
in December 1953 he had to borrow money to buy Ava a Christmas present.

Their jealousy of each other passed the raw edge of violence. At one
point in their teeth-and-claw romance Frank was hired to sing at the
Copacabana in New York, while the two of them stayed in Hampshire
House. While he worked nights, Ava got bored and started running around
town with her friends. She strayed one evening into Bop City, where
Artie Shaw, ex-husband number two, was starred with a jazz band.

The following afternoon, when Frank discovered where she’d been, the
fur began to fly in his hotel bedroom. When she screamed that she was
sick of his jealousy and was going to leave him, he pulled out the .38
he carried and threatened to blow his brains out. She stalked toward
the door. He fired twice--into the mattress of the bed. Ava didn’t turn
her head; she kept right on walking.

David Selznick, in the suite next door, heard the shots and called
the front desk. The clerk there telephoned the police. Mannie Sachs,
the king of talent scouts for RCA, who had a permanent suite down the
hall, had also been startled by the explosions, and came running. He
and Selznick hurried into Frank’s room, listened to what had happened.
Then they grabbed the mattress with the two holes in it and toted it
down the hall, to exchange it for one on Mannie’s bed. When the police
arrived to search Frank’s suite without finding a trace of bullets,
Frank was as cool as a cat. “You’re dreaming,” he told them. “You’re
crazy.”

He had already applied to Harry Cohn for the featured role of Maggio
in _From Here to Eternity_ when he flew to Africa in 1952 to be with
Ava while she made _Mogambo_ with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly. Cohn had
originally doused cold water on his ambition. “You’re nuts. You’re a
song-and-dance man. Maggio’s stage-actor kind of stuff.”

Frank had been in Africa five days--days of sitting around with nothing
to do but watch his wife work. He killed time by building an outside
shower in the woods for her. He rounded up fifty native singers and
dancers for a party for cast and crew. He worked harder than on any
sound stage to keep from going crazy. Then his agent, Bert Allenberg of
MCA, called him back to test for _Eternity_. Frank told me the whole
story later:

“I left Africa one Friday night. I had a copy of the scene and I sat up
all night on the plane. Didn’t sleep the whole trip. Monday morning I
made the test. I finished at 3 P.M. and that night flew back to Africa.
My adrenalin was bubbling. I waited five days, ten, then got a letter
they were testing five or six other guys, among them Eli Wallach.

“I’d seen him in _Rose Tattoo_ on Broadway, and I know he’s a fine
actor. So I thought: ‘I’m dead.’ Then I got a wire from Allenberg:
‘Looks bad.’ My chin was kicking my knees. But Ava was wonderful. She
said: ‘They haven’t cast the picture yet. All you get is a stinking
telegram, and you let it get you down.’

“Clark would say: ‘Skipper, relax. Drink a little booze. Everything
will be all right.’ I left Africa and went to Boston for a night-club
date. I got a call another Monday morning that they’d made the deal. I
told Allenberg: ‘If you have to pay Harry Cohn, sign the contract; I’ll
pay _him_.’”

For Maggio, Frank’s fee was $8000 instead of the usual $150,000. He
flew off to join Ava for a few days of fun and fury in Paris. “Then I
got a cable from Harry Cohn: ‘Clift already proficient in army drill.
Seeing as how you have same routine, suggest you get back a few days
early.’ I wired back: ‘Dear Harry--will comply with request. Drilling
with French Army over weekend. Everything all right. Maggio.’ I talked
to his secretary later, and she said when she opened the wire she
screamed. But Cohn didn’t crack a smile. He had a sense of humor like
an open grave.”

Unpredictable as always, Frank went with his family to the Academy
Awards show when he collected an Oscar for Maggio. “The minute my name
was read, I turned around and looked at the kids. Little Nancy had
tears in her eyes. For a second I didn’t know whether to go up on stage
and get it or stay there and comfort her. But I gave her a peck on the
cheek and reached for young Frankie’s hand.

“When I came back, it was late, so I got them home and sat with them
for a while. Then I took the Oscar back to my place, where a few
people dropped in. I got Nancy a little miniature thing for her charm
bracelet, a small Oscar medallion. The kids gave me a St. Genesius
medal before the Awards, engraved with, ‘Dad, we will love you from
here to eternity.’ Little Nancy gave me a medal and said, ‘This is from
me and St. Anthony.’ That’s her dear friend. She seems to get a lot
done with St. Anthony. I guess she has a direct wire to him.”

There’s a show-business legend that, abracadabra, Frank’s career
started going up like a skyrocket from that moment on. It’s a legend,
nothing more. Turning the corner was slow going for him. He still had
to play in such flops as _Suddenly_ and find he was turned down for
_Mr. Roberts_ because Leland Hayward thought he was too old. He still
had night-club tours to make under old agreements. And he still had to
work out the switch to Capitol which eventually made him a best seller
on records.

It took him a long time, too, to recover from Ava. She hasn’t yet
recovered from him. Holed up in Spain, she has been outcast to most
Spaniards, who don’t tolerate her flouting of their social rules.
Recently she went back to work again, talking a comeback, as so many
like her do. The proof, as always, lies in the performance they can
deliver before the cameras.

Frank came near the end of the road he’d traveled with her when he
returned unexpectedly early one day to his Palm Springs house and
overheard her talking with another woman star whom she’d invited
down there while he was away. The subject they were discussing, I
understand, was Frank’s love-making, which they were downgrading. Those
two would do just that. “Pack up your clothes and get out,” Frank
yelled. “I don’t want to see either of you again.”

I sat in his dressing room at Paramount in December 1956 when the Ava
era finally ended for him. A Hollywood reporter had taken her out
driving one night in the desert around Palm Springs, gotten her drunk,
and recorded what she told him over a microphone hidden in his car. The
magazine story that resulted had appeared that day. Frank sat with a
copy of it in his hand, cringing silently in his chair. Ava was quoted
as complaining: “Frank double-crossed me ... made me the heavy ... I
paid many of the bills.” Even the ashes were cold after that.

That was the year he waged a busy-beaver campaign for Adlai Stevenson,
just as he had worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and,
four years later, would slave for John F. Kennedy. He was in Spain,
filming _The Pride and the Passion_, when he was asked to assist the
Democratic convention in Chicago by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”
on opening night. Eager to oblige, he flew for thirty-three hours
through appalling transatlantic weather and reached the convention
platform at 8 P.M., a bare thirty minutes before Sam Rayburn, late
Speaker of the House of Representatives, was scheduled to gavel the
session to order.

No more than four hundred people had filtered into their places in
the 25,000-seat auditorium when Mr. Rayburn, fortified by bourbon,
started banging away with his gavel. Frank had no choice but sing to a
virtually empty hall, while his fine old Sicilian temper flamed.

During the anthem somebody alerted Sam Rayburn to his error. He went
over to Frank as soon as he’d finished singing and put his hand on
Sinatra’s sleeve to apologize. Frank brushed him aside. “Keep your arm
off my suit,” he snapped, and stormed away.

When Bill Davidson wrote the story, Frank had his attorney, Martin
Gang, file suit for $2,300,000. He was armed with a telegram from
Rayburn asserting that the incident was undiluted imagination. All
Davidson had was the word of Mitch Miller, who’d been close enough on
the platform to overhear what had gone on there. There didn’t seem to
be any other witnesses.

But on a visit to New York soon after, a Hollywood press agent who was
close to Davidson bumped into a Madison Avenue advertising man whom
he hadn’t seen for years. The old friend happened to tell the press
agent about a funny thing he’d seen on the platform at the Democratic
convention, which he’d attended on agency business: He’d watched
Sinatra giving Rayburn the brush-off. Needless to say, the suit was
dropped.

Politics are serious business to Frank--they used to be to me until I
got tired of the game and decided to give the young ones a chance. I
was doing a bit in a picture at Las Vegas while he was there making
_Oceans 11_, and I wanted to talk to him. But he was always too busy.
After the 1960 conventions came and went, he was off on the island of
Maui doing _Devil at 4 O’Clock_ before he could keep a promise to come
over to my house.

From Maui he sent me a letter “giving you all the answers to the
questions you would have asked me if we actually did an interview.”
He’s a John F. Kennedy man and I was a Robert Taft woman; what better
subject for a letter than politics, Sinatra version?

“Every four years,” he wrote, “the same question arises: Should
show-business personalities become involved in politics? Should they
use their popularity with the public to try to influence votes?

“My answer has always been ‘yes.’ If the head of a big corporation can
try to use his influence with his employees, if a union head can try
to use his influence with his members, if a newspaper editor can try
to use his influence with his readers, if a columnist can try to use
his influence, then an actor has a perfect right to try to use his
influence.

“My own feeling is that those actors who do not agree with my point
of view are those who are afraid to stand up and be counted. They
want everybody to love them and want everybody to agree with them on
everything.

“I am not sure whether they are right or whether I am right. I only
know what is right for me....”

I almost tore up the letter as soon as I’d read it because of its last
paragraph: “Maybe it will make a good Sunday piece for you. If you
think so, then please don’t start to edit it. These are my thoughts,
and if you want to pass them on to your readers, let them stand as is.”
I haven’t edited; I’ve quoted, but not all five pages. Life’s too short
for that, and you probably wouldn’t read them, anyway.

Though he’s proud to be a Democrat, he’s uneasy about being called a
“Clansman.” The Clan consists of the men with which this mixed-up,
lonely talent has surrounded himself--Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr.,
Joey Bishop, Peter Pentagon Lawford.

“I hate the name of Clan,” Frank once said.

“Did you ever look the word up in a dictionary?” I said. “It means a
family group that sticks together, like the Kennedys you’re so fond of.
They’re the most clannish family in America. I don’t like Rat Pack, but
there’s nothing wrong with the name of Clan.”

What is wrong with the Clan and the Leader, as his gang have christened
Frank, is the pull they both have over young actors who would give
their back teeth to be IN. Membership dues include generally behaving
like Mongols from the court of Genghis Khan.

The Clan was riding high the night Eddie Fisher opened his night-club
act at the Ambassador Hotel here, before the _Cleopatra_ debacle got
under way. I was in New York at the time. Frank and his henchmen took
over and mashed Eddie’s performance. “This was a disgusting display
of ego,” snorted Milton Berle, sitting in an audience that included
comedians like Jerry Lewis, Danny Thomas, and Red Buttons, any one of
whom, if he’d tried, could have joined in and made the Clan look silly.
Elizabeth Taylor, on Eddie’s side that night, raged: “He may have to
take it from them, but I don’t. One day they’ll have to answer to me
for this.”

Steve McQueen was one young actor I managed to extricate from the
Clan. I took him under my wing when he was driving racing cars around
like an astronaut ready for orbit. “You could kill yourself when you
were single, and it was only your concern. But you’ve got a family and
responsibilities now. Think of them.” Between his wife and myself, we
got him away from overpowered automobiles.

I took to Steve as soon as I saw him in “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I liked
his arrogant walk, the don’t-give-a-damn air about him. So did Frank.
When he sent Sammy Davis, Jr., into temporary exile for indiscreet talk
to a newspaper about other Clansmen, Frank had Sammy’s part in _Never
So Few_ rewritten for Steve. When Frank is in a movie, he becomes
casting director, too.

He took Steve on a junket to New York when the picture ended, and Steve
took along a big bundle of Mexican firecrackers, which he cherishes.
He hadn’t previously been any kind of drinker, but in Frank’s crowd
you drink. From the tenth floor of his hotel Steve had a ball tossing
lighted firecrackers into Central Park. When the police ran him to
earth, it took all of Frank’s influence to keep him out of jail.

As a peace offering, Steve had a live monkey delivered to my office in
advance of his return. He wasted his time. I don’t like monkeys, so
I gave it away and summoned Steve for some Dutch-aunt lecturing when
he got back. “I know all about your trip. You were loud, boorish, and
probably drunk. You have to make up your mind whether you’ll have a
big career as Steve McQueen or be one of Frank Sinatra’s set. Think it
over.”

Twenty-four hours later he gave me his answer. “I was out of line. I
was flattered that Mr. Sinatra wanted me, but I’d rather stand on my
own feet.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I sometimes wonder about the Leader. His face lit up like a neon sign
when he broke the news to me that he was going to marry Juliet Prowse,
the South African dancer to whom he was engaged for an hour or so. “I
haven’t seen that light in your eye for ten years,” I told him.

But I suspect the men around Frank went to work against Juliet. It’s
easy enough to work the trick if you’re determined and unscrupulous.
A word dropped into the conversation here and there will plant the
doubts. “Do you think she really goes for you, Frank?” “She’ll probably
figure on keeping her career.” “You should have met that family of
hers--strictly nothing.” Frank was convinced eventually that Juliet
wasn’t for him.

With all his talents and power, I sometimes wonder who’s the Leader and
who’s being led.




_Four_


When Louella Parsons heard that I’d started work on this book, she
telephoned to ask what its title was going to be. “Come, Louella,” I
said, “you don’t expect me to reveal that to you, do you?”

“I hoped you would. And I hope you’ll be kind to me in your book
because I was very nice to you in mine.”

“You certainly were--you got the facts about me so mixed up that I
haven’t finished reading it.”

“Well, anyway, what are you going to write about?”

“I’m just going to tell the truth.”

“Oh, dear,” she wailed, “that’s what I was afraid of.”

       *       *       *       *       *

In the days when I earned my living as a motion-picture actress, I was
one of Louella’s regular news contacts. I had an insatiable curiosity
about the town I’d known for years. I got around a lot, and lots of
people talked to me. I salted down stories by the barrel load.

Louella would call up and say: “I understand you went to so-and-so’s
party last night. Tell me something about it.” I was glad to oblige.
Payment came in kind, not cash, when she inserted my name in her
column, which helped a working actress.

She really was the First Lady of Hollywood then, for one good reason
which nobody was allowed to forget. She was William Randolph Hearst’s
movie columnist, and he was lavishing millions of dollars and acres
of publicity space on his motion-picture properties, bent on making
himself the greatest of all impresarios and Marion Davies the greatest
star.

With the Hearst newspaper empire behind her, Louella could wield power
like Catherine of Russia. Hollywood read every word she wrote as though
it was a revelation from San Simeon, if not from Mount Sinai. Stars
were terrified of her. If they crossed her, they were given the silent
treatment: no mention of their names in her column.

When Hearst let himself be lured by Louis B. Mayer into putting his own
production company, Cosmopolitan Pictures, under MGM’s wing, Louella’s
power was apparently complete. She could get any story she wanted
front-paged in the Los Angeles _Examiner_ and all other Hearst papers,
none of them accustomed to making much distinction between real news
and flagrant publicity.

At San Simeon, Hearst’s $40,000,000 Shangri-La in San Luis Obispo
County, Louella mingled with the stream of visiting celebrities, stars,
and producers that poured every weekend into the fabulous, twin-towered
castle or the surrounding marble “bungalows” at the summons of W.R.
or Marion. So did I. At the fifty-four-foot table in the Renaissance
dining hall, you’d see Garbo, John Gilbert, Errol Flynn, Norma Shearer,
Nick Schenck, Beatrice Lillie, Cissy Patterson, Frank Knox, Bernard
Baruch. Name the biggest and they’d be there, including, on one
occasion, Mr. and Mrs. Cal Coolidge and Bernard Shaw.

Nobody would deny that Louella has talent. She showed at her best with
GBS, who was writing some articles for Hearst. All of us invited to
San Simeon that weekend had been warned against asking Shaw for an
interview. That didn’t stop Louella. He yielded to her persuasions
only on condition that he have the right to approve every word of her
article after he’d talked to her.

When she went back with the typescript he had her read it to him. After
the first few words, he interrupted sharply: “But I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, Mr. Shaw,” she said, batting her big brown eyes, “I’m so nervous
just being in your presence. What was it you said before?” He repeated
the sentence, which she carefully inserted, and then read another line
or two before the irate Irishman pulled her up short again.

This performance went on for some minutes longer before GBS took the
manuscript from her hand. “Give it to me--I’ll write it myself,” he
said firmly, proceeding to do just that. But Louella wasn’t through
yet. When he handed back the completed article to her, she asked: “Oh,
Mr. Shaw, won’t you please autograph it for me? It will be such a
wonderful keepsake for my daughter, Harriet.”

He couldn’t refuse; he was writing for Hearst, too. So Miss Parsons
scored in a triple-header. She collected the only interview Bernard
Shaw gave in the United States. She subsequently sold the article to a
Hearst magazine. And she has the autographed interview, which someday
will sell for another tidy sum.

Some of us San Simeon regulars discovered that Louella isn’t slow
to take credit. When W.R. and Marion went abroad on one of the many
voyages they made together, we decided to throw a party for them on
their return. We intended it as a gesture of thanks for all the parties
of theirs that we’d enjoyed. We put on a terrific evening at the
Ambassador Hotel, with its rooms crammed with flowers and cockatoos,
and split the bill between us: $175 apiece. Louella was one of the
party, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t write an article for a national
magazine taking credit for it.

She owed a lot to Marion Davies. It was an article praising Marion in
_When Knighthood Was in Flower_ that got Louella started with Hearst.
It caught W.R.’s eye and prompted him to hire her away from her $110 a
week as movie reporter on the New York _Telegraph_ into working for him
at more than twice the salary. Over the years Marion shielded Louella
from boss trouble more than once. After W.R. died in 1951, she was
among those who didn’t exactly hurry to give Marion sympathy.

She did ring the doorbell, however, immediately after Marion had
appeared on my television show. She arrived at her house bearing as a
gift a photograph of herself in a heavy silver frame. She proceeded
to place it in full view on a table in the front hall, taking star
position ahead of an autographed portrait of General Douglas MacArthur.

Marion asked me to take a look when I arrived soon after Louella had
left. I carried it back to the library, where Marion was sitting. “Do
you want this?”

“No,” she said quizzically. I took the frame home to substitute a
photograph of Marion standing beside me on the TV show, returning the
old frame and new picture to her the following day.

       *       *       *       *       *

Louella didn’t regard me as a serious rival when I got started as a
columnist in 1938. Andy Harvey, in MGM’s publicity department, had
recommended me to Howard Denby of the _Esquire_ syndicate: “When we
want the low-down on our stars, we get it from Hedda Hopper.” I was
signed by Mr. Denby and sold to thirteen papers straightaway, the first
to buy being the Los Angeles _Times_.

The betting in town after column number one appeared was that I
wouldn’t last a week. My mistake was being too kind to everybody. I
didn’t tell the whole truth--only the good. I set out to write about my
fellows in terms of sweetness and light, not reality. I began:

    Just twenty-three years ago my son was born. Since then I’ve
    acted in Broadway plays. Sold Liberty Bonds in Grand Central
    Station. Knitted socks for soldiers--which they wore as
    sweaters. Made very bad speeches on the steps of the New York
    Library. Helped build a snowman on Forty-second Street ... when
    the streetcars were frozen solidly in their tracks. Earned
    money for one year as a prima donna in _The Quaker Girl_ with
    only two tones in my voice, high and low--very low. Played in
    _Virtuous Wives_, Louis B. Mayer’s first motion picture.

    I’ve worked with practically every star in Hollywood. Sold
    real estate here--made it pay, too, but not lately. Was a
    contributor to one of the monthly magazines. Did special
    articles for the Washington _Herald_. With a friend, wrote a
    one-act play. Through pull had it produced at the Writers’ Club
    and was it panned! Ran for a political job here; thank goodness
    the citizens had a better idea! Coached Jan Kiepura in diction.
    Learned about the beauty business from Elizabeth Arden in her
    Fifth Avenue salon. Made three trips abroad, one to England on
    business. Put on fashion shows. Have a radio program.

    And today I begin laboring in a new field and am hoping it
    will bring me as much happiness as that major event which
    took place twenty-three years ago. I can only write about
    the Hollywood I know. About my neighbors and fellow workers.
    Amazing stories have been written--many true. Hollywood is mad,
    gay, heartbreakingly silly, but you can’t satirize a satire.
    And that’s Hollywood....

I was green as grass, and the town jeered at me. Luckily, I had a
good friend at my side. Wonderful Ida Koverman carried the title of
executive assistant to Louis B. Mayer, but she was the real power
behind his throne. To all intent and purpose, she ran MGM. Two
months after my launching, when I was sinking slowly in an ocean of
kind words for everybody, she gave a hen party for me. On the guest
list were Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, singer Rosa Ponselle,
Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Sophie Tucker, press people,
public-relations people--every woman you could think of. There was only
one holdout--Louella.

It was a night to remember. A forest fire was blazing in the hills,
and the sky was lit with flame. I was burning, too. Ida had just set
me straight about column writing. “They’ve laughed at you long enough.
You’ve been too nice to people. Now start telling the truth.”

That was the best advice she ever gave me. It marked a turning point.
My telephone started ringing like a fire alarm every day soon after.

“Hedda,” the callers would moan, “how can you print such things about
me?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but you’re my friend. I didn’t think you’d tell.”

“I’m earning my living with my column. I’ve got to tell the truth. You
didn’t call when I wrote sweet nothings about you, did you? If you
can’t face facts, then I’m sorry.”

The column began to grow almost instantly, on the way up to its present
readership of 35,000,000 people, which came about after I switched
from _Esquire_ to the Des Moines _Register & Tribune_, then in 1942 to
Chicago _Tribune_-New York _News_ syndication. (If I stop to think of
that audience figure, I get so scared I can’t write a line until I’ve
pushed the arithmetic out of my mind.)

Louella prepared for a fight. She had an intelligence service
that included telegraph operators, telephone switchboard girls,
beauty-parlor assistants, hotel bus boys, doctors’ and dentists’
receptionists. Her medical-intelligence chief was her husband, Dr.
Harry Watson Martin. She called him Docky or Docky-Wocky. He was often
known as Lolly’s Pop. His special field earlier had been venereal
disease and urology, his hobby was show business, and he retired as
head of the Twentieth Century-Fox medical department.

Docky had the friendship of everybody, along with a certain
nonchalance. He once took a dive into the Bimini Bath pool when it
lacked a single drop of water, broke his neck, and lived to marry
Louella in 1929. He displayed a similar unconcern about water one
morning when Louella, dressed up to go ashore for Mass, made her
cautious way down the gangplank of a yacht in Catalina Harbor straight
into the sea. Docky was waiting in the dinghy, engrossed in the Sunday
papers. “Ready to go, dear?” he asked, not raising his head until her
splashing drew him to her rescue.

Leaving a party, Docky once fell flat on the floor and lay there,
comfortable enough. When a friend came forward to hoist him up, Louella
put out a restraining hand. “Oh, don’t touch him, please. He has to
operate at eight o’clock this morning.”

Through Docky’s good offices, Louella had a tie-in with testing
laboratories, notably those making rabbit tests for pregnancy. This
private line into the womb could give her news that a star was pregnant
before the girl knew it herself.

But I had sleuths on my side, too. As an actress, I knew directors,
producers, stars, and the men and women who worked on the other side
of the cameras. One special ally was Mark Hellinger, a hard-boiled
columnist for the New York _Daily News_ before he became a gentle,
kind, and great producer for Warner Brothers and Universal.

He called me over to his house for an off-the-record conference and
offered to help “because you’re going to need it.” He said: “I don’t
somehow care for what Miss Parsons stands for. Whenever I hear a story
at the studio, I’ll pass it on to you. I shan’t be able to call you
through the switchboard, so I’ll give it to you from a private booth.
There won’t be time for questions, but you’ll get the truth.”

The scoops I had on the affairs of Warner Brothers nearly drove Jack
Warner out of his cotton-picking mind. He could never make out how it
happened. When he reads this, he’ll know.

Louella watched her monopoly start to crack. If she was asked to a
party, she’d want to know whether I was going to be invited. If I was,
she’d demand that I be excluded “or else I certainly shan’t come.”
Some timid hostesses fell for that. I laughed in their faces for their
cowardice.

Anxious to break her hold, producers were steering my way more and
more of the items that had previously been hers alone--the news of
engagements, weddings, pregnancies, and divorces that made up a fat
share of her daily diet. An engagement announced first to Louella had
been good for six months of smiles for the happy couple. An exclusive
on a pregnancy was even better--the mother-to-be could count on nine
months’ favorable notice, which could be extended if she gave Lolly a
beat on the birth announcement, too.

The competition she was getting didn’t make her any fonder of me. When
Jean Parker was about to marry for the second time, she telephoned me:
“I want you to have this exclusively.”

“No,” I warned her, “you must tell Louella.”

“But I don’t want her to have it.”

“You can’t afford to give it to me alone. Call her and tell her I have
the news, too. For your career’s sake, you must.”

Ten minutes later she called back, weeping. “I did what you said and
told her I’d given it to you. She said: ‘Get it back from her, or I
won’t print it.’”

“Tell her she’s got it exclusively, if it means so much to her,” I
said. “What’s one story among friends--and you’ll need friends.”

If a studio passed along a story to me that Louella thought she should
have, she raised the roof, if necessary going over everybody involved
to the studio head himself: “Hopper was given that. I should have had
it. Don’t let it happen again.”

Even a producer as peppery as Darryl Zanuck had reservations about
doing anything that might antagonize her. Zanuck, at that time
Twentieth Century-Fox production chief, thought nothing of squaring
off and mixing it in a fist fight with a director who argued with him.
But when Bill Wellman, after three days of shooting on _Public Enemy_,
urged that Eddie Wood, who was the star, should be replaced in that
gangster epic by a newcomer who had the second lead, Jimmy Cagney, the
fiery Zanuck flinched.

“My God, we can’t do it, Bill. Eddie’s engaged to Harriet Parsons,
Louella’s daughter. Parsons will raise hell.”

“You son of a bitch,” answered Bill, who’s a flinty character. “You
mean you’re going to let that decide it?”

“Damn it, no,” said Zanuck, put on his metal. “You go and put Cagney
in.” And that’s how two men with guts turned an ex-chorus boy into a
star.

Harriet married not Eddie Wood but King Kennedy. There were more
stars in attendance than there are in the Milky Way when the two of
them became man and wife at Marsden Farms in the San Fernando Valley
in September 1939. Some of the guests were old-timers like Rudy
Vallee, Billy Haines, Aileen Pringle, Frances Marion, and myself. The
photographers ignored us completely, to the point where Billy got
spitting mad.

He went up to Hymie Fink, who had been the town’s best still
photographer since Valentino’s day. “We’ll each give you five bucks if
you’ll take a picture of us,” Billy offered. But Hymie couldn’t do it.
He had his orders, he said. After Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy were divorced in
1944, King came to work for me as leg man, covering the studios for a
while, but I insisted that he get Louella’s consent before I hired him.

Not many men had the courage of Bill Wellman and Darryl Zanuck. I was
in a roomful of faint hearts at a party the Gary Coopers gave when
Gene Tierney made a beeline for me: “I’ve been trying to get you all
afternoon to tell you I’m going to have another baby.”

That was wonderful news. Louella and I both knew that Gene’s first
child, a beautiful little girl, had been born with a sleeping mind--it
was one of the many blows that life dealt Gene, who finally cracked
under the torment and needed psychiatric care. I hustled to the
telephone, but it was tied up with a call to Henry Hathaway, who was
a patient at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. By the time I
got through to the _Times_ night desk, Gene was nowhere to be found to
verify her news for the paper. But Louella had barged over to me and
was hanging on like a limpet.

Next morning I heard what had happened. Gene’s studio had given the
story of the forthcoming baby exclusively to Louella the previous
afternoon. When she heard Gene had told me, she had flounced over to
the poor girl and delivered a tongue lashing so violent that Gene had
collapsed into tears. Gary Cooper had been in another room and didn’t
hear it, but of the whole mob of Hollywood heroes who listened to
Louella, not one lifted a voice or a finger to help Gene. Fear of their
own precious skins kept them as dumb as mutes at a funeral.

Even Frank Sinatra had to come to terms with Louella in her heyday. He
stood high in her disfavor for months. It seemed there was nothing he
could do to stop the attacks she made on him. I thought I might be able
to help, so I suggested through Perry Charles, his agent, that Frank
should call Marion and arrange to meet Hearst. The meeting came about,
and Frank made a good impression. The order was passed down from San
Simeon, and Miss Parsons suddenly discovered that Sinatra was nowhere
near as black as she’d imagined him.

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard flouted the “first to know” rule
Louella had laid down when they set their wedding day to coincide
with Louella’s absence from town--she’d gone off on a trip to San
Francisco. She was on the train coming home when she got the news that
they were married. “It can’t be true,” she gasped. “They would have
told me first.”

But Clark had given the story to all newspapers simultaneously to avoid
any bickering over who should have first whack. She took such a dim
view of that, though, that the Gables felt they had to make up to her
by means of a distinctly unusual present: They had her bathroom done
over with mirrored walls and brand-new plumbing.

Orson Welles is one of the few who never gave a damn for her. When he
was making _Citizen Kane_, a picture with a striking resemblance to the
life of William Randolph Hearst, he persuaded Louella that the story
was something entirely unconnected with her chief. I wasn’t convinced
so easily, and Orson finally agreed to let me see the first screening
of the finished product in a private projection room of RKO. What I saw
appalled me.

W.R. had been a friend to me for years. So had Orson, ever since I’d
been a struggling actress and he’d gone out of his way to be kind to my
son Bill, who was a struggling young actor. When Hearst learned that
I’d been hired as a columnist, he said: “Why didn’t you come to me? I
didn’t know you wanted to write a column. I’d have given you one.”

“Have I ever asked you for anything?” “No,” he said. “What makes you
think I’d ask for anything as important as this is to me?”

“Everybody else asks for things. Why not you?”

“I don’t ask,” I said. Then he wrote me this, to which I didn’t reply:

    My dear Hedda:

    I am glad you are going to do some work for the _Esquire_
    Syndicate. The _Esquire_ people are very clever. They produce a
    fine publication and they know good stuff.

    I always thought that the stuff you did for the Washington
    paper was extremely good.

    It was accurate, interesting, and high-grade. It appealed to
    intelligent people, who like the movies--and there are lots
    of them. So many moving-picture commentators write down to the
    level of the movies, as they call it.

    I always figure, however, that these commentators write down
    because they cannot write up.

    Best wishes. I will look for your column.

                                        Sincerely,
                                        (s) W.R.


After the screening Orson asked how I liked it. “You won’t get away
with it,” I said. But he arrogantly insisted that he would. It was his
arrogance that decided which of two friendships had to come out ahead.
I put in a call to Oscar Lawler, a great friend of mine and one of
W.R.’s attorneys, to tell him about _Citizen Kane_ and what Orson was
up to.

As soon as word was passed along to W.R., he telephoned Louella. When
she heard I’d seen the picture already and that, contrary to the
assurances she’d given him, it had a great deal to do with the chief’s
affairs, the sky fell in on her. He commanded her to have it screened
for Oscar Lawler and herself. After the showing she begged the attorney
to go home with her to help describe to Hearst what they had seen, but
he declined. She had to get on the telephone herself to San Simeon,
just as later she made many calls, including one to Nelson Rockefeller,
in a battle royal to keep _Citizen Kane_ out of Radio City Music Hall,
which is part of Rockefeller Center, and every other movie theater.

If W.R. had taken Oscar Lawler’s advice to ignore _Kane_, it might
never have received the attention it won when, breaking the boycott
ten months later, it was shown around the world, won a Best Picture of
the Year award, and, as late as 1958, was named as one of the greatest
movies ever made. But on W.R.’s orders Orson Welles’ name went on the
Hearst Silent List of people about whom Louella could never say a kind
word.

The black list constantly makes its presence felt. When Nunnally
Johnson aided and abetted in a blistering article about her that
appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_, she hit back at his wife.

“I ran into Dorris Bowdon last night,” she wrote. “She used to be such
a pretty girl before she married.” Joan Crawford, Nelson Eddy, Jimmy
Cagney, and Ava Gardner have all had the treatment.

Bette Davis and I were administered a slap on the wrist after I
tracked her down to Laguna, where she holed up, refusing to talk to
newspapers, following the birth of her May Day baby in 1947. The door
of the cottage was open, so I walked in, and we talked for hours. The
next week Louella wrote: “Since Bette Davis has had so many unwelcome
visitors, she has had to have her gate padlocked.”

As a present for the baby, Jack Warner sent Bette an add-a-pearl
necklace with five pearls on it and space for the donor to add another
each birthday. Recently I asked Bette if her daughter’s necklace was
still growing. She gave that raucous laugh of hers and replied: “It’s
just the size it was the day you came to visit me.”

Personally, like Louella, I’ve found that silence is the greatest blow
you can deliver to a Hollywood ego when it needs whacking down to size.
Not to mention the name of a star drives him half out of his mind;
they live and die by publicity. Not even producers are immune, as Sam
Goldwyn demonstrated. He cabled me once from Hawaii, where my day’s
eight hundred words apparently were read so faithfully that even when
wartime restrictions limited the paper there to four pages, I had to
be squeezed in somehow. Sam complained: NAME NOT IN COLUMN FOR WEEK
STOP THEY DO NOT THINK I’M IMPORTANT OVER HERE STOP PLEASE DO SOMETHING
ABOUT IT.

Ginger Rogers and Ronald Colman were both excommunicated by Louella for
years for their effrontery in refusing to appear on her former radio
show, “Hollywood Hotel.” As mistress of ceremonies, she collected $2500
a week and the stars appeared free. If any star balked, the producers
hastened to Louella’s aid by putting the pressure on until that star
was convinced of the error of his ways. Total value of the free talent
has been estimated by better mathematicians than I at $2,000,000. For a
while, her sponsor, a soup company, was delighted to pay a weekly tab
of about $12,000 for a show which, without her, would have cost well
over $30,000.

But after the soup maker had been replaced by a soap maker and the show
had been restyled as “Hollywood Premieres,” the Screen Actors Guild
plucked up its corporate courage to do what only Ginger and Colman had
dared. The Guild ruled that Louella had to pay her guests, and thirteen
weeks later the program was off the air.

She showed her power when Mary Pickford organized a radio spectacular,
to be sponsored by a milk company, to benefit the Motion Picture Home,
where poverty drives so many veterans of the movie business. Gable and
dozens of other stars wanted to appear, but Louella got busy on her
telephones. Mary had to back down and cancel the program with the stars
in her living room waiting to go on.

For one of my radio series I wanted to hit up the competitive theme,
which press agents had originally invented. They rubbed their hands
when I got started because, by having us fight, they thought they could
get double space and play off one columnist against the other.

Louella didn’t seem to sense what they were up to. I said: “Let’s take
a tip from Jack Benny and Fred Allen and whip up a feud. We could have
a mountain of fun. It would increase our audience ratings, and we might
get a salary increase out of it. Supposing on the first show we staged
a battle royal and both got carried out on stretchers....” But Louella
wouldn’t play.

Habit dies hard with her if she is invited to appear with me for a
photograph, still shot, or movie. When Charles Brackett and Billy
Wilder wanted us to appear together in _Sunset Boulevard_ as reporters
breaking the news of the murder, they extended the first bid to me. I
began scheming a scene in which she and I would rush for a telephone
simultaneously. Then I would trip and say sweetly: “After you,
Louella.”

When she got her invitation and was told I had already been signed, she
stormed: “Get her off. I won’t be in it if she is.” They would have
none of that, so Miss Parsons did not appear in _Sunset Boulevard_. And
she didn’t mention the picture in her column for months.

She didn’t know what to do when _Time_ ran a cover story and a cover
portrait along with ten columns of some highly flattering prose
about yours sincerely. (Hopper “is a self-appointed judge and censor
of all that goes on in Hollywood,” said _Time_, “and she carries
out her assignment with a hey nonny-nonny and the old one-two.”) In
frustration, Louella took to her bed.

The studios were in a panic. They couldn’t afford to have Louella out
of action. She’s too useful to them. They know how to handle her, where
I’m a tougher nut to crack. If she lays hold of a scandal, she does
not print it unless the studio involved is willing. When scandal comes
in range of my telescope, I’ll print it so long as it’s news and true.
Press agents can’t stand it; the business they’re in should be called
suppress agentry. They’ve suppressed far more than they’ve ever passed
out as news. In the olden days, when Louella reigned alone, there was a
mighty load to suppress, too.

As she slid into a decline through sheer aggravation over _Time_, her
spirits were rapidly restored by a suggestion put up by Adela Rogers
St. John, the magazine writer: “Give Louella the most wonderful dinner
party Hollywood has seen, then maybe she’ll forget about the cover
story.”

Now Louella has accepted every conceivable and inconceivable degree,
doctorate, scroll, and plaque held out by college or corporation.
Testimonial dinners to her are routine, though Eddie Cantor may have
said a little more than he meant at a Masquers Club event celebrating
her thirtieth anniversary as a columnist when he conceded: “I am here
for the same reason everybody else is--we were afraid not to come.”

The idea of putting on a super-size testimonial caught on with every
producer who heard about it. The Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove was
hired and treated to a face lift for the big event. It was originally
planned to collect $25 from each of the hundreds of guests who sat
among the papier-mâché monkeys and imitation palm trees, but when
Hearst heard about it, he footed the whole bill.

_Daily Variety_ did the evening up proud: “The guest list was the
Who’s Who of motion pictures, and even the oldest old-timer could not
recall when so many reigning stars of the past, present, and future, in
toto, as well as agents, press agents, producers, directors, authors,
distributors, studio chiefs, maîtres d’hôtel, the mayor, and governor
all got together in one room. Flanked by industry leaders, Miss Parsons
sat on a garland-strewn dais and listened to oratory in which no
adjectives were spared.”

As a climax, Louella collected a gold plaque with an engraved
inscription to her “courage, accuracy, fairness and curiosity.”
_Time’s_ account noted: “Such well-established stars as Clark Gable and
Cary Grant allowed themselves the liberty of not attending.”

All I know about it, I read in the papers. I wasn’t invited. Neither
was Adela Rogers St. John.

My modest contribution to the welfare of Louella and her family took
the form of some column paragraphs that appeared soon after the
Cocoanut Grove whingding: “_I Remember Mama_, and you will, too, when
you have seen the film. With all the elements of good theater and good
cinema, humor, humanity and hominess, it will be hard to forget ... to
Harriet Parsons, who found the story and produced the picture, must go
a lot of credit....”

That was the final chapter in a story that had started four years
earlier. Harriet is an only child; her father was John Parsons, who
died following the breakup of Louella’s first marriage, before Docky
came on the scene. RKO had signed Harriet as a producer, and she set to
work delving into the studio’s files, looking for likely properties.
She dug out _The Enchanted Cottage_, had it prepared for the screen,
arranged a deal with Sam Goldwyn to borrow Teresa Wright as the
heroine. Then suddenly it was snatched away from her and given to
another writer-producer.

Undeterred, she went back to the files and excavated a story called
_Mama’s Bank Account_, which was retitled _I Remember Mama_, and lined
up Katina Paxinou to play in it. That, too, was grabbed from her by
RKO. At that point, I stepped in with a column item relating Harriet’s
misfortunes and asking: “What goes on? Harriet’s clever, and I think
this is shabby treatment, even for Hollywood.”

The day after the item appeared _The Enchanted Cottage_ was returned to
her--it was a big success when she produced it--and she got _I Remember
Mama_ back, too. Louella had been restored in health and spirit in time
to attend the preview, though in a seat removed from mine. “I expect
Harriet’s picture will be very good,” she confided to a friend, “but I
know one person here who won’t give it a good review.”

Harriet was in New York, where she read my notice in the News. She
telephoned her mother. “Have you read Hedda’s column?”

“No, I never read that column,” Louella sniffed.

“She’s done what nobody else would do for me. I want you to call her
and thank her for me.” Louella did, and we arranged a peace parley over
a luncheon table at Romanoff’s for one o’clock the following day. When
she walked in, a bit late as usual, every chin in the place dropped.
Hasty telephone calls brought in a mob of patrons who stood six deep at
the bar to witness our version of the signing of the Versailles Peace
Treaty. Nobody moved until we left arm in arm two hours later.

Harriet, whom I’ll always like, wired: YOU AND MA WOULD MANAGE TO TOP
ME STOP YOUR HISTORIC LUNCH HAS NOW CROWDED I REMEMBER MAMA OFF THE
FRONT PAGE STOP YOU GALS MIGHT HAVE WAITED FOR BABY. After that, she
won a ten-year contract at RKO. But peace between Louella and me wasn’t
wonderful enough to last very long.

The flames of our relationship blazed merrily one Christmas when a
studio head unwittingly poured fuel oil on. Louella and I are on the
same list for good-will offerings from studios, which fill my living
room from floor to ceiling every season.

One Christmas just before Ernie Pyle went off on his last visit to the
South Pacific, he came to call on me with some friends. After a few
drinks in the den, I said: “Ernie, do you want to see what fear can
bring a female in this town?”

We went into my living room. He looked in wonder at the loot and said
softly: “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”

Not every female star gets carried away with generosity. Doris Day
once sent me boxes of gift-wrapped chocolate-covered pretzels, and
Rosalind Russell a fist-sized hunk of coral such as you’d find in a
fish bowl. Louella’s loot exceeds mine. Once, I’m told, she collected
an automobile.

One unlucky studio chief had bought expensive handbags for each of us,
but they got switched in delivery. When I telephoned to thank him and
included a glowing description of the bag, I could hear his face fall.
“But that’s Louella’s,” he moaned. “Will you be a doll and send it on
to her and explain?”

“Like the devil I will,” I countered crisply. Louella is certain to
this day that I got a better present than she did. Another store’s
mistake brought me two handsome cut-crystal decanters for another
Yuletide, one engraved HH, the other LOP. “Would you return hers to
me?” said their donor.

“Not for the world. It makes such a gay conversation piece when I
can ask a guest: ‘Would you like some Jack Daniels out of Louella’s
bottle?’”

I regard her ungrudgingly as a good reporter, though she doesn’t always
get her facts straight where I’m concerned. (Nor do I sometimes.)
She invariably pretends that I am published only in the Los Angeles
_Times_, so her followers won’t know about the syndicate, which gives
Hopper a considerable edge in readership.

She has sometimes been tripped by her own prose. When Warners years
ago chose Alan Mowbray to play George Washington in _Alexander
Hamilton_, she took aim and fired: “It seems strange to me that an
Englishman would be cast as the father of our country.” During the
days when Mussolini invaded Albania and lives were snuffed out by the
thousands, she decided: “The deadly dullness of the past week was
lifted today when Darryl Zanuck announced he had bought all rights to
_The Blue Bird_ for Shirley Temple.”

In a reminiscent mood she noted: “I don’t know how many of my readers
remember John Barrymore and Dolores Costello in _Trilby_, the George
Du Maunier story, but my mind goes back to John just loving the part
of Svengali, wearing a black beard and hypnotizing the artist’s model
who could only sing when he cast his baleful eye on her.” As Irving
Hoffman recalled: “There wasn’t a thing wrong in the story except that
the name of the picture was _Svengali_, not _Trilby_, the leading lady
was Marian Marsh, not Dolores Costello ... du Maurier wrote it, not Du
Maunier.”

Louella left me with egg on my face with her exclusive story that
Ingrid Bergman was going to have a baby by Roberto Rossellini while she
was still the wife of Dr. Peter Lindstrom. This, a few months after I’d
interviewed Bergman at the scene of the crime and left Rome convinced
by her that Italian newspapers had lied in their linotypes when they
called her pregnant.

I will always believe that Joe Steele (the press agent employed both by
her and her studio boss, Howard Hughes) subsequently told the truth to
Louella. When her scoop appeared and the newspapers were hunting for
Joe, they couldn’t find him. Seems she had persuaded him he was in bad
shape, made sure he didn’t suffer thirst or hunger, then kept him safe
and sound for three days away from her competitors.

After her story had been spread to the world, it seemed like a good
idea to do something to help Ingrid, who wanted a quick divorce so
that her baby could be spared at least a part of the stigma. I thought
that perhaps she could be smuggled by plane out of Italy to some other
country, where only friends would know exactly when or if the child
was born.

Plans were going beautifully when the plan was broached to Ingrid.
She refused to have anything to do with it. She would have her child
proudly, she said, and if anyone didn’t like the idea he could lump it.

In 1951, Docky Martin died of cancer in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. It
was a crushing blow for Louella. Not long ago, she found herself there,
too, for an operation. The feebleness in her voice alarmed me. “I’m so
tired of this place,” she said, “and I’m so sick.”

I had a word with Harry Brand, publicity director of Twentieth
Century-Fox and a good friend to Louella and Docky: “If you want her to
live, you’d better get her out of that hospital. Either she’s in the
same room that Docky had or one exactly like it. She’ll never recover
until she’s moved.”

Nobody apparently had thought of that. She was out of there and into
the Beverly Hills Hotel the next day. Her column power is still potent,
but the times and temper of Hollywood have changed. Though she doesn’t
change, you can’t help but feel sorry for her. She still belabors her
enemies and coos over her intimates: Mervyn LeRoy, Jimmy McHugh, Cobina
Wright, all the Catholic “A” group that includes Loretta Young, Irene
Dunne, Dolores Hope. She still pretends not to read Hopper, but when I
broke the news of Kay Gable’s pregnancy, on the strength of a tip from
a crew member on _The Misfits_, Louella must have read the item and put
in a call instantly to Kay, begging to be the child’s godmother. At the
baptism her hands were so shaky we were scared stiff she’d let young
John Clark Gable fall on the floor by the font.

Louella claims that the people she writes about are all her dear, dear
friends, a total she once estimated at 312. My taste runs closer to
that of Dema Harshbarger, my manager, whom I have known since she first
put me on radio. “I have three friends in the world,” says Dema, “and
I don’t want any more. The average Hollywood friendship today wouldn’t
buy you a ham sandwich.”




_Five_


One of the legends that haunts the typewriters of most of Hollywood’s
five hundred resident reporters and columnists insists that our town
is just like Podunk, a typical American community with a heart as big
as Cinerama. (Are you there, Louella?) This is true, of course--give
or take a few billion dollars a year. Provided Podunk can muster three
dozen and more Rolls-Royces outside a movie house for a new picture
opening. And pay a good cook $500 a week to steal her away from the
best friend. And produce half a dozen houses with built-in pipe organs
and one with wood-burning fireplaces in both the master and children’s
bathrooms--it used to belong to Maggie Sullavan and Leland Hayward but
Fred MacMurray owns it now.

If the majority of people in Podunk worship money like a god, then
there isn’t much to choose between us. Take a man like Dean Martin. If
Podunkians judge their fellows by how many dollars they earn, then Dean
would be right at home. There was the day he got to arguing with his
press agent about Albert Einstein.

“I made $20,000 last week,” Dean said. “What do you think he made?”

“You’re right,” said the press agent, a thoughtful soul. “That
Einstein’s a dummy. I bet he never earned more than $12,000 a year in
his whole life. He’s got to be an idiot.” Dean had the grace to grin.
In Hollywood, where the love of money can change people’s nature every
bit as fast as in Podunk, he has a reputation for cool blood behind his
beaming Italian charm.

He isn’t alone in his class. It’s an obvious weakness among singers.
Perry Como, for instance, sets few records for making appearances for
charity. Bing Crosby, who enjoys almost nothing about his profession
except the income it brings him, can’t be dragged to a benefit. It took
his fiery little Irish mother, Kate, to push him out of his house to
one Academy Awards show when he was at the top of his career. “You’ll
go,” she threatened, “or you’ll never hear the last of it from me.”
Kate was a woman to be reckoned with and still is. That was the night
Bing got his Oscar for _Going My Way_.

Jerry Lewis on one occasion begged one big star to join him in New York
on an all-night telethon to raise funds in a muscular-dystrophy drive.
“You know what you can do with those crippled kids,” was the response
he received from this father of a big family, who has a reputation for
charming birds off trees.

Some of our inhabitants cherish the quaint idea that the number of
charity performances he gives is an accurate yardstick for measuring
an entertainer’s heart. More accurate, anyway, than the size of his
bank account. It’s easy to sing a song or two, harder to stand up and
be funny for half an hour. Yet the comics measure up well; Jack Benny,
Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, George Burns--all knock themselves out in the
sweet cause of charity.

Our number-one citizen on that score is Bob Hope, and we’re proud as
peacocks of him. There isn’t a place in the world he wouldn’t fly to
for charity and work without drawing a nickel. He’s ham enough to love
the publicity it brings him, but he does a monumental amount of good.
Bob has literally made the millions that everybody believes Bing has
stashed away in the vaults.

Money is talked about in our town more than elsewhere, perhaps, because
there’s more of it around. Bob, who could safely be called thrifty,
has splurged on a private three-hole golf course valued at more than
$100,000. Elvis Presley owns fifteen automobiles, including an all-pink
Cadillac with a television and hi-fi set. Beverly Hills High School has
an oil well on its campus which brings in $18,000 a year.

Beverly Hills is an oasis of thirty thousand inhabitants and thirty
thousand trees set in the steppes of Los Angeles. Many of its people
earn their living in the entertainment industry or as doctors, lawyers,
agents, soothsayers and headshrinkers, living on the backs of the
others. Most of the trees that line the sidewalks are palms, though
magnolias, eucalyptus, and acacias thrive in the gardens, and the
evening scent of pittosporum drifts over the streets as sweet as the
song of nightingales.

It’s a separate community with its own schools, police, firemen, and
local government. As a contented resident, I’m happy to say that it
enjoys the lowest tax rate for miles around. I am not so happy to
report that in our town, where there’s at least one Olympic-size pool
to the block, and sometimes five, Esther Williams found nobody she
asked would give her the regular use of one for classes in teaching
blind children to swim. She finally found a pool in Santa Monica,
thirty minutes’ drive away, two days a week.

Acting as a kind of buffer between Beverly Hills and Los Angeles proper
is Hollywood, with a population of some quarter of a million, which is
the workplace of most of the stars who live in Beverly Hills. The rest
of our population seems to be Texans, who are flocking in and who can
usually leave the movie colony standing with dust on their faces when
it comes to worshiping the golden calf.

Up until the early days of this century, Beverly Hills saw more
coyotes than dollar bills. It was a Spanish-owned wilderness of remote
canyons and tumbleweed. Then in 1906 it was bought for $670,000 by its
American founders, who sold off lots at $1000 apiece on the installment
plan, $800 if you paid cash; those lots sell now for $50,000. The big
spending didn’t start until soon after World War I ended, but long
before that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had bought a whole
hilltop on Summit Drive together with the hunting lodge that stood
there. They spent hundreds of thousands on the place that we called
“The White House”--Pickfair.

Doug itched to put a wall all the way around Beverly Hills, but he
compromised by simply encircling their estate. He and Mary literally
made their home a palace. They were America’s royalty and were treated
as such in their own country and overseas. Kings and queens entertained
them; they rode in Mussolini’s private train. At Pickfair they
entertained visiting bluebloods.

The Duke and Duchess of Alba stayed there, but they left a week early
because the duke discovered, to his chagrin, that the armfuls of cuddly
Hollywood blondes he’d been expecting were not permitted through
Pickfair’s portals.

Pickfair had some rich neighbors. Carl Laemmle, the half-pint immigrant
from Bavaria who founded Universal-International, built an estate.
So did Will Rogers, Gloria Swanson, Charles Chaplin. Chaplin is
notoriously tight-fisted. After he’d furnished most of his home on
Summit Drive, including his own bedroom, four or five other bedrooms
remained empty. He had the head decorator of our biggest furniture
store come to see the rooms and suggest their decor. Charlie had
all the recommended furniture delivered and kept it for six months,
ignoring the bills. Finally, the store repossessed everything it had
“lent” him. He applied the same treatment to another store, with the
same final result.

During this period, a titled Englishman with wife and entourage wired
the Douglas Fairbankses that they’d be arriving at Pickfair with ten in
party; could they be accommodated? Pickfair hadn’t room for everybody,
so Mary telephoned Charlie, who said he’d take in six of the visitors.

But he’d forgotten that the furniture in his guest bedrooms had been
carted off, leaving only an old chest of drawers and mattresses and
bedsprings on the floor of each otherwise empty room. When the guests
saw the accommodations he’d provided for them, they were astounded;
imagined he must be some kind of crazy health faddist, and departed
after one night for a hotel.

Harold Lloyd bought his acreage direct from Mr. Benedict
himself--that’s the old-timer who put his name on Benedict Canyon.
Then Harold bought more adjoining land from Thomas Ince until he had
twenty acres of lawns and woodlands. After he married Mildred Davis,
his leading woman in _Grandma’s Boy_, in 1923, he built a forty-room,
Spanish-style mansion on the place, with ten bedrooms, two elevators,
a theater seating one hundred guests, and a four-room dolls’ house
complete with electric light, plumbing, and grand piano. Around
the house he had kennels for his great Danes, a swimming pool with
fountain, two reflecting pools, and a Greek temple.

Mildred loved it all, then took a second look at the front door and
burst into tears. What was the matter? “No keyhole!” she sobbed.

The Lloyds still live there. When he opened the grounds for a local
charity a few years ago, today’s generation of stars gasped at this
glimpse of how thick the luxury could grow before income taxes gobbled
up your pay checks. “How can he possibly afford to keep up this place?”
Frank Sinatra asked me.

“Because he’s worth millions,” I said, “and he holds on to them.” That
afternoon, though, $69,000 was raised for the Nursery for Visually
Handicapped Children. At the suggestion of Walter Annenberg’s mother,
when things got dull, I sold endowments for thirteen scholarships to
the school at $1000 apiece.

Harold, who is in his late sixties, believes that you can take it with
you. There is one servant, a helper and nurse for their grandchild, on
the place which used to employ twenty gardeners. Mildred Lloyd does
most of the cooking.

Stores and services soon crowded into and around Beverly Hills, to
tap the golden stream that poured into the motion-picture industry.
You could buy any kind of merchandise or service at a price. Saks
Fifth Avenue, J. W. Robinson’s, W. & J. Sloane eventually opened up on
Wilshire Boulevard. One lady got in ahead of them with a different kind
of establishment on Sunset Strip, just beyond the town line; her girls,
dressed to the teeth, were once taken on a conducted tour of the MGM
lot. A Metro executive was appalled when, in a moment of confidence,
she showed him a wad of rubber checks she’d been given by various male
customers. They would have been a prize package for any autograph
hound. He offered to collect the debts and split the proceeds with her.

“Oh no, I couldn’t allow that,” she said, shocked to the marrow. “It
wouldn’t be ethical.”

She had a competitor in the same line of business who one evening
telephoned a visiting English knight in the middle of a dinner party to
say she’d seen his name in the papers and could she provide him with a
steady companion for his lonely hours.

In Beverly Hills you can call on furriers who’ll be glad to sell a mink
coat at $20,000, a chinchilla wrap for $15,000, or an ermine-covered
toilet seat. You can have your hair dressed by George Masters, who’ll
bill you up to you-name-it for a home appointment, or a make-up by Gene
Hibbs, who invented an ingenious, invisible bit of nylon mesh with
a rubber band suspended from tiny hooks pulled up through your hair
which, for special occasions, takes more years off your looks than
plastic surgery.

If you’re a celebrity anywhere, your cost of living takes a leap, but
in our town it jumps sky high. Any star looking to buy a house tries
to keep his identity secret until closing day or else the price will
be doubled. A star of the opposite sex will be charged $5000 by her
obstetrician for delivering a baby.

When Norma Shearer was first pregnant, she was aghast to hear what the
bill would be. “Very well,” the doctor compromised, “I’ll gamble with
you. I’ll charge $5000 for a boy, $1000 for a girl. Okay?” Norma lost
the bet when Irving Thalberg, Jr., was born.

Some of our citizens fall into the habits of European royalty and carry
no money whatever in their pockets. Shirley MacLaine was working on
_The Children’s Hour_ when Sam Goldwyn invited her to dine tête-à-tête
with him and see a private showing of his old-time movie, _Stella
Dallas_. It provided an evening out as unsophisticated as a flour sack.

She told me: “While we were looking at the picture, I started to
scratch. I was wearing a wool dress I hadn’t had on for months and
apparently it had gotten moths or something. I was afraid he’d think I
wasn’t enjoying _Stella_. When we got out, he said, ‘How about a soda?’”

In his Thunderbird they drove to Will Wright’s on Sunset Boulevard. At
the next table some youngsters were having a ball burning holes in soda
straws to make improvised flutes, then blowing tunes on them. Sam asked
for a lesson and soon sat in to play his own straw flute.

“The girl came with our orders,” Shirley reported, “and we ate them.
Then he went through all his pockets before he finally said, ‘You got
any money on you?’ But I’d left my bag at the studio.”

He called over the waitress, who wore her name on a lapel pin:
“Nancy, have you ever been out with a male friend and been so
embarrassed because he didn’t have any money with him?” Nancy smiled
sympathetically. “How about if I sign an I.O.U. and have my wife,
Frances, come down tomorrow to pay you?”

That was agreed. Sam leaned over confidentially toward Shirley. “Since
we’re getting ’em free, let’s have a couple more.” They had three each
before they went outside and flagged down his chauffeur, who’d followed
them in another car.

“You go up and tell Mrs. Goldwyn what happened here tonight,” Sam
instructed. “Say Nancy had to trust us for six sodas at thirty-five
cents apiece. You come back with the money and see if you can’t
scrounge seventy-five cents for a tip--but don’t tell Frances about the
tip.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Evenings were known to be gaudier in the old days. The Basil Rathbones
gave a Louis XIV masquerade, and I was set to go as a shepherdess
complete with live lamb, who had his hoofs gilded and fleece shampooed.
I didn’t get there, but that’s a later story. Mrs. George Temple,
Shirley’s mother, went to her first and only big Hollywood party and
left a new ermine coat on a bed on top of a pile of others. When the
time came to leave, she discovered that one distinguished guest had
been taken violently ill in the bedroom with disastrous results to the
furs, her ermine suffering most of all.

For one revel at his Mulholland Drive home, Errol Flynn imported a
transvestite fairy dressed so skillfully as a girl that nobody guessed
the secret. Errol had his swimming pool lit from below and brought on
a team of high divers to brighten the evening. When his guests went
on chattering, taking not a blind bit of notice of the performance,
he dived headlong into the water in protest and refused to speak to
anybody except the divers for the duration of the party.

“You’re so generous in many ways and so stingy in others,” I told him,
years later. “You spent thousands on those parties, yet you wouldn’t
buy a girl a box of candy or send her flowers when you could have saved
yourself at least five lawsuits with a single rose each time.”

He worshiped John Barrymore and deliberately started the rumor that he
was John’s illegitimate offspring. They came to a parting of the ways,
however, when he invited “Father” up to Mulholland Drive. John, who was
incontinent toward the end, forgot himself as he sat on a beautiful
settee in the lavishly furnished living room that was Errol’s pride.
That was the last time John was invited.

Water, as well as drugs and alcohol, attracted Errol. He was
sun-bathing mother-naked one day on a sailboat in the Mediterranean
when a sight-seeing craft loaded with American schoolteachers came by.
He chose that moment to stand up and stretch. One gasping teacher fell
overboard, covered in blushes, and he promptly plunged in to retrieve
her.

Errol used to live directly across the street from me during his
marriage to Lili Damita. All I had to do to pick up an item or two for
the column was sit by my bedroom window and listen to them shrieking at
each other. I got the low-down on their separation by just lying in bed
and listening. It was a screaming, juicy bout.

I was all set to put it on the wire the next morning, when Errol came
over in dressing gown and slippers at 7 A.M., got me out of bed, and
begged me not to print it, saying they hadn’t even talked about a
property settlement. Like a fool, I promised to keep silent until he
gave me the cue. But he couldn’t keep his own secret and told Louella,
who scooped me with my own story. I could have throttled him--but
that’s Hollywood.

The last time I saw Errol was in Paris, when he was making _The Roots
of Heaven_. He wanted his teen-age popsie to stay in the room while I
interviewed him. She wouldn’t go, so I did, interview or no interview.
But I kept a soft spot for him in my heart in spite of the several
kinds of ruin he brought on himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

After ten o’clock on a weekday night, Podunk would probably look
like Broadway compared with Beverly Hills, which is strictly a
roll-up-the-sidewalk community. After that witching hour, police in
prowl cars stop anyone they see out walking to ask if they’re residents
and, if they’re not and have no good reason for being around, escort
them to the nearest bus stop.

By ten-thirty virtually every household has gone to bed. Working actors
and actresses have to be up by six or six-thirty. Then it’s a cold
shower to get the eyes open, a shampoo and a finger wave in the case
of actresses. Most women have a shampoo every morning; blondes from
necessity because they use gold dust in their hair, brunettes to make
their hair shiny. Half a dozen eggs makes the basis of many a brunet
shampoo.

Under the dryer, the Beverly Hills workingwoman takes the juice of a
lemon and a cup of hot water. Then a look over the script for the day’s
shooting while she downs orange juice and black coffee. After leaving
instructions for the cook and servants--and nurse, if there are young
children--she drives to the studio, where curls are combed out and
make-up applied. If she’s wearing an evening gown, she’s whitened to
the waist; it’s cold and sticky.

She’s squeezed into her costume, and a stand-by car takes her to the
sound stage. Director, crew, and rest of the cast say their good
mornings. Because their moods will be affected by hers, she has to
set the emotional climate for the day--no headaches, heartaches, or
bellyaches for her.

If she knows her lines, some other cast members may not. So the company
rehearses until everybody’s letter perfect. Lights are set, sound
adjusted, cameras roll. Then somebody fluffs a cue or a move, and
that’s contagious. “Dear God, don’t let it happen to me,” she mutters.
The same scene may be done over forty times before the director is
satisfied. Some of them are sadists, who’ll keep their players sweating
just to prove who’s boss.

At noon, lunch is called. Her dress is usually so tight that a cup of
hot soup, green salad with cottage cheese, and more black coffee is as
much as she can stand. It’s hard to relax after that bit of bunny food.

Maybe there’s a long-distance call waiting from some relative who never
did a lick of work, complaining that the allowance will have to be
upped because baby Peggy needs braces or the car has to have new tires
or Auntie May has set her heart on a Florida vacation.

Then she hurries back to work. If she happens to have a crying scene
to do, it will be easy. When she comes out of it, she catches the eye
of an extra whose thoughts are as plain as if shouted aloud: “Were you
ever rotten in that! I could show them how to handle it.” When our
girl’s nose, eyes, and mascara are all running simultaneously, the head
of the studio walks on with a banker from New York.

So it goes until six o’clock, when she goes to the projection room
to see the previous day’s rushes, then back to the dressing room to
remove make-up. If she’s a blonde, the gold dust is brushed out, hot
oil applied, and her head’s wrapped up in a bandanna like a Christmas
pudding.

Home at last, where the servants are eating high on the hog, but she
has a tray with hot broth, one lamb chop, spinach or string beans, and
perhaps a dab of apple sauce. There’s time to play with the children
for half an hour, look over tomorrow’s script, sign dozens of checks a
secretary has laid out in a folder for her. Then a body massage, and
what’s left of her crawls to bed.

Is it any wonder that there hasn’t been a real, big-star hostess in our
town since Doug Fairbanks deserted Mary Pickford? Hundreds have tried,
but nobody’s succeeded, not even Mary. As Mrs. Buddy Rogers, she lost
the glory.

Mrs. Kirk Douglas and her friend, the present Mrs. Gregory Peck, have
their dreams along those lines. Veronique pretended to be a writer so
she could get a private interview with Gregory when he visited Paris
with his first wife, Greta, and openly told a companion, Brenda Helser
of _Diplomat_ magazine: “I’m going to be the next Mrs. Peck.” Her plan
worked like a charm.

The current Mrs. Edward G. Robinson would like to be a hostess with
the mostest, but she has not attained the status of Gladys, his former
wife, who entertained in great style and set him going on his way to
being a great art collector. It was Gladys who had the knowledge and
chose most of the paintings. Collecting pictures is a neat trick for
cutting down on income tax, highly recommended by financial consultants
if you can afford it. You donate the paintings to a museum as an act
of charity, but have the pleasure of them hanging on your walls for a
lifetime.

The William Goetzes mix social ambitions with art collecting and what
may be lightheartedly called “cultural leadership.” The walls of their
home--it takes seven servants to run it--are adorned like a museum with
works by Monet, Matisse, Roualt, Dufy, Lautrec, and a reputed Van Gogh,
which Bill bought for $50,000 in 1948 from a New York gallery. When the
painter’s nephew had doubts about its authenticity, the Metropolitan
Museum assembled a jury of three experts. After they’d pored over the
canvas, they declared that they, too, were unwilling to accept it as
an original. A European art critic, Dr. Jacob Bart de la Faille, who
had vouched for the picture’s genuineness in the first place, insisted
that he’d made no mistake and the buyer hadn’t been taken. Then five
European experts took a look and said it was a Van Gogh, sure enough.
Where that leaves Bill Goetz, I don’t know, because he hasn’t told me.
We aren’t in each other’s confidence and never have been.

He married Edith, Louis B. Mayer’s older daughter--Irene, the other,
became David Selznick’s wife. When Edie’s engagement was announced,
Louis put Ida Koverman in charge of wedding arrangements, with orders
to invite all the old-line Los Angeles socialites. As Herbert Hoover’s
former aide, Ida knew them; Louis did not. Edie was always drawn by
pictures of one sort or another. She paid almost daily visits to Ida’s
office, whose walls were hung with autographed pictures from the
biggest people in America, to bombard her with fresh instructions.

She stopped in front of the then President’s photograph (“To my dear
Ida ... Herbert Hoover”) and asked: “Have you invited him?”

“You don’t know him,” Ida said.

“You do and father does. Send him an invitation. I’d like to see what
he sends me.”

“But he’s the President of the United States.”

“Invite him, anyway.”

Hoover didn’t attend the wedding, but Edie got a present from him. She
got presents from everybody. There must have been twenty showers given
for her. If you were on the MGM payroll, as I was as an actress then,
there was somebody to tell you what to take or send for all occasions.

Came the night of the wedding and sit-down supper in the Biltmore
ballroom. I was seated at a side table when Ben Meyer, a local banker,
came over and asked me to join his group at a more elevated spot. “We
don’t know any of these people,” he said. “Will you point out the stars
for us?”

Partly as a result of making my first visit to the place as DeWolf
Hopper’s wife when he was an idol in the theater, partly as a result
of having Harry Lombard, the Boston banker, and his wife as friends, I
knew my way around Los Angeles society. But I had to tell Ben Meyer:
“I’ll have to get Mr. Mayer’s permission first.”

“You’ll have to what?” he exploded.

“He employs me, remember? Social or anything else, I’ll have to ask
him.”

Louis couldn’t understand how I could have a banker asking after me.

“These are my friends, Louis: lawyers, doctors, professional people.
They’ve no idea who your stars are because they never see your
pictures.” Permission granted, grudgingly. With the Meyers, I sat at
the gayest, most gossipy table in the room. At the end of the evening
they knew the names of all the stars and most of their histories.

Louis and his son-in-law were thick as thieves for years. Mayer bought
race horses, Goetz bought race horses. At one Academy Award banquet
Louis put his arm around Bill: “If you just go on the way you’re going,
you’ll be a greater man than I ever was.”

William wanted to head his own film company just like his
brother-in-law, David. With Louis behind him anything was possible. It
looked like a wide-open opportunity when Darryl Zanuck left Twentieth
Century-Fox to join the Army in World War II. Louis began maneuvers
with his partner at Metro, Nick Schenck, of Loew’s Inc., whose brother
Joe was board chairman at Fox. Goetz would replace Zanuck while Darryl
was in Washington, D.C. in uniform.

I got wind of it and flashed a “hurry home” message to Darryl, who was
on duty in Washington. He raced back three days before the intended
change-over. Shortly thereafter it was announced that Mr. Goetz had
resigned from Twentieth Century-Fox, to become production chief at
Universal-International.

Ten years later, in 1953, he quit that job, too. A controlling interest
in the studio had been bought by Milton Rackmil, who found in the
course of negotiating a new contract for his head of production that
Goetz set his price at $5000 a week while fellow executives got less
than $2000. Later he had a spell at Columbia, and now Bill Goetz sits
on a bank’s board, has real-estate interests. The movies lost their
attraction when he underestimated Louis, a fierce Republican, and
backed Adlai Stevenson in 1948 despite his father-in-law’s pleas. Louis
did not speak to him after that. When he died in 1957, his will left
$500,000 to his daughter Irene and similar bequests to her sons by
Selznick. He cut out Edie and Bill Goetz and their children entirely.

       *       *       *       *       *

Los Angeles society is much like the frog that wanted to inflate
himself bigger than a bull. New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit
all have social leaders with recognizable names that stand for
something in America and, in some cases, around the world. Los Angeles
is different, for all its size. Outside our city limits, its “society”
with few exceptions doesn’t mean much, primarily because our standard
isn’t “Who are you?” but “How much have you got?”

In the early days Los Angeles socialites lent their gardens and
exteriors of their houses to movie making on a business basis, donating
proceeds to charity. But they didn’t invite picture people in to dine
with them. The dividing line still exists, though it’s narrower than it
used to be. For one thing, international leaders and celebrities don’t
give a damn about Los Angeles society when they visit here. They want
to meet and be entertained by the stars, because they give the best
parties and are more fun to be with.

Now Sam Goldwyn mingles with Mrs. Norman Chandler and the music crowd
since they’re both deeply involved in fund raising for the music center
housing the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Opera
Company. Danny Kaye and Jack Benny conduct concerts for the symphony.
One that Danny did brought in $185,000. But movie people can no more
get into the Los Angeles Country Club for either love or money than
they could when Cecil De Mille battered in vain on its doors.

Harpo Marx, whom I adore, once told me he couldn’t understand why he
couldn’t join a local country dub. “That’s easy,” was my reply. “You
belong to a different club, where they don’t take in Christians. So in
a way they’re sort of even.”

“I never thought of that,” said he. The following day, Eddie Mannix, a
feisty Irishman, joined Harpo’s country club.

Generally speaking, Los Angeles society in the beginning would have
nothing to do with the movie crowd; now the movie industry has little
to do with Los Angeles society. In some cases the bar went up because
they worked in movies, sometimes because they were Jews. Our town and
every suburban Podunk across the nation have something in common with
that prejudice.

Hollywood treats the subject simultaneously as a joke, a jinx, and a
business risk. Sinatra and the Clan allow themselves the privilege of
kidding each other as “wops” and “kikes” but protest publicly against
racial discrimination. One comedy star doesn’t wince when men on his
payroll refer to him as “Super-Jew.”

When Louis B. Mayer first saw Danny Thomas, who is a professional
Lebanese, on a night-club stage, he liked everything about him except
his looks. “I would put you under contract immediately,” he told
Danny, “except you look too Jewish. I want you to have some surgery to
straighten out your nose.”

He imagined it was doubt about the possible result that made Danny
decline with thanks. “Well, then, I understand you have a brother.
Here’s what we’ll do for you. We’ll have his nose done _first_ as a
sample.” He was amazed when that offer was turned down, too.

Because of his “lady complex,” I was approached by Louis, who begged
me to get his daughters into our most private private school, whose
principal was a friend of mine. There was no point in mincing words.
“Mr. Mayer,” I said, “they don’t accept them.”

“But they’ll take my daughters,” he snapped. “Can’t you tell the head
mistress how important I am?”

“It won’t do any good. You can’t win that one. They will not take
Jews.” He had no choice but to accept the truth, no matter how
disagreeable.

When Samuel Goldwyn was preparing _Guys and Dolls_, I heard he was
talking about having Frank Sinatra play Nathan Detroit, the gambling
man, brilliantly played by Sam Levene on Broadway. I bearded Samuel
in his den. “Sinatra’s no more fitted for that part than I am. He’s a
great entertainer, but not in that role. Nobody but nobody can play it
like Sam Levene. Why don’t you get him?”

“You can’t have a Jew playing a Jew,” Sam said calmly. “It wouldn’t
work on the screen.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What was that you said?” He repeated his
words. “I could slay you for that remark,” I exploded.

“But you won’t.”

“But someday I might,” I warned.

So in Hollywood only Christians are allowed to portray Jews. Gertrude
Berg was thrown out of _A Majority of One_ to make room for Rosalind
Russell--Gertrude read about the switch in the New York _Times_ after
she’d been promised the part by Dore Schary. Otto Preminger’s casting
transformed _Exodus_ into a Protestant epic. _Anne Frank_ emerged
as milk-and-watery Millie Perkins. _A Catered Affair_ served Kellys
instead of Cohens.

Sam stayed on speaking terms with me until _Porgy and Bess_ came along,
and he hired as director Rouben Mamoulian, who had performed the same
task for DuBose Heyward’s _Porgy_ as a straight play, before it was
converted into a musical. During the following eight months Mamoulian
had fresh arrangements orchestrated, persuaded a distinguished list of
Negro players to forget their fears that the movie would be an “Uncle
Tom” show.

Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey, and others had
turned down Goldwyn’s approaches. Only Sammy Davis, Jr., had agreed
to perform. Mamoulian explained individually to each holdout how he
would direct, with full recognition of the fact that humanity has come
a long way since Porgy first saw the light of Catfish Row. Satisfied
that there’d be no reflection on their race, they signed contracts
with Sam--who decided to fire Mamoulian and hire in his place Otto
Preminger, whose style is distinctly Prussian. He engaged Preminger
before he told Mamoulian he was through.

Outraged, I let fly at Sam in a column. I admired this talented, foxy
man from the days when he was Sam Goldfish, an immigrant from Poland.
I knew him as Jesse Lasky’s partner when Geraldine Farrar came out
from New York to make _Joan of Arc_ in 1915. In fact, I made a couple
of silent pictures for him. I helped get an honorary Oscar for Harold
Russell, the miraculous, handless ex-GI in Sam’s _Best Years of Our
Lives_. Harold also collected one as best supporting actor, thus
squeezing out Clifton Webb, who was the favorite that year in that
category.

Samuel was Mr. Charm himself then; we were friends, especially if he’d
had a tiff with Louella. But a few lines in print ended our life-term
friendship. He hasn’t spoken to me since. It’s gall to him that _Porgy
and Bess_ was one of his few failures, a dull, photographed opera with
no heart, soul, or finesse, where Mamoulian could have made it a thing
of beauty, like the original _Porgy_, which had me weeping tears of
compassion as I first saw it in a New York theater.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beverly Hills is my home. I’ve lived in the same house there for
twenty-two years. When I walk my gray French poodle, Beau Beau, a gift
from Ann Sheridan, I pass the house of Ned Washington, who wrote such
scintillating songs as “My Foolish Heart,” “I’ll Walk Alone,” “When You
Wish Upon a Star.” Across from him resides Pete Smith, retired now,
whose movie short subjects had audiences in gales of laughter for more
than a generation.

Then there’s the home of Ann and Jack Warner, with its private golf
course and tennis court. In the drawing room hangs her portrait by
Salvador Dali, the finest he’s painted.... There’s the house of Mr. and
Mrs. Bruno Pagliai. We knew her first as Merle Oberon, then as Lady
Alexander Korda. After their divorce she married Lucien Ballard, one of
our finest cinematographers. She longed for children but could have
none, even after several operations. So after her marriage to Bruno,
she adopted a boy and a girl.

Next to the Pagliais live Ketti and Kurt Frings. Ketti adapted for the
stage _Look Homeward, Angel_, which boosted Tony Perkins to stardom.
Kurt is the agent who got Elizabeth Taylor the first million-dollar
picture salary in our history.

Turning into Roxbury Drive, I pass the home of Lucille Ball, who knew
joy and sorrow there with Desi Arnaz and now is happy as a lark with
her new husband, Gary Morton. Tallulah Bankhead and I were among
the dinner guests in that house once, when Tallu was appearing the
following day on “I Love Lucy.” Desi seated me on his right, a place
which Tallu insisted should be hers. But Hopper can be stubborn as an
Amish mule, and the brickbats started to fly. We couldn’t get her out
of the house until 1:30 A.M. At the “Lucy” filming Lucille was nervous
as a cat over the events of the previous night. She forgot her lines
for the first time in her life. Tallulah, who’d been appalling during
rehearsals, sailed through her performance like Eleanora Duse.

Lucy’s neighbors are Mary and Jack Benny, who’ve never changed marriage
partners or their way of life. Jack doesn’t stop working; Mary, like
Gracie Allen, refuses to set foot on a TV sound stage again.

Up the street, you find Jeanne Crain and Paul Brinkman and their six
children, all happy as hooligans. Better look sharp as you pass or
you’ll trip over roller skates, a tricycle, or a baseball bat on the
sidewalk.

Next door is a house of sorrow--Rosemary Clooney and her five children
live there with no husband or father to guide them. José Ferrer moved
out. Also on this street are the Ira Gershwins; the Thomas Mitchells;
Aggie Moorehead in the house where Sigmund Romberg used to make music
and feed us every Sunday night. In this block, too, stands the Spanish
house where Liz Taylor lived with her parents when she was making
_National Velvet_, too young to be interested in men or even boys.

Then I pass what was once the home of Sir Charles and Lady Mendl, a
monstrous Spanish affair that Elsie Mendl made over into a thing of
beauty. Never was an off-color joke allowed to be told when she was
present. Ludwig Bemelmans, who had a Rabelaisian sense of humor, repaid
her hospitality by adorning the powder-room walls with some outrageous
pictures. She took one horrified look and ordered the walls repainted
immediately. Elsie, ninety-five pounds of energy, fun, and good taste,
received Sir Charles in her bedroom only after she had granted him
permission via his valet.

Charles and I used to walk by the mile together, apparently the only
residents of Beverly who applied their legs to such purpose. Though
he’d known seventeen European monarchs in his day--including the Duke
of Windsor, whom Charles didn’t much care for--he steadfastly turned
down my pleas for him to write the Mendl memoirs.

Charles earned his knighthood as press attaché to the British Embassy
in Paris when Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister. MacDonald,
unsophisticated as a newborn baby, fell into the clutches of a wise and
beautiful woman. He was indiscreet enough to write her letters that a
schoolboy would have blushed over. The problem was how to recover them
without scandal or the outlay of a mint of money.

Someone thought of Charles Mendl, who had a way with the ladies and
adored them one and all. He was delighted to accept the assignment. The
lady was so pleased with him that she produced the letters for them to
read together, roaring with laughter. She presented them to him as a
souvenir of many happy hours, and she collected a few thousand pounds
for her trouble. The Empire was saved; Charles was knighted.

       *       *       *       *       *

No wonder psychiatrists flourish in our town. There are nearly
two hundred of them. Bedford Drive and Roxbury Drive, where their
consulting rooms are concentrated, are known as Libido Lane and Couch
Canyon. Louis Mayer once had his whole family analyzed by the same
woman. I went to her once to see how she’d react to my being a patient.

“You’d have me on the couch in nothing flat,” she said. “Out you go.” I
went.




_Six_


The one and only exclusive interview I had with Marlon Brando lasted
half an hour. As the minutes ticked by he sat posed like Rodin’s
“Thinker” contemplating a bust of Stanislavski. He paid no more heed
to me than if I’d been a ladybug squatting on the back of his canvas
chair. With a snap of the fingers, I brought him out of his trance.
“Have you been listening, Mr. Brando?”

“Sure.”

“Do you care to answer my questions?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Then may I tell you that I didn’t want this interview? Your producer,
Stanley Kramer, insisted that I do it. You needn’t submit yourself to
further agony. Thanks for nothing, and good day.”

I walked off the set of _The Men_, and I haven’t set foot on any Brando
set from that day on. Every studio he has worked for has tried to coax
me back. But I can’t be insulted twice, not if I know what’s going to
happen.

I regard him as a supreme egotist, for want of a better term, whose
good performances, like those in _On the Waterfront_ and _A Streetcar
Named Desire_, I recognize. I understand that he refers to me as “The
One with the Hat.” He has been known variously as “the male Garbo”
and “Dostoevski’s Tom Sawyer.” He’s doing extremely well without my
support in piling up millions. He’s a dedicated ringleader in a current
melodrama which can be called “Viva Brando; or, The Actor’s Revenge.”

When he originally landed here in 1950, he carried his entire wardrobe
in a canvas satchel: two pairs of blue jeans, four T shirts, two pairs
of socks, and the works of the philosopher Spinoza, who teaches that
everything is decreed by God and is therefore necessarily good. Marlon
immediately labeled Hollywood a “cultural boneyard.”

He said then: “My objective is to submit myself to what I think and
feel until I’m in a position to think and feel as I please.” It took
ten years to do it, but he made it in spades in _Mutiny on the Bounty_.
He also said: “The only reason I’m here is because I don’t yet have the
moral strength to turn down the money.”

When Stanley Kramer telephoned him in Paris about doing _The Men_,
Marlon had two questions: “Do you want me for more than one film? How
much will you pay?” From a $50,000 fee for _The Men_, he went, via
_Streetcar_, to $150,000 in _Viva Zapata_. More recently, he held out
for every cent of net profits, leaving the studio to collect nothing
more than a percentage of the gross as distributor. His asking price
now is a million dollars a performance.

The town should have known what to expect on the strength of reports
from Broadway and his nerve-racking portrayal in the theater of Stanley
Kowalski, the cave-man lover of _Streetcar_. Irene Selznick, who
produced the play, gave an opening-night party at “21” which Marlon
reluctantly attended. Jerome Zerbe, the society photographer and
columnist, was there, and Irene asked if he’d invite Marlon over to be
photographed with her, not for publicity but for her personal album.

Crossing the room, Zerbe passed on the request to Marlon, who turned
him down flat. “Why should I be photographed with her?”

“Well, she’s your producer, after all.”

“Means nothing to me,” said the newest sensation of Broadway, aged
twenty-three. Zerbe broke the news to Irene and exchanged no more words
with Marlon until Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie, arriving late,
picked their way through the crowd to Zerbe and made a fuss over him.

Now Marlon could see that Jerome was socially “in”; he made a beeline
for him. “I’ll pose for that picture now,” he offered.

Zerbe, a proud man, was halfway toward the door on his way out. “You
won’t pose for me,” he said flatly. “I wouldn’t photograph you if you
were the last man on this earth.”

I once put a question to Marlon asking his opinion of acting as a
profession. “If you’re successful,” he replied, “it’s about as soft a
job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you’re unsuccessful, it’s
worse than having a skin disease.”

Social ailments of various kinds hold a strange attraction for him.
When reporters used to ask him about some chapters of his younger days,
he would tell them he couldn’t give an adequate answer because at the
time he wasn’t feeling too well. The favorite theme cropped up again
when he was making _Mutiny on the Bounty_ in Tahiti. By then, the
joke was on him, but he was drawing $5000 a day overtime and spouting
another favorite thought in slightly altered words: “After you’ve got
enough money, money doesn’t matter.”

He arrived in Hollywood with a hole in the knee of his only pair of
pants, and a large-sized chip on his shoulder. Though there were
stories of such generosity as tipping a New York shoeshine boy with a
five-dollar bill “because I felt sorry for him,” he appeared to resent
spending money, even a dime. If he could get an agent or reporter
to buy him a dinner, a drink, or even a cup of coffee, he was in a
good mood for hours. He refused to load himself down with a house,
swimming pool, convertible, fancy wardrobe, or any such items which the
“cultural boneyard” usually regards as the accompaniments to a soaring
career.

Producers, if they can, cultivate extravagance on the part of the
stars. They see to it that their puppets stagger under piles of
possessions and towering stacks of bills. Studios will lend money so
it seems easy to buy the house with the swimming pool at $200,000.
The debt becomes a sword to dangle over the star’s head if he shows
signs of resentment about making a particular picture. Arguments about
“artistic integrity” are as effective as paper darts against a studio
that holds the mortgage.

To his credit, in more ways than one, Marlon was in no danger on
that score. “Just because the big shots were nice to me,” he told a
reporter, “I saw no reason to overlook what they did to others and to
ignore the fact that they morally behave with the hostility of ants at
picnics.”

He is turning the picnic tables with a vengeance on the “ants.” Their
one-sided admiration of Brando (they used to call him “the best actor
in the world” on weekdays and a “genius” on Sundays) got chipped when
Twentieth Century-Fox cast him in a stinker called _The Egyptian_.
He objected, but they imagined they had soothed him and went ahead
building sets, making costumes, signing other players. When the
first day of shooting arrived, Brando did not. Instead, his New York
psychoanalyst sent a telegram: BRANDO VERY SICK.

       *       *       *       *       *

Breaking a contract is a refined art, which skillful performers conduct
with the finesse of brain surgeons. A classic case is provided by Jerry
Lewis after he broke with Dean Martin when they were under contract to
make three more pictures for Hal Wallis.

Wallis had the legal right to have them complete the contract, no
matter what carnage would have resulted. Martin and Lewis’ agents,
the Music Corporation of America, talked to him but they got nowhere.
Attorneys tried to argue with him, but Wallis is, among other things, a
stubborn man. It took a press agent to recall the time-tested formula.

“You call Mr. Wallis,” the agent told Jerry, “and invite him to lunch
at the Hillcrest Country Club. Sit him down and say: ‘Have you ever
had a picture that began, Scene one, take eighty-five?’ Tell him that
you’re ready to devote six months of your life to his next Martin and
Lewis picture; that you understand his problem, so you’ve reserved a
suite at Mount Sinai Hospital for him as your guest. Because you know
he’s going to get a coronary from the aggravation that’s coming to him.”

The press agent continued: “Also tell Wallis: ‘You know my own medical
history. I only pray to God we don’t get in the middle of this thing
before I have to take to my bed again.’”

Jerry took Hal Wallis to lunch at Hillcrest and said his piece. Wallis
heard him out, then conceded: “I get your point. I’ll start with you
alone in a new picture next month.” No further movie with Dean Martin
was discussed.

Marlon didn’t get off so lightly when he tangled with Fox. The studio
pushed Edmond Purdom into _The Egyptian_, which was a great mistake,
and sued Brando for two million dollars. He settled by agreeing to play
Napoleon in a turgid flop called _Desirée_.

The studio bosses are proof positive that you can fool yourself most of
the time over stars who, when the fancy strikes them, delight in doing
in the people who put up the money. The producers ignore any flop these
highly prized players make and hypnotize themselves by repeating over
and over: “We can’t go wrong this time; it’s our turn to be lucky.”
They blind themselves to the fact that these stars jeer at the money
men, make fools of them, regard them deep down as their sworn enemies
with the I.Q. of idiots.

Marlon got into stride when he made _One-Eyed Jacks_, a simple Western
that was going to cost no more than $1,800,000 and a few months to
complete. First casualty was the director, Stanley Kubrick, who
retreated in the early stages of production and abandoned the field to
Brando. On his first day as director, Marlon threw away the script and
announced: “We’re going to improvise.” For the next half year, he and
his crew ran up production bills of $42,000 a day.

He had them spending hours on the shores of the Pacific waiting for the
water to “look more dramatic.” He’d start the cameras, then sit with
his head between his knees for twenty minutes or more until he got in
the mood. As a good democrat, he let his actors vote for the last reel
they liked best, and that was the ending he used, though he didn’t
care for it himself.

When the front office at Paramount got uneasy and costs passed the
$6,000,000 mark, Marlon turned surly: “I’m shooting a movie, not
a schedule.” There were days, I’m sure, when Y. Frank Freeman,
head of Paramount, would have liked to clobber him, while Marlon
went on playing his favorite mumbling, lurching, behind-scratching
character--himself. Paramount has long since given up hope of getting
its money back, much less of making a profit.

But when _Mutiny_ came around, Metro recited the old mumbo jumbo:
“We can’t go wrong on this.” Sol Siegel, who ran the studio, would
settle for nobody but Marlon as top star. That little decision, along
with several other lulus along the way, cost well over $20,000,000
before the picture was wound up. Marlon enjoyed $1,250,000 for his
contributions, along with ten per cent of the gross and an incredible
contract giving him the final word on scenes taken on Tahiti.

Screen rights to the original novel by Charles Nordhoff and James
Norman Hall were bought by the late Frank Lloyd, a fine, free-lance
director, for only $12,000. In order to make the picture and gather the
cast he’d set his heart on, he was compelled to sell those rights back
to Irving Thalberg at Metro for precisely what they had cost.

Metro’s first flash of creative genius called for Wallace Beery to
play Captain Bligh in the breath-catching tale of eighteenth-century
mutiny on the high seas aboard the British merchantman _Bounty_. They
envisaged the sadistic captain as a comical old coot pursued by his
wife and twelve children. Talked out of that, Thalberg signed Charles
Laughton, who for weeks had to be rowed slowly around Catalina Island,
flat on his back on the floorboards, to teach his protesting digestion
that seasickness was not permissible during working hours.

Louis B. Mayer didn’t think much of the script: “Where’s the romance?”
he demanded. Gable didn’t like the idea of playing Fletcher Christian,
leader of the mutineers and his finest role up to that date. Eddie
Mannix talked him around: “You’re the only guy in the picture who gets
anything to do with a dame.” I’ll never know why they didn’t reissue
the old _Mutiny_ after Clark’s death--it would have made $5,000,000 and
saved Metro a truckload of ulcers.

Frank Lloyd’s picture was ten months in the making, from his first
background shooting on Tahiti to its presentation in November 1935.
The bills amounted to $1,700,000, the most expensive MGM production
of those days. Front-office opposition grew stronger month by month.
To satisfy Nick Schenck, a rough cut was sent to New York with the
strict understanding that it would be run only for him to see. He had
it screened before an audience of four hundred people and afterward
delivered himself of this undying judgment: “Tell Thalberg it’s the
worst picture MGM ever made.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The second version of _Mutiny_ got under way when an MGM expedition
arrived on Tahiti at the height of the rainy season. It had to run
before the weather and go back later for another try. The first of the
thirty scripts to be completed by five writers, including Eric Ambler
and Charles Lederer, was meantime coming hot off the typewriters.

Life on French Tahiti, where society is very proper and the caste
system very strong, livened up considerably when Marlon debarked. He
unearthed a series of hide-outs to which he would retire when the mood
came upon him. On bad days hours would roll by while messengers tracked
him down so that filming could resume.

His taste in girls has always been off-beat, from the Hindu
impersonator, Anna Kashfi, whom he married and divorced; through the
fisherman’s daughter, Josanne Mariana-Berenger, to a barefoot waitress
whom he found on Tahiti.

The first major casualty among the company was Oscar-winning Hugh
Griffith, who was eased off the island by the French authorities after
some spectacular high jinks. Another Briton, Sir Carol Reed, hired to
direct, was replaced when it developed that he saw Captain Bligh as the
hero, not Fletcher Christian. At the speed at which he was shooting,
it would have taken years to finish the picture.

Sir Carol had also made the basic error of believing that when he told
Marlon to do something in front of the camera, Marlon would obey. Reed
was succeeded by Lewis Milestone, director and diplomat, who grew
accustomed to handling difficult situations with kid gloves.

There were plenty to handle. The movie makers hit the South Seas
like a typhoon. Liquor poured over the island like the Johnstown
flood. A French naval lieutenant ran off with the second native lead
halfway through filming, so that in one version two girls mysteriously
alternated in playing the romantic scenes without a word of explanation
being offered.

Marlon at one point was bowled over in a double feature by a popular
local infection and a virus, forcing him to take to his bed for three
weeks.

Aaron Rosenberg, the producer, couldn’t make a move without being
balked and countermanded by cable and telephone from Metro’s front
office, where Siegel found his reputation at stake. On Tahiti there was
panic at the lack of a script. A succession of writers, concluding with
Lederer, worked against the clock to get out scenes, often only one day
in advance of shooting, sometimes rewriting lines at lunch time for the
afternoon shift.

“In one two-week period we shot only two small scenes,” Richard Harris
told me during filming--he came close to stealing the picture as one
of the mutineers. “That wasn’t surprising since Brando was constantly
demanding that scenes be rewritten. You never knew where the hell you
were.” Marlon added his own seasoning to the stew by toying with the
idea at one point of abandoning the part of Christian and taking on a
different role in the picture.

Trevor Howard, playing Captain Bligh, left for home swearing: “Never
again will I take part in an epic,” and to prove his point he turned
down _Cleopatra_. He thought it was “the greatest travesty in the
world to allow Brando to snap and snarl at me.”

In their steamy tents the sweating writers invented a game to preserve
their sanity. They made up imaginary labels to hang on the cast. Trevor
Howard: “a deafening answer to no question.” Aaron Rosenberg: “the
persistent marshmallow.” For Brando, they had a tag so obscene that he
brooded for days, trying in vain to think of some way to strike back at
them.

At work, on a typical morning, he’d stand on the Bounty deck, draw
his cutlass, and yell at the ship’s company: “I now take command of
this....” At that second, his memory would falter. The crew and other
cast members filled in for him. “Train?” somebody suggested. Marlon
nodded his thanks and take eighteen began. This time he got it right
... “command of this ship.”

Charles Lederer insisted: “Brando is responsible for a great deal of
whatever brilliance the picture has. But neither he nor anybody else
I know can improvise and be better in five minutes on the set than a
writer with three weeks at a typewriter.”

Marlon’s enthusiasm touched rock bottom when it came to playing scenes
supposedly on Pitcairn Island, where the _Bounty_ mutineers landed.
Rosenberg ordered him to perform. Richard Harris related the rest of
the story: “Brando fouled it up good. He came to work for a few days,
but I thought he was acting as though he wanted to scuttle it. So I
finally told him: ‘When you’re willing to perform like a pro, I’ll be
in my dressing room.’ The picture was suspended for three days, while
they tried to get him to resume, but not a word about it got into
print--it was all suppressed.”

The cast didn’t know what they were doing most of the time because the
next scene usually contradicted whatever they were trying to play.
Harris had another clash with Brando. He told me: “Brando said: ‘This
is the final script. I want nothing changed, not a line, not a comma.’
On the strength of that, I memorized eight pages. We rehearsed it in
the morning, went to lunch, and prepared to shoot in the afternoon.”

The company returned after the break, and the cameras rolled. Then
“Cut!” Harris related: “They told me I was wrong. When I asked why, I
found out they’d changed the script during lunch. I demanded that the
producer be brought to the set.”

Aaron Rosenberg didn’t know that changes had been made. “Actors,” said
Brando to Harris, “are paid to do their jobs without opinion.”

Harris exploded. “You like to pull the strings as though others are
puppets. This scene was changed because you demanded it.” At that point
Lewis Milestone walked off the set. So did Harris, who’s an outspoken
Irishman. “When Mr. Brando is ready to perform, I’m available,” he said
once more.

“It was a long way to my dressing room. You’d have thought I was
radioactive the way everybody backed away from me. I lay down on my
couch and closed my eyes. Presently the director stuck his head in the
door to say sotto voce: ‘Everybody in the company wants to applaud. You
were great.’ But still no one came in until Rosenberg shook my hand,
said he was sorry this had happened, and added: ‘Thank you.’”

Eighteen months after the start, when MGM had poured more than
$20,000,000 into this bounty on the _Mutiny_, Marlon was still acting
up. The final scenes, months behind schedule, were being shot in
Hollywood, costing still another two million. With the financial
future of Metro itself at stake, with millions tied up in a picture
which still had no ending, Marlon played Fletcher Christian in such a
manner that, although the cameras turned, the film was unusable. He
overplayed; he underplayed; he mumbled; he minced. It was a unique
moment in our town’s history. Nobody before him had dared take hold of
a mammoth studio, swing it by the tail, and make the bosses like it.
The actors’ revenge was complete.

It takes avaricious agents with calculating machines for hearts to
encourage stars like Brando to behave as they do. Now that no studio
any longer has its own roster of stars tied by contracts, the agents
and actors run Hollywood, as they always threatened to. The studio has
to go cap in hand to the agent to sign up the big star for a single
picture. No more than a half dozen actors and actresses alive today can
attract an audience big enough to give a picture a hope of success at
the box office.

The first giant among ten per centers hated producers and made no
secret of it. Myron Selznick held it a point of honor to wring every
dollar he could get out of the studios to settle the score for the
wrong that had been done his father, Lewis J. The louder the bosses
yelled “Murder!” the harder Myron squeezed.

Lewis J. was nicknamed “C.O.D.” for “cash on delivery” by starlets he
lured to that notorious item of studio furniture, the casting couch.
He lured plenty when he owned a $60,000,000 film corporation in the
silent twenties. But as a financier he overreached himself. His sons,
Myron and David, blamed rival movie makers for plotting the ruin that
overtook old “C.O.D.”

Myron’s first client was Lewis Milestone, who must have smiled
philosophically to himself when he saw what Brando was doing to MGM.
Acting for Milestone, Myron left his mark on the Howard Hughes studio
when, in 1927, he squeezed out of them exactly twice the salary the
then young director had anticipated receiving. Alva Johnston recalled
the time when Myron went home rejoicing: “Remember what those bastards
did to my father? They paid more than a million dollars for it today.”

Bill Wellman was Selznick’s second client. After him, everybody who was
anybody--Carole Lombard, William Powell, Pat O’Brien, to name just a
sample--rushed to get Myron to do battle for them.

But neither he nor the mob of imitators who followed him in business
managed to hold the entire industry up to ransom as it is being
done today. One reason was that under the star system of that era,
contracts came up only once a year for negotiation, not before every
picture. Another reason: producers and directors, to a great extent,
could make or break a star.

As a tribe, actors and actresses seldom know what’s good for them. They
usually judge any script solely by the number of lines of dialogue they
get. Greer Garson announced to one and all that she wouldn’t be playing
in _Goodbye, Mr. Chips_, one of the finest pictures that came her way,
because “I’m only in a few scenes.”

The day before she left town for England to make the picture, she
poured out her woe to me. “I’ve sat here for months doing nothing,”
she said, “and now I’m going back to my native land in a picture that
gives me a very small part. When I left England, I was a star there; my
friends will think I’m coming home a failure.”

I wrote the story, but before she stepped on the train the next day,
she begged me to kill it: “What if the picture’s a hit? I’d look like a
fool.” So I kept a friend by sitting on the interview. _Mr. Chips_ made
her an international name.

Vanity takes all kinds of shapes. In one of his earliest pictures Gary
Cooper played a location scene so well that it was shot in a single
take. That night Coop went diffidently to the director’s tent. “If
you don’t mind, I’d like to do that scene over again in the morning,”
he said. “I seem to remember at one point I picked my nose I was so
nervous.”

The director knew better. “Listen,” he said. “You were so damn nervous
you were great. You keep acting that way and you can pick your nose
into a fortune.” That bit of advice registered with Coop. After he’d
belly-flopped trying to dive into the deep end of acting with pictures
like _Saratoga Trunk_, he saw his old director again. “Guess I’ll have
to go back to my nose,” he said.

It took an eye doctor from South Bend, Indiana, to set up in the agency
business and put the hammer lock on Hollywood; by comparison Myron only
twisted arms. Dr. Jules Caesar Stein is the founder and board chairman
of MCA, a flesh-peddling octopus with approximately one thousand
clients ranging from actors to zither players, before it got rid of
them all in a hurry under pressure from Washington’s trust busters. He
and his wife, Doris, are also devout collectors of antiques; European
furniture dealers used to rub their hands when they saw them coming,
but they were soon crying in their porcelain teacups, because Jules had
set up his own antique shops.

Dr. and Mrs. Stein have climbed so high since his college days--he
worked his way through by playing the violin in little jazz bands--that
they are now helping to refurnish the White House. Mrs. John F.
Kennedy was pleased to announce last year that the Steins, as a gift
to the nation, “will contribute pieces from their collection of
eighteenth-century antiques as well as new acquisitions.”

Soon after the Steins moved to California--they now live in a beautiful
Beverly Hills hilltop mansion--the good doctor told me at a party: “I’m
going to be king of Hollywood one day.”

“You and who else?” I laughed. But I underestimated him. He succeeded,
thanks to the shortsightedness of the producers when big stars are in
short supply and desperate demand.

Besides Brando, MCA spoke for Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Burt
Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Jack Benny. That’s just a
sample. Agents used to hustle for salary and billing. Jules Stein’s
poker-faced assistants demanded lots more than that. They often weren’t
satisfied until they got a fat slice of the picture’s profits for their
clients.

The first deal like that was made for Jimmy Stewart, whom I originally
recommended to MGM after he and I played on Broadway together with
Judith Anderson in _Divided by Three_. The slice that MCA carved for
him out of Universal-International’s _Winchester ’73_ brought him more
than $600,000. Now he’s a millionaire on the investments he made on the
advice of a keen-brained business friend from Texas and he’s become a
sober-sided industrialist as well as a fine actor.

With Kirk Douglas as a client Jules Stein did even better at Universal.
After running up costs of $12,000,000 on _Spartacus_ in which Douglas
starred and also produced with Universal’s money, the huge, 400-acre
studio fell into a situation where it had to sell out, lock, stock, and
acreage. MCA bought the place for $11,250,000 and set to work churning
out television series. Now it’s called Revue Productions and it’s the
best-run studio in Hollywood. If MCA plans work out now it has beaten
the anti-trust suit--it is concentrating on production and stripping
itself of the agency business--millions more dollars will be invested
in an effort to make Hollywood the movie capital of the world once more.

Once an actor has seen his agent put the pressure on and turn a geyser
of cash into Old Faithful itself, the sky’s the limit where his greed
for money is concerned. Everything else is forgotten, including, of
course, gratitude. William Holden, an MCA prize winner, did mighty well
with _The Key_, though Trevor Howard stole the notices; and much, much
better before that from _Bridge on the River Kwai_, which brought him
millions. The producer of _The Key_ was Carl Foreman.

When Foreman had another picture in the works, _The Guns of Navarone_,
he wanted Holden for his hero. “My price,” Holden declared, “is now
$750,000, plus ten per cent of the gross.”

“But not with me, not after _The Key_,” Foreman said.

“With you or anybody else, that’s my price,” Holden replied.

Foreman had a few forceful words to say on the subject of gratitude,
then hired Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn together for
less than Holden demanded. To keep his bulging bank account safe from
the hands of tax collectors, Holden moved his family to Switzerland,
that temporary haven of fugitive American fortunes--temporary because I
understand that President Kennedy has some fancy plans for correcting
that state of inequity.

William doesn’t spend much time in his Swiss home, though his wife,
formerly Brenda Marshall, does, together with their two sons. Her
daughter by a previous marriage preferred staying behind in Hollywood
as an interior decorator. When Brenda Marshall married, she was a
happy, fun-loving woman. The last time I saw her, at a party Norman
Krasna gave for me at Lausanne, Switzerland, her old contentment had
gone bye-bye.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Tony Curtis was fourteen, he wrote me a six-page letter from his
family’s one-and-a-half-room flat in the Bronx, where his father worked
as a tailor. The boy was then Bernie Schwartz, and he wanted to know
how to become a movie actor. He’d beaten a path to Hollywood, but he
wasn’t rated as much more than a curly haired pretty boy by most people
when MCA started to steer him. No matter how hard he was asked to work
to promote his career, he gave the same answer: “I’d love to.” He was
eager and fun to be with, and I invited him to all my parties. There
he got to know, among others, suave, immaculate Clifton Webb, whom he
looked up to as the epitome of social form.

“You’re getting up there,” Clifton cautioned him as the months rolled
by, “so you must dress better. That suit isn’t good enough for you, and
your tie is awful.”

As soon as Tony could afford it, he bought himself a custom-tailored
suit, which he christened at another party of mine where Webb was a
guest. “Look, Hedda,” Tony said with pride, “isn’t it wonderful? All
hand-sewn.”

“Lovely,” I agreed, “and that’s a good-looking pair of shoes, too.”

“A producer I know couldn’t wear them, so he gave them to me. They
pinch a little, but aren’t they beautiful? They cost him $75.”

Clifton wandered over to add a word of praise for the suit. “But you
can’t wear that tie with it.”

“What kind should I wear, Mr. Webb?”

“Come over to my house tomorrow and I’ll give you some.”

Tony found a wife who was used to being kept on a tight financial rein
when he married Janet Leigh in 1951. Her father, Fred Morrison, who
ten years later took an overdose of pills that ended his life, held the
purse strings after her career got going. I remember coming across her
at Rex, the mad hatter, where she was aching to buy a sweater for $75,
but her dad said no. When he died, she was on the French Riviera with
Mrs. Dean Martin, guests of Joe Kennedy.

Tony and Janet bought an eighteen-room house in 1958. (“Did you ever
believe I’d end up a country gentleman?” he asked me.) They had enough
money left to furnish the dining room, but not enough to buy much else.
He was around at my house when I mentioned that I had a handsome,
carved oak chair down in the basement, which I couldn’t use. “If you
want it, take it. Go down and see.”

He came back conveying the heavy chair in his arms. “It’s wonderful,”
he said. “I’ll put it in my car.” He’d started the motor to drive
straight home before I caught him. “Come back here. We’ve got a party
going. Janet can see it when you get home.” It still sits in their
front hall, bleached and upholstered in white brocade.

MCA maneuvered Tony’s affairs so astutely that he now owns his own
picture company, makes millions, drives a Rolls-Royce. “I hope that
in a few years I’ll have enough security so I can drive around in
an old battered station wagon if I want to,” he says. He lost Janet
Leigh after he made a picture in South America with Yul Brynner, which
featured a girl named Christine Kaufman, to whose apartment in the
Château Marmont, in the company of her mother, Tony would go to have
coffee on his way home.

He sent me another letter after I’d criticized him in the column last
year over the postponement of _Lady L._ “I wonder,” I’d asked, “if
actors realize they’re killing the goose that laid the golden eggs and
are ruining their careers.”

“You might well have asked whether the studios realize what they are
doing to actors,” Tony wrote back. “Because of the delays and stalling
on this project, I have not made a film for eight months. True, I was
paid a salary for part of that time but money alone can never make up
for the fact that I might have two films during that period, that
I could have been working in my chosen profession, could have been
improving in the only way an actor can improve--by working.

“As a star, I have the right to pick my own parts, to decide whether or
not a script is right for me. That is clearly understood by everyone
who seeks to employ me.

“If the final script does not meet my requirements, the burden must
remain with the company and not with me. The studio did submit a script
I liked, which is why I signed to do the picture in the first place.
Before we could get into production, they began making changes and the
script they were finally ready to shoot bore little resemblance to the
one I had approved.” He was right, the picture has never been made.

       *       *       *       *       *

When press agents nudge an actor hard enough, he imagines he can write,
produce, direct, and act simultaneously, as busy as a one-armed paper
hanger. That was a delusion Clark Gable avoided.

“Why don’t you want to direct, like everybody else?” I asked him not
long before he died.

“It’s hard enough to act without going into all those monkeyshines,” he
said. “I just want to act and get the money. Let them take the grief.”

Clark loved money all his working life. I don’t remember that he ever
gave a party. He nursed a grievance against Metro from the time Mayer
loaned him to David Selznick to make _Gone With the Wind_. Clark
thought he should have received an extra bonus for that, not simply
continue on his salary of $7000 a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

When he cast off from Metro in 1954 and entrusted his business affairs
to MCA, he boasted that he had “never really made any big money” until
then. Like the rest of the monarchs of the movies, he wanted what they
call “the most”--highest salary, biggest percentage.

“Why do you fight so hard for those enormous salaries?” I asked him, as
I’ve asked them all. “Why can’t you put back some investment in the
industry when it’s done so much for you?”

“I want the most because you’re only important if you get it.”

Money helped kill Clark Gable. That and his refusal to acknowledge that
he was growing old. He couldn’t resist earning the most he’d ever get,
when the offer came along for _The Misfits_; $750,000 plus $58,000 for
every week the picture ran overtime.

On location in the Nevada desert, where the heat jumps to 130 degrees,
he roped and wrestled with wild horses to prove to everybody who
watched, including me, that he still had his old virility. “This
picture will prove he is America’s answer to Sir Laurence Olivier,”
said the ever-present Mrs. Paula Strasberg. He was encouraged by John
Huston, a director with no qualms about making actors sweat. And he was
outraged by the behavior of Marilyn Monroe.

He was habitually early on the set, ready to work at 9 A.M. Some days
she wouldn’t show up until lunch time, sometimes not at all. Though
he seethed inside, Kay Gable told me, he curbed his feelings by iron
self-control. Clark was not a pretty sight when he blew his top, as he
did when _The Misfits_ was completed, but Huston wanted one more retake.

The retake was never shot. Huston was still working the final cut of
the picture when Clark died, nearly a million dollars richer, leaving a
beautiful widow in Kay Gable and a handsome son he never saw.




_Seven_


Hollywood was always heartbreak town, though most of the world fancied
it to be Shangri-La, King Solomon’s mines, and Fort Knox rolled into
one big ball of 24-karat gold. We used to see the hopefuls stream in
from every state of the Union, tens of thousands of them, expecting
that a cute smile or a head of curls was all it took to pick up a
million dollars. Many were old enough to know better, but not the
children.

They came like a flock of hungry locusts driven by the gale winds of
their pushing, prompting, ruthless mothers. One look into the eyes of
those women told you what was on their minds: “If I can get this kid
of mine on the screen, we might just hit it big.” I used to wonder
if there wasn’t a special, subhuman species of womankind that bred
children for the sole purpose of dragging them to Hollywood.

Most of the women showed no mercy. They took little creatures scarcely
old enough to stand or speak and, like buck sergeants, drilled them
to shuffle through a dance step or mumble a song. They robbed them of
every phase of childhood to keep the waves in the hair, the pleats in
the dress, the pink polish on the nails. I’ve had hundreds of them
passing through my office asking for help.

Stage mothers are nothing new. I remember as far back as the Tartar we
lovingly called “Ma” Janis, who took care of all the cash her daughter
Elsie earned. When “Ma” died, Elsie got so lost in the tangle of her
financial standing that she wondered whether she had $100,000 or a
million in the bank. She found she had little left except a note signed
by “Ma” certifying that she owed Irving Berlin $10,000. Elsie had
never made out a check in her whole life, never had more than $5.00 in
her pocketbook.

What motion pictures did was to encourage the breed and give them
better opportunities to ruin their children while they were beneath
the age of consent. Peg Talmadge, mother of Norma and Constance, was a
sweetheart. Anita Loos wrote her book _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ from
choice bits that fell from the lips of Peg, but even she ruled with
a whim of iron. We all laughed at Peg when she said these things but
didn’t have the wit to write them down. Anita did.

Jackie Coogan’s boyhood earnings were so scandalously dissipated by his
family that the law was changed to protect child actors--but Jackie was
left penniless.

When I worked for Metro, stage mothers lingered outside the gates at
the Culver City studios, waiting to catch some dignitary’s eye or for
a chance, which seldom came, to slip past the guards into the maze of
narrow streets that wound between the big barns plastered with stucco
which were called sound stages.

Some children made it, though not by waiting like beggars at the
gates of paradise. Louis B. Mayer needed appealing youngsters for the
all-American family pictures which this Russian-born Jew from New
Brunswick delighted in making because they earned fortunes for him.
There were two children in particular, a boy and a girl, who captured
the imaginations of all.

The boy had once had his hair dyed black by his mother so he could
get a job in two-reel silent comedies. She wanted to change his name
to Mickey Looney, but the “L” became an “R” when he was signed on at
Culver City.

The girl’s mother had seen her child walk out onto a vaudeville
stage when she was two years old to join her two older sisters in a
song-and-dance act. Mrs. Ethel Gumm took her three children slogging
through West Coast theaters for years. Frances, the youngest, developed
the hungriest drive of them all, battling to show her big sisters that
she could sing louder and longer than either of them.

It was a cheap act, and it made very little money for anybody. One
Christmas saw the traveling Gumms chewing on tortillas at a corner
drugstore near the theater they were playing. Frances Gumm had been
rechristened Judy Garland when Lew Brown spotted the trio playing The
Lodge at Lake Tahoe and decided she might have something.

In the typical Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance switching that usually makes
it possible for half a dozen people to claim they “discovered” a star,
Brown put Judy and her mother in touch with an agent named Rosen, who
knew Jack Robbins, a music publisher with offices in Culver City.

With Rosen, Judy was in Robbins’ office when he telephoned down to
Ida Koverman, who made a point of hunting for fresh talent to keep
the wheels turning at MGM. Judy was twelve; round as a rain barrel;
stringy hair; dressed in an old blouse, blue slacks, dirty white shoes.
Ida heard her sing with a zing in her heart, and she flipped. She
called Mayer, who grudgingly came up to see what was causing all the
excitement. Ida had got hold of the words to the Jewish lament “_Eli,
Eli_” and coached Judy in the pronunciation. That’s what she sang for
Mayer, but he wasn’t impressed. He tossed the ball right back at Ida.
“If you want her, sign her up.”

But Ida was too knowing about the foxy ways of Mayer to fall for that.
She needed a second opinion, or else if Judy failed, Mayer would
never let Ida forget it. She had Judy sing again, this time for Jack
Cummings, a producer who just happened to be Mayer’s nephew.

Jack was called one of the “Sons of the Pioneers,” a walking
testimonial to the fact that it never hurt to be somebody’s relative
at Metro. “A producer produces relations” was a stock gag. Later on,
however, in pictures like _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_, Jack
proved that he could fly when they gave him wings.

Long before that, he made a picture with a young girl named Liz
Taylor and a collie dog: _Lassie Come Home_. The picture was sweet,
sentimental, and I went all out in praise of it. A loyal friend in
Metro’s New York office wired me after reading the review: YOU SURE
STUCK YOUR NECK OUT THIS TIME HOPPER STOP IT’S NOTHING BUT A POTBOILER.
But the picture made a fortune, got Lassie a lifetime contract, helped
get Liz _National Velvet_.

Cummings could see the potential appeal of Judy, a roly-poly girl with
eyes like saucers and a voice as clear as a gold trumpet “This kid’s
got it,” he told Ida. “Let’s sign her up.” While he went off to set the
legal wheels in motion, Ida took Judy to the commissary for some ice
cream.

She tried to introduce her there to Rufus Le Maire, head of casting,
but she got the brush-off. Mr. Mayer hadn’t given the little new girl
the nod, so she wouldn’t receive any favors. He was starry-eyed over
another schoolgirl MGM had signed. Deanna Durbin was the real talent,
in his book. The two children made a musical short together, _Every
Sunday Afternoon_, but Deanna was the one given the big build-up. After
that, Judy had nothing to do but hang around the lot--and get some
education at the school Ida had established with academically qualified
teachers to meet the requirements of California law.

Mayer had decided to let Judy go and keep Deanna, but the plan turned
sour. Universal, looking for a youngster to play in _Three Smart
Girls_, wanted Deanna. By a fluke, Metro had let her contract lapse.
Mayer was away on one of his many trips to Europe. He knew nothing of
this until he returned and found his prize pigeon had been allowed to
fly the coop. He went berserk.

For days he ranted and raged at everybody in sight until some anonymous
prankster won revenge. In Mayer’s exclusive, private bathroom one
morning, Louis found that on every sheet of toilet paper the face of
Deanna had been printed overnight.

Deanna got stardom and the royal treatment from Universal with _One
Hundred Men and a Girl_, which followed _Three Smart Girls_. There was
a fancy premiere, and she planted her footprints in wet cement in the
forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, a pastime which was one of the
glorious bits of nonsense in those days. Deanna is now quite plump and
leading a happy married life with husband and children in Paris. Once a
year newspapermen descend upon her home, but she won’t receive them or
allow photographs to be taken. She’s had her fill of Hollywood and you
couldn’t lure her back for a million dollars. The only singing she does
is with her children.

Judy was living in a little rented house with her mother. Her father,
Frank Gumm, was not in Hollywood. Judy’s mother telephoned Ida the
morning after Deanna’s big show: “I can’t do a thing with Judy. She’s
been crying all night. What shall I do?”

“Bring her right over,” said Ida. With no children of her own, she was
a mother hen to everyone who needed her. Judy was as close to her as a
daughter. She fell into Ida’s lap and buried her head on her shoulder,
sobbing: “I’ve been in show business ten years, and Deanna’s starred in
a picture and I’m nothing.”

Frustrated ambition has to be treated gently. “You’ll get your feet in
cement, too,” Ida soothed her. “You’ll be starred, you’ll see. Don’t
forget, I’ve told you so.”

Mayer schemed to turn the tables on Universal. Nobody was going to
laugh at him for keeping the wrong girl. “I’ll take this fat one,
Garland, and make her a bigger star than Durbin,” he boasted to his
associates. How to start was the puzzle. He began by insisting that
she be coached in acting and dancing, though she’s never had a formal
singing lesson in her life. She still doesn’t know what key she sings
in. She’ll say, “Play some chords and I’ll pick one.” He had orders
sent down to the commissary: “No matter what she orders, give her
nothing but chicken soup and cottage cheese.”

Her one dear friend in approximately her own age group was Mickey
Rooney. They were nuts about each other. They went to school together,
along with Metro’s Jackie Cooper, Freddie Bartholomew, and other child
stars whom Mickey rapidly eclipsed. Mickey, who remains today one of
the greatest underrated talents in entertainment, was brash, cocksure,
and growing up fast. He was doing calisthenics in the schoolyard
one day under an instructor’s eye when Frank Whitbeck, the studio
advertising director, passed by.

“Hi, Uncle Frank,” yelled Mickey. “Ain’t this the damndest thing for a
grown man to be doing?”

The crush Judy had on Mickey would have burned up a girl twice her age.
An explosive mixture of emotion and ambition churns inside her. “I have
to have a crush on somebody,” she once cried to Ida, “but they don’t
last.” Mickey had a shield of toughness, which she lacked, and a heart
as big as Ireland, but he mostly regarded her as a kid, too young for
him.

She’d played minor roles, two of them with Mickey as star, when _The
Wizard of Oz_ came along. Producer Mervyn LeRoy, typically, was all set
to have Shirley Temple as Dorothy, but Twentieth Century-Fox wouldn’t
release her. So he reluctantly settled for Judy--and she had it made.

The top executive offices at Culver City are located in the Thalberg
Building, otherwise known as the “Iron Lung” by reason of its
much-envied air-conditioning system. Before it was built, Metro
tried to buy a little piece of corner property, on which stands a
long-established undertaker’s parlor. He refused to sell, so today his
establishment stands like a sore thumb next to the handsome structure
named for Irving Thalberg. The undertaker occasionally peers into the
“Iron Lung” and says: “Well, I’ll get you all, sooner or later.” He’s
had most of the old-timers already.

From the executive offices you could look across the street at four
big twenty-four-sheet billboards standing side by side. On them were
displayed posters that shouted the claims of the studio’s newest hits,
listing names of the stars, featured players, producer, director and,
if they were lucky, the writers.

Since actors are vain, Mayer and his aides, like soft-spoken Benny Thau
and burly Eddie Mannix, could sweet-talk them into accepting bigger
billing in lieu of more money in many a contract. With _Oz_, Judy’s
billing grew like a mushroom. It jumped above the picture’s title,
making her technically a star. The size of the lettering that was used
to spell out her name expanded year by year. Now she’s reached the
peak, where one name, _Judy_--like _Garbo_ and _Gable_--does all the
selling needed to pull in an audience.

Then Metro smelled gold in billing Mickey and Judy together for _Babes
on Broadway_, and some of her cruelest years opened up for her.
Compared with Mickey’s greased-lightning ability to do everything and
anything and get it right instantly, Judy was a slow study. Dance
rehearsals were a torture. She was driven frantic, dancing, singing,
improvising, putting a picture together. The director, Busby Berkeley,
was a taskmaster who extracted the last ounce of her energy.

“I used to feel,” she told me later, “as if he had a big black bull
whip, and he was lashing me with it. Sometimes I used to think I
couldn’t live through the day. Other times I’d have my driver take me
round and round the block because I hated to go through the gates.”

I saw him work her over in one picture, where she stood on a truck and
sang. He watched from the floor, with a wild gleam in his eye, while
in take after take he drove her toward the perfection he demanded. She
was close to hysteria; I was ready to scream myself. But the order was
repeated time and time again: “Cut. Let’s try it again, Judy.”

“Come on, Judy! Move! Get the lead out.” By now, she was determined to
keep her name in the billing, but I doubt if she would have pretended
to anyone that she enjoyed being an actress. She was jealous of Mickey,
forever running to Ida to complain: “He got the break, I didn’t.” For
all the friendship of the two young people, she wanted to best him in
everything they did together.

The two of them sat together in the darkened theater. On one side of
them was Irene Dunne; on the other, Sonja Henie; behind them, Cary
Grant. When the house lights came on, Judy was crying through the
applause. “I know what you’re thinking,” Mickey said. “We’re two kids
from vaudeville, and we didn’t mean a damn thing for so long, and now
it’s happened to both of us.”

Years later, after Judy had fallen into a bottomless pit and climbed
out again, the Friars Club gave a banquet at the Biltmore Bowl and
proclaimed her “Miss Show Business.” She had just had the British
eating out of her hand at the London Palladium, played the Palace in
New York for nineteen sensational weeks; toured the United States and
finished her triumph at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles.
Mickey’s career was running downhill. Somebody remembered to send him
an invitation to the Biltmore Bowl, but it was to sit way over in a
corner.

“Everybody was slapping each other on the back,” he reported without
bitterness, “and I said to myself: ‘Poor Judy, how many of these people
really care about you?’”

I said: “You two were like ham and eggs. You helped her more than
anybody.”

“Yeah, but the people who gave the party forgot that. That was the
only thing that hurt. Because I felt so close. I haven’t seen her much
lately. It’s all a kind of whirl.”

Adolescence can give a rough ride to any girl--and her mother, if
she’s around to share her daughter’s fears and confidences and dry her
tears. Judy’s thinned-out body was not given time to readjust. The
public idolized her. The exhibitors couldn’t get enough Garland-Rooney
musicals. She had to go on churning them out one after another. They’d
been sent to New York for the Capitol Theatre opening of _Babes on
Broadway_. They went back again and broke every house record.

“We’d been doing six, seven shows a day and having about forty minutes
between shows,” Mickey recalled. “This one afternoon we’d just gone
off stage to come back and take a bow together, and she collapsed in
the wings. I didn’t know what to do. I filled up with tears. I felt as
though something serious had happened. I came out on stage and just
felt lost without her. She wasn’t dieting at this time. She was just
going too fast.” And with the wrong companions.

That was Louis B. Mayer’s doing. His suspicious brain came up with the
idea that Ida had too much influence over Judy. She might be tempted to
think of what was good for the girl before she thought of the studio,
so he flatly told Ida: “You’ve got too much work to do to look after
the Garland.” By order, the old intimacy was ended.

The studio brushed off somebody else in Judy’s life, too--her first
husband, David Rose, the serious-minded, preoccupied composer to whom
she was married at nineteen. She made two mistakes in that. She married
him without consulting Mr. Mayer beforehand, which was a fracture of
MGM protocol. Even worse was the fact that she married at all.

A star’s life was supposedly controlled twenty-four hours a day by the
studio. She was told what to do, both at work and after working hours;
where to go; what to say; whom to mix with. Mayer didn’t want any star
to marry because that introduced a foreign influence in the control
system. A husband could often influence a star against the studio for
her own good and sometimes for his own power.

They turned on Judy like rattlesnakes. On Academy Awards night, she had
sat for years at the number-one table along with the rest of the MGM
stars. As Mrs. David Rose she was deliberately humiliated and seated at
a much less desirable spot on the side and out of the spotlight. That
year she called to ask if I’d like to sit with her.

“Love to,” I said, then proceeded to give the tsar hell by telephone:
“Louis, you are treating her outrageously. Even if you personally don’t
like her, think of what she has done for your company. You should be
ashamed of yourself.” But he was immune to shame or compassion. I
wasted my breath.

They actually believed that she belonged to them, body and soul. They’d
created her; why couldn’t she show more gratitude? The marriage hadn’t
a chance. The studio told her so. David Rose was the wrong man for her,
said the sycophants who clung to her like leeches. “He’s trading on
your popularity. You’re a star; he’s a struggling composer.” If they
passed the two of them in the Culver City streets, they’d greet her but
ignore him.

After Judy left him, as she inevitably did, her private life changed
in many ways. Her father had died and her mother remarried to become
Ethel Gilmore. Both sisters were married, too. Metro assigned a
publicity writer, Betty Asher, to stay with Judy, and they lived high,
wide, and not particularly handsome.

She turned from her mother and her old friends. When they warned her
about the new set she was going with, the rainbow girl screamed: “I’m
old enough to know what I want. When I want your advice I’ll ask for
it.”

The dismal cycle of benzedrine and sleeping pills began again. The
studio kept up the illusion of Judy’s perfect health. She plunged on,
beating her thin chest and saying: “I feel fine.” Of course, she knew
she wasn’t, but she was too riddled with ambition to let someone else
take over a picture scheduled for her.

She listened to anybody who flattered her ego. Joe Mankiewicz, the
director who suffered the tortures of the damned on _Cleopatra_, was
a great ego booster. “You could be the greatest dramatic star in the
world,” he told her. “Anything Bernhardt did, you can do better. I’ll
write material for you, make you another Bernhardt.” That was something
he never did.

Metro smiled on marriage number two--to Vincent Minnelli, who had
directed her in _Meet Me in St. Louis_ and _The Clock_. They felt this
gentle man would bring her under control. Judy was married in her
mother’s home. Louis Mayer gave the bride away; Betty Asher was matron
of honor; Ira Gershwin the best man. Ida Koverman was not invited, nor
was I. Judy was then twenty-three.

Minnelli, ten years her senior, had never married before. Though he
controlled hundreds on a sound stage, he wasn’t successful in seizing
the reins as husband. He was too gentle. She continued to mingle with
her old crowd; sought and found her sensations; quarreled with her
mother.

By this time, we knew many of Judy’s problems and were delighted to
hear that she was pregnant. Maybe motherhood would bring her back to
her senses. Before Liza was born, I wanted to give her a different
kind of baby shower, with only men invited. Judy was in a depressed
mood. She bowed out with a note: “I’d have been a dull guest of honor,
but it was a wonderful idea. Thanks for thinking of me. Forgive me, and
after March I’ll be rarin’ to go. I’ll be my old self again.”

Unfortunately motherhood rarely produces miracles. Though the birth
left Judy weakened, she scurried back to work again. Metro issued
glowing reports about her health, but her previously ravenous appetite
had strangely deserted her, and she stayed pathetically thin. She got
through her pictures only on nervous energy and doctors’ help. She was
so near the borderline that when I visited her in her dressing room on
the set of _The Pirate_, in which she was co-starring with Gene Kelly,
she was shaking like an aspen leaf. She went into a frenzy of hysteria.
Everybody who had once loved her had turned against her, she said. She
had no friends.

Even her mother, Judy said, tapped her telephone calls. “She is doing
everything in her power to destroy me.”

I said: “You know that isn’t true. Nobody in the world loves you as
your mother does--and has all your life through all your troubles.”

But she cried out against her mother; against Ida Koverman; against
all those who had helped her out of so much potential trouble. She was
carried out of the dressing room, put in a limousine, still wearing
make-up and costume, and put to bed. But she rallied and finished the
picture.

The gulf between her and Minnelli widened. He tried to force her to
eat, but she couldn’t. In fits of temperament, the couple parted many
times. But he was always on hand to help.

The road got rougher. Something desperate was happening to her. The
sad chronicle of studio suspensions began. Then Metro bought _Annie
Get Your Gun_ for her and assigned as director the “man with the bull
whip,” Buzz Berkeley. She went into a weeping rage when she was told
she’d have to work for him again and refused point-blank to do it. So
the studio gave her Charles Walters in his place. But then nothing
could have improved the situation for her.

She recorded the songs which are collectors’ items--I often sit and
play them in my den at night. Then day after day, with a million
dollars of Metro’s money already invested, she didn’t show up for work.
Her bosses took her off the picture. Betty Hutton was brought in to
replace her, which was one of their biggest mistakes. They should have
waited until Judy got well.

When Judy walked into my den after hearing the news from Mayer himself,
she looked middle-aged. She stared into space, blamed herself for her
troubles. “I understand the studio’s problems at last. I’d been there
so long I’d forgotten you have to conform to their plans. Mr. Mayer
promised to take care of me. He said he’d give me so much to live on
while I’m out of work.”

She was in the throes of another separation from Minnelli. “I’m broke.
How can anyone save money in this business? When Vincent and I were
together, I spent $70,000 decorating our house. Since our separation
I’m paying $1000 a month rent on another. It’s tiny; no nursery for my
baby. But I have to keep working.”

I begged her to go to the Menninger Clinic. Treatments there had done
much good for Robert Walker, her co-star in _The Clock_. “There’s
nothing the matter with my head,” she replied. “It’s my body that’s
tired.”

A few days later she entered the Peter Brigham Hospital in Boston, with
Louis Mayer personally paying the bills, and stayed there for several
months. Back in Hollywood, fighting to lose weight again, she finished
_Summer Stock_ with Gene Kelly. Then, during rehearsals for _Royal
Wedding_ with Fred Astaire, the headlines screamed that Judy Garland,
suspended for refusing to work, had cut her throat in the house she’d
spent $70,000 decorating. Stories told of her racing into the bathroom,
breaking a glass, slashing her throat. In fact, the scratch could have
been as easily made with a pin. The cut wasn’t serious. It was more a
case of nerves than anything else.

Her mother had long since given up the hopeless task of staying close.
She was working as a theater manager in Dallas. When she heard the
news, she got in her little jalopy and drove thirty-six hours nonstop
to go to her daughter. “Judy,” she said enigmatically, “will never kill
herself.” She stayed on in California, working in a job in an aircraft
plant that Ida Koverman helped obtain for her. She died of a heart
attack in the parking lot there. Previously, she used to plead with her
friends: “Please don’t introduce me as Judy’s mother.”

Judy has walked the rocky road back to the top of the mountain with
Sid Luft by her side for most of the miles. Sid is her husband,
“manager,” and a gambling man who can kill $10,000 in an afternoon. He
loves horses and fast motor cars. It was Sid, with whom she has led an
on-again off-again life as Mrs. Luft, who arranged her first tour that
opened at the London Palladium, where she was an absolute sensation.
She has two more children by him: Lorna and Joe.

“I don’t think there’s any actress in the world that can produce
like she can when she’s going,” said one member of the group that
accompanied her to London. “When she’s going, she’s the greatest thing
on wheels. When you’re with a dame that’s fantastic like that, and you
don’t know if she’s going to get on or off or anything, you’re bound to
crack under the strain.”

Many people wondered how Judy Garland got her amazing contract from
Jack Warner to make the musical version of _A Star Is Born_. There was
a clause in it she didn’t have to work before 11 A.M. If she was ill
they wouldn’t expect her to work. It was a fantastic deal. Here’s the
story.

When it came time for Jack’s beautiful daughter Barbara to have her
coming-out party, he promised to get her anything she wanted. What she
wanted was to have Judy Garland sing at the party. Her father told her
that was impossible. “But, Daddy, you promised to give me anything I
wanted, and I thought you could do anything.” Then she burst into tears
and hung up the telephone.

Father went to work. He called Judy. Her answer was: “Why would I
do that? No.” He called her again: “What would I have to give you to
change your mind?”

Then it was that Sid Luft came on the phone and said: “We want _A Star
Is Born_,” naming an astronomical price for Judy and special clauses in
the contract. Warner had to buy the story from David O. Selznick at a
cost, I believe, of a quarter of a million.

But Judy survived the flop that _A Star Is Born_ proved to be, as
she has survived all the incredible excesses of her life. In every
performance--at concerts, on television, in her new pictures--she has
the power to stir an audience to the depths of their hearts, like an
old-fashioned revival meeting. “We have all come through the fire
together,” she seems to say, “and none of us is getting any younger,
but we’re here together, and I’ll love you if you love me.”

This feeling she gives out to and gets back from an audience may be
the one crush of her life that will last. She used to be her own worst
critic. Before she went into a number for the screen, her co-workers
had to keep telling her: “You’re wonderful, wonderful!” But she never
thought she was good. “I was awful” was her own self-judgment whenever
she’d finished. But now, as she literally tears her way through her
songs, her audiences go crazy listening to her. They crowd around to
touch her, and she believes in what she can achieve.

Ethel Barrymore, one of her greatest boosters, told me: “I think she
has a tremendous frustration. She’s always felt she wasn’t wanted. She
has a complex common among women--she wants to be beautiful. I told
her: ‘God is funny that way. He divides these things. When you open
your mouth to sing, you can be as beautiful as anyone I’ve ever known.’
But you’ve got to keep telling her.”

Judy suffers from nightmares concerning her mother. She has lost
something of herself somewhere along the road. But so long as she has
millions of people loving her and fighting for her, she’ll keep the
ghosts in the background.

Her performance in Carnegie Hall was one of the most amazing things I
ever witnessed. Her fans screamed and applauded after every number.
She gave encore after encore, promised: “I’ll stay all night if you
want me.” She threw her head back and used the mike like a trumpet.

She repeated the same frenzied performance in the Hollywood Bowl, this
time in the rain, and nobody moved. You sat enthralled because she’d
cast her magic spell as she did first when she sang “Over the Rainbow.”
This was our little Judy, who came home and persuaded the natives that
skies really were blue and that dreams really do come true.




_Eight_


One bright morning last spring, a fat young woman with a baby carriage
ambled along Hollywood Boulevard. First to catch my eye were the pink
Capri pants and her wabbling _derrière_ that was threatening to burst
right out of them. Next item I spotted was the cigarette dangling out
of her mouth, sprinkling ashes on the baby. I put on speed to catch up
with her, though I didn’t know her from Little Orphan Annie.

“I wonder if you know how you look from the rear. You should be ashamed
of yourself, and you a mother, too.”

That stopped her dead in her tracks. “And who might you be?”

“Doesn’t matter, but you’re disgusting.” With that, I walked on,
feeling I’d done my bit for the cause. I wasn’t exactly running any
risk. Though she outweighed me by thirty pounds, I knew she couldn’t
leave the baby to come after me.

The cause is glamour, for which I’ve been fighting a losing battle for
years. Our town was built on it, but there’s scarcely a trace left now.
Morning, noon, and night the girls parade in babushkas; dirty, sloppy
sweaters; and skin-tight pants. They may be an incitement to rape, but
certainly not to marriage. Unless the era of the tough tomboy ends
soon, the institution of matrimony is doomed to disappear forever.

The geniuses who conduct the motion-picture business killed glamour
when they decided that what the public wanted was not dream stuff, from
which movies used to be made, but realism. They took the girls out of
satin, chiffon, velvet, and mink, put them first into gingham and then
blue jeans. So what happened? They converted the heroine into the girl
next door, and I’ve always advocated that if they want to see the girl
next door, go next door. Now they’ve thrown the poor kid out to earn
her living on the streets.

The milliners, especially the males, have helped stitch glamour’s
shroud. Deep inside whatever they call their souls, they hate women.
They made the most ridiculous concoctions for women to wear on their
heads. Hats like table doilies, little pot holders, coal scuttles,
dishpans, crash helmets, bedpans. Husbands were ignored when they
complained: “Where in God’s name did you get that thing? Whoever made
it must hate your sex.”

Not until other women laughed at them did the glamour pusses discard
their psychotic chapeaux and go bareheaded. By then the designers had
ruined their own racket; they’d killed the sale of hats. I can walk
six blocks today in any city and see nothing more than hair or a scarf
covering anybody else’s hair but mine.

Studio wardrobe departments that employed cutters, seamstresses, and
embroidery hands by the dozens are empty, staffed by skeleton crews.
The stock rooms were crammed with bolts of magnificent brocades,
satins, laces; now most of the shelves are bare. One odd sight you’ll
see, though--rows and rows of realistic breasts cunningly contoured
from flesh-colored plastic, complete with pink nipples, hanging in
pairs, labeled with the name of the underprivileged star they were
created for. Some deceivers are made of rubber and inflate to size.

Everything else in Wardrobe was real--furs, fabrics, and feathers.
The cost of sheer labor that went into making the clothes drove the
accountants cross-eyed. One costume Garbo wore in _Mata Hari_ took
eight Guadalajaran needlewomen nine weeks to complete. In my wardrobe I
have the most beautiful coat I have seen anywhere, which Travis Banton
of Paramount designed. The embroidery alone cost $4000.

The studio designers were brilliant men and would have succeeded as
artists, painters, decorators. One or two were addicted to the bottle,
but they all blazed with talent. Travis at Paramount, Adrian at Metro,
Omar Kiam at Goldwyn, Orry-Kelly, now free-lancing and making more
money than ever. He designed the clothes for Marilyn Monroe in _Some
Like It Hot_, but she recut them to suit herself, and he refused to do
her next picture.

There are only two women associated with the movies now who make sure
they look like stars, and they both live in New York. Joan Crawford
won’t venture out of her Fifth Avenue apartment to buy an egg unless
she is dressed to the teeth. Marlene Dietrich does more--she’s made
herself a living legend of spectacular glamour around the world.

For her opening night the first year at the Sahara in Las Vegas I had a
front-row seat. She came on in a white dress that was poured over her.
She wore layers of sheer soufflé, infinitely finer than chiffon, but
only one layer to protect her chest from the evening air. The audience
let out a gasp that threatened to blow away the tablecloths. The next
night she wore the same gown, but she’d had two little circles of seed
pearls sewed strategically on the bodice and forever after swore she
had never appeared any more naked than that. But I’d seen both of them.

Every year she outdoes herself. One season she succeeded with a
full-length coat of rippling swan’s-down that for sheer beauty
surpassed anything in fabulous fashion. Jean Louis designed it, but it
was made by my furrier, Mrs. Fuhrman. In her shop one day, where the
coat was kept in cold storage, she asked me to try it on. I felt like a
maharaja’s mother.

“We had a terrible time getting the swan’s-down,” said Mrs. Fuhrman,
as I preened my borrowed feathers. “You know, you have to pull the
feathers off the living swans--”

“You what?” I gulped. “I don’t want to see it again.”

Marlene was invented as a fashion plate just as Pygmalion created
Galatea. The first time Travis Banton saw her, I thought he’d pass
right out at her feet. Soon after she landed here, as Josef von
Sternberg’s protégée, she turned up at an afternoon tea party wearing
a black satin evening gown complete with train, trimmed with ostrich
feathers. Her hips were decidedly lumpy. Except for her beautiful face
and perfect legs, which we’d seen in _The Blue Angel_, she could have
passed for a German housewife.

Travis, a Yale man, took her in hand, taught her everything he knew
about art, clothes, and good taste. She slimmed down, was made over
into the most strikingly dressed clothes horse on the screen. She had
some keen competition to contend with at Paramount. Carole Lombard,
Claudette Colbert, Kay Francis, Evelyn Brent, and, later, Mae West
fought for Travis’ most stunning designs.

For one picture Mae insisted upon having only French clothes. She had
posed for a nude statue and sent it to Paris to have the clothes fitted
on it. They were beautiful clothes that arrived back, but when they
were tried on Mae, they didn’t meet by ten inches. Everything had to be
remade at the studio.

There aren’t any Marquis of Queensberry rules when an actress wants to
win, but Marlene walked off with the honors. She was Travis’ favorite.
Nothing was too good for her. As top star at Paramount, she allowed
herself the luxury of a raging temper unless she got her own way, but
she took care not to rage at Travis.

At Christmas time she showered him with presents by way of thanks. He
invited my son Bill and me to help trim his tree one Christmas. I saw
him unwrap twenty-two separate packages from Marlene, covering the
whole gamut of giving, from sapphire-and-diamond cuff links with studs
to match, to Chinese jade figures and a kitchenload of copper pots and
pans.

She is a complex woman. A different side showed when she wanted a hat,
made almost entirely of black bird-of-paradise feathers, which she
was going to wear at the race track. Trouble was that federal agents
had just swooped down on the Wardrobe Department and confiscated its
entire stock of egret and paradise feathers--$3500 worth. The law said
that importing, buying, or possessing them was forbidden, though these
particular items had been carried on the inventory for years.

So Marlene’s precious hat had to be made of substitute plumage by a
staff of expert milliners--one of them even came out from New York
for the occasion. Marlene took one look at the result, tried the fine
feathers disdainfully on for size, then in silence ripped them to
shreds. The milliners worked for days before they came up with a hat
she’d wear.

The same perfectionism blazed again when Ouida and Basil Rathbone
announced a costume ball they were giving at the old Victor Hugo
Restaurant in Beverly Hills. This was going to be the diamond-studded
social event of the season. Our hosts counted the invitations they’d
sent out, then thoughtfully had the restaurant install extra plumbing
and built two complete extra powder rooms, ladies’ and gents’.

Marlene, as ever, was intent on outdoing everybody. She decided to come
as Leda and the Swan. Paramount’s sewing ladies labored for weeks on
the costume. The studios in those days took care that wherever a star
appeared, she lived up to the glittering image of a star that they--and
the public--carried in their minds. If she showed up at a private
gathering looking less than immaculate, she’d be hauled on the carpet
next morning by a head executive and advised to mend her manners.

On the evening of the Rathbones’ party Marlene made up at home and went
to the studio at 8 P.M. to be poured into her Leda gown. She regarded
herself in the mirrors, then cried: “It won’t do. I can’t possibly
wear a swan whose eyes match mine.” So the sewing girls fell to, and
the embroidered blue eyes were picked out and green ones substituted.
Marlene sent out for champagne and sandwiches for them all to have
an impromptu celebration in Wardrobe. She arrived at the Rathbones’
shivaree five hours late and was the sensation of the evening.

I’d intended to go in a borrowed brocade that had a coronation look,
with a jeweled crown to match, toting a baby lamb with gilded hoofs
on a leash. But the lamb submitted to his pedicure for nothing. I was
working on a picture with Louise Fazenda until midnight. When I got
home, I was too tired to look at the lamb or do anything but flop into
bed.

Under the swan’s-down and sequins, Marlene remains at heart what she
was in the beginning: a _Hausfrau_ with a mothering instinct a mile
wide. She has mothered every man in her life. They’ve loved her for
that, and much more. Mike Todd enjoyed a special place under her warm,
protective wing. A great friendship started when he went to see her
in Las Vegas to ask her to appear as a “cameo” star along with Frank
Sinatra, Red Skelton, and George Raft in the San Francisco honky-tonk
sequence in _Around the World in Eighty Days_.

She agreed and instantly took on the full-time job of mothering Mike.
She saw to it that he ate regularly, and the proper food. She helped
him with advice. She bought him his first matched set of expensive
luggage when she saw the ratty collection of cheap suitcases in which
he’d been living. “You are a very great man, Mike,” she told him; “you
must look and act like one.” He bought her nothing in return. Every
dollar he could scrape up had to go into completing his picture. He
hadn’t then met Elizabeth Taylor.

I watched Marlene play the honky-tonk scene, which wasn’t suited to
her--she could have written a much better script herself. Then Mike
drove me over to Metro, the only place where Todd-AO equipment had
been installed, to see José Greco, David Niven, Cantinflas, and Cesar
Romero in the flamenco and bullfight sequences. I sat stunned. “If the
rest is as good as this,” I told Mike, “you’ve got one of the greatest
spectacles ever made.” Joe Schenck, who’d sat with us, agreed. “If you
need money to finish it,” he promised, “all you have to do is come to
me.”

Mike gave Marlene and me his word that we could see the first rough
cut of the complete picture. He kept his promises with most people,
certainly with us. We had a six o’clock date to attend the screening
with him before the three of us ate a quick dinner at Chasen’s and he
flew to New York. He was late, as usual, but at six-thirty he was there
to call: “Roll ’em.”

When the screening ended, Marlene and I sat in total silence. Mike
couldn’t stand it. “Why don’t you say something? What’s the matter?
I’ve never known you two broads at a loss for words.”

“Shall I tell him?” I asked Marlene.

“Go ahead.”

I gave it to him on the chin. “Who cut this picture? A butcher? Where
are those wonderful scenes I saw in the gypsy tavern and the bull ring?
Why have they been cut to bits?”

“She’s right,” murmured Marlene. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“The cutter said they ran too long,” Mike explained.

“Well, fire him. Get the negative put back together and start all over
again. Pay him off and find yourself an artist, not the man who did
this.”

“I don’t know if I can do it. I gave him a year’s contract. It’d cost a
fortune.”

“If you don’t, it will cost you a great picture.”

“Who could I get?” he begged.

“You’ve got one friend in this town who wants to see you succeed, not
fail,” I said, “and that’s Sam Goldwyn. He has saved his own pictures
in the cutting room many a time. Go to Sam and let him find you the
finest cutter in the business. It’s the only way you can save it. You
haven’t got a picture unless you do.”

Mike sat there churning with anger. This was his first picture. We made
a sad threesome in the restaurant, with Mike complaining about how hard
he’d worked already and us not listening to him. “You’re going on a
plane and you’ll get no food there,” Marlene interrupted. “I’ll order
dinner for you. Hedda and I will eat later.”

He accepted that idea, then grumbled that he didn’t feel like going to
New York anyway and he’d cancel his reservation. “You must go. You’ve
got money questions to settle there,” said Marlene, the mother again.

After he’d left, she telephoned the airport: “Mr. Michael Todd will be
a few minutes late for his flight, number ten, TWA, for New York. Would
you please hold the plane for him? It’s very important.” Then she
asked me: “Are you hungry?” We hadn’t eaten a mouthful with him.

He went to New York. On his return he saw Sam Goldwyn, who came through
with the right cutter. The first real preview, loaded down with
Hollywood and New York big shots, was a sensation. But by then Mike had
met and been dazzled by Liz, who arrived late at that screening nursing
a highball, and sipped her way through the performance. Marlene saw
very little of him after that, and Liz got all the glory.

On the afternoon of March 22, 1958, I was in Havana, Cuba, bowing
before Madame Fulgencio Batista, wife of the reigning dictator, who was
guest of honor at a fashion show being staged to celebrate the opening
of a new Conrad Hilton hotel. In my outstretched hand I held a hat for
presentation to her. A newspaperman in the crowd couldn’t wait until
I’d finished. He hurried forward and whispered in my ear: “Mike Todd’s
dead--his plane crashed.”

I quickly dipped my head to Madame. “Will you excuse me? I’ve had some
very sad news.”

When I flew back to New York next day, Marlene telephoned me at the
Waldorf Towers, broken up by the news of Mike. We talked for ninety
minutes. She wept for him, and so did I.

Over cocktails in Havana I’d met an ex-subject of my movie-making
days. Ernest Hemingway had cursed like a troop of cavalry in 1942 when
my cameraman trailed him around Sun Valley and ruined a day’s quail
hunting for him. I wanted to bag him and the Gary Coopers on film for
my series of two-reelers called _Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood_. In Cuba I
got very chummy with Ernest and his lovely wife, Mary. “We should have
met twenty-five years ago,” he said gallantly.

“Yes, I think we might have made some sweet music then.”

“It’s not too late now,” the old flirt replied.

“It is for me,” I said.

He sighed. “I was boasting a bit. I guess for me, too.”

The following winter in New York I saw Mary at a Broadway opening.
“Where’s your ever-loving?” I asked.

“Out with Marlene Dietrich. He preferred dining with her to coming to
see this play.”

“Can’t blame him. But how come I never get that much attention from
your husband?”

“Because you don’t do as much for him as Marlene,” said Mary.

       *       *       *       *       *

Where Marlene was a challenge and an inspiration to Travis Banton,
Garbo was a challenge, exclamation point, to Gilbert Adrian at Metro.
Marlene loves seductive glamour in clothes, and she finished up knowing
as much as her master. The Swede hated dressing up, enjoyed wearing
only her drab woolen skirt, turtle-neck sweater, flat-heeled shoes, and
men’s socks on her big feet.

Travis delighted in high fashion. Adrian came up with more fantastic
designs, though when femininity was in order, his clothes dripped
with it for Greer Garson, Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald. He sized
up Garbo like a bone surgeon, with his keen, kind, hazel eyes. She
moved like a man, and she had a man’s square shoulders. Her arms were
muscular; her bosom--let’s just say meager. Yet on the screen there was
a commanding presence and luminous beauty.

She had an acting secret that only a few of us who watched her closely
caught on to. In every clinch, a split second before the leading man
put his arms around her, she would reach out and embrace him. It was
one of the subconscious things that marked the difference between a
European and an American woman--and Americans were always awed by
Garbo. Her pictures are still earning lots more praise and money
overseas than at home.

Her face hinted at sadness. She suffered her first bitter taste of
that not long after she was brought over from Stockholm by Metro, to
land in the middle of a New York heat wave, when she spent most of her
days sitting in a hotel bathtub full of cold water. It wasn’t Garbo
that the studio wanted but Maurice Stiller, the Swedish director who
had discovered her and refused to travel without her. But Stiller was
subsequently fired by Irving Thalberg, and it was Garbo who was given
the build-up. Stiller returned to Stockholm, a defeated, ailing giant
of a man, and she was heartbroken.

She stored up bitterness against MGM. In her early days Pete Smith,
head of publicity, had her pose for cheesecake shots wearing track
shorts, to be photographed with another Scandinavian, Paavo Nurmi, the
record-breaking runner, on the athletic fields of the University of
Southern California. When she had made her name a household word and
insisted on working in complete privacy on the set behind tall screens,
Louis B. Mayer brought six important New York stockholders to see her.
She sent them packing. “When Lillian Gish was queen of the lot, all I
was allowed to do was show my knees. Now let these visitors bend their
rusty knees to me, but they shall not watch,” she said.

Once Arthur Brisbane, Hearst’s top editor, came on the set to watch.
When she saw him she walked out of the scene. “If he wants to see
me, he can see me in the theater.” She went to her dressing room and
wouldn’t come back until he’d gone.

Adrian accentuated Garbo’s assets and concealed her liabilities. For
her he devised the high-necked, long-sleeved evening gown that swept
the world of fashion in the thirties. For _As You Desire Me_, in which
I played her sister, he invented the pillbox hat with strings tied
under her chin, which became part of every smart woman’s wardrobe. He
had her dripping in lace and melting costume lines for _Anna Karenina_,
sent the dress industry off on an oriental kick with her exotic outfits
for _The Painted Veil_. Her costumes in _Grand Hotel_ could be worn
today and still be high fashion.

He achieved much the same kind of fashion influence for Crawford. Her
padded halfback’s shoulders in _Chained_ and a dozen other movies
convinced half the women of America that this was exactly how they
wanted to appear. His _Letty Lynton_ dress, with wide sleeves and
sweetheart neck, was a garment-center classic. “If Crawford has an
apron,” we used to say, “it has to be by Adrian.”

His new clothes for any top star were guarded like the gold of Fort
Knox. Until the premiere costumes were kept under lock and key so
manufacturers’ spies couldn’t run off with his designs and pirate them.
A new Garbo or Crawford or Norma Shearer picture carried the fashion
wallop of a Paris opening today.

No more. The tradition that the designers fostered has vanished. Women
used to follow Hollywood fashion as avidly as they copied Veronica
Lake’s peekaboo hairdo or dreamed that some miracle might endow them
with legs like Betty Grable or Esther Williams’ classy chassis. Now
they haven’t got much to build their diet of dreams on except Ben
Casey’s surgical smock--television doesn’t go in strong for women, much
less gals in glamorous gowns.

When I look at Jackie Kennedy these days I think: “If those fellows
were around today, what they couldn’t have done for her!” She’d be
queen of fashion the world over. Oleg Cassini can’t hold a candle to
any of them, and he never had it so good, not even when he was married
to Gene Tierney.

Who’s left in motion-picture fashions? Nobody much outside the industry
has heard of Irene Sharaff, or Helen Rose. Edith Head started as Travis
Banton’s sketch girl, and her designs continue to follow his lead. Jean
Louis is the one designer that picture stars ask for today, just as
stage stars beg for Mainbocher.

Sometimes Jean overdresses Doris Day, but the clothes he makes for her,
at producer Ross Hunter’s insistence, have transformed Doris from a
plain Jane into a fashion plate. One difference between Jean Louis and
Adrian: Doris Day and Lana Turner got all the clothes to keep, as a
wonderful bonus from Ross Hunter. At Metro, the dresses belonged to the
studio, and Adrian had to ignore the pleas from a New York socialite
who, after every Garbo picture, used to send him a blank check, willing
to pay anything for just one of the costumes Garbo wore.

Metro’s meanness and lack of judgment was one reason he quit and opened
his own salon. A New York wholesale house wanted him to design a total
of thirty-five dresses a year and offered to pay $150,000 for the job,
split between him and Metro. “What’s that to us?” his bosses said.
“That’s peanuts. No, you can’t take it, and that’s final.”

Reason number two was the reaction Adrian got from director George
Cukor to the twenty-four beautiful costumes designed for Garbo in
_Two-Faced Woman_. I saw them hanging in the Wardrobe Department and
drooled over them. But Cukor made up his mind that for this picture she
was going to look as she does in reality. No glamour; two fake diamond
clips in her frizzed-up hair. No clothes to make an audience’s eyes pop,
but wool sweaters and sack frocks.

“After making her a fashion legend, you want to do this to her?” cried
Adrian. “Won’t you at least come and see the clothes I’ve made?”

Cukor refused even that. _Two-Faced Woman_ was the last picture Garbo
made. She respected Adrian, to the point where she’d sometimes eat
her vegetarian lunch in his office. The picture was one of her few
failures. He handed in his notice. Metro was burned to a cinder when
it had to hire six people to replace him. He’d been in the habit of
designing clothes not only for the stars but for the whole company in
movies he worked on.

When Garbo retired from the screen, she gave only one autograph as a
souvenir. It went neither to Adrian nor Louis Mayer. To her colored
maid, the only living soul allowed in her dressing room, whom the
studio paid for, she presented a framed photograph of herself on which
she had written: “To Ursula, from your friend, Greta Garbo.” I’ve heard
of only one similar gesture of hers. Dr. Henry Bieler, of California,
put her on a diet to which she’s clung over the years. When he wrote a
book, he asked her for an endorsement, which she promptly sent him.

Nowadays she’s lost the passion for self-effacement that had her
masquerading as “Harriet Brown,” hidden in a floppy hat and dark
glasses. Neighbors in the New York apartment where she lives are
devoted to her. Their children exchange greetings with her on the
street. Among those neighbors are Mary Martin and Richard Halliday.
Their daughter Heller lived with them until she eloped last year.

One day Mary’s front-door bell rang. Garbo was standing outside.
“Forgive my intrusion,” she said shyly, “but I have often watched from
my window and seen you and your family. Sometimes going shopping.
Sometimes getting into your car. You look so happy, and I feel so
alone.”

Over the tea that Mary insisted on serving for them both, Garbo found
one more friend, to add to the precious few she’s made in her lifetime.
Two others, who are devotion itself, are the designer Valentina and her
husband, George Schlee.

There was a Christmas Eve before Adrian resigned when I was the stooge
in a plot to turn him green around the edges. Omar Kiam, who designed
for Sam Goldwyn, was the one to arrange it. Adrian had just announced
his engagement to Janet Gaynor. He was giving a party, and Omar was
to be my escort. On December 22, Omar informed me that I had to have
a new gown. But I hadn’t time to get anything, I told him. “Then I’ll
make one. You won’t even need fittings; I’ve got your dress form at the
studio. You’ve got to be dressed to the teeth.”

At six o’clock on Christmas Eve, ninety minutes before he was due to
collect me to go to Adrian’s, Omar arrived on my doorstep with the
dress over his arm. I have never seen anything lovelier: American
Beauty red velvet, tightly fitted, with a full, flounced skirt and
train. “If this doesn’t knock their eyes out, nothing will,” he grinned.

“It sure will,” I said. “I’ll be ready sharp on time.” But I was still
waiting at eight-thirty. Wondering what went wrong, I telephoned Omar’s
house. His butler answered: “I’m terribly sorry, and I should have let
you know. Mr. Kiam won’t be able to come for you. He has retired for
the night.”

It dawned on me then what had happened. After delivering the gown he
went home to celebrate, not wisely but too well, and had to be put to
bed. I swept into Adrian’s living room an hour late. My red gown dimmed
everything else in the room. Ina Clair, who was there, said: “You did
it on purpose.”

I still have that red velvet--as the upholstery on two French chairs
once owned by Elinor Glyn. Every morning when I open my eyes I see a
memento of Omar Kiam. He did the clothes for both the pictures I made
for Sam Goldwyn. In one of them, _Vogues_ of 1938, which Walter Wanger
produced, I played Joan Bennett’s mother. She and I had a certain
exchange of words some years later.

Two lines in my column brought me the gift of a skunk from her. Here’s
the story. Mothers usually had a tough time in pictures, especially
with close-ups. They came almost always at the end of the day when you
were tired and your make-up was messy. So it was on this picture.

It was not only the end of the day but the last scene in the picture
and I was feeling desperately weary. I went to Walter Wanger and said:
“I don’t think I can do that close-up. If you’ll let me come tomorrow
morning, it won’t cost you anything.”

He said: “You’ll have to do it--I’d have to bring the whole crew in; it
would cost a day’s salary for everyone.”

So I finished the scene and went to my dressing room and for the first
time in my life fainted. How long I lay there I don’t know. When I woke
I called for help. There wasn’t a soul around; everybody had gone home.
I finally found a telephone and got the gateman to order me a cab,
which took me home. Then I sent for a doctor.

Years later, when Joan was playing mother to Elizabeth Taylor in
_Father of the Bride_, I went on the set to interview Liz. There was
Joan doing her close-up. I looked at my watch: it was 6:30 P.M. I
remembered the misery I’d once endured, and in my column the following
day, I wrote: “At last Miss Bennett knows how it feels to get her
close-up at the end of the day and not at the beginning.”

For that she sent me a deodorized, live skunk. I christened it Joan
and gave it to the James Masons, who had been looking for one as a
companion for their nine cats.

In its rosier days, Hollywood Boulevard saw glamour by the carload on
Oscar nights. Movie fans drove in, goggle-eyed, from every state in the
Union to see the stars; a hundred searchlights would crisscross the
sky. Bleachers set up on the sidewalk overflowed. Flashbulbs flared
by the thousands as the queens slid out of their limousines, owned
or rented, in minks and sables, which the studio would lend to dress
up the show if your wardrobe didn’t run to such luxury. They’d glide
across the sidewalk like some special, splendid race of the beautiful
and the blessed; gowns swishing, hairdos immaculate; teeth, eyes, and
diamonds gleaming together.

Just watching them walk in was as good as a ticket to a world’s fair.
They all had gowns made for those evenings, each trying to outdo the
other. They’d pester the studio designers to find out what the other
girls were getting. “You’ve got to top them for me,” they’d all plead,
and the boys would smile the promise to do their best with sketch pads
and shears.

During World War II the women of Hollywood let the producers talk them
into surrendering every shred of glamour even on Oscar nights. “If you
go out, you mustn’t be well dressed,” the front-office men argued, “or
else the public will be offended. What you’ve got to do is to look
_austere_.”

I knew this was malarkey. So did they. From the mail that poured in, it
was as plain as a pikestaff that servicemen were starving for glamour.
They wanted pin-up pictures of glamorous girls. I sent out ten thousand
of them, until the studios rebelled and pretended they couldn’t afford
any more. But they didn’t get away with that.

I waged a little guerrilla war of my own, too, to doll up the Academy
Awards when the studio chieftains still wanted the presentation to look
no dressier than a missionary’s sewing bee. Telephone calls by the
dozen worked the trick. “What are you going to do,” I demanded, “let
those clothes rot in your closets? You’re not going to wear anything
but your most beautiful gown.”

“But nobody’s going to be dressed,” the girl at the other end would
wail.

“Then set the style. Last year you looked like spooks: sackcloth and
ashes.”

At least, we managed to re-establish the tradition that year that women
should dress for the night they hand out the gold-plated little men who
first saw life in 1927, when Cedric Gibbon roughed in the design for
them on a tablecloth at the Ambassador Hotel.

But the Academy Awards I’ve cared about most over the years had
nothing to do with glamour. They had to do with life, exclusively, in
full measure. The first were the two Oscars that went to the crippled
veteran, Harold Russell, who proved in _The Best Years of Our Lives_
that a man can lose his hands but not his courage.

The second was willed to Howard University by Hattie McDaniel, who won
hers for the best supporting role in 1939 for _Gone With the Wind_ and
died penniless in 1952 in the Motion Picture Relief Home.

The third was won by James Baskette for _Song of the South_, after a
campaign in which Jean Hersholt, then president of the Academy, and
Freeman Gosden gave their immediate support. Some members disdained my
idea that a special Oscar should go to a man for playing Uncle Remus,
a slave, and they fought at a meeting on the eve of presentation until
4 A.M. Jean finally sent them home with this warning: “If he doesn’t
receive an Oscar, I shall stand up tomorrow night and tell the world
the whole disgraceful story.”

After he received it from the hands of Ingrid Bergman, James Baskette
carried his statuette everywhere he went, in a black velvet bag that
his wife made. At night he stood it on his bedroom mantelpiece with a
tiny spotlight shining on it.

He was slated to play “De Lawd” in a Broadway revival of _Green
Pastures_ when he was taken critically ill. As he lay dying, his eyes
returned time and again to Oscar. “No colored man ever got one before,”
he said, “and I’m grateful, Lord.”




_Nine_


Our town worships success, the bitch goddess whose smile hides a
taste for blood. She has a habit, before she destroys her worshipers,
of turning them into spitting images of herself. She has an army of
beauties in attendance at her shrine.

Not many survive the encounter with success. Wreathed in smiles, she
kills them in cars, like Jimmy Dean; or with torment, like Marilyn
Monroe; or with illness, like Jean Harlow. She turns them into
drunkards, liars, or cheats who are as dishonest in business as in
love. This is the story of four women and what success did to them.

One of them who escaped in a single piece is Lucille Ball. She grabbed
the prizes of talent, fame, and money, and Lucy is only slightly
battered as a consequence. She even survived after she gave Desi Arnaz,
with whom she was madly in love, the shock of his life by divorcing him.

Lucille had the sense to quit as TV’s “Lucy” when she sat on top of
the world. That show had an audience rating so high that America took
time out for half an hour every Tuesday evening to look at that little
black box. I remember that the 1952 inauguration party that Colonel
Robert McCormick of the Chicago _Tribune_ gave in Washington came to a
temporary halt while everybody had to watch in silence. Lucy’s baby was
being born on the program that night and Bertie wanted to see.

But the time came when Lucy told Desi: “I won’t do any more. The
writers have run out of ideas, and I’m dead tired.” They sold out the
series to CBS for reruns and on the proceeds bought the two RKO studios
for $6,150,000. These studios had a certain sentimental appeal on top
of their commercial value. Lucy and Desi first met at RKO in 1940 when
they were filming _Too Many Girls_, a prophetic title. The former Earl
Carroll chorus girl and the ex-bongo drummer from Cuba proceeded to
spread themselves over a whole pile of enterprises that included a Palm
Springs hotel, a golf course, and a $12,000,000 production contract for
Westinghouse.

Desi took to putting a few drinks under his belt as a diet, and the
fireworks started. They split up two or three times, but Lucy always
forgave him and took him back. To save the marriage, as she hoped, she
set up a trip to Europe for them both. “We’ll take the children along,
too,” she said.

I begged her not to. “If you’d just try it alone, the two of you,” I
said. “Little Desi and Lucie are too young to enjoy a trip like that.”

But Lucy can be stubborn. “I won’t go without them,” she said. So she
took a maid along to look after them. For the voyage, which she hoped
would be a second honeymoon, she bought clothes by the trunkload; big
picture hats that she never put on her head; a magnificent full-length
sable coat. “But it’s May now, and you’ll be running into summer over
there,” I said.

“I’ve bought it and I’m going to take it,” she said. “Besides, Desi
hasn’t seen it.”

They sailed aboard the _Liberté_. “We are having a wonderful
crossing--so far--weather perfect,” she wrote me. “Food divine--too
divine. Eating ourselves out of shape. Everyone loves our kids--that
makes us happy. They have even forgiven us our forty pieces of baggage
and two trunks.”

Just how wonderful the trip was I heard when she got back, scarcely
speaking to Desi. He had been weary, resenting the presence of their
children, though he’s a loving father. He and Lucy collided head on in
one quarrel after another. “What did he think about the sable coat?” I
asked.

“Never saw it,” she said. “I used it on the ship as a blanket for the
kids.”

The following Christmas, when the Westinghouse contract had three more
months to run, she asked me to appear on a TV show on which she was
making her bow as director; it included a dozen or more players she had
been training in her school. Desi was just back from a solo trip to
Europe, shooting a picture there.

On the set, Vivian Vance and Bill Frawley, veterans of happier “I Love
Lucy” days, wanted to take cover along with me to shelter from the
storms between Lucy and Desi. It was dreadful. “You can’t insult him
before the entire company,” I warned her in her dressing room. “You’re
partly responsible for this show, too, you know.”

It seemed we were doomed to have a flop on our hands. As director, Lucy
was lost without a compass, too mad to see straight, and the show was
going to pieces. In dress rehearsal Desi said mildly: “Lucy, dear, will
you let me see if I can pull this thing together for you?”

“Okay, try it!” she snapped.

Desi was winning no medals as husband, but he shines as a director
and producer. In ten minutes he had that Christmas program ticking
like a clock. The New Year hadn’t yet come around the corner before
Lucy wanted to sue him for divorce, which was something Desi had been
convinced she would never do.

“You can’t,” I told her. “You and Desi both signed the Westinghouse
contract as partners. If you walk out, they could cancel and sue you.”

She had to listen to the same tune from me every week. She was itching
to dump Desi and so desperate to leave Hollywood that she’d have played
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ if it would take her to Broadway. Instead she took
on the next best thing--a musical called _Wildcat_, on which she staked
money and her reputation.

Lucy hasn’t many illusions about herself. “I’m not beautiful, not sexy,
and I don’t have a good figure,” she says. She knows she can’t sing and
she admits that too many years have flowed under the bridge for her to
dance like Cyd Charisse. But for _Wildcat_ she had to sing, dance, and
hold the show together. She tried to inject some sparkle by ad-libbing
wisecracks à la Lucy. The author, instead of being grateful, was fit to
be tied.

After a lot of her cash had vanished and she’d collapsed two or three
times on stage, she returned to Hollywood. She licked her wounds and,
with Desi down on his ranch breeding horses, earned fresh medals as a
businesswoman by helping to put Desilu back on its feet.

In November 1961, I went to the wedding of Lucy and Gary Morton, a
young man she met on a blind date while she was playing in _Wildcat_
and he was telling jokes at the Copacabana. He makes her happy, and she
told me that he’d be able to spend the summer at home while she started
a new television series. No, Gary would not co-star.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joan Crawford has been a priestess at the shrine of success since she
was a hoofer named Lucille Le Sueur. She’s been put to the sacrificial
flames more than once, but has always risen like Lazarus and lived to
burn another day.

She’s cool, courageous, and thinks like a man. She labors twenty-four
hours a day to keep her name in the pupil of the public eye. She’ll
time her arrival at a theater seconds before the curtain goes up and
make such an entrance that the audience sees only her through act one,
scene one. The actors on stage may hate it, but she’s having a ball.
If she has a surviving fan club in any city she’s visiting, she’ll
carefully supply its president in advance with a complete schedule
for the day, detailed to the minute, and collect such crowds that by
evening there’ll be a mob hundreds strong escorting her.

She was called box-office poison and couldn’t get a job for years
after her Metro contract ended. Out of money, she continued to play
the star and hold her head high, and she had the town’s sympathy.
_Mildred Pierce_ put her back in pictures and won her an Oscar, as
much for bravery under fire as for her acting. The same gutsy quality
showed when her husband, Al Steele, died and she took on a job as
traveling ambassador for his company, Pepsi-Cola. Just before that,
he’d arranged for her to visit the Strategic Air Command base at Omaha,
Nebraska. Typically, she went through with the visit alone. Going on
from there to Hollywood, she told me about it over dinner at the home
of Billy Haines, once a picture star, now a top decorator with Joan
among his customers.

Nothing would suit but I had to see SAC, too. She fixed it with General
Thomas Power, the commander in chief. The Air Force flew me out from
Los Angeles. Joan, who’d meantime returned to New York, came on from
there on a commercial flight that got in an hour ahead of me. I found
her waiting at the airport, with the mayor of the city in tow. She
hadn’t yet checked into the hotel suite we were sharing, so we went
straight to SAC, where General Power took us through the most amazing
setup you could dream of. Joan and I rode to town together in the
chauffeured limousine Mr. Mayor had put at her disposal.

She had enough luggage and hatboxes with her to fill a department
store. She carried a jewel case two feet long. “I always travel with
it,” she told us. “By the way [this to the mayor] would you be kind
enough to provide someone to guard my jewels? I’ll need two men--one
for day and one for night.”

“Certainly, Miss Crawford,” he said, hypnotized. “Whatever you need,
just ask for it.”

Our suite consisted of a living room and two separate bedrooms, one for
Joan, and one for me. As soon as we’d checked in, she unpacked. For
our two-day visit she brought twenty-two dresses, which she spread out
all over her room, and fourteen hats. “I don’t know what I’ll want to
wear,” she explained seriously when my eyebrows hit my hairline, “so I
brought them along in case.”

We were no sooner unpacked than she rang for an iron and ironing board.
The iron the bellboy brought wasn’t the kind she liked, so she sent him
out to buy a new one. With it, she proceeded to press every one of the
dresses and hang each in its cellophane wrapper in her closet.

“Would you like to see my jewels?” she asked. I nodded, speechless. She
unlocked the case and--abracadabra!--it was like peering at Aladdin’s
treasure, half a million dollars’ worth; trays and trays loaded with
diamonds and emeralds and pearls, bracelets and necklaces and earrings.

“This is the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done,” I said. “Someday
you’ll wake up with your throat cut.”

“But I always have it guarded,” she said, “and I keep it beside me on
the plane.”

“Why isn’t it in a safety-deposit box?”

“I like to look at them,” she said, as though she were talking to an
idiot.

I went into my room for a minute. When I came back into the living room
she had disappeared. “Where are you?” Her voice came from the bathroom:
“In here.” She was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. “It
wasn’t very clean,” she said.

Next to the goddess in their prayers, many of the worshipers place
a compulsive kind of cleanliness. Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Doris
Day--they’ll shower three times a day like pilgrims in the Ganges
trying to wash away their sins. But only Joan and Garbo will personally
scrub the bathroom or kitchen floor to make sure there are no germs
lingering there.

The mayor returned to make us his guests at a small dinner party. We
both wore simple dresses because Omaha doesn’t run much to evening
clothes. We were back in the hotel by eleven-thirty and had Mr. Mayor
and two or three others up for a drink.

As soon as they had said their good nights, Joan, who doesn’t smoke,
flung every window wide open and carried the ash trays out into the
hall, where her night guard had dutifully stationed himself outside the
door. She gathered up the glasses and washed them in the kitchenette
off the living room. She then unlocked another item of her luggage that
the bellboy had staggered under when we moved in.

It was a massive chest perhaps a yard long, packed with ice. It
contained four bottles of hundred-proof vodka, bottles of her favorite
brand of champagne, and a silver chalice, which she took out for her
bedtime ceremony. Into the chalice she poured a split of champagne and
raised it in a simple toast, “To Al,” before she put it to her lips.

“What do you want for breakfast?” she asked when the chalice was empty.

“Can’t we order in the morning?”

“No, I like breakfast when I get up. I’ll put our order in tonight.”
I settled for juice, coffee, and a boiled egg. That taken care of, we
agreed that eight-thirty in the morning would suit us both as time to
arise. Come the morrow, I’d bathed when at eight-thirty sharp there was
a rapping at my bedroom door. In the living room stood a waiter ready
to serve us. Outside the front door stood a new guard, keeping the
daytime watch.

Then we spent a full, fascinating, reassuring, awe-inspiring day at
SAC; saw the H-bombers take off in a practice scramble; again met
General Power, who gave us dinner. I started sleeping more easily from
that night on as a result of what I’d witnessed. It seemed to me to
be an up-to-date necessity in a fearful world where the best rule for
America’s conduct was advocated by Teddy Roosevelt: Speak softly and
carry a big stick. The next morning, every inch a star and clean as a
hound’s tooth, Joan flew on to Chicago, with her twenty-two dresses,
fourteen hats, jewel case, ice chest, and silver chalice, to scrub
another bathroom if she had to.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some of our women can walk through the temple’s sacrificial flames and
not get as much as singed. They’re so deep-down innocent they wouldn’t
recognize the goddess if they saw her. Ann Blyth, a devout Catholic and
a darling, doesn’t know that she’s used as regularly as tap water by
people seeking favors, charity, or a conducted tour around the studios.

Kathryn Grayson is another, so guileless that a fat, bow-legged
producer with lust in his eyes used to arrive on her doorstep many a
morning before she’d had breakfast and literally chase her through the
house.

The most gullible of all is Mary Martin, who sees, hears, and speaks
no evil and, by a miracle, lives by it and through it. Judge Preston
Martin’s daughter was friendly as a kitten when she drove her bright,
new, yellow convertible to Hollywood in 1936 from Weatherford, Texas,
which boasted a population of 5000 people at the time. She’d always
been the girl who sang sweetest in church, stood out in school plays,
worked the most enthusiastically in civic causes.

Her father gave her $500 as stake money on the strict understanding
that as soon as that was gone, she’d come back home. He also saddled
her with her five-year-old son, Larry, who resulted when Mary eloped
from finishing school in Nashville, Tennessee, with a boy from Fort
Worth. That marriage lasted in fact two years, was dissolved in five.
“Larry’s your responsibility and you’ve got to take him along,”
her father insisted, figuring this was a fair means of keeping his
wide-eyed darling out of new romances and would bring her back quicker.

Around the studios they got to calling her “Audition Mary.” She sang
for everybody, and everybody turned thumbs down. “Nice voice, fair
figure, but impossible to photograph that face,” was the verdict. She
sang for Oscar Hammerstein II--remember _South Pacific_?--at his house
on Benedict Canyon at the end of my dead-end street. He knew she wasn’t
ready. Years later Mary told me he taught her how to phrase a song,
how to read lines, how to move. “In fact,” said she, “I learned show
business from Oscar Hammerstein.”

When he thought she was ready, he and Richard Rodgers adapted a play
called _Green Grow the Lilacs_, and she was offered the leading role.
At the same time, she had also been offered a lead in a play produced
by Vinton Freedley, who’d given Mary her first Broadway chance in
_Leave It to Me_.

“I was torn between the two offers. Talking to Hammerstein over the
phone, I said: ‘Will you give me a minute?’ I tossed a coin and
Freedley won. The play was a success in Boston, but I felt certain it’d
never reach Broadway--it didn’t.”

_Green Grow the Lilacs_ also failed and later was rewritten for a man
instead of a woman in a new version called _Oklahoma!_

When her $500 had melted away, she picked up what jobs she could find.
She sang for $60 at a little night spot. She taught slew-footed stars
how to get through dancing scenes. Her voice was dubbed on sound tracks
for tin-eared girls who couldn’t sing. Then she managed to get signed
by a producer named Lawrence Schwab for a Broadway musical he had in
mind.

When she got to New York, she found that plans for the show had come
to nothing, but Schwab lent her to another producer, Vinton Freedley,
for _Leave It to Me_. It had a song called “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,”
by Cole Porter, which Sophie Tucker encouraged Mary to sing with the
innocence of a lamb. That was the making of Mary. Soon she was singing
on radio, then back in Hollywood with a contract at Paramount. Judge
Martin went to his grave believing that “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” was
written especially for him.

But making movies is a cold-blooded, impersonal, highly technical
business. Some performers slowly freeze inside when they work for
staring cameras instead of for human beings sitting in a theater
waiting to burst into applause. Mary was like that. “I beat my brains
out,” she says, “and I like to hear the echo.” She didn’t cotton to
Hollywood.

Glamour and Mary were strangers in those days. The studio put her in
curls and ruffles. She arrived at one dress-up affair in a sports suit.
And make-up men hadn’t yet acquired their present techniques, which can
transform literally any girl into a beauty queen.

Mary didn’t start to glow until Mainbocher took her over and made her
one of America’s best-dressed women. Any woman wearing a beautiful gown
can peek at herself in a mirror and think: “My, how pretty you look in
that!” The thought itself puts a sparkle in her eye and a smile on her
lips, making her just what she fancies herself to be.

I only once saw Mainbocher cringe at the sight of his pride and joy.
That was in New Orleans, when we sat together watching Mary’s opening
in _Kind Sir_, produced by her long-time friend and Connecticut
neighbor, Josh Logan. I smelled a fiasco during her rehearsals, but
I did whatever was possible to boost her morale. She poured out her
gratitude in a telegram: ONCE BEFORE ANOTHER GREAT WOMAN SOPHIE TUCKER
HELPED ME IN MY VERY FIRST SHOW STOP NOW YOU BY SOME MIRACLE WERE SENT
TO ME GOD BLESS YOU AND THANK YOU MY LOVE ALWAYS--MARY.

But nothing helped _Kind Sir_. On opening night, when the last-act
curtain fell, even the flowers that were pushed into her arms were
tired. In the seat next to me, Mainbocher, who’d done her costumes,
slid down almost out of sight so he wouldn’t be asked to take a bow.
But he took it with a smile like all the rest.

I almost made an enemy of Josh Logan by nagging him to use Mary in the
movie of _South Pacific_ instead of Mitzi Gaynor. “There are make-up
men today who’ll make Mary look like a young girl,” I told him.
“Mitzi’s a fine entertainer, but she’ll be only a carbon copy of Mary
as Nellie Forbush.” Josh wrote me a twelve-page letter explaining why I
was wrong. _South Pacific_ turned out to be only a modest success as a
movie, earned around $5,000,000, but it would have done better if Mary
had starred in it.

She played Nellie in London, of course, and reported rapturously, in
red ink yet: “Dear Hedda: Look where we are! Exactly where you said
we’d be! And--oh!--it has been just as wonderful as I had hoped and
_dreamed_ it would be. All of it has been unbelievably perfect.”

When she came home she was bone-weary. She and her husband, Richard
Halliday, had booked passage on a slow boat to South America. Then
Leland Hayward told her: “I’m going to do a big TV spectacular, and I
can’t do it without you.” She begged off and started on the cruise.
When they reached Brazil, Adrian talked her into buying land near the
house he and Janet Gaynor built in the middle of the jungle that he
loved.

Mary had as much need for a Brazilian hideaway as for two heads, but
she can’t go on saying no to anybody. She and Richard, who was the
only big reward she won in Hollywood, discovered that the first jungle
real estate they bought was sold to them by a woman who didn’t own it.
The local authorities hushed that up since they couldn’t afford to
have the news leak back to the United States. So Mary, $40,000 poorer,
sank another $50,000 into some other property, which the surrounding,
giant-sized greenery constantly threatens to steal back from her.

When Leland Hayward heard about her proposed rest cure in Brazil, he
flew down ahead of the Hallidays and was waiting for them as they
landed. Brushing aside her pleas of fatigue, he told her: “Ethel Merman
says she’ll do my TV show if you will.” Mary, as ever, couldn’t say no.
After the two of them made television history that season, she asked
Ethel casually one day: “How did Leland get you to do it?”

“At first I told him to go to hell,” said Ethel, “but then he said
you’d do it if I would, and I couldn’t refuse.”

Where Joan can’t stop washing, Mary can’t stop working. She hasn’t a
clue as to the size of her bank account, and I’ll guarantee she never
looks inside a checkbook. She waded trustingly into ventures, often
backed with her own money, where she found herself up to her ears in
problems.

“But that’s all ended,” she declares. “Never again would I do a play
that I’m not suited to and take another two and a half years out of my
life.”

But so long as she can go on flying, she’ll be happy in the theater. As
Peter Pan, which was a lifetime dream come true, she’s the world’s most
celebrated flying grandmother. Her son, Larry, and his Swedish wife are
the parents of two children.

The other member of the Halliday family, daughter Heller, “eloped” with
her fiancé, Tony Weir, along with her parents, his parents and family,
and the twenty-six guests. They’d planned a reception at New York’s
River Club. Her bridal gown by Mainbocher was made but never worn.
Heller decided that instead of a big wedding, she’d rather have cash to
get her household started, so Mary’s big production plans went up in
smoke.

This was an elopement with a difference. In two cars, one Friday
morning, the wedding party made for Elkton, Maryland, without anyone
remembering that the state law there requires forty-eight hours’
residence before the knot is tied. That made it impossible for them
to get a marriage license before Monday. Heller, Tony, and his sister
Karen took one of the cars and headed south for Alexandria, Virginia,
while the rest of the faltering band drove up to stay in Baltimore.

The bride and groom went through their blood tests in Alexandria.
Heller had to be jabbed half a dozen times before blood could be
drawn, and she finished the day with three pieces of adhesive plaster
on each arm. But they still couldn’t get a license; Heller, short
of twenty-one, needed her parents’ consent. On the following day,
Saturday, the nearest license bureau open in the state of Virginia was
in Leesburg. The doors there closed at noon. So the party took off
bright and early, covered 150 miles in waltz time, and got to Leesburg
just before the deadline.

“Our darling elopers,” Mary related, “were married there in the first
Methodist Church to be built in America. Both mothers cried. I sat on
the wrong side of the church, the groom’s. The happy pair were, oh
so happy, and we are, oh so tired.” Heller went to work showing off
wedding gowns as a model, instead of wearing one.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sometimes the first breath of success converts an otherwise nice,
well-adjusted girl into a priestess of the cult. Sometimes it takes
longer. It took eleven years, her third husband, and a turnabout in
her faith to convert Doris Day, who was born to Wilhelm and Alma
von Kappelhoff, a German-Catholic couple in Cincinnati, on April 3,
1924, and christened Doris because her mother rated Doris Kenyon the
greatest actress that ever breathed.

The von Kappelhoff became “Day” because band leader Barney Rapp wanted
a name that would fit on the marquee of the Cincinnati night club where
Doris, a puppy-fat sixteen-year-old girl, earned $25 a week singing
with his orchestra. She graduated from there to sing with Les Brown and
His Band of Renown, and the goddess started to breathe harder on her
when Doris recorded her first hit, “Sentimental Journey” with them. She
was making $500 a week when she left the band.

She was a girl who fell in love without pausing for breath. In April
1941 she up and married Al Jorden, a trombonist from Cincinnati who
played for Jimmy Dorsey. On February 4, 1942, Doris gave birth to her
son, Terry. A year later, she went through her first divorce, left her
baby in her mother’s care, and joined up again with Les Brown, the girl
singer who sat primly in front of the band until her turn came to go up
to the microphone.

They were playing at the old Pennsylvania Hotel, which became the
Statler, on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue, when agent Al Levy first heard
her. Struck by a funny feeling that this girl might go someplace, he
sent her a note inviting her to join him at the table where he sat with
Mannie Sachs, who was then head of Columbia Records. “Have you ever
thought of going on your own?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said. “I’m going to get married soon.”

Eighteen months after, Les Brown was appearing at the Palladium in Los
Angeles, and Doris and her new husband, George Weidler, a saxophonist
in the orchestra, were living in a trailer camp on Sepulveda Boulevard
out toward Long Beach. They quit Les Brown and went on living in
the camp, Doris out of work, George picking up occasional weekend
engagements. Terry was still with his grandmother.

Al Levy had trouble contacting Doris. The trailer was a block away
from the only telephone and, if anybody called Doris, the proprietress
of the camp found it easier to say “She’s not here” than go get her.
But Al managed to exchange a few words: “Call me sometime if you get
ambitious, and we’ll talk some more.”

Mannie Sachs got her one brief job--as singer on a sustaining radio
show that starred Bob Sweeney, now a TV director, and Hal March, who
made a Broadway hit in _Come Blow Your Horn_. She worked for thirteen
weeks at $89 a week, after deductions, but then she was dropped; the
network figured she had no future. So, with no money coming in, it was
time to call Al Levy. “All right, let’s see what can happen now,” she
said.

He had put $25,000 into a management agency called Century Artists,
which gave him forty per cent ownership. Dick Dorso had started the
business with a small stake from Lew Levy, no relation of Al’s, who
was manager of the Andrews Sisters and the husband of one of them,
Maxine. Lew wasn’t acting out of undiluted generosity--he wanted to
get his brother-in-law, Marty Melcher, out from under his feet. Marty,
Patti’s husband, used to handle such chores as fixing the lights for
the sisters’ act. Marty became the second partner in Century Artists as
part of Lew’s deal with Dorso. The agency, which took on the sisters
as clients, had its offices next to mine in the Guaranty Building on
Hollywood Boulevard. Al also assisted my manager, Dema Harshbarger, in
booking talent for my weekly radio show.

Al brought Doris to say hello as soon as he’d signed her. She was a
scared little creature, smothered in freckles, wearing scuffed-up
shoes, skirt and sweater, but not a lick of make-up. For months she
wore skirts and sweaters. When I asked why she never wore a dress,
she said: “I can only afford skirts and sweaters.” Her first need was
clothes. He found a little dressmaker in Los Angeles to make her four
evening dresses on Century Artists’ money.

In New York, Billy Reed was opening his Little Club on East Fifty-fifth
Street, uncertain whether or not to have any entertainer work in the
squeezed-in room he’d rented, which he was doing up with striped-silk
walls. A friend of Billy’s, Monte Proser, thought Doris might fit
there. He passed the word to Al, who persuaded Billy by telephone to
try her for two weeks at $150 a week.

Al bought train tickets to New York for Doris and himself. Still
deeply in love with George Weidler, she telephoned him every night.
For the opening of the Little Club, Billy and Al had packed their
friends in, making sure Doris got a good hand. This was going to be her
springboard. If she succeeded here, it would be easier to make it in
Hollywood.

The notices she received were encouraging. Billy engaged her for an
extra four weeks, and Al returned to California to see what he could
line up for her there. Ten days later she telephoned him in tears: “I
can’t handle the rest of my time at the club alone. I want to get back
to George. I’ve had it.” Al took it philosophically. “Come on back
then,” he said. On the way, she stopped off in Cincinnati to see her
son.

Meantime, Mike Curtiz, a sentimental Lothario from Hungary at Warner
Brothers moved in to succeed Hal Wallis, who started in business for
himself. Mike had Jack Warner breathing down his neck to start making
a musical to be called _Romance on the High Seas_. Betty Hutton was
supposed to play the girl lead, but at the last minute Curtiz wouldn’t
hire her. He decided to look around for a lesser, cheaper name, though
he was growing more panicky by the day with Warner starting to twist
his arms.

Song writers Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, who were writing the score
for _Romance_, had an idea that Doris might do for the picture and
suggested to Al that he ought to arrange an audition for her. He called
Doris to come home. The day of her promised return to Los Angeles
brought no news of her, though her audition had been fixed for the
following morning. In the evening, on a hunch, Al drove out to the
Sepulveda camp. In the darkness he thumped on the trailer’s door until
Doris put her head out the window and promised again to turn up in the
morning.

When he collected her in his car, she was weeping hysterically. Her
marriage was on the rocks, she said. George Weidler wanted out. “I
can’t do the audition. You’ll have to cancel.”

“Look, if your marriage is breaking up, you’ll sure need a job,” said
Al. “It’ll get your mind off your trouble, and you’ll have to make a
living.”

She accepted the logic of that and dried her tears. He sent out to buy
her new stockings, since those she was wearing were laddered, then
took her to meet Curtiz. In the middle of singing for him, fresh tears
trickled down her cheeks at the thought that her husband was leaving.
Curtiz thought this was one of the great acting performances of all
time and invited Al to talk contract. They settled on $500 a week for
her, and because Jack Warner regarded television as nothing more than
furniture that stares back at you, Al got her TV rights. Doris wasn’t
in a mood to care much about anything. She was still pining for George,
hoping she could bring them back together.

Moving out of the trailer, she was so lonely that her agent wanted
some place for her to live where she could look out the window and see
people; she had no more company than that. He put her in the Plaza
Hotel across the street from the Brown Derby and stopped by every
morning to take her to the studio. When the picture was finished, he
came up with another idea. Why not see Sinatra, for whom Al had worked,
and check whether Frank could use her on his radio “Hit Parade”?

Frank, who knows talent, liked that fine. She went with him to New
York for the weekly shows, and life was starting to look rosy when the
blight attacked again. The sponsors, the American Tobacco Company,
decided that her singing style was too close to Frank’s and they dumped
her. Doris was knocked off her feet again. This time she felt sure she
was finished. “I guess I can always go home to Cincinnati,” she said.

Al was running into complaints from his partners. “Why do you waste
your time on this dame?” they demanded. “She’s not the most beautiful
girl in the world; she’s loaded with freckles; she’s got no clothes
sense; she’s going nowhere.” But Al’s mind revolved around the memory
of Alice Faye, another girl with a voice. “People could identify
themselves with Alice, and they can with Doris,” he argued. “Because
any girl in the audience could be Doris Day, and she could be any girl.”

So when Curtiz wanted her to work for him again but was stuck for a
story to do, Al promised rashly to think up a plot, which he dictated
to a writer as _My Dream Is Yours_. She went into that with Jack Carson
and Lee Bowman. Bob Hope was also persuaded to put her on his radio
show at $1250 a week.

Doris, who nowadays shies away from appearing for charity no matter
what, was more co-operative then. Hearing her sing at a benefit in
the Beverly Hills Hotel, Curtiz decided she needed a vocal coach, and
she went along with him for a while. By now her career was beginning
to move. She was waiting for her divorce, and was going out on dates
again. She also went to her lawyer and had him draft a new contract
to be signed between Al and herself. It contained an escalator clause
giving him up to twenty-five per cent of her earnings as they increased.

“I don’t want anybody but you to take care of me,” she told him.

“You’re already under contract,” said Al. “This new one isn’t
necessary, but if you really want it, then fine. I’ll be happy to sign
it.”

His partners were still telling him: “You’re spending too much time on
her. You’d better get on to something new.” Al disagreed. “If this girl
hits like I think she will, we can make a whole business around her
alone.”

She decided she was secure enough now to buy a small house in San
Fernando Valley, to bring out her son and mother. This was a taste of
heaven for her, bringing her family under one roof. Her parents had
been separated when she was twelve. In 1961, her father at the age of
sixty-two married Luvenia Williams Bennett, the forty-five-year-old
Negress who managed the bar he owned in Cincinnati. The telegram he
sent Doris to break this bit of news went unanswered.

The last benefit Al Levy asked her to do was to be held at the
Hollywood Bowl for a local disk jockey. She agreed, as usual then, but
didn’t show up for rehearsal with the band. Her agent telephoned to ask
why.

“Marty says I don’t have to do the benefit,” she answered.

“What’s he got to do with it? He hasn’t been in the picture much so
far.”

“He told me you’ll be traveling around a lot and getting other things.
He said it will be best if he starts taking care of part of my business
in case things come up when you’re away.”

“That makes sense,” said Al. “Okay.” That was the last time he had
anything to do for Doris Day.

He left for Century Artists’ New York office with his wife, Ruth,
shortly after, to take a look at a bouncing baby called television,
switching places with Dick Dorso. When the Andrews Sisters went to
London for a big season at the Palladium, Marty Melcher stayed home and
got to know Doris well. Later, his marriage to Patti Andrews ended in a
heartbreaking divorce for her. Marty and Doris were married on April 3,
1951, her twenty-seventh birthday.

In New York on the Christmas Eve after he and Dorso had exchanged
assignments, Al received a call from Melcher: “I just want to tell you
that as of now you’re out of Century Artists. Doris and I have decided
we don’t need you, and that’s it.”

After Christmas, Al Levy walked down the hall to his Hollywood office
and found a locksmith changing the lock on the front door. Inside,
Marty had his brother and sister occupying the place to prevent Al’s
moving back in. In his absence in New York, he had been voted out of
Century Artists. He paid off the locksmith on the spot to keep the lock
unchanged. He settled with Melcher and Dorso that he would retain the
offices but not immediately take any big lump sum out of the agency;
they would pay him off on the installment plan, sending money each
month to his parents in Arizona.

Shortly before her third marriage, Doris, born a Catholic, became a
Christian Scientist. Soon after the marriage Marty, born a Jew, also
became a Christian Scientist.

Marty set out to do over Doris, making her an entirely different
kind of woman. A long list of subjects was barred in interviews
now. Questions were welcome that let the two of them concentrate on
picturing her as the girl next door who never smokes, drinks, or
cusses, and always minds her manners. Any queries that probed into
the real past were rejected. “Doris is not a movie star,” Marty told
me blandly. “She’s a talented girl who through circumstances has been
pushed into the limelight.”

That was quite an interview, telling as much in its silences as in its
words. They came in to see me together, and that’s how they answered,
though they didn’t exactly overflow with information. So they won’t be
misjudged, I’ll quote them verbatim:

“How does being married to you affect him?” I asked.

“He couldn’t live without me,” she said.

“Seriously, how has this marriage affected you?”

“I’ve learned an awful lot.”

Marty broke in: “That’s pretty ambiguous.”

“Let me put it this way. We’re both striving to be real good people.
Marriage has made a terrific change in Marty.”

“In what way?” I said.

“We’re very serious about our religion, but we can’t discuss that.”

“Why not? I think it should be discussed. Do you go to church every
Sunday?”

“No, we’re not churchgoers. But we’re trying to be good people, and
we’ve come a long way. It’s helped me to be less impatient. I used to
be so impatient. Now I’m not.”

“Our religion,” Marty explained in words of one syllable, “is being
good. Take out one ‘o’ and you’ve got God. To do good is to prove God.”

Doris hastened to explain: “For instance, we don’t gossip. We don’t
talk about people. We don’t stand in judgment of others. We have only
enough time to mind our own business.”

Minding their own business has made Mr. and Mrs. Melcher into a
ten-million-dollar corporation. They hold interests in a motion-picture
production company, recording companies, music companies, real estate,
and a merchandising firm with plans to cash in on Doris’ new-found
reputation as a clothes horse by peddling “Doris Day” dresses and
make-up.

In spite of, or maybe because of, the dollars that come arolling in,
Doris is neurotic about her health, which can cause mighty big problems
for a Christian Scientist. When she was sure she had cancer--she was
wrong--she put off going to a doctor in case she would be betraying
her faith. Her brother Paul, who was going to be her manager on the
recording side of her career, was a convert to the same faith; he died
of a heart condition in his early thirties.

Both the Melchers keep a tight hold on their money. Their social life
scarcely exists beyond having an occasional couple in for an early
dinner--carrot juice in place of cocktails and desserts from Doris’
celebrated home soda fountain. She also holds on tight to the clothes
she gets from her movie roles. When Irene Sharaff, who designed her
_Midnight Lace_ outfits, wanted to borrow one coat to be modeled on the
Academy Award night where Irene won an Oscar nomination, she had the
devil of a time borrowing it--and it had to go back to Doris the next
morning.

As for Al Levy, he had one more bit of business to sort out with
Marty Melcher. Century Artists’ client list was shrinking as Marty
concentrated on Doris, and the decision was made to sell the agency
to MCA, who would latch onto anything in those days that promised to
increase their holdings in the industry. There was just one cloud on
the legal title when the time came to close the deal--the contract
Doris had once insisted that Al sign with her.

“It doesn’t mean anything now,” the lawyers told Al Levy. “So just let
us have a release before the first of the year.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, let’s forget it,” he said, by this
time deep with David Susskind in Talent Associates, the television
production company that Al founded the day after he sent the locksmith
and Marty’s relations on their way.

But the lawyers insisted that something had to be done to satisfy Lew
Wasserman, president of MCA, that Century Artists was in the clear.
“All right,” Levy told the attorneys, “I’ve never asked Doris Day for
anything in my life. Fact of the matter is, I put more money into her
than I ever took out in commissions. So you give me a check for $3000
signed by Doris--it’ll buy a mink coat for my wife.”

He got the check and gave it to his wife. But Ruth Levy didn’t buy a
coat. She put the money in their bank account.

[Illustration: 1. At sixteen, in my first evening gown, made by loving
hands--my own.]

[Illustration: 2. My son, Bill, at age of five, relaxing against me
at our home in Great Neck, Long Island. Even at that age he loved the
Navy, or I did, because I selected a Navy suit for him.]

[Illustration: 3. Ken Murray burping. My beloved mother, Mrs. David
Furry, and her daughter Hedda. At a picture premiere. Later at Ciro’s
we were joined by Edgar Bergen. I introduced them. She was a bit hard
of hearing and said, “Who?” I whispered in her ear, “Charlie McCarthy.”
She said, “Is he now?” (_Photograph copyright Vitagraph, Inc._)]

[Illustration: 4. Clark Gable, who won the title of King and deserved
it; he was the first I was photographed with when I started my column
in 1938. And he was one of my greatest friends until the day of his
death. (_MGM photo by Ed. Cronenweth_)]

[Illustration: 5. Charles Laughton, Carole Lombard, and I in the good
old days when pictures were fun for everyone except the producers.
(_Photo by Fred Hendrickson, Copyright 1940, RKO Radio Pictures, Inc._)]

[Illustration: 6. The beautiful Merle Oberon, after telling me she was
divorcing Sir Alexander Korda.]

[Illustration: 7. Jane Powell and I were supposed to look alike. I was
once engaged to play her mother at $5000 a week. But Louis Mayer was
feuding with me at that time. Someone else got the part, but I got the
money. The boy is Vic Damone.]

[Illustration: 8. Ida Koverman, everybody’s pet, between two of her
greatest discoveries, Bob Montgomery and Clark Gable. She fought like a
tigress to see they got the top roles at Metro.]

[Illustration: 9. Cary Grant and Randy Scott were once young bachelors,
sharing life together. (_Copyright 1935, Paramount Productions, Inc._)]

[Illustration: 10. No wonder I look sad. Errol Flynn, Marion Davies,
and Cissie Patterson have all passed away. But we were a gay quartet
when this picture was taken at San Simeon during one of William
Randolph Hearst’s birthday celebrations.]

[Illustration: 11. At the San Simeon wedding of Mary Grace (daughter of
Mrs. Grace, one of Marion’s cooks) Doris Duke and Marion Davies were
bridesmaids. James Cromwell, who was married at the time to Doris Duke,
was a guest of honor and William Randolph Hearst was the host.]

[Illustration: 12. Charlie McCarthy’s Edgar Bergen and I at a
fancy-dress do. Our mothers would never have known us.]

[Illustration: 13. I aimed for Duke Wayne, but Charles Luckman got in
the way.]

[Illustration: 14. Hedda and the great Hemingway in Havana. We met too
late. (_Jerome Zerbe photo_)]

[Illustration: 15. Mario Lanza, the great. His voice is silent but
you’ll never forget him. He didn’t sing as well as Caruso, but his
voice was much sexier. When he’d sold a million copies of his first
record, he received one made of gold and insisted that I present it to
him. (_Photo by Earl Leaf_)]

[Illustration: 16. With Moss Hart and Lady Elsie Mendl at the premiere
of his _Lady in the Dark_. When Moss and I got inside, there were no
seats for us.]

[Illustration: 17. Tony Perkins, Sophia Loren, Hedda, and George Raft.
This was Sophia’s first introduction to Hollywood, a party given
for her by Twentieth Century-Fox. Jayne Mansfield almost stole the
spotlight from her in a low-cut gown with a break-away strap--it broke.]

[Illustration: 18. Designer Omar Kiam, Hedda, and Bill Hopper at the
_Marie Antoinette_ premiere, where Norma Shearer, the great Antoinette,
wore two evening gowns--one gold, one black spangles.]

[Illustration: 19. Ingrid Bergman and Hedda Hopper signing autographs
at Hollywood Canteen during World War II, with a member of the shore
patrol looking on. This almost broke up my friendship with David
Selznick. I didn’t ask his permission for Ingrid’s appearance at
the Canteen. He called up and said: “Now you’ve got me into trouble
with Louella.” My reply: “That’s your hard luck.” (_Photo by Joseph
Jasgur_)]

[Illustration: 20. James Shigeta, Robert Merrill, Charles Durand, Luise
Rainer, and Ethel Barrymore on my Hollywood radio show. I can still
close my eyes and remember that lovely voice of Ethel. No one like her;
no one will ever forget her. (_NBC Photo by Gerald K. Smith_)]

[Illustration: 21. Stephen Boyd and Hopper when she was handed the
Foreign Correspondents’ Golden Globe Award by Vincent Price. (_Los
Angeles Times Photo_)]

[Illustration: 22. Hedda, Mrs. Eisenhower, Mrs. Raymond Massey, Mrs.
Charles Brackett lunching at Romanoff’s during Mamie’s visit to
Hollywood. You may notice how young Mamie and I look. The best brush
man in Hollywood worked on our faces and eliminated the lines. When I
thanked him, he said, “I’m now retiring and presenting that brush to
the Hollywood Museum.” (_Photo by Twentieth Century-Fox_)]

[Illustration: 23. Hedda Hopper receiving a new bonnet from Jackie
Gleason, who was playing _Gigot_ in Paris. (_Photo by Jean Schmidt,
Paris_)]

[Illustration: 24. Elizabeth Taylor and Arthur Loew, Jr., her devoted
admirer, with yours truly, whose hair needed the attention of both Mr.
Kenneth and George Masters for this party. (_Nate Cutler Photo_)]

[Illustration: 25. Bob Hope and me on Christmas, 1958, with Southern
European Task Force in Vicenza, first U. S. Army Missile Command Base
in Italy.]

[Illustration: 26. I’ve got Bob and Lucy just where I want them--at my
feet--during a visit on their set. But don’t worry, they didn’t stay
there long.]

[Illustration: 27. The conversation must have been dull, or was Darryl
Zanuck just pretending to be asleep? I almost didn’t get on the set.
The picture was _Roots of Heaven_, directed by John Huston, who never
cared for me after my review of _Moby Dick_. I felt sorry for the
whale, and it was made of cement.]

[Illustration: 28. I like to think it was a draw between Betty Furness
and me where hats are concerned. But in all honesty she had an edge on
me. Both of them came from Sally Victor.]

[Illustration: 29. Henry Luce and I trying to impress each other.
Jerome Zerbe, in the background, was the winner. He remembered
everything we said, but I’ve forgotten. (_Photo by Walter Daran_)]

[Illustration: 30. Mrs. Bob Considine, Gary Cooper, Hedda in Madrid,
where the señoritas and señoras followed him as if he were the Pied
Piper.]

[Illustration: 31. Perry Como never did take me seriously, and here’s a
picture to prove it. (_NBC Photo by Frank Carroll_)]

[Illustration: 32. Two of my best friends: Louella Parsons and Debbie
Reynolds at a shower given for Debbie before the birth of her first
child when she was Mrs. Eddie Fisher. I bribed the photographer to hold
this print. I like it.]

[Illustration: 33. Rudy Vallee, now one of the great hits in New York
in _How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying_, listening in on
a radio rehearsal of Jack Barrymore and me.]

[Illustration: 34. What a nerve I had showing my legs beside those of
Marlene Dietrich.]

[Illustration: 35. Hedda and Elvis sharing a koala.]

[Illustration: 36. Hedda and Robert Preston in Mason City, Iowa, June
19, 1962, when 121 high school bands paraded through the city.]

[Illustration: 37. Whenever I see a picture of George Washington, I
always try to get under it and this time I did with Dean Martin. (_MGM
Photo_)]

[Illustration: 38. Well, now, look how Senator Javits and Joseph Binns
have sliced off my hips, at a party at the Waldorf for Orphans of
Italy. (_Photo by Helen Grant_)]

[Illustration: 39. Adolph Zukor, Hedda, Mel Ferrer, and Audrey Hepburn
at Friars dinner honoring Gary Cooper, which was his last public
appearance. Coop became a star at Paramount Studios, whose founder
was Adolph Zukor. But those who arranged the dinner--and they didn’t
consult Cooper--didn’t have sense enough to place Mr. Zukor as an
honored guest on the dais. (_Photo by Jules Davis_)]

[Illustration: 40. Jimmy Cagney and Hedda Hopper--all passion spent.
(_Earl Theisen/Look photo_)]

[Illustration: 41. Barry Goldwater and Hedda Hopper at a luncheon for
crippled children in Scottsdale, Arizona.]




_Ten_


In my business I get “genius” dished out to me as regularly as the
morning mail. To believe the press agents, every dirty-shirttail boy in
blue jeans who comes over the hill from Lee Strasberg’s classes is the
biggest thing to hit the industry since Jack Barrymore played Don Juan.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the gangling lad is like a dream
brought on by eating Port-Salut cheese too late at night: if you wait
long enough, it goes away. There’s that once in a hundred, though, when
the press agent is right....

The chief public-relations man at Warners’ was as persuasive as ever:
“This one is something special. We think he’s a genius, more or less.
I want you to meet him.” So I agreed to go over for luncheon in the
commissary, and he introduced me to Jimmy Dean, brought to Hollywood
to do _East of Eden_ by Elia Kazan, who had been bowled over by his
Broadway performance as the Arab boy in Billy Rose’s production of
André Gide’s _The Immoralist_.

The latest genius sauntered in, dressed like a bum, and slouched
down in silence at a table away from mine. He hooked another chair
with his toe, dragged it close enough to put his feet up, while he
watched me from the corner of his eye. Then he stood up to inspect the
framed photographs of Warner stars that covered the wall by his head.
He chose one of them, spat in its eye, wiped off his spittle with a
handkerchief, then like a ravenous hyena, started to gulp the food that
had been served him.

“Would you like to meet him?” said the studio press agent who was my
escort.

“No thank you, I’ve seen enough. If that’s your prize package, you can
take him. I don’t want him.”

“He doesn’t always behave like this,” said my companion apologetically.

“Why now?”

“I don’t know. To be frank, he never acted this way before.”

I went back to my office and wrote a story describing every
heart-warming detail of James Dean’s behavior. “They’ve brought out
from New York another dirty-shirttail actor. If this is the kind of
talent they’re importing, they can send it right back so far as I’m
concerned.”

When an invitation came to see the preview of _East of Eden_, nobody
could have dragged me there. But I heard next day from Clifton
Webb, whose judgment I respect: “Last night I saw one of the most
extraordinary performances of my life. Get the studio to run that movie
over for you. You’ll be crazy about this boy Jimmy Dean.”

“I’ve seen him,” I said coldly.

“Forget it--I read your piece. Just watch him in this picture.”

Warners’ cagey answer to my call was to pretend _East of Eden_ had been
dismantled and was already in the cutting room for further editing. I
telephoned Elia Kazan: “I’m sorry I missed the preview. I hear Jimmy
Dean is electrifying as Cal Trask--”

“When would you like to see it?” Kazan said instantly.

“Today.”

“Name the time, and I’ll have it run for you.”

In the projection room I sat spellbound. I couldn’t remember ever
having seen a young man with such power, so many facets of expression,
so much sheer invention as this actor. I telephoned Jack Warner. “I’d
like to talk with your Mr. Dean. He may not want to do an interview
with me. If he doesn’t, I shan’t hold it against him. But I’d love to
have him come over to my house.”

Within minutes his reaction was passed back to me: “He’ll be
delighted.” A day or so later he rang my doorbell, spic and span in
black pants and black leather jacket, though his hair was tousled and
he wore a pair of heavy boots that a deep-sea diver wouldn’t have
sneezed at. He carried a silver St. Genesius medal that Liz Taylor had
given him, holding it while we talked.

“You misbehaved terribly,” I told him after he’d chosen the most
uncomfortable chair in the living room.

“I know. I wanted to see if anybody in this town had guts enough to
tell the truth.” He stayed for two hours, sipping scotch and water,
listening to symphonic music played on the hi-fi, pacing the floor.

We talked about everything from cabbages to kings. About George
Stevens, who ultimately directed him in _Giant_ and who was sizing
him up at this time as a candidate to play Charles Lindbergh. “I had
lunch today with him,” said Jimmy, “and we were discussing Antoine
St.-Exupéry’s _Le Petit Prince_--the writer’s escapist attitude, his
refusal to adjust to anything earthbound. Reading Exupéry, I’ve got
an insight into flying and into Lindbergh’s feeling. I like the looks
of Lindbergh. I know nothing of what he stands for politically or
otherwise, but I like the way he looks.”

“Do you fly?”

“I want an airplane next--don’t write that. When things like that
appear in print, the things you love, it makes you look like a whore.”

We talked about Dietrich. Would he like to be introduced? “I don’t
know. She’s such a figment of my imagination. I go whoop in the stomach
when you just ask if I’d like to meet her. Too much woman. You look at
her and think, ‘I’d like to have that.’”

Grace Kelly? “To me she’s the complete mother image, typifying perfect.
Maybe she’s the kind of person you’d like to have had for a mother.”

Gable, who took up motorcycling in his middle-age? “He’s a real hot
shoe. When you ride, you wear a steel sole that fits over the bottom
of your boot. When you round a corner, you put that foot out on the
ground. When you can really ride, you’re called a hot shoe. Gable rides
like crazy. I’ve been riding since I was sixteen. I have a motorcycle
now. I don’t tear around on it, but intelligently motivate myself
through the quagmire and entanglement of streets. I used to ride to
school. I lived with my aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana. I used
to go out for the cows on the motorcycle. Scared the hell out of them.
They’d get to running, and their udders would start swinging, and
they’d lose a quart of milk.”

We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on
television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got
from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him “through the veil”).
He said: “I had studied _The Golden Bough_ and the Marquis de Sade, and
I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic
force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true
interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.”

I turned on some symphony music while he fished his official studio
biography out of his pocket, glanced at it, rolled his eyes up toward
heaven, and threw it away. While the record played softly, he went into
Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.”

When it was over: “I want to do _Hamlet_ soon. Only a young man can
play him as he was--with the naïveté. Laurence Olivier played it safe.
Something is lost when the older men play him. They anticipate his
answers. You don’t feel that Hamlet is thinking--just declaiming.

“Sonority of voice and technique the older men have. But this kind
of Hamlet isn’t the stumbling, feeling, reaching, searching boy that
he really was. They compensate for the lack of youth by declamation.
Between their body responses and reaction on one hand and the beauty of
the words on the other, there is a void.”

At that point he casually dropped his cigarette onto a rug and said:
“Call the cops.” He went over to the mantelpiece, raised the lid of one
of my green Bristol glass boxes that stand there, and, as if speaking
into a microphone, said hollowly: “Send up Mr. Dean’s car.”

As he left I told him: “If you get into any kind of trouble, I’d like
to be your friend.”

“I’d like you to be,” he said.

“I’ll give you my telephone number, and if you want to talk at any
time, day or night, you call me.”

“You mean that?”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

I learned a lot about James Byron Dean, some from him, some from his
friends. He acquired his middle name in honor of the poet, Lord Byron,
whom his mother idolized. She was a little slip of a thing, a farmer’s
daughter, who spoiled Jimmy from the day he was born in Marion,
Indiana. Five years later, in 1936, Winton Dean, a dental technician,
took his wife, Mildred, and their only child to live in a furnished
flat in Los Angeles.

       *       *       *       *       *

“When I was four or five or six, my mother had me playing the violin;
I was a goddam child prodigy,” Jimmy reported. “My mother also had me
tap dancing--not at the same time I played the violin, though. She died
of cancer when I was eight, and the violin was buried, too. I left
California--hell, this story needs violin music.”

Jimmy rode aboard the same train that carried his mother’s body back
to Indiana, to be buried in the family plot. He was on his way to live
with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow. “I was anemic. I
don’t know whether I went back to the farm looking for a greater source
of life and expression or for blood. Anyway, I got healthy, and this
can be hazardous.

“You have to assume more responsibilities when you’re healthy. This was
a real farm, and I worked like crazy as long as someone was watching
me. Forty acres of oats made a huge stage. When the audience left,
I took a nap, and nothing got plowed or harrowed. When I was in the
seventh or eighth grade, they couldn’t figure me out. My grades were
high. I was doing like high school senior work. Then I met a friend who
lived over in Marion. He taught me how to wrestle and kill cats and
other things boys do behind barns. And I began to live.”

“How old were you then?”

“About twelve or thirteen. Betwixt and between. I found what I was
really useful for--to live. My grades fell off--”

“Living without learning,” I said.

“I was confused. Why did God put all these things here for us to be
interested in?”

His Aunt Ortense was active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
When he was ten, she took him along to do dramatic readings for her
ladies. “I was that tall,” he said, indicating half his adult height,
“and instead of doing little poems about mice, I did things like ‘The
Terror of Death’--the goriest! This made me strange; a little harpy in
short pants.”

“You must have been a worse brat than I was.”

He gave me a sharp look. “I don’t know about that. I had to prove
myself, and I had the facility to do so. I became very proficient
at wielding a paintbrush and sketching. I won the state pole-vault
championship. I was the bright star in basketball, baseball. My uncle
was a tremendous athlete--he won the Indiana state track meet all by
himself. I won the state dramatic-declamation contest doing Charles
Dickens’ ‘The Madman.’ When I got through, there were broken bones
lying all over the stage. If ‘Medic’ had been running then, I’d have
been a cinch for it. But let me say this: no one helps you. You do it
yourself.”

“Who would you say has helped you the most?”

He gestured toward himself in answer. “When I graduated from high
school, I came out to Los Angeles and went to UCLA to take pre-law. I
couldn’t take the [long pause] tea-sipping, moss-walled academicians,
that academic bull.”

“You sure as hell cleaned that phrase up,” I said.

He had two years at UCLA, keeping in touch with his father, who had
married again, and establishing good terms with his stepmother, Ethel.
Jimmy discovered that James Whitmore, movie and stage actor, ran a
theater group that met once a week. “There’s always somebody in your
life who opens your eyes, makes you see your mistakes and stimulates
you to the point of trying to find your way. That was James Whitmore.
I met him around 1949, and he encouraged me to go to New York to join
Strasberg’s Actors’ Studio. I did different things on television there
and a couple of plays.

“When I came back to Warners, _Battle Cry_ was being made, and Whitmore
was on the lot. I wanted to thank him for his kindness and patience. He
said: ‘It’s not necessary. Someone did something for me--Elia Kazan.
You will do something for someone else.’ I’ve tried to pass it on. I
feel I’ve been of some benefit to young actors. It’s the only way to
repay Jimmy Whitmore. But you do it yourself.”

I steered him on to another subject--New York. He had a contract with
Warners calling for a total of nine pictures in six years. He would
have had 1956 completely free to go back to Broadway. I had a feeling
he’d be one of the few actors who would, in fact, return to the theater
and, what’s more, play _Hamlet_. He had the urge and push to do it.

“New York’s a fertile, generous city if you can accept the violence and
decadence,” he said. “Acting is wonderful and immediately satisfying,
but my talents lie in directing and beyond that my great fear is
writing. That’s the god. I can’t apply the seat of my pants right now.
I’m too youthful and silly. I must have much age. I’m in great awe of
writing and fearful of it. But someday....”

“How old are you now?” I asked.

“Twenty-three.”

“You’ve got a long and beautiful life ahead of you.”

“I hope the second adjective is the more abundant,” he said. He then
had almost exactly nine more months to live.

He made _Rebel Without a Cause_--and made a friend of its director,
Nick Ray.

Hollywood started to simmer with excitement over this new, young talent
when _East of Eden_ was released and Jimmy went into _Rebel_, causing
no problems for anybody because Nick Ray could communicate with him;
they got along like a house on fire. Then came _Giant_, which he
should never have gone into. The part of Jett Rink, Texas wildcatter
turned millionaire, was not right for him.

George Stevens is a martinet, a slow-moving hulk of a man who tried
to force Jimmy to conform to George’s interpretation of the role. Now
Jimmy could be led but not driven; he’d bend like a young tree but
not break. How poorly Stevens understood him showed in his remarks
after Jimmy died: “He was just a regular kid trying to make good in
Hollywood. He was determined to reach his goal of being a topnotch
movie star at any price.”

Tremendous trouble was brewing on the set. It reached boiling point
when Jimmy went on strike and boycotted _Giant_ for three days. The
newspaper and town gossips started picking on him, pinning all the
blame on his shoulders. It was high time we had another talk.

“I’ve been reading some bad things about you,” I said. “I understand
you haven’t been showing up for work.”

“Right, I haven’t. Stevens has been horrible. I sat there for three
days, made up and ready to work at nine o’clock every morning. By six
o’clock I hadn’t had a scene or a rehearsal. I sat there like a bump on
a log watching that big, lumpy Rock Hudson making love to Liz Taylor. I
knew what Stevens was trying to do to me. I’m not going to take it any
more.”

“I hold no brief for Stevens,” I said, “but what you don’t know is
that there’s a man on that set who put the whole deal together. Henry
Ginsberg, Stevens, and Edna Ferber are partners. It took Henry two
years to do it. This is the first time in Ferber’s life she took no
money, only an equal share of the profits as they come in. If this
picture goes wrong, Stevens can walk out, and those two years of
Ginsberg’s life go down the drain.”

“I didn’t know,” Jimmy said.

“Something else. Henry has a great deal of affection for you, but he
can’t show it or else Stevens might walk off the set.”

“I’d no idea of that. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Thanks for
letting me know.”

He could do anything he set his hand to. In Texas for _Giant_, he
had so little to occupy him that he learned to ride and rope, until
he could twirl a lariat as well as Will Rogers. He had overpowering
ambition. Like John Barrymore, whom he might have equaled had he lived,
Jimmy never thought of consequences. There was no risk he would not
take. He was too young to know restraint, and he was marked for death.

He got even with George Stevens. I watched him play the climactic
banquet scene where Jett Rink, middle-aged and defeated, is left alone
to get drunk at the top table. He had some marvelous lines, but he
mumbled them so you couldn’t understand them. When Stevens realized
what had happened, he wanted to retake the scene. Jimmy refused.

There was no time for Stevens to try again to talk him into it. On the
evening of Friday, September 30, 1955, Jimmy was racing down Highway
41 in his new, 150-miles-an-hour Porsche, which he had christened “The
Little Bastard.” He ran into another car, and Jimmy Dean was dead.

Liz Taylor had two more days’ work left on _Giant_, including a call
for the next morning. She was extremely fond of Jimmy, had presented
him with a Siamese cat, which he treasured. That Friday night she
telephoned George Stevens: “I can’t work tomorrow. I’ve been crying for
hours. You can’t photograph me.”

“What’s the matter with you?” said Stevens, who had heard the news just
as she had.

“I loved that boy, don’t you understand?”

“That’s no reason. You be on that set at nine o’clock in the morning,
ready to shoot.”

She was there. When she started to rehearse, she went into hysterics,
and an ambulance had to carry her to the hospital. She was in the
hospital five days before she could finish _Giant_.

The body of Jimmy Dean was claimed by his father, who rode on the same
train that took the casket back for burial in Fairmount. The only man
from the _Giant_ set who went back to Indiana for the funeral was Henry
Ginsberg.

Only once before had anything equaled the mail that deluged my office,
and that came after Rudolph Valentino died. Letters mourning Jimmy came
by the thousands week after week. They came from young and old alike,
some crisply typewritten, some pencil scrawls, and they kept coming
three years after. He was an extraordinary boy, and people sensed
the magnetism. He stood on the threshold of manhood, the adolescent
yearning to grow, trying to find himself, and millions knew that
feeling.

I begged the Academy to award him a special Oscar, to stand on a plain
granite shaft as a headstone to his grave. The Academy declined.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another young actor often came to talk with me. The electricity of
James Dean was missing in Robert Walker, but this gangling, shy man
carried a gentle sweetness with him that touched your heart. He sat
out on the patio one day and said: “Everybody expects miracles to come
along and get him out of drudgery and misery. Not many people can face
themselves, and the miracle, of course, rarely happens.”

He had come over alone from a new house in Pacific Palisades into which
he’d moved with his nurse and his two sons by Jennifer Jones, Robert,
Jr., and Michael. “All we have is three beds,” he said, “a dining-room
table and a refrigerator. We’re going to furnish it like we want it.”

He was just out of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, from which
he had been discharged after four and a half months of treatment for
compulsive drinking and the sickness that drove him to it--the searing
melancholy that was as much a part of him as the marrow in his bones.
He wanted to tell me about the experience.

The background is important, reaching back as far as Bob at the age of
six, when he was expelled from his first school. Undersized then and
unattractive, he was ignored by his schoolmates, and he couldn’t stand
it. One day he ran amok, not knowing why, and raced screaming through
the playground, yanking pigtails and kicking shins.

“From childhood,” he said, “I found myself up against mental walls. The
maladjustments of that age grew and branched out all over the place. I
was always trying to make an escape from life.”

He began running away from school when he was ten. Finally, his Aunt
Hortense, who raised him, sent him to San Diego Military Academy. It
was much the same old story. The young cadets didn’t care for him, so
he fought them. He trailed his class in everything, but he landed the
job of playing the big bass drum in the school band, and he beat the
daylights out of it.

It was just as a matter of course that he tried out for a part in a
school play. There were several contestants, and the teacher made a
little speech before she announced the winner. Ability and hard work
always succeed, she said, and “that’s why Bob Walker has won the role.”
On the strength of that, Aunt Hortense staked him to a course at the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he met a fellow student, a
beautiful girl christened Phyllis Isley who later changed her name to
Jennifer Jones.

When they began looking for jobs, nobody wanted either one of them.
Then she had an offer to work on radio in Tulsa, and they persuaded
the station to hire them both for a total of $25 a week. He was twenty
years old when they were married.

They put together a dollar or two and tried to crash Hollywood. They
failed, went back to New York, found a cheap little Greenwich Village
flat, and sold their car so they could eat. A baby was on the way.

Bob and Jennifer, whom he called “Phyl” all his life, took turns in
tending Bob, Jr., while the other scoured the town job hunting. They
were poor as church mice, happy as larks. These struggling days were
bound to leave their mark on both of them.

He broke into New York radio in time to pay the obstetrician’s bills.
He made a fair living in soap operas, so they had another baby. They
outdid each other in looking after their two infant sons, born only a
year apart.

One day Jennifer went out looking for a job, bearded David Selznick in
his den, and landed herself a contract. Letting her go to Hollywood was
almost a sacrificial blow to Bob, but he stayed in New York with his
soap operas to hold up his end.

But lightning struck twice in the Walker household--the only miracle
he ever knew. He was offered a part in _Bataan_ that let him join
Jennifer in California. They were wrapped up in each other’s happiness
until Selznick fell madly in love with her; then the Walkers separated.
She divorced Bob in June 1945, after six years of marriage. David’s
wife, Irene--Louis B. Mayer’s younger daughter--was separated from her
husband two months later. She divorced David in January 1949, and David
and Jennifer were married six months later.

“The breakup with Jennifer,” said Bob on my patio, “gave me an excuse
for amplifying my troubles. When I had a few drinks, I got to thinking
about Poor Me and the broken home and all the et ceteras. Only now I
can talk about it freely. I used to refuse to discuss my breakup with
Phyl because I felt it was nobody’s business. I talk about it now
because it’s part of the story that I want to get over. So far as I’m
concerned, she is first and foremost the mother of my two children.”

He went on working, detesting himself. “Laying oneself open to be
hurt,” he said, “is an agonizing way to be living.” He tried another
marriage--with John Ford’s daughter, Barbara, after he’d known her
eight weeks. That was two weeks longer than they lasted together as man
and wife.

He relied chiefly on liquor for survival. It was a news picture of
Bob Walker drunk in a police lockup, with fists clenched and mouth
distorted, that convinced him he needed psychiatry. “I would rather
have had a knife stuck in my side,” he told me, “because then I should
have known what was wrong. There was terrific remorse the day after.
I decided that sometime soon I was going to end up dead. I tried an
analyst in town, but I wasn’t ready for him. My back wasn’t yet up
against the wall.”

When Dore Schary took over Mayer’s job at Metro, he had Bob in for
a talk. “I think you need help,” he said. “I want you to go to the
Menninger Clinic.”

“After I left Schary’s office,” Bob said, “fear hit me. I thought about
a mental clinic like an insane asylum. I kept asking myself: ‘Is there
something about me that others can see and I can’t?’”

But he promised Schary that he’d try Menninger’s. With a studio
publicity man as companion, he rode the plane to Kansas wearing a pair
of dark glasses, with his hat pulled down over his face, hoping nobody
would recognize him. “When I first hit Topeka, I couldn’t bear the
thought of people looking at me. It was as if the whole world had its
eyes focused on me. Actually, nobody gave a damn.”

Living in a hotel, he drove each day to the clinic for a week of tests.
“I hated myself and blamed myself all my life for things I shouldn’t
have blamed myself for. I felt that everybody was against me, hated me,
couldn’t understand me. I couldn’t even understand myself. I was only
moments away from alcoholism, which is a slow form of self-destruction.”

On the basis of the tests, the clinic recommended that he be admitted,
warning his father and Dore Schary that Bob would require at least one
year of treatment, possibly two. He returned to Hollywood and went to
the desert to hide, afraid to see people, until it was time to sign
himself into Menninger’s.

“I got the idea that the clinic was something like a country club, so
I asked for a single room and bath. First thing I noticed was that all
the doors were locked. Then everything sharp, including my razor, was
taken away from me--you could only shave with an attendant watching.
The room I was taken to had bars on its window. When I was told:
‘You’re rooming with so-and-so,’ I said I was leaving. That first night
a patient who understood how a newcomer felt gave up his room and bath
without my knowing it, so it would be easier on me.”

For the first four weeks he was under observation only; no analysis.
“You have to have a recreational therapist with you even on walks over
the grounds.”

He lived in one of several “lodges,” with fifteen patients to each
floor, ages varying from eighteen to sixty-five. “We didn’t discuss our
illness with each other. Most of the men were wonderful, because it’s
often the self-sacrificing, overly kind people who take all the blame
on themselves and land up in such conditions.” His one thought was to
leave the place.

At the end of that quiet first month he was still a good enough actor
to persuade a doctor that he was perfectly capable of going into Topeka
alone one night. “Or perhaps the clinic was trying to convince me how
sick I was. Anyway, when I went to town I got drunk, landed up taking
a swing at another cop, and smashed my fist through a window. I was
more determined than ever to get away because I was sure the clinic had
driven me to it.”

He contacted his father, begged him to come and take him away, signing
to assume responsibility. It was suggested Bob should see one of
Menninger’s analysts. “I told them I didn’t want to. Why spend more
money on an analyst when he couldn’t do me any good? Even then, I was
making excuses to keep from facing facts.”

Soon afterward, a psychoanalyst who had been assigned to him anyway,
came to his room, said he knew Bob was leaving, but had just stopped by
to say hello. “He stretched himself out on the bed and let me do the
arguing. At the end of about an hour I thanked him for coming, but told
him I was still going to leave. The next day I found some excuse to ask
him to visit me again. I still argued that I was leaving. It was some
time before I realized I was doing all the talking--not him. I made up
my mind to stay.”

He had one hour of analysis a day, six days a week. “For three weeks
I spoke to nobody but this doctor, keeping myself shut up in my room,
eating scarcely anything, sleeping very little, drinking cup after cup
of coffee. When I started to get some inside on the cure, I began
to work constantly at it. Pouring out your thoughts and mind is an
emotionally exhausting experience. But you could never know the thrill
it was when I realized that hate was leaving my heart.”

In September 1949 an announcement from the clinic said that he had
completely recovered from a “nervous breakdown.” “I came back here
scared as hell,” Bob said, “and I don’t think I’ve got the world by the
tail. I haven’t worked for over a year, and I’d like to do two or three
pictures in a hurry now and go back to the clinic for two months next
spring.”

He was in a proselytizing mood when he talked to me. “The $64 question
is where the average man can go for mental help. They can’t afford
high-priced clinics, and they can’t afford to take the time off for
what I did. People are waiting to get into clinics, but there’s not
enough public demand for real work in this field because so many are
unaware of its importance. If you have a decayed tooth, you can go to a
dentist and have it removed. But if you have a mental stumbling block,
you’re provided with no such opportunity.”

He spoke of trying to shield his sons from the truth about himself.
They wanted to read the first newspaper interview he’d given. “Since
it mentioned several unpleasant subjects like drinking, I hesitated.
Then I decided to keep nothing back from them. The boys read it, and I
explained the things they couldn’t understand. At night I read to them.
Right now, we’re going through _Swiss Family Robinson_. About once a
week we take in a show, usually a drive-in. They work two hours a day,
scraping paint off a fence and a shed, and get fifty cents a day for
it.”

I had written up his interview with me when, two days later, he
telephoned. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t run that story. I poured
my heart out, but I wasn’t thinking enough of my sons. I’d rather not
have them read it all yet. When they’re older they’ll understand.”

       *       *       *       *       *

At six o’clock on the evening of August 29, 1951, Mrs. Emily Buck,
who was Bob’s housekeeper and nurse, called a psychiatrist who had
been treating Bob for the previous eighteen months. Mr. Walker, she
said, needed help in a hurry. He had been drinking, and he was losing
control of himself. The doctor answered the call, and two hours later
telephoned his associate to join him at the Walker house because he
thought an injection would be necessary.

Two men among the group of friends who had gathered at the house held
Bob down while the doctor prepared the needle. Bob was pleading: “Don’t
give it to me. I’ve been drinking. It will kill me. Please don’t give
me that shot.”

The following day the doctors reported that as many as thirty times
before they had injected sodium amytal to calm him. Seven and a half
grains “is not an abnormal dose if the patient is extremely emotional,”
said the coroner’s autopsy surgeon. Bob’s breathing had begun to fail a
matter of minutes after the shot entered his veins. The fire department
rescue squad was called at eight-thirty. Not until ninety minutes later
did they give up hope. Bob was thirty-two years old.

Jennifer Jones is still a very beautiful woman, her face unlined by
age. She is an excellent actress on her own account--not since _A
Farewell to Arms_, in which she starred with Rock Hudson, has David
Selznick made a picture with or without her. She is very nervous
while acting, hating to be watched at work by anybody but the minimum
necessary crew, flinching at even routine questions when she’s
interviewed.

The David Selznicks live beautifully. His income comes largely from
selling or leasing his backlog of pictures, made in the days when
David had walked out of MGM to open up as an independent producer. The
backlog does not include _Gone With the Wind_, which makes a sure five
or six millions every time it’s sent on the rounds again. Under the
terms of the ruthless bargain Metro drove with him before he could have
Gable play Rhett Butler, every cent of income goes now to that studio,
not to David.

At the second gala premiere held not long ago in Atlanta, where _GWTW_
first opened in December 1939, he was asked: “Don’t you feel dreadful
that you don’t receive a thin dime from all this?”

“No, I did it with my own little hatchet,” he said. “I never regretted
it.” He has his own grandiose plans to stage a musical version of his
greatest movie on Broadway, using two separate casts, producing it in
two halves on successive evenings. Alfred Hitchcock once asked the
unanswerable question about David’s checkered career: “When you’ve
produced a picture like _Gone With the Wind_, what can you do to top
it?”

David still loves parties as he always did, but most always goes alone.
Instead of going with him, Jennifer stays home and reads or applies
herself to yoga, which she took up long ago. Sometimes she takes a trip
to India to meditate. She went twice to Switzerland to see Carl Jung
but was too late the second time. He was ill and receiving nobody. “If
I had pressed it, I might have seen him,” she said. “I shall always
regret that I didn’t try harder.”

If David ever thinks about it, he must notice the contrast between
Jennifer, who is very gracious and feminine, and Irene Mayer, who had
a brain like a man, plus sound business sense and an instinct for the
theater. She was also bossy like her father, and David rebelled against
it. He would come home tired from slaving at a studio, which he did as
a habit then, but she’d say: “Take those old clothes off, get into a
tub and dress. We have guests arriving in fifteen minutes.”

He’d grow so mad he’d toss his clothes on to the floor and stomp on
them. Then: “David, pick those things up and put them away properly.”
Louis B. Mayer used to tell me about those scenes. “If I were married
to Irene, I’d hit her,” he said. “I love her, but I see all her faults.”

David and Jennifer have one daughter, whom they adore. They also have
the two sons she had by Robert Walker. Bob, Jr., is twenty-five now. He
looks exactly like his father. He lives with his wife and their baby
in a cottage on the Selznicks’ estate. George Seaton, the director,
tells me Bob will be as fine an actor as his father. The younger son is
also following in his father’s footsteps, cutting quite a swath with
teen-age beauties in our town. It must be easy for Jennifer to remember
and mighty hard to forget.




_Eleven_


Sorting out fact from fiction can be harder on the constitution than
separating milk from whipped potatoes in a cupful of vichyssoise. And
when you succeed, the results may taste sharper than vinegar on the
tongue. Let’s take the case of Marion Davies and William Randolph
Hearst.

The newspaper tycoon, with a wife and five sons, and the golden-haired
charmer from the Bronx shared many things in life--laughter, riches,
tears, disaster; everything except his name. Mrs. William Randolph
Hearst denied him the divorce he begged for, spurned his offers of
millions and anything else she wanted. The legend is that W.R. found
his golden-hearted girl when she was a mere sixteen, skipping around
in Flo Ziegfeld’s _Follies of 1917_. Truth is, it happened some years
earlier.

He was fifty years old, with a long, pale face and piercing blue eyes
when he sat in the Globe Theatre and saw her dancing in the chorus
of _Queen of the Movies_, directed by Julian Mitchell. She was then
fourteen years old. It was January 1914.

A sister of hers was another of the six chorus girls. Marion Cecilia
Douras--she changed the name to Davies later--wanted to be with her
sister and work beside her. Neither her father, Bernard, nor her
mother, Rose, objected. Her one obstacle was the Gary Society, whose
inspectors supposedly saved young girls from a fate worse than death,
meaning sin and exploitation in the theater, by seeing they didn’t
dance in any chorus until they were at least sixteen years old.

She took her problem to a family friend, Pat Casey, who arranged it so
that Marion would land the job, and he fibbed about her age. To all
intent and purpose, she had reached the essential sixteenth birthday
when she went into the show. On opening night Hearst was there with
a companion, a judge. The next morning, from the Louis Cohen Ticket
Agency, he ordered two seats in Row C for every performance of the
show’s run, one for himself, the other for any friend who wanted to see
the show. Or if no friend was available, the vacant seat was a handy
place to park his hat.

Most of the cast had a hunch he had his eyes on Marion’s sister. But
after a week or two he tipped his hand by sending a note to Marion
inviting her to have supper with him in Delmonico’s. She took the note
to Casey to ask: “What should I do? What could I possibly talk about to
a man like him?”

“Accept the invitation,” answered Pat, “but be sure you always take a
girl friend with you.”

Pat had some sound advice for another cute beginner in the same chorus
line. This other sixteen-year-old was Al Jolson’s light of love. He had
reached the point of promising to marry her when another beauty caught
his eye and he married her, instead. The young dancer went to Pat with
her troubles. “Keep quiet and let me handle it,” he said.

He and Al had some serious talking to do. “I feel like a dog,” said
Jolson. “What can I do?”

Pat had the answer: “You can give her $100 a month as long as she
lives, plus a home in Westchester County.” Al was happy to escape so
lightly. She outlived him and collected an additional keepsake of the
glorious days that used to be. In Jolson’s will he left her $100,000,
and nobody knew who she was, except the lawyer who drew up the document.

Measured either in love or money, Marion did much better than that. To
Hearst she was a golden, blue-eyed princess, and he showered her with
treasure until ultimately she was worth more than $8,000,000 in her own
right. When she died she owned three skyscrapers in New York City, the
Desert Inn in Palm Springs, plus an estate in Beverly Hills.

From the moment he saw her, he fell under her spell. She didn’t
waver in the affection she gave him. Toward the end, though, she had
different feelings about his family. She had a special reason for
being pleased with her Manhattan skyscrapers. “Wherever the Hearsts
walk on the East Side, if they ever do,” she said, “they have to pass
one of my buildings--on Fifth Avenue, Park, or down Madison.”

No princess in a picture book enjoyed such gifts as were heaped on her
by W.R., history’s most extravagant spender. In their early days he
decreed that she was to be the greatest star in motion pictures. In
New York she lived with her family, was surrounded with instructors in
every subject under the sun that might further her career. She was cast
in an inconsequential drama, _Cecilia of the Pink Roses_, for a start,
and his newspapers and magazines started promoting her.

He insisted that she play only ingénue roles, though her talent was as
a comedienne. If he’d let her play comedy, she could have been the real
success he’d set his heart on. But she worked only to please him. “I
was never crazy about making pictures,” she told me. “It was all right
once we got started. But to me it was wasting time. You live only once;
you’ve got to have fun, and you can’t work all the time.”

Another typical bit of Hearst’s fancy didn’t do Marion any good. One
cocktail was the rule for her at San Simeon. If she wanted an extra
drink, she had to sneak it. In each of the castle’s countless powder
rooms she kept a bottle of champagne hidden in the tank of the toilet.
Friends like Carole Lombard and Frances Marion knew the secret and
shared the bubbles. I’ve seen Marion Davies drink a pint of champagne
in half a dozen gulps and walk out singing. If W.R. had been less
strict on the subject of liquor, she wouldn’t have drunk so much.

After _Cecilia_, Marion had her own movie studio to reign over. Hearst
bought the River Park Casino up on 127th Street in Harlem and converted
it as the production center for his Cosmopolitan Pictures. There all
the stops were pulled out for a hang-the-expense Tudor epic, _When
Knighthood Was in Flower_, designed to put her in the front rank of the
movies in a single leap. She cared no more for this sword-and-cloak
stuff than for anything else about the business she’d been pushed
into. “The only thing I liked about making pictures was the fun we had
on the side,” she said. “But there was always somebody pulling your
hair, powdering your nose, and those hot lights!”

Hearst wasn’t a man to listen to argument, much less admit defeat.
She went on making pictures, some of them winning enough praise from
critics other than his own men to justify his relentless ambitions for
her. _Little Old New York_ was “exquisite,” according to the New York
_Times_. _Janice Meredith_, another costume cutup, also came in for
_Times_ approval. “No more brilliant achievement in ambitious motion
pictures ... has ever been exhibited.”

He failed in his movie plans for Marion and himself as he failed
in many other things he attempted, except making money. He didn’t
become the greatest producer in the world; he missed laying hands on
the governorship of New York; he never got into the White House. The
biggest irony of his life was the deal he made by telephone from San
Simeon to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1932 to swing most of
the California delegates behind a candidate he didn’t like, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. More than any other man, the deeds of Roosevelt
ruined Hearst. Then World War II made Hearst another fortune.

The Shepherd of San Simeon had a long way to go before he let Marion
ease her way out of the career he had chosen for her. The arrangement
he came to with Louis Mayer and the Cosmopolitan company brought
Marion from New York to Culver City in such style you’d imagine it was
Louis XVI transferring Marie-Antoinette from Paris to Versailles. Near
the front of the lot a fourteen-room bungalow was built for her as a
combined dressing room and summer home.

Later, when Marion left for Warners, it was transported lock, stock,
and barrel there. When she departed from Warners, an addition was made
and the whole thing moved to Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. Louis
Mayer bought it and lived in it. Then it became the home of Kay and
Arthur Cameron. But they were divorced, and Cameron lived on there
alone.

San Simeon, two hundred miles from Culver City, was too far for daily
travels to Metro. Hearst built a new castle for his princess on the
gold coast of Santa Monica. This new ninety-room Georgian mansion,
with two swimming pools, three drawing rooms, two dining rooms, and a
private movie theater, was called the “beach house.” It cost $7,000,000.

W.R., in his sixties now, and the gorgeous young girl, whose stutter
only added to her charm, had dreamed that someday, somehow they would
be man and wife. Mrs. Hearst--who was Millicent Willson, a chorine in
a group called “The Merry Maidens” when she first met W.R.--thought
otherwise. Her husband’s hopes of marriage to Marion seemed about ready
to bloom when Millicent was being escorted by Alexander Moore, once
married to Lillian Russell and once United States Ambassador to Spain.
As an inducement to divorce, W.R. was offering Millicent $10,000,000
together with the huge apartment house in which they used to live.

Millicent sought advice from one of the biggest men in the country, who
was a good friend of Marion’s, too. His reasoning prevailed with her:
“Mrs. William Randolph Hearst is a very important name in America and
the world. What would you gain if you gave it up?”

Marion made friends with Moore in later years when he was in California
very ill. She sat by his bedside during his last days. “Before the end
comes,” he murmured, “will you put your arms around me and kiss me?”
She didn’t hesitate a moment.

She performed that same, final act of compassion for another man, her
father, long after it was clear that, in spite of all Hearst did for
her, he could never give her his name. Bernard Douras, like the rest of
Marion’s family, had shared in W.R.’s generosity. As a result of ties
with “Red Mike” Hylan, mayor of New York, Douras had been appointed a
city magistrate and was invariably referred to in Hearst papers as
“Judge” Douras. He had been a stanch Catholic all his life. He, too,
died in Marion’s arms.

She had a heart big as the Ritz Tower, which was one of the hunks of
New York real estate W.R. owned in those days, after taking it over
from Arthur Brisbane when he couldn’t meet the payments. Socially, in
Hollywood she was the queen bee for more than thirty years. Friends
fallen on hard times could rely on a check from Marion to see them
through. A girl who wanted to impress a producer or land a job could
borrow Marion’s best dresses, furs, and fabulous jewels--whatever the
occasion called for.

When talking pictures arrived, Marion had problems like everybody
else; she got going with _Marianne_ and went on to _The Floradora
Girl_. “Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure
the stuttering. That goes back to the days of the Greeks, the pebble
treatment. During a scene the first day, I swallowed the pebble, and
that was the end of the cure.”

She had no cause to worry that speech trouble would put an end to her
career. The birth of the talkies ruined many another reputation. Two of
the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those
who fall from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone.
But Marion was a hostess who took no notice of who was in and who out
of the social swim. Her friends, rich or poor, were invited up to
San Simeon. Her parties and picnics mixed the important guests with
people you saw no other place. Mighty executives rubbed shoulders with
has-beens still living under her protective wing. Quite a few careers
were started all over again as a result.

In her bungalow she had a complete household staff, including a fine
cook, Mrs. Grace, with a young daughter, Mary. When Mrs. Grace fell
fatally ill, as a last favor she asked Marion to look after her Mary.
The little orphan was raised like a daughter. When she reached school
age, she went away to be educated, then returned to live with her
foster mother.

Mary begged for a photograph of Marion autographed “To my darling
daughter.” And on that deceptive bit of pseudo-evidence was built the
juicy rumor that W.R. had children by Marion. Only after some years did
she retrieve the picture from Mary Grace, but the damage had been done,
prompting Hearst in his will to testify: “I hereby declare that the
only children I have ever had are my sons....”

Marion did some matchmaking on Mary’s behalf by introducing her to one
of Hearst’s band of trouble shooters, William Curley, publisher of the
New York _Journal American_, who had five children of his own by a
former marriage, plus grandchildren, and was old enough to be Mary’s
grandfather. Mary was married to William Curley at San Simeon.

Doris Duke, the tobacco heiress, was one of the bridesmaids, and her
husband of the moment, Jimmy Cromwell, one of the guests. Before the
ceremony Curley changed his will in Mary’s favor; which later left her
a rich widow. Marion was a bridesmaid on that occasion, as on many
others. I knew how much she envied any bride.

I stayed in Hollywood largely because of her. When picture parts grew
scarce as hen’s teeth, I holed up in a three-room basement flat with my
son. I was ready to quit and return to New York when Marion heard about
it from Frances Marion and put me into a picture of hers, _Zander the
Great_, for which Frances wrote the script. That also opened the door
to San Simeon for me. It was the springboard to more jobs, and that
kept me, for better or worse, in the movies.

Wealth came to mean nothing to Marion except in terms of the good it
could do. “You’re rich not because of money but only through what you
give,” she used to say. She built a children’s wing on UCLA’s Medical
Center, with a trust fund added to maintain it. With her wry humor that
remained intact to the end, she shrugged off any fancy talk about the
building being her memorial: “It won’t do me any good; I’ll be down
below where I can’t see so high.”

This Lady Bountiful extended her warmth to Hearst’s close family and
employees. She mothered John R., Jr., the Chief’s twelve-year-old
grandson, nicknamed “Bunkie,” when he came to live at San Simeon after
his parents were divorced. She interceded with the iron-willed man to
save his sons--William, Jr., John, David, Randolph, and George--from
their father’s wrath. She supported one of the five for years after he
had spent his inherited money as if it would last forever.

For thirty years she protected the boys from W.R.’s anger and
disapproval; covering up their sins in his eyes; lending them money
when they needed it; taking them and their friends in under San
Simeon’s roof and into her Santa Monica home. In return, the sons
behaved as if she was one of their nearest and dearest friends. No
hostility was ever shown until after W.R.’s death.

She bestowed the same kind of favors on Hearst’s staff. Thanks to
Marion, Louella’s job was enlarged for her, with steady increases in
salary. Through Marion, she got to know all the stars and greats of
the world. Cobina Wright picked up her stint as society columnist by
Marion’s pleading on her behalf with W.R.

Hearst’s staff treated Marion fondly during her protector’s lifetime.
Richard Berlin, the organization’s strong man who emerged as president
of Hearst Corporation, was one of the many who scrupulously saw to it
that every birthday and similar anniversary in her life was marked by
flowers and the cordial words of congratulations.

When W.R.’s fortunes crumbled and his empire faced sudden ruination,
Marion came to the rescue. She lent him one million dollars. “You’ll be
left without a penny,” said I, always the practical one, to her.

“What would you do?” she asked. “It came from him. Would you deny him
when he needs it?”

In 1947 the two of them took refuge from the storms that blew
increasingly around him--old age and an America entirely changed from
the land he’d left his stamp on. They closed down San Simeon and moved
into a Spanish stucco house on North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills.
W.R. was reluctantly facing the fact that he was no more immortal than
any other man.

For Marion herself, W.R. had a special warning--against the wife
of one of his sons. “Be careful of her,” he said in his quavering,
high-pitched voice. “She will be far more hostile than Mrs. Hearst.”

The final act in Hearst’s eighty-eight years began on the night of
August 13, 1951, as he lay dying. Marion could sense it, though she
would not put it into words. She summoned her nephew, the writer
Charles Lederer, to the house. She had been drinking and was on the
verge of hysteria. W.R.’s two physicians, Dr. Prinzmetal and Dr.
Corday, were already in attendance. Presumably summoned by one or the
other of them, Bill and David Hearst and Richard Berlin also arrived at
the house.

When things got too hot to handle, Lederer persuaded Dr. Corday that
Marion should be taken to her bedroom and given sedation. The wrangling
continued after she had left, and in the course of the evening Lederer
returned to his house, close by on North Beverly Drive.

Early next morning Lederer received a telephone call that Hearst was
dead. He had died in the arms of his Catholic valet, Henry Monahan, now
with Conrad Hilton, who said prayers for him. Two hours later the body
was flown to San Francisco.

When Marion’s nephew arrived back at the Hearst house, he was greeted
by Berlin: “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To see Marion.”

“Make sure you go to her room and nowhere else.”

“This house belongs to Marion Davies,” Lederer said, “and I’ll go where
I please.”

Marion couldn’t be roused from her drugged sleep until after the body
was being flown to San Francisco, escorted by Bill, David, George,
and Randolph Hearst. Mrs. Hearst, Bill’s wife, “Bootsie,” and other
members of the family flew from New York for the service. Louella was
one of the hundreds of mourners who gathered in San Francisco. Marion
read about the funeral arrangements in the paper. What W.R. had planned
before his death was a quiet service in his home with only Marion and
an Episcopal minister reading from the Bible.

The day he was buried, I sat with Marion in her dining room. We prayed
silently together. “I had him while he lived,” she said. “They can have
him now.” Though she disguised it, she was still in a state of shock at
the loss of the man she had loved for nearly forty years.

When the announcement came, a few months later, that she had eloped
to Las Vegas with Horace Brown, a hell-for-leather Merchant Marine
captain who looked somewhat like a younger version of William Randolph,
the Hearst paper in Los Angeles, the _Examiner_, reported with
satisfaction: “It was Miss Davies’ first marriage.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I decided one day to write a piece about what happens to a retired
movie star and went to Marion to talk about it. With Horace and Dennis
the Menace, a small brown dachshund, she lived in the house where
W.R. died. Its long front hall retained a touch of the beach-palace
days, with life-sized portraits of her in her leading roles hanging on
the walls. In the library there were three more pictures. On a table
stood a “Lucky Lindy” photograph of Charles Lindbergh autographed “To
Marion Davies, best wishes and many thanks.” On the mantel were two
photographs of Bernard Shaw, one of them inscribed, “This is what is
left of me--1948.” Shaw, said Marion, was the only man that Gandhi,
W.R.’s favorite dog, didn’t try to bite. “He wanted to listen to what
GBS had to say, but Gandhi took it out on me later.”

She was wearing dark brown slacks, cinnamon-colored silk blouse, and
flat-heeled leather shoes. The blond hair looked as though it had just
been washed and set. On the coffee table in front of her she kept a
compact and two lipsticks which, while we talked, she applied almost
unconsciously, with perfect aim.

She said: “I don’t look at motion pictures any more, most of all my
own. I used to see one every night. I have prints of most of mine, but
they’re slowly molding in a vault downstairs. I have _Little Old New
York_, but my projector goes too fast to run it off.”

“Wasn’t Bill Powell in that one?”

“No, he was in _When Knighthood Was in Flower_. Remember those
symmetricals he wore to make his legs look pretty? When we ran that
at San Simeon, Carole Lombard was with him. She never got over his
symmetricals. He was a real villain in that picture.”

“I saw him in Palm Springs. He said it wasn’t exciting, but it’s adding
years to his life. Would you like to make another picture?”

“Not if they offered me Mars on a silver plate. I have other ideas
along the theatrical line. Something big, like washing elephants.”

“What was your favorite picture?”

“_The Big Parade_. Long time ago, but I liked it.”

“How about _Gone With the Wind_?”

“I liked that, but I didn’t see much of it. I went with Carole and
Clark to the opening here. Raoul Walsh was with us, too. A man who
pretended he was Burgess Meredith picked a fight with us. Clark was
nervous and didn’t want to sit through the picture, anyway. So we all
went into the manager’s office. The manager was off somewhere, and the
phone kept ringing. We’d pick it up and say: ‘Sorry, no reservations;
all sold out for a year.’ We thought that was funny. Carole was a lot
of fun. She liked to have a good time.”

“So did you.”

“It’s taken its toll.”

“Did you ever have any protégés?”

“I kept it all for myself. I couldn’t act.”

“Well, I know you helped Ray Milland, for instance.”

“He played my brother in _Bachelor Father_. The director got impatient
with him. It was his first picture and he was nervous. Who isn’t, even
on the twenty-fifth picture? So I told him to pretend that the director
wasn’t there.”

I asked her about the plush party she gave for Johnnie Ray not
long after W.R.’s death, which caught a bit of the glamour of our
yesterdays, with six hundred invited and a thousand showing up.

“I was having my hair done when Charlie Morrison brought him in. He
didn’t know me at all. He must have been awful young. I never saw so
many people I didn’t know--I didn’t know ninety per cent of the guests.
We were in a turmoil for weeks. They put gardenias in the bushes and
moved all the furniture.”

What was her average day? “I have business things. Then I watch TV and
read. I sleep late.”

We talked again about the old days. “Gloria Swanson always liked to
play games. So she cooked this one up at San Simeon one night. I played
the minister, off in another room. All the men were to pick the girls
they wanted to marry, then couple by couple they came into the room
where I would perform the ceremony. Then I’d say, ‘All right, seal it
with a kiss,’ and when they started to do that, Gloria would pick up a
towel that she’d filled with ice and conk the guy on the head.

“Everybody laughed until it was Joe Hergesheimer’s turn. The girl he
picked was Aileen Pringle. He was so serious about it and so mad that
when Gloria let him have it, he stormed out of the house and said,
‘I’ll write about this. I’m through with Hollywood.’”

Changing the subject: “Why did you keep making pictures if you didn’t
like it?”

“Mr. Hearst wanted me to,” she said, “and contracts had something to do
with it.”

“Did he have any eccentricities?”

“Yes, he placed his faith in the wrong people.”

Marion put on two more performances during her life. One was for the
sole benefit of the Hearsts, when she sat in Joe Kennedy’s box at his
son’s 1961 inaugural ball and rode with Joe in the parade, so that
Millicent and her sons could see Marion undefeated and unconquerable.
But she was a very sick girl and never recovered from that trip.

She’d earned Joe’s hospitality by handing over her house to the
Kennedy clan for the Los Angeles convention of the Democrats that
nominated John F., while she paid $3500 a month for a rented house in
Santa Monica. Joe had extra phones put in her house, installed his own
servants, and wouldn’t permit Tom Kensington, who had been with Marion
for fifteen years, to remain after he learned Tom was a former FBI man.

She also ousted her sister out of her own house, to make room for the
Robert Kennedys, and rented another temporary home for the sister. When
Joe heard how sick Marion really was, he sent off three specialists to
see her. But Marion paid all the bills.

Earlier, she put on a fine performance, too, to appear on one of my
television shows. By this time she was in the middle of her three-year
fight with cancer. When word got out that I’d asked her, Kay Gable
waxed indignant. “She can’t possibly do it,” said Kay. “She’s not well
enough.”

“Why do you think I asked her?” I said. “For one reason only--to lift
her morale.”

“But she looks so ill.”

“Take it from me, she’ll look beautiful.”

On the day the show was due to be filmed, I went to Marion’s house
wearing the make-up Gene Hibbs had already given me at my home. I
brushed aside her compliments: “Wait until you see what he does for
you. And George Masters is coming, too, to do your hair.”

She was so weak that her nurse, Mrs. Mauser, had to help her downstairs
to the dressing room where the two wizards were waiting to ply their
arts. I went off to the bottom of her garden to shoot some scenes
there. When I came back, the transformation had been worked. It was as
if a magic wand had waved lovingly over her. She looked thirty years
younger than when I’d left not more than an hour before.

She literally danced out of that dressing room and hurried upstairs to
put on a blue satin gown. Her body was so thin I had to pin the dress
in with safety pins all up the back to keep it from falling off. Her
arms were as thin as wrists. “You need a mink stole,” I said, “to wear
around your shoulders.” When that last touch had been added, she took
a long look at herself in a mirror. “You look beautiful,” I said. She
nodded agreement, smiling like a girl on her way to her first prom.

I got Charlie Lederer on the telephone. “Come over to Marion’s right
away. I want you to see something.”

“What is it?” he said instantly, afraid as we all were that her illness
was taking a bad turn. I refused to tell him, let him see for himself.
At the first sight of Marion with her age and sickness erased, he burst
into tears and left the room.

For fear of her stutter and of fatiguing her, we’d arranged to give her
only one line to say: “Welcome to my house.” She carried it off on the
first take. “Is this all I get to do?” she demanded. “I want more.”

“Don’t be a greedy little girl.” At five o’clock she insisted on going
visiting. She went to Pickfair to show Mary how young she looked and
then all over town, until it was time for bed. At midnight I received a
call from her: “How do I get this stuff off my face?”

When the show was screened, she was a sensation. Thanks to Hibbs and
Masters, she enjoyed a last flurry of fame and fun, including her trip
to the inauguration, while I went off for a month to Europe. She had
two more offers for TV.

When I came home, Marion had been taken into Cedars of Lebanon
Hospital. She never came out alive. She was in a coma for five weeks.
“I don’t think she’ll recognize you,” Mrs. Mauser said. But I went
anyway. I’ll never forget my last picture of her. Weeks of daily cobalt
treatments had colored her neck and part of her face a deep purple. It
was heartbreaking, yet she was feeling no pain.

On September 23, 1961, the Los Angeles _Examiner_ reported the death
of Marion Davies the previous day. “The list of Miss Davies’ close
friends,” the obituary said, “was long, impressive and diverse,
reflecting her wide range of interests. They included George Bernard
Shaw, William Randolph Hearst, Sir Thomas Lipton, Winston Churchill,
Lloyd George, Bernard M. Baruch.... Miss Davies’ only venture into
matrimony lasted until her death. She was married to former Merchant
Marine Captain Horace Brown....”

       *       *       *       *       *

A letter Frances Marion wrote her earlier struck some different notes:
“Remember how we laughed even when we were crying?... How we danced the
shimmy and the Charleston ... tossed our petticoats over the windmill
... went to the Follies to applaud _A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody_ and
cheer the beautiful Miss Davies, who was Miss-Miss-Miss America!

“Then the thirties ... those fabulous excursions to San Simeon ... the
long table in the dining room with W.R. shepherding his flock (and
not all of us lambs) ... nipping champagne in the little girls’ room
... those overnight picnics ... Miss-Miss-Miss America on a gentle
old nag but looking more scared than if a mouse had run up her riding
habit ... sleeping under the stars ... W.R. pacing up and down as he
waited for his forgotten Seidlitz powders ... the ride back in the
morning, the fields dappled with wild flowers ... a lot of us wilder
than the flowers but just as pretty ... Bill Haines dressed as though
for the North Pole wearing a hood over his head and face, and mittens
on his hands ... Errol Flynn smacked in the heart by the limbs of Lili
Damita....

“All of this was ours to enjoy and be grateful for the rest of our
lives. And none of these memories could have graced our past if it
hadn’t been for you and your loving kindness.”

If anybody can sum up a life in nine words, Frances can. Of Marion
Davies she says: “She was a butterfly with glue on her wings.”




_Twelve_


The lure of the almighty dollar brings two categories of people to our
community--those who work and those who prey. Like Hamlin before the
Pied Piper, we are infested with rodents, from bookies to con men, from
mobsters to panderers anxious to supply anything a paying customer
calls for. Difference between us and Hamlin is that we’ve given up
hoping for the Piper.

Extortioners have flocked to our town since the notorious reign of
George Browne and Willie Bioff, the union racketeers, who, in the
thirties and early forties, didn’t even condescend to visit the
studios--top producers had to stop by their hotel room and toss on to
the bed wads of greenbacks for “protection.”

Now there are only lean pickings left at most studios, and the leeches
cling to individual stars. They sucker them into accepting loans
to buy the new house, the new mink, the new car, in return for a
permanent slice of income. They let them run up bookmakers’ bills at
strangulation rates of interest, collectable every payday. By offering
fat fees for night-club performances, they entice them to Las Vegas,
the sanctuary for birds of prey, and make sure they get back every cent
of salary and more at the gambling tables.

Syndicate men have the run of Hollywood society. I don’t know who
charms whom more, the actor or the mobster. I understand that “Lucky”
Luciano could charm a bird off a bough. Frank Sinatra, who has a
weakness for such fragrant characters as Joe Rocco and Charlie
Fascetti, of Chicago fame, is fond of boasting: “If I hadn’t made it in
show business, I’d have been a mobster myself.”

Bookies used to have priority at studio switchboards when they made
their calls to Culver City. Nowadays, Las Vegas soaks up much more
floating cash and credit. It’s fashionable in some circles to brag
about how much you lost down the drain. Phil Silvers has shed a fortune
at the tables. Gordon MacRae has unloaded thousands at one go, so that
ever-popular pair of night-club entertainers, Gordon and Sheila MacRae,
parents of four fine children, have to smile with every evidence
of delight when they find they’ve been booked around the country
forty-three weeks out of fifty-two to make ends meet. When Ernie Kovacs
departed this vale of tears, he left $600,000 of gambling debts.

The police departments, often reported to be openly cozy with mobsters,
have a long record of blinking at other kinds of lawbreakers, provided
a nimble press agent can get on to the case in time. Clark Gable,
returning home from a party at Paulette Goddard’s after downing too
much of the bubbly, banged up his car in a traffic circle, but it was
happily announced that a passing motorist was really to blame.

Eddie Mannix has related how it cost a total of $90,000 to keep the
reputation of a celebrated MGM star intact when he was caught in the
same desperate situation that sent Big Bill Tilden, the tennis ace, to
prison as a homosexual.

Studio cops worked hand in glove with custodians of the law outside
the studio gates. Some days the telephones of top public-relations men
like Howard Strickling at Metro and Harry Brand at Fox rang like a
four-alarm call in the firehouse, as police dutifully reported they had
this or that star safely locked up for speeding, drinking, or mixing it
up in a public brawl.

There’s something heady about driving in Hollywood that got even
Garbo tagged twice for speeding. One of the wildcat drivers was Luise
Rainer. She had won her _Great Ziegfeld_ Oscar and was going into _The
Good Earth_ as the sensation of the industry. For the picture’s sake,
the studio conspired with minions of the law to frame her. She’d be
arrested, plead guilty, and the judge, primed in advance, would lift
her license until _The Good Earth_ was completed. So ran the plot.
But a snag developed after the police trapped her; she clung to her
innocence and vowed to fight the case in court. So the ticket had to be
quashed, and the suppress agents had to ’fess up to Luise. She refused
to speak to them for weeks.

Since we live in an age of corruption, almost like the declining days
of ancient Rome, with the “interests” digging in deeper all the time,
I ought not have been surprised at a campaign to build another Las
Vegas right in the heart of our community. The plan was to incorporate
a separate little city made up of the Sunset Strip, with its night
clubs like Dino’s and Jerry Lewis’ new place, and stretching from Santa
Monica Boulevard up into the hills. Like Beverly Hills, which is a town
unto itself and an extremely well-conducted one, this new Sunset City,
or whatever it was to be christened, would have written its own rules
and controlled its own life.

The idea was perfectly feasible, however unattractive. The area
involves a bit of no man’s land, bounded by the city limits of Beverly
Hills and Los Angeles, yet attached to neither of them. This is county
territory. The promoters’ objective, among other things, was to bring
in gambling, making it as legal as Nevada. It was a choice location and
could be a perfect haven for mobsters.

Among the unsuspecting citizens of the Strip, petitions were circulated
to gather signatures as the first step to take the proposed “city”
away from county control. Whether or not he realized the implications,
one of the sponsors was Bart Lytton, whose modernistic new savings
bank stands on the site of the old Garden of Allah at the hub of
the territory. It was he who threw one of the biggest parties in
Washington, D.C., on the night of President Kennedy’s inauguration,
which drew JFK and other members of the family. Even I received one of
the gold-engraved invitations, though I’d never met the host.

Our local _Citizen-News_, which has since changed management, broke
the story of what lay behind the apparently innocent moves to make
the Strip independent. I got busy in my column and with some letter
writing to throw a monkey wrench into the wheels.

I was amazed at the time that my words were allowed to appear, because
some exceedingly powerful individuals stood to gain from “Sunset City.”
But it worked. Our community had seen too much of Murder, Inc. muscling
in, of gangsters receiving the lead-poisoning treatment on the streets.
The petitions died from anemia--but I am sure the backers haven’t given
up hope or forgiven me.

There was another time when the businessmen of the Strip weren’t so
slow to take up arms. In this other affray they succeeded in putting
the object of their attention behind bars, but then she was a woman, or
even a lady, and a local celebrity. She was a tall, dignified creature
with a back straight as a ramrod, who introduced herself to me one day
as we sat under neighboring dryers in a beauty parlor. I was happy to
make her acquaintance, having heard a great deal about her.

She was a pioneer in her profession by allowing her patrons, including
some super-sized stars, to run up bills for their pleasure, whereas
cash in advance is, I gather, the almost invariable procedure
elsewhere. She accumulated a load of bad bets as a reward for
establishing her informal credit plan, though her establishment gained
a certain distinction from the array of several Oscars which stood on
her mantelpiece, gifts from satisfied customers.

She conceived the ambition of retiring from her former calling and
opening an extremely proper and swank restaurant on the Strip. She had
the plans drawn up, which envisaged upstairs dining accommodations for
private parties, which are not unusual among caterers. She ordered some
somber but becoming gowns to wear as hostess. The restaurateurs along
the Strip were outraged. They shuddered at the thought that _chez elle_
could well become the most popular, though innocent, port of call for
natives and tourists alike. She was denied a liquor license and later
arrested.

She had one stanch supporter to turn to--that friend to all womankind,
Louise Fazenda, the zany, pigtailed comedienne of the Mack Sennett
era. Mack enjoyed working late at his studio so he could chase pretty
girls between takes. Louise found the only means of quieting an empty
stomach and finding some fleeting peace was to take a sandwich and hide
it, ready for supper, in the women’s lavatory.

Louise married Hal Wallis in 1927 and began a new career as an angel
of mercy who covered her philanthropies in secrecy. A law student
concluded that he’d have to quit school because his girl-wife was
pregnant; Louise took up all the bills. She would go out to UCLA
Medical Center to feed young children, rock and sing them to sleep.
Not all of her charges recovered; she made a special point of seeking
out the hopeless, terminal cases because her heart was big and strong
enough to pour out its love even when a child was doomed.

And she never lost her sense of fun. There used to be a vacant corner
lot next to her small house. At night she’d wander over the ground
scattering wild-flower seeds, just for the sake of hearing her
neighbors exclaim in wonder that only a blooming miracle could have
produced the flowers that sprang up. It was Louise’s sense of humor,
matched with the need to teach Hal and his friends a lesson, that
brought the stately brothel keeper to the Wallis’ home in the San
Fernando Valley.

Hal was in the habit of asking his men friends and associates around
for Sunday luncheon to sample his wife’s delicious cooking. Most of his
buddies seemed to think this was something too tasty to waste on their
wives, so they brought along their girl friends. Finally, Louise’s
patience ran out. One Sunday, when the usual crowd had gathered for
some home cooking, Louise entered with her own special guest. Almost
all the men knew her instantly; some of their companions needed no
introductions either. Not a single harsh word was spoken between Mr.
and Mrs. Wallis; but from that Sunday on, the husbands started bringing
their wives.

Faced with the certainty of a prison term, the madam asked for Louise’s
help. “I’ve no place to hide my jewels, my car, and my clothes,” she
said, “and they’re all the savings I’ve got left. If the police get
their hands on them, I may never get them back. Is there anything you
can do?”

“Certainly,” Louise said. “There’s a special stall in my garage to
which this is the only key. Drive in there tomorrow, lock the door,
and keep the key until you’re free.” That is why, when search was made
of the lady’s place of business, there were some mighty mystified
investigators around, for they could find nothing. All her valuables
were safe in the Wallises’ garage, and when Hal reads this it will be
news to him.

Crooks as well as shady ladies like to mingle with celebrities. Bugsie
Siegel’s gaudy days and nights as a man-about-Hollywood ended on a
davenport in the house at 810 Linden Drive, Beverly Hills, that his
dear friend, red-haired Virginia Hill, rented at $500 a month. “Death
at the hands of a person or persons unknown,” said the coroner’s jury
after the machine-gun bullet holes in his back had been counted, fired
(while the watchdogs remained peculiarly silent) through a window.

Bugsie loved to socialize. He’d turn up, dressed to the nines, to take
a drink or play poker as the guest of all kinds of people. Every two
weeks he came into Beverly Hills to get his hair cut by his favorite
barber. Marie MacDonald used to dine in his company at Las Vegas.
George Raft appeared as a witness for Bugsie when the mobster went on
trial in Los Angeles. Leo Durocher was one of many who knew Bugsie
well. The day before he was rubbed out he sent a check for $2500 to the
Lou Costello Youth Foundation, a sports center Lou and his partner, Bud
Abbott, built on East Olympic Boulevard. The day after Bugsie departed
this life, the sun-blackened peddlers who sell maps of movie stars’
homes to tourists along Sunset Boulevard latched onto a new sales dodge
with hastily scrawled signs that said: “See Where Bugsie Met His End.”

One old friend of his, Countess Dorothy Taylor di Frasso, was in Europe
when she heard the news. “Bugsie, Bugsie?” she said, and eyebrows could
be heard arching over the telephone. “Why, I don’t know any Bugsie.
Could you mean Mr. Benjamin Siegel?” An amateur gentleman to the final
curtain, he would have appreciated the formality.

“I was very fond of Mr. Siegel,” the countess allowed, “but it is
utterly ridiculous to say I was in love with him.” A man in her life
that she really cottoned to was Gary Cooper. She snaffled him up when
he was worn out from too many pictures and too much Lupe Velez. She
whisked him off aboard a slow boat to a safari in Africa.

She found our town an unplowed pasture for her type of worldliness,
mixing titles with prize fighters and topnotch actors with show girls.
At one of her parties she hid a recording machine under a sofa in
the hope of picking up some spice from her unsuspecting guests. Jack
Barrymore ruined it. He sat there, unknowing, and delivered a monologue
of tangy reminiscences about every celebrity who entered, including
his delightful hostess. Unaware of all this, the countess grabbed an
opportunity to remove the record and summon her closest pals up to her
bedroom to hear a playback. After it made a few revolutions on the
turntable, she snatched the record off and smashed it on the floor.

Bugsie’s darling, Virginia Hill, who’d given him a gold key to the
house on North Linden Drive, was in Paris when she got word that he had
turned his back to a window for the last time. “It looks so bad to have
a thing like that happen in your house,” she said when she’d dried her
tears.

Some months after this I was dining at a left-bank restaurant in Paris
with Lilly Daché, her husband, and Jean Daspras, a struggling young
French designer who was about to open his own dress salon. After coffee
he took us up to his roof-top garret to show us some of his sketches.
There he told us about an American, a friend of his, who had recently
arrived at the place with a tightly wrapped shoe box.

“Please don’t open this,” said the visitor. “Just hide it somewhere and
forget it.”

Six months later the same American returned for the box, which the
young Frenchman had kept hidden under his bed. As a favor, he was
allowed to take one look inside before the caller departed. It was
filled not with shoes but with jewels--hundreds of thousands of
dollars’ worth belonging, so the American said, to a woman named
Virginia Hill; but who she was, Jean Daspras had no idea.

Bugsie had his finger in a lot of pies. He was trying to corner the
bookmaking business as far east as St. Louis. In Los Angeles, Reno,
and Las Vegas he was cramming his race wire, known delicately as
“Trans-American News Service,” down the throats of bookies. He had his
own bookie joint at Guy McAfee’s Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.

Siegel also had set up a milk route, as he called it, for running
raw opium, which is a popular crop in Mexican fields just south of
the United States, to cookers in Tijuana. There it was prepared for
a further trip across the California border, for distribution and
sale in Los Angeles. Rumors flew around that Luciano was sore at the
competition Bugsie was giving him and had warned him to stay out of
opium smuggling. Forty-eight hours after the gang had lost its boss,
border patrolmen were battling smugglers near Calexico and confiscating
thousands of dollars’ worth of opium destined for Los Angeles.

Bugsie was a big man in Vegas. He was president of Nevada Projects
Corporation which operated the Flamingo, a sprawling, hectic-hued
hotel and gambling joint built spang in the middle of a scrubby desert
at a cost of $5,600,000. He started in as vice president when Billy
Wilkerson was president.

Billy was a dapper operator who used to run two plush Los Angeles
restaurants, the Vendôme and the Trocadero, later the Mocambo and
Ciro’s, then opened a fancy haberdashery and barbershop. When they
failed, he started as publisher and editor of the _Hollywood Reporter_.
His greatest claim to fame is that he discovered Lana Turner sitting on
a drugstore stool, playing hookey from Hollywood High School. He sold
out his interest in the Flamingo to Bugsie and was on vacation in Paris
when the machine gun opened fire outside 810 Linden Drive.

Bugsie had lost a fortune running the Flamingo and was struggling
to save it from foreclosure. One police report had it that he owed
$150,000 to an eastern gangster. The police also had a shrewd idea that
he was behind some mighty big jewel robberies in our town. Earl Warren,
our governor at the time, made the expected statement of the obvious:
“One lone gangster coming to California from another state where he
was a power doesn’t mean much, but when he becomes connected with
narcotics, gambling, bookmaking, and jewel and fur thefts, he becomes a
dangerous article.”

Whoever knocked off Bugsie got away with it; his murder has never been
solved.

One inevitable suspect was questioned but set free. “I don’t think
anybody’s gunning for me,” said slippery Mickey Cohen, who has
more friends among the movie makers than Bugsie ever dreamed of. I
accidentally found myself sitting at the table next to Mickey in the
Mocambo one night. He had a party of ten that night, including Florabel
Muir and her husband, Denny Morrison, plus a guard sitting at each
corner with the usual bulge under his coat that denotes the presence of
concealed artillery.

I called over the captain. “I refuse to sit next to gangsters.”
Florabel turned around. “But they’re _not_ gangsters,” she said.

“They certainly look like gangsters to me,” said I, and was given
another table in double time.

Mickey, who was finally sentenced to San Quentin for income-tax
evasion, wheedled his way into a friendship with Red Skelton, a
sentimental, unpredictable man whom I admire very much. Red was a soft
touch for Mickey; lent him money; took him into his home, together with
Janet Schneider, a Cohen protégée whom Mickey eventually succeeded in
getting onto a Jerry Lewis television show. He tried to sell Red the
idea that he should play himself in a movie version of his incredible
life story.

Red survived the depression of the thirties as a marathon dancer around
Bayonne, New Jersey. He managed to stay on his feet sixty days at
one time to win enough money to keep body and soul together, though
not very tightly. He worked as a circus clown--his father was one,
too--and he’s never lost that quality in his nature, a sympathy for the
underdog, an ability to picture all human frailties.

Not that he’s slow with a wisecrack when the magic moment comes.
Like the day I went to see him in the hospital soon after the last
inauguration. We talked about how much Frank Sinatra had given of
himself to stage the inauguration party for the President. “What can
Kennedy do to repay Frank, the man who has everything?” I asked.

Red paused to consider that for a moment, then grinned: “He can repeal
the Mann Act.”

Red’s an Abraham Lincoln Republican. In fact, he’s one of our country’s
foremost experts on our greatest president, and he’s got a Lincoln
library that stirs your soul. During a lull in rehearsal at one of his
television shows on which I was appearing, we decided to try to convert
some of his crew to our brand of politics. We both made stump speeches
and got a good round of applause. “I don’t think we changed anybody’s
mind,” I said.

“Maybe not,” he answered, “but we gave ’em something to chew on,
anyway.”

He begged Gene Fowler to cross the Atlantic as his guest when he
opened at the Palladium in the summer of 1951, following Danny Kaye,
who was cutting it up all over London town as a buddy of Princess
Margaret. Gene, an old Hearst reporter and once editor of the New York
_American_, went along, principally to fend off some of the bites of
the sharp-fanged British press. He wrote to me:

    Dear Sweetie:

    This is the old man’s last long journey anywhere except perhaps
    to the cemetery. Every citizen should be compelled by law to
    take a trip abroad--all expenses paid--so as to know how to
    vote.

    Skelton is a big hit at the Palladium notwithstanding all
    manner of handicaps. It is a hot June with all kinds of sports
    events going, _and_ Danny Kaye failed to introduce him (as is
    the hitherto unbroken tradition) on Sir Danny’s last night at
    the Palladium. Tell me, honey, is it possible for any man to be
    bigger than himself? And is momentary glory too precious to be
    shared with a fellow American and a fellow trouper? It is quite
    true that we cannot share personal grief, but we can and should
    share happiness or success.

                                        Gene

    P.S. It is not true that I have been knighted.

When they got back, Red bought Gene a car to say his thanks, but Gene
would have none of it. He clung like a limpet to his ramshackle jalopy,
growling: “I didn’t go to London with you for a present, but because
I’m a friend.”

Gene wasn’t around to help when Red and his wife, Georgia, took their
son, Richard, on his last, long journey to see the world after doctors
at UCLA Medical Center told them the boy was doomed with leukemia. The
British press venomously accused Red of publicity seeking in taking
Richard to see the Pope. The boy read the papers and realized for the
first time that his illness was fatal. Wounded to the heart by the
stories, Red brought his family home to Brentwood, to wait for the
inevitable. Gene was one of the pallbearers at Richard’s funeral.
Mickey Cohen was among those at the ceremony.

I was working in a television studio next to Red’s soon after that day.
In the corridor he said shyly: “Do you suppose you could do something
for me, Hedda?”

“Anything, Red.”

“My wife is mourning, just as I am. I get home tired from working and
burst into tears, and so does she. She says everybody knows how I feel
but nobody thinks of her. Could you write something about her, how
she’s having a bad time, too?”

Four years later Red has been unable to shake off his melancholy. He
sits by the hour in his garden rather than go into the house, which
holds too many memories. Though he’s earned enough to make him a
millionaire, he has gone through so much money--diamonds for Georgia,
gifts to friends--that he has been compelled to sell the $3,500,000 TV
studio he bought in hopes of becoming a big producer like Desi Arnaz.
His health isn’t good, he sleeps poorly. Yet before the cameras or on
a night-club stage, he’ll work hard enough to break his heart--and put
a chip or two in yours.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mickey Cohen had another friend among the comics in Jerry Lewis, whom
he tried to set up as producer of Red’s movie life story. Jerry was
another who lent Mickey money: $5000 with no security “because he
needed help.” In his Martin and Lewis incarnation, Jerry came from
playing night clubs in Philadelphia, where the majority of clubs are
controlled by Frank Palumbo, no stranger to the racketeers.

When Dean and Jerry first appeared at Slapsie Maxie’s in Hollywood,
every studio in town tried to sign them. It was Hal Wallis who
succeeded. Incidentally, in their days together, Dean and Jerry
had an admirer and occasional companion in the junior senator from
Massachusetts. In show business language, they found John F. Kennedy
was a square John who seldom caught on when they were kidding him.
Jacqueline hadn’t yet come into his life. The girl he was most gone on
was Helen O’Connell, who delivers warm jazz with a genteel air.

Before Dean and Jerry could start work for Hal Wallis in movies, they
had some more night-club dates to fill, including one in Philadelphia.
They were joined in that City of Brotherly Love by the actress wives of
two of our better-known Hollywood personalities, one of them a woman
who had dragged her patient husband to Slapsie Maxie’s night after
night to ogle Dean. If you can prevent catastrophe, you’re bound to
give it a try. So when I found out what was going on in Philadelphia, I
went to see Hal Wallis.

“Unless you nip this in the bud,” I said, “you’re going to start your
first Martin and Lewis picture with a couple of divorces to contend
with.”

Hal was petrified. “What can I do?” he pleaded.

“Stop it before the news gets out.”

He called his partner, Joe Hazen, in for consultation. “How would you
handle the situation?” they both asked.

“Telephone the boys right now. Tell them that unless those women get
out of Philadelphia immediately, you’ll cancel the contract. And tell
them why.”

Hal liked the idea. I sat by his desk while he made the call, and two
foot-loose actresses caught the next available plane from Philadelphia
to New York.

There is a New York night club with a deserved reputation for
high-class entertainment called the Copacabana, formerly conducted by
Jack Entratter, who became the impresario of the Las Vegas Sands, and
Monte Proser, who went on to operate Broadway’s Lanai. For some years
the Copa has enjoyed the services of Jules Podell, who has a gravel
voice and a sharp temper.

Not long after the Martin and Lewis breakup Jerry was visiting New
York to do a television show, while Sinatra was appearing at the Copa,
drawing such crowds that they waited outside in the winter cold for
hours in lines that stretched halfway around the block.

Jerry had played the Copa with Dean some three years earlier and
quarreled briefly with Podell in the course of the engagement. One day
Frank came down with an occupational sore throat, and Jerry agreed to
substitute at the Copa for him, though he had no formal act and hadn’t
played a night-club date alone since his parting from Dean. He appeared
that night ad-libbing like crazy, but that was the last time the Copa
ever saw him.

Jerry had a press agent who knew the Copa and Podell well. In a
previous job, when he’d had his own public-relations business, the
agent represented the place as one of his clients. The agent was in
the bar one night watching Podell, in his overcoat, ushering in the
customers to the restaurant and floor show downstairs. “You’re doing
fantastic business with Sinatra,” the agent said admiringly.

“I need you to tell me?” snapped Podell. “Get the hell out of here.”

The agent snapped right back. The two fell into a shouting match, which
ended with the agent spitting at Podell and walking out the front door,
back to the Hampshire House suite where Jerry was staying. There was
no satisfying Jerry until he’d heard the full account of the set-to.
By now it was after midnight, but Jerry picked up the telephone to get
two vice presidents of MCA out of bed, with a summons to meet him at
ten o’clock the following morning at the Brooklyn studios where he was
rehearsing his television show.

The pair of them showed up on the dot. They knew Jerry had a contract
for a future appearance at the Copa. “I want you,” he ordered, “to
write Mr. Podell a letter saying I will never appear, never set foot
there from now on. You can say I don’t give a damn what pressure they
try to put on me. I told Podell years ago if he ever talked nasty to
any one of my people or laid a hand on one of them, he’d see the last
of me.”

Over the next few days Jerry had some interesting telephone calls from
all kinds of people promising to straighten things out with Podell.
Jerry had a stock answer: “Not if I live to be a thousand will I talk
to Podell. Nobody should look to get lucky with me. I’m not going into
that place--ever.”

He made that decision stick. One side of Jerry knocks himself out to
have people like him. The other side includes a mind like a steel
trap; when he says no, he means not bloody likely. He won’t run
away from a fight, but he shies away from people who frighten him
intellectually because they’re better educated than he is. He’s the
son of show-business parents who left school in the tenth grade after
swatting a teacher for saying: “All Jews are stupid.”

He makes $3,000,000 a year, and he can’t stand it. Money is something
he disdains. He is probably the one entertainer in our business who has
never struck out in a movie, and he’s been twenty-six times to bat.
Does he have any ideas why? You bet your life he knows exactly:

“I appeal to the kids and ordinary people who spend all their lives
under the thumbs of authority and dignity. And I appeal to children,
who know I get paid for doing what they get slapped for. I flout
dignity and authority, and there’s nobody alive who doesn’t want to do
the same thing.

“No matter how high you go, there’s some schnook up over you. Any
General Motors vice president, for example, thinks he can do a better
job than the guy above him, except he’s down here and his boss is up
there. I’m getting even for every little guy in the world. I’m the kid
who throws snowballs at dignity in a top hat.”

Jerry, who’ll do anything for anybody he likes, once agreed to fill in
for Sammy Davis, Jr., in Las Vegas, because Sammy wanted a few days off
over Christmas in Aurora, Illinois. When I got the tip, I realized the
fat was in the fire. It happened that Kim Novak was also spending the
holidays at her sister’s house in Aurora.

Now Harry Cohn of Columbia, who made Kim everything she is today, had
been getting trouble from her. Her favorite weapon was to date men that
Cohn detested, either for personal reasons or because they clashed
violently with the carefully fostered image of her as a sweet, friendly
girl from Chicago. Sammy was a heavy date. I’m sure he occupied quite
a few pages in the oversized diary which she keeps in code and carries
around with her all the time.

Kim was a girl tied hand and foot by her Columbia contract: “I haven’t
got enough money to invest,” she told me one day. “I’ve been under
contract on a straight salary for six years. When I’m loaned out, I
don’t get anything extra--the salary goes to the studio. On _Man with
a Golden Arm_, I was promised a percentage of the picture, but I guess
they forgot somehow.”

“You never got a bonus?” I asked.

“One time before _Vertigo_ my agents got me a sort of bonus. They got
me a special loan at seven per cent interest for a year so I could buy
my house. But I was on my old salary schedule.”

“Don’t you collect for TV?”

“I can’t do TV.”

The house she bought on Tortuosa Drive in Bel Air cost her $95,000. It
contains an all-blue bedroom, an all-purple study, an all-gray living
room, an all-gray sleeping porch, and a pool where she swims wearing
a straw hat. She gets along without a housekeeper, cooks a big pot
of chile on Sundays, and dips into it for dinner three or four times
a week. “I sometimes get stomach trouble,” she admits, to nobody’s
surprise.

Sammy had been a frequent visitor at her house, but not after he
returned to Las Vegas from Aurora. Harry Cohn, who collapsed with a
fatal heart attack some months later, was not a man who enjoyed being
thwarted. His passion for keeping his fingers on everybody’s business
led him once to install an intercom system at Columbia so that, by
flicking a switch, he could eavesdrop on conversations all over the lot.

The rumor was that it cost him $200,000 to break things up between Kim
and Sammy. Truth is that it cost him no more than a single telephone
call from his office to Las Vegas, where Harry knew one of the mob with
a certain reputation in the business. Cohn was a man you had to stand
in line to dislike. A bitter, final jest about him alleged that two
thousand people attended his funeral, wanting to make sure it was true.

Over the telephone to Vegas, he said to the man on the other end: “You
take care of this for me, will you?”

“Sure,” said the voice on the telephone. “I’ll just say: ‘You’ve only
got one eye; want to try for none?’”

Very soon after that Sammy announced his marriage to Lorena White, a
Negro show girl in Las Vegas. A few more weeks elapsed before Sammy and
Lorena started proceedings for divorce. On November 13, 1960, Sammy
married May Britt, who gave him a daughter the following summer, and
let me tell you they’re very happy, or were when I wrote this.

Two years after the Sammy incident, Kim told me: “I guess I never
really adjusted to being in Hollywood.” She found, she said, that
her telephone hadn’t been ringing for quite a while. “I’m not really
anti-social. It’s just that I prefer smaller parties to big ones,” she
said.

With the help of a house guest, a girl who went to high school with
her, she was fixing up her patio, to make it all turquoise. She was
also building a fallout shelter in her back yard for herself, her
friend, and her dog.




_Thirteen_


The magic word now is “television.” It used to be “Hollywood,” and
there was no end to the miracles it could work. It transformed plowboys
into princes, peasant girls into goddesses. The stars were American
royalty and revered as such by their subjects. The magic word would
bring whole villages out on the street to watch a star go by. It opened
palace doors, stopped trains, brought you the keys of a city or an
audience with the Pope.

Hollywood set the social style for thirty years of our history, until
TV came along. Clara Bow wore a cupid’s-bow lipstick job; fifty million
women copied her. Clark Gable shucked off his undershirt; so did fifty
million men. The studios stuck to a simple rule and coined fortunes
with it: “Show the stars like kings and queens in a glamorous setting,
and the crowds will flock to see them.” Today it’s a calculated risk to
put a man on the screen in evening dress in case the popcorn-munching
customers decide that he’s a square.

They follow television stars just as they used to emulate the
motion-picture variety. My reader mail proves that. “Is Dorothy Provine
a natural blonde?” “Whatever happened to Edd Byrnes?” “When did Richard
Boone get married?” Ben Casey’s surgical gown turns out to be a Seventh
Avenue fashion hit. The children switch from coonskin hats to space
helmets to Soupy Sales. Some of the biggest names in our town--Sinatra,
Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and all--go on to let Soupy toss a custard
pie in their faces. The children love it and the networks want the
child audience.

The impact on the audience--and I don’t mean from the custard pies--is
astounding to anybody like me who’s been making pictures since World
War I. One of the early ones was a thing called _Virtuous Wives_, in
which I sank my entire salary of $5000 on my clothes and got $25,000
worth of the loveliest outfits you ever saw from Lady Duff-Gordon,
known professionally as Lucile and one of the greatest dressmakers of
them all. The biggest impact I made was on a pudgy little fellow who
used to lurk around the set.

When the picture was finished, he sidled up to me. I mistook his
intentions. “I don’t want to buy any fur coats,” said I.

“You don’t understand,” said he. “My name’s Louis Mayer. I’m the
producer and this is my first picture.”

Making a reputation then was slow going. Producers used to say: “Get
what’s-her-name who played the rich bitch in _Virtuous Wives_--she
might be good for this one.” But when you go on television the impact
is felt overnight. The following morning a cab driver won’t let you pay
your fare, a workman on a construction job offers you his hard hat.

Outside Saks Fifth Avenue, after an Easter Sunday appearance on “What’s
My Line?”, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of autograph hunters
so big that a disgruntled policeman threatened to turn me in unless we
all went around the corner into a side street. “You’ll have to call the
paddy wagon,” I warned him, “and a picture of Hopper behind bars is all
I need for my collection.”

For another “What’s My Line?” appearance I had some fun with Dorothy
Kilgallen, who likes to queen it on the panel. I knew I’d have to do
something exciting to knock her in the eye, so I asked Marion Davies to
lend me a diamond necklace. “Which one?” asked Marion. “Or would you
like them all?”

“Just one,” I said. “The small one with the pear-shaped pearl. That
will be showy.”

I didn’t allow Miss Kilgallen to see me until just before we were
introduced on camera. She gulped, turning slightly enviously green:
“Isn’t it wonderful to see real jewels again? It’s so _beautiful_!”

I didn’t let on that I’d borrowed it. “It _is_ rather nice,” I purred.
The following week she had to top me. She arrived with her hair dyed
bright red.... We females do that to each other.

I’ve made a lot of friends through television and a few enemies. On the
whole, I imagine that enemies are better for me. I love them, because
they keep me on my toes. That’s one small debt I owe “Stoneface” Ed
Sullivan, the Irish Sunday supplement to the American home.

After “Toast of the Town” was launched, Billy Wilkerson made Ed an
offer to come out and work for him on the _Hollywood Reporter_. Ed gave
in his resignation to Captain Joseph Patterson, who ran the New York
_Daily News_ until he died. “I wonder if you know what you’re doing,”
said Joe. “You’ll be in a trade paper with maybe 7500 readers instead
of a two-million-plus circulation.”

“I think I’ll make a lot of money,” answered Ed. “I’ll know everybody
out there and be able to get them for my TV show.”

“If that’s what you want, go ahead; but don’t ask to come back.”

Billy Wilkerson, who could run a dollar to ground as fast as any man,
canvassed Hollywood, collecting advertisements for a special issue of
the _Reporter_ welcoming Ed Sullivan to his new roost. When that issue
appeared, it was thick with page after page of greetings, all proceeds
going to Billy as publisher. Somewhere along the line, Ed must have
realized who was going to find himself on the better end of his new
deal. He went back to Joe and announced that he’d changed his mind.

“Don’t do that again,” Joe chided him. “Another time, if you make up
your mind to go, you go.”

When his “Toast” was in its salad days, Ed pursued the practice of
inviting Hollywood stars to appear for free. Jack Benny was nudged into
appearing for him, Bob Hope went on for the same nonexistent fee five
times, until he got his own show, which was programmed opposite Ed’s on
a different network. Ed repaid Bob’s earlier courtesies by opening fire
on him in his “Broadway” column.

He invited Frank Sinatra to appear for nothing except the sheer joy of
it to plug _Guys and Dolls_. When Frank refused, Ed roasted him in a
press statement. Sinatra promptly took a full-page in the _Reporter_ to
holler:

    Dear Ed: You’re sick. Sincerely, Frank. P.S. Sick, sick, sick!

As a newsprint neighbor, his “Broadway” often runs cheek by jowl with
my “Hollywood” in the _News_, though the Chicago _Tribune_ won’t print
him. I’d been asked several times to go on his show and be introduced
from the audience. He received the standard reply: “Mr. Sullivan,
when I appear on TV, I go as a guest and get paid for it.” The Screen
Actors’ Guild ruled long ago that an interview doesn’t constitute
a performance, since it tends to promote the career of the player
involved. The union set a minimum pay scale of $210 for interviews.

That was what I paid each of a long list of stars who agreed to appear
in interview format on “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood,” a Sunday television
hour that Talent Associates arranged for me to do for NBC, 8 to 9 P.M.,
while Ed was on CBS at the same time. I took on the show to see how TV
and I got along together, on the understanding that there’d be five
more similar shows if I liked it. But Ed was told that I was going to
do the half dozen for certain. That’s what got his bowels in an uproar.

The rumble gave us a singularly un-merry Christmas. The only time we
could hire the big MCA studio we needed for one hour was on Friday,
December 25. Use of the sound stage there for sixty minutes cost $1000,
plus double pay for the crew. I had another taping session set up for
three days later, with _Ben-Hur’s_ Charlton Heston, who had given his
promise five weeks earlier and cabled from London that he would land in
Hollywood on Sunday, December 27, ready to work with me the following
day.

I didn’t know a blessed thing about it until I read it in the _News_,
but Ed was scared I was going to steal his TV audience. He’d been busy
trying to engage extra stars for his show, including Heston, who turned
up that Sunday evening, the twenty-seventh, on Sullivan’s soiree,
reading from the Bible for a $10,000 fee.

On the Monday, three other actors from _Ben-Hur_--Stephen Boyd, Francis
X. Bushman, and Ramon Novarro--sat waiting with me for Heston, all
of us made up and rarin’ to go. At the appointed hour of 2 P.M. a
telephone call reached the studio from his agent, Johnny Dugan of MCA.
“I have advised Mr. Heston,” he told me, “not to come on your show.”

“That is very kind of you. Might I ask why?”

He had assumed the program would be local, not network, said Johnny.
“He’s negotiating for two more shows with Ed Sullivan, and he’s afraid
this might jeopardize those two engagements.”

“What about his promise, as a man, that he would appear with me? When
did he arrange with Mr. Ed Sullivan to go on last Sunday?”

“I don’t rightly remember,” said Johnny Dugan.

“Is Mr. Heston there?”

A moment’s hush fell between us. “Yes.”

“Put him on,” I said. There was some murmured conversation in the
background, then the agent came back: “He’s busy.”

“Then please tell Mr. Heston to go to hell. I never would have asked if
I’d known he had a conflicting job at $10,000. I’d have said ‘God bless
you’ and certainly not have asked him to give it up.”

The Hearst papers went to town with front-page headlines as Ed
continued shooting. TV columnists all over the country started playing
up the feud between Sullivan and Hopper. He needed a gimmick to help
him. “Heston played Moses in _The Ten Commandments_,” he said. “This
week he was the Moses who led all these people out of the wilderness.”
“All these people” were the alleged walkouts from my program. The
complete list over which he raised hosannas consisted of:

Bette Davis, who was ill;

Steve McQueen, who was in Alaska;

Robert Horton, who left for an engagement at the London Palladium
before we ever got started;

Joan Crawford, who was not notified in time by Talent Associates that
they could not tape her segment in New York;

Tuesday Weld, with whom negotiations had not reached any conclusion;

Mickey Rooney, who could not match his schedule to ours for taping.

After the show Jack Benny asked me why I hadn’t invited him on. “I
don’t know you as well as I do the others,” I replied. “I wasn’t sure
you’d respond.”

“I’d have loved to,” said Jack. “You’ve no idea the pressure Ed put on
me to appear with him when he started his shows.”

Just for the record, these are the people, in alphabetical order, who
did make their appearances on “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood”: Lucille Ball,
Anne Bauchens, Stephen Boyd, Francis X. Bushman, John Cassavetes,
Gary Cooper, Ricardo Cortez, Robert Cummings, William Daniels, Marion
Davies, Walt Disney, Janet Gaynor, Bob Hope, Hope Lange, Harold Lloyd,
Jody McCrea, Liza Minnelli, Don Murray, Ramon Novarro, Anthony Perkins,
Debbie Reynolds, Teddy Rooney, Venetia Stevenson, James Stewart, Gloria
Swanson, King Vidor, and the four Westmore brothers.

Ed blasted me twice before I tried to fire back. He was still banging
away like thirty-nine weeks of “Wagon Train.” He tried another tactic.
He complained to two show-business unions, the Screen Actors’ Guild and
the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, that he found
me guilty of “the most grievous form of payola.” “Here,” he said, “is a
columnist using plugs in a column to get performers free.”

For this, I called him a liar. I have never pressured anybody to do
anything for me in my life. On the air on January 10, the Hopper show
did fine. Our rating matched Ed’s exactly--and we were brand-new. He
didn’t appear that evening on his own show. His ulcer wouldn’t let him.

There was an epilogue. The United Services Organization gave a benefit
luncheon at $25 a plate for Mary Martin at the Hotel Pierre in New
York. I sat on the dais, due to make a speech, near Ed Sullivan, who
was billed to introduce me. At least two hundred people at the other
tables knew what had gone on between us, including Mary Patterson of
the _News_, Joe’s widow.

Ed mumbled his few opening words without looking at me. I know the
whole room was hoping I’d let fly. I said: “Thank you very much, Mr.
Sullivan. That is the most beautiful introduction you have ever given
me.” Then I went on with my speech.

“I expected fireworks,” Mary Patterson told me afterward.

“I wouldn’t do that to Mary Martin,” said I.

If this was television, they could keep it. Never in my life had
anything like the brawl with “Stoneface” happened to me. Maybe a TV
camera brings out the worst in people, though some of them do all right
without much prompting.

I’ve known Elsa Maxwell for years. I met her long before she came out
to Hollywood under contract to Darryl Zanuck to stage a party for him
in a picture he was producing with Linda Darnell as its star. Elsa’s
inspiration was to dress every male as Abraham Lincoln and have two
poodles dancing on a piano. Then she booked herself a lecture at the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium on her perennial theme: “How to
Give a Party.” For a solid hour, while the audience fidgeted, she
eulogized Zanuck. After the performance she found she’d run into a
roadblock. The backers of her lecture refused to pay her fee. “Go ahead
and sue,” they said cheerfully. “You never got around to your subject.
Let Zanuck pay you.”

I dutifully reported this in the column and added: “If she thinks she’s
going to collect any money from Zanuck, she’s out of her ever-loving
mind.” By way of reply, she sent me a large, fragrant bunch of catnip.
Another feud was on.

While she was visiting Hollywood as Evelyn Walsh McLean’s guest, Elsa
organized a victory party to celebrate the liberation of Paris toward
the end of World War II. It was set up in the garden of the Countess
di Frasso, complete with special outdoor stage, footlights, spotlights,
and special effects all supplied by Mr. F. B. Nightingale, a minor
celebrity of Beverly Hills, sometimes known as “the wizard of light,”
who was recommended to Elsa by Lady Mendl.

“Why not make it complete by inviting some GI’s? You’ll have a lot of
vacant seats at the back,” I suggested to Elsa.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” she said. “It isn’t a party for them, it’s
for my friends.”

Nevertheless, it was a beauty, with top stars singing and dancing in
Mr. Nightingale’s extravaganza. He was so proud of his job that he
donated his and his assistants’ labor to the cause, and charged only
$200 for materials. He sent a succession of bills to Elsa. They went
unanswered.

Finally, Lady Mendl called me. “This is dreadful. Mr. Nightingale needs
that money.”

“Oh, come on, Elsie,” said I. “Let’s each send him a check for $100 and
forget it.” She was willing, but not Mr. Nightingale. He sent Elsa a
receipted bill to which he added a postscript: “Your friends Lady Mendl
and Hedda Hopper took care of it.”

Within forty-eight hours I had a telephone call from Elsa, and I got
a $100 check from her one day after that. Elsie Mendl had to wait two
weeks. But she didn’t have a daily column.

Elsa has boasted: “I’m full of beans. You can’t embarrass an old woman
like me.” Four of her friends once sat together at luncheon in the
Beverly Hills Hotel. Each came from a different city, and each was
well up in society. One woman steered the conversation to the subject
of their common friend: “I felt desperately sorry for her when Elsa’s
mother died in Los Angeles. She sent me a cable from Paris, saying she
hadn’t a bean and would I cable $3000 so she could bury her mother. Of
course, I was happy to.”

The woman across the table broke in. “But I had the same kind of cable,
and I sent the money. It was I who buried Elsa’s mother.”

The third woman could scarcely believe her ears. “But I mailed Elsa a
check for the same purpose.”

The fourth of them, who lived in San Francisco, said quietly: “You are
all mistaken. My husband knew Elsa and her mother well. He had several
cables from Elsa like that over the years. Finally, she convinced him
she was telling the truth one day, but he went down to Los Angeles to
make certain. Sure enough, her mother had died. My husband took care of
her funeral.”

Elsa and I met again in San Francisco, during the birth there of the
United Nations in 1945. Ina Claire was giving a party for Averell
Harriman, who was then our ambassador to Moscow. As a joke, she
confided to six other guests, including Elsa and myself, that each of
us was the guest of honor. Harriman told us off-the-record tales of the
horrors committed by Stalin and his gang. “How can you talk like that
to us,” I demanded, “when you say just the opposite to the newspapers?”

“It couldn’t be printed,” was his only reply.

Elsa sailed away with that party, if you could believe what she wrote
about it. She was Ina Claire’s real guest of honor--so Elsa said. Her
special brand of self-promotion demands that she has a celebrated name
to play on. She built her own reputation by using other people’s names,
such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as the drawing card. She took
up Maria Callas, and with the burning-eyed prima donna beside her, Elsa
could attract virtually anybody into the Maxwell circle.

I was introduced to Callas and her then husband, Giovanni Battista
Meneghini, by Henry Sell, who runs _Town and Country_ magazine. He gave
a luncheon for the three of us at Pavillon. I did my bit, in turn, by
introducing Maria to some people sitting directly across from us who
were members of the board of the San Francisco Opera. “Why don’t you
get her to open your season?” I prompted. Later, it was arranged that
she would do just that, in _Lucia di Lammermoor_, the coming September
and, in October, also launch the Los Angeles season.

But before either event could take place, Callas went to Europe and
met Elsa, who fell hook, line, and sinker for her. The verbal bouquets
blossomed in every Maxwell column. Overnight, Maria became “my favorite
friend ... La Prima Donna del Mondo ... a goddess ... a joy forever.”
She was out until all hours, caught up in a hectic round of parties.
Preparations for _Lucia_ got lost by the wayside. Only a matter of days
before she was due to arrive in San Francisco, she canceled out.

Elsa couldn’t forgive what I promptly wrote about her loved one,
Maria: “The day of the temperamental opera star is over; has been for
some time. Her rich husband, a businessman, should know you can’t do
business that way.” San Francisco opera lovers couldn’t forgive Maria.

She wrote me from Milan: “If I wouldn’t always be in this nervous
tension caused by these constant attacks by the papers and dishonest
people and dishonest, jealous colleagues and so many other stupid
things of artistic life, I would have nothing wrong with me. My nerves
can stand just so much and not more. I’m sorry that I’m troubling you
with these ridiculous things, but I feel you must know exactly how
things are.... If you drop me a line, I’d be grateful, and please
consider me your sincere friend.” She proved that in 1961 in Mallorca,
when we had a jolly old time together.

Elsa couldn’t let it go at that. Thanks to Jack Paar, she landed
herself a new job on his “Tonight” show on NBC and announced: “I have
invaded TV. The great American public loves me.” Not every member of
it, let it be said. Walter Winchell threatened to sue all twelve of
Paar’s sponsors for $2,000,000 apiece after Jack and his companion had
raised questions about Walter’s role as a good citizen.

Miss Maxwell decided to take it out on me, though I didn’t see her
crowning performance. John Royal, NBC vice president, telephoned me the
following morning about it. “She went on and tried to distort you,” he
said. “I suggest you call your lawyer and get a transcript of what she
said. More than that, make them show you a tape of the show. We tried
to get her off the air once before when she talked about somebody on
Broadway and made a gesture indicating the woman was crazy.”

“Why don’t you get her off now?”

“We can’t. Paar loves her. But if she slanders you, you can get her
off. Put your lawyer on to it.” My New York lawyers are also the
_News’_ lawyers. They insisted on a transcription from NBC. Their
considered opinion was that Elsa stopped just short of libel. “What she
wants,” they said, “is the publicity you and your circulation could
give her. Our advice is ‘Don’t let her have it.’”

Not long ago Dave Chasen came across to the table at which I was
sitting in his restaurant. In tow he had a dapper young man in a blue
blazer with brass buttons. “Hedda,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Jack
Paar.”

After we’d exchanged our how-do-you-do’s, I asked: “Mr. Paar, why do
you hate newspaper people? They’ve been very good to you. You wouldn’t
be where you are today but for them.” I thought he was going into his
tears-in-the-eye routine, but I pressed on. “I certainly should hate
you for what Elsa Maxwell did to me.”

“What did she say?” he asked, all innocence.

“I have a transcription in my office, though I don’t carry it around in
my purse. But tell me, why do you hate newspaper people?” He excused
himself and went off. I thought he was going to burst out crying.

By this time Jack Paar and Elsa Maxwell, who belong to the same cradle
but a generation apart, had gone their separate ways. The Paar staff
told me several times: “He’s very anxious to have you on his show.” But
I refused. The inscrutable workings of television may have made Jack a
bigger name than Bob Hope or Jack Benny, but insults leave a bad taste
in the mouth.

My fellow target on the Paar show, Walter Winchell, did not always see
eye to eye with me. We used to suffer from a chronic case of mutual
astigmatism as far as the other was concerned. The symptoms developed
rapidly during the war, when he was shunted off by the United States
Navy on a mission to South America. Walter raised no objections except:
who was going to look after his Sunday night radio show for the Andrew
Jergens Company?

The chosen candidate to replace him was Hopper. But W.W. screamed in
pain at the thought. What happened next is best told in its distinctive
press style by _Daily Variety_ dated December 7, 1942, one year
precisely after Pearl Harbor:

    Hedda Hopper got caught among numerous complications last week
    that ended up in John Gunther, Robert St. John and Baukage
    taking over the Walter Winchell Jergens spot on the NBC chain
    last night instead of she.

    Last Monday morning, Lennen-Mitchell agency handling the
    account made a deal with Dema Harshbarger, manager for
    Miss Hopper, to have the latter replace Winchell on the
    fifteen-minute period during his absence abroad. On Tuesday,
    confirmation came through from New York on the Hopper deal, and
    Jack Andrews, of the agency, was en route to Hollywood to start
    the ball rolling.

    Miss Hopper in the meantime was preparing to take over the task
    when Thursday night she received a wire from New York informing
    her that due to complications the deal for her to fill the spot
    was off....

    In radio circles it is understood that the Jergens outfit had
    changed its mind about having Miss Hopper replace Winchell
    after Andrews had been authorized to engage her for the
    December 6 broadcast. Also that the client had reversed its
    plan to engage her for the spot following Winchell, now
    occupied by the Parker family, starting January 3.

And that’s how Louella Parsons got the job following Winchell and
stayed on the air four years.

It was clearly the moment for me to do a little yelling of my own,
with some assistance from my attorneys, Gang, Kopp and Tyre. Our
disagreement with Jergens and that company’s advertising agency was
settled out of court. I received a check for $16,670. Walter took sly
digs at me in his column as part of his own personal war effort clear
through V-J day.

Then when the United Nations Charter was being framed in San
Francisco, Hubbell Robinson of CBS asked me to fly up there to do two
fifteen-minute broadcasts a week. I was to give the woman’s angle on
the birth pangs of the world’s new peace baby. “I’d like to try,” I
said, “even if it’s a long way from doing a Hollywood column. If I fall
on my face, at least I shall have learned something.” I already had a
once-a-week show for Armour and Company.

I flew my crew and myself up, expecting that a big network like CBS
would have laid on all the necessary arrangements for us, since I was
working for nothing and paying all my own expenses there. Not a bit of
it. For my first show, interviewing some women delegates and wives of
delegates from the founding nations, I learned two minutes before we
went on the air that no announcer had been provided.

I scurried into the corridor outside the studio and grabbed the first
man in sight. “Can you read?” He nodded, startled. “Then come on in.
Here’s the script. I’ll give you a nod when it’s time, and you start
reading where it says ‘Announcer.’”

We got on and we got off without casualties. Years later, when I was
interviewing that calm, cool, and collected young man, Jack Webb, he
said to me: “You know, you put me on radio, where I got started in show
business. I was the guy you kidnaped one day in a CBS corridor in San
Francisco. I was just out of uniform and needed a job.”

The first hesitant and somehow inspired sessions of the General
Assembly were held in the San Francisco Opera House. Only the year
before, I’d sat in a box there admiring the ladies and the glitter of
a fashionable crowd listening to Puccini. Strictly as an observer of
how the world was waging the peace, so I thought, I sat squeezed into
one of the boxes of the Diamond Horseshoe with H. V. Kaltenborn on one
side, Bill Henry on the other, and Walter Winchell to the rear with his
knees digging into my back.

Walter was delivering some staccato comments into a microphone when a
sound engineer tapped me on the shoulder: “You’re on next,” said he,
“and you’ll have five minutes.” This was Friday.

“But I don’t start until Monday,” I whispered. Too late. I was on. I
closed my eyes and prayed. I had no more idea than the man in the moon
what I was going to say.

With my eyes closed, I thought how different it was now from the last
time I’d been there. I said into the microphone: “The entire Diamond
Horseshoe is now taken over by the press, cameras, radio equipment. Not
one of the people who sat here a year ago is with us. They’re up in the
gallery, and happy to be there because we’re all here for one reason,
to help bring peace to a troubled world.”

I went on like that for five minutes. When I’d finished, Winchell
thrust out his hand and said: “I’d like to congratulate you. I couldn’t
have done that for the life of me.” And so we made up, and we’ve been
good friends ever since.




_Fourteen_


Every time I go out on the town twisting, I murmur a silent apology to
Elvis Presley. I realize that I’m indulging in the same gyrations that
pushed Sir Swivel Hips along the road to fame. I told him in a note not
long ago: “You’ll be surprised to know that I’m now doing the twist.
Not as well as you, but I’m doing it. I have taken one inch off my
waist and two off my _derrière_. Now I know how you keep so thin.”

When I originally saw the act, I was horrified. I said so, loud and
clear. He was rolling around on the stage floor of the Pan Pacific
Auditorium in Hollywood with his arms and legs wrapped around the
microphone as though they were bride and groom. Nine thousand teens
shrieked with excitement as he wiggled, jiggled, and bumped, and six
husky policemen looked the other way. At the crucial point, from my
front-row seat for opening night, I saw him give his bandsmen a broad
wink that spoke volumes.

The policemen’s job was to keep the hands of the audience off the
boy. He’s been manhandled so often by his frantic fans that he’s
scared he’ll be torn to shreds someday, suffering the same fate as his
shirts and suits. “If anyone comes down the aisle,” the loud-speakers
announced, “Elvis will go off stage and not come back.” In his gold
jacket with white lapels, he twisted and writhed for an hour, belting
out the whole skull-cracking repertoire, from “Heartbreak Hotel” to
“Jailhouse Rock.”

It was like a neighbor of ours in Altoona, who had fits, fell down, and
squirmed on the sidewalk. Mother told me it was an illness and not to
be upset. I hadn’t heard then about epilepsy.

The next day the Los Angeles police told Elvis to clean it up and
tone it down. That night the six cops had their backs to the audience
to make sure he did. I’d said my piece in the column: “Every muscle
jerks as though he were a marionette. I’ve seen performers dragged off
to jail for less. But Elvis’ audience got the emotional impact of the
lines and screamed their undying love for the greatest phenomenon I’ve
seen in this century.”

Time passed, but it doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds. When Norman
Taurog, who directed Elvis in _G.I. Blues_, came up with the idea that
his star and I should get together for luncheon, I fancied Presley
might be tempted to swat me. “He isn’t what you expect,” Norman
promised, so I went along, ready to keep my guard up.

I’ve seldom been more mistaken about anybody. I hadn’t been with Elvis
five minutes when we were cozy as old pals who’ve been dragged apart
and have a lot of talking to make up. His manners would have put
Lord Chesterfield to shame. His face was firm, lean and unlined as a
four-year-old’s. “What did you do with sideburns and the pompadour?” I
asked.

“The army barber got the sideburns, and I gave the pompadour to the
Sealy company to stuff mattresses with.”

“I’m one of those who felt you were a menace to young people who
imitate you without realizing what they--or you--are doing.”

I must have sounded defensive. He smiled. “I gathered that. You can’t
make everyone like you, but I try.” He toyed with a container of
yoghurt, a bottle of Pepsi, and a cup of black coffee--nothing more. I
remember how he used to lunch on a huge mound of mashed potatoes and
a bowl of gravy, meat, tomatoes, a quart of milk, with half a dozen
slices of thickly buttered bread to top it off.

Two years in the Army had brought many changes. I found that out
when I talked with his commanding officer in Berlin. “I’d be happy
if I had ten thousand more like him,” said the C.O. Sergeant Elvis,
the highest-paid entertainer that ever lived, realized only $12 a
month of his $145 pay because it was subject to ninety-one per cent
surtax. But the trade in Presley souvenirs--a fantastic assortment
of shirts, slacks, ties, statues, masks, dog tags, records, and sheet
music--brought in $3,000,000 while he was out of civilian circulation.

He’s one of the few new faces in our industry who has been promoted
into a living legend, and we need dream stuff like Elvis to survive. He
owes his reputation to the labors of “Colonel” Tom Parker, the old-time
carny and circus hand who isn’t above peddling photographs and programs
at his protégé’s personal appearances to boost the take. He and his
wife are childless; he’s quick to say he loves Elvis like a son. The
“colonel,” with eyes like ball bearings and a mind like a bear trap,
acts the part of the hick from the sticks in business dealings. “I only
went to fifth grade” is his line, “so I have to go slow.” Elvis’ role
is to create the impression of the country boy whose head is still
awhirling from the bedazzling luck that’s befallen him.

“Sometimes a silly tale starts a lot of repercussions,” he told me.
“One time I was out at the beach with some fellows throwing baseballs
at milk bottles lined up in a booth. I kept on winning Teddy bears, and
I gave them to the kids that gathered round. Then somebody printed a
story that I owned a collection of Teddy bears. Ever since then they’ve
been coming in from all over the world. I’ve got an attic full of them
at my home in Graceland, Memphis. All kinds of bears, some in tuxedos,
some dressed like me with guitars strapped to them. It’s fantastic.”

Elvis is an identical twin whose brother died at birth. His mother, who
could bear no more children after that, is dead, too. That combination
of circumstances may go toward explaining his built-in fear of being
left alone, which keeps a hand-picked group of wiry young men, roughly
his own age, constantly with him as companions, bodyguards, chauffeurs,
and partners in judo and karate, two pastimes he picked up in the Army.
The group includes his cousin, Gene Smith, an army buddy from Chicago,
and boyhood pals from Memphis. If they’re temporarily unwanted in his
company, they melt away in the flick of an eye.

The “colonel,” drawing on his circus experience, has seen to it that
nobody has ever been hurt in any of the public melees that have a habit
of building up around Elvis. But it makes for a secluded private life.
When he’s in the mood to roller-skate, another hobby, he escapes the
crowds by hiring an entire rink for the evening. He drops in at night
clubs with his little gang and their dates only after the lights have
dimmed for the floor show, and he leaves in a hurry if he’s recognized.

The same routine applies to his movie going--he sits in the last row
and high-tails out if anybody stops by to stare. Every time he leaves
his rented Bel Air home for the studio, he and his companions travel
in two Cadillacs, one driven hard on the tail of the other. The same
compulsion for protection from who knows what sometimes results in
his being delivered to an auditorium or arena where he’s singing in a
moving van, lying on a couch.

He works conscientiously at a long list of charities in semi-secrecy.
In twelve months he will raise as much as $118,000 for benefits; prides
himself that every cent of it goes to the chosen cause with nothing
subtracted off the top for expenses. “We buy our own tickets, and no
free tickets are handed out to anybody. We pay every entertainer on the
program. When the benefit’s over, we give local newspapers a story in
which every item of money is accounted for.”

Sooner or later, he says, he aims at becoming a good actor. It looks as
though he’ll have to pick up his training in front of the cameras as
Gary Cooper and many others did. He isn’t depending on the gyrations
any longer. “They call it the twist, but it’s the same thing I’ve done
for six years. The old wiggle is on the way out now.”

Apart from sensations like Elvis, the only place a young entertainer
can get training is in television. The studio schools, where promising
beginners were compelled to go to classes in speech, drama, dancing,
or what have you, were disbanded years ago. The studios claimed they
couldn’t afford them any longer. There’s very little point in a raw
recruit trying to crash Hollywood today. My advice, if anybody asks
for it, is: “Start in New York; get on TV; do bits on Broadway; then
take a stab at movies. Otherwise, you’re going to find California can
be a great spot to starve in.”

Elvis is lucky, too, in having an agent like the “colonel,” whose itch
for money hasn’t outpaced his protégé’s talents. A good agent doesn’t
allow his client to take on more than he can handle. Too many ten
per centers slaver for the quick buck. They’re not content to wait a
week longer than necessary. So the youngsters are booked into night
clubs, TV, personal appearances, fairgrounds, and every imaginable
kind of fee-paying frolic. In that rat race, a greedy agent can kill
a promising newcomer’s career in two years flat. I’ve seen it happen
too often. The agents don’t care. Ten per cent of a boy’s murdered
future is zero, but there are always plenty more lambs to lead to the
slaughter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Before I met him, I had an earful of Elvis one day from Natalie Wood.
She was tough, very young, starry-eyed and burningly ambitious. All the
beaux were after her like a pack of hound dogs--Nicky Hilton, Lance
Reventlow, Jimmy Dean, Nicky Adams, Johnny Grant, Dennis Hopper, Bob
Neal, and as many more. But she was crazy for Elvis. She has every
record he ever made.

She wasn’t only crazy for him. She was mad for stuffed toy tigers,
including one that played “_Ach du Lieber Augustine_.” She wouldn’t
ride on a plane without taking aboard, to read during the flight, a wad
of unopened “good luck” notes written by her friends saying how glad
they were that she’d arrived safely. She also took some tigers along as
talismans. She went through a phase of wearing nothing but black, clear
down to all her underwear. She drove a decorator way out of his mind by
ordering black drapes and black furniture for her bedroom, where rugs
and walls were chalk white. At that time, she was going on eighteen
years old, all but four of them spent making movies.

“My father said he didn’t want his child to be an actress,” she once
told me, “but my mother took me on a train to Hollywood to see Irving
Pichel, who gave me a bit in _Happy Land_, on location in Santa Rosa.
In my scene I had to drop an ice-cream cone and cry.”

There was no turning back after that. She used to pose in the darkness
of movie theaters because her mother, youthful-looking Mrs. Maria
Gurdin, an ex-ballet dancer, used to pretend the cameras that ground
away in the last fade-out of the newsreel were focused on Natalie. By
the time she was eight she had appeared in court, calm and collected,
to squeeze a pay increase, up to $1000 a week, from her studio.

The build-up toward an earful of Elvis began at breakfast in the new
Hilton hotel in Mexico City. A crowd of us had gone down for its
opening, including Nicky Hilton and Bob Neal, who qualified in trumps
for the phrase beloved of society gossip columnists, “a millionaire
playboy.” Over coffee, he came in and whispered that he’d just slashed
every tire on young Hilton’s automobile, “so Natalie will have to ride
with me.”

Limousines were to take us to catch a plane home to Los Angeles. But
Nicky foxed Bob. He took another car, and Natalie, to the airport. If
either of the two swains thought he’d furthered his cause, he was dead
wrong. En route, we landed for twenty-five minutes to refuel, and I
went with Natalie to the waiting room, where a mammoth jukebox stood
waiting to be fed. Like a thirsty traveler who’s reached the oasis,
she pumped nickels and dimes into the maw of the thing to make it play
Presley nonstop from the moment we arrived until we left.

She got as far as riding on the back of Elvis’ motorcycle and staying
with Elvis at his home “because I wanted a vacation and a rest--his
parents were there all the time.” But the passion soon faded. “Since
he’s in town, why don’t you see him?” I asked her soon after her return.

She shrugged. “He’s busy and I’m working.” Did she think the vogue
for him would last? She shrugged again. “That depends on how he does
in his next picture.” Within a matter of weeks she had married Robert
Wagner.

This pair of newlyweds made lovebirds look like scorpions. This was
the couple that invented “togetherness.” In private or in public made
no difference; they held hands, kissed, clutched each other in an
altogether nauseating display of coltish affection. The fan magazines
drooled over Bob and Natalie as the symbol of all young lovers. They
bought a boat and painted it together. They bought a $175,000 house
with marble floors and went into debt together.

When Warners suspended her for eighteen months, she sat out her time on
the sets of Bob’s pictures, nuzzling him between takes. The marriage
lasted three years. In that time, the career of Bob Wagner, who started
out as a caddie carrying clubs for Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy at
a Beverly Hills country club, slowed down considerably, while his
wife’s took wings. Togetherness turned into that delight of the divorce
attorneys, “mutual incompatibility,” and Natalie cut fan-magazine
interviews out of her life completely.

As an actress, she’s always been a child wonder. Orson Welles remembers
her vividly in her first major part, with him in _Tomorrow Is
Forever_: “She was so good she was terrifying. I guess she was born a
professional.” In her teens, when there was nothing better to do, she’d
collect a bunch of young actors together to improvise scenes with her,
which she immortalized on her tape recorder. On top of the world at
twenty-three, she drew $250,000 for _West Side Story_, with more money
promised from Warners.

She yearns to do more live TV, which her contract allows, as a
prelude to Broadway. “The last five minutes before you start, while
you’re waiting for the first cue, is like being poised on a roller
coaster, before it swoops down. When it’s over, you feel you’ve really
accomplished something.”

Off camera, she is a ninety-eight-pound kitten who gazes adoringly
upward from her 5 feet 2 inches at the current man who takes her fancy.
Warren Beatty jumped into that category when they worked together in
_Splendor in the Grass_, and he dumped Joan Collins after two years of
going steady. Joan turned down four pictures so she could stay with her
ambling heartthrob. They’d talked about a wedding.

This very sexy member of the new male generation came to me to ask: “Do
you think I should marry Joan?” He received a quizzical look. “If you
can put that question, you know the answer.”

Warren isn’t alone among young actors of any generation in having an
eye for the publicity mileage to be obtained from a newsy romance. As
for Natalie, she wasn’t talking about marrying anybody, by her account.
Like most young actresses, she can’t be taken seriously on the subject.
Two months before she married Bob Wagner, she was saying much the same
thing.

When she was seventeen, she had one concealed admirer who lost fifty
pounds in weight while the torch burned him. Raymond Burr specialized
in menace roles when they worked together in _Cry in the Night_. She
was the screaming heroine, he was the kidnaper who had the audience
chewing its fingernails down to the knuckle wondering whether he would
kill her or rape her before the final fade-out.

I had Ray literally at my feet when I met him for the first time. I
used to lunch most every day with Dema Harshbarger in the garden of
Ivar House, a restaurant now demolished which used to stand around the
corner from my office. One day a husky fellow was laying bricks in the
patio where we were sitting, and we had to keep moving our chairs to
make way for him.

I finally looked down and saw a handsome face and a very large body.
“You don’t look to me like a bricklayer,” said I.

“I’m not; I’m an actor.”

“Then what are you doing this for?” If looks could kill, I wouldn’t be
here, he was so mad. He quit his job that night and never laid another
brick.

Ray Burr enjoys food, to put it mildly. When he fell for Natalie, he
made up his mind to reduce. As the pounds melted off, he progressed
from heavy to hero, though he made no headway with her. And that’s how
lean, hawk-eyed Perry Mason was born. This I learned after he’d been on
the show for a year.

Most of the action in Hollywood today centers on television. In the
spring of 1962, only a half dozen motion pictures were in production
there, while TV studios churned out hour shows and half-hour shows
literally by the hundred. MCA alone owned 403 hour and 2115 half-hour
negatives. The majority of the new faces in town are television
faces--like Raymond Burr; like Chuck Connors, who went from baseball
bats to Winchesters; like Vincent Edwards, who describes himself as “an
eleven-year overnight sensation” after serving that long a stretch in
the wilderness of odd jobs.

Ten years ago, the movies treated television the way a maiden aunt
treats sex--if she doesn’t think about it, maybe it will disappear.
But TV grew into a giant, and now it’s the odds-on favorite in
entertainment. It’s the turn of television factories like MCA to
declare, in Lew Wasserman’s words: “We think the movie industry has
made many mistakes in judgment. It has refused to face up to the need
for progress in the entertainment industry.”

David Susskind, of Talent Associates, another TV production company,
can arrive in Hollywood to make a movie, remarking pleasantly: “This
town is dedicated to pap. Show business here is founded on quicksand.
The people are quick to take offense at criticism because they have
a guilt complex. They know they’re turning out commercialized junk.
Basically, they are ashamed of it, and they’re defensive.”

Neither the television industry nor Mr. Susskind used to be quite so
cocksure, and working in TV was a lot more fun before the craze to
put every show on film. David got his start in our town as a junior
publicity man at Universal-International. He sat for three days in an
agent’s waiting room, trying for an interview with the boss before he
clicked and was invited to join the staff there.

“We don’t pay much--we’re a new business,” Al Levy told his new boy
in those days before Marty Melcher and Dick Dorso squeezed him out of
Century Artists.

“I must have $100 a week,” said David. “I’ve got two children to
support.” That was what the little fellow was paid, $100 and no more,
when he wet his feet as an agent’s assistant. After the breakup of
Century Artists over Doris Day, David aligned himself on Al Levy’s side
and went to New York with him in a shaky new business called Talent
Associates.

After a few months of getting nowhere, the company’s bank balance had
sunk to ten dollars. Al felt the fair thing to do was see whether he
could help David land another, more secure job elsewhere. He introduced
him to Sonny Werblen of MCA, and David enlisted in the regiment of
cold-eyed young men in charcoal-gray suits who are MCA’s shock troops.

Over the next three and a half years Al Levy pounded a lot of
sidewalks. Television was still the runt of the entertainment industry.
Hollywood jeered at the little black box, with its nightly parade of
women roller skaters, bicycle riders, and grunt-and-groan artists in
the wrestling ring. In advertising agencies the money was in the big
radio shows--Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.
The head of the agency TV department was usually tucked away in a
windowless cubicle next to the mail room. Radio had networks stretching
from coast to coast, television was in the chrysalis stage, centered in
a few cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Talent Associates began to get lucky when it signed Janet Blair, who’d
been dropped by Columbia after seven years making pictures. Levy had
seen June Allyson do a movie song-and-dance number with the Blackburn
Twins. He put Janet in with the twins to make up a similar act, which
ultimately was booked into the Wedgwood Room of the Waldorf-Astoria.
Richard Rodgers saw Janet there, signed her for the road company of
_South Pacific_, which kept her going for three years.

Al’s hustling meantime was paying off, though nobody was making any
fortune on the prices television paid. His agency put Wally Cox,
Tony Randall, Marion Lorne, and Jack Warden into the first of the
situation-comedy series, “Mr. Peepers”--with a price tag of $14,500,
which had to be stretched to pay for everything from script to hire of
a studio. The Associates also had the “Philco Playhouse,” an hour-long
dramatic series for which they were paid $27,000 to cover everything
but actual air time. “Playhouse” had stars like Eli Wallach, Eva Marie
Saint, Grace Kelly in Scott Fitzgerald’s “Rich Boy”--the finest talents
in the theater. I even did a couple of shows myself.

After three and a half years soldiering for MCA, David Susskind
received his marching orders. He hadn’t won any medals as a salesman
or contact man. He wanted to be a bigger noise than that. I suspect
that David’s ambitions spouted the day he was born. He talked over his
problems over breakfast in a Schrafft’s restaurant on Madison Avenue.
As a result, he was taken back into Talent Associates on a six-month
trial.

They had their offices in a six-room apartment on East Fifty-second
Street, rented for $210 a month. A secretary and switchboard operator
occupied the living room. The master bedroom was the main office. In
bedroom number two sat the script writers, pounding out “Mr. Peepers.”
The back bedroom comprised the quarters of Ernie Martin and Cy Feuer,
who had the space on a work-now-pay-later arrangement while they
labored to produce a show that developed into the Broadway hit of the
season, _Guys and Dolls_.

Ernie said to me not long ago, after he and his partner had five hits
in a row, including _How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying_:
“Hedda, you made me $3,000,000.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never did any such thing.”

“You drove me out of Hollywood,” he said. “I had to quit radio or get
an ulcer.” Then I remembered. Ernie, a CBS vice president at the age
of twenty-nine, was responsible for censoring my radio scripts for my
weekly show. I always popped in three or four items which I knew hadn’t
a hope in hell of getting on the air. I’d fight over those paragraphs
until the red light glowed and I was on. That kept Ernie and his legal
eagles so busy they didn’t have time to argue over the items I really
wanted to get off my chest.

The secretary in the living room doubled as cook in the kitchen for
luncheon. Meat balls and spaghetti were ladled out to the hungry mob of
writers, actors, and directors who haunted the place at mealtimes. “Do
you have to smell up the place with all that cooking?” Martin and Feuer
would steadily complain. But since they were on the free list until
later in the matter of paying rent, spaghetti and meat balls stayed on
the menu.

The business was loaded with talents, a bunch of enthusiastic young men
who had tremendous fun in the brand-new medium that was just beginning
to grow. There were directors who went on to earn international
reputations--Delbert Mann, Arthur Penn, Robert Mulligan, Vincent
Donehue. There were the writers who set the future pattern for drama on
TV--Paddy Chayevsky, David Swift, Horton Foote, James Miller. There was
Fred Coe as producer. And David, who developed an itch to produce.

When his six-month trial was over, he was kept on for a further six.
Then Levy went into the hospital for a series of operations and stayed
out of the business for a year. Al Levy, who has since died, was a good
and dear man; he left a glow in every life he touched.

David, meantime, had turned from selling to producing, and he proved
himself to be good at it. He helped carry the business right to the
top in reputation and influence. But he wanted to make a louder noise.
He took on “Open End,” the TV gab fest, and fell flat on his face more
than once as a would-be Socrates, most notably when Nikita Khrushchev
decided to pay him a visit.

The most flabbergasted man in television when that happened was David.
On a previous show he’d had a panel of United Nations diplomats,
including a Russian. “I’d like to have Mr. Khrushchev himself if he
ever cares to come,” David said casually, as much as to say: “If your
wife’s coming to town, stop by for a drink sometime.”

One day his telephone rang. The Russians were happy to announce
that Khrushchev would be David’s guest. Within a matter of hours
anti-Communist pickets were parading outside Talent Associates, David’s
family needed police protection, and his own life had been threatened.
For the program, he armed himself with a few carefully prepared words
with which to prod Mr. K. and prove that David was no red flag waver.
But it was like a gadfly fighting back at the swatter. David did no
good for himself or America.

He would have been wiser to stick to easier targets like Hollywood,
most of whose inhabitants are personally too scared to hit back. He
has taken a swing at Dick Powell, Jerry Lewis, Rock Hudson, Gina
Lollobrigida, and Tony Curtis, and only Tony has ever come back
fighting. “I’ve never met Mr. Susskind,” said Tony, after David had
blasted him for having “no talent and no taste.” “And when I do I’m
going to punch him right in the nose.”

David, who is unfortunately seldom at a loss for words, had his
answer ready: “If I’m not the biggest admirer of Tony Curtis’ talent,
I’ve never questioned his virility or strength. He is, in my book, a
passionate amoeba.”

Playing in television, which used to be more fun than a picnic, is more
like a salt mine now. The latest generation of TV actors, if they click
in a hit program, slave six and seven days a week to keep the series
going. The new faces soon show signs of bags under the eyes and crows’
feet.

“Ben Casey” is a case in point. Vincent Edwards, who plays the surly,
sexy young surgeon in that hour-long, weekly series, enjoyed one day
off in the first eight months of production. “We’re in such a bind,” he
told me, “we take seven days to shoot a show to keep up the quality.
And we’re only four shows ahead of screening time.”

He has the physique of a young bull, and he needs it. He started
building muscle as a young swimmer; won scholarships to Ohio State
and the University of Hawaii on the strength of his backstroke.
Proving again the old axiom that actors are healthiest when they’re
out of jobs, his idle years on Hollywood gave him time to go out to
the Santa Monica beaches to pick up a permanent sun tan and hoist
seventy-five-pound bar bells over his head.

He came in to see me wearing a dark suit, red T shirt, and red socks.
His lunch came with him--a mixture of carrot, papaya, pineapple,
and cocoanut juice, helped down with yoghurt and a sandwich. “TV’s
a marathon,” he said. “I think the grind probably contributed to
the death of Ward Bond on ‘Wagon Train.’ I arrive at the studio at
seven-fifteen in the morning, and I’m there until seven-fifteen at
night. By the time I’m cleaned up, it’s later than that when I get
away. On Friday nights it’s usually ten or eleven.”

He has an agent, Abby Greschler, who developed Martin and Lewis in
his earlier days and who was responsible for snagging the “Ben Casey”
assignment for the thirty-five-year-old giant born Vincent Edward Zoine
of Brooklyn. Abby is celebrated in our town for turning away wrath
whenever it arises. He interrupts any harsh words from his clients by
smiling ingratiatingly and asking: “Now how’re the wife and kids?”

He can’t use this trick with Vince because somehow he’s escaped
marriage. “I’ve been at the starting gate a few times, but I rear
up and throw my head back. My most serious romances have been with
dancers.”

“Why dancers?”

“They’ve always been so healthy, most that I’ve known. Julie Newmar and
I used to date off and on for years. She’s a health-food addict, too;
makes the most exotic salads.” Diet is a fetish with him. “Foods in a
natural state” are the mainstay. He recently showed signs of interest
in a girl, Sherry Nelson, who is a jockey’s widow but addicted only to
live horseflesh--they play the ponies at the track together.

Besides an agent, he also had a pile of debts when “Ben Casey” came his
way. So Greschler booked him, for extra money, into things like the
Dinah Shore TV show, which demanded rehearsing at night after the day’s
stint on “Casey.” For those appearances he sings in a surprisingly good
baritone voice. He once did some ballads and rock ’n’ roll for Capitol
Records. “Five years ago one called ‘Lollipop’ got up to number three
on the hit list, but we’ll forget that,” Vince said in my office. “I’m
afraid the image wouldn’t hold up under it.”

The “image” is an invention of himself and Abby Greschler. It’s
straight Madison Avenue talk, but it’s the immemorial style among
Hollywood agents to convince the public that every star is superhuman.
Casey is supposed to be what Vince has described as a “godlike kind of
man,” a mixture of Gable, Brando, and Albert Schweitzer. Just to liven
the picture up, Vince has got to be a maverick in his clothes, like the
red T shirt, the black shirt and slacks he sported for Dinah Shore.

Greschler has a three-year plan for his protégé which calls for the two
of them to form one or more corporations to produce movies with Vince
as their star. At the end of the period Dr. Ben will supposedly finish
up a millionaire. “If you have to make pictures, what would you like to
do?” I asked him.

“Anything but a doctor. I doubt if I’ll ever play one again. I’m so
identified with it. I’m only going to do it for three seasons.”

“You’ll do it for five, they’ll offer you so much money.”

“As I sit in this office, I will make a vow. I will say: ‘I’m sorry, I
pass. My health is more important.’”

“Ben Casey” has one bit of pleasure he can count on. “I stay up and
watch my own TV show. I have to have some reward for all this work.”

       *       *       *       *       *

There is one face in entertainment that’s new and old simultaneously.
Old because it’s been around ever since Mickey Mouse starred in
_Steamboat Willie_. New because the old master has been conjuring up a
project--it tells American history with life-sized, animated figures of
our presidents--that’s as revolutionary as sound was when Jolson sang
“Sonny Boy.”

Walt Disney has held on tight to the common touch and contact with
everyday people. He maintains an apartment, furnished in grandmother’s
style, in one of the buildings overlooking Main Street at Disneyland.
On many a Saturday night Walt and his wife will sit up there, tweaking
back the lace curtains that cover the windows, gazing at the crowds
below like children watching a Memorial Day parade. It’s a real bit of
Americana up to date.

He doesn’t acknowledge that anything but clean, good-humored pictures
exist. He has never, to the best of my knowledge, sat through a single
reel of the off-color, highly seasoned imports from France, Japan, and
Italy that flood our screens today. By sticking to purity and fun he
makes more money than ever before--and spends it as fast as it pours in.

He once almost lost Disneyland to the bankers who had extended
necessary construction loans. But he was saved by the gong. He made a
new picture, which earned more money than anyone had anticipated, and
the big bad wolves were foiled again. The only living soul that Walt
fights with is his brother Roy, who is the professional hard guy in
Disney Productions, doomed to keep on wailing: “Walt, you’re spending
too much money.”

My own modest contribution to the bank balance consisted of badgering
Walt for five years to reissue _Snow White_, since I was convinced
that a new audience grew up every season for his picturing of this
timeless classic. In the end, he was persuaded and showed his thanks in
the heaped-up basket of presents he sent my granddaughter Joan every
Christmas.

He insisted on throwing a birthday party at his studio for her, with
her whole school class, their mothers and teachers invited. We all
watched a special showing of some Disney cartoons, then made our way to
the party, which was held in Walt’s private penthouse atop the studio
building. As the presents were handed out to every guest, ice cream and
cookies devoured, cake cut with its miniature merry-go-round playing
“Happy Birthday,” I noticed a detail that Walt had overlooked: the
walls of the room had been adorned by Disney cartoonists with murals of
rather handsomely equipped females without benefit of clothing.

One little fellow on the guest list wasn’t paying much attention to the
gifts or the goodies. His eyes were riveted on the naked girls. “I’ve
never seen ladies like that before,” he said when I went over to him.
“I like _them_. I think I’ll be an artist when I grow up.”

I relayed the incident, with a chuckle, to Walt. His permanently raised
eyebrows arched up an inch or so higher. “Oh, sure,” he grinned, “I
forgot all about those pictures. There was only one youngster staring
at them? Well, that’s all right. They won’t kill him.”




_Fifteen_


Whenever I stand up to make a speech about Hollywood, there is one
question that’s ninety-nine per cent certain to pop up from the
audience before we’re through: “Is _anybody_ in the movies happily
married?” The only answer I can give, of course, is another question:
“Who can possibly say, except the husbands and wives?” I’ve been lied
to many times when a marriage was crashing on the rocks and nobody
would admit it. Can’t say I blame them. A man and his mate have the
privilege of pretending that all is well up to the bitter end, the way
people do everywhere.

Three days before she filed suit to divorce Cary Grant, Barbara Hutton
said to me: “If only Cary and I could have a baby someday. We both love
children. We’d like to have at least three. We’re praying, both of us.
Maybe our dreams will come true.”

Barbara, Frank Woolworth’s granddaughter, was a shy, self-effacing
woman who allowed Cary to play lord of the manor in their Pacific
Palisades house, which had a staff of eleven servants. They moved into
it with her son of a former marriage, Lance Reventlow. Cary had by far
the biggest bedroom, complete with wood-burning fireplace, beautiful
antiques, private entrance, and a private bathroom approximately the
size of Marineland. Cary always liked his creature comforts. And if she
had dinner guests he didn’t care for, he didn’t come down to dinner.

He asked me to kill the interview when Barbara called quits to their
marriage seventy-two hours after she talked to me. I did him that
favor. Then he married wife number three, Betsy Drake. Number one,
Virginia Cherrill, who later found a titled husband, was the blonde
in Charles Chaplin’s _City Lights_, and she lasted less than twelve
months with Cary. Barbara lasted five years.

With Betsy, he took up hobbies, from yoga to hypnosis. The former
Archie Leach, of Bristol, England, ex-stilts walker and chorus boy,
had Betsy hypnotize him into giving up liquor and cigarettes. He
subsequently gave up Betsy, who finally sued to divorce him.

When Joe Hyams wrote a series of articles quoting Cary as saying he’d
been seeing a psychiatrist, Cary denied that he’d said a word to Joe.
That outraged reporter promptly retaliated with a $500,000 suit for
slander. It came to an unusual but amiable settlement: Cary agreed
to have Hyams collaborate with him in writing his memoirs and other
articles, with Joe collecting the full proceeds. Joe didn’t know how
lucky he was going to be. Once he got at a typewriter, Cary couldn’t be
pried loose, asked for no help whatever from his fellow author. So the
actor did the writing, and the writer drew the pay. I should be that
lucky.

If yoga can’t hold a marriage together, confession sometimes can. One
cowboy star talked himself out of a jam for which a less forgiving
woman than his wife would have thrown him out on his ear. Talking
didn’t come hard to him. He was laconic on the screen, loquacious off.
He had some tall explaining to do when the scandal-sniffing hound dogs
on the staff of _Confidential_ tracked him down on a weekend at Malibu,
spent in the company of one of our bustiest blondes, and I don’t mean
Jayne Mansfield.

The sensation hunters had compiled a timetable, at fifteen-minute
intervals; the precise time he and the girl arrived in his car; the
trip to do some shopping; the swim they took in the sea--every detail
of the three days, supported by the affidavits of witnesses. There
could be no disputing it. He couldn’t sue. Certain of that, publisher
Robert Harrison already had the story on the presses.

Howard Rushmore, the lanky, sad-eyed former Communist who quit the New
York _Journal-American_ to edit _Confidential_, gave me the tip two
weeks before the issue of the magazine was due to hit the newsstands.
“I thought you’d like to know ahead of time,” he said. “I know you’re
fond of the guy, and you might like to warn him.”

“It’s a horrible thing to have happen,” I said, “but I appreciate your
telling me.”

As soon as Rushmore left, I called the delinquent husband and got
him over to my house. “How could you do this, and just after you’re
reconciled with your wife?” I said. “If you wanted something like that
weekend, why did you go in a car that anybody can recognize? Why didn’t
you go further afield--to Santa Barbara, Laguna, La Jolla?”

“I guess I was out of my mind.”

“You must have been. You and your wife are so happy now.”

“How can I tell her?”

“Tell her the truth. Ask her to say, when her dear friends come to
gossip, that she knows all about it, and it happened a long time ago.
If you’re lucky, she’ll forgive you.”

I heard from him within an hour. “I told her,” he said, “and she was
wonderful. Now things are better than ever.” And they remained that way
until his death.

There’s probably more temptation to the square mile in our town than
anywhere else on earth. A male movie star is bait to all seven ages
of women, including female movie stars. A good-looking, virile male
can take his choice among literally thousands of girls when it comes
to romance. Some of them go into it for thrills, some in the hope
of advancing their careers. Some of them get hurt, and some do the
hurting. Many sell themselves too cheaply, a few value their favors too
highly.

Gable could have had his pick of half the women in Hollywood after the
plane carrying Carole Lombard home from a defense-bond drive crashed on
Table Rock Mountain, Nevada. He couldn’t appear in public or private
without starting a near riot. They flocked around him like moths around
a candle--duchesses, show girls, movie stars, socialites--name them,
he could have had them. He had the knack of taking just one look at a
girl and flattering her to swooning point. He looked like hundred-proof
romance, and was, unless you knew about his dental plates, a full upper
and lower set. He hadn’t a tooth of his own in his head.

As a newcomer to Hollywood, he’d faced the usual months of torment
having his teeth, which were in poor shape, fixed and capped to repair
the cavities and fill the gaps. There was one difference between Clark
and other recruits of his age group like Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy,
and Pat O’Brien. Clark had a rich wife at the time in Ria Langham. On
her money, he had all his teeth yanked and a false set installed so
natural-looking they deceived almost everybody but a dentist.

The script of _Command Decision_, filmed long after Ria had made her
exit and he’d paid her a quarter of a million dollars for the divorce,
called for a slam-bang screen battle between Clark and Walter Pidgeon,
to be staged near a fire that was blazing outdoors. The two of them
mixed it up like heavyweights. In the middle of a wild, openmouthed
swing, Clark’s uppers and lowers went sailing out of his jaw straight
into the flames. He collapsed on the ground, helpless with laughter.
“They ought to see the King of Hollywood now,” he gasped.

Clark’s dentures supplied me with the news beat that he was about to
join up as a private in the Air Corps; a friend of his dentist tipped
me off that he was making Clark an extra set of teeth, which had to be
finished before he left to enlist.

Before Clark was nabbed by Lady Sylvia Ashley, he took his fill in
high society. Millicent Rogers, married three times before, considered
him the one real man she’d ever known. The Standard Oil heiress’ first
husband was a fortune hunter, an Austrian count who revealed himself
a hidden hero when he died at the Gestapo’s hands in Budapest in
1944. Her second was “Lucky Arturo” Peralta-Ramos, who won two French
lotteries in a row then lost her. Number three was a New York broker,
who turned the tables by divorcing her.

Millicent enjoyed twelve unforgettable months with Clark before she
said good-by. In his affairs he always had to do the pursuing, as any
man should, but she made the mistake of pursuing him. If she hadn’t
revealed how much she loved him, she might have captured him. Then
he might have been spared the miserable year and a half he had with
Sylvia. Millicent sent him a farewell letter that put into words the
feelings of every woman for a man like this:

    My darling Clark:

    I want to thank you, my dear, for taking care of me last year,
    for the happiness and pleasure of the days and hours spent with
    you; for the kind, sweet things you have said to me and done
    for me in so many ways, none of which I shall forget.

    You are a perfectionist, as am I; therefore I hope you will
    not altogether forget me, that some part and moments of me
    will remain in you and come back to you now and then, bringing
    pleasure with them and a feeling of warmth. For myself, you
    will always be a measure by which I shall judge what a true man
    should be. As I never found such a one before you, so I believe
    I shall never find such a man again. Suffice that I have known
    him and that he lives....

    You gave me happiness when I was with you, a happiness because
    of you that I only thought might exist, but which until then
    I never felt. Be certain that I shall remember it. The love I
    have for you is like a rock. It was great last year. Now it is
    a foundation upon which a life is being built.

    I followed you last night as you took your young friend home.
    I am glad you kissed and that I saw you do it, because now I
    know that you have someone close to you and that you will have
    enough warmth beside you. Above all things on this earth, I
    want happiness for you.

    I am sorry that I failed you. I hope that I have made you laugh
    a little now and then; that even my long skinniness has at
    times given you pleasure; that when you held me, I gave you
    all that a man can want. That was my desire, that I should be
    always as you wished me to be.... Love is like birth; an agony
    of bringing forth. Had you so wished it, my pleasure would have
    been to give you my life to shape and mold to yours, not as a
    common gift of words but as a choice to follow you. As I shall
    do now, alone.

    You told me once that you would never hurt me. That has been
    true ... not even last night. I have failed because of my
    inadequacy of complete faith, engendered by my own desires, by
    my own selfishness, my own inability to be patient and wait
    like a lady. I have always found life so short, so terrifyingly
    uncertain.

    God bless you, most darling Darling. Be gentle with yourself.
    Allow yourself happiness. There is no paying life in advance
    for what it will do to you. It asks of one’s unarmored heart,
    and one must give it. There is no other way.... When you find
    happiness, take it. Don’t question it too much.

    Goodbye, my Clark. I love you as I always shall.

You may wonder why I am using this. Millicent gave me a copy of this
letter to read and asked if I thought she should send it to Clark. I
said: “By all means.” She never heard from him again, but I think it is
one of the most beautiful love letters I have ever read.

Millicent Rogers found nobody else, never married again. Clark, on the
other hand, got as far as proposing to another woman, Dolly O’Brien,
which was rare with him. Julius Fleischmann, with his yeast fortune,
stayed in love with his wife Dolly after she fell into the deep end
for handsome, polo-playing Jay O’Brien. When he agreed to a divorce,
he settled $6,000,000 on her. “I want you to be comfortable,” he said.
One year later Julius fell from his pony and died on the polo field,
leaving an estate of $66,000,000, which could have been the former Mrs.
Fleischmann’s if she hadn’t been in such a hurry.

Dolly, blond, blue-eyed, and full of fun, lived in style. She wouldn’t
go on a train without taking along her own bottled water, silk sheets,
and bedding. She was a lot like Carole Lombard, and Clark was searching
for another Carole. When Dolly met him a few years after Jay’s death,
he thought he’d found the woman he wanted as his wife. But Dolly turned
him down. “We live in two different worlds,” she told him. “You’re
a rich actor, I’m a rich woman. You like the outdoors, hunting and
fishing, but I’m a luxury-loving baby. Your life, frankly, would bore
me to death.”

The aging male enjoys a far better time than the average aging female.
If he’s a big enough star, the producers throw him into picture after
picture playing opposite girls young enough to be his daughters. Coop,
Gable, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne--they all were pitched into these
June-and-December screen romances, and the public finally rebelled. But
Duke Wayne was the first with sense enough to cry halt and insist on
acting his age.

Too often the wives of both stars and producers haven’t enough to do
to keep them content and out of mischief. Their husbands go to the
studio and spend their day working with beautiful girls. The girls,
wanting better parts in pictures, will do virtually anything they can
to please them. Reality and normal values got lost. The men live with
both feet off the ground. They can have any girl they try for, as easy
as plucking a peach off a tree.

When they arrive home, they often find waiting a wife who can’t compare
with the studio girls in looks. She may be complaining--I’ve heard it
a thousand times--that she’s been stuck at home with only the children
and servants for company. “Why don’t you take me out more? Why didn’t
you tell me there was a party last night? Why do you have to work so
late so often?”

It can get irksome. I am certain one reason for the flight of movie
making from Hollywood to Europe has been the pressing desire for
producers, writers, directors, and top-money stars to escape from
nagging wives. The wives, if they’re lucky, may be given a week or so
in Paris or Rome or London in the course of production. Then back they
go to the house and the children while the husbands live it up for
months on end. It’s a pattern that has set Hollywood on its ear. And
it’s crowded our divorce courts.

Louis B. Mayer married his first wife, Margaret Shenberg, daughter of
a Boston synagogue cantor, when he was nineteen and earning a meager
living as a scrap-metal dealer. He worked like a stevedore, breaking
into the entertainment business with a nickelodeon in Haverhill,
Massachusetts, where Margaret served behind the wicket selling tickets.

Then he got into the production end of movies. He dealt now not in old
iron but glamour. He was the boss of gorgeous girls, the kind he could
only have dreamed about before. Margaret stayed home, the _Hausfrau_,
unable to keep pace with him. This was a Jewish family with strong ties
of faith and custom, and Louis waited a long time before he flew the
coop. But the outcome was inevitable.

Once in New York, before the final break came, he asked me, since I
wore smart clothes and was on his payroll, to take Margaret out and
make sure she bought some decent clothes. We shopped all day, while she
tried on dress after dress, always finding some fault, usually the size
of the price tag. When we’d finished, she had just one package to show
for our pains: a new girdle, which I insisted upon.

She tried her best to hold him, but it was a million miles from being
good enough. She fell ill, and he put her into a sanitarium, but she
refused to stay. “This has come on me because I dieted,” she told me.
“Louis likes slim girls, and it’s left me like this.” She took a suite
in a New York hotel, with a sitting room overlooking Central Park. Her
behavior there grew more and more erratic. Her memory wandered. She’d
start a sentence, then break off and go on to something else.

After a year she moved back to Hollywood, into an apartment daughter
Edie found for her. Louis wasn’t living with her by this time. He had
other social interests. One was a singer. Another was a woman with a
child for whom he bought a house in Westwood. Yet another was a lovely
chorus girl who hitchhiked from Texas and joined the Ziegfeld Follies.

Louis fell hard for her. His courtship coincided with her romance
with a big agent, though Mayer didn’t know about that at first. His
suspicions were aroused shortly before he was due to leave on a trip
to Europe, where she was to join him in Paris. Before he left he put
a detective on her trail. The private eye’s sealed report crossed the
Atlantic ahead of the girl, but Louis restrained himself from opening
the envelope until the next morning after she had joined him. The
battle royal that broke out then exploded Louis’ plans to marry her, so
she married the agent.

Mayer’s revenge was to bar the bridegroom from MGM and persuade some
of his pals at other studios to follow suit. The bridegroom had a hard
time of it for quite a few years. Then Louis met Lorena Danker, an
ex-dancer thirty years younger than he was and the widow of an account
executive at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. He had already
divorced Margaret, which cleared the way for Mrs. Danker to become the
second Mrs. Louis B. Mayer. Now she’s Mrs. Michael Nidorf. After she
married Mayer, he adopted the daughter she’d borne Danny Danker; Louis
left her half a million dollars in his will.

Other producers and big shots habitually took their cue from Louis, who
carried a lot of weight in our town. He was the emperor who set the
social pattern. So long as he stuck by Margaret Mayer, they stuck by
their wives, too. But Louis’ divorce, after forty years of marriage,
let them loose. In the next few months there were more top-level
divorces than there’d been for years before.

Divorce has made sensational headlines and spicy dinner-table gossip
from the days when a former Denver bellhop catapulted into fame with
a sword in his hand and dagger in his teeth as Douglas Fairbanks. His
first wife, Beth, was the daughter of Daniel Sully, otherwise known as
the Cotton King of Wall Street. As a wedding present, her father gave
her a beautiful string of pearls, which kept the Fairbankses going year
after year, when Doug was a struggling Broadway actor.

When the larder was bare, she’d pawn the pearls and redeem them again
as soon as Doug got into another play. Those pearls also paid for many
a trip to Europe. The Fairbankses lived at the Algonquin Hotel in New
York, which bulged with actors, from Jade Barrymore to John Drew.
Included among the residents was Hedda Hopper with the only husband she
ever had. In the lobby I used to stop to chat with a little boy with
a frightened manner, kept forever under the wing of his mother or his
nurse--Douglas, Jr., whom his father had determined should never get
into show business.

Beth found the Hoppers their first Hollywood house when we followed
the Fairbankses out to that never-never-land where it seemed that the
rainbow had finally come to earth and deposited a crock of gold for
everybody. Some years after that a brisk little blonde named Mary
Pickford got herself a bungalow in a Beverly Hills canyon. Doug, Sr.,
was a gentleman caller. Beth and I used to walk past the place, but she
didn’t know who was inside. I did. One day my heart turned somersaults
when she peered through a window. She saw nothing amiss. But after
that I steered our walks in a different direction. Beth was ever
unsuspecting about sex. Her own blood ran cool. She claimed Doug spent
too much time practicing handsprings and jumping over barns to be an
effective lover.

They argued for months over the divorce he wanted. He was willing to
pay her a quarter of his earnings for life as alimony. She demanded
every nickel he earned. The sad climax came in a suite in New York’s
Sherry-Netherland Hotel. In my presence she turned on him in a fury.
“Get out, you Jew!” she said.

Doug’s face was a mask. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” I
exclaimed. “You’re out of your mind.”

“I do, and he knows it. He’s a Jew.”

He said not a word and dragged himself from the room. He couldn’t argue
about his background. His father’s name was Ulman. Doug’s mother was
married five times, and had children by other husbands, one of whom
was named Fairbanks. Beth knew all about it. It had been a secret, wry
joke to her that, through her father’s contacts, she had been able
to make her husband a member of New York’s best men’s clubs, where
anti-Semitism was an article of faith. She collected her money from
Doug--$650,000 in cash and securities that his brother and business
manager, John Fairbanks, carried in a suitcase from Los Angeles to New
York.

Young Doug adored his father, but stayed with his mother after the
breakup. He didn’t emerge as a man until he married Joan Crawford. An
experienced woman can teach a lot to a youngster like Douglas, Jr. He
learned much about women and the world from Joan, though she wasn’t
accepted by her in-laws until Lord and Lady Mountbatten, honeymooning
at Pickfair, asked if they could meet her. The first time she set foot
inside the front door was the night she was invited to a ball to meet
Dickie Mountbatten and his bride.

The senior Fairbankses drifted apart after Mary Pickford made _My Best
Girl_ with Buddy Rogers. In London, Doug got to know Lady Sylvia Ashley
very well, but he had little thought of marrying her. He made a special
trip home to try to patch things up with Mary. But she insisted that
he beg for a reconciliation, and he was too proud to beg for anything.
He decided to sail back to England. For seven hours on the eve of his
sailing Mary tried to reach him by telephone to tell him she was ready
to save their marriage. But she missed him. She was too late. Sylvia
was married on the rebound to Doug, who by the merest coincidence
chanced to be a millionaire.

There was nobody quite like Doug. He loved everyone, and that
sun-tanned charm of his made everyone love him. He would rather leap
over the moon than go to the greatest party in the world, though he
started drinking his way through the nonstop round of parties and
night clubbing to which Sylvia introduced him. Vanity was one weakness
of his. When the two daughters of his brother, John, who was born
Fairbanks, wanted to go into pictures, Doug warned them: “You’ll have
to change your names, you know; there can only be one Fairbanks.”

He had a handsome head on his shoulders, but it was no head for
figures. I’m reminded of that every time I look out of my office window
at a towering gas storage tank a dozen blocks away that looms over the
old United Artists studio which Doug, Mary, and Charles Chaplin built
in 1918. Doug or any of them could have bought it then for $50,000 and
demolished it. But they saved their money--and it cost their company at
least $3,000,000 over the years to shoot around it to avoid having the
tank show up in every movie United Artists made. After many lawsuits
the studio is now owned by Sam Goldwyn. It nets Frances and Sam a
mighty juicy yearly income. The three stars who created it receive
nothing.

Sylvia’s best friend and next-door neighbor in Santa Monica was Norma
Shearer, who decided one day to give the Fairbankses a party, inviting
Doug’s closest friends. At 7 P.M. that evening Sylvia telephoned Norma:
“I’m terribly sorry but we can’t come. Douglas was taken ill this
afternoon, and he’s much worse now.”

Their two place cards had been removed from the table when the other
guests sat down to dine at nine o’clock. During the first course her
butler whispered a message to Norma. She turned pale for a moment, but
the dinner went on into dancing, some party games, and all kinds of fun
until things broke up at 3 A.M. By that time Douglas Fairbanks had been
dead five and a half hours. Later I asked Norma: “How could you do it?
Your guests were Doug’s best friends.”

She answered: “What could I do? I couldn’t say anything. It would have
spoiled the party.”

Not all Doug’s money was left to Sylvia. Douglas, Jr., was more than
comfortably off when he married Mary Lee Epling, divorced wife of
financier Huntington Hartford. They live in old-world style in a small
London town house with their three daughters. Douglas, Jr., does not
stray from the hearthstone. They are extremely social, with British and
European royalty and ambassadors of all nations, including one of our
own, Winthrop Aldrich, who had a penchant at parties for pinching old
ladies in the Latin fashion. They absolutely adored it--no one had paid
them such attention for years.

Hollywood has all the excuses you find anywhere for divorce--boredom,
egotism, emotional immaturity, and the rest. It also has some special
reasons of its own--press agents who can get bigger headlines with a
scandal than with a happy home life; producers who resent a husband or
wife “interfering” in a star’s business; managers who stop at nothing
to hold onto their percentages. Elsewhere in the world, children are
usually a bond that holds parents through many a squabble. But that’s
not always the case in the Empire of Guff, which was one of Gene
Fowler’s labels for us.

This is a hard, rocky place for a child to grow up in. Some of them
don’t know who their fathers really are because they’ve had so many in
the family. They’re brought up by nurses, cooks, and chauffeurs instead
of parents because mother and father are too busy to give them any
time. All the children can be spared is money, which is a stone to suck
on when a child needs love.

Eddie Robinson, Jr., was spoiled. His mother, Gladys--the first Mrs.
Robinson, Sr.--was never allowed by her husband to lay a hand on the
boy. At thirteen he “borrowed” other people’s cars without asking. He
has been in one automobile accident after another. Now he has a wife
and child, whom Gladys helps support. Edward G. Robinson couldn’t be
accused of being stingy toward his son, however, since he continued to
make Junior an allowance of $1000 a month.

Dixie Lee Crosby brought up her four sons strictly but well. Bing
somehow found other things he had to do, so the children didn’t see a
lot of their father. Dixie had problems in her pregnancies, when she
virtually was forced on to brandy to survive. She had to stay home,
sick, when Bing sailed off to Paris at the time Queen Elizabeth was
crowned, taking Lindsay with him and having a gay old time. The boy
went to London to see the coronation and stayed with the Alan Ladd
family at the Dorchester. Bing was having too much fun in Paris to
leave. Lindsay was the youngest and sweetest of the four sons. Like
Gary, Philip, and Dennis, he started whooping it up the minute Dixie’s
restraint was lifted.

Henry Ginsberg for a while attempted to be a kind of foster father to
the Crosby boys, inviting them to use his apartment as a second home
while Bing was courting Kathy Grant. Finally Henry got tired of their
drinking and other night-owl habits which brought them to his door at
two and three o’clock in the morning. “I like you, but I can’t put up
with it any longer,” he said, and the door was closed to them.

I have seen the frightening looks given to her mother, Lana Turner, by
Cheryl Crane, who was found guilty of stabbing Lana’s good friend, the
hoodlum muscle man, Johnny Stompanato. I’ve argued with Joan Crawford
after she told the oldest girl of her four adopted children that she
had to leave home. “This at a time when she needs love and protection
most?”

“She’s a wild girl with no respect for anything,” snapped Joan.

I know one young girl, the daughter of one of our most married stars,
who fell madly in love with her mother’s fourth husband and made up her
mind to steal him away by hook or crook. She went to her mother and
said: “He tried to make love to me.”

This was a lie, but the woman believed her daughter. “Get out of my
house!” she raged at her husband. “How dare you do such a vile thing?”

“Did she tell you that?” he said, appalled. “Are you willing to take
her word against mine? You remember how old she is, don’t you? She’s
fourteen.”

“I believe her.”

“Then I’ll go. But I’ll tell you this--you’re going to have more sorrow
through that girl than you’ve believed possible in this world. You’ll
see.” He proved to be an accurate prophet.

Divorce is often an inherited affliction, passed on from mother to
daughter, father to son, like hemophilia among the Hapsburgs. Marilyn
Monroe, Judy Garland, Doris Day, and a dozen more came from broken
homes. Their own chances of success as wives may well have been
blighted. The children of Hollywood’s broken marriages inherit a
tradition of trouble. As an example, take a look at the Fonda family
tree.

I used to wonder how Henry Fonda could so much as cut his meat when he
sat at the table next to mine when we were fellow passengers aboard
the boat sailing from Southampton to New York. His table mate was Mrs.
Frances Seymour Brokaw, whom he’d met in London, and she was so stuck
on him that I doubt she let go of his hands for more than five minutes
at a time all the way across the Atlantic.

Hank had already tried marriage once, and so had she. Mr. Brokaw had
been the husband of Clare Boothe before she married Henry Luce, the
founder of _Time_ and _Life_. Hank had been the husband for two years
of Margaret Sullavan.

Frances Brokaw was the second Mrs. Fonda--the knot was tied in
1936--and the mother of two children: Jane, born in 1937; and Peter,
who arrived in 1940.

There is a darker inheritance than divorce. As man and wife, the
Fondas were seemingly happy for years. But Frances was increasingly
possessive, and though no divorce suit ever was filed, Hank wanted his
freedom to marry Susan Blanchard. In April 1950, Frances took her life
in a Beacon, New York, sanitarium, after cutting Hank completely out of
her $500,000 will.

The first Mrs. Fonda, Margaret Sullavan, went on to three other
marriages; to director William Wyler in 1934; to producer Leland
Hayward in 1936, to whom she bore three children, Brooke, Bridget,
and Bill; to financier Kenneth Wagg, who had four children already.
Margaret’s life ended in tragedy, too. She was depressed by an
ever-increasing deafness, which had crept up on her unnoticed at first.
We discussed it together. I spoke about possible treatments, but she
dismissed them. “I’ve discovered it too late,” she said.

Then she was set for a New Haven opening of a play which she was
tackling after a long absence from the stage and which she didn’t much
care for. Her death from sleeping pills was called suicide and blamed
on the fact that she didn’t want to open, while Equity rules insisted
that she should. Cathleen Nesbitt, who had helped her in the part,
could not accept that verdict. “I am as sure as I sit here,” she told
me later, “that it was an accident for Maggie.”

But there was no doubt that the second daughter, Bridget, whom Margaret
bore Leland Hayward, died of her own choice.

In December 1950, Henry Fonda took his third wife, Susan Blanchard,
stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II and mother of Hank’s third child,
Amy. The divorce came five years later. In 1957 he married for the
fourth time. We see very little of his wife, the former Baroness Afdera
Franchetti. She doesn’t particularly care for Hollywood.

One more bit of tragedy hovers over Hank. His best part in years was in
_Mr. Roberts_, whose author, Thomas Heggen, he knew and liked. Thomas
Heggen decided life was not worth living, too, after the play was a
great success.

What her family means to Jane Fonda, only she could tell. She saw
very little of her mother, was brought up by her grandmother, whom
she adored. Jane went to the Actors’ Studio to study, tackled her own
movie career like a she-wolf. She claimed, understandably perhaps, that
marriage had no part in her plans. She could manage very well, she told
me, without love in her life. When I wrote a column about her, her
father telephoned. “I have no control over my daughter,” he said. “But
when the right fellow comes along, she’ll marry him. She’s a very smart
girl and likes to make headlines.”

One smart girl used to bring documents to me from the J. Walter
Thompson agency in Los Angeles not long ago. I hadn’t heard her name
until she said: “I don’t think you know it, but I’m John Gilbert’s
daughter. I didn’t know my father--he died before I could remember him.”

I thought to myself that I would never forget the screen’s great lover,
destroyed as an actor on the sound stage when the talkies came in.
Jack’s first talking picture, _His Glorious Night_, was directed by
Lionel Barrymore. I was in it. Jack’s first words were: “I love you,
I love you, I love you.” In forming these words, his mouth and nose
came together almost like a parrot’s beak. I used to see the glee on
Lionel’s face as he watched Gilbert. Lionel was suffering painfully
from arthritis, and by four o’clock any afternoon he could scarcely get
out of his chair. If anybody tried to help him he’d knock their hands
away and yell: “What’s the matter with you? Do you think I’m sick?”

That picture destroyed Jack Gilbert. He was honeymooning abroad with
Ina Claire when he lost all his money in the crash of ’29. The day they
landed in New York, the picture opened. He went to see it. With the
opening sentence the audience started to laugh, and he crept out of the
theater like a man condemned to the electric chair.

While he was abroad, the studio had built him a beautiful bungalow and
raised his salary to $5000 a week. After his return, when executives
saw him coming, they crossed to the other side of the street. They gave
him miserable, inconsequential pictures which he did. But he never
survived the hurt.

I said to his daughter: “Have you seen your father in any movies?”
wondering if she knew that Jack had been desperately in love with
Garbo, who was fond of him but would never marry him, for the love of
her life was Maurice Stiller.

His daughter replied: “Not until the other day, when I went to see him
in _Queen Christina_ with Garbo.” I asked what she thought of him. Her
head lifted and her eyes glowed: “I thought he was wonderful.”

He was, but we treated him badly.




_Sixteen_


I live in a town that sells dreams but is ruled by nightmares. Its
stock in trade is illusion, which it manufactures in fear; not mere
apprehension about fading profits or a decline in reputation, but stark
terror of God’s honest truth.

Power in the movie business fell into the clutches of men who stopped
at nothing to lay their hands on it. In the process they picked up a
chronic infection of guilty conscience. They couldn’t afford to let the
public glimpse the facts behind the fiction; they’d rather shell out a
million dollars. They were always terrified of being found out.

There were--and are--so many closets bulging with skeletons. I’ve
rattled a few of them in my time when I’ve been convinced the cause was
good. But never was there such a rattling as I gave our one and only
self-appointed monarch, Louis B. Mayer, and his temporary crown prince,
Dore Schary. I’m glad to say it scared the living daylights out of them.

The cause was a worthy one: one of the few unsung heroines of our town
had been pushed off the payroll in outrageous ingratitude for all she’d
contributed to MGM. She badly needed her job back after a long illness,
and I was determined that she should have it. One of the rattling sets
of bones was labeled “Politics,” another was “Greed,” and a third was
“Messages.” I don’t think Dore Schary has ever forgiven me.

Ida Koverman was the tall, stately, gray-haired queen mother who stood
behind King Louis’ throne. She taught the little gormandizer about
table manners, how to handle a party without throwing Emily Post into
strictures. Ida transformed the once inarticulate ex-peddler of scrap
iron into an after-dinner orator in love with the sound of his own
voice, and she rehearsed him in the speeches that rolled off his tongue.

She was the behind-the-scenes arbiter of good taste in the greatest
motion-picture studio of them all. There was a day when she burst into
his office when he was deep in conference with the New York investment
bankers who had control of Loew’s Incorporated--Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is
Loew’s trade name, Loew’s is the parent corporation.

Louis, who had issued strict orders that he was not to be disturbed,
was furious. She brushed aside his protests in her best, no-nonsense
manner. “I want you to come right now and see yesterday’s rushes on
_The Pirate_,” she said. “You must see a dance scene Gene Kelly and
Garland did together.” She kept at him until he angrily excused himself
and stumped out on his bandy legs with her.

In the projection room she gave the order for the film to be rerun. The
scene was a hair curler. Gene and Judy had flung themselves too eagerly
into the spirit of things. It looked like a torrid romance. “Burn the
negative!” screamed Louis. “If that exhibition got on any screen, we’d
be raided by the police.” He summoned Kelly to his office next morning
for an ear-blistering lecture on how to behave while dancing.

Mayer, who was his own best talent scout, met Mrs. Koverman when
she first came to California to rally Republican women in support
of Herbert Hoover. When he hired her away from the future President
to join Metro as Louis’ executive secretary and assistant, she was
thought to be Jewish. But Ida Raynus--her maiden name--was a widow with
Scottish blood. And her Scottish pride kept her from asking Louis for
a raise. For twenty-five years, she was held at her starting salary of
$250 a week.

On that comparative pittance she had more power than anybody in our
town over stars earning forty times more than she did; over the whole
product of Loew’s, a quarter-billion-dollar empire; over Mayer himself,
who pulled down a total of $15,000,000 over the years and preened his
feathers every time the newspapers tagged him the world’s highest-paid
executive. Until they came to a parting of the ways, she was the only
living soul in Hollywood he would listen to when she told him what was
what and why.

In next to no time Ida was all but running the studio from her office
next to his. Louis never personally made a picture in his life; didn’t
know how. That was left to Irving Thalberg, the slim, neurotic wonder
boy who could carry the plot and production details of half a dozen
pictures simultaneously in his head. The sheer strain made him a
nervous wreck, with a trick of sitting in conference with a box of
kitchen matches, carefully breaking every stick into tiny pieces and
piling the bits in a mixing bowl on his desk.

Louis, however, was the impresario, who prided himself on knowing
intimately what made the human heart tick. Nobody on the lot could
outdo him at chewing scenery when the mood came on him. This thwarted
thespian was a hypochondriac who could faint to order, fake a heart
attack to win an argument or stave off somebody’s salary increase. He
would project anger, indignation, piteous pleading, or tears like a
home movie show.

One of his favorite songs was “The Rosary.” He would weep buckets just
talking about it. He thought there was a fine picture idea in the
lyrics and assigned two of his favorite writers to create a script.
After nine months’ hard labor they turned in their typescript. He
discovered their story was set in a New Orleans whorehouse. That was
the last assignment they ever got from the outraged Mr. Mayer.

As Louis concentrated increasingly on playing god, more and more
responsibility fell on Ida’s shoulders. She set up the talent
school that trained a skyful of future stars who made millions for
Loew’s--Jackie Cooper, Freddie Bartholomew, Judy Garland, Mickey
Rooney, Liz Taylor, Kathryn Grayson, Donna Reed. It was Ida,
called “Kay” by her friends, who suggested having the elaborate
sound-recording system installed which opened a whole new horizon in
musicals. Stars like Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald, Grace Moore,
and Lawrence Tibbett were freed from the double burden of acting and
singing at the same time, because their voices could now be recorded
separately to the filmed movement of their lips.

Ida had the feel in her bones for talent that Mayer imagined he had.
She discovered a young Adonis named Spangler Arlington Brugh fresh out
of Pomona College and saw to it that he was rechristened Robert Taylor.
She heard an overgrown Boy Scout sing at a Los Angeles concert, which
is how Nelson Eddy arrived on the scene.

Ida and a handful of others, including Lionel Barrymore, were impressed
by the movie test of a husky, beetle-browed actor from a downtown stage
show--he played his scene in a cut-down sarong with a flower behind
one flapping ear. “A woman knows what appeals to women,” was a rule
she worked by, so she had the test rerun for an audience of Metro’s
messenger girls and secretaries. On the strength of the raves they
scribbled on their comment cards, Clark Gable was signed.

Ida devised what she called “the rule of illusion” that captured
daydreams on celluloid and convinced the public that Hollywood was
paradise on earth. “A star,” she considered, “must have an unattainable
quality.” Another specification of hers: “A star may drink champagne or
nectar, but not beer.”

Ida was a Christian Scientist who, incredibly in the motion-picture
business, clung to her job because, as she saw it, her special position
of power gave her a phenomenal chance to do good. “If you can’t help
somebody,” she used to say, “what are you put here on earth for?”

That philosophy contrasted violently with her boss’s point of view.
He behaved as if the earth had been invented exclusively for Louis
B. Mayer. He gave and withheld his favors like Ivan the Terrible. If
you crossed him, he sought vengeance. During the filming of the first
version of _Ben-Hur_, its star, Francis X. Bushman, offended Mayer,
who saw to it that the actor was kept off the screen for the next
twenty-three years.

He tried to force his attentions on practically every actress on his
payroll. Jeanette MacDonald had to invent an engagement and buy herself
the ring as a desperate sort of defense against the tubby, bespectacled
little tyrant. He chased me around his desk for twelve years until
my contract came up for renewal. “Why don’t you say yes to him for
once and see what happens?” said Ida, before I was ushered into his
all-white sanctum to talk a new contract.

I found Louis in good form. “Why do you always resist me?” he demanded.
“If only you’d been nice to me, we could have made beautiful music
together. I could have made you the greatest star in Hollywood.”

“I was wrong, Mr. Mayer. There are only two questions--when and where?”

His blown-up ego exploded with a bang like a toy balloon. With a
stricken look he turned on his heels and ran out the private exit of
his office as fast as his legs would carry him. He just liked to talk
about it. (I might add that my contract was not renewed.)

Louis owned a stableful of race horses; Ida lived simply. She once
inscribed a photograph to our friend, Virginia Kellogg, who was a
script writer until she married director Frank Lloyd. “I would rather
have the small worries of too little,” Ida wrote, “than the empty
satisfaction of too much.”

She lived in a rented apartment, drove a Dodge that Mayer gave her in
a rare burst of generosity. In the evenings she listened to music or
played her grand piano, which was one of the great joys of her life. Or
she embroidered petit point bags as gifts for friends. What money she
could save, she used as down payments on little houses, which she’d do
over and resell at a small profit.

Howard Hughes wanted her with him at RKO, offered her three times the
salary she was making. She refused. She had too high a regard for
Howard. She knew that if she walked out on Mayer, it would set him
off on a vendetta to destroy Howard Hughes, and Louis, with Hearst’s
friendship, had the power to do him a lot of harm.

She was more than Mayer’s conscience; she was his entree to Republican
politics. Through Ida, he snuggled up close to Herbert Hoover, begged
Hearst to jump on the Hoover bandwagon, got himself chosen as a
delegate to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City that
resulted in the Great Engineer succeeding silent Cal Coolidge in the
White House.

Grateful for Mayer’s support, the new President invited Louis and his
faithful wife Margaret to Washington as his first informal guests after
the inaugural. Hearst, who saw a lot of Louis now that Cosmopolitan
Pictures was under Metro’s wing, gave the visit the full treatment in
his newspapers, which was oil to Louis’ ego.

He thought he was really going places then, with the President in his
pocket. A place in the Cabinet? An ambassadorship? When years passed
and none of his pipe dreams came true, he pinned the blame on Ida.
Suddenly she could do nothing right for him.

He fumed because he had to pass her next-door office and see her
whenever he went out his own door. She was running the show instead of
him, he raged. She was usurping the power that was his. He turned on
her like a tiger. That was Mayer’s way. But she had too many friends
for him to reach her at that time.

Another woman and, indirectly, another President saved Ida from Mayer’s
fury. The woman was Mabel Walker Willebrand, a brilliant attorney. The
President was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was now in the White House
with a Congress behind him that was out for Mayer’s hide. I met FDR
only once, and that in his White House office. “You’d have been a great
actor if you hadn’t been President,” I said, “but I’m never going to
come and see you again.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a Republican, and if I saw you again, you might turn me
into a Democrat.” He laughed so hard and tipped back in his chair so
far I was scared he’d topple clean out of it.

But the Democrats weren’t laughing at Louis. They were gunning for him
with a reform bill that included a provision stating that breeders of
race horses could claim no depreciation and write off no losses unless
the stables were their stock in trade or principal business. That
pinpointed Louis. His prodigal style of living demanded some income
benefit from his stables. The staggering take he enjoyed from Metro put
him up in solitary splendor in the ninety per cent tax bracket when a
bite that size was virtually unheard of. If the bill were voted into
law, he was going to bleed.

He had two key allies when he took on Congress: an accountant, Mr.
Stern, who was paid the princely sum of $100 a week for taking care of
Louis’ personal bookkeeping, and Mabel Willebrand, who earned as much
as $75,000 a year as his attorney. Out of her Washington office she
battled to stave off the new bill. In the middle of the fight she came
to Culver City to confer with Louis. She found he wanted to devote the
time to denouncing Ida Koverman, whose value to the studio was well
known by Mabel.

He paced his thick white carpet, pausing only to stand in front of the
mirror in the room to admire the effect he hoped he was making. “Kay
Koverman talks too much,” he raved. “I’ve got to get rid of her. People
don’t want me to, but I will.”

“Mr. Mayer,” cut in Mabel, “we have to work day and night to keep this
tax measure from passing. I need your cooperation and Kay’s too. I
will tell you right now that unless I can have her help with yours and
unless you keep her on the payroll, we can’t possibly win.”

That stopped him in his tracks, and not in front of the mirror. He
wriggled like a struck fish trying to get off the hook, but Mabel
wouldn’t let him free. Finally, he swallowed her line of argument. “And
you can have unlimited money to hire anybody else you think we need,”
he said, in a typical complete turnabout.

But Mabel needed nothing extra except Ida’s experience and wisdom in
developing her strategy. Ida had been in the habit of making half a
dozen trips a year to Washington to lobby for MGM interests. In joint
Senate-House committee the tax bill was beaten by just one vote. Mr.
Mayer said his thank-you to Mabel, but made it clear that he couldn’t
really give her any credit. After all, wasn’t it the magic name of
Mayer that had worked the trick in Washington? She didn’t enlighten
him, but she made a bargain. To make sure Ida was kept in her job,
Mabel Walker Willebrand waived her fee for a period of one year for
what she’d achieved.

Ida went on working way into her seventies, her back still straight as
a ramrod, her hair iron-gray. “I wouldn’t have to do it,” she used to
confide, “if I’d provided for myself when I was younger.” Mayer refused
to put her on the studio’s old-age pension scheme. It was discovered
later that her entire estate, including furniture, pictures, and
insurance policies, amounted to less than $20,000. After twenty-two
years of it she suffered a stroke and had to go into the hospital,
where it was feared she would never walk again. She was forced to sell
her car to pay her medical bills. Mayer didn’t lift a finger to help.

Visiting her in the hospital, I remembered a call I’d made on Louis
when he didn’t know a horse’s head from its tail and consequently got
himself pitched out of the saddle in the middle of a riding lesson. He
landed with such a thump that he broke his coccyx. I found him lying in
a hammock strung over the hospital bed, and roared with laughter.

“What’s so funny?” he said.

“You. Everybody in town has longed to see your ass in a sling, and you
finally made it.”

The room looked like a gangster’s funeral. There were trees of orchids
and roses, forests of gardenias and camellias. Ginny Simms, whom he was
squiring at the time, had contributed a full-sized cradle overflowing
with roses that played “Bye, Bye, Baby Bunting” when you rocked it.

Louis proudly handed me for admiration a sheaf of get-well telegrams
and letters, among them a missive from the then Archbishop Francis
Spellman returning a check for $10,000--Louis didn’t miss a trick in
trying to win friends and influence people. The archbishop sent his
thanks, “but I am sure you must have many charities of your own.” I had
to read that letter first, aloud.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” said Mayer, his eyes ready to pour tears down
his cheeks.

“Not in the least,” I said. “I’m certain he expected at least $50,000
from a man of your wealth and standing.”

“Haven’t you any sentiment?” wailed Louis.

“None. I’m a realist and believe in calling a spade a spade.”

As Ida’s bills piled up and weeks stretched into months of illness, he
came up with the noble thought that she ought to go into the Motion
Picture Relief Home, where she could live and receive treatment free.
He had Howard Strickling telephone to sound me out about the idea. “Let
him do that and he’ll be sorry he was ever born,” I said as I slammed
down the receiver.

The only alternative open to her seemed to be to sell her grand piano.
Two moving men were actually inside her apartment carting off her pride
and joy before her heart began to harden and she decided to fight.

       *       *       *       *       *

We need to flash-back here to Dore Schary, necktie salesman turned
press agent, screen writer turned producer, who had gone the
rounds of most of the studios--Columbia, Universal, Warners, Fox,
Paramount--before he went to Metro. Starting in 1941, he had a
phenomenally successful year and a half, making low-budget hits like
_Journey for Margaret_ and _Lost Angel_. Schary considered himself
an intellectual and was happy to be known as a liberal. He thought
pictures should carry a social message, not exist exclusively on their
merits as entertainment. “Movies,” he said, “must reflect what is going
on in the world.” Quite a few other people working in Hollywood felt
the same way.

For twenty-five years a running fight was waged in our industry over
“messages” in movies. Among those who fought to keep them out, you
could number John Wayne; Walt Disney; Ward Bond; Clark Gable; John
Ford; Pat O’Brien; Sam Wood, who directed _For Whom the Bell Tolls_;
Gary Cooper; James McGuinness, an executive producer at Metro who
literally worked himself to death in the cause; and myself. On the
other side stood some equally dedicated people who were convinced they
were battling fascism in the days when Hitler, Mussolini, and the
Japanese war lords threatened the world. Many of these politically
unsophisticated innocents were used mercilessly by another group who
set out in the thirties to infiltrate Hollywood--the Communists.

They were all in favor of propaganda messages; tried to squeeze them
into every possible picture. A hard core of professional conspirators
baited the hook to land the big stars, to use them to glamorize,
endorse, and spread the party line. The strategy paid off. So did many
stars who fell for it. They were soaked for millions of dollars in
contributions to the party itself and its “front” organizations, like
the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which had four thousand dues-paying
members at its peak. Leader of the Communist faction was John Howard
Lawson, who organized the Screen Writers Guild. He had forty or fifty
card-carrying colleagues to help him manipulate the strings that
stretched throughout our town and controlled the dupes.

Lawson and his gang flourished in the thirties and during the war
years. They got what they wanted by convincing the stooge writers,
directors, and stars who fell for what was called the “progressive”
line that they were serving humanity by turning out pictures dealing
with “real life.” That meant throwing patriotic themes to the winds
and focusing instead on bigotry, injustice, miscegenation, hunger,
and corruption. What did it matter if audiences still hankered
for entertainment and stayed away from most “message” pictures in
droves? The Communist answer was: “Better to make a flop with social
significance than a hit for the decadent bourgeoisie.”

After World War II was over, however, the decline at the box office
of “message” movies finally persuaded the industry as a whole that it
was poor business to persist in foisting off “messages” on to the
public. It was a decision that combined one per cent of patriotism
with ninety-nine per cent of public relations and avidity for profits.
Battling communism has never been easy in a town where Sam Goldwyn once
confessed: “I’d hire the devil himself as a writer if he gave me a good
story.”

Dore Schary and Metro came to a parting of the ways over a “message”
picture in 1943. He wanted to film a script called _Storm in the West_,
which was to be a sort of Western, only the villains would be easily
identifiable as Hitler and Mussolini. Metro’s executive committee
wouldn’t swallow that, but Schary refused to yield, and Mayer released
him pronto from his $2000 a week contract.

David Selznick immediately picked up Schary as a producer for David’s
new Vanguard company. Then when Vanguard was put on ice, he farmed Dore
out to RKO, later let him join that studio as its head of production.
That job lasted until Howard Hughes, who had meantime bought RKO,
criticized another movie, _Battleground_, that Schary badly wanted to
do. So contract number three was torn up, and Schary was at liberty
again.

This was now 1948, and the anti-Communist campaign in Hollywood
was out in the wide, open newspaper spaces. The town had endured a
strike sparked by Communists, which saw John Howard Lawson and his
“progressives” marching in picket lines around Warner Brothers studio
in Burbank. After one of these “peaceful demonstrations,” seven tons
of broken bottles, rocks, chains, brickbats, and similar tokens of
affection were cleaned up from streets in the area. Congressman J.
Parnell Thomas steered his House of Representatives Un-American
Activities Committee to investigate our labor troubles, check into
propaganda in our pictures, and make a name for himself in the
headlines.

Forty-one people from the movie industry were called to Washington to
testify before the House investigators. Nineteen of them announced in
advance that they weren’t going to answer any questions as a matter
of principle. So the Committee for the First Amendment blossomed
overnight. That amendment to the Constitution, remember, guarantees
freedom of religion, speech, of the press, and right of petition. The
committee which was christened for it covered John Huston, Humphrey
Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Evelyn Keyes, and a whole lot more.

They sashayed off to Washington the day Eric Johnston, president of
the Motion Picture Association of America, was due to testify. The
producers had been shouting “witch hunt.” They took full-page ads
alleging that the industry was being persecuted. Bogey and Betty Bacall
and the rest thought they’d lend their lustrous presence in the hearing
room to support Johnston.

But Parnell Thomas pulled a fast one on them. The first witness put on
the stand wasn’t Johnston but John Howard Lawson, who screamed abuse
and yelled “Smear!” until the guards had to be called. In evidence
against him there was a copy of his membership card in the Communist
party. There were nine more cards on view, too, to identify the full
complement of the group that came to be known as the “Hollywood Ten”:
Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Herbert Biberman, Adrian Scott,
Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr., Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, and
Alvah Bessie.

On their sorrowful way home from Washington, Bogey, Betty, John Huston,
and Evelyn Keyes limped into my living room. I poured a drink or two,
and we got to talking. They’d been had, and they knew it. I wanted to
know from Bogey how they could have let themselves be suckered in. When
Bogey started to answer, John Huston interrupted him.

It hadn’t been a good day for Bogey. He turned on John to get some of
the steam out of his system. “Listen,” he snarled, “the First Amendment
guarantees free speech. That’s how we got dragged into this thing. Now
when I try to talk, you’re trying to deprive me of my rights. Well, the
hell with you. I’ll have another drink.” And he talked. In fact, they
all did.

One of the witnesses before the House committee was Dore Schary. He
was called to Washington along with producer Adrian Scott and director
Edward Dmytryk, who had worked for him on _Crossfire_. He made no
bones about his admiration for their work. As for the “Hollywood Ten,”
he believed--in the words of one reporter--that they “had a right to
whatever they believed and did not necessarily deserve to be thrown to
the dogs if it served the best interests of the producers.”

The committee’s chief investigator, Robert Stripling, asked: “Now, Mr.
Schary, as an executive of RKO, what is the policy of your company in
regard to the employment of ... Communists?”

Schary replied: “That policy, I imagine, will have to be determined
by the president, the board, and myself. I can tell you personally
what I feel. Up until the time it is proved that a Communist is a man
dedicated to the overthrow of the government by force or violence, I
cannot make any determination of his employment on any basis other than
whether he is qualified best to do the job I want him to do.”

That made him a controversial figure in some people’s judgment. When
Nick Schenck wanted to see Schary, he flew out in secret from New York
to avoid getting involved in the probing of communism, which was still
drawing blood in our town.

Nick, the soft-spoken boss of Loew’s who directed the world-wide empire
and its 14,000 employees from his New York office, had a monumental
mission to perform. He had come to take a look at Dore Schary, whom
Louis B. Mayer now wanted back at Metro as vice president in charge
of all productions, as Irving Thalberg’s successor, as Mayer’s crown
prince. And Schary was insisting that if he took the job, Louis would
have to keep his hands off Dore’s key decisions.

Nick Schenck approved of the plan. Schary received contract number
four--seven years “in charge of production” at $6000 a week. He
started in on July 1, 1948. In my July 19 column, I wrote: “It will be
ironically amusing to watch some of the scenes behind the scenes now
that Dore Schary is the Big Noise at Metro-Goldwyn-Moscow. He testified
on the opposite side of the fence in Washington from Robert Taylor,
James K. McGuinness, Louis B. Mayer, Sam Wood, and other men with whom
he will work....”

As soon as he read that, Mayer shut the studio gate in my face. But I
didn’t have to go there to get news; my friends inside telephoned me
every day. Two weeks later Louis telephoned: “I’ve got to see you.”

“Impossible. How can you? You barred me from the studio.”

“I mean at your house.”

“Louis,” I said, “fun’s fun. What makes you think you can come into my
home when I can’t go into your studio? Turnabout is fair play.”

But he badgered and bullied and begged until I agreed to see him at
five o’clock that afternoon. He was standing on the doorstep as the
clock struck. He came in, and we shouted at each other for an hour.
“How could you do this to me, write such a column?” he kept bellowing.

“How could you do it to yourself and the studio? You fired him for
putting messages in your pictures. Now you take him back as head man.
You don’t agree with anything he stands for. But you’ve given him the
power to do as he likes, and he’ll get you out.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, who else was there?”

I’d never seen fear in his face before. I saw it then. Before he left,
he invited me to breakfast the next morning at his house on Benedict
Canyon. I guessed what would happen there.

We were having a second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Somebody
came in. I didn’t turn around. “Dore just arrived,” Mayer said. “Will
you speak to him?” Of course. Moving into the library where Schary was
waiting, Louis muttered a brief hello, then left us.

“You were mighty hard on me, weren’t you?” asked Schary.

“I intended to be,” I said. “I think messages should be sent by Western
Union. I don’t believe they have any place in motion pictures. Your
politics should be a thing apart from your business.”

“If I promise to put no more messages in my pictures, will you be my
friend?”

“Yes. But I doubt whether you can. You’re too full of your own ideas.”

“You have my promise. Will you shake hands on that?” We shook hands,
but I gave him fair warning: “The moment you start putting messages in,
I’ll be on your back again.” But, sure enough, the “message” pictures
got into production again.

This was the time that Ida Koverman faced stark poverty through her
prolonged illness. She had to have a job. I went to Schary and asked
him to take her back on the payroll. He was only too willing to have
her. He needed her.

Ida went back on salary for the last five years left to her. She had
to walk with a cane for those years. The cane appeared the day she
returned to Culver City in a black limousine, which carried her from
set to set. Clutching the cane, she made her entrances to cheers,
crowds, and an outpouring of affection from everyone who saw her. On
her last Christmas on earth I dropped by on my way home from the office
to give her a check. I asked: “What did Louis send you?”

“Go into the living room. You’ll find a shoe box. Take off the lid and
you’ll see.” It was filled with homemade cookies.

While I was at her home, a huge silver bowl containing five dozen
American Beauty roses arrived from K. T. Keller, president of Chrysler
Motors Corporation. When I got back to my house, I called Louis Lurie,
a friend of Louis B. Mayer, told him what had happened, and asked him
to mail a check to Ida immediately, so she’d have it Christmas Day. He
wrote a check on the spot for $250.

She lived to see King Louis deposed from his throne. It couldn’t
have given her any joy, because she wasn’t that kind of woman. The
mammoth studio, in spite of all its stars and resources, was being
driven to the wall by this thing called television, which Hollywood
despised. Metro lost millions when Mayer was in charge of production
in the late forties. When Schary took over the job, there were some
early money-makers, but not enough to offset the other kind, which he
couldn’t resist making.

Time and again he crossed swords with Louis. If the dueling threatened
to go against him, he was quick to appeal to Nick Schenck for support.
In the end Schenck had to choose between Mayer and Schary. He chose
Schary, who in turn was ousted years later and, when he left, collected
a million dollars. Louis spent the rest of his life burning with
hatred, trying in vain to take over MGM in legal battle he could never
win. At his funeral Jeanette MacDonald appeared to sing “Ah, Sweet
Mystery of Life.”

The fight against communism waxed and waned; so did the newspaper
headlines. It took me off on a two-year lecture tour of twenty-four
cities. I found myself the second vice president--the first was Charles
Coburn--of an organization called the Motion Picture Alliance for the
Preservation of American Ideals. John Wayne was president. As the
Congressional probing continued, the studio bosses, true to form,
shoved their heads into the sands like ostriches and, to protect the
millions invested in unshown movies, hoped that trouble would simply
go away. People like me, who dared to mention that trouble was still
hanging around, discovered that strange things happened to them. Like
the subpoena from Washington that didn’t exist.

_Variety_ weighed in to report news of trouble ahead for Hopper:

            HEDDA’S RED RAP
            STIRS STUDIO TALK
            OF FILM REPRISAL

    Hedda Hopper’s columnizing that she “knows” the names
    of many Reds in Hollywood--with a resulting subpoena by
    the House Un-American Activities Committee--has some
    publicity-advertising toppers of major companies doing a quiet
    canvass among themselves of what their studios’ attitude should
    be toward the syndicated writer.

    Their thought is that Miss Hopper has a perfect right to say
    whatever she pleases. However, she is largely dependent on
    studio press aid for news, and there’s some question as to
    whether such cooperation should be continued....

    Although the pub-ad chieftains--and presumably company heads
    and other execs--are sizzling at Miss Hopper for further
    needling the Washington probe, probability is that there will
    be no concerted action to cut off her news sources or otherwise
    penalize her. Similar thoughts have arisen in the past
    concerning other columnists and have never worked out.

    Industry execs feel that not only Miss Hopper, but all writers
    whose living depends on Hollywood should take a cooperative
    attitude.

The truth was that no subpoena had been issued, and none ever was.
Someone had planted the story on that unsuspecting publication. Of all
the items about me that were printed in its columns over the months
ahead, only one hurt. That was a front-page, banner-lined interview
with George Sokolsky, the Hearst political commentator and an old
friend. He’d wept openly on my shoulder--I top him by an inch or two
in high heels--at the 1952 Republican convention in Chicago when Ike
Eisenhower walked off with the nomination instead of Bob Taft.

When George arrived in Los Angeles on a lecture tour, he was nabbed by
a _Variety_ reporter and quoted as saying that Hopper was a political
babe in arms. That stung. A year went by before I got a chance to set
him straight--in an elevator descending to the lobby of the Waldorf
Towers in New York. I felt better when he wrote me afterward:

    I was asked a question which did not include your name and
    which I answered without knowing it referred to you. When the
    question and answer appeared in print, I was chagrined to find
    that it was made to apply to you personally.... We differ
    slightly on methods, but that is not as important as that we
    agree in principle. I regard myself as a missionary trying to
    win back the lost souls.... Perhaps your sterner creed is more
    correct than mine, and I do not want ever to quarrel with you
    over this particular difference. You must do it your way, and I
    shall have to do it mine. Please forgive me.

The pot shots loosed off in my direction from some quarters of our
town didn’t cost me any sleep. I was raised to believe in the stern
tradition of “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can
never hurt you.” Abraham Lincoln put it a touch more graciously: “If
I were to read, much less to answer, all the attacks on me, this shop
might as well be closed for any other business.” I believe in that,
too; the quote is printed on a sign that stands on my desk.

Hollywood’s top brass is used to buying things, but they couldn’t buy
me or my silence. Dore Schary once offered to put the Hopper name up on
a big Broadway sign, but it wasn’t hard to refuse that bit of coaxing.
All the major producers threatened to pull their advertising out of the
Los Angeles _Times_ unless I sweetened up my printed opinions of their
pictures. That suited Publisher Norman Chandler just fine. Advertising
space was very tight, Norman told them. “I like the way Miss Hopper
expresses herself, and you’ll be doing me a service if you cut back on
ads.” They didn’t cancel a line. I didn’t hear about this until three
years later. Everybody should have a friend like Norman Chandler.

I was flattered in a different way to learn that _Confidential_ had its
West Coast gumshoe toiling for six months to find something to pin on
me, past or present. Howard Rushmore reported that they finally quit
empty-handed. “We wasted our time,” he said dolefully.

“I could have told you that before you started. I’ve never knuckled
down to anyone in Hollywood. I’m not beholden to anybody, and I’ve
never had romances with any one of them from the day I came out here.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It’s impossible to talk about movie politics without finding John Wayne
on camera hammering away with both fists. He’s a rock-ribbed Republican
who wears his creed like a medal. It’s affected his popularity no more
than Frank Sinatra’s been hurt by his sympathies for the other side of
the street.

Duke Wayne had no hand in politics until he smelled that Communists
were infiltrating the movie business. Then he sat down in James
McGuinness’ house one night with Sam Wood, Adolphe Menjou, writer
Morris Ryskind, Ward Bond, Leo McCarey, and Roy Brewer of the A.F. of
L. That’s how the Motion Picture Alliance was born.

Duke likes to tell about a producer who warned him the next morning:
“You’ve got to get out of that MPA. You’re becoming a controversial
figure. It will kill you at the box office. You will hit the skids.” He
says: “I hit the skids all right. When I became president of the MPA in
1948, I was thirty-third in the ratings of box-office leaders. A year
later I skidded right up to first place.”

He occasionally hankers after the days, thirty-four years and more than
150 movies ago, when he was the easygoing ex-prop man making his first
Monogram picture on a total budget of $11,000. “We couldn’t afford more
than one horse. So in the first scene I had to knock out the heavy and
steal the horse.” His political faith is simple enough. For America:
“I’m for the liberty of the individual.” Overseas: “We’ve permitted the
world to think of us as big soft jerks who’re trying to buy our way
with money.”

For all the burning of midnight oil he’s done as a hard-hitting
businessman producing movies like _The Alamo_, he hasn’t managed to
reap great profits. “I have a pretty tough partner in Uncle Sam. I’m
not squawking, but he’s taken a little of it.” _The Alamo_, on which he
gambled his entire bankroll of $1,500,000, has done well in the United
States and cleaned up overseas.

Duke’s a kind of patriarch, with four children born to his first wife,
Josephine Saenz, whom he married when he was toiling in the slave
market of cowboy serials. Those children have now supplied him with
four grandchildren, and by his third wife, Pilar Palette, he has a
delightful daughter, Aissa, and a son, John Ethan. When Aissa was in
her cradle, he set the beatniks around Schwab’s drugstore on their ears
by striding in straight from work in full Western regalia one evening
demanding: “Give me an enema nipple, small size, for a sick baby.”

His middle wife was a Mexican tamale named Esperanza Baur. As a warm-up
to grabbing headlines with vitriolic accusations against him, “Chata”
Wayne dispatched two detectives to spy on him in her native land, where
Duke was filming _Hondo_. The two not-very-private eyes unfortunately
got themselves arrested and thrown into jail. It took Duke to get them
out.

“One had acute appendicitis. The doctor wanted to operate. You know
the reputation of Mexican doctors. If anything had happened, I’d have
been blamed. So I got a plane and got them out of there, over to the
American side of the border. Then there could be no reflection on me if
anything happened.”

Today, at fifty-five, he still stands six feet six in his Western
boots (“Most comfortable things in the world if you have them made to
order”) and behaves like a twenty-five-year-old when the script calls
for action and he’s “on.” For _Hatari_, shot in Africa in 1962, he was
pulling stunts like lassoing rhinos, missing disaster by inches when
one of them charged his open truck.

He isn’t a man who goes out much, though he always comes to my parties
early and stays late, talking a blue streak. “I don’t think the
industry is going on the rocks,” he decided not long ago. “We’ve hit as
low a point as we can go, and we can’t get anything but better.”

How does he explain his own popularity? “It’s very simple. I never do
anything that makes any guy sitting out there in the audience feel
uncomfortable. So when the little woman says, ‘Let’s go to the show,’
the guy says, ‘Let’s see the John Wayne picture,’ because he knows I
won’t humiliate him. I think the guys pull the girls in.”

He wanted to get into Russia to make _The Conqueror_, the first United
States picture shot there, but the deal fell through. When a certain TV
celebrity received the Kremlin’s permission to film a television show
behind the Iron Curtain, Duke asked: “If they let you in, why not me?”

“We’ve never said anything about the Russians.”

Duke Wayne grinned. “That’s the difference. I have.”




_Seventeen_


Maybe I look like Mother or Grandma Moses to Americans in uniform if
they’ve been away from home long enough in far-flung places. That’s the
only reason I could ever find for Bob Hope’s wanting to take me along
on his Christmas shows overseas. The first time he invited me, I was
too delirious to ask why. I haven’t asked him since, and he hasn’t told
me. But whenever he calls: “Pack your things, Hedda, we’re off,” I’m
always rarin’ to go.

You think you know what Bob’s like, but you don’t until you’ve seen him
on one of these safaris. We once had to wait six hours while the fuel
was drained out of our plane and replaced. When the pilot had stepped
aboard, he’d sniffed and said: “My God, they’ve filled it with jet
fuel.” Which would have blown us to hell and gone at a few thousand
feet. Have you ever had black coffee and Tootsie Rolls for breakfast
at 6 A.M. five days running? No complaints from Hope. When I got home,
I’d drunk so much of the stuff I developed coffee poisoning and didn’t
recover for a month.

I’ve watched him put on a performance in a base hospital for patients
who looked better than he did after he’d been driven half blind with
fatigue by army wives who wouldn’t let him rest because he helped their
husbands’ chances for another promotion. Bob can’t say no to anybody.

He would rather entertain five hundred GI’s than be handed $50,000.
He’s looked after the money he’s earned, too, though he pays as high
as $2000 a week apiece to his team of writers. They deserve it. This
unpredictable character, high over the Pacific, hours out on our way
to the Far East, asked two of the team, John Rapp and Onnie Whizzen:
“Have you got that script about a sergeant and a private you wrote six
years back but we didn’t use?” So help me, they fished it out of one
of their bags and passed it to him.

He can joke about his money, along with religion, politics, and the
Kennedys. “Since it was reported that I’m worth around $30,000,000,” he
told me recently, “busloads of relatives have arrived at the house. We
have ’em standing in corners instead of floor lamps.”

He’s irreverent, but never a dirty word does he utter, nor does he
take the Lord’s name in vain. I’ve been with him days on end, and I’ve
yet to hear a cuss word out of him. Came the night that Hollywood and
America honored him at a banquet as the number-one citizen of our
industry, and Jack Benny stood up to make a speech. “I hadn’t seen Bob
for ten months until I ran into him on the golf course,” said Jack,
who’d arrived an hour late for the celebration after dining at home.
“He stood there and said: ‘I’ve had the god-damndest time with this
ball today....’” We sat there in silence, not believing it.

Bob can’t stay home, can’t sit still any more than Jack can. And at
parties Jack’s the champion floor pacer, stanchly refusing to dance. “I
don’t have to,” he says. “I don’t have to prove myself. I did that in
my youth.”

Dolores Hope--they were married twenty-eight years ago--and their
four adopted children haven’t seen Bob at home for the past eight
Christmases. If there’s any loneliness in her life, which I doubt,
religion fills it--she’s a devout Catholic, who used to preach to me.
We spent an hour and a half together driving from Beverly Hills to
Santa Ana during the war. My mind was on my son, Bill, who was away
in the Pacific, so when she started on religion, Dolores did all the
talking by default.

At the end of the ride, she apologized: “I guess I talked too long
about the faith.”

“Only about ninety minutes too long,” said I. Now she leaves the
attempts at conversion to another good friend of mine, Father Edward
Murphy, but we’ll come to him farther along.

I spent wonderful Christmases with Bob and his troupe. There was Thule
Air Base, where our servicemen hadn’t seen a woman in two years except
five homely nurses. Anita Ekberg was one of our party. For stark
horror, you couldn’t beat the looks on those GI faces when she was
told to cover up in a fur coat because her gown had a low-and-behold
neckline.

Not a dry eye in the house when we sang “Auld Lang Syne.” A colonel got
carried away and said to me: “Do you mind if I kiss you? You remind me
of my mother.” He couldn’t have been a day over fifty-five.

The following year it was Alaska, with Hopper wrapped up against the
cold like an Eskimo. “If you want anything, just ask,” they told Ginger
Rogers and me, so we had breakfast in bed in rooms as hot as hell’s
boilerhouse. Outdoors, even cameras froze if you lingered longer than
fifteen minutes.

One year we discovered that the rain in Spain fell mainly on us; that
day Gina Lollobrigida and the John Lodges joined us. Another Christmas
Day we spent at a missile base in Vicenze, Italy; put on a show on the
deck of the aircraft carrier, _U.S.S. Forrestal_. There was a bronze
bust of James Forrestal aboard. I stood and wept for our country’s
injustice to this fine man. One of our group asked: “Who was he?”

There was the year we covered the South Pacific. Jayne Mansfield
was along, a girl it’s impossible to dislike, who’s kind, anxious
to please, and willing to do anything but cover herself up. Mickey
Hargitay came, too. In the plane I peered over at the two of them in
the seat behind me. He was painting her toenails firehouse red. “She’d
do the same for me,” he said.

Her fan letters followed her all through the Pacific. She’d read
a fresh batch before she’d eat, then gulp down a stone-cold meal
perfectly happy--her fans had fed her. On Guam seven thousand GI’s
stood up, cheered, and took pictures of her when she walked on stage,
parading her monumental shape. Then, at my suggestion, Bob introduced
Mickey. I should have kept my mouth shut. All seven thousand GI’s
booed him to the echo.

Twelve thousand marines on Okinawa marched downhill in formation to sit
on the ground in a great natural bowl and watch the show. Jayne kicked
off her shoes and stood barefoot for an hour and a half because she
looked cuter that way, posing with everyone who wanted a picture taken
with her. She signed every autograph book, too, drawing a little heart
instead of a dot over the “i” in “Mansfield.”

“Who’s going to pay to see it,” I asked Bob, “when she gives it away?”

Years later Jayne came up with a yarn about being stranded off Nassau
in allegedly shark-infested waters, which I can testify are so shallow
she could have walked to the mainland. I examined her later for
mosquito bites; nary a dent on her back or legs. “They’re higher up,
Hedda,” she whispered.

I had a special reason for feeling mighty privileged to join Bob on the
South Pacific tour, and I used to explain it in talking to our fellows.
It made me the only woman in the world able to follow the route her son
took journeying from island to island to fight the Japanese.

Bill Hopper, not a bit like his father, is a shy one. The fact that he
reached his full growth and height of six feet four when he was fifteen
may have something to do with it. He won’t talk about the war, won’t
let me write in my column about playing Paul Drake on the “Perry Mason”
show or the movies he makes. “If I can’t make it on my own, I don’t
want to make it” is his theme song.

In the war he made it strictly on his own as a skin-diving member of
the Navy’s Team Ten, Underwater Demolition. Their job was first to
sneak in under water and survey the best spots for our landing craft
to put ashore on islands held by the enemy. Then their mission was to
blast clear paths through the coral, swimming through the reefs with
eighty pounds of dynamite apiece on their backs.

One Christmas my family and friends sent off to Bill and his buddies
packages with such silly, homey things as miniature bottles of scotch
and bourbon, a sniff of his wife’s favorite perfume. Also included was
a little bag of earth, a publicity gimmick from one of the studios,
labeled “The latest dirt from Hollywood.”

Bill, who doesn’t lack a sense of humor, took the last item along when
he and his nine teammates crept ashore on one island. He left behind
the tiny sack as a kind of calling card. Team Ten chuckled for weeks
imagining the face of the first invading U. S. marine who found it on
the beach, asking himself: “How in the name of all that’s holy did this
get here among these Japs?”

The team discovered there was nothing to beat one particular latex
item, government issue, for keeping sticks of dynamite good and
waterproof. It was pure joy for them to figure what the Pentagon must
have thought about the statistics piling up in the quartermaster
general’s office concerning the kind of war Team Ten was apparently
fighting. Bill, as the tallest and huskiest, was the last aboard the
waiting pickup boats after the charges had been set--you had to swim
fast because the boat couldn’t hang around waiting for you. On one
excursion he happened to turn his head. He saw some loose dynamite
protectors bobbing up and down in the water after him and nearly
drowned laughing.

Their captain was a grandson of Joseph H. Choate, once ambassador to
Britain and the godfather of DeWolf Hopper, Bill’s father. Team Ten
received some leave to say good-by to their families. I found out later
they’d been chosen for the invasion of Japan. Thank heaven, they were
in America when the war ended.

A sense of humor is one of the essentials of this life. You can be
rich, powerful, famous, but without a bit of fun in your nature, you’re
something less than human. I’m not fond of psalm-singing, solemn piety
in anybody. But match devotion with kindness and laughter, and you’ve
company after my own heart. It’s time to talk about Father Murphy.

He was born in 1892 in Salem, Massachusetts, one of an Irish laborer’s
eight children, and he followed an older brother into the priesthood.
At one time he was a student together with Fulton Sheen, but one went
on to convert the rich, the other the poor. They’ve both exercised
their persuasions on me, their faith, I guess, bolstering their hopes
for the impossible.

Any danger of conversion by the then Monsignor Sheen was limited to
an elevator ride I took with him from the thirty-fifth floor of the
Waldorf Towers down to the entrance level. We’d just been introduced
by Clare Boothe Luce, who was a fellow passenger. The monsignor,
now bishop, has hypnotic black eyes and a magnetic presence that’s
inescapable. I was fascinated by him and his words. Then the elevator
reached our destination. “Saved by the basement!” I exclaimed. “Ten
more floors and you’d have had me a Catholic.” He roared with laughter.

Father Murphy, bless his heart, has tried longer. I hadn’t known many
Catholic priests until I met him at a party in Hollywood, when he was
in our town lecturing. I fell under the spell of the soft voice and
gentle spirit of this giant-spirited little man. In the Josephite Order
of Missionary Priests to the Negro, he served as pastor of the St. Joan
of Arc Church in New Orleans, was dean of the department of philosophy
and religion at Xavier University there. He did as much for the Negro
in that city as anyone alive today.

There was a young man in his parish who had gone as far as he could
studying sculpture in New Orleans, though it was plain to Father Murphy
that he could become an important sculptor, so funds were raised to
send him to New York. Some time later the priest found himself in that
city on his way to Rome by way of Paris, and he invited the young
sculptor to luncheon. The student had a request to make--would the
priest please serve as his eyes and report back to him every possible
detail, from the chisel marks to the play of light, of how the statues
looked in the Louvre and St. Peter’s?

Father Murphy went straight from the luncheon to the steamship office,
where he exchanged his first-class ticket for two tourist berths, with
a little spending money left over. He telephoned the young Negro to
join him and spent two inspiring weeks in Europe seeing the greatest
art treasures of the world through his young companion’s starry eyes.
On the voyage home they also shared a cabin.

“Father,” said the young man, “may I ask you a very personal question?
I understand that to white people we Negroes have a distinctive odor.
What do I smell like exactly?”

Father Murphy’s eyes must have twinkled, as they do constantly. “It’s
a little bit like burnt chestnuts.” They both laughed at that. “Now,”
said the priest, “we must have a special odor to you. What do I smell
like?”

“Well, Father, I’d say it’s--it’s a little bit like an old goat.”

Before he had left Hollywood, it had been arranged that a party of us
would meet at the next spring’s Mardi Gras and I’d bought him a suit to
replace the one he was wearing, which was turning green with age. He
wrote me about both items soon after he got home:

    Brace yourself. This is probably your first “mash” note from
    a dignified, almost funereal representative of the cloth, on
    which you made a positively ripping impression. (Me for the
    ecclesiastical tailors!) Your casual conversational reference,
    for instance, to someone as an equine posterior (remember? even
    though those two words are not exactly the ones you used) left
    me limp with inner mirth.

    Girl, I’m envious for the first time in my life. With your gift
    of gusto, what a ministry I’d have had! I’d have blown Negro
    prejudice in N’Orleans to smithereens and been an electrified
    Abe Lincoln to the lowly. Henceforth mouse Murphy shall assume
    stature and verve. In sheer defiance of incipient arthritis, he
    shall frisk.

    Don’t forget our date for Mardi Gras. It is said on the Delta
    that all good Americans go to N’Orleans when they die, and that
    all wise ones come while they are living. You are very wise,
    _ma chère_....

He signed off “Mississipiously, Edward F. Murphy, SSJ.” Letters
over the years carried fifty-nine varieties of sign-off greetings:
“Emphaticallergically” ... “Con amore-and-more” ... “Your sancrosanctly
devoted friend” ... “Deltavowedly” ... “Turkishbathetically.”

His first letter deserved a prompt reply:

    Now you can brace yourself after that beginning. You’ve won me,
    hands down. Don’t confuse that with the Church, however, as I’m
    still a Quaker. You go ahead and make your contacts for our
    voodoo meeting down there, even if you have to hold it in the
    church, because Frances Marion and I are-a-comin’ ... God bless
    the Irish!

He promised to “put the curse of the seven wet-nosed orphans on the
weatherman if he doesn’t behave himself while you’re here.” Somebody
must have had influence, because the February weather was fabulous,
and Mardi Gras turned out to be a long, nonstop ball. I didn’t miss
anything. We lunched with Mayor “Chep” Morrison, teaed with Frances
Parkinson Keyes, nibbled chicken legs alfresco with total strangers
squatting on the asphalt in the middle of Canal Street.

We had a magnificent four-hour luncheon at Brennan’s restaurant where
every dish had been prepared in wine, champagne, or brandy sauces.
Father Murphy religiously abstained from anything that came by the
bottle but ate heartily and conscientiously spooned up every last drop
of the sauces. “I’m not drinking,” he observed blandly, “but there’s no
rule against my not _eating_ these things.”

At six-thirty one morning I was up and off to see King Coal, the
colored monarch of Mardi Gras, land at the docks with his court off a
barge and parade their way through the streets on trucks. Their first
stop for a drink was at a celebrated local undertaker’s parlor, which
was always jammed with guests for the ceremony. One year a visiting New
York newspaperman discovered to his terror how they made room for all
the celebrants. In the middle of festivities he opened the door of the
men’s room. Three corpses, which had been stood inside upright behind
the door, tottered out at him, and he fled, screaming his head off.

My faithful new N’Orleans correspondent was writing more than some of
the liveliest letters I’d set eyes on. He has a long string of book
credits to his name, from _Yankee Priest_ to _Mary Magdalene_, which
was bought years ago by David Selznick, who retitled it _The Scarlet
Lily_ as a vehicle for Jennifer Jones. But by the time he gets around
to making it, I suspect we may all be ringing St. Peter’s doorbell.

The good father, too, is a fast gun with a news item.

    And how about this front-page violent calm into which you and
    Louella-la have flown? [he wrote during one Hollywood armistice
    between us.] By what female magic has yesterday’s equine
    _derrière_ become a bosom pal of today? Are you quite sure
    that the embrace is not an _osculation de mors_ or a mutual
    search for the most vulnerable places in each other’s anatomy?
    Well, whatever the mystery, the moral shines clear: _Anything
    can happen_. After this, I shall not flicker an eyelash if
    Peace descends on the human race as a certified dove--not an
    unmistakable bucket of bricks.

In his early days he used to serve as weekend assistant at St.
Michael’s in New York, where he met Eddie Dowling, and a bit of grease
paint rubbed off on Father Murphy’s Irish heart. He’s been an avid
follower of stage and screen ever since.

New Orleans was set on its ear when Elia Kazan went down for Fox to
make _Outbreak_, with Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes and Richard
Widmark, on location there. As supporting players, Gadge rounded up
six hundred local characters, from B-girls to skid-row derelicts, from
detectives to three extras whom police spotted in the crowd and dragged
off to prison.

My faithful correspondent kept his eyes peeled.

    Well, [Elia Kazan] went the aesthetic limit the other day,
    [he wrote,] using some genuine Orleanian streetwalkers. Of
    course, the ladies were paid for their posing and the wear and
    tear on their delicate constitutions. A bit later, when a
    policeman was about to pull them in for loitering (what a name
    for the world’s oldest profession!) they haughtily gave him the
    brush-off. “We’re working for Twentieth Century-Fox now,” they
    said, swishing their skirts.

He had a new sign-off for that note: “Kazanimatedly.”

When a member of the actor’s union led a cavalcade of stars to New
Orleans and they were tendered a banquet at Arnaud’s, Father Murphy
outdid himself. He gave an invocation to end all invocations. It went
something like this:

    O Lord God, Creator of the Cohens, the Kellys, and the Murphys;

    Author of the scenario of reality, from which we all play our
    parts, some of us so badly that we get hell for our performance
    and others brilliantly enough to achieve stardom;

    Director of the drama of the ages, which begins with the
    sublime curtain-raiser called Genesis, unfolds with the dreams,
    sighs, and sins of mankind, culminates with the Atonement on
    Calvary and ends endlessly with the unspeakable visions of the
    Apocalypse;

    Source of the silver screen of existence, which Hollywood
    ingeniously reflects with a silver screen of its own on which
    appear the animated shadows of thespians, whose fine art
    makes fiction seem truth, so differently from many of us poor
    preachers who succeed only in making truth seem fiction;

    We thank you, O Lord, for this occasion that brings some of
    the best representatives of Cinemaland into our midst. Help us
    to honor them fittingly. Bless them for shedding the gleams of
    their gifts into our darkening times. Save them--tonight--from
    Bourbon Street. Inspire the mighty industry that sponsors
    them. And, in fine, smile beneficently on the box offices of
    the land, breathe into them a second spring and let there be
    the financial flow that is so vital to the maintenance of an
    enterprise without which our daily lives would be so definitely
    drabber. Amen.

The one man who could hold a candle as a letter writer to Father Murphy
was Gene Fowler, another friend of many years. I loved him as much as I
loved Agnes, his wife of nearly half a century. Gene and I knew each
other well when the urge remained, but the ability in both cases had
departed. I doubt whether he put a dull word on paper, whether it was a
book, a three-thousand-word letter, or a post card.

After a dinner party for Gene and Agnes, for instance, he wrote:

    My dear Handsome:

    It doesn’t require the prompting of Emily Post or that other
    authority on etiquette, Polly Adler, to cause me to write a
    note of appreciation.... As I dined and sat beside two of
    my beloved women, I forgot my white hair and certain other
    elements of my physical decline. For the moment I was once
    again in the saddle (figuratively of course) and Life seemed
    new. Upon shaving this morning, I _had_ to see the realities
    once again, and I must confess that I abhor all mirrors.

He gave the years a run for their money, slowed down sometimes by
illness but stopped only once, by a final massive heart attack.

    I am in fine shape, [he concluded,] except for a faulty motor.
    I have led such a clean life that I can’t understand it (I mean
    I can’t understand the clean life).... But I still carry the
    torch for you. The torch, alas! is becoming an ember, but it is
    all I have.

Did anybody ever write such letters?

He spent an evening with Gene Buck, a true friend of ours, dating back
to the days when I commuted from Long Island to play on Broadway in
_Six-Cylinder Love_ in the evenings and make a movie in New York with
Jack Barrymore by day. A letter from the Fowlers’ home in Los Angeles
told about the two Genes’ meeting:

    He tried to get hold of me for four days, a thing that Sheriff
    Biscalis always does within an hour, and if it hadn’t been for
    you, the mighty squire of Great Neck would have gone without
    paying his disrespects to me.

    I suppose there are just as many great people now as there ever
    were, but it does not seem so to me. Possibly I am thinking
    of my own youth when I recall the wonderful troupe who were
    knocking down bottles during the early part of this century.
    Jesus Christ, Hedda! What a wonderful tribe it was!

    Gene and I enumerated them all and drank a toast in milk (not
    toast and milk) to the many memories. I do not want to classify
    you as an aged alumna, for you were just a baby ... I wish to
    God you had been there. We would have called you, busy as you
    are, but you were at some damned glamorous but uninteresting
    party to a movie magnate....

    If this sounds like a love letter, make the most of it; but,
    note well, you will have to hurry, for Forest Lawn is sending
    me literature.

Gene used to say: “The important thing is to see that friends, big or
little, famous or otherwise, have a sincere send-off.” He wrote the
send-off for Red Skelton’s son Richard, for Jack Barrymore, for Fred
MacMurray’s first wife, Lillian, and a dozen other people. “Maybe you
will do this kind of thing for me when my own time comes--and may I not
keep you waiting too long at that,” he told me.

After his last heart attack two years ago, I did my best, such as it
was, in my column: “He was as near heaven as any mortal can get. I feel
the loss more every day and will for the rest of my life.”

If, nostalgically, I learned something about how to love from Gene
Fowler, I got some advice on how to live from Bernard M. Baruch. I was
visiting Hobcaw Barony, his South Carolina plantation, hundreds of
acres of pines and live oaks, draped in Spanish moss with the King’s
Highway running through the middle of it. The soil’s so rich you can
throw a seed down one day and have a plant two inches tall the next.
Only a handful of servants were left when I was there; the rest went
north years ago. I urged Bernie to hand over the estate to the Negro
people as a memorial, to see what they could make of it by building
schools, churches, a community center. But he says no: “They’d think
I was showing off.” He’s left it to his daughter Belle and built a
small house some fifty miles away, where he spends his winters with his
devoted hostess-companion and nurse, Elizabeth Navarro.

I was running up Hobcaw’s great sweep of stairway when Bernie stopped
me. “Let me show you how to do it,” he said. “I know you’re not sixteen
any longer. Do what I do. Go up to the first landing, take five deep
breaths. Then go up to the next landing and take five more, and so on
until you’re at the top.”

I’d arrived bone-weary from a lecture tour. Jimmy Byrnes, former
Secretary of State to Harry Truman, was there with his wife to dinner.
I’m a sort of middle-class Republican, while Bernie’s an intellectual
Democrat. He’s fond of conducting his own private polls of politics,
and I’m counted on to give him an opposition point of view. So while
Baruch, Byrnes, and other guests stood in a group in front of the
fireplace debating the affairs of the nation, Hopper sat on a sofa,
ears tuned in until my head began to nod. The next thing I knew was
Bernie’s tap on my shoulder. “Come now, it’s time for you to retire.”

“But you haven’t finished your discussion,” I protested.

“No, but you have.”

I fell asleep hours later in a huge bedroom with four picture windows
in two of its walls. Through each of them I could see and hear the
breeze ruffling through the moss on the live oak in the moonlight so
that it danced like a _corps de ballet_. Bernie believes in plenty of
rest, including a nap between the sheets every afternoon. The next
morning I had breakfast in bed, served by Bernie. He’d been up long
enough to have read all the newspapers, so I got bulletins along with
my coffee.

With a chauffeur and one other servant, the three of us went off on
a fishing expedition in a station wagon loaded to the hubcaps with
equipment. At the selected spot at the mouth of a narrow river lined
with oyster beds, the two helpers set out folding chairs and steamer
rugs for Bernie and me and wrapped us up like mummies. Then they
baited our hooks and left us to it, while the chauffeur took himself
with his line off to his own favorite fishing spot.

Bernie and I waited and waited for a nibble. At last he snagged a
hard-shell crab. I followed suit. “Do you want to go on?” he asked.

“Sure, I love it,” said I. Only crabs were biting that day. I went on
hauling them out like sixty, but Bernie turned his back on the whole
undertaking, got up, shook himself, and sat in the sun. “FDR came out
to this same spot,” he noted dryly, “but he managed to catch fish.” So
did the chauffeur perched out on the pier.

If he’s in town, Bernie is the first man I call when I visit New
York. I took myself one day to his house on East Sixty-sixth Street,
and there hanging over the mantelpiece in his drawing room was a new
portrait of him. I gave it one good, hard look, then asked: “Have you a
stepladder, please? I want to take that down.”

“Ah, it’s not that bad,” he protested.

“Have you really looked at it? Whoever painted it has made your head
too small, your shoulders too narrow, and stuck you on a park bench
outside the White House. Whose idea was that?”

“Well,” he explained, “Clare was having her portrait done....” He has
the greatest regard for Clare Luce; years before he arranged with a
single telephone call to have her play _The Women_ staged on Broadway
after the script had been lying around producer Max Gordon’s office for
months. And this for a play that Bernie told her was “the most cynical
satire on your sex ever written.”

I said no more against the picture, but on my next visit a year
later, the portrait had been replaced by another, by Chandor, a
wonderful likeness, complete to Bernie’s hearing aid. He autographed a
reproduction of it for me. With pen in hand, he looked up: “How do you
spell gallant--one ‘l’ or two?”

“Never could spell,” I said. “Use a different word.”

“No. Gallant is the word for you,” he said, and waited until the butler
found a dictionary. Bernie is a loyal friend. If our top governmental
officials had listened to him, we shouldn’t be in the mess we’re in
today.

I once worked for another Democrat, not in politics, to be sure, but
making two silent pictures at the studios of the old Film Booking
Offices of America, called FBO for short, before it was acquired by
Howard Hughes and renamed Radio-Keith Orpheum, or RKO. Joseph P.
Kennedy, father of our President, had just arrived from Boston as a
sharp, up-and-coming businessman to see if he could make a fortune in
Hollywood.

He signed up a scad of stars--Joel McCrea; Constance Bennett; Fred
Thompson, the cowboy Adonis who’d been a Presbyterian pastor in the
Valley until Frances Marion married him on a bet with Mary Pickford.
Heading Joe Kennedy’s contract list was Gloria Swanson, who was always
quite a gal.

She’d been married to Wally Beery and Herbert Somborn, who started the
Brown Derby restaurant chain, when producer Mickey Nielan entered her
life. He rapidly hired Somborn to go off on a nationwide promotion
tour plugging a movie Nielan had made. To make sure that his wooing of
Gloria would not be interrupted, he had Somborn telephone him every
evening at eight California time from whatever city he was in that day.
When Somborn hung up, Nielan would have the operator check back to
verify where the call had originated.

I met Joe’s wife, Rose, at a luncheon Frances Marion gave, where Polly
Moran stared at Colleen Moore’s straight boyish bangs and said: “Look
at her--makes $10,000 a week and has a lousy haircut.” Rose adored her
husband.

Gloria was Joe’s number-one star. He hired Laura Hope Crews as her
coach, and she practically lived day and night with Gloria, including
sessions at Laura’s home overlooking the beach at Santa Monica. He made
some good pictures before he started _Queen Kelly_, with Gloria as
star, which began as a silent, then ran into the monster called Sound.
He never forgot he was a businessman. He had notes for $750,000 signed
by Gloria to help finance the picture. The question was: What to do?
Finish _Kelly_ as a silent, scrap it, or take time off to see if Sound
became important?

He suggested a trip to Europe for Gloria, accompanied by Joe and Mrs.
Kennedy. It must have been a mighty trying trip for all three of them.
The picture was never completed, but on their return Joe sold his FBO
holdings for a $5,000,000 profit, to make the first big financial
killing of a career that later sent him to London as a wartime
ambassador. Mrs. Kennedy’s father, the legendary “Honey Fitz,” onetime
mayor of Boston, had a hand in getting Joe out of Hollywood.

Joe and I saw each other occasionally over the years. If I’d taken all
the advice he gave me, I’d be rich today. He was one of the first on
FDR’s bandwagon when Herbert Hoover was the man to beat. In the lobby
of a New York theater Joe told me: “Beg, borrow, or steal all the money
you can and put it on FDR, because he’s going to be the next President
of the United States. You don’t have to vote for him, but make sure you
bet on him.” Did I? Not on your life.

I saw him last not long before he had his stroke. I was sitting at a
table in Van Cleef & Arpels, New York, waiting for a package. He came
bustling in, as spry as ever then. “Hi, Joe! Buying _me_ a present?”

He paused in mid-stride. “What--Oh, it’s you. I might have known.”

He threw me a hard look and went on into the back room. The senior
assistant in the place came up, shook my hand, and said: “I didn’t
think anybody in the world could do that.”

“Why not? I knew him when he was a Hollywood producer and had a
stableful of stars,” I said. “Besides, I have a mighty retentive
memory.”




_Eighteen_


His voice was the making and the breaking of him, a blessing and a
curse. He could melt your soul or shatter mirrors when he set it free.
One night, all over the hearthrug in my den, there lay the chunks of
broken glass to prove his point. In his fevered love affairs he was a
stallion, with a body as strong as an animal’s, and he called himself
“The Tiger.”

Mario Lanza roared upward to fortune and fantastic fame like a
Fourth of July rocket, then fell back to earth, a burnt stick, lost
in darkness. For a moment, while he lit the sky, he brought back to
incredible life the archaic days of madness, romance, depravity, and
glory. But there had never been anybody quite like Mario, and I doubt
whether we shall see his like again.

It was easy to be captivated, though often hard to tell exactly why.
His smile, which was as big as his voice, was matched with the habits
of a tiger cub, impossible to housebreak. He was the last of the great
romantic performers, born in the wrong century--maybe there could never
be a right one for him. “Reality,” he believed, “stinks most of the
time. It’s a star’s duty to take people out of the world of reality
into the world of illusion, and a motion picture is the ideal way to do
that.”

He ate too much, fought too much, drank too much, spent too much. He
could no more handle success than a child can be trusted with dynamite.
So many of the themes of this story met and merged in Alfred Arnold
Cocozza, from Philadelphia’s Little Italy, who borrowed his mother’s
maiden name, Maria Lanza, as a ticket to destruction.

He developed a god complex a mile wide. “I’m the humble keeper of
a voice,” he used to tell me in all seriousness, “which God has
entrusted to me. This is not easy. There are sacrifices you must make.
I love champagne--I can’t drink it. Red wine I love--I must refuse
it. I must not smoke--it is bad for the voice. I am the fortunate and
unfortunate guy it passes through.”

He couldn’t be called a liar, because he found it increasingly hard to
distinguish between the facts and the fables he wove around himself. He
could boast of his abstemiousness and, a few hours later, wander into
a bar on Sunset Strip like The Players, a favorite haunt of his, which
Preston Sturges used to run. They could hear Mario coming by the slap
of laces in the handmade, elevator shoes he imported from New York to
add a couple of inches to his own natural-grown five feet seven. The
fancy footwear must have been uncomfortable; the laces were seldom tied.

He turned up at The Players one morning fifteen minutes before the
2 A.M. curfew which California law demands, awash from the red wine
he guzzled after dinner. Closing time arrived, but Mario and Sturges
lingered at a table with two girls, killing more wine. Two state liquor
inspectors stopped by for a friendly, after-hours drink. They were off
duty and well acquainted with Sturges, but Mario hadn’t been told that.

One of them walked up behind him, grabbed the bottle, and, as a joke,
grunted: “Okay, you’re all under arrest.” That was the last thing he
knew until long after dawn broke. Mario snatched the bottle from the
inspector. With a fist hard as a rock, with a seventeen-inch biceps
behind it he sent him flying against a far wall, cold as a mackerel,
with seven teeth knocked out of his head.

The other officer tried to tackle Mario. For his trouble, he was picked
up bodily and hurled against the same wall, dead to the world, slumped
on the floor beside his companion like a second sack of broken bones.

Sturges was aghast. Before he called an ambulance he shoved Mario
out the front door. “Start running and get lost,” he grunted. The
now-terrified tenor put on so much speed he shed one of his shoes
in his flight to the apartment of a friend, who lived close to the
Château Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. At 4 A.M. Sturges telephoned
Mario’s press agent to report the massacre. “Keep that maniac away from
me,” he said. “He’s likely to kill us all in our sleep.”

The press agent made a beeline for the nearest sheriff’s sub-station,
on Fairfax Avenue at Santa Monica Boulevard. Standing in full view on
the desk was Mario’s shoe, as distinctively his as a fingerprint, but
nobody had any idea who owned it. “Have there been any charges filed?”
the agent asked. There had not. “Well, my client would like to have his
shoe back.”

“Who’s your client?” asked the desk sergeant.

“That’s neither here nor there. No need to identify him until charges
have been filed.” After some persuasion the law accepted that viewpoint
and handed over the shoe. Mario got it back the following morning,
along with a lecture from his agent.

Lanza was contrite and, as always, willing to pay. The inspector with
the missing teeth received a $4000 job of expert dentistry. Both he and
his colleague were given $200 cashmere suits by the agent as balm to
their wounds. To this day they don’t know what hit them--or who.

Mario may have been on to something with his claim that his voice was
a gift of God; he certainly didn’t owe a thing to formal training. He
simply taught himself by listening to his father’s collection of opera
records, including one Caruso disk that he once played twenty-seven
times in succession, matching his voice to the great Enrico’s. He
was a blubbery fat boy, an only child, spoiled rotten by his mother,
who was the only working member of the Cocozza family. She was up at
five-thirty every morning, to sew uniforms in an army quartermaster
depot as the sole support of Mario and his father, a pensioned veteran
of World War I.

The studios later had a hard time inventing jobs that Mario was
supposed to have held down as a young man. The handouts pretended he’d
been a piano mover or a truck driver. But he used to sprawl in bed
until lunch time, hadn’t done a lick of real work until he was drafted
in the Army.

He had one other hobby in his Philadelphia era besides singing, and
that was girls. “I can’t help it if I was born in heat,” was the way he
put it. “I am always the lover--I never stopped. I spend ninety-nine
and ninety-nine one hundredths of my time in a romantic mood. That
accounts for my high notes.”

Women mobbed him every step of his career. Wherever he showed his
face in public, they ripped at his clothes, grabbed him, hugged him,
smothered him in lipstick from the top of his curly head down. It was
impossible for him to escape them. They followed him to his home, rang
his doorbell in the middle of the night, and some of them were the
biggest stars in our business.

As an army private, Mario got to Los Angeles on furlough. A lot
happened to him there. A fellow soldier in the same outfit, Bert Hicks
from Chicago, introduced him to his sister Betty, who became the one
and only Mrs. Lanza after Mario was discharged. They were married in
Beverly Hills Municipal Court, with neither of their families knowing
anything about it. At a Frances Marion party loaded to the doors with
stars, with Father Murphy up from New Orleans, and myself, Mario sang
clear through from eleven o’clock one night until the birds started
giving him competition at seven the next morning. At another party,
Frank Sinatra heard him and invited him to stay at his home.

After I’d heard Mario sing, I asked him over to my house. There was a
big, gilt-framed mirror over the fireplace in the den. “I could break
that with the power of a single high note,” he boasted. Like a fool, I
told him: “I’d like to see you try.” Like a little boy, he had to prove
it. When he had gone, the house seemed oddly quiet. I was sweeping up
bits of glass for days.

Walter Pidgeon and I both became Lanza boosters, but it was Ida
Koverman, true to form, who took him to Louis B. Mayer. Mario had been
cutting some tests for RCA-Victor to see whether his voice would be
right for commercial recording. Ida, who was a board member of the
Hollywood Bowl, laid hold of some of those disks to play for her boss.

To Louis, that tenor sounded like a symphony orchestrated for cash
registers. Mario was presented with a seven-year contract, starting at
$750 a week, with a bonus of $10,000 payable on signature. I begged him
not to sign, because his voice wasn’t ready to be exploited the way
Metro was sure to exploit it. But he was beating his chest so loudly he
couldn’t hear me. He was twenty-six years old. He had twelve more years
left to him.

Metro had a sad history with its tenors and baritones. There’d been
Lawrence Tibbett, a baritone of large frame and a big voice, who was
hauled out of the Metropolitan Opera to do _The Rogue Song_, music by
Franz Lehar, screen play by Frances Marion. He did _New Moon_ with
Grace Moore, then faded like the morning dew.

Igor Gorin was hustled out to Culver City, too, under Mayer’s strategy
of always keeping an understudy in the wings to prevent any star from
getting too big-headed. Gorin was kept hanging around doing nothing in
particular for two years, though Louis admitted he had a better voice
than Nelson Eddy, who was piling up the profits for the studio as a
team with Jeanette MacDonald.

But Louis grew tired of Nelson, so he was handed the Impossible Script
treatment--given stories so remote from his abilities that he was bound
to turn them down. This continued until he cracked and announced: “I’m
through.” That was the day his bosses had been banking on and waiting
for.

Food was always a delight to Mario right from the teen-age days when
his invalid father used to serve him breakfast in bed. He swore by
“Puccini and pizza--greatest combination since Samson and Delilah.”
Also by spaghetti, ravioli, meat balls, a steak and six eggs for
breakfast; thirty and forty pieces of fried chicken at a sitting,
rounded off with a whole apple pie and a quart of eggnog.

His studio bosses watched his weight go up and down like the stock
market. There were times when they put him in a drug-induced coma for
days on end; he would have to lose twenty pounds before he was allowed
out of bed. They peeled him down to 169 pounds for his first picture,
_That Midnight Kiss_, and kept scales on the set to weigh him every
morning like a prize bull readied for market.

He hadn’t started picture number two, _The Toast of New Orleans_,
before he took to the bottle as enthusiastically as to the knife and
fork. He recognized no authority, no discipline, no frontiers except
his own gigantic appetites for food and drink and women. One afternoon
on the set he fell into a brief, blazing argument with Joe Pasternak,
the producer. But he resumed work in the scene, a lavishly decorated
New Orleans restaurant, replete with crystal chandeliers, velvet
draperies, snow-white tablecloths adorned with glass and silver.

In the middle of one take, he spotted a friend who had come onto the
set, so he stopped cold, still raging from his quarrel with Pasternak,
to take the visitor to his portable dressing room. Inside, Mario
launched into a tirade against the producer, the studio, and the lousy
picture he was making. From the little clothes closet he pulled out a
fifth of Old Granddad and yanked out the cork. In two gargantuan gulps
he emptied the bottle.

Suddenly he was calm as a lake. “I think I’m making too much of
little things,” he said, and, steady as a rock walked back before the
cameras. There were two steps leading down to the restaurant floor. He
negotiated the first without difficulty, but on the second the bourbon
hit him. He gave a thundering roar, then burst on the set like a bomb.
Tables collapsed as he crashed into them, chandeliers shattered into
fragments, curtains were torn to rags, while above the chaos sounded
the screams of his co-star, Ann Blyth. He made his way across the set
leaving havoc in his wake, then subsided to the floor, unconscious.

_The Toast of New Orleans_ presented a special problem to Mario, who
had been introduced to the pleasures of coffee and brandy by J. Carroll
Naish. Starting before breakfast, Mario was taking thirty cups of
coffee a day, with disastrous effect on his kidneys. The picture was
being shot on the old lot back of Culver City, a long block away from
the nearest washrooms. He spent the better part of his working day in
transit, until production had slowed to a crawl. He made poor time
walking, anyway--he had broken his foot, which was in a cast, and he
was forced to limp along with a cane.

His director, Norman Taurog, and Joe Pasternak appealed for help to
Dore Schary, who, with Mayer on his way out, was now in charge of
production. Schary luxuriated in an impeccable office furnished in
old-English fashion, with a mahogany desk that reeked of class and the
antique showroom. The first time Mario was summoned, he sat nursing his
cane in patient silence. “We can’t have the picture held up by your
bladder trouble,” said Schary. “We must find a solution.”

“Okay,” said Mario. “Leave it to me.”

His solution was simplicity itself. By now, shooting was concentrated
on a New Orleans quay, bright with fishing nets and boats at anchor.
Mario didn’t bother hobbling to the washroom. The water in the
quay was more convenient. So was a bucket half filled with a still
photographer’s used flash bulbs.

The whole company was in an uproar, most notably David Niven, whose
voice was raised in indignation on behalf of Ann Blyth and other women
in the cast. Mario was called again to Schary’s office. But now his
temper had changed. He shouted down every word that Schary tried to
utter, until the producer cowered in fright behind his beautiful desk,
watching Mario pound it to a battered wreck with his cane. But Schary
wasn’t one to nurse grudges. After the first preview of _The Great
Caruso_ he showered Mario with hampers of fruit, bouquets of flowers,
and cases of champagne.

When I first heard his mighty voice, I wrote: “If Lanza can act, he’s
the man to play Caruso.” I still have Caruso records, along with a
framed caricature he drew of DeWolf Hopper to celebrate the birth of
our son. Caruso’s eloquent title for his sketch of Wolfie, scribbled
on the back of a Lambs Club banquet menu, was _The Bachelor_!!!!!!!

Nick Schenck was opposed to _The Great Caruso_, whose chances of
box-office success he rated at zero. Mayer, prompted by Ida, pushed
it along toward production. It was completed in thirty-one days of
shooting; it ran for ten weeks and earned $1,500,000 at New York’s
Radio City Music Hall alone; around the world it piled up $19,000,000
the first twelve months after release. Mario’s pay check was $100,000.

His finances were already tangled like knitting wool tossed into a
cage full of tigers. On the face of it, he was earning from movies and
records about $1,000,000 a year. But there were complications. The
greatest singing attraction in the world was a monumental spendthrift.
After _Caruso_ he bought two dozen gold watches, had them engraved
“With love from Mario,” and handed them out like lollipops. He insisted
on having 14-karat gold fittings on his brand-new Cadillac, which was
upholstered in tiger skin. He ran up delicatessen bills so huge he was
leery about showing his face in the shop.

And there was Sam Weiler, who collected a cut of everything Mario made.
Weiler was a nondescript little man who owned a boys’ summer camp in
Pennsylvania and yearned to be a singer. Soon after the Lanzas went to
New York to spend their honeymoon in the Park Central Hotel, he heard
Mario singing at the studio of a voice teacher, Polly Robertson, and
decided on the spot that managing this talent was a much better bet
than trying to make it to glory on his own larynx.

When he offered to pay off Mario’s debts--$11,000 or so, by Weiler’s
account--and subsidize his career, Betty and her new husband calculated
they could get along on $70 a week living expenses. In return, Weiler
was to collect five per cent of all Lanza’s earnings for the next
fifteen years. Eighteen months later the manager’s share was increased
to ten per cent. A third contract pushed up his cut to twenty per cent,
and when Mario signed for a radio show later, Weiler was in on the
ground floor at $500 a week. According to his protégé’s reckoning,
Weiler advanced $70 a week for seven months and drew a subsequent total
of more than $350,000 in commissions.

Cash money and Mario were almost strangers. He never saw the tens of
thousands of dollars he made every week. Nobody actually put cash into
his hands until he was in the middle of a man-killing concert tour that
took him and two or three followers clear across the nation, singing
his heart out at every performance.

His life had come down to a deadly dull routine: sing every night, come
off stage and drink a case of beer, sleep, drive on to the next town.
Even his thick-skinned followers felt sorry for him. “Why not give him
something for himself?” they asked each other. “Let him have the money
from the programs.” Those souvenirs of the concert sold at one dollar
apiece, cost no more than twelve or so cents to produce. So while the
tour was bringing in $30,000 a week in Oregon, which is silver-dollar
territory, Mario was permitted to store up five hundred of those
dollars, which he squirreled away in a canvas bag.

Only this bull of a man would have the muscle to tote around that sack
of silver like a change purse, but he took it everywhere with him, day
and night. In the car, he set it down on the floor between his legs and
occasionally, subconsciously, gave it a reassuring chink. At night, he
slept with the bag under his bed.

The biggest money came in, unseen by him, from his records. He sold
more than 110,000 albums from _Caruso_ before the picture was shown to
any public audience. Then he topped this by selling a million copies in
less than a year of a single record, “Be My Love.” No classical artist
in RCA history had ever equaled that mark. The record was cut in one
flawless attempt while he was muzzy with wine and soaking wet from
head to foot. When he was awarded his first golden record for selling
a million copies of it, he would have nobody but Hedda Hopper present
it to him. The studio was furious. They wanted one of their stars to
perform that service so all the glory could be kept in the family.

He had gone through a normal rambunctious day at Culver City,
drinking steadily but staying out of trouble. At seven-thirty
that evening he had an appointment at Republic Studios, where one
particular sound stage came so close to acoustic perfection that RCA
consistently hired it for cutting its classical-label records, Red
Seal. A sixty-five-piece orchestra had been engaged to work with him
through the night in a four-hour session, to make an armful of master
recordings.

On his way home from the studio Mario thought he’d stop by for another
drink or two at the home of a good friend of his, a free-lance
writer. The tempestuous tenor was distinctly the worse for wear when
he arrived, and his condition did not improve. Phyllis Kirk, a young
actress who lived in an upstairs apartment, was invited down to have a
drink with Mario. Before he collapsed into alcoholic slumber, he had
tried to rip the dress off her shoulders.

Lanza’s long-suffering press agent was eating dinner when he had a call
from an RCA representative waiting at Republic: where was Mario? Within
minutes another telephone call provided the answer, from the free-lance
correspondent: “Will you kindly come over and get your degenerate,
unprincipled client out of my apartment?”

The agent had a favor to ask first: “Can the three of you drag him
into a cold shower, prop him up, and keep him there? If he drowns, he
drowns, but will you please try it for me?” Be happy to, the writer
said. When the agent got to the apartment, Mario was fully clad,
three-quarters conscious, and half drowned. The idea that he had work
to do had somehow penetrated his curly head. But he had a bargain to
make first.

“I’ll go out to Republic if you come with me,” he told the agent. “I’ll
do one number, then we go and have a bottle of wine together.” Agreed.

The orchestra, impeccably dressed, had been waiting nearly two hours
when Mario staggered in, splashing water wherever he stood. He frowned
at the conductor, then turned on the musicians. “---- all of you,” he
said to introduce himself. “I don’t want any bull. We’re going through
this thing once, and it had better be right.”

And that’s how it was done. Half an hour later Mario was sitting with
his press agent in a bar in Coldwater Canyon quaffing Ruffino by the
quart. A year and a half later the same agent was handed a check
for Mario representing his take from nine months’ sale of “Be My
Love”--$405,000. The one record earned over $2,000,000. In 1961, Mario
Lanza records were still collecting royalties of $275,000. Mario wasn’t
around to share in as much as a nickel, but the percentage merchants
still had contracts which continued to give them their cut.

“Be My Love” was selling like hot cakes, especially in Philadelphia,
when a fan magazine appeared on the newsstands quoting Mario’s
reminiscences of his old neighborhood. These memoirs had been concocted
between the singer and a writer in the course of another battle of
the bottles that began at five-thirty one afternoon in Mama Weiss’s
Hungarian restaurant and ended at seven-thirty the next morning when
Mario got home to Betty. His imagination had run wild through the night
with lurid tales of gang wars in Little Italy and bullets whistling
past his ears when he lived on “Murderers’ Row.”

Publication of these highly colored tales so enraged some of his former
neighbors that they invaded local stores and smashed every Lanza
record they could seize. Rocks were hurled through the windows of his
relatives. The mayor was forced to telephone Hollywood: “Please bring
Mr. Lanza to Philadelphia for a personal appearance, or I’m afraid we
may have a major riot here.”

Mario was always officially on a diet. “I’ve never been fat,” he
bragged, “only seductively buxom.” But he was a compulsive eater
who ballooned up to three hundred pounds between pictures. Schary
was forever plagued with the problem of paring down Mario, who was
pure gold at the box office; his four pictures for Metro brought in
$40,000,000, a phenomenal figure. He had so many temptations to eat and
drink in Hollywood that Schary decided his prize tenor would have to be
hidden away somewhere for the poundage to be lost.

Ginger Rogers had a secluded ranch on the Rogue River in Oregon. She
would be happy to let Mario use the place for reducing. He couldn’t
ride in planes because of a punctured eardrum, so he was driven up
there with Betty, his press agent and wife, and a colored butler. Mario
wasn’t short of will power when the occasion demanded it. For six weeks
he held himself down to eating three tomatoes and six eggs a day. Every
morning he puffed half a mile each way up and down the road, sweltering
in a specially made latex suit. He had to work out alone. The agent sat
on the porch of the ranch house with a .22 rifle. Whenever Mario slowed
down, a shot would come singing into the roadway by his feet to speed
him up again.

He had one more great record, “The Loveliest Night of the Year,” and
one more miserable movie, _Because You’re Mine_, to make before his
feud with Metro took on the proportions of nightmare. Much of the blame
has to be loaded onto his wife’s shoulders. She loved her husband in
her own shrill fashion, but she no more knew the greatness in him than
she could sing _Aïda_.

She loved the money he made, the house it bought with butler, cook,
maids, gardener, chauffeur. She loved the $20,000 mink he bought her,
but she couldn’t spare the time to listen to his new recordings when he
burst into the house with them like an excited schoolboy.

He was wonderful with his own children and every other child. I’ve seen
him romp around his living-room floor by the hour with his family--who
are a family of orphans now. He tried to keep one little child alive
and failed through no fault of his. Raphaela Fasona of New Jersey was a
ten-year-old fan, one of the army of them throughout the Western world
whose letters kept Mario’s mother, father, and a staff of three others
busy answering them. Ray was in the hospital, a victim of Hodgkin’s
disease. Mario had great compassion for the sick, sent out hundreds of
his albums to them. He talked to Ray in person or by telephone every
week, sang to her, told her fairy tales.

He brought her with her mother to Beverly Hills one Christmas, gave
her a party with stars and their children as guests--Kathryn Grayson,
the Ricardo Montalbans, Joe Pasternak, David May, Mrs. Norman Taurog
among them. The children chuckled over a puppet show and a magician,
and I watched Ray’s great luminous brown eyes fill with wonder. When
her illness came to its inevitable end, Mario planned a concert in her
memory, donating the proceeds for cancer research.

Betty Lanza was a cheerleader in the bleachers that were filled with
the stooges who lived off Mario. “You don’t have to go to the studio,”
she used to tell him. “You’re too big a name for that now. Make them
come to you.”

The studio did come to him once more, to make _The Student Prince_,
though the bosses were panicky about his weight, which had puffed
him out to look more hippopotamus than tiger. I went to his house
to get his side of the donnybrook that broke out and kept his name
in headlines for months. “I was treated cheap while I was Tiffany.
Box-office Tiffany. They gave me the little-boy routine, and I’m not a
little boy. They took my advice before. Then when I became a big star,
they said: ‘We’ll take the reins in on this sonofabitch.’”

I could hear all kinds of people talking through his lips as he spoke:
his wife, his sycophants, whole generations of stars and the relatives
of stars dating back to the days when Hollywood first made dreams of
fame and greed come true.

Eddie Mannix, MGM vice president, was a target for Mario’s fury. “I
told him I’d kill him. He said: ‘You wouldn’t hit an old man.’ I said:
‘I’ll tie my hands behind my back and fight you with my head.’”

In the middle of the battle Mario took a look into the books of Marsam
Enterprises which agent Sam Weiler had set up with his wife, Selma, as
partner to handle Lanza’s business affairs. The ledgers showed he had
little left. Weiler promptly quit, and Mario subsequently filed suit
against him. His memory was kept green in Mario’s private gymnasium, a
boxing ring under a tent in his garden. Painted on the punching bag was
a portrait of Weiler. “I can keep in trim the rest of my life,” Mario
boasted, “because every time I work out I can beat the daylights out of
the sonofagun.”

The studio had allotted twelve weeks to cut the recordings for _The
Student Prince_. Mario finished the job in two. When he played them
over for me, he sat a million miles away, saturated in the music, until
the last notes had died. “A critic wrote about me once: ‘He sings every
note as though it’s his last on earth.’” Mario said softly: “It’s true.
I do. I can’t help myself.”

The sound track was all he made of _The Student Prince_. He refused to
work on the picture after that. He was suspended, then sued for the
potential profit on that and future pictures. The figures mentioned
in the legal documents were a gargantuan jest to him. “They asked
$13,500,000 plus $855,066.73. Now what I want to know is, what’s
the seventy-three cents for? I guess Eddie Mannix had his drawers
laundered.”

He could joke about it in daylight, but darkness brought about a Jekyll
and Hyde change. He kept to his house during the day; at night, with
his chauffeur-trainer for company, he roved through the streets of
Beverly Hills seeking out his enemies. He drove to Joe Pasternak’s
house to smash the entrance gates off their hinges. Another night he
used the Cadillac to batter down Joe’s mailbox. And some mornings the
men on Mario’s black list found he had ridden up to their doorsteps and
defecated there.

The rocket had exploded, and the charred stick was tumbling down. A
letter from Eddie Mannix, on behalf of Loew’s Incorporated, came to
Mario: “For good and sufficient reasons your employment under the
contract between us is hereby terminated. We shall hold you fully
accountable for all damage and loss suffered by us as a result of your
actions and conduct; and we expressly reserve all rights of every kind
and character acquired by us under said contract.” Mario promptly had
a banner made to hang in his house: “The Lion is Dead,” it proclaimed,
“Long Live The Tiger.”

I was one of the friends who begged Mario to commit himself to the
Menninger Clinic. Once again he tried to strike a bargain with Jack
Keller, another friend: if Jack would go with him, Mario would take
treatment. But he made the mistake of letting Betty know too soon.

“He’s no crazier than you are,” she raged at Jack.

“But it’s for your happiness as much as his.” It was known by now that
the Lanzas were on drink and drugs together. Their domestic battles
often stopped short of murder only by a hair’s breadth. But Betty set
her foot down; no trip to Topeka for her husband.

In theory he could still make records, but he was in no shape for
singing. He tried and failed repeatedly, his throat shut tight
by tension. The Lanzas owed money to everybody, from Goldblatt’s
delicatessen to Uncle Sam. A psychiatrist familiar with his case had an
explanation: “Lanza has lost all touch with reality. He no longer knows
who he really is or the personality he wants to be.”

His first job after two years of seclusion was a television show,
“Shower of Stars,” for the Chrysler Corporation. It ended in a furor
when he simply mouthed the words to old recordings as they were played
off camera. The sponsors had invited reporters from all over the
country to come out for the occasion, with supper afterward at the
Beverly Hills Hotel.

Mario went straight home after his performance. I went to the party
to hear what the reporters had to say. Most of them thought Mario was
through. He hadn’t even been able to synchronize his lip movements to
his recorded voice.

At 12:30 A.M. I drove to his house. He sat in the drawing room with his
wife and the Hubbell Robinsons, drinking pink champagne. I’d always
been rough with him because I loved him. “What do you think you’re
doing?” I asked. “Celebrating a wake?”

He leaped to his feet in a white heat of anger. “What do you mean?”

“That’s what it was--a wake. I stayed at the party long enough to hear
what the reporters had to say.”

Suddenly he became a little boy. “What can I do to redeem myself?”

“There’s only one answer. Nobody thinks you can sing. Can you?”

“Of course, I can.”

“Then tomorrow afternoon you’ll invite the reporters here to your house
and sing for them. You’ve got to if you want to save your reputation.”

“Will you come? Will you sit where I can sing to you?” I reluctantly
said I would. They came, and he sang as only he could when he knew it
was a question of success or failure. He saved what was left of his
career.

He was booked by his agents, MCA, to appear at the opening of the New
Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas, at $50,000 a week. In preparation he forced
himself once more on to a heroic diet, worked out religiously with bar
bells and exercise machines, submitted to hours of pounding on the
massage table, then took off for Vegas with Betty, their children, and
his trainer, Terry Robinson, in a total entourage of twelve. The staff
at the New Frontier had strict instructions not to let Mario start
drinking, come what may. The town’s gamblers anticipated trouble; the
wise money was eight to five against.

On the afternoon of the opening Louella Parsons went looking for him.
Ben Hecht, who was writing a new picture for him, also sought him out.
He found Mario in his suite, pale with nerves but dry as a bone. Ben
felt like a drink, and a waiter arrived with champagne.

I tried to reach Mario that afternoon but couldn’t get near him. I
went to his suite and knocked and knocked. I could hear voices inside,
but nobody let me in. “I did all the drinking,” Ben said later. “When
he left me at six o’clock he was O.K. to walk out on any stage and do
handsprings. Whether he had desert dust or goofy dust in his throat, I
don’t know.”

He added: “I’ve never seen a guy suffer so because of what he was
doing, whatever that was. Does he always have those soul agonies, or
doesn’t he give a damn?” And then: “I’ve listened to his story--some of
it funny, most sad. I’ve heard this same story in this town for thirty
years. The minute a guy gets big, people start sitting on his head. I
still have complete confidence in the guy.”

After he left Ben Hecht in the hotel, Mario disappeared. Half an hour
before the show, he staggered back to the New Frontier. There were
panicky efforts to revive him. But he passed out cold. A star-flecked
audience, including Sonja Henie, Ann Miller, Jack Benny, George Burns,
Robert Young, and 150 newsmen, waited for him in vain. The management
canceled his contract and sued him for $125,000.

The rest was all exclusively downhill. Beatrice, the Lanzas’ colored
housekeeper, paid some of the bills out of her salary to hold things
together. He desperately tried for work at other studios, but nobody
would take a chance on him. So he took up a deal to make a picture in
Rome, to give concerts there and elsewhere in Europe, taking his family
along. In Rome he rented the fabulous Villa Badaglio, where crystal
chandeliers gleamed on statuary and marble floors and old masters
decorated the walls.

In London he failed to appear at the Albert Hall concert that had been
arranged for him; same thing in Hamburg, where crowds jeered his name.
He died in Rome, aged thirty-eight, suffering from phlebitis and a
blood clot in a coronary artery. His enormous bulk created some macabre
problems for the undertakers. Not long after, when Betty Lanza had
brought her children back to Beverly Hills, her mother tried to get
her committed for psychiatric care. Betty would listen to no one, any
more than she’d listened when Mario’s sanity was at stake. There were
five more months left before drugs took Betty’s life. Love for the man
she’d lost? Desperation? The verdict simply said: cause unknown.

All of us, within ourselves, carry the seed of our own destruction.
But in some there is an inner core beyond our powers to destroy. Jack
Barrymore was one of these. I watched him try to pull himself down. He
was a man embittered, disillusioned, broken in health and finances,
burlesquing his own genius with a devil’s grin. He saw the same public
that idolized him in _The Jest_, _Richard III_, _Hamlet_ shriek with
sadistic laughter over his antics on and off the camera.

During a lull on the set one afternoon, some jokester said to him:
“Come on, Jack, give us one of your old tear jerkers.” He agreed, with
a shrug; started hamming Mark Antony’s lines from _Julius Caesar_.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen.... My heart is in the coffin there with
Caesar, and I must pause till it comes back to me.”

After the first few lines something had happened. As the voice steadied
and deepened the set grew quiet. Grips, carpenters, electricians,
extras approached, soft-footed. When Mark Antony finished, Hamlet took
his place. The years fell away and there, on the cluttered sound stage,
stood the young Hamlet, the greatest any theater ever knew.

In complete silence Barrymore walked to his dressing room. Then such
a storm of applause broke out that the whole stage shook with it.
More faces than one were streaked with tears. We knew we had seen an
indestructible human spirit fighting its way clear of the dross of a
reckless and ill-spent life.




_Nineteen_


We used to go riding in the moonlight, raising the dust down roads
shadowed by palm trees, walking the horses through citrus groves and
fields of barley, up into the trackless red hills, where we’d turn to
catch a glimpse of the Pacific gleaming like pewter under the night
sky. Now cowboys have to learn how to climb into a saddle before they
can gallop away into the sunset for another TV horse opera. There are
none of the genuine, Bill Hart variety left.

When I first saw Hollywood, Sam Goldwyn was still Goldfish, and a
grain store stood on Sunset Boulevard at the corner of Cahuenga. Cecil
B. De Mille, looking for some place to produce _The Squaw Man_, had
rented a livery stable at Selma and Vine, founding the motion-picture
capital, the wonderland that clothed dreams in flesh for millions of
the world’s inhabitants. Bill Farnum reigned in splendor in a suite at
the Hollywood Hotel; I made my movie debut with him, played his leading
lady for $100 a week, which was a fortune to me then.

Life was simple, exciting, and, most of all, fun. We worked hard and
loved it. People were neighborly, kind, and didn’t know the meaning of
class distinction--that came later when the big money rolled in and
changed everything. We used to borrow sugar, bake cakes for the folks
next door, stop by each other’s houses to gossip about the wonders of
this bouncing new baby, the movie business, and the climate, and the
everlasting sunshine. Where is it now? Hidden by fog and smog.

Now the dirty-post-card boys have moved in, churning out pictures
reeking of violence, prostitution, perversion, and decay. Anybody can
produce a movie--it takes no great talent. Everybody can try to make
a quick killing in hard times and the devil with the consequences. Of
course, we always knew there were such things as sewers, but never
before have audiences had their noses pushed over so many gratings.

A different odor used to hang over our town--the smell of fresh money.
It poured from the four corners of the earth like the tide coming in.
That’s the scent that drew the founders of our industry, a bunch of
shrewd dishwashers, nickelodeon proprietors, glove salesmen, dress
manufacturers, junk dealers. They knew a good thing when they saw it,
and who should worry about tomorrow?

They were freebooters at heart, most of them, set on carving out
empires and ruling them like despots. They started by despoiling the
land when they lopped down the trees to make room for the shabby
warehouses and barns we call studios. My office desk is placed nowadays
so that I can turn my back on Hollywood. If I faced the window, the sun
would be in my eyes, and I like the sun on my back.

They despoiled the actors and actresses, too, whose names became better
known than those of presidents and kings. Money ruined many of the
stars, washed over them in a deluge, then left them high and dry when
their few working years were over. Lionel Barrymore, for instance,
earned a gigantic reputation as director and star, with enough talent
left over to make him more than competent in other arts--a water color
and two etchings hang in my den, and he was a fine composer, too. But
he left very little property behind, and that was seized by federal
agents a few hours after his funeral, to be auctioned to pay his income
tax.

He lies beside his wife, Irene Fenwick; Jack Barrymore was buried on
her other side by Lionel’s order. Years before, Jack had been in love
with her, but his big brother broke up the romance and later tried to
commit suicide. Then Lionel fell in love with her, and to marry her, he
left his wife and two sons, both of whom died in their early teens. Few
people knew he had children.

Studio heads dangled the carrots at contract-signing time and cracked
the whip once the ink on the paper was dry. Not so long ago David
Selznick was reminiscing about those tightly disciplined days with me:
“I’ve called Jack Barrymore into my office for not knowing his lines;
he was contrite and apologetic. I had to speak to Leslie Howard, who
was embarrassing Vivien Leigh by not being prepared for the scene. But
you never had to speak a second time. They recognized their fault and
corrected it.”

Garbo was never late. She appeared on the set at 9 A.M. sharp, made
up and ready to work and no nonsense. But she was patience itself if
an older member of the company had trouble remembering lines. She was
considered demanding when she wanted to know who would produce, who
co-star, who direct. Once she turned down a story Metro wanted her to
make, David remembered, “and they cast her opposite Tim McCoy in a
Western as punishment. When Lionel Barrymore heard it he said: ‘That’s
like cutting Tolstoy’s beard so he wouldn’t write any revolutionary
novels.’”

Now we have Elizabeth Taylor picking up more than $2,000,000 for
_Cleopatra_, jeopardizing the whole future of Twentieth Century-Fox by
her behavior, and getting herself proposed for a seat on the board of
directors by a disgruntled stockholder. We have Mr. Brando collecting
more than a million from _Mutiny on the Bounty_, plus overtime for
every day’s delay his antics caused. Selznick calls such ventures
“movies of desperation.”

“The men who make movies have been digging their own graves,” he says.
“They’ll put up with anything for a transient advantage. They have
no long-term concern because they’re busy getting dollars for the
next statement, watching the effect that statement will have on the
company’s stock.” I second that.

What went wrong with Hollywood? Well, something like this....

The founding fathers didn’t know what competition was. They had it
all their own, undisputed way so long. They hit on something, motion
pictures, that the world took to like babies take to candy. The handful
of families that ran the big studios made a cozy little clique by
intermarriage, bringing in their relatives, sticking together like
mustard plasters.

The same men owned the studios, the distributing companies, and many of
the biggest movie theaters. Right down the line, they controlled what
audiences saw and how much they paid to see it. An independent theater
owner in any town at home or abroad either was deprived of the pictures
he wanted or else had to accept block booking. To lay hold of, say, a
sure-fire Humphrey Bogart picture from Warners, he had to take three
others that he’d have to take a chance on.

But a picture had to be a real turkey not to pay its way, at least.
If people wanted an evening out, in most cases, they had no place
to go except the movies. There’s never been a monopoly that brought
such sweet rewards to the men who ran it. Radio proved to be no kind
of competition. If I paid them enough--and some big stars demanded
$5000 to stand up and read a script--I could get virtually anybody I
wanted, including Dore Schary, on my weekly show when I crashed into
broadcasting. A loud-speaker was no substitute for the screen, where
a kind of earthy paradise was on view. Illusion had to be put into
pictures, not just into words.

The film factories were organized like an automobile assembly line.
They had to be. The demand for movies was insatiable. Our town turned
out four, five hundred pictures a year, with close to a thousand actors
and actresses under contract. Every year the bosses prepared lavish
promotion programs to light a gleam in the exhibitors’ eyes, listing
the four colossal musicals, the half dozen scintillating comedies,
the seven searing dramas, and so forth which the particular studio
would deliver in the months ahead. Many times these promises were pure
blue sky. They’d invent a title, pencil in the stars, then a team of
contract writers would knock out a story. Today no production head
can promise what next year will bring because the system’s out of his
control and he just doesn’t know about tomorrow.

On top of the heap sat the Mayers, Schencks, Warners, Goldwyn, most
of them ruling like pharaohs, unapproachable by underlings except by
invitation. At the next level down, among the producers and directors,
came the real pros who kept the wheels aturning. A man like Byrnie
Foy, the “Keeper of the B’s” at Warners, could look at a script for a
Western, rip out a page after a single glance, and order: “Don’t have
them cross a bridge, or you’ll have to build it. Have them cross a
gulch and save $20,000.”

That’s a far cry from _Something’s Got to Give_, where Fox watched
$2,000,000 disappear down the gutter and all they got for it was some
footage of Marilyn Monroe slipping into a swimming pool naked. Most of
the old-time professional producers are dead. Our town needs the likes
of them the way a burning house needs firemen.

We had directors whom actors and actresses gave their eyeteeth to
work for; it was the cracker-jack directors who made the stars.
Beginners in grease paint slogged their way up through bit parts in “B”
pictures until they’d picked up enough experience for bigger things
and better contracts. Sometimes the lightning would strike an actor
like Bob Mitchum, glimpsed by Bill Wellman as he strode down Hollywood
Boulevard. Bill had _G.I. Joe_ to make, didn’t fancy Gary Cooper for it
because he needed a man with a look of sweat on his skin and the devil
inside him. Bill tapped Bob Mitchum for stardom on the spot. Bob, after
more than his share of headlines, ranks now as one of our more solid
citizens.

Like a ride on a roller coaster, Hollywood reached peak prosperity
just before the final dive began. World War II brought in profits that
overflowed the tills and burst the bank vaults. It also brought on the
first of the catastrophic decisions that wrecked the industry.

A soldier with a precious pass or an off-duty hour to spare, a war
worker on the swing shift--the whole world flocked to the movies to
escape reality for a few moments. You couldn’t produce a picture, any
picture, without it turning a handsome profit. So we promptly made the
worst claptrap and flung it on the screens.

By way of gratitude toward the men who fought the war, our town let
them wander by the thousands around the streets when they drifted in
on leave, craning their necks to see a famous face or ready to settle
for a pretty one. Aside from limited efforts like the much-publicized
Hollywood Canteen, our hospitality was mostly private. Many towns put
cots down for GI’s to sleep on in town halls and firehouses if they
were caught without accommodations for the night. Not us. I campaigned
for vacant sound stages to be converted into temporary quarters for our
visitors in uniform. For all I achieved, I was talking to myself.

The catastrophe that the studios invited was the death of glamour,
which had filled the air we breathed. The stars were asked to stop
wearing the golden glow of gods and goddesses and look like plain
folks, as homey as apple pie and lawn mowers. You couldn’t pick up a
magazine without coming across publicity shots of Betty Grable out
marketing, Bette Davis washing dishes, or Alice Faye changing diapers.
Nobody had ever seen a picture of Dietrich hanging out wet wash or Jack
Barrymore in a life-with-father layout. We were busy bringing stars
down out of the sky, lousing up the act, cutting our own throats.

Realism strangled the dream stuff, and it’s slowly slaughtering
Hollywood. I see very little hope unless glamour is given its rightful
place again. I believe that audiences wanted it then and want it now.
More and more people share that point of view. Jerry Lewis is one of
them.

“It wasn’t good to take the soft lights off the tinsel,” said Jerry.
“The days of the stars must return. There’s been too much haphazard
mingling with the public by the stars. It killed a beautiful illusion,
the illusion that helped make Hollywood and picture stars important to
the public.”

When the GI’s came back from the war, the lean years set in for our
industry. They’d seen strange sights and found new dreams. They were
a restless generation, looking for fresh excitements. They turned to
bowling alleys, night baseball, the race tracks. Suddenly there were a
whole lot of other things to do besides going to the movies. The money
that went for new pastimes used to go into movie-house tills.

They reacted by bumping up admission prices. It didn’t help. Instead of
a couple being able to see a double feature, cartoons, and a newsreel
at thirty-five cents a head, for a first-run picture the tab leaped
up to $1.50 and more apiece. Coincidentally, another great American
invention had come along in the postwar years, the baby sitter.

Only a handful of households could afford living-in servants after
the maids and cooks and butlers had enjoyed a taste of wartime wages
on factory assembly lines. It was no longer the thing to do to ask a
neighbor to mind the baby while Dad took Mother to the movies. They had
to hire a baby sitter at accelerating hourly rates. If Dad stood Mother
dinner out somewhere first, a couple of hours watching Luise Rainer
knocked the family budget for ten or fifteen dollars. It just wasn’t
worth that much. The tide on the sea of gold was ebbing fast.

Then the government started huffing and puffing, and the big empires
were gone with the wind. What happened was that the independent theater
owners, who’d been pushed around for years, finally nudged the Justice
Department into declaring that it was illegal under the anti-trust laws
for the same organization to make movies, distribute them, and screen
them in its own picture palaces.

This was like the Ford Motor Company waking up one morning to find it
had lost all its showrooms. Or Fanny Farmer discovering she could cook
up her candy but not run the stores she sold it in. The movie makers,
who had never smelled real competition up to date, suddenly realized
they were in a tougher grind than the cloak-and-suit business ever was.

There was a moment when they could have had another gilt-edged
guarantee of money by the billions if they’d had the sense to see it.
The early runners of the television industry came on their knees
to Hollywood and begged the movie men to help them. “You’ve got the
factories to make the product, we’ll get the outlets to show it,” they
said. “Let’s co-operate, and we’ll all grow rich.”

Oh, but the studio heads were too smart for that! They could have held
television in the palms of their hands. Instead they jeered: “Who’s
going to stay home and watch a little box?” They sneered: “What have
you got--women wrestlers and bike races? It’s a fad like Yo-yo. It
can’t last. Movies are better than ever.”

Only Paramount sensed the potential in the little boxes when there were
no more than half a million of them, with post-card-sized screens,
in the country. That studio joined hands with Dr. Allen Du Mont, the
pioneer TV scientist, hoping to build a network of Channel Fives.
But he was an inventor, not an executive who could put together the
necessary hours of daily programming. The idea failed, the network
amounted to nothing, and all that Y. Frank Freeman, head of Paramount,
could do was watch NBC and CBS forge ahead, while he speculated on what
might have been.

The bankers moved deeper and deeper into the faltering movie industry.
They had to. They were the people with money to keep it going. They
didn’t know a thing about it, but they knew a star when they saw one.
To a banker, a star looked like the safest bet in a business beset
with more hazards than a steeplechase. The studios found out you could
always raise the financing if you showed Mr. Moneybags a big enough
star and a script the star liked. Independent producers learned the
same lesson and flocked around, waving contracts. Directors, cameramen,
every other key employee necessary to make good movies--the banks
didn’t want to hear about them.

The ever-loving agents grabbed hold hard. If the industry lived or
died on names like Gable, Brando, Hepburn, and Taylor, then, by
crikey, their clients were going to grab the steering wheel from the
professional producers and studio heads. The only way the stars could
be guaranteed enough money to tempt them to work was to give them a
slice of the picture’s potential profits on top of salary. The slice
grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

In the old days we used to wait impatiently for the studio gates to
open at 9 A.M. I couldn’t get there soon enough. Nowhere else did
you have such fun. You had companions of your own kind to work with,
many of them the finest talents in the worlds of the theater, concert
platform, fashion salon. On Saturdays and Sundays we’d hurry back to
the studios to hear the orchestras record sound tracks with stars of
the musicals, or maybe listen to four hundred Negroes sing spirituals
for a Lawrence Tibbett picture.

When George Cukor was preparing _The Women_, I was so eager to play
in it that I called him on the quiet after Dema Harshbarger had set
a price on my head of $1000 minimum, whether for a day’s work or a
week’s. “Confidentially, I’d work for nothing,” I told him. A contract
was drawn at a cut-down figure and sent to Dema.

She asked me into her office, next to mine. “I’d like to give you
a farewell luncheon at some smart place,” she said, her dark eyes
gleaming bright. “We won’t have any unpleasantness, and we’ll stay
friends, but I don’t want any business dealings with you unless you let
me set a value on you.” I got the point--and a revised contract.

At least two once-powerful studios, Fox and MGM, were driven into
a corner from which they may never emerge, thanks to the present,
overpriced star system. Rome and Madrid today are the temporary movie
capitals of the world. Tokyo, London, Paris--all compete for the title.
Soaring costs at home push more and more production overseas. The
peccadilloes of foot-loose stars and producers who hanker for far-off
places favor foreign production. Some countries freeze profits from the
screening of American movies, so the money must be used to stake new
pictures inside those countries’ frontiers. Then, too, the big screen
demands the real locations; you can no longer paint a mountain on a
piece of glass and make it look like the Rockies.

So pictures like _Lawrence of Arabia_ and _Ben-Hur_ are made anywhere
except in Hollywood. William Holden won’t come home from Switzerland
for reasons of taxes--and his pictures get picketed by our town’s
movie unions. Even Tom and Jerry are refugees now. They were made at
Culver City before the animation studios were shut five years ago.
Now Tom and Jerry are drawn in Italy, Popeye is a Yugoslav sometimes,
and Bullwinkle comes to life on drawing boards in Mexico. Walt Disney
remains one of the all-Americans.

MGM prayed it would be helped out of its _Mutiny_ hole by the oil well
that started to flow on the back lot at Culver City at about the time
that Brando was stumbling through the final scenes of the picture in
Hollywood.

Twentieth Century-Fox went in for sterner stuff, very late in the day.
They tried to hurry _Cleopatra_ production to a conclusion by cutting
off the salary in Rome of Walter Wanger. They fired Marilyn Monroe and
sued her for $500,000 for absenteeism from the set of _Something’s Got
to Give_ after she had given five days of performance in seven weeks of
shooting.

The Fox counterrevolution against stars found her colleague, Dean
Martin, in the line of fire next. He’d promptly announced after Marilyn
was dismissed that so far as he was concerned it was Monroe or nobody.
He walked out; the picture was shut down. Equally promptly the studio
threw a record-breaking suit for $5,678,000 at his head, claiming breach
of contract, and Dean’s attorneys filed countercharges.

He was no hero to the unions, though they sat back and did nothing.
An official said to me: “He’s putting people out of work at a time
when we’re all faced with unemployment due to runaway production. He’s
certainly demonstrating his unconcern for his co-workers.”

When a star got out of line, the crew used to have a peculiar way of
handling the situation. Jack Barrymore would be performing his heart
out when out of the blue a crystal chandelier came crashing down,
missing his head by inches. If his behavior didn’t improve, the next
one fell even closer.

If the handful of stars still left to us disappears, who will replace
them? Who’s in sight to give Hollywood the color and excitement that
it needs to live? Where are the newcomers to be discovered and how can
they be trained? The answers, so far as the eye can see, are Nobody and
Nowhere. Opera has been stirred by new names in the past decade--Joan
Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Maria Callas. The concert stage has its
Van Cliburns. Politics has its Kennedys and Nixons. The movies have
virtually nothing at the top except the same names that were shining in
lights ten years ago--Bob Hope, Burt Lancaster, Cary Grant, John Wayne,
Jimmy Stewart and the rest politely called “middle-aged.”

Television’s no better off. The surge of talent there was mostly in
writers and directors--Rod Serling, Delbert Mann, and others--who
subsequently migrated to Hollywood. But the surge is about over. The TV
networks pretend to foster young talents. But do they?

They got going on their own account when Hollywood turned them down as
partners, then was compelled to sell its old movies to them to raise
cash to keep the studios open. The young, untried talents who came
out of the war swarmed like flies into TV. They couldn’t find a place
in the movie industry or in the Broadway theater. Early television
was like early movie making all over again, a great adventure filled
with fun but not much money; a wonderful place for experiment and
experience, because everybody could afford to make mistakes.

The networks needed that mysterious thing called programming, meaning
a dependable timetable of big hits and steady features, spectaculars
blended with _Lassie_. Without programming, they couldn’t get TV sets
sold, and a network like NBC, owned by RCA, was primarily in business
not to entertain its audiences but to sell sets.

NBC programming was in the hands of Pat Weaver, a farsighted pioneer
at his business with a special, rare ability to spend other people’s
money without being frightened by the cost. Before he departed network
headquarters in Rockefeller Center, he had brought in “Wide, Wide
World,” Groucho Marx, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar.

CBS had an executive, too, in Hubbell Robinson, who also ran a good
store. ABC had its problems as the little brother fighting to break
into a situation where its rivals divided most of the country between
themselves. But along came men like Bob Kintner, Oliver Treyze, Tom
Moore, and Dan Melnick. They took a backward look at what Warner
Brothers had done when they had to crack open a similar situation in
the movies and the big studios closed ranks against them.

Jack and Harry Warner, with stars like Bogart and Cagney on the
payroll, broke in with action pictures, with gang bullets flying and
fists swinging in every reel. ABC copied a leaf from that book. Never
had such a volley of blank bullets resounded over the land before.
Critics threw up their hands in horror, but ABC arrived with a bang and
stayed there.

It’s a tragedy of the entertainment industry that the networks were
as blind to the future needs of their business as the movie makers
had been to theirs. Like Pharaoh, the television tycoons let the
people go; the big talents left when the money wasn’t put up to keep
them together. The tycoons thought they made television, not the
writers, directors, and producers. They wouldn’t dream of setting up
a studio system, a great pool of brains that could have made NBC or
CBS or ABC the biggest creator there ever was of entertainment and the
lively arts. They put no funds aside for research, as General Motors,
Westinghouse, Du Pont and the others do.

Now TV by and large has become a dime-store business so far as
creativity and talent are concerned. The half-hour and sixty-minute
series rattle off the production lines like cans of beans, with an
occasional dab of ham inside. If the finished film doesn’t make sense,
no matter. If the kid with the six-shooter can’t act to save his
mother’s life, who cares?

The idea is that if enough people are watching, some of the
advertisers’ message will rub off on them to make the series worth
while. But if enough people stop watching the stuff that’s put on
their screens, then commercial television faces a similar fate to the
movies, in spite of color sets or tomorrow’s gimmicks such as giant
screens to hang on your living-room wall.

I believe the only possible solution for television and movies alike
is a recognition of the eternal values of real talent, excitement, and
glamour. Audiences are starved for all three. Entertainment must be a
satisfying emotional experience, a stirring of the heart. We need all
kinds of young men and women. Those people with an artist’s eye and an
executive’s brain that we term directors. Those wrestlers with their
souls and typewriters known as authors. The beggars on horseback called
actors and actresses.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hollywood is my home, and most of my friends live there. I like to
travel sometimes, but I find scenery as a diet doesn’t nourish me. So I
intend to stick around and watch what happens, remembering a few more
words from the plaque that stands on my desk:

    I do the very best I know how--the very best I can; and I mean
    to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all
    right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the
    end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would
    make no difference.




Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Obvious typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.

All of the photographs are in one section, as they were in the original
book. Originally, the section followed the first page of Chapter Ten,
but to avoid disrupting the flow of reading, in this eBook, that
section has been moved to precede Chapter Ten.

In the original book, there usually were 2-4 photographs per page,
with descriptions for all of them in the middle of the page. Here,
the photographs are separate and contiguous with their descriptions.
References such as left/right/above/below have been removed from those
descriptions, as they are not needed here.

The original book has no Table of Contents. The Transcriber added one
to the HTML version of this eBook.