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.