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.