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.