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.