The Happy Years (1944-48)

by Cecil Beaton

  I related to Greta how I had been woken from my first sleep by a woman in the next room giving vent to the most agonizing sounds. I realized the woman was in the throes of love-making and that the cries, so heartbreaking to hear, were part of her enjoyment. Ecstasy is revolting if it comes to this. Greta said the man must be a brute, then added: ‘And I know how strange the noises of the night can be: the laughter, people fighting in the street below. I sometimes lie with my heart beating like mad — it’s so awful I feel life can’t go on.’

  Greta came in at a little after six; Michael Duff was here sitting bolt upright awaiting her arrival. Greta enjoys the ‘British Empire’ aspect of Michael. ‘The British have such reserve — they don’t say all they mean — they’re nice. I get that feeling, and I know I’m right.’ Michael inadvertently gave a delightful picture of my home life in England, of my mother and my ‘divine’ Aunt Jessie; Greta seemed pleased. Together they made a comic team, and it was interesting to watch each individual’s considerable charm working upon the other. With every discovery about one another these two characters became in closer harmony. I have seldom seen Greta so demonstrative; she told entertaining anecdotes, laughed at him, and kissed him on both cheeks. Naturally Michael was quite besotted and, when leaving, tried to nail her down for future occasions — but, of course, she was as mercurial as ever.

  When I answered her ring at my door, she was not there but hiding around a corner. This is typical of her. When I leave a restaurant a minute after her she is nowhere to be seen, but a few seconds later emerges from her hiding-place. Today, on her way through the snow, a young man had come up to her and said: ‘Did you see such-and-such a film? Because, if so, don’t you think I over-acted in it?’ Greta had looked astounded and said: ‘I’m so cold, I can’t talk to you now.’ She laughed about the incident. On account of the snow and dearth of taxi cabs I suggested my hiring a car to take us to the theatre tonight, but she was horrified. ‘No, we must go on foot: we are students.’ That is how she likes to see herself. She hates getting into a taxi and seldom does so: ‘They are full of germs and are obnoxious.’

  On the way Greta recounted how once she went to the opera with Mrs Sanson. Mrs S. generally appeared at the opera in a chinchilla coat with tiara and orchids. ‘But not this time!’ Greta laughed. ‘What we looked like! It was raining, pouring in torrents. I was wearing a salmon-pink mackintosh and a mackintosh hat and snow boots, and we unpeeled ourselves by layers.’ She told me of other incidents when she went out with Mrs Sanson to various unsuitable places, and that Mrs Sanson had little sense of humour about appearing at a disadvantage.

  It was too cold to talk much during our park walk today but, at one point, I raised my hat and said, as is customary when I am about to touch her cheek with a kiss: ‘Am I permitted to draw attention?’, and she said: ‘I was just about to do the same thing.’ With lips pressed down in a child’s moue, her eyes darting in all directions to spy any strangers who might be approaching, she gave me a loving peck. Suddenly she said: ‘Got to go now. I have to see somebody or something.’ Instinctively I guessed that the something was the re-showing of her film Ninotchka, now playing at the little Carnegie Cinema. Again it happened, as often it does, that I sense much that she does not tell me. I even knew, by some sort of extra-sensory perception, that she had lunched at the Barrocco — an item of no general interest except that, to me, any place she visits is hallowed by her presence.

  I went alone to see Ninotchka and was very self conscious for fear that, by chance, she and ‘the little man’ should be there too. After ten years Ninotchka is still a funny film, and the range and variety of Greta’s performance is masterly. Now that I know her well, I can see what a lot of herself she gives to the part. The tragic, touching, honey-sympathy quality of her voice comes across the microphone in an amazingly lifelike way. Lubitsch is the first director to show that Greta has a sense of humour. It is doubtful, however, if future historians will be able to tell from this picture what a great contribution Greta could have made to the cinema art of her day.

  The biggest theatrical stars always seem to be born at the very time when their talent shines at its brightest; yet no doubt it is the time itself that creates their particular form of talent. If Garrick or Bernhardt had lived today their performances would certainly have been less flamboyant; they would have fitted themselves to the restraint of the time, but no doubt their contribution would have been just as outstanding. In other professions, and means of creative expression, there are those innovators whose work in early life is too original or advanced to be appreciated; but they live to become accepted as the geniuses they always knew themselves to be; sometimes they survive long enough to be considered ‘back numbers’. (The span of a dramatist’s talent is the shortest of all, and few playwrights continue to be successful for more than ten years.)

  Very early on, Garbo’s incandescence was a guiding light for a discriminating Berlin public, and her potential as a great actress immediately recognized. But Greta’s tragedy was that she ever left Europe. When she arrived in California, the moving picture industry was going through one of its worst phases. The great inventiveness of the earliest Hollywood film-makers had become dissipated, while the days of Hollywood’s best ‘commercial’ potboilers were still to come. At the beginning of her histrionic career Garbo had the highest of ideals. To find herself under contract to appear in a succession of rubbishy screenplays as oversexed, underdressed houris came as a prison sentence. Most of us recover, sooner or later, from some great misfortune: time generally heals the results of some surgical operation to even the most nervous system. But those long years Garbo spent making all her silent pictures were a living nightmare that has left an indelible impression. Even when, at the height of her popularity, she prevailed upon Mr Mayer to give her opportunities to show signs of her true quality and some acting roles of more substance, and the ‘talkies’ certainly gave her greater scope, yet the making of films was, to her, still ‘a tawdry business’.

  How different it would have been if there had been a script or a director worthy of her, and she had been surrounded by sympathetic, creative artists! Apart from Lubitsch, she had to rely almost unaided upon her instincts to sustain her through long roles that necessitated every variety of playing. Yet what an infallible instinct she shows! How can she have known so much about the ineffable allure and grandeur of the cocotte, Marguerite Gautier, the loneliness of Queen Christina, the desperate quayside toughness of Anna Christie? In all her roles she shows her rare quality of ‘presence’. But if she had come under the wing of some of today’s European directors, how her genius would have burgeoned! If only she had been born into a later decade! During all the years of her youthful beauty the public has never seen her as she should have been shown. Almost all the scenes were shot in the studio (and looked it!) where a gantry above spilled, from every direction, a flood of blinding, unnatural light onto the stars. According to our present-day standards, every performer was over-made-up, then photographed through a soft-focus lens. If a few scenes were shot ‘on location’ in the Californian sun, huge reflectors and artificial lights were added to obliterate all shadows. The public has seen nothing of the subtlety of the modulations of Garbo’s face; we have had to spell all that we can of her from the white and black mask which has been all that we were allowed to see. Likewise, except for a sitting of a few minutes with Steichen, there were never any ‘still’ photographs that came near to showing her as she would have been in the natural light of today’s realism. All these relics of Garbo are grotesquely over-retouched: only an artificial façade remains.

  It is perhaps not to be wondered at that Greta is not proud of the legacy she has left. Yet, even now, whenever there is mention of a new project, in her mind she harks back to former habits, and of again putting herself in the hands of an old hack director and cameraman. Meanwhile, valuable time is passing. Perhaps, for her, that is not important; she has long since had little respect for the public, and
she now thinks more of her personal freedom and liberty.

  Telephone — no chance of meeting — she was rusty in bed and very sorry for herself. She said her face had shrunk and that she looked like a little squirrel. But she is always critical of her appearance and diagnoses it queerly.

  She was in her dressing-gown on the sofa of her dreary, impersonal and untidy hotel rooms. She appeared pale and drawn, her hair was curled over her forehead. I told her I had been to see Ninotchka; she took a great gulp. ‘How strange that I got mixed up in that business, but I did!’, and she talked quite freely of the experience of working on that particular picture. She had not enjoyed it, and was worried that it was vulgar. It did not strike her as being funny until she saw it four years later. Lubitsch was clever: he was so much better as an actor than any of his casts. It was so depressing to see him acting every part well. ‘I remember, one morning, going in and seeing him, cigar in mouth, with my big leading man, running through a scene on the sofa that I was to do. He was being so funny! But underneath he was a vulgar little man, and he made such a noise on the set, always shouting. One day I said to him in German: “Please, when you speak to me, please speak more softly”, and he was so surprised that from then on, whenever he looked at me, he became quieter.’

  Greta had been too ill to see Ninotchka the other evening, but might do so as soon as she is well enough — perhaps tomorrow at dusk — but she would feel such a fool going there. She seldom went to see her pictures, and was so shy of being seen that she would always leave before the lights went up, with the result that she scarcely ever knew how her films ended.

  ‘You mustn’t dally’ (she pronounces it ‘dully’), ‘I’ve got to get some rest and become healthy (‘helty’) again.’ But it was hard to leave. Greta looked out of her hotel window. ‘If you walk along the street I can see you from here. I wonder if we can see each other from the Plaza?’ I leaned out of the window, but just by a few yards our windows miss being visible to each other. ‘You walk along that street to that corner and I’ll wave to you from here,’ she suggested. I left. I walked up Park Avenue and, at a given point, looked up at the Tower soaring into the late afternoon sky. Alas, the last rays of sunlight were reflected in the glass pane so I could not see any face at the window. But, suddenly, the minute window opened and a huge white towel fluttered in the air. There she was, waving so gaily. I doffed my hat and bent double with laughter until passers-by stopped and also stared up at the window, which forthwith was shut.

  Five minutes later in my hotel she telephoned. ‘I miss you,’ she said, ‘and wasn’t it awful of those people to stop and gape! Heaven knows who they were — they might have guessed it was “Harriet Brown” at the window.’

  January 13th

  I told her the great news that a frigidaire had been installed in my room, and I could now save my precious dollars and have my own meals from the ice box. ‘You will have unnatural noises in your room, and Mr Attlee will get worried and think you have set the fuse for the atom age.’ But she also gave me advice about putting in avocados and radishes and cheese and biscuits and fruit. She could not share them with me today, but would be around directly after luncheon. ‘Well, all right then — at 2.30.’ But 2.30 was 3.00, then she telephoned to say she had such bad congestion of the chest that she must remain indoors. I could come and see her. ‘If you think I look like a witch, don’t say so.’ She appeared quite extraordinary — hiding in the shadow behind her door — her hair hanging in a most peculiar bell-shape. She laughed and croaked, and thought maybe she would develop pneumonia. It was her own silly fault, she said, for having washed her hair this morning. She sprawled on the small, uncomfortable sofa and gave a performance of charm, fantasy, and madness. She pulled down her mouth in a grimace, and looked in the distance with the most hauntingly beautiful velvet and forget-me-not eyes.

  ‘I’m worried about your birthday present. What can I get you? You’re spoiled: you’re difficult: you know what things are. You’re not like Mr Everley: anything goes for him.’

  I wanted very much for her to give me a present — something that I can keep for always. Suddenly she asked: ‘Would you go to California if I left here in a week’s time?’

  ‘Yes. Could I stay with you?’

  ‘No, because my house isn’t organized for that, and it would embarrass and worry me. I live simply, alone, with a servant I call “the Dragon”, and it’s just arranged for me there alone.’

  VISIT TO TCHELITCHEW

  She was wearing my favourite grey highwayman hat and was in the most dulcet of moods. What a wonderfully intimate manner she has of conversing with a friend! Her attention is completely concentrated and dedicated, her face beautiful in every mood, and even when grimacing she shows those shining big teeth. The French restaurant was so quiet we talked in whispers. A fortune-teller had told her: ‘You haven’t had too good a life, but the latter part will be much better’ — so she believes. She talked of the dread she felt of having to go to a party tonight: she had made the date long before and now couldn’t get out of it. She described fully the boredom and embarrassment she would suffer, but never divulged the names of the hosts. For two weeks now I have tried to take her to see Pavlik Tchelitchew, and today that, too, was to come about. She didn’t seem averse to the visit until we were already in the elevator when she suddenly became fretful and petulant, so I said: ‘Then let’s leave.’ We went in.

  Pavlik — quiet, serious, shy and very gentle — with huge liquid, brown eyes and dry, pumice-stone complexion. Before showing us his new drawings he warned us, in his crackling Russian accent, that we’d be shocked by them. He explained, with a great pantomime of trembling jowls, staccato jerks, starts of his arms, and bursting eyeballs, that he was trying to show the transparencies of the human body: the outer cover alone did not interest him. Greta tactfully and tentatively explained why, indeed, his gouaches were a shock to her. ‘All these veins and muscles are not seen by us, unless in an accident and under some violent condition.’ Her simplicity and complete lack of pretence helped to create a calm and congenial atmosphere, and she enjoyed Pavlik’s highly-charged conversation — his brilliant similes and inventive noises where words of any specific nationality failed. Pavlik tried to explain how parsimonious nature was: the butterfly, he said, was the first thing to be designed, and the same design is used over and over again in the muscles of man and in many of nature’s phenomena.

  As a painter Greta admired Pavlik’s craftmanship, but she later confessed she found his pictures ugly, and that, like many Russians of talent, he was lacking in taste: she would have been thrilled to see something being created that was beautiful. It was sad, she said, that she couldn’t be emotionally moved by his work.

  Later I asked Pavlik what he thought of Greta. Apropos her reaction to his paintings, Pavlik agreed that in her innate honesty there is a great purity, ‘but the most important thing about her is that she comes out of the memory as if one had last seen her only a half hour ago.’ He held forth with galvanized gestures. ‘Her face is so familiar she’s like one of the family — like a cousin — because one has suffered and cried with her. There is no surprise on meeting her, for she is without colour — in greys. In real life she is as she is in the films — grey and black and white — and she’s like that in dreams, for dreams have no colour.’

  ‘IDEAL HUSBAND’ BIRTHDAY PARTY

  January 14th, 1948

  My birthday. A croaking voice on the telephone: ‘Happy birthday to you!’ It ended in a long laugh. ‘Don’t I sound like an elderly woman?’ I was touched by the punctuality of the call, which was earlier than any she had made before. We laughed about the awfulness of growing old, and she again quoted Shaw about the unmentionable. ‘4.15 this afternoon — right.’

  I hurried back from a photographic session that had involved models of all sorts, children, dogs and a quantity of elaborate props, and soon my doorbell rang. I put my face round the door in a playful grimace and came head on to an elderl
y messenger with an ‘express’ envelope. Greta was late in arriving, but when she appeared she was bearing me a chocolate cake with one pink candle on it, and a pink Battersea enamel saucer painted with flowers that we had admired on Third Avenue. We talked of the passing of time. She said she had wasted the best years of her life by being so far removed from life. She had always wanted to make a contribution to the world, but had never dreamt that the film work would turn out the way it had: if she had her life over again she would never touch it. It was a terrible punishment that wherever she went in public she was recognized and given no privacy: fame of that sort had no compensations: she was hounded everywhere except in her own ‘backyard’. All those years, in a huge house on North Rockingham Drive in Hollywood, she had seen no one — had lived only in her bedroom. One day she passed through the dining-room, and it was covered in a deep layer of dust. She had run her finger over the surface of the table and left a deep line: the servant would be very surprised. She had a housekeeper and a man driver. He paid no attention to her, wasn’t interested in anything she did, and was content to wait for hours. He would motor her, in the rainy season during a storm, to the mountains or to the sea. When the entire shore was deserted, she would walk for miles — for an hour and a half or more — and it was soothing to her. When she came back she felt re-born. But she had missed seeing many delightful people, and seen little of life. She wished she had been a painter or a writer: she would have liked the fame of an artist which was independent of the personality. I said I thought she could be a writer for she has such a sense of words. She smiled that a man has asked if she would write her biography; of course she wouldn’t do a thing like that. ‘Nobody wants to be bothered with that nonsense: it’s of no interest that as a brat I was dressed up to kill trying to get into the cinema.’