The Happy Years (1944-48)

by Cecil Beaton

  It was still quite early, according to most people’s timetable, when Greta said goodnight to me at her front door. I waved to her in the dark. Walking around her garden walls on my way home, I looked up to see her peering from her bedroom window through the Venetian blinds.

  Friday, March 4th

  Early morning was again brilliant in her garden, and she said: ‘You’ve no idea how lucky you are — you brought the sun with you.’ Now, exhausted, she relaxed on the sofa with a cigarette and described the chores that she had done since dawn, when she had been clearing up the undergrowth and digging strenuously in her garden. ‘Once I cut down an enormous bougainvillea that covered the entire wall. It lay all over the lawn, and I had to cut it up in small pieces and cart it away, and it took days to tidy up afterwards. Sometimes when there are rough jobs to do — like sawing — and there’s a big branch on that tree that is so tempting — oh my, my! — I get up before anyone is awake. I once took a ladder out into the alleyway at five o’clock in the morning. I had on no mascara, and the most wild-looking clothes imaginable, and I started to saw away a huge tree, and as I was at the job a man came along with a dog. I trembled — oh, I trembled! — in case he would come up and talk to me. But I kept right on, and mercifully he continued down the alley, but I noticed he turned round to stare and I dare say he had anxieties about my sanity. I am always busy here — there’s always such a lot to do: I work like a slave, and it’s so hard keeping in trim, and getting limbered up.’

  She then demonstrated some Hindu exercises that she had taught herself from a book, and which left her quite sweating and exhausted. Again she lay down and relaxed, and talked about restarting her film career, and of Mrs Viertel’s[36] contribution to her former pictures. ‘If there was ever any argument about a script I always had this woman to fight for me. She was indefatigable and worked on them to saturation point, and always found something good that others would not bother about. If only I could have her around on The Eagle I should feel so much more secure! (I shall try to arrange it.) And please send a cable to Korda asking for the script.’ We discussed the conditions of working for screen plays in England, and I minimized the difficulties. I was pleased and excited to see how strongly G. was convinced that she would be making the picture.

  As we lay basking in the sun I watched the contours of her face, and noticed that the little lump at the bridge of her nose, which I had seen in her photographs, is of cartilage and not bone: she had never known that it was there. I asked why she had always worn this heavy eye make-up, and she answered: ‘Because I am an oriental.’ She explained that only in the last six years had she worn lipstick: ‘Because my lips became so thin and pale, but I despise lipstick — it’s messy and degrading! But oh, what’s the use — I look so pinched and pale! I couldn’t sleep very well last night. I kept hearing noises in the alleyway as if someone were working there. I tried in vain to see anyone, but the noises went on and on and I thought “He can’t be working all night.” It was a sound as if someone was dumping some metal objects on the ground.’ Even as we lay in the sun I could, from time to time, hear this metal clinking. I could not imagine at all what it might be, but I must discover: it’s hard that Greta should be kept awake when sleep is rare and precious to her.

  It was quite an event to prepare to go to the Farmers’ Market. The dressing for it was as charming a part as any. Greta, adding to her mascara and looking sadly into the mirror, said of this most beautiful object in front of her — of this face of such rare delicacy and refinement — ‘Oh, I look so ugly!’

  On the way she told me of her difficulty in driving the car: she is scared of parking and, since she finds it hard to choose a suitable place, drives around and around. Once she was in a great predicament. Having run out of paint while painting her garage, she stepped into the buggy in her filthy shorts to buy some more tins. When she parked the car it was in an isolated spot, but on returning to it with the paint cans, other cars had parked close, both front and back, to hers. She was appalled. She tried to get out — in vain. Her heart beat — she panicked. She jumped out of the car and started to walk for miles. Should she call Crocker and get him to help her? At that moment her friends, the Reginald Gardiners, appeared. ‘How are you?’ they asked conversationally. ‘Oh, I’m in terrible trouble.’ ‘No, not really? How bad?’ When she told them, they roared with laughter and came to her rescue.

  Greta knows her way about Hollywood only sketchily, and is in a constant state of anxiety lest she is nabbed by the police or submitted to the public gaze. But the Farmers’ Market is one of the places that she feels she can find — though not without difficulties, as it turned out. However, we were both in such good spirits that a few reversals were quite comic, and with me to ask the way of passers-by, she eventually managed to find our goal. At the market Greta showed an interest in the kitchen utensils and stainless steel but, as usual, preferred to look rather than buy. She hates to be hurried into a purchase and will return many times to make her decision before getting ‘landed’. For myself it is just the opposite, so that I have respect for her conscientiousness. The stalls of fragrant fruit, the preserved fruits and sweets looking like mounds of precious stones, the inviting cooked-food stalls, were all highly-coloured and appetizing. There was one particular Spanish counter that made the juices run, but we had already eaten our lunch under an umbrella — and jolly good it was, too, of mixed salad and prawns and chicken. Suddenly we were confronted by an English spinster — none other than the redoubtable Phillis Wilbourn, Constance Collier’s saint-like companion, secretary and ‘Man Friday’. Phillis pointed to where her beloved mistress was sitting, an imposing Roman empress in yellow, musing under a sunshade. When Greta stole up and kissed Constance Collier from behind, Constance exclaimed: ‘I thought I must be mad!’ Constance remembered a time when I told her how unhappy I was that Greta and I were no longer friends, and now she saw us together again she was delighted and, to Greta’s intense surprise, said: ‘Why don’t you two settle down?’ In reply Greta ruined my reputation by saying: ‘But you don’t think he’s that sort of a man, do you?’ Phillis led the laughter. Greta asked questions about post-war conditions in England, and Constance said all the wrong things but one: ‘I came away ill from undernourishment, and life is very hard there, but, nevertheless, it’s life — it’s vital — and I want to go back. It’s ruined me for this place — this’, waving her sunshade, ‘is stagnation’.

  We pottered about the market until it was time for our planned walk in the mountains. While Greta again changed her clothes in the dressing-room, I went out onto the balcony of her bedroom determined to discover the noise that had kept her awake. I could still hear, from time to time, the metal click that reverberated against the walls of the house. It was quite loud even in daylight, but at night time it must seem doubly so. I listened. There it goes — this time a double click of metal. By degrees I realized that the noise came from Sunset Boulevard, and happened whenever a car passed. Perhaps it was a ramp in the road. Suddenly I spied a large, angular bar of steel lying on the tarmac. Each time a car ran over it, it jumped. That was it. I drove out and picked up the object which had caused such pangs of anxiety and nervous exhaustion.

  After motoring through a high winding path into the mountains we got out near the summit to walk. The afternoon sun was still hot, but quickly the day was coming to an end and, in the distance, the mountains were the blue-purple of Greta’s eyes. This is one of the times when I want most to remember her, for now her beauty was at its zenith. Her fine skin had the sheen of a magnolia, her hair fell in smooth, lank bosses, her figure lithe and thin, flat haunches, flat stomach. She was in high spirits and started reciting poetry, singing old songs, and being the most companionable of human beings. When she wishes she has the capacity to talk by the hour, and her brain is alert and quick. She recounted how she used to walk alone for miles in the mountains. She would talk to herself, and shout and sing, and ‘go to the little boys’ room’, thinking
she was all alone and free of the world to do anything. But one day she saw a photograph of herself walking in the mountains, miles away from anyone — she recognized the spot. It must have been taken by someone hiding in some bushes. ‘When I saw it I got such a fright. I thought maybe I’d be followed and attacked — anything might happen — and since the burglary I’m afraid to be alone. I never used to be like that — but I am now!’ In that house down that mountainside a friend of hers, now dead, had lived. Once he had become drunk and pointed a revolver at her, and she had fled out into the night and gone into some stranger’s house and said: ‘I find I’m without a car.’ They had been nice people and, although they must have realized something was very wrong, they had not talked and the story had never reached the newspapers.[37] She reminisced a great deal about the attacks in the papers on her: of how Louella Parsons had written — merely, perhaps, because she had refused to appear at some publicity benefit — that she should be deported. As we walked we approached an isolated house which Greta had watched the inhabitants building with their own hands. A number of alarming dogs ran out to greet her, and she was ecstatically happy patting them and playing with them, although some were so large that they jumped up to her shoulders. Greta said, after fondling a pet donkey: ‘These must be nice people who live here — so close to nature. People can exist like this in California if they want to — oblivious of the movies and Miss Parsons.’

  The sky grew dim and, in the distance, lay the twinkling carpet of Los Angeles glittering in millions of lights. We talked a bit about the terror of another war, and the preparations for deadlier weapons that are being made and of the horrors that would result. Greta told me that she was still a Swedish subject — that she had not bothered to fill in the last forms to become an American subject and that her application had therefore lapsed — so that if Russia took Sweden, then all her money could be blocked. I was quite exercised about this and said that we must bestir ourselves, and ask the Mendls,[38] or some such influential people out here, to help, for without money she could not maintain her present independence. It gave me quite a shock to think that this could possibly happen. It would be the final disaster if she were again to become poor when it might be too late to continue making moving pictures.

  We drove down the hill. We were to dine in her house, and I was to have my first glimpse of ‘the Dragon’ who was preparing a dinner that was to be a surprise. The room was filled with the pink and scarlet carnations which I had bought in armfuls at a roadside stall. The central heating was turned on, and the table was set with candles and mats we had bought at the Farmers’ Market. ‘The Dragon’ turned out to be a most refined German woman of middle age: she obviously looked after Greta like a mother, though realizing how difficult Greta would be to impose upon. Fortunately Gertrude, as she is called, does not mind being alone much of the time. The ‘surprise’ was Irish stew, and very well prepared it was. Greta talked about her inability to cope with servants. When she had had a chauffeur she never knew what to do with him in between pictures. She felt self-conscious when he was hanging about doing nothing, so sometimes she would get into the car and tell him to drive to Arrowhead, sixty to seventy miles away. Here she would go on the lake in a canoe and read a book, and later she would telephone for the chauffeur to come all the way back to fetch her. Often she would be driven to Santa Barbara, nearly a hundred miles away. There she would go into a teashop and, after ten minutes, return to the car and be driven all the way back — a five-hour journey for that one cup of tea. ‘What a waste of the best years of my life — always alone — it was so stupid not being able to partake more. Now I’m just a gipsy, living a life apart, but I know my ways and I must not see people. Generally Gertrude serves me my dinner at 6.30 in bed, and three-quarters of an hour later I’m asleep.’

  March 5th

  I am obsessed by Greta. The moment I wake in the morning I start to think about her, and so it goes on all day and then in my dreams at night. I telephone early. ‘Come over as soon as you can.’ However, Greta was today tired and out of sorts; she again had not slept well and was awake at dawn. She had several items of news. ‘Black and white’ Mercedes had wired to say she was coming to California, and that would make for complications as Mercedes could be very proprietary. Crocker had put a ‘special delivery’ letter in her box. She had guessed he was around, and so had closed the curtains last night. ‘My instinct is so strong. Crocker is always prowling around. He gossips too much — he can’t help it. They’re all like children out here: they can never keep anything to themselves, and very few of them are gentlemen, and only a gentleman isn’t loud-mouthed. But I never let them know or see anything if I can help it. Once I was out with Cukor[39] and Miss Akins[40] and they wanted to see where I lived. I said they could look at my garden. So on the journey home we drove miles out of their way and I let them look at my pool, and Zoe Akins said: “It’s like being inside the Vatican”, and I said: “Well, that’s all you can see. You’ve got to go now.”’

  We lay back on the patio sofa in the sun, and Greta brought out her carefully annotated French grammar book and together we went through a Maupassant story. She knows more French than she realizes and her accent is true. She is an apt pupil and has powers of concentration when she wishes, but before the end of the story she became distraite, eventually getting up to do some strenuous exercises; then she went to a corner of the lawn to hose herself before lunch. We had the usual salad, and the birds came for their titbits. We rested. Later we went into Beverly Hills to buy a big basket for gathering fallen leaves, and more lamb chops for dinner. Greta’s appearance caused quite a small commotion in this village where everyone is so film-star conscious, but I laughed when, coming out of one shop, there was a most ferocious bulldog who collected a big crowd and created a counter-attraction. Greta is really completely immune to the stares of the public, and never behaves in a self-conscious way although the attention is very disagreeable to her.

  We went to many shops and, as usual, bought nothing. ‘We are just looking today: we’ll come back some other time,’ she explained. We then motored to another mountain-top from which we hiked for hours. Greta sang like a troubadour and appeared irrepressibly youthful. With her long hair and downbeat trousers and sweater she strode along with infinite zest and grace.

  Sunday, March 6th

  But for a telegram arriving from the Condé Nast publications, asking me to remain on a few extra days to take photographs for them, this would have been my last day here. I was determined that it should remain free: all connections with the outside world were cut. Being Sunday, ‘the Dragon’ was out for the day, and so in her privacy Greta was free to go around as she wished. She did strenuous exercises, she hosed herself, and put on a shirt for preparation of lunch. She hurried around the kitchen with professional efficiency. She showed me how to cut the celery and carrots for the salad. Expertly she tended the stoves, opened and shut the right cupboards, and stacked trays. A sort of devil possesses her under these conditions, and she becomes almost inhuman, with little time for pleasantries, and remote from affection. When the lunch is prepared, then she can relax and become human again. Greta said: ‘I can work hard — harder than anyone. Afterwards I can lie down in the sun almost for ever: I have an infinite capacity for relaxation.’

  While lying in the sun, I noticed that Greta appeared tired and drained of sparkle. Early in the morning she had been particularly beautiful but, as the day advanced, her face became pinched. She realized this, but did not let it make any difference to her lack of self-consciousness. No one has less airs and pretences to beauty, and if ever her beauty should leave her — she would shrug her shoulders: ‘It’s too bad, but there are compensations. Life is full of interests — I really love life,’ she keeps repeating. Nevertheless, today we both felt tired and had vitality for nothing. The climate here is treacherous, and I have been stricken with a virus that has attacked my throat.

  With an effort we tore ourselves from lazy indol
ence and dressed for a mountain walk: being a Sunday there would be too many people on the beach. But Greta took a path that was already in the shade, and the cold, damp air affected my throat so that, soon, I was unable to speak. The night fell abruptly. Back at her house we turned on the heating and pulled the curtains, and after I had drunk a bumper of whisky my voice returned to a croak. Greta put artichokes and celery in the steamer, and broiled veal chops. After the meal, my throat was recovered enough for me to smoke a cigar as I lay on the cedar-coloured sofa.

  Greta said: ‘When I went back to Sweden after working in pictures I was a novelty. You see, I was a poor child, and I didn’t know any rich aspects of life until I returned and stayed with some friends of mine, and they had an English nannie and I adored that little old woman. Once, when there was a party, I took her in my arms and she looked up into my eyes like a lover, and we danced together until she became dizzy and had to stop. She was so sweet, and that was the first time I began to realize how much I like English people and what they stand for. Now tell me what happens when you go home.’

  I lay looking up at the ceiling and extemporized about my return — with the local Hare meeting me with the tinny blue car at Southampton, the arrival at Reddish House with my mother showing me the improvements in the garden: ‘Here, you see, the terrace has been widened’ — ‘These are the new standard roses’ — and my sisters asking if I didn’t think the new greenhouse was far too big? I rambled on as if in a trance about Maud, my secretary, until suddenly Greta said: ‘That’s enough of that. I see perfectly that you are hag-ridden.’

  Monday

  She said: ‘I’ve been digging so hard and putting so much fertilizer into the ground that I’m exhausted, and I shouldn’t do that — I look very badly.’ When I remarked, rather pompously, that after the ‘all-out’ war effort in England, it was strange to see men watering lawns here as if there were nothing more important in the world to do, she said: ‘There is nothing more important.’