by Gore Vidal
As it was Christmas Day, there was no shop-talk, other than a sour remark from Curtis to the effect that Borah was, yet again, disaffected. “He’s mad that you’re getting all the credit for his Disarmament Conference.”
“What can I do?” Harding looked genuinely pained.
“Nothing,” said Daugherty. “There’s no pleasing that son-of-a-bitch.”
“Anyway, we have the votes.” Curtis blinked his black eyes at Blaise, a disconcerting effect. “Whatever treaty you come up with the Senate will give you.”
“Thanks,” Daugherty turned to Harding, “to your making Lodge a delegate. That was inspired, Mr. President.”
“I’ll say it was.” Harding chuckled. “Fact, it was literally inspired by President Wilson’s not letting him sit in on the League of Nations. You know,” Harding gazed at the Secret Service agent in the hall, “when Wilson and I were driving from the White House to the Capitol, I was trying to make conversation, never an easy thing to do with him when he was well and really hard when he was so sick. Anyway, I don’t know how I got onto the subject of elephants, but there we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and I’m telling him how these elephants fall in love with their keepers and how jealous they can get, and how, in the case of this one elephant, when her keeper died, she died, too, of grief. Then I looked over and Wilson was crying, and I thought what a strange end to a presidency this was. Strange beginning, too, I suppose, for me.”
Christmas dinner was served with the usual McLean lavishness. Ned seemed somewhat bemused by his new regimen but otherwise did not embarrass Evalyn, who quizzed Blaise in great detail about Caroline. “I loved her Mary Queen of Scots and I don’t see why everyone was so mean about her.”
Blaise murmured something about envy; actually, he himself was envious of Caroline’s conquest of the movies, and he wondered why. It was not as if he had ever had the slightest ambition along those lines. Yet the fact that, once again, she had moved beyond him was a source of nagging irritation. Fortunately, her recent failure had been most heartening. Without going to any particular effort, he had somehow managed to read every one of her American reviews. She was, at last, too old, was the verdict. He, of course, was older than she but he did not market his face on the screen as she had done.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s in Paris. She opened up Saint-Cloud in the summer but that’s no place to be alone in for Christmas. I suppose she’s with friends.”
“Isn’t there a director … ? Evalyn was eager to gossip.
“Two directors,” said Blaise, now compulsively disloyal. “But I don’t think she’s with either of them. She may be making a picture in Paris, where old age is rather a plus,” he added, wondering if he was leering uncontrollably at Evalyn, who now wanted to discuss Mary Pickford. But then everyone wanted to discuss Mary Pickford.
“If you don’t want to play poker with the President, I’m showing Mary’s new movie, Little Lord Fauntleroy.”
“I’ll watch,” said Blaise, who disliked poker even more than America’s sweetheart.
“I got to know her whole family.” Evalyn was more involved with Hollywood than Blaise had suspected. But then almost everyone nowadays had two lives, his own and his life at the movies. Although Blaise did his conscious best to ignore Caroline’s triumphant new world, he found himself unable not to read any gossip about the stars and he sometimes showed movies at Laurel House when he and Frederika were alone, the ultimate vice.
“Anyway, they are all drunks, the whole lot of them, including Mary and her brother Jack and this wonderful old Irish biddy of a mother who, just before Prohibition came in, went out and bought a whole liquor store and moved all the bottles into her cellar and locked the door to keep Jack out.”
“They are most royal these days, the Fairbankses,” said Blaise, succumbing yet again to Hollywood. Caroline had taken him to dinner at Pickfair, where social climbing was very much in the air. Titles were resonated at the table; and royalty was referred to by pet names. But then the king and queen of Hollywood would naturally be interested in their own kind. Warned of Miss Pickford’s liking for the bottle, Blaise had watched her keenly. But she was as demure as her screen self, a rather matronly little girl was the effect that she made in real life, while Fairbanks, now that he had come into his own as a swashbuckling athletic star, tended to gallop about the room, lecturing on strength both physical and moral. Apropos divorce, a sore subject, he announced, “Caesar and Napoleon were both divorced men, and no one can say that they were weak!” Thus he classed himself.
Fairbanks’s mother-in-law was more engaging, particularly when she confided to Blaise that “Mary gives her most as an actress when she’s got a good director on top of her.”
After dinner, the sated guests sat about the Christmas tree, waiting for the President to be assassinated. In low voices, the men spoke of the Fatty Arbuckle—Hollywood again—scandal. Harding was particularly fascinated by the details, which the Secretary of War had mastered.
During the course of a wild party in San Francisco, the hugely fat comedian Arbuckle, a one-time plumber as the press never forgot to mention, hurled himself onto a young woman, much experienced at parties, and, inadvertently, he burst her bladder—or so the story went. Daily, the press, including Ned McLean and Blaise, printed horrendous stories about the new Babylon while Hearst daily exhorted the Almighty, if not the police, to destroy this city of the plain and turn all its inhabitants, save Marion Davies, to salt. The hapless Arbuckle had finally brought down the concerted wrath of Puritan America on the sinful movie stars who, after celebrating every sort of immorality on-screen then, off-screen, busily burst the bladders of virgin girls and worse. The patriarchal spirit that deprived all Americans of alcohol was now abroad again in the land, and Blaise was ashamed to be a part of it. But he had little choice in the matter: one newspaper followed another until a story had finally run its course. This one seemed nowhere near its terminus. Aside from Arbuckle and his trial, there were more and more stories about drug addiction among the stars and everyone now agreed that something must be done.
Harding echoed the popular cry, without much enthusiasm. “The movie people want the government to come in and police them. But how can we? That isn’t our function. Police yourselves, I told Mr. Zukor.”
Senator Curtis observed that the Postmaster General had been approached about becoming a czar of the movie business, to pass on everyone’s morality. Curtis chuckled, “Can’t you see Will Hays, with all them starlets, sitting on his lap?”
“I’m sure,” said the President, surreptitiously lighting his first cigar—the Duchess was facing in the opposite direction—“that Will has great control and he’ll do nothing improper, if he takes the job.”
This was news. “Has he been offered the job?” asked Blaise.
Harding nodded. “But don’t tell anybody just yet. He hasn’t made up his mind. And of course I don’t want him leaving the Cabinet, particularly now.”
Blaise knew that Fall also wanted to resign, and two resignations at the same time would not be—seemly, to employ one of the President’s favorite words.
Daugherty wondered if any movie had ever encouraged anyone to a life of crime or vice. By and large, the men agreed that it was unlikely, unless the sinner was already so disposed. But Curtis came up with an interesting variation. “There’s no doubt in my mind that movies and plays and books give people plot ideas, including criminals. The badger game, for instance.”
To a man, the politicians beside the Christmas tree shuddered. Harding nodded somberly and said, “There’s no doubt that when Senator Gore wouldn’t help out those oil men one of them thought of that play, the Purple something.”
“Deep Purple,” said Daugherty.
“What was that all about?” Blaise had only a vague memory of the blind Senator’s trial.
“A few years back, there was this real popular play,” said Curtis. “Everybody saw it. How a b
unch of gangsters set up an innocent man with a woman. Well, one day this woman, a constituent, calls up Senator Gore about getting an appointment to West Point for her son, and she says can he come by her hotel, as she’s lame, and so he does, with his secretary, and they all meet in the lobby, and of course Gore’s blind and can’t see her or what she’s up to when she says, let’s go up to the mezzanine. But instead of going there, she takes him to her room, tears her dress, starts to scream ‘Rape!’ and a couple of crooks hired by the oil men come rushing in and say, ‘We got you.’ ”
“Could happen to almost any senator,” said Harding sadly.
“It could certainly happen to any senator who happens to be blind.” Weeks was precise.
Daugherty was even more precise. “Particularly if the folks out to get you had seen Deep Purple.”
When Gore had refused to be blackmailed, charges were brought against him for attempted rape. He had then insisted on standing trial in Oklahoma City. The whole affair had been exceedingly melodramatic, Blaise now recalled, even to the last-minute appearance of a widow from Boston who had observed what had happened from her hotel-room window. Gore was exonerated. “Proving,” said Harding, “that no trouble with a woman ever lost a man a vote.”
“Unless her bladder bursts,” said Curtis.
The Duchess and Evalyn joined the gentlemen. Evalyn said, “I’ve talked to the Secret Service and they say that the safest place in the house is the sitting room to my bedroom. Ned’s up there now, with the cards.”
“Be careful, Warren!” The Duchess was genuinely frightened.
“Why, dearie, when am I not?”
Blaise remained with the ladies to see Little Lord Fauntleroy. Millicent, Countess Inverness, drifted off to sleep, and snored while the Duchess fidgeted, and Evalyn took her hand from time to time. Blaise day-dreamed; only Frederika was intent upon the adventures of a stocky thirty-year-old matron as she impersonated, in the most sinister way, a pubescent boy.
At first, Blaise thought that a bomb had gone off somewhere upstairs. They all leapt to their feet except Mrs. Harding, who slipped off her chair and now lay like some stranded sea-creature on the parquet floor. “Florence. Here!” Evalyn pulling Mrs. Harding to her feet.
“I know. I know what’s happened. It was foretold in the stars. Take me to him. Now. It’s all come true. All of it. Just like she said. Oh, God!”
Mrs. Harding was now in the hallway where a Secret Service man smilingly reassured her. “The wind slammed a door shut. That’s all.”
From far above them, Harding’s mellifluous voice could be heard. “Don’t worry, Duchess. They missed me.”
Mrs. Harding turned fiercely back into the drawing room. “I don’t see the joke.”
“Unbecoming,” said Blaise, delighting in the President’s other favorite word. Then he turned to Frederika. “I think he’s safe.”
They said good night to the Duchess, who was now in full tirade. Like so many forceful women of a certain age, her conscious mind had been gradually replaced by her unconscious. She now tended to say whatever she was thinking, even when she was not, properly speaking, thinking at all. “I know what’s going on, you see.” She stared vacantly at Blaise. “I always do. That doesn’t mean that there’s anything I can do. But I try, God knows how I try. What makes it worse is how they’re all in on it. Even Laddie Boy who sits in front of the door.” Evalyn led Mrs. Harding back to the Christmas tree.
“What was that about?” Frederika was intrigued.
“Hysteria,” said Blaise. “Poor Harding. I think she’s crazy.”
“Poor Duchess, to be so misused.”
“How?”
“There are mistresses,” said Frederika, pulling the coverlet over her knees as the great car glided toward Georgetown.
“I wonder why she cares? She’s got him, after all.”
“I think,” said Frederika, uncharacteristically focussed on a problem not her own, “that he dislikes her and she doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“Except make scenes.”
“Chagrin d’amour. I don’t suppose it helps having just the one.”
“The one what?”
“Kidney,” said Frederika with unanalyzable joy.
THIRTEEN
1
Miss Kingsley always put Caroline in a good mood. For one thing, she was a genuine fan of Emma Traxler. For another, she was encyclopedic. There was nothing that she did not know when it came to who was making what movie and why. Caroline always served her tea, and Miss Kingsley always made an art form of taking off her gloves, while discussing the subtleties of Indian as opposed to China tea.
Traxler Productions was having a good season. The release of two westerns had already made up the money lost on Mary.
“But when do you plan to go before the cameras next?” Miss Kingsley’s kindly eye was fixed on Caroline’s left ear where the surgeon’s knife had cut; then the skin was drawn back and resewn, following the natural line where the ear connected with the head. Hair swept back and in a full light, the scar was still a horrible livid shiny wound to Caroline’s own sharp eye. But the Paris surgeon had assured her that it would lose all color soon and no one would ever notice the line.
After much trepidation, Caroline had gone into a clinic outside Paris, and the deed had been done at the beginning of winter. Now she felt that it was safe to show off her restored—if not exactly new—face. She had been lucky. Aside from all the horror stories of operations gone wrong, many an operation had been so successful that the seeker after eternal beauty was startled to see that she—or he—was indeed made beautiful by the unexpected possession of someone else’s face. Caroline looked like Emma at her best, who was exactly like, though unlike, the original Caroline long since erased by time and Emma’s glory and—now—surgery.
“I have no plans,” said Caroline, who had a great many plans. “It was so pleasant being home again in …”
“Alsace-Lorraine. I know.” Miss Kingsley was very good at keeping straight all the lies that the stars had told her. When Mabel Normand had said something to Miss Kingsley about her childhood in Staten Island, Miss Kingsley had gently reminded her that she had been born and raised on Beacon Hill in Boston. Mabel promised not to make such a slip again.
“Dear old Alsace-Lorraine,” sighed Caroline. “Yes. I took the waters there, and lost a great deal of weight.”
“I can see. You look amazingly rested and slender.” This was Miss Kingsley’s code phrase for “plastic surgery.” “Ready to go before the cameras again.” Code: the star is now ready to face with a brand-new face a new career, having lost the old one to unkindly Father Time.
“Perhaps. I’m talking to William Desmond Taylor about a new project, a life of George Sand, actually.”
“Will you wear trousers?” Miss Kingsley frowned at her note-book.
“I think one must, at times. But she was mostly in gowns.”
“I deplore, frankly, women in men’s clothes. Mr. Hearst has an unhealthy passion for this … this perversion. There is no other word, I fear.” Miss Kingsley turned pale pink. “I’ve discussed it with poor Marion, who says it’s what, as she puts it in that cute way of hers, ‘Pops wants.’ ”
“She has not got quite the right bottom for trousers.” Caroline was judiciously clinical.
“I trust you will wear a long frock coat …”
“A Prince Albert, yes. And I shall only pretend to smoke a cigar.”
“What you stars must do for your art!” Miss Kingsley shook her head more in pity than awe. “Do you still plan to buy or build your own studio?”
Caroline nodded. Tim had reawakened her ambition. Although she enjoyed acting the part of a movie star in real life, she did not much like becoming an old woman on the screen. The sudden entirely unexpected realliance with Tim had changed her course. With Tim’s help, what Hearst had done with newspapers she would do with the movies. Others had had the same wish but they had been bemused by the notion of art
. Griffith had tried to render the Civil War on the screen in “lightning flashes,” as President Wilson had poetically put it, but he had got lost in the politics of that huge event. Later, when he made Intolerance, he had succumbed to spectacle without mind. Yet Caroline knew what he was doing or trying to do. Like Griffith, Tim believed that the imagination of the public could be laid siege to, and won. But Tim chose, perversely, to appeal to everyone’s sense of justice, while Griffith wearied them with grandiose visions of various deadly sins. Caroline knew that the answer was somewhere between the two, in what would look to be nothing more ambitious than a celebration of the ordinary in American life; and then—thanks to the luxury of film editing—dreams could be stealthily planted in the viewer’s mind. Instinctively, Chaplin had done this from the beginning, and Caroline was confident that once he knew what he was doing, he would lose his art. Self-consciousness was the principal enemy of this strange narrative form. Gradually, she and Tim had worked it all out in a way that neither on his own could have done. They were now both hard at work on a dozen photo-plays, each calculated to appeal to as many people as possible, yet with a certain intrinsic design that, if successful, would subtly alter the way everyone observed the world. Where once Huns and Reds were demonized, human qualities would be apotheosized. The fact that they could so easily fail made the attempt all the more exciting.
“We’ve thought of buying Inceville at Santa Monica. Or maybe something in the Valley but only,” Caroline added quickly, “if you approve.”
“My heart shall never go out to the Valley, but if you are there I will come out. That is a solemn promise.”
“I shall miss Paramount.” Famous Players–Lasky was now more and more known as Paramount Pictures, by order, presumably, of Adolph Zukor, who had also painted the studio green, his favorite color according to Charles Eyton. Yet Zukor was never to be seen in the studio. Instead he reigned over his empire from New York and left movie-making to his employees, a mistake Caroline would not make when she began her new career. Essentially, the movie magnates were not concerned with what was on the screen as long as it was profitable. Those who did care, like Griffith, tended to be self-indulgent and unprofitable. But the magnates must be propitiated. They—or specifically Zukor—owned the movie theaters, and Caroline had done her best to charm the great man who lived in Rockland County, New York, surrounded by relatives. But then all of the movie magnates were family men on the grandest, most tribal scale. They married off their children in the same calculated way as royal families did, and with, often, the same dire results. No wonder they all wanted to make Mayerling. Currently, Samuel Goldfish now Goldwyn, brother-in-law of Lasky but mortal enemy of Zukor, wanted Caroline to play the Empress Elizabeth, whose doomed son Rudolph—Barthelmess had said yes to the role—would kill himself at the hunting lodge of Mayerling. Hearst was now threatening to make his Mayerling with Marion Davies as the tragic Maria Vetsera.