Despite the criticism, MGM and the rest of the studios had begun to incorporate recorded dialogue into their films by late 1928. Envisioning sound as a kind of "spice" that could be added to films for extra flavor, most film executives imagined a partial transition, in which films contained both silent and sound scenes. But public pressure for an "all talking" cinema was increasing daily. Studio financiers shuddered at the thought of the expense, while actors entered a state of terror. They had made their fortunes by their faces and gestures; none of them, save the few stage actors who had come to Hollywood, knew how to act. Joan Crawford described those tense times in a single word: panic!42 Actors frantically enlisted in voice lessons, while speech and acting coaches flocked to Hollywood to capitalize on the revolution.
After actors spent months training in diction and elocution, the moment of truth arrived: the dreaded "talkie screen test." Each morning, recalled silent-film actor Buddy Rogers, the studios "would take a star to find out if they had a voice. One morning they took Harold Lloyd in. At four the boy came out and said, `Harold Lloyd has a voice.' The next day, Wally Beery. We waited ... and about 3:30 in the afternoon, the door opened. The cry rang out: `Wally Beery has a voice.' "41 The tests were nerve-wracking but important, since multimillion-dollar careers hung in the balance. Many if not most of the stars survived. Blessed with good voices and speech coaches, and in some cases prior dramatic experience, they made the transition to the talkies with little or no damage to their careers. Even Davies passed. She had been so terrified of making her talkie screen test that she considered quitting film altogether, but Hearst brought speech and elocution coaches from Broadway to help her. On the morning of the test, Davies fortified herself with a glass of sherry, then proceeded to pass the test with flying colors. Impressed, Irving Thalberg extended her contract .44
But those who fell from grace fell hard. The fates of two of America's most popular silent stars, Clara Bow and John Gilbert, became tragic testaments to the fragility of stars' careers during the talkie transition. Though they passed the studio talkie tests and were put into sound films, these two failed the ultimate test-the showdown with the fans. Clara Bow's Brooklyn accent, audiences and reviewers declared, was "hard and metallic," and she quickly fell out of favor. ("All her s.a. [sex appeal] and all of her `it,"' Photoplay magazine joked, "couldn't make her talkies a hit.")45 After his talkie debut in the 1929 film His Glorious Night, John Gilbert became an object of national humiliation. Shocked to discover that the handsome, romantic Gilbert had a boyish, high-register voice, audiences jeered. (The morning after the premiere, Variety announced: "AUDIENCES LAUGHING AT GILBERT.") Some viewers were so appalled that they threw fruits and vegetables at the screen.46
Nerves were strained and egos fragile. A single bad review, a negative comment in a fan magazine, the rumor of a failed talkie screen test-criticism that could have been weathered in the past was now potentially fatal. And Louella, in the midst of this, became more important than ever. During the late 19zos, she devoted her column to the latest "talkie news"-who had passed their test, who had not, who was rumored to be studying with a voice coach, whose careers seemed destined for failure. Stars, directors, and producers depended on her column to gauge their own and their competitors' fortunes in the face of the upheaval.
Pola Negri read the results of her test at RKO in Louella's column, hours before she heard back from the studio. Louella often printed the outcomes, Negri recalled, "even before the people concerned were informed of it."47 Louella also used her position to boost the imperiled careers of her friends. Fearing that Bebe Daniels's dismissal from Paramount in 1929 would end her stardom, Louella attacked the studio in her column and announced confidently that the "gossip ... that Bebe Daniels was finished in pictures" was a myth.48 Louella so aggressively boosted Daniels and Davies that she was accused by Variety of promoting "Hollywood phoneys" and having "syndicated a story about how well the old screen stars were holding their own." "This is boloney," the publication claimed. "Louella is merely trying to stem the tide for her friends."49
Afraid that she would run damning accounts of actors' voices or tests, the major studio heads agreed to grant Louella first dibs on all news coming out of the studios. Because Louella's column for the Examiner was prepared two days in advance, the studios granted her a "48 hour exclusive," a promise that they would give Louella news at least forty-eight hours before they released it to other outlets. She now had a direct pipeline to breaking news that was virtually guaranteed. And thus began the exclusive arrangement that would ensure Louella's access to Hollywood gossip for over a decade.
Though her career was blossoming, Louella's love life was another story. She was still involved with Peter Brady, but their long-distance relationship was disintegrating. It was difficult for them to find time to talk, let alone meet, and Brady regularly fired off angry telegrams to Louella complaining about their incompatible schedules and Louella's inability to get to New York. Though she still loved him, she knew that it was time to move on. In 1927, twelve years after her ill-fated elopement with Jack McCaffrey, Louella went to the Los Angeles County Courthouse and filed for divorce from McCaffrey on grounds of desertion.50 Now legally unattached, she began actively looking for a more permanent relationship, one potentially culminating in marriage.
In spite of her desire to find another man, she could not resist the opportunity, in the summer of 1928, to see Brady again. Knowing that Brady was one of the New York delegates to the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston, Louella convinced Hearst to send her to Houston to report on the convention from the "woman's angle." In June, she proposed, she would travel to Boston to see Harriet's graduation from Wellesley, then to New York to meet Brady, who would accompany her to the convention. Though by late May the itinerary had been set, a backlog of work forced her to postpone the trip for over a week. The change in plans caused Brady to change his sched ule, and he sent a snide message to Louella. If she had been able to leave her "fascinating" Hollywood on time, the disruption would have been avoided.s'
Finally, in early June 1928, Maggie Ettinger took Louella to the train station for her departure. Late as usual, Louella was running down the platform to catch her train when Maggie shouted at her. "Louella, I want you to meet someone," she yelled, pointing to a husky man behind her. "He'll be going East on the same train with you." When Louella finally got on the train, she turned and saw "the most Irish face" she'd ever seen.
Harry Watson Martin, racetrack addict and incurable practical joker, was a well-established urologist with a successful private practice in Hollywood. Born in 1890 in Redfield, South Dakota, he received his medical degree at the University of Illinois and served in the Army Medical Corps in World War 1. In 1919 he moved to Hollywood, where he established a reputation as a specialist in abortions and sexually transmitted diseases, and as one who served clients from the local brothels. In 1924, he married actress Sylvia Bremer, and in 1927 they divorced. A loud and blustering but lovable Irishman with a penchant for alcohol, not long after his arrival in Hollywood, Harry dove into a shallow pool at the local Bimini Bathhouse and broke his neck. Still drunk, he held his neck in place while he walked to the nearest hospital for surgery. Notorious for his exaggerated tales, he claimed to have been a good friend of Al Capone's and to have knocked out Jack Dempsey.52
"His color was high, and he had startlingly blue eyes that disappeared almost completely when he smiled," Louella recalled. "He had a husky quality about his voice that I have always found particularly attractive in a man. Nice, I thought."53 During the three-day train journey, Harry entertained Louella with jokes and stories and plenty of "subtle flattery." Louella could not help but be intrigued, but her obligation to Brady prevented her from going further. Then, as the train approached the Midwest, Louella received an angry telegram from Brady telling her that her delay prevented him from meeting her in Chicago as he had planned. If Louella wanted to see him, the telegram read, she would have to go to New York
, where he might be able to meet her train. Furious at Brady's remarks but still eager to see him, Louella agreed to go to New York and bought tickets in Chicago. But the only train she could take departed in two days, leaving Louella in Chicago with Harry, who was there attending a medical convention. By the end of a romantic weekend, both Louella and Harry were smitten, and a confrontation with Brady seemed imminent. When Harry called Louella a week later in New York, Brady, who was in the room, exploded. "If you see or talk to him again, I'm through," he threatened. "I'll never forgive you."54
Louella briefly escaped the tensions when she went to Boston in the middle of the month for Harriet's graduation. "Of all the things in the world I think this is my biggest thrill," she told her readers. During her four years at Wellesley, Harriet had been a star pupil-gifted in the classroom and an important contributor to the campus literary magazine and drama society. An avid playwright, songwriter, and director, Harriet had composed the class march and, in her senior year, directed the school play.55 She planned to parlay her literary interests into a screenwriting career after graduation and a trip to Europe. Conveniently, Louella had secured her a coveted screenwriting position at MGM.
Upon her return to New York, Louella, Brady, and a group of Tammany Hall bigwigs boarded a private railroad car, "the Convention Special," bound for Houston. During the three-day journey south, Louella "queened it," she recalled, joking and flirting with the delegates and reveling in the flattery and attention.56 When the entourage arrived in Houston, they were greeted by crowds and sweltering heat. Each day the temperature reached ninety-five degrees and some days even higher. "Thirty thousand perspiring Democrats are an active part of a mad scene here that makes the Christians in Ben Hur look like a Sunday school picnic and the battle scenes in What Price Glory and the Big Parade resemble a peace conference," she wrote in one of her first syndicated dispatches from the convention.57 Swept up in the frenzy, she almost forgot that she and Brady were barely on speaking terms.
Per Hearst's instructions, Louella limited her reporting to the "woman's point of view." As a result, her articles mentioned nothing of the tumultuous events of the convention. Al Smith would receive the nomination, though the New York governor, an Irish-American Catholic who opposed Prohibition, raised controversy even among his own party's ranks. Barred from more substantive commentary, Louella focused on fashion-the dress styles and colors worn by the delegates' and candidates' wives. "The new color for the Democratic parry ... seems to be Catherine Blue, named in honor of Mrs. Al Smith," she wrote. But Brady and Jimmy Walker urged her to endorse Smith in one of her columns, and Louella relented. The article never made it into print. Smith's archenemy for years, Hearst promptly yanked the article from the papers.
She returned to Hollywood in July, accompanied by Brady and Walker, who were on vacation. Though thoughts of seeing Harry were on her mind, Louella suppressed them while she escorted Brady and Walker on a whirlwind tour of the Hollywood nightlife. One afternoon, at a special luncheon at the Montmartre Cafe given in honor of New York mayor Walker, Louella, seated between her two guests, looked up and saw Harry. "My heart gave one little glad leap," she recalled. "I knew then-if I had not suspected it in my heart before, that I loved Harry."58
From that moment, Louella committed herself to the pursuit of Harry Martin. It was a quest that consumed her almost as much as her work. "It is all right for a woman to go along with her career, thinking it can take the place in her life of a home and husband, for a little while," she wrote in her autobiography. "But the years have a way of sneaking by. Even the gayest path can be a lonesome road-if a woman is alone."59
In reality, Louella was hardly alone. Though she complained frequently of feelings of isolation, during virtually all her waking hours she was surrounded by colleagues and friends. She spent a good deal of time with Maggie Ettinger, who had since left the MGM publicity department to become one of the most successful independent publicists in Hollywood. Louella often went to Maggie's for late-night dinners, where they "gossiped endlessly, talked half the nights away, and generally had the time of [their] lives."60 She also participated in the wild-and often illegal-entertainment that Prohibition had spawned. With the rest of the film colony, she spent her evenings at the Cocoanut Grove, where banquets, parties, and Charleston contests were held almost nightly and liquor flowed freely.61 She became familiar with the nightlife on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, where gamblers, prostitutes, and members of the movie crowd frequented such notorious speakeasies as the Doo Doo Inn, the Kit Kat Club, Monkey Farm, Hoosegow, Club Royale, Harlow's Cafe, and the Sneak Inn.
A more respectable venue for nighttime pleasure was Marion Davies's beach house in Santa Monica. A colonial-style mansion surrounded by four smaller buildings, the Beach House featured a iio-foot heated swimming pool in Italian marble and over a hundred bedrooms that were occupied by Davies's family, guests, and thirty-two full-time servants. Louella, along with the rest of "Marion's crowd"-Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, Jesse Lasky, Louis B. Mayer, Sam and Frances Goldwyn, Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, Mildred and Harold Lloyd, and Harry Crocker, among others-appeared regularly at the nightly dinner parties and weekend swimming parties that Davies held throughout the 19zos. Louella ("Loll," as Mary Pickford called her) was also a guest at Pickfair, the palatial Beverly Hills mansion that Pickford and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, called home. Louella dined there regularly with Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, and Elinor Glyn, the famed British author.62 She also showed up regularly at Hedda Hopper's Sunday afternoon parties. "Hedda Hopper's house seems to be the Mecca on Sunday afternoon for all filmland," she wrote in 192,6. "I stopped there Sunday, and although Hedda said she had issued no invitations and it was no formal tea, half of the film colony wandered in during the course of the afternoon. "63
Louella missed the camaraderie and support she had found in the Newspaper Women's Club and the Woman Pays Club in New York, and she continued to advocate higher status and better pay for women in journalism. Though women had risen in the ranks of the profession by the late 19zos, and they were working as managing editors, city editors, and even sports editors in many cities, they were still often caricatured as "flapperesque sob sisters" or "giggling girls," a stereotype that Louella worked to debunk. (One woman reporter on an Ohio newspaper complained that the "copy editor makes a sob sister out of women." If female reporters did not write according to the sob sister style, copy readers amended their stories to fit the mold.)64 In a 192,6 interview, Louella told Editor and Publisher magazine that, contrary to stereotype, the "modern newspaper woman is not only mentally alert but is smartly dressed. The idea of the dowdy-looking female with bedraggled hair and ill-fitting clothes as typical of every female reporter went out with the bi- cycle."65
In the spring of 1928, Louella organized a group of female newspaper reporters and fan magazine writers who covered Hollywood; the group met in her apartment to "swap shop talk." The informal gatherings soon became regular weekly meetings, and by 1929 the group, named the Hollywood Women's Press Club, was meeting each Wednesday at noon at the Vine Street Brown Derby. Unlike the New York Newspaper Women's Club, which worked to increase the status and visibility of female journalists, the Hollywood club was organized "to manage and conduct social meetings" and "to promote pleasure and recreation," according to its founding statement.66
The Wednesday lunches brimmed with companionship and enthusiasm. Bob Cobb at the Derby "gave us a rate of $1.2,5 a person. We could order anything we liked from squab to Cherries Jubilee," recalled Dorothy Manners, one of the group's early members. We came "to eat-and dish-and it was a lot of fun."67 "The women of the club do no infighting," recalled another member. "That does not mean that everyone agrees with everyone else. We have had one or two brannigans that rocked us, but we have more mutual respect and interests than to indulge in open, picayune criticism of each other. "61
Dorothy Manners, Gladys Hall, and Katherine Albert, three of the group's founding membe
rs, were well-known feature writers for the fan magazines Motion Picture and Motion Picture Classic. Ruth Biery, the West Coast editor of Photoplay magazine; Maude Latham, a society columnist; and Regina Carewe, a movie writer for the Hearst papers, were also part of the initial group. Together they shared gossip, vented their frustrations, and "the taboos of secrecy were thrown out the window!" recalled one member. When the group formally incorporated its bylaws in 193o and began collecting dues, the women elected Louella president. She remained head of the organization until 1935, when she resigned, and she eventually resumed membership in 1954. The group became an important personal and professional network for Louella, and she handpicked several of her future employees from the club's membership. Member and fan magazine writer Ruth Waterbury would write Louella's radio scripts in the 1940s, and Manners became Louella's primary editorial assistant in 1934.
The club grew larger and more influential than Louella had ever imagined. By 1940, it boasted more than two dozen of the brightest and best-known women journalists and publicists in Hollywood. That year the group established its famous "Golden Apple" and "Sour Apple" awards, given annually to the stars who were most and least cooperative with the press. In honor of its founder, the group established the annual "Louella Parsons Award" in 1967. The award was bestowed yearly on "the person representing the best image of the entertainment industry to the world."69
The First Lady of Hollywood Page 16