by Thomas Tryon
But before all this, Fedora’s long Hollywood career continued. She revealed her finest artistry with the production of The Voices of Joan of Arc, and again she was nominated by the Academy, and again she lost, this time to Luise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld. This was followed by the unfortunate The Mirror, from a story written by her friend Countess Sobryanski; two successes, The Three Sisters and Madame de Staël; then two dreadful flops. One, Night Train from Trieste, took advantage of the war-scare headlines, while another, her last Hollywood film, The Duchess from Dubuque, in which she again co-starred with William Marsh, was a badly conceived attempt to convert her into an “American princess,” a formula plot already a screen cliché, which kept the customers away in droves and hastened the decline of not only her own career but that of Marsh as well.
She completed her contract at AyanBee, stunned the world by announcing that she would make no more films, then disappeared again. She sold her house, flew to Halifax, and boarded one of the last ships taking passengers to Europe before the outbreak of the war. She arrived eventually at the Sobryanskis’ Montreux château, where she remained sheltered and in seclusion until peace came six years later. She never returned to America.
After V-E Day, when she was again seen, it was sometimes in Paris or London, sometimes in Athens, en route to Crete, in the company of the Sobryanskis. Publishing more photographs, Life (July 23, 1951) noted that the countess was aided in her ascent up the gangplank by a cane; she had fallen from a horse at the Camargue ranch. Tourists who came to Crete with cameras to get snapshots of their goddess were disappointed, and found themselves confronted by only another high wall; though there was a fine view of the Aegean, there was none to be had of Fedora. She kept virtually out of the public eye for almost another ten years, during which time it remained a matter of conjecture whether she really would never make another film.
There was little doubt that one of the Stories of the Decade was Samuel L. Ueberroth’s production of The Miracle of Santa Cristi. And since Fedora’s was an unbilled appearance, the surprise was the more astonishing. Marion remembered it well. Beetrice Marsh had found a book, The Miracle of Santa Cristi, which she gave to Viola Ueberroth to read. Viola agreed it had movie possibilities and turned it over to her brother. Sam, now Samuel L. Ueberroth, arranged to produce it independently of Columbia, where he had been under contract. Ueberroth shocked the industry by casting his girlfriend, an ex-baton twirler from Santa Monica, who until his liaison with her had made only B pictures; this was Lorna Doone, whom he later married, and still later divorced, and whose career had had so many quirky and passionate ups and downs. Lorna played the American girl touring in Italy, where she meets a young boy who becomes a miracle worker through the intercession of the Holy Virgin, who appears to him in the local church.
The boy, Bobby Ransome, later famous as the star of the Bobbitt films, was discovered by Viola Ueberroth. The problem casting was that of the Virgin. She appeared with the child in five scenes in the church interior, and the major requirement was that she be classically beautiful. Sam Ueberroth had flown with Viola to Tel Aviv, where they located an Israeli girl and signed her for the part. Locations were shot at Rocaillo, a small hill town about eighty kilometers outside Rome; the interiors were to be done at Cinecittà. The Israeli girl had completed only two days’ shooting, however, when Ueberroth looked at the rushes, didn’t like her, and ordered her replaced. Viola had a private meeting with Sam and the director, then she went south to Morocco. When she returned from Tangier, she was accompanied by a second party, incognita, who was smuggled into the Grand Hotel through the kitchen entrance. The following week Fedora began her comeback on the screen.
The Miracle of Santa Cristi was premiered in New York ten months later. Cannily, Ueberroth had made no announcement of Fedora’s unbilled appearance, nor was she listed in the credits. He waited for word of mouth and gossip to do their work. Pins could have been heard to drop in the theaters as the boy knelt in the darkened church and saw the radiant vision emerging from the shadows of the sacristy. She stood there, robed in white, with a blue mantle, a girdle of gold, the Crown of Heaven on her head, surrounded by a blinding nimbus of shimmering light, through which could be discerned a face. But whose? Whom did it look like? It looked like Fedora. But no, they said, it couldn’t be. Then, yes, they said, it was. Finally Ueberroth called a press conference and “confessed” that indeed it was Fedora. But oh, they said, they’d tricked her close-ups, shot her through gauze, burlap, even linoleum. It couldn’t possibly be her; this was seventeen years later. It was a cheat; they’d used dazzling light to disguise the wrinkles and sag. It scarcely mattered. Her slaves rejoiced in being tricked; their goddess could do no wrong. She spoke no lines, it was all pantomime, but her brief scenes electrified, if frustrated, the audiences, and the line at the Roxy reached almost from Seventh Avenue to Fifth.
The picture itself proved far from satisfactory, but Fedora’s presence in only five short scenes was sufficient to ensure its success. Having thus aroused the world anew, she once more disappeared. The fox had gone to earth again and, like hounds, rumor, conjecture, and supposition went sniffing in her wake. She had given no interviews, and it was not known if she planned to further continue her career. Then more news came from a casual remark made in the Ritz Bar in Paris, where Sam Ueberroth had dropped the word that in a coproduction deal with some Italians, Fedora would undertake the role of Nefertiti in a superspectacle, The Blue Nile. The most remarkable thing about the film was the way the lie was given to those who said Fedora’s age had been disguised in Santa Cristi. Though she is talked of a good deal, Nefertiti does not appear until twenty minutes into the picture. Nor does she make an entrance; she is simply there. The pharaoh enters the great palace hall, demanding to see the princess. Off-camera footsteps are heard, he looks toward the doorway, but instead of cutting to the central figure, the camera remains on the actor’s face, then as he speaks the camera cuts to a full shot, holding the pharaoh in the middle ground, with Nefertiti’s back to the audience. Finally, in a dazzling display of cinematography, the camera slowly dollies during his speech, circling her, losing him, and slowly, slowly, gradually closing in as she listens. And there, at last, is the face.
Ageless. She was ageless. This time there could be no doubt; the camera saw it all. She hadn’t grown old, hadn’t suffered the mutilations of time. Who cared if the picture was terrible? One cared only to look, to see, to glory in the goddess, to hear again those inimitable drawled-out heavy accents. And though the inevitable comparisons between smiles was made—that of Nefertiti versus Mona Lisa’s—it was a question which was the more enigmatic.
The French press had for many years called her La Déesse, the goddess. The romantic Venetians had conferred upon her the very title of their city, La Serenissima. The Neapolitans countered with their own La Sublima. But it was the Romans who now dubbed her with another title: La Scandalosa. Everyone knew that goddesses were impervious, and in this particular instance, quite immortal; but what now seemed apparent was that the La Déesse was possibly immoral as well. Since she had ventured again into the public eye, Fedora’s private life had once more come under careful scrutiny. Now the talk centered on reports that she had revived her old affair with Count Sobryanski, and a second gossip-ridden triangle was formed. From Hollywood both Louella and Hedda worried in print about the peculiar geometry involved. Wags said it required only two superimposed triangles to make a star. In the earlier instance it had been Fedora, the mother, and the son. Now it was Fedora, the husband, and the wife. John Sobryanski’s wife was a French girl, daughter of a wealthy automobile manufacturer. Fedora was seen frequently in the couple’s company, and she was known to be spending much of her time between movies at Menton, a French town close to the Italian Riviera, in their small but handsome house high in the hills. Previous to this the count had bought an old castle on the outskirts of Tangier in Morocco. An architect and a team of decorators had been brought from Paris to m
ake it elegantly habitable, and the four principals were often in residence there, in various combinations, for the dowager countess would occasionally arrive from Crete, where she had been living since her riding accident. While she continued to avoid press interviews, Fedora worked steadily over the next twelve years. For Warners she remade Ophelie, which was shot in Paris, and she received another Oscar nomination, again losing, this time to Patricia Neal for Hud. Fedora was not available for comment. Little was seen or heard of her between pictures, though stories had begun cropping up of difficulties on her sets, of arguments and disagreeable incidents; often players were dismissed and recast, the films went over budget because of delays, and it was said that Fedora, who before had been merely tempestuous, was now temperamental. It hardly mattered. Audiences craved her. Producers vied for her name on a contract and exhausted themselves trying to dig up suitable material as vehicles. Gossip concerning her was as rampant as ever, though more outrageous. Several times she became ill and vanished as of old, usually, they said, back into Switzerland and Vando’s personal care. She would hole up at the château, and though reporters established their usual watch, no eye fell upon her. There were comings and goings that even the press found impossible to keep up with, from the Montreux château, to the Riviera with Sobryanski, to the Tangier castle, where Sobryanski would be waiting, sometimes alone, sometimes with his wife. Then, when she left, Sobryanski and Fedora would be seen in Athens, boarding a boat for Crete to visit the countess, who after complications following her accident was now confined to a wheelchair. It was, the papers noted, rather like a royal progress, house to house to house, but what, they wondered, went on inside?
Certain information had not got into the papers at all, and though rumor became blatant, nothing was printed until an incident at the Nice airport, where Fedora was detained by customs, then charged with illegal possession of drugs. The scandal occurred during the filming of Mother Russia, which was being shot on the Dalmatian coast in Yugoslavia. She was eventually released and permitted to finish the film, but word of the incident had got around, and finally the Rome publication Oggi picked it up. Other incidents followed, and though many people attributed her difficulties to alcohol, insiders knew that she was taking hashish and cocaine, which she had easy access to in Tangier, and it was now whispered that she had become addicted.
She continued making pictures, each worse than the last, and by now she was considered a risk; few producers would take a chance on her. She was replaced twice, her career faltered again, then failed altogether, and The Dying Summer was not completed. She never made another film. She resumed her royal progresses, but gradually receded into or was absorbed by that anonymity she had sought; not that she could ever be anonymous—her face was too famous; she was still La Déesse or La Scandalosa—but she was treated like exiled royalty, to be talked of and pointed out, a little eccentric, a little bizarre, rather melancholy, continuingly baffling, and what was now saddest, passé. The high hat had become old hat.
The evening was so pleasant that Marion and Barry walked back to his apartment. He put on some records while Marion visited the bathroom, combed her hair, and freshened her make-up. When she came out he had his shoes off and was lolling in the club chair. He pointed to the sofa and she sat.
“Where now?” she asked.
Barry smiled. “To the end, I guess. It’s about time, don’t you think?”
Marion looked at the clock. It was after midnight; she hadn’t even noticed the hour. “You’re really not going to let me use it?”
“Marion, I don’t think you’ll want to,” he replied seriously.
“Why not?”
“You said you need twenty minutes’ worth. You couldn’t do this story in two hours.”
“All right,” she said. She lit a cigarette, drew in smoke, exhaled, and waited.
“It began—and ended—with a trip I made to Europe almost two years ago. My novel had just come out in London and my British publishers asked me over to do some publicity. There I came across an old friend, Viola Ueberroth. I was in Harrods, signing copies of my book, and up she popped. She’d just flown in from Greece, she said, and insisted on having a first edition, and when I offered to autograph it she said no, thanks, and gave it to the salesgirl to be wrapped. We talked for a few minutes while she paid for the book, but when she left the store I thought she’d forgotten it, since she hadn’t taken it with her. I asked the salesgirl and found out it was being mailed; not to herself, but to the Countess Maria Lislotte Sobryanski, on Crete.
“It was only an idle notion at first, but I had some free time and I conceived the idea of going to Crete to see if I could talk to the countess—beard the lioness in her den. It happened that I had another friend—also a writer—who has a small house on a nearby Greek island. I cabled him, asking if I could come and visit. He agreed, and I flew to Patmos. Peter knows the region well, but when I questioned him about the Sobryanskis, he could tell me very little. John and his wife still alternated among their several residences, and it was known that Fedora was still a not infrequent visitor both to their houses and at the countess’s villa as well. I stayed three days with Peter, we said goodbye at the boat dock, and I embarked for Crete. The weather is still fine in late September in that part of the world, but the greatest blessing is that most of the tourists have gone home. I found immediately a small hotel to my liking in the port of Iraklion. My first inquiries at the hotel brought results. I learned that the Sobryanski villa was in a nearby village. I rented a car and drove over late on my first morning.
“The village climbed a mountainside, wooded and wildly overgrown and accessible only by a narrow twisting road which overlooks the Aegean, a truly spectacular view, and it was at the end of the road that I had been told I would find the villa. It was there, all right, a yellowish-pinkish stucco affair with tiled roofs and chimneys, and that was about all I could see, because there was a high stone wall, and the only entrance seemed to be a small wooden door cut into it. The few visible signs of life were a battered gray Citroën parked in the gravel turnaround, and some goats chewing on the weeds. I wasn’t about to pop in on the countess, but I had written a note, introducing myself, giving my credentials, and adding that I was the friend of Viola’s whose book she had recently sent, and asking if it would be convenient for me to call sometime. No one answered when I banged the knocker; I’d decided to mail the note from the hotel when suddenly I heard someone on the other side of the wall. The gate was thrown open and there was this fellow standing there. He looked like a thug. Everything about him was thick and rough, and I guessed this probably included his brain—he had a really stupid look about him, menacing, too, and I backed away several steps. When I spoke the countess’s name, he only went on glowering, so I held out my letter. He took it, blinked at it, and then shut the gate in my face. I got in my car and started back down the road.
“Around the first turn there was another house, which I stopped to investigate—hardly more than a cottage, with the windows boarded up, but with a magnificent view. I went around to the back, which faced the sea, and to my right, up across a gully some six hundred yards away, I could see one side of the villa, with a terrace behind, built out onto the hillside. There was a low stone balustrade bordering the terrace, with some statues on pedestals and decorative urns at the corners, and red flowers in boxes. Part of the terrace, likewise facing the sea, was protected from the sun by a striped canopy swooping out from one blistered wall, and under the canopy sat a figure in a wheelchair. Ah ha, I thought, the countess in the flesh; I could make out her knot of white hair and a knob-headed cane, and I recalled the magazine photographs of her leaning on a cane after her accident at the Camargue ranch. Now she used it to shake it at the servant, who came out and handed her my note. She snatched it from him and he went inside again. She held the envelope in front of her, inspecting but not opening it, then rang a little bell at her elbow. It wasn’t the servant who replied to her summons, but another woman.
The countess handed her the envelope, from which she extracted my note and read it to her. The countess’s hand came up, she snatched the paper, crumpled it, and tossed it up so the breeze carried it over the balustrade. Ah ha, I thought, so much for my interview with Countess Sobryanski. The second woman pulled up a chair and sat close to her, reading aloud from a book, and I could hear music from inside the house. Next there was a loud crash, and what sounded like an angry shout, then a third woman came through the French doors onto the terrace. She was like a character in a play, her entrance was so floridly theatrical, with volatile, dramatic gestures, and I saw at once that it was Fedora herself.
“It was totally unexpected, pure coincidence, yet somehow completely natural that my real quarry should also be in residence. No wonder the countess had tossed my note away. She’d thought I knew beforehand that Fedora was there and was trying to obtain entrée under false pretenses. Now Fedora came up to the second woman, who rose and relinquished the book, and Fedora took her chair and began reading to the countess. Was this how she was living out her years—reading to the old woman? Some time later Countess Sobryanski rang her bell, the manservant came to wheel her inside, and Fedora followed them, letting one hand trail negligently through the red flowers as she walked by the boxes.