“First thing he said was, ‘Are you terribly angry with me?’ I told him, ‘Yes. You’re making a mistake. I’ll ruin your movie, I’ll be awful.’ Mother grabbed my shoulder and shook it and I had to pull away so she wouldn’t be close enough to hear him. He said I should be sensible and realize it would be much easier for a successful actress in Hollywood to get rid of her mother than for an unmarried girl in Milwaukee. I told him—I had to be careful, because if I said much more Mother would have apoplexy—I told him if it didn’t work out that way, things would be worse than ever. He said, ‘I don’t want some actress who already thinks she knows everything arguing with me. I want someone who will trust me to tell her how it should be.’ And he asked me if I trusted him. I didn’t, I thought he was crazy. But I told him I did.
“The contract wasn’t much by the standards of a real leading lady, a few hundred a week. But it was a world of money to us. We moved into a little bungalow and we had the studio car instead of having to take the streetcar all the time. I went out and bought some new clothes and Mother did too, and we thought we were living it up.” She looked at the clock, a big brass thing under a dome on the mantel. “It’s past 10:30. Time for my cigarette. I know you smoke too, would you like one of mine?” She reached for a lacquered box on the table.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I have two in the evening.” It was the most disciplined thing Ceinwen had ever heard. Miriam took the top off the box, took one and handed the box over. The cigarettes were filters with a gold band around the middle.
“Never seen these before.”
“They’re St. Moritz.” Ceinwen’s hand stopped. “What’s so funny?”
She took one and snapped the lid back on the rest. “Nothing. I’m happy to set St. Moritz on fire at the moment.” Miriam got up and pulled a large silver table lighter off the server, along with a big silver ashtray, lit Ceinwen’s cigarette and then her own.
“Did he treat you well on set?”
“Very well. It didn’t take long to see that wasn’t the case with others. He wasn’t a shouter, he told me once he’d had enough shouting in the army. But if he didn’t like what was happening he’d walk over to whoever was offending him and quietly tell them what he thought. And he was vicious. I’ve never known anyone who could be so cutting in so few words. About a week into the shoot he said something to the DP, I didn’t hear what. But the man went white and walked off and didn’t come back. We shut down for a couple of days while they found someone else.
“But with me he was always reassuring. He set aside a car for Mother during the day and she would go out to lunch and brag to people that I was going to be a star. He knew how to get on my good side. I was the teacher’s pet, and all I wanted was to make him happy. But it wasn’t a happy set. Push, push, push. We were filming late almost every day, and no one dared complain to his face, although they did plenty behind his back.
“We were about a week into shooting and it was very late in the day, and we were doing a simple scene where I entered a room and collapsed into a chair. I did it once and Emil told me it didn’t look right. Still no good the second time. He demonstrated and I tried not to laugh and I could tell he was annoyed. The third time I did it he yelled ‘cut’ and he shouted, ‘Is that how women sit in Milwaukee? Ass first like a dog?’
“He’d never raised his voice on set before, and it was me he did it to. I yelled right back at him, ‘If that’s how they talk to women in Berlin, you can take your movie and go straight to hell.’ I ran to my dressing room and locked the door so I could cry. I threw all my costumes off the rack. But I wasn’t very good at tantrums. Costumes cost money, and I didn’t think to rip them up.
“People started knocking. The assistant director, the art director, the hairdresser, he was sending anyone I had ever seemed to like. I kept the door locked and I told them all to go away. Finally Emil knocked. Him I told—well, I don’t think he had realized I knew that phrase. I took off my makeup and put on my street clothes and sat down to wait until it sounded as though they’d all left for the night. When the set got quiet I walked out and he was by himself, sitting on one of the prop sofas. He asked if I was calm enough to talk.
“He told me he was sorry. It was the only time I ever heard him apologize to anybody for anything. Emil said he had to be the way he was, because Gregory was the biggest skinflint in Hollywood. He didn’t want to be von Stroheim, spending too much money and taking too much time, and winding up with his movie taken away from him and no work. He was going to do it his way, but on time and on budget, and if that meant he had to browbeat everyone that was how it would be. I told him I understood, and he kissed me.”
“Did you, ah …”
For the first time, Miriam looked as though she were enjoying herself. “Did we what?”
“Did you go to bed with him?” Ceinwen winced at herself.
“Not that night. The set was cold and back in my dressing room the costumes were still all over everywhere. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to mess them up. No, he took me home. The next evening I told Mother I had to go to his house to rehearse. She didn’t make the slightest objection. That was when we went to bed. You should ash that.” Miriam held out the ashtray and Ceinwen flicked her cigarette. “I’ve shocked you.”
“No, why should I be shocked. You were in love.”
“Because it is shocking, you know. It was wicked of him. Not much better than Chaplin. I was nineteen and he was thirty-eight. I teased him about that later, him being exactly twice my age. He said he could have waited for my next birthday, to make the difference less embarrassing, but he didn’t like waiting for anything. I asked if he wanted to give me more life experience so I’d be a better actress, and he said it was exactly the wrong thing to do. Madeleine was a virgin, that was the whole point to her, and he’d fixed that for me forever, hadn’t he.”
Miriam wasn’t much easier to rattle than Matthew. She might as well ask. “You think that’s why he cast you? To sleep with you?”
“I thought about that, even at the time. Of course he said that wasn’t it, what else would he say. But I’m sure he thought about it as soon as I walked in the office. Probably even from the photos. That’s how it works with a man, just a few minutes.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all,” protested Ceinwen.
“You really are a romantic, aren’t you.” Miriam put out her cigarette. “That’s the real reason you wanted to hear all this. If I’d had an affair with a train conductor you’d be just as fascinated.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I love movies.”
“But if the story is as good as a movie …”
“Maybe.” She thought back. “Did you ever see Closely Watched Trains?”
Miriam let out a hoot. “No! A romantic movie about train conductors! You know one!”
“He isn’t a conductor, he’s a station employee. The girl’s a conductor.”
“I think,” said Miriam, “I can tell why you didn’t want to stay in Mississippi. Well, New York usually knocks some sense into romantics. And you’ll be better off.”
“But I really do think a man can fall in love gradually.”
“That’s what I mean, dear. I’m talking about sex, you’re talking about love. I don’t mean they’ll instantly try it with any woman who makes them think ‘yes,’ I mean they don’t sit around for months, then decide, ‘next week, if I’ve nothing better to do.’ Anyway, I’m sure now that wasn’t why he cast me. The movie was too important for him to be that self-indulgent. He wanted the actors to look a certain way; to him they were like figures in a painting. You can imagine how they loved him for that too.” She rolled her eyes. “I had the look he wanted. And it was just as he said, he wanted someone who would do as she was told. At Ufa his first movie was with an actress …” Miriam trailed off. “What was her name. I used to know it. Something like Lina.” She shrugged at Ceinwen. “Name’s gone. No matter. I’m sure Lina or Nina or whoever is
gone too. She wasn’t a big star but she’d made a lot of movies and because he was a newcomer, she felt free to argue every part of every scene. Which he would have found irritating from anyone. Coming from a young woman it was intolerable. He wasn’t going to do that again.”
“You don’t exactly seem like a pushover.”
“Don’t I? Didn’t I just tell you I went to bed with him one night after he kissed me?”
“That’s what you do when you’re in love.”
“That must be good news to your boyfriends.”
“Miriam,” protested Ceinwen.
She smiled. “I had small ways and small moments, like the Chaplin audition, but mostly all Mother had to do was lie down and moan and it was off to another casting call. Emil was shrewd and he saw that. My backbone grew in later. Anyway, after that, for all intents and purposes, I moved in with him.”
“What?”
“I know. You would think, wouldn’t you, that with all Mother’s show of protecting me, she would have something to say about that. And you’d be wrong. I told her that I had to rehearse with him because the work we were doing on my acting was important. And that we were working late, and naturally I stayed over sometimes. And she pretended to believe me. I would stay at our house one or two nights a week and the rest of the time I was with Emil. He was going to make me a star, and if that meant she had to hand me over to him in the bargain, she was willing to do it.
“Of course word got out on the set, and almost everyone started to despise me. I tried not to care, I was caught up with him. But it was dreadful. Edward Kenny, Valancourt, after takes he would tell me how nice it was to work with someone with a lot of life experience. The one who was playing Morano …” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Old age. Thought I’d never forget him and here I have. But I remember his mouth well enough. Swearing under his breath as soon as they quit rolling, to show me I wasn’t enough of a lady for him to watch his language. Although one day he forgot himself and did it on camera and Emil lit into him. Audiences could read lips and they’d know those words right away.
“Even the crew, they were supposed to be respectful, but the wardrobe woman would say things about my costumes. They were rumpled, what had I been doing in them? There was another man, a set dresser, very low on the totem pole but he was always around sticking his nose into everything, making a big phony show of being friendly, like he thought I’d confide in him or something. And we couldn’t do a thing about him because he was cousin to Frank Gregory’s wife. The only one who still treated me like a human being was Norman Stallings, the assistant director.
“I could have complained to Emil, but I didn’t want to set him off. As it was, I was afraid someone would drop a light on him, they hated him that much. There weren’t any unions and he would make everyone stay until he got it right. Half the time we would go home and he would have a few drinks and then we’d just fall asleep.
“It took almost two months, which was a long time in those days, but Emil finished it right on schedule and they started cutting it. And we finally started going to some parties, and I was still staying with him most nights, and it was as happy as we ever were together.
“Now it was the fall. 1928. You know what happened the year before, yes?”
Oh yes. “The Jazz Singer.”
“Terrible movie.”
“I didn’t like it either.”
“Jolson.” Miriam made a face. “The things I could tell you about him. Anyway, it wasn’t like Singin’ in the Rain, not everything changed at once. But anything with sound, all talking, half talking, sound effects, music, whatever, it was packing them in. They were still making silents, but it was different. People were, I don’t know, they looked at things in a different way. Once they’d seen talking pictures certain things didn’t play to them anymore. I don’t think Emil understood that. I know I didn’t.
“And they finished the movie and they arranged a preview out in, oh, some dreadful little inland town, very ugly. Emil took me and Mother, and I got dressed up even though I knew it wasn’t going to be a fashionable crowd. And Frank Gregory was there and a bunch of men from the studio, and we were all feeling very confident. And then the movie started.”
Miriam looked tired, and Ceinwen wondered if she should leave. But Miriam picked up the box of cigarettes again, offered one to Ceinwen and went on.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a theater where a movie was playing, and you thought it was good, and the rest of the audience …” She made a waving gesture.
“Sure.” She didn’t have to think hard. “I saw Imitation of Life in a theater once.”
“Claudette Colbert?”
“No, the other one, with Lana Turner. I love that movie, I’d seen it on TV and I wanted to see it on screen because it’s beautiful. But the audience kept laughing at it. The more tragic it got the more they laughed.” The 8th Street Playhouse. She still hated that place. Miriam said nothing. “That was what happened? You liked it and they didn’t?”
“Yes. After about ten minutes it was like I was watching a different movie from everyone else. It was slow and pensive, no real jokes or comic relief. There were dissolves and process shots, there were times when he was trying to make the characters’ thoughts visible. The novel has a lot of digressions that he’d cut out. He’d used it instead to make a movie about … well, about this naive young girl’s fear of sex, raw terror of men really. And I could feel people getting restless, and then there were some giggles, and then more. Mother kept trying to shush people until I shushed her.”
Miriam lit her own cigarette. “I don’t know. I loved him so, and it’s been so many years. I hadn’t seen any rushes, Emil thought they would make me self-conscious. Maybe it did have more problems than I thought. It seemed to me that on screen he’d made my inexperience look like Madeleine’s naiveté. I didn’t think I was bad. A couple of years later I saw a Murnau movie, called City Girl. I thought, yes, completely different story and setting, but that was Emil’s vocabulary.” She exhaled and watched the smoke vanish overhead. “From time to time I’ve wished I could see it again. Find out whether time passing made it look different to me, better or worse.”
“I’m sure it was a great movie,” said Ceinwen. She meant it as comfort, but Miriam shot her a look.
“That would be more romantic, wouldn’t it.”
“I didn’t meant that,” said Ceinwen, defending herself once again. “Don’t you trust your own taste?”
The same look, only longer. Finally, “If I had to put money on it, I’d bet on my judgment, not Frank Gregory’s. Yes. I will say that. We’d been sitting near Gregory and his people …” Miriam’s cigarette burned untouched. “I think … I think I won’t say more about that night, if you don’t mind.”
Ceinwen saw it was almost midnight. She was wearing Miriam out, and making her sad, and she felt ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to tell me anything else at all.”
“Oh well,” said Miriam, her voice regaining the old briskness, “you’ve come this far. You can’t leave at intermission. Not much more to tell anyway.” She stubbed out her cigarette and checked the pot. “No coffee left. I think we’d best avoid the brandy straight, don’t you? I’ll get some water.”
She came back with a tray set with a pitcher of water and two more glasses, and put it on the table. “I never drank brandy with Emil. He paid his bootlegger a fortune for the best stuff, but back then I still didn’t like it.” She sighed and poured the water for them both. “They asked for recuts, of course, and Emil did it because he didn’t want them doing it without him. He’d stay out late and then he’d come home and pass out, sometimes on the couch because he never made it back to the bedroom. They finally released it in November and the reviews …” Miriam drank some water. “James Quirk at Photoplay, he liked it. The way a movie was shot mattered to him, he didn’t see them as overdressed plays. But the rest, they just waved it off.” She dropped her voice to a pompous barit
one. “‘A rather tedious romance. It isn’t altogether without interest, and perhaps it will appeal to certain distaff segments, but for an intelligent audience …’” She set the glass down with a thump. “Meaning men, I suppose. That idiot at the New York Times, Mordaunt Hall. I wanted to kill him.” She gave her half-smile. “I walked around wanting to kill a lot of people. Starting with Frank Gregory. What a monster he was. They were all monsters, the studio heads, but Gregory, he was two-faced on top of it. So kind, so understanding, while he was poisoning your life. He told Emil they believed in the film and then he gave it this piddling release, here one minute, gone the next. Said they’d try to sell it in Europe, never did. Poor Emil, he’d worked so hard to keep the movie cheap. All that meant was the studio could swallow the loss more easily. My contract was for just a year, but Emil’s was for two. Gregory could have released Emil, while there was still a chance to get something else, but he was angry his prestige picture had flopped. Thought he’d been made a fool, and he held Emil to the terms out of spite. Kept saying oh, of course there’d be assignments. Then, nothing. Civitas went under in 1932, and the day I heard, I went out and bought a bottle of champagne.
“I knew I was through, and I didn’t care, I’d always thought it was a dirty business. But he wanted to work, so badly. And he didn’t want to make talkies. I don’t know if you know what that was like.”
“A bit. They had to put the camera in a box.”
“Yes, at first, with big things almost like carpet to mask the sound of the cameras. They hid microphones all over the set. The actors could barely move and the camera couldn’t move at all. Emil loved to move the camera, Mysteries had all these long, slow shifts. They developed some better talkie techniques pretty fast, but Civitas was too cheap to buy the best equipment, and Emil said if he’d wanted to direct plays he’d have joined a theater. But after six months he went to Gregory and said he’d reconsidered, he could do talkies. Gregory said that was great news, he had just bought a play that would suit Emil, and he came home and we celebrated. But then another month went by without a call from anyone, and Emil knew Gregory was still lying to him.
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