Tommy was sad after she left, but not for long. Suddenly he surprised us with his abundant English vocabulary and by firmly refusing to speak German. He never mentioned the boy Unglücklich again.
I remained in close contact with Nena. She despised the Nazis and was unhappy that her son was in the Reichswehr. I was deeply moved by her lonely resistance to the Third Reich. She died during the war.
•
Garbo’s first talking film Anna Christie was an enormous success, and Metro decided to remake it with her in German. The studio imported German actors, and Jacques Feyder, although French, was chosen to direct. I was cast as Marty, a waterfront whore, admirably played by Marie Dressler in the American film. Being twenty-five years younger, I was not too eager for the part, but Feyder persuaded me that Marty could be of any age. Also he wanted me to help him with the German dialogue.
In the theater actors have a chance to improve their interpretation with each performance; the contact with the audience, the immediate response enables them to try out details and nuances. In the films, once a scene has been shot and approved, it is preserved for ever. It is true that one rehearsed it many times, but only in short pieces. An inspired moment is apt to be discarded, because perhaps the shadow of a microphone or a smudge of powder had been overlooked. Playing Anna Christie for the second time, Garbo had to conquer the difficulty of still another language. She worked hard, with precision, and her German was almost without accent. She was a most patient, appreciative and considerate colleague.
I was frightened when my first scene had to be shot. I hated my costumes, my make-up seemed all wrong and there was no time to change it. But Feyder made everything easy. He made me play a long scene just as I would have done it in the theater, without interruption and, although blinded by the lights, I forgot that three cameras were shooting it from different angles. The stagehands applauded after he said, “Cut.”
I played in two more films, both for Warner Brothers. The first one, The Flood, was directed by William Dieterle. For the second, Somerset Maugham’s The Sacred Flame, Berthold was borrowed from Paramount. However, I was neither beautiful nor young enough for a film career. If I had been sixty and an American, I could have played the so-called “earthy” character parts. Probably I would have had a chance in the theater in New York, but we were tied to Hollywood. It made me miserable that I, who had started to act at the age of seventeen, had to be idle in my best years.
It was during the shooting of Anna Christie that I came upon a biography of Queen Christina of Sweden, which had appeared in Germany. Long before that my interest in her had been aroused by Strindberg’s misogynistic play. The preposterous child of the heroic Gustav Adolph, she was eccentric, brilliant; and her masculine education and complicated sexuality made her an almost contemporary character. Also her escapism, her longing for a world outside puritanical Protestant Sweden, to which she was chained by her crown, fascinated me. Greta, who knew a lot about Christina, agreed with me that it would be a wonderful role for her and that such a film should be produced in Europe, preferably in Sweden. Her contract was expiring and Metro was moving heaven and earth to make her sign a new one. Other studios made fantastic offers. She was in a position to ask for the best director and the best actors. She had only to choose.
Contrary to all the gossip, I have never been Garbo’s “advisor” in her dealings with the film industry. I had no mind whatsoever for business and what I could grasp of it either horrified or bored me. This defect in my character, perhaps the fault of my upbringing, was most detrimental to my own career. Money was something I never valued excessively as long as it was there, and I tried to ignore it as gallantly as possible when it was gone. I had inherited from Mama a touch of “Oblomovism” when financial matters had to be faced.
Garbo urged me to write the film about Christina. After thorough research I began in German to dramatize the first part of Christina’s life. Berthold read it and said that it had great possibilities, and that I should have it translated into English.
Meanwhile Berthold’s contract with Fox had expired and he signed with Paramount. Ben Schulberg, the head of production, was indisputably an intelligent man and more understanding than Berthold’s previous bosses. Mrs. Schulberg was lively and hospitable. She surrounded herself with writers, dramatists and American liberals. The Schulberg children, Budd and Sonya, a few years older than Hans and Peter, were exceptionally intelligent and gifted.
I mentioned my problem to Ad Schulberg and she told me that her friend, Margaret Le Vino, spoke German and could do the job. She invited us together to discuss the project. Mrs. Le Vino was a distinguished-looking, middle-aged woman, very likeable, and she asked what the story was about. When she heard that it was about a seventeenth-century Swedish queen, she shook her head: “It’s a waste of time. Historical films are taboo in Hollywood.” Had I a special actress in mind? Before I could answer, Ad exclaimed: “Garbo of course! Salka is a friend of hers.” Immediately Mrs. Le Vino became interested and said that she would like to read my story, but several weeks went by and many things happened before we met again.
Berthold had finished two films for Paramount: one with Ruth Chatterton, in which Charles Boyer and Françoise Rosay played supporting roles; the second, with Clive Brook and Claudette Colbert, which was a success in England but failed to make any impression in the States.
For his third assignment he was to go to New York and remake a shopworn melodrama, The Cheat, with Tallulah Bankhead. As he felt that he had to escape “the Hollywood spell” for a while, he accepted it.
From the Chief carrying him east he wrote:
I have lost confidence in Schulberg and no matter how things turn out, they will be better than if they had continued in the old way. This time I shall not run with open eyes into a lousy assignment. (He had not read the script of The Cheat yet!) . . . As we still have another year in America I am making strategic plans for our future, OURS not only mine . . . I am sending this letter and a telegram from Emporia. Dear heart, do you remember Emporia from our first trip west, three and a half years ago? I am looking at the big stone with the name on it, that ridiculous symbolic name . . . Well, Emporia once more, though in the opposite direction.
For three years we had been uninterruptedly together. If it had not been for Berthold’s professional dissatisfaction, they would have been very happy years. I could not go to New York because I could not leave the children. Tommy had started first grade and he and his brothers had to be driven to their respective schools. Hans and Peter’s junior high was quite a distance from the Canyon.
I engaged a young student teacher and good driver to help me with my chores and look after Thomas. The three boys fell in love with Larry and competed with each other in chivalry. They fought for who would be first to push the chair under her when she sat down at table and to pull it back when she got up. She was pretty, gay, unpretentious and they found her a sensational improvement on Nena. The unfaithful Tommy was making rapid progress in expressing himself. I found my sons’ “spring awakening” normal and reassuring, but what disturbed me more than the American custom of sitting with one’s feet on the table, was the growing contempt for intellectuals.
One evening Peter insisted that I give him written permission to join the football team of his school, though he was only eleven. I had just read in the paper that a boy had been killed in the rough game, and refused. He pleaded and argued but, for once, I remained adamant. Suddenly, with clenched fists and flashing eyes, he shouted at me: “You . . . you foreigner!” I was deeply shocked. Next time he would call me “you Polack!” Back to Europe, I thought, immediately.
At the end of 1931 the Depression was felt and the beginning of 1932 was sad for us. Again we were separated. Berthold’s mother died while he was in New York. Then came the Eisenstein crisis in Mexico and his cries for help.
Berthold’s prediction that twenty-five thousand would not be enough for a film had come true. The year had passed quickly a
nd the money was about gone. First the rainy season, which lasted three months, had detained Eisenstein’s shooting; then the search for locations and his becoming ill caused further delays. Eisenstein asked me to persuade his Pasadena sponsors to invest more money in the film. Through Upton I succeeded in the difficult task and the millionairesses agreed to increase the financing. But Mrs. Sinclair insisted that the “irrational artist” be put under the strict control of her brother, Mr. Kimbrough. There were telephone calls and letters, and finally Eisenstein agreed, appointing me to be his representative when the rushes were shown in Los Angeles. As he had no facilities in Mexico for developing the film, the negative was sent to the Eastman Laboratory in Los Angeles. The Mexican Consul had to see the rushes to be sure that nothing detrimental to Mexico had been filmed. My job was to explain to the Pasadena ladies why Eisenstein had photographed this or that from different angles (for example the bare breasts of a dark Mexican girl, or two parrots sitting on twin coconuts).
The filmed material was stunning and is still shown and admired in film museums all over the world. The Christian-pagan rites and processions, the peons and Indians, the desert and the forests were breathtakingly beautiful. To photograph all that and not be able to see one foot of the film must have been torture. But the sponsors were indignant that a scene or a place, a coconut palm or a parrot, was shot so many times. “A waste of film!” they would exclaim.
It was useless to explain that, even unedited, the film revealed Eisenstein’s intentions and also the passion and concentration with which he worked. Then suddenly I was no longer told when the rushes were to be shown, and a letter from Eisenstein informed me of what had happened:
Mexico, January 27, 1932
Dear Zalka! [He always wrote my name with a Z],
It seems to be your fate that I should be heaping my despair upon you! In my Paramount days and after—but this time is the most desperate of all! I don’t know how much Sinclair keeps you au courant about our activities and difficulties. If he does I may be as doomed in your eyes as I am in his. However, this is the situation:
You know that instead of the four months schedule and $25,000, which would have merely resulted in a pitiful travelogue we have worked thirteen months and have spent $53,000, but we have a great film and have expanded the original idea. This expansion was achieved under incredible difficulties inflicted upon us by the behavior and bad management of Upton Sinclair’s brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough. I am blamed for all sin committed and I accept it, under the condition that from now on I myself should be responsible, but not Mr. Kimbrough. Or we three: I, Alexandrov and Tisse, should manage the whole thing until its completion. But I am facing a situation which, so far, had been completely unknown to me: blood relationship and family ties. Mr. Kimbrough was recalled, but then sent back with “increased powers” as my supervisor, which means that now he has the right to interfere in everything I do and make all the cuts! He presented me to Sinclair as a liar, blackmailer and God-knows-what else. My direct correspondence with Sinclair stopped, our only contact was through Kimbrough who, an ambitious man, poisons our existence and creates an atmosphere in which it is impossible to work. I wrote this to Sinclair, whereupon he abruptly halted our work of thirteen months. The last part of my film, containing all the elements of a fifth act, is ruthlessly ripped out, and you know what this means. It’s as if Ophelia were ripped out from Hamlet, or King Philip from Don Carlos.
We saved this episode, the best material, story and effects, which have not been exploited before, as a climax and the last to be filmed. It tells the story of the Soldadera, the women who, in hundreds, followed the Revolutionary army, taking care of their men, bearing them children, fighting at their side, burying them and taking care of the survivors. The incomparable drama and pathos of this sequence shows the birth of the new country. Exploited and suppressed by the Spaniards, it emerges as a free Mexico. Without this sequence the film loses its meaning, unity and its final dramatic impact: it becomes a display of unintegrated episodes. Each of these episodes now points toward this end and this resolution.
Now to our practical achievements: We have 500 soldiers, which the Mexican Army has given us for 30 days, 10,000 guns and 50 cannons, all for nothing. We have discovered an incredible location and have brilliantly solved the whole event in our scenario. We need only $7,000 or $8,000 to finish it, which we could do in a month, and then we would have a truly marvelous film—and when I say it I mean it—a film with such mass scenes as no studio could attempt to produce now! Imagine! 500 women in an endless cactus desert, dragging through clouds of dust, household goods, beds, their children, their wounded, their dead, and the white-clad peasant soldiers in straw hats following them. We show their march into Mexico City—the Spanish Cathedral—the palaces! For the meeting of Villa and Zapata we will have thousands of sports organizations—again without pay—with the cathedral bells ringing the victory of the first revolution. And all that has to be sacrificed because of $8,000, and quarrels—by the way, I am absolutely right and have documents to prove it—Sinclair stopped the production and intends to throw before the people a truncated stump with the heart ripped out!
I have exhausted my powers of persuasion. I shall do everything he wants. . . . I accept Kimbrough, everything, anything . . . if only they let me finish this film. I have worked under most incredible harassment, no, not worked—fought. When I see you in Hollywood I will tell you what we had to go through and what probably is still ahead of us.
I myself am incapable of persuading these people. Zalka, you have already helped in this cause. We, all three of us, are convinced that this is our best film and that it must not be destroyed. I beg you, Zalka, go to Sinclair. As you were authorized to see all the rushes, he will certainly use the occasion to pour out to you everything which caused the present situation; or better, you could ask him and I am sure influence him . . . A film is not a sausage which tastes the same if you eat three-quarters of it or the whole Wurst. You will hear horrible things about me (first, they are not true, and second, I know you don’t care and I beg you to think only about the film). The situation is different now. I have an ironclad plan. I know the locations precisely; General Calles has promised us all the facilities: those are concrete things! And we are now familiar with conditions here and know exactly how to handle the production. Use your Medea flame and convince him (but especially her) to let us finish our film.
We were due to leave but Kimbrough postponed our departure for ten days, to clean up odds and ends of what we have shot. Our only hope is that meanwhile a miracle will happen and that the Soldadera episode will be filmed. Help us, Zalka! No, not us, help our work, save it from mutilation! If they have no money, ask for their consent to let us get it elsewhere. It seems incredible that this amount could not be raised as business. Even here the money could be found, not from philanthropists, but from businessmen, but the Sinclairs are so frightened of businessmen that they prefer to destroy all that they now have.
Wire immediately that you have received this letter and that you take our cause to your heart, regardless of what they tell you about me. One does not write such letters often.
Your,
Sergei
I phoned Upton Sinclair and asked if I could come to Pasadena and talk to him. After a brief consultation with his wife, he said that he and Mrs. Sinclair had a luncheon date in Hollywood and they would come to my house afterward. When they arrived Upton was, as usual, warm and friendly, but, I could feel, uneasy. Mrs. Sinclair, at first gay and charming, launched soon into a ferocious attack on Eisenstein. I was prepared for it and did not interrupt her, until she said that in Hollywood the Russians had been squandering money like mad, giving “wild parties” for Paramount executives. She knew for sure that the cost of one of them was four thousand dollars. (I was curious how she had arrived at that sum.) She said further that Eisenstein was immoral and a megalomaniac. I asked if she seriously believed these fantastic stories. Berthold and I had be
en at the party Eisenstein and his “collective” had given for the Schulbergs, at which Mrs. Montagu had been the hostess. It had been a simple, utterly “uncapitalistic” dinner, and like Upton, Eisenstein was a teetotaler. Mrs. Sinclair smiled at my guilelessness. But my greatest mistake was in saying that I could not understand what Eisenstein’s private life, and the way he entertained, had to do with his art and talent.
“Of course not!” said Mrs. Sinclair. “But why should fine, trusting people spend their good money to support irresponsibility?”
I suggested that perhaps it would be advisable that less “fine and trusting people” should take over the financing of the film. I added that I knew a producer who would buy the existing film material and pay off the Pasadena group. Upton seemed inclined to give in; I sensed that he did not quite approve of his wife’s severity toward Eisenstein.
They left and I waited impatiently until I heard Oliver Garrett’s tateè-tatà, then went over to ask his advice. He was very amused by my description of the Sinclair visit, but blamed Eisenstein for the debacle. I had had enough for one afternoon of defending and explaining Eisenstein, and I only wanted Oliver’s suggestion—whom to approach for the shabby eight thousand dollars Sergei needed. Oliver wanted me to tell him what I really thought of the rushes. “They are extraordinary, marvelous, fantastic, the most beautiful and incredible film I have ever seen. . . .”
He did not trust superlatives: “ ‘Good’ is enough for me.”
I would not let him bully me and said: “They are marvelous.”
Taking his highball with him, he went to call David Selznick.
David O. Selznick was then the production head at RKO. He was young, and it was said in Hollywood that he was brilliant and heading for a great career. Oliver, who did not like producers, told me that Selznick was the only man in the industry he did not mind working for. The telephone conversation was quite long; then Oliver returned saying that Selznick wanted to see me at his office.
The Kindness of Strangers Page 22