“What do you mean by complete control?” asked Thalberg, incredulously.
“I mean that I would have to work with the actors,” answered Schoenberg. “They would have to speak in the same pitch and key as I compose it in. It would be similar to ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ but, of course, less difficult.” He turned to me and asked if I remembered some verses of the Pierrot and would I speak them. I remembered very well: “Der Mond, den man mit Augen trinkt. . . .” (“Augen” high and long.) I reproduced it quite faithfully, watching Thalberg’s face. He must have been visualizing Luise Rainer and Paul Muni singing their lines in a similar key. But he did not move a muscle of his face. “Well, Mr. Schoenberg,” he said, “the director and I have different ideas and they may contradict yours. You see, the director wants to handle the actors himself.”
“He could do that after they have studied their lines with me,” offered Schoenberg magnanimously.
I thought that this would put an end to the conference, but Thalberg was fascinated by Schoenberg and asked him to read the screenplay of Good Earth. If he found some additional scenes, which he thought needed special music, he would like to hear his suggestions. Schoenberg took the script and he and his wife left.
After a pause Thalberg said: “This is a remarkable man. And once he learns about film scoring and starts working in the studio he’ll realize that this is not like writing an opera.”
“You are mistaken, Irving,” I said. “He’ll invent a revolutionary kind of scoring.”
“He’ll write the music on my terms, you’ll see.”
Next morning Trude Schoenberg telephoned me that the price of prostitution had doubled. For his complete control of the film, including the dialogue, Schoenberg was asking fifty thousand, otherwise it was not worth his time and effort. When I related this to Thalberg he shrugged and said that meanwhile the Chinese technical advisor had brought some folk songs which had inspired the head of the sound department to write some very lovely music.
Discussing the incident a few days later Schoenberg said to me: “Komponiern heisst einen Blick in die Zukunft des Themas werfen.” (“To compose means to look into the future of the theme.”) I was very moved by these words.
The endless waiting for conferences, the lack of interest of my collaborators, who would not work as long as Irving was engrossed in something else, was undermining my morale. Wolfgang Reinhardt, sensitive and unassertive, had landed in Hollywood and got a job as Thalberg’s assistant. He also was sitting around waiting. We spent many miserable hours talking about the hopelessness of the world and life in general.
“How could all this happen,” I wrote to Berthold. “Why did we let it come to this senseless separation? Why can’t we recapture our former life? I cannot bear any longer explaining to people why Napoleon did not marry Marie Walewska. Gottfried says that I am dramatizing myself. I know I have to pull myself together.”
30
MY BROTHER-IN-LAW HAD a three year contract with the Berlin Opera House, but our meeting in Switzerland put an end to the forbearance of the Berlin authorities and he was peremptorily dismissed. Luckily he was immediately offered a contract with the Burgtheater in Vienna, which for the time being gave him and Rose a respite from Hitlerism. It was a great relief for me to know that they were out of hell and we could write to each other openly. Also to my great joy Edward gave in to my persuasions to emigrate with his daughter to the States.
They arrived in June 1936. Our neighbor across the street had a room with a piano, which I rented so that he could compose and practice undisturbed. I had rebuilt the garage, adding a room and bath for Peter, who longed to have separate quarters.
It was nice to have a girl in the family. Margret and Thomas were a few weeks apart in age and although he had forgotten his German and she had only a smattering of English, they established a friendly contact much more quickly than expected. She was a gifted child, quite extraordinary, musical and sensitive, but high-strung and used to being the center of attention. Edward adored her blindly. I was worried that it would be difficult for Margret to adjust to a predominately male family but she easily accepted with restrained graciousness the role of an only daughter. After a long, hard season, Edward was glad to rest for a few weeks. He had played two concerts in London and had seen Berthold, who was editing his film Cecil Rhodes. This and the perennial negotiations with Korda were delaying his homecoming.
Happy about Edward’s arrival, Schoenberg was making plans for recitals, and Otto Klemperer invited him to play Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto in the Hollywood Bowl. He introduced him to Mrs. Irish, chairman of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Society, and she asked Edward and me to lunch. I was surprised at how well Edward spoke English. The first thing Mrs. Irish said was that they needed publicity photographs and she suggested that he pose in a white apron and chef’s cap, cooking spaghetti. “But I am not opening a restaurant,” Edward defended himself.
“Musicians like to cook,” declared Mrs. Irish. “The public identifies them. . . .”
“. . . . with spaghetti!?” he interrupted, amazed.
But even without the spaghetti photo, his appearance in the Bowl was a success, and Klemperer engaged him to play another concert with the Philharmonic during the winter season. However, there were not many people interested in modern music in Los Angeles, nor advanced pupils to teach. His friends were in New York or still in Europe; there were not many people he liked to see, with the exception of the Polish musician Bronislaw Kaper, and Gottfried and Wolfgang Reinhardt. The latter were good chess players and so was Edward, who, as my mother used to say, had inherited this talent from our brilliant great-grandfather. Gradually Edward prepared to move to New York. Hollywood was a movie town and neither San Francisco nor Los Angeles showed any promise for him. For the children Santa Monica was Paradise. I knew this from my sons and now I saw it in Margret’s ready acceptance of the great freedom and easy comradeship.
While I was explaining to “the best MGM minds” the partition of Poland and what Napoleon was doing in Warsaw in the year 1807, George Cukor was directing Garbo in Camille. Not often have I seen her as happy, glowing and inspired. I had told her what a profound impression Sarah Bernhardt had made upon me when I was a young girl and she could not hear enough about it.
Finally Thalberg, who still believed in Marie Walewska, called Sam Behrman to write the screenplay with me, and my hopes and spirits soared high, not only for the film but also for my own morale.
Sam arrived, as dear and whimsical as ever, and in spite of the Spanish Civil War, which broke out in July, Hitler’s threats, and the appeasement policy of England and France, we finished in a reasonably short time a very good screenplay.
•
The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League had been founded by Prince Hubert von und zu Loewenstein, a progressive Catholic; a Mr. Breda who turned out to be no other than the Otto Katz whom we had known in Berlin as a communist; Rupert Hughes, a Republican; Eddie Cantor, one of the most popular stars; several studio executives, and, as I mentioned before, Donald Ogden Stewart, who was also the chairman. Breda traveled back and forth and appeared only sporadically. The members paid their dues and very little was going on, until one day Ernst Lubitsch told me that he was withdrawing from the Anti-Nazi League because it was dominated by communists. He advised me to do the same. I begged him to reconsider. After all, the Prince was certainly not a socialist, Breda was back in Germany risking his life and the Popular Front was the only way to fight Fascism.
“I know it from a reliable source that the Reds are controlling the Anti-Nazi League,” insisted Lubitsch, and he mentioned a few names which made me laugh.
“But Ernst,” I said, “what all these people do is sit around their swimming pools, drinking highballs and talking about movies, while the wives complain about their Filipino butlers.”
“I am only warning you,” he said. “I am getting out.”
“And I am staying.”
The difference in our beliefs
never influenced our friendship.
The Popular Front extended into my family: Berthold had his own personal kind of socialism, Peter was a New Dealer, I was a “premature anti-Fascist,” Thomas a Democrat and Hans a Trotskyite. The latter was in love with an attractive girl from a Mormon family, a few years older than he. She had embraced Trotskyism as her religion, clinging to it with the same fanaticism as her ancestors had clung to the Bible. Hans, who had been reading Lenin and Das Kapital instead of doing his homework, surprised me by graduating from high school and entered an extension course at the University of California in Berkeley. So far he seemed to be doing quite well, in spite of the news of the Moscow trials, with their inexplicable confessions and horrifying executions, and the growing Stalin terror. These were the days of meetings, and wherever one went one could be sure that a small group of girls and young men in blue jeans would be standing outside a hall or a theater, distributing leaflets which denounced Stalin and the tactics of the Communist Party. Often they were insulted and beaten up.
More than a year after my trip to Europe Berthold returned to Santa Monica. The boys were happy to have him back, especially Thomas. The big ones, though they loved him dearly, had their girls and their own problems and were not always available when, in the few short months of his stay, he wanted to transform them into Europeans. He was tense and unhappy because he missed C. and had not secured another film assignment, but he wrote wonderful poetry and, all in all, seemed in a much more conciliatory mood than on his previous visits. As always he enjoyed the beach, the conversations with Edward, visits with Bruno and Liesl Frank and Fred Zinnemann, who meanwhile had married a tall, blond and handsome English girl named Renée.
In September Hans went to study in Berkeley, and on the first free weekend, Peter and I decided to drive “up north” to find out how he was doing. I enormously enjoyed this excursion and the Sunday with my “big” sons. On the way home the car broke down and we had to stop overnight. Next morning as we were having coffee in a drugstore, we saw the newspaper with the headline: IRVING THALBERG DIES AT 37.
Only a few days before, Sam and I had finished our screenplay and we had talked to him. He was in a good mood, very pleased with the rushes of Camille. In the last months Greta and I had often mentioned how much happier he seemed. After my first clash with him about Queen Christina we had got along well and he had been always very cordial toward me. I felt terribly sad. His children were so small that they would not remember him.
•
It seemed likely that one of Thalberg’s close associates would take over the production of Marie Walewska, and the heads of MGM wanted Garbo to express her preference. She did not know the new producers and left the decision to L. B. Mayer and Mannix, who in turn did not see eye to eye in the matter. Finally, as I remember, Mannix suggested Bernie Hyman.
Gottfried Reinhardt had been Hyman’s assistant and had often told me that there was no nicer and more decent person on the MGM lot than Bernie, a close friend of Thalberg. Greta and I had lunch with him and she found him pleasant and sympathetic, but the question whether he was the right producer for our film remained unanswered. Again Clarence Brown, a veteran of Garbo films, had been assigned to direct her. Neither he nor Hyman had read the screenplay. Sam Behrman was on the verge of leaving, and told me, when I implored him to wait another week, that I had still not learned my Hollywood lesson—and if the studio wanted him they knew his New York telephone number. Still, he promised me to stay two more days. When I called him in the evening the hotel clerk said that Mr. Behrman had checked out.
Sam had been right: I had not learned my Hollywood lesson. Hyman was an important producer, who only approved screenplays he himself had supervised, and he disliked ours heartily. His great success had been San Francisco, in which the earthquake was a magnificent achievement of the “special effects” department. He was very sentimental, extremely kind and rather endearing; if it had not been for that, I could not have survived his indecision and endless procrastination. To some extent, because Hyman listened to him, Gottfried was helpful in preventing a disaster.
After several weeks of complete idleness, which could have been excused as mourning for Thalberg and reorganization in the studio but which were merely an inexcusable waste of time, Bernie told me that although he liked the story he did not like my and Behrman’s script and wanted it completely rewritten. “Without me!” I exclaimed, but he did not want to hear of it. My resignation would be most disloyal to the film and to Garbo. After all, it had been my idea.
“What do you think of Sam Hoffenstein?” he asked.
“Very highly. I love his poetry.”
“He is reading your and Behrman’s script.”
A few hours later Hoffenstein burst in to my office waving the blue-bound script and shouting: “This is the best screenplay I’ve ever read. It’s brilliant—I could not put it down! Congratulations! Where is Behrman? I must send him a telegram.”
Gottfried heard his shouting and came in. Hoffenstein repeated what he had said to me, adding more flattering adjectives and suggesting that we all go to Hyman. We had to tell him that not a word of the screenplay should be changed. I said that as I was involved it would be much better if he and Gottfried went alone. Ten minutes later Goldie, Hyman’s blond secretary, called and said I should come to his office.
Bernie was sitting behind his desk, two girls in white uniforms attending to him, one to give him a manicure, the other a scalp treatment. He looked gloomy: “Sam says he likes the script as it is.” Not reacting to Bernie’s statement, I asked the girl who was rubbing his scalp if she could grow hair on bald spots. “Positively, yes,” she said. Bernie, now more cheerful, launched into a long explanation. He had not said “Positively no.” He admitted that there were some good scenes and lines in the script, but it had “no heart.” It was sophisticated and cold. It did not make you cry. When “that man” was all alone on St. Helena—he meant Elba—waiting for “his Empress,” and Marie arrived instead of her, “this should bring tears into everyone’s eyes.” I said that what we wanted to show was Napoleon’s growing megalomania, his ruthless use of the Polish Legions without any intention of restituting their country, and Marie’s disillusionment with the man she worshiped, her realization that he was an egotistical monster but whom she could not cease loving.
“If you want to feel sorry for Napoleon then let Garbo play him,” suggested Hoffenstein. But Bernie said sternly: “I want this film to be the best Garbo ever made,” and went off to lunch in the executive dining room.
Hoffenstein, Gottfried and I left the studio and drove to the “Little Gipsy,” a Hungarian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. After two martinis we felt much better and were more inclined to listen to Gottfried’s analysis of Bernie’s psyche. There was no use resisting: the script would be rewritten even if William Shakespeare had been its author. It was imperative for Bernie’s ego to start from scratch, because that way he could get used to the story and the characters, and this always took a great length of time. “For you Sam and Salka,” he went on, “it will be leisurely work, pleasant, because you like each other and Bernie is a nice man. I am sure that you can save many scenes from the Behrman script, as in the course of time Bernie will become convinced that everything has been invented under his guidance. This may seem cynical to you and a waste of money, but that’s not your responsibility. The more Bernie spends, the closer he is to becoming an executive. On the other hand, if you refuse the assignment, somebody else, much less scrupulous, will tear down Behrman’s and Salka’s script, and suggest another story, which Garbo will reject, and we’ll have to start all over again!”
“Gottfried is right,” said Hoffenstein and called for the wine list.
•
The Falange had split Spain in half. With the exception of a few calcified reactionaries, Hollywood was passionately on the side of the Loyalists and contributed thousands and thousands of dollars for ambulances, food, medicines and clothes. Ernest Hemin
gway, Vincent Sheehan, André Malraux and Ludwig Renn came to speak for Spain and crowds gathered in huge auditoriums to cheer them.
Before Malraux addressed a mass meeting in the Shrine Auditorium he was to speak at a few private gatherings. I gave a party for him, asking about fifty people, but twice as many came, anxious to meet him. He was tall, thin, his sensitive handsome face sometimes distorted by a nervous tic. He had as his interpreter Haakon Chevalier, a professor of Romance languages at the University of Stanford, who had translated Malraux’s novels into English. (Several years later Chevalier had to pay dearly for his friendship with J. R. Oppenheimer of atom-bomb fame.) Berthold, home from his Gaumont-British work, introduced both men. Standing in front of the fireplace, Malraux urgently and passionately asked for help for the heroic struggle of the Loyalists and told about the great support Franco was getting from Hitler and Mussolini. His speech made such an impression that my guests contributed around five thousand dollars.
Next night, in the Shrine Auditorium which was packed to the last standing place, Malraux and Chevalier by their French-English duet carried away an audience of stars, producers, writers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, shop clerks, workers from the studios, the Douglas and Lockheed factories, and practically every German refugee in Los Angeles. Donald Ogden Stewart made a brilliant collection speech, which brought in a large amount of money. At the end Malraux thanked the cheering crowd, raising his fist in the communist salute. I turned around to see the effect and to my amazement saw ladies in mink rising and clenching their bejeweled hands.
The Kindness of Strangers Page 29