The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel

  Hemingway and Joris Ivens, producer and director of documentary films, were touring the States showing The Spanish Earth to compassionate, generous masses. Fifteen Hollywood stars gave a thousand dollars each for ambulances and medicine.

  •

  The rewriting of Marie Walewska became first a small, then a huge nightmare, but it cemented my friendship with Samuel Hoffenstein. Often I wondered how this Chassidic soul landed in Hollywood, but he made a lot of money. Hoffenstein’s two volumes of verse, one called In Praise of Practically Nothing, had had great success and become very popular. Today, I am afraid, not many people remember them. Expressing himself in exquisite English, slightly tinged with an Irish brogue, he would surprise one by bursting into a Yiddish song or Kol Nidre and other Hebrew prayers. When intoxicated, he would improvise for hours in verse which, unfortunately, he forgot next day.

  The filming of Walewska started before the script was finished, which gave our producer the chance to interfere and create dissent between the director and the writers. During the whole of Anna Karenina Clarence Brown could not have been nicer to work with. Although not the most sensitive judge of a script, he was inventive on the stage, an excellent technician and competent in handling the actors. Napoleon and Marie went much against his grain, and we had to fight on two fronts. The one was Bernie’s sentimentality and his addiction for ending each line of dialogue with a question: “You must be tired, aren’t you?” “We love each other, don’t we?” “It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” (I am improvising the lines, as the script is MGM property.) The second was Brown’s disgruntled obstructionism against the screenplay.

  The film, released as Conquest in America, was more than three months behind schedule, cost several million dollars and was an exhausting experience for everyone, especially for Garbo and Boyer, who patiently suffered to the very end (although at doubled salaries). Thanks to Gottfried, Hoffenstein and I had a small victory; several scenes of the Behrman script were incorporated in the final version. But we also suffered a major defeat: Bernie found that the last farewell between Marie and Napoleon, before he boarded the Bellerophon, was not heartbreaking enough and as Hoffenstein and I were incapable of providing the right kind of “uplifting lines” he had asked Charles MacArthur to write another ending for the retakes. Of course we hated it.

  In 1963 I saw Marie Walewska in London at a Garbo festival and I was surprised at how much better the film was than I remembered and how much the audience loved it.

  •

  Else Reinhardt, Gottfried’s mother, was about to engage a German housekeeper and asked me to come and assist at the interview. I promised to stop by on my way to the studio. When I arrived she met me in the hall and informed me in a stage whisper: “Nichts für mich!” The woman was a refugee and educated; it would be embarrassing to have her eat in the kitchen. However, I should take a look at her. Frau Hardt was a pleasant-looking woman with a trim figure and very straight posture, her short hair prematurely white. I could see by the ironical expression of her blue eyes that she had heard every word Else had “whispered.”

  I knew that Garbo was looking for someone reliable to keep house for her and to ward off intruders and reporters. Having talked for a while to Frau Hardt it occurred to me that she would be right for the job. I asked her if she knew how to drive. “Of course. I drove from Berlin to Barcelona, beating the Nazis who chased me to the Dutch border.” I invited her to come in the afternoon to my house and tell me more about herself.

  She told me that she had been an executive-secretary in a publishing house in Berlin which her friend Annie von Bucovitch had inherited from her Jewish father. In 1933 the Nazis dispossessed her but offered Etta the management of the business, which she refused. Then, at great risk, she concealed a few thousand dollars, said farewell to her fatherland, and drove with Annie to Spain. They settled in Tossa near Barcelona, where they opened a boutique until the Civil War forced them to leave.

  “We had,” concluded Etta, “just enough money to take a very slow boat through the Panama Canal. As we were nearing Los Angeles I said to Annie: ‘Let’s not worry. I can always get a job as a maid for a movie star: Greta Garbo perhaps.’ ”

  Just then Greta came in as if on cue and Etta stared at her as if she were an apparition. Later, having worked for Greta almost a year, Etta joined our household as my secretary, sharing the love of my Irish setters and untangling their silky coats, as well as my disturbing finances.

  Annie von Bucovitch, Etta’s friend and ex-employer, also faced the hardships of exile courageously. Raised in luxury and extravagance she worked, for very little money, in George Antheil’s art gallery—a vain cultural effort for Los Angeles—in an antique store, and at the Warner Brothers’ studio.

  There were other refugees who arrived under more pleasant circumstances. Bruno Frank, the distinguished German novelist, had signed a contract with Metro. In 1933 he and his wife Liesl had moved to London, where they became great friends with Berthold. Liesl, young and pretty, with slant green eyes, was the only daughter of Fritzi Massary, the famous star of German musical comedy. They were well off, Bruno handsomely paid by MGM. Liesl, compassionate and warm-hearted, tried to help the refugees. With admirable energy and persistence she and Charlotte Dieterle founded the European Film Fund. All Europeans who had jobs in the studio gave one percent of their weekly salaries to the Fund. American writers, among them Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, Alan Campbell, Samuel Hoffenstein, Sam N. Behrman, Donald Ogden Stewart, Herman and Joseph Mankiewicz, and others contributed. And after the war broke out they were also most generous in giving affidavits.

  •

  After Conquest was previewed Bernie told me to think about another story for Garbo.

  “Only keep away from historical topics,” warned Gottfried, “and convince Garbo to do a comedy for once.” He was thinking of a story the Hungarian dramatist Melchior Lengyel had shown him. Lengyel was the author of Czarina, which for years had been played everywhere, and I cannot remember how many versions of it were sold to the movies. Always smiling, Lengyel would come to the studio with ideas and stories which he told very amusingly, in an absurdly concocted Hungarian English. The one Gottfried and Bernie Hyman liked best was Ninotchka, and the studio bought it.

  Meanwhile I had read the biography of Marie Curie written by her daughter, Eve, and I thought that it would make a wonderful film for Garbo. When I told Bernie he looked aghast: “What makes you think Garbo will be interested in that?”

  “I am certain she will.” And as Greta was in Sweden I added: “Please let me send her a cable!”

  He shrugged. “She’s never heard of Marie Curie!”

  Next morning came Garbo’s answer: “Love to play Marie Curie. Could not think of anything better.”

  Since Queen Christina she had not expressed herself so positively and directly.

  “You are incorrigible,” sighed Gottfried, who was working on Ninotchka, and had persuaded Sam Behrman to write the screenplay.

  “We will have two scripts ready when Garbo comes back,” commented Bernie with reckless optimism.

  Gottfried was now a full-fledged producer, though still under Bernie’s executive thumb. Once more MGM had reorganized itself, nominating four Field Marshals, one of them Bernie, to command the lesser Generals of production. The only advantage of this reshuffle was that Bernie did not interfere during the writing of screenplays, only later after they were finished. The Marie Curie project had not been assigned to a producer. My suggestion of buying the book had upset the story department. Miss Corbeley, its head, had read the proofs and was convinced that none of the MGM stars would want to play a scientist. But Universal Studios bought it for Irene Dunne. As soon as Bernie heard of this, he moved heaven and earth to retrieve the rights from them. A deal was made: to get Marie Curie MGM had to buy some less desirable properties and paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars—at that time an enormous sum—and Bernie decided I should write the treatment under his personal s
upervision. This meant endless waiting while he “familiarized” himself with the contents of the book, and constant interruptions by telephone calls. Luckily Mrs. Hyman had read Marie Curie and loved it.

  I began to acquire a great deal of information about Polonium, Radium, radio-activity and the atom. Belatedly trying to correct my ignorance, I read scientific books, which fascinated me, especially Bertrand Russell’s. “I have been an idiot,” I would say. “Why did I not study physics instead of wasting my time in the German theater?” Berthold considered these remarks treason to our past. Now he was spending his summers in Santa Monica, always staying longer than he intended, annoyed that we were “never alone” and that it was “impossible to talk to each other.”

  31

  I MET ALDOUS AND MARIA HUXLEY at the house of Anita Loos, the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Extremely tall and thin, his distinguished head with its soft brown hair bent forward, Huxley listened to people with an absent expression in his strange eyes. This expression remained also when he told amusing anecdotes (most of them very funny), and was probably caused by his eye trouble. His wife was slender and dark, not beautiful, with her sharp features, but interesting. She was a Belgian, and spoke with a strong French accent. They had a son, who was in school abroad. She told me that they both greatly admired Garbo.

  A few days later Huxley and I were asked to lunch with George Cukor at Bernie Hyman’s beach house. The table was set near the swimming pool and the absence of the hostess indicated that this was a business and not a social occasion. We sat down and Bernie asked Cukor to tell Mr. Huxley “how we see the Curie film.” It was obvious that because of his success with Camille, Cukor was being chosen to direct Marie Curie. He had suggested that Huxley write the screenplay, but had no idea how Bernie saw the film. After a few rather vague sentences he interrupted himself: “It is much more important to hear what Mr. Huxley thinks about the idea.”

  Huxley said that he did not go much to the movies but that he was very much in favor of a film about the Curies. The discovery of radium was very photogenic and dramatic: the glowing glass tubes, the dark shack . . . “That’s what Salka has been saying,” said Bernie, disappointed. He wanted Huxley’s “own approach to the material” and it did not have to be a scenario, just a narrative. He liked the love story but had found many of the incidents very dull and asked me to remind him which incidents these were; but when I started he was called to the telephone, and as Cukor also had to leave, Huxley and I decided to take a brief walk on the beach.

  “You see,” I shouted over the roar of the incoming tide, “the greatest problem is that Bernie does not understand the complete disinterest of the Curies in fame and personal profit. Poor as they were they refused one million dollars to patent their discovery. Now, how could they?” Huxley laughed: “Of course, this does not make sense!”

  “My great hope is,” I went on, “that you will compel Bernie to curb his imagination and stick to facts.” Bernie returned and Huxley promised to write a treatment. Later Maria told me that the studio had paid him twenty-five thousand. . . . It was the same sum Thalberg offered Schoenberg for the scoring of The Good Earth.

  I asked Bernie what I should do during the time Huxley was writing the treatment. I did not want to sit in my office twiddling my thumbs, and I felt that this was the right moment to ask for another assignment, which would relieve me for a while from the responsibilities of being a “Garbo specialist.” I had read in a newspaper that a British destroyer had picked up, in stormy seas, thirty shipwrecked Spanish orphans, three nuns and two pregnant women. I had a very clear idea what kind of film this newspaper item, developed into a story, could make. William Dieterle was directing a Spanish Civil War film for Walter Wanger, so I did not feel too hopeless about my project.

  When I told Bernie the story and said: “Orphans of the Spanish war,” he sent me to a young producer, Frank Davis, the only one at Metro who would be interested. However, he warned me that as it had no big parts for stars the film would end up as a “B” picture. Nevertheless, Frank was all for it. Calm and practical, he was not swayed by optimism, but could be very persistent. The film had to show the suffering civil war inflicted.

  •

  For a while life and work went on quite happily, or at least, it seemed so.

  A rich patron of music had invited Edward that summer to the Bohemian Grove in the Redwoods of northern California, a very exclusive Republican club whose members were all multimillionaires. He accepted only because his admirer assured him that such contacts were of utmost importance for his American career and one could not refuse. First he gave a concert in Carmel, then went to the Grove. From there he wrote me:

  . . . You’ve heard about Carmel. I read one notice (on the front page!) which seems almost too favorable. Still, everything went very well and they want me back for a recital of modern music. Now I am here in this “Grove” experiencing “ein englisches Leben” more in the sense of Great Britain than in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“englisch” meaning also “angelic” in German). It is quite a shock to see these old men, the American variations on the theme of Dr. Mandl, wandering around and with a boyish predilection to piss on the thousand-year-old trees, saying “This truly is living in nature.” Every second person explains to you at full length the profound “idea” of the Grove, which simply consists of the psychoanalytically complicated urge to escape from the spouse, drinking and a wild indulgence in dilettantism. I would have preferred to spend a week in a Trappist monastery, but I am afraid I have to stay here. The gentlemen were outraged when I said I would leave on the 27th. Once they capture an artist they hold on to him. They seemed deeply offended and my friend, Mr. L., explained in a long speech that “honoring” me to such an extent, the club expects me to participate in the great concert on Friday. The baritone Thomas from the Metropolitan Opera (an excellent singer) will also appear. And Saturday I must see “the Grove play,” which is being intensively rehearsed and according to L., will be first: an unforgettable event; second: of greatest importance,” because “all those who have power and money in the state will be present.” It is true that from the ex-President, Herbert Hoover, the least person one encounters is a president of a railroad company. I don’t know if such connections are really important, but as I am already here it is simply logical to stay. After all, Gulliver lived longer than three days with all kinds of peoples.

  The week in the millionaires’ Grove convinced Gulliver that social life and entertaining the rich was incompatible with his temperament and that he had to find a more dedicated musical following. He decided to go to New York or Chicago, preferably New York, where he would have contact with modern composers and where many of his former pupils and colleagues had settled. Sadly I realized that he was right. Margret stayed with us. Children adjust themselves quickly. Her friendship with Thomas and the certainty that her father would be back on holidays, reconciled her to the temporary separation.

  Hans returned from Berkeley and enrolled at U.C.L.A., but I found out that he was not attending classes and spending most of his time in political discussions at the campus cafeteria. It also became increasingly noticeable that his hearing was impaired, which may have been one of his reasons for not following lectures. To me his affliction seemed an intolerable injustice. That this sensitive and brilliant boy should suddenly be isolated, deprived of normal contact with others, inhibited in the choice of his profession, was a blow which hit me harder than him. The doctors could only give it a name. They called it “otosclerosis,” adding that it appeared during or after puberty and that twenty-five million people in the United States were hard of hearing. Statistics were no comfort. We were advised to consult a specialist in New York, and Edward suggested that Hans stay with him and continue his studies while he was undergoing treatments. I accepted gratefully, but cold, noisy and dirty New York was not a place to appeal to a young Californian. Hans came back home and we found a wonderful, dedicated man, Dr. Guggenheim, who took a great interest
in his case and improved his hearing, although he was not able to restore it.

  Peter was seventeen years old when he graduated from high school and insisted upon going to an eastern college. He was accepted at Dartmouth, but like Hans could not stand the East for longer than three months. He returned and enrolled at U.C.L.A., much more appreciative of old, lovely Santa Monica than he had been before. From time to time he threatened to give up his studies and get a job. I opposed it, convinced that my sons should get college educations as long as I could afford it. In his first attempt at financial independence, during the summer vacation, Peter became a filing clerk in the story department at David Selznick’s studio. His boss, Val Lewton, told me later that it took him weeks to put the filing system back in order.

  Before all these happenings, Aldous Huxley had finished the treatment of the Curie film and delivered it. It was instantly forgotten. Ninotchka had been pushed forward on the production schedule, but progressed at the usual leisurely pace caused by the chronic “recession.” Bernie could not make up his mind who should direct it. Sam Behrman refused to stay in Hollywood and lucky Gottfried was sent to New York to work there with him.

  Bruno Frank had been given my notes concerning the Curie film. He agreed with them but declined a collaboration because he preferred to write his treatment alone. I was surprised that no one mentioned the Huxley script, and on the next occasion, I asked Bernie what happened to it. Embarrassed, he admitted that he had had no time to read it but had given it to Goldie, his secretary, who told him “it stinks.” As I did not share his faith in Goldie’s judgment I asked him to show me the script, but days went by and I never received it.

  Bruno Frank remained seven months on the assignment, then abruptly left MGM. Sidney Franklin took over the production and hired Scott Fitzgerald to write the screenplay. I hoped that at last somebody would be interested in what Huxley had done.