The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel

  I had finished the outline of The Cargo of Innocence as my story was called, and was writing the screenplay with James Hilton. His literary standing and high salary guaranteed to some extent that the studio intended to produce the film. However by this time, the United States, England and France had abandoned Spain to her tragic fate, and our script was “temporarily” shelved. The activities for the Loyalist cause went on and I gave another party, this time for Ludwig Renn who movingly appealed to the conscience of the liberals. Again we collected some money, but much less than before. Hans’s Trotskyite friends, forgetting their own disruptive activities in Spain, heckled Renn and accused the communists of breaking the socialist solidarity. And so the disintegration of the Popular Front continued, even on Mabery Road.

  Like Ariadne’s thread, the work on Marie Curie was running through the labyrinth of my life, dangling before me, incessantly interrupted, exasperatingly close to my grasp, then suddenly disappearing. Months went by . . . the Hitler menace grew.

  I had breathed more freely after the Gielens had moved to Vienna; then the annexation of Austria endangered them again. All direct contact between us ceased.

  I had applied for a Quota for my mother, besides collecting affidavits for others who were trying to escape from Vienna and Prague. Ludwig went to London. Karl Kraus had died before the holocaust he had predicted came true. Dorothy Parker, Herman Mankiewicz, Don Stewart, Miriam Hopkins, Sam Hoffenstein generously guaranteed with their bank accounts that none of my protégés would become a financial burden to the United States and I am happy to say that none ever did. It was impressive to see how rapidly men and women, who never before had worked with their hands, became “proletarians.” That dramatists and journalists were drawn to Hollywood was obvious; American universities and colleges invited scientists, musicians and artists; doctors established themselves after miraculously passing exams in English; new Viennese restaurants and delicatessens flourished.

  The occupation of Austria ended Max Reinhardt’s European enterprises. Goering moved into Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg and the expropriated Reinhardt took a house on Pacific Palisades. He bore the loss of his theatrical empire with great dignity and opened a dramatic school on Sunset Boulevard. There he and Helene Thimig staged plays with inexperienced beginners unaware of the artistic importance of their master.

  Max Reinhardt had a great liking for Hans and asked him to be his assistant and dramaturg. As Hans did not show any intention of continuing his studies, I was delighted that the Reinhardt school would give him the chance to prove himself, and that the theater was a stronger attraction than politics. The school slowly transformed itself into a theater, but its most talented pupils were immediately absorbed by the film industry. From London, Berthold wrote:

  As always, I forgot your birthday; not even these times make me conscious of time. Of course, your and the boys’ letters arrived punctually on the 28th, also the money. It was a beautiful birthday for me. I would have loved to have your photo. I don’t have a good one and also the boys have changed. In the photos I have, they are so much younger.

  Now bulletins from the battlefield: my sister Paula is in a panic, she has to get out of Vienna. They dragged her to the barracks and made her scrub floors, wash dishes, make beds for the S.S., etc., etc. They jeered at her and she had to look on while they were beating an old Jew. She has written to you asking for an affidavit. Can you do it? Rose cannot write to you. Josef is constantly watched because of us, although he himself has been quite unpolitical. Kleiber engaged him to stage operas for a South American tournée. If only they could get out! Jacob Hegener* arrived emaciated after eight weeks in a Gestapo prison, also his seventeen-year-old daughter. Camil Hoffmann helped to free them through some foreign Embassy. The Jews don’t arouse compassion in the world. Here in England an incredible indifference. Some papers are openly anti-semitic. Only the Quakers perform miracles of helpfulness.

  Have my friends Christopher Isherwood and Wynstan Auden arrived in Santa Monica? As you remember, Christopher wrote the screen-play for Little Friend. Auden is a poet of great power; Isherwood one of the finest and most original writers. He observes very sharply, behind his mask of boyish charm. He lived in Berlin and speaks German. I find his Berlin Diary a stylistic masterpiece, the humor is quite devilish. You will like him. . . .

  Do you remember how Edward had only one pupil in Hollywood? The same is with me—I am directing a one-act play with one actress, which will play only one night.

  After Munich:

  . . . It’s just as well. My own feeling is that we are in a trap. . . . The war preparations here were pitiful. Everybody got a gas mask, they evacuated the children, and the rich people moved to the country. Had England fought I would have offered her my cadaver plus brain. Willi also volunteered his services. But when Chamberlain returned, Armistice Day scenes took place in the streets. Although the danger of war has passed a great depression remains. I got my extension for the American re-entry, and permission to work in England—all I need now is work. At the moment I am rehearsing a new play with Beatrix Lehmann: They Walk Alone. If it is a success and comes to the West End, it will bring me some money. Not enough though, as I have Income Tax debts. . . .

  . . . That you are forced to live and work in Hollywood, whether you want it or not and whether you can stand it, because you are supporting all of us, Mama and others, is hard to bear, first for you, but even more for me.

  * Berthold’s publisher.

  32

  SAM HOFFENSTEIN USED TO SAY: “Wherever I go, I go too, and spoil everything.” This was exactly how I felt. I had nothing but harassments and personal conflicts, in addition to bad news daily. In Porto Ronco, Rose had said to me: “With all your problems and responsibilities that you still have the courage to be in love impresses me as something truly admirable.”

  But my courage was deserting me. The years were piling up on me, but I loved to celebrate birthdays, even my own. As little as I worried about my finances and my health, so little was I conscious of my age. It was dissatisfaction with my work which made me despair. I could not bear the studio any longer; I longed for a respite from people who considered themselves superior only because they were overpaid.

  In February, 1939, I became a citizen of the United States. Even I, who hate flag-waving and patriotic demonstrations, found it very moving, and repeated the oath of allegiance along with three hundred other people. I was hopeful that now I would get my mother and Dusko out of Poland. A few days later I was assigned to the producer Sidney Franklin, to collaborate on the screenplay of Marie Curie.

  Mr. Franklin was a slight, inconspicuous man, nearing fifty and a dedicated Anglophile. His office looked like the drawingroom of an English country house. He constantly talked of the film he had made based on James Hilton’s Goodbye Mr. Chips, which had had a British background, and was a great success.

  There were four, sometimes five of us discussing the story, an international set up: Jacques Théry, a Frenchman, who did not give a damn; Mr. Harris, an American on loan from Fox, author of the Alexander Graham Bell film; the Austrian novelist George Froeschel, who alternated with another German refugee, Hans Rameau; Claudine West, British, and with bad memories of me from the time of Queen Christina; and myself. No one was writing yet because we had not agreed on the “story line.” Franklin’s secretary was supposed to record all suggestions but only took down what Franklin dictated.

  The conferences began at ten in the morning with the producer appearing last, changing into a jacket and stretching out on the couch, while we grouped ourselves around him. Invariably he would begin with: “Well, guys, last night, after dinner, I talked to Mrs. Franklin about the story and she agreed with me: no pretty girl would ever study chemistry or physics.”

  My colleagues waited until I automatically protested: photographs showed that Marie Curie was lovely in her youth. I argued, Miss West smiled enigmatically, Théry gossiped about Madame Curie’s love life, Froeschel and Ram
eau made abstract and noncommittal suggestions. After two hours Franklin would admit that some pretty girls might study chemistry but not many.

  Having settled that, we began the search for “motivation.” At six P.M. we left the studio, certain that tomorrow’s conference would again begin with “Last night after dinner. . . .” I informed Franklin about the Huxley script, and after he had read it he admitted that there were some good scenes in it. Also there was “one good speech” in the Scott Fitzgerald screenplay.

  Gradually our conclave was reduced to three participants: Franklin, Walter Reisch and myself. Walter Reisch had written and directed successful pictures in Europe: Escapade with Paula Wessely had been bought by Metro and remade with Luise Rainer. I don’t think Walter has ever forgiven me for suggesting Marie Curie. He constantly repeated that he hated bluestockings and intellectual women, while Franklin was gradually transforming Pierre Curie into a French Mr. Chips. At last we agreed that young Marie’s weird interest in science could be “motivated” by her being a foreigner.

  In summer Berthold returned from England, in good health but tense and nervous. He found the house too lively and moved to the room over the garage. As he had been away so long he had to get used to us. Luckily Edward was spending the summer at Mabery Road and his presence had, as always, a calming influence. In the evenings, as in the old times, we gathered to listen to his playing.

  This was also the summer when Congressman Martin Dies and his committee announced that Walter Wanger’s Blockade, Warner Brothers’ Juarez and Metro’s Fury were inspired by communists. Unperturbed by politics, we finally let Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, “the girl with an impossible name,” explain her devotion to science with: “I always wanted to know why the grass is green and the water wet.” But we were deadlocked on another issue: the discovery of radium was not “spectacular enough for film audiences.” It was not enough to show how in a miserable, badly equipped shack, two people stubbornly persisted in their search for four years. We had to find an answer to “did radium mean anything for the whole world?” “What was it good for?” It was not like Salvarsan, nor was it like Pasteur’s vaccine for smallpox, nor did it cure diabetes. It was in an experimental stage; the treatment of cancer and radio-activity merely complicated the story line. Apart from all that, Sidney Franklin was doubtful about the correctness of Eve Curie’s presentation. “She is not a scientist. It couldn’t have been as simple as she writes. There must have been some kind of a gimmick.” And Walter Reisch would say: “After all, they got the Nobel Prize.” The comparatively primitive process by which the Curies isolated the new element was nothing sensational. There was no suspense, no competition, no false lead, no sabotage, as in a detective story. Poverty was the only obstacle and poverty was “dreary.” I argued that the obsession of the Curies was a dramatic element . . . The moment when Pierre and Marie Curie entered their shack at night and saw a glowing substance in the glass tubes was a triumph of the human spirit.

  Tired of arguments, Walter Reisch suggested that we ask a physicist at Caltech, and five minutes later a studio Cadillac took us to Pasadena.

  Dr. Johst waited in his laboratory, at his side an atomsmasher. The small room had unpainted brick walls, a desk and two chairs; the cyclotron took up most of the space. Dr. Johst was middle-aged and tired; he stood behind the desk, while Reisch asked his questions. As I remember it, he started with the isolation of radium. Word for word, Dr. Johst gave the same information as Eve Curie’s book and the encyclopedia. Franklin asked if there were no incidents of failure, false symptoms and wrong results. “The main problem was to get the pitchblende,” answered Dr. Johst. Disappointed, Franklin asked the crucial question: “Has the discovery of radium completely changed the basis of science and has everything to start on another basis?” Dr. Johst was baffled. He murmured that every discovery leads to something new but he did not understand what we were after.

  “We are after a gimmick!” I thought but refrained from saying it. Again Dr. Johst reiterated how the Curies had isolated radium, first as uranium then as a more radioactive substance, which Marie had called polonium in honor of her native country; then by special methods, she and her husband had found another radioactive substance, to which they gave the name of radium. The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions that the name was “happily chosen, for in its pure state radium bromide has a far greater activity—about two million times as great as an equal weight of uranium.” This gave us some comfort and we left Dr. Johst.

  In the car, after a gloomy silence, Sidney Franklin said: “This guy is a very small fish, otherwise he would not be in such a dirty, small office. He didn’t say anything we don’t know. We’d better look for somebody else.”

  At that, obviously out of despair, Walter Reisch exclaimed: “Why don’t we send Salka to Paris to ask Irene Joliot-Curie, who is a physicist like her mother? Salka knows what we are after and she is the right person to interview Irene.”

  Franklin perked up. My heart was pounding. This was one of the things the studio adored: sending someone to the Antipodes, to the South Seas, to the Congo, or at least across the Atlantic. My eyes on Franklin, I held my breath. He nodded. Yes, that was a very good suggestion. My conscience made me remind them that it was summer, the Sorbonne and the Institute of Radium would be closed. “Then you must find out where Irene Joliot is and go there. Let me talk to Bernie. See you after lunch.”

  Reisch and I went to the Commissary and Gottfried and Bronek Kaper joined us for lunch. I told them that I was keeping my fingers crossed as I might be sent to Paris, and they turned green with envy. But I did not believe in such luck. The thought that having accomplished my mission, I might be allowed to go to Poland and see my mother and Dusko made me dizzy. I dismissed it.

  “You will see,” I said, “the studio will say ‘no.’ ”

  But the studio said “yes” and two secretaries typed pages of instructions for me, cables were sent to the Paris office and everyone was excited and kind and full of advice.

  In two days I had my new American passport and a reservation on the Normandie, sailing on the last of July. Liesl Frank wanted me to look up and comfort those who were waiting for American visas. Berthold had a long list of messages for people I had to call in Paris and London. Hans and Peter envied me (Tommy was going to a camp and was completely preoccupied with his equipment). Expecting war to break out, Edward was worried.

  On the Super Chief I read Mr. Franklin’s instructions. They began with:

  . . . The more we talk about it, Walter and I, the more we realize that we must consider our audience of primary school intelligence so far as this discovery of radium is concerned. I instantly considered myself in this same class.

  FOR THIS REASON WE HAVE GOT TO REDUCE IT TO THE MOST SIMPLE TERMS, SO THAT WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR NOTES IT WILL NOT ONLY BE UNDERSTOOD BY THE AUDIENCE, BUT THEY WILL GET A Thrill OUT OF IT, AND WHEN LEAVING THE THEATER WILL SAY: “I KNOW HOW SHE DISCOVERED RADIUM, AND I WOULD HAVE DONE EXACTLY THE SAME IF I HAD BEEN MADAME CURIE.”

  Of great importance are the instruments that Madame Curie used in the discovery of radium. This, of course, as you know, is most vital.

  . . . Ask whether we can say, in so many words, the following:

  That if her discovery of radioactive minerals is a fact (that it still appeared doubtful staggered me) could they say that the basis of science will be completely changed and all experiments and everything that is done will start from another basis—that the very thought of matter, as scientists know it, will be changed?

  Could she come to the conclusion, and voice it, that if they do not accept her theory, they are a stumbling block to the advancement of science?

  Aware of how embarrassed “they” would be by such a threat I was determined to skip this question.

  The next day I boarded the Normandie, the most beautiful ship in the world. After I had unpacked in my lovely cabin, I went on deck and suddenly was back in Hollywood: Norma Shearer; Frederick Lonsdale; Edward G
. Robinson with wife, child, child’s nurse; Pat and Charles Boyer; Bob Hope and his wife; Madeleine Carroll; Joe Cohn, boss of Columbia Pictures; buyers from Magnin and Bullocks, the great department stores in Los Angeles; Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Miller—they were all going to Paris.

  The weather was wonderful, everyone in elated spirits. I don’t remember anyone ever reading the ship’s bulletin or talking about Hitler. Happy to be going to Europe, I laughed with the others. The beautiful ship carried us rapidly eastward.

  33

  PARIS WAS DESERTED but lovelier than ever. The concièrges sunned themselves in front of their apartment houses, in large upholstered fauteuils, children skipped rope on the sidewalks, people promenaded with their dogs and cats and one woman took the air with a parrot perched on her shoulder. At the reception desk of the Plaza Athénée I caught a glimpse of my traveling companions, but was not to see them again for a long time.

  I unpacked and called the Metro office. A woman’s voice acknowledged my arrival, then advised me to “take it easy.” The head of the office, Mr. Lawrence, was in the country, Mr. Monta, the lawyer, was taking a cure in Vittell. “But Monsieur Lapinère will see you tomorrow at your hotel.”

  I had just put down the receiver when Marcel Achard burst into my room, genial, beaming, with huge spectacles and with coat flying. We fell into each other’s arms. It was wonderful to succumb to his infectious addiction to life. I had to report minutely about my “sons and lovers,” then tell him what had brought me to Paris. Marcel said that he could help me. He and Juliette were good friends of Eve Curie. She was spending the summer in Dinard and nothing was easier than to arrange a meeting between us either there or in Paris. It would be more difficult to get hold of her sister. The mondaine Eve liked society, was young and gay, while Madame Joliot, a great scientist and admirable woman, was withdrawn and moody. Marcel thought that the best way to approach her was through Professor Jean Perrin, an old friend of the Curies.