The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel

  Because of his impaired hearing Hans was not called. He was still with the Reinhardt Workshop and getting more and more involved with the theater. He played a comedy part in Jederman, which the Workshop produced.

  He wrote to Berthold,

  My best (?) lines, usually brought on in the audience a silence that you could cut with a knife. But on the second night, somehow my timing and everything else clicked perfectly and I got laughs just about every time I opened my mouth. Reinhardt was very pleased and said that I should remember that night, for it was my birthday as an actor . . . I do not know whether it is good or bad that the theater fills me as completely as it does. But I definitely feel: “Here I belong, this is my place in life.” I have tried to get away from it, but have always been driven back . . . I think I should make my work such as to bridge that old contradiction* which we have talked about so much, and to build my place in life so that I do not have to reproach myself.

  . . . I am thinking of going away from the theater for a short while, into a more “primary” occupation, in order to live as most people do. . . . Concretely, this means some kind of industrial work. I know you will say (and rightly) “What, again!” But this time the perspective is different. What do you think?

  And without waiting to know what his father thought he went to work in the shipyards. He would come home unshaven and grimy, a helmet on his head, every inch “the worker.” One day he phoned that he would bring a friend for dinner. I was expecting the Huxleys and had promised Maria that we would be alone. Hans pleaded with me; Norman was an admirer of Huxley and it would be “a great thing” if he could meet him. I softened and gave in, admonishing Hans that they should not be late.

  As usual the Huxleys arrived on the dot and we were drinking our sherry when Hans and Norman, a frail, short, ungainly young Jew from Brooklyn, made their entrance, looking as if they had emerged from the bottom of a coal freighter. Only good manners prevented Maria from wincing, when Norman, with a “toity toit” accent thanked me for the invitation.

  At dinner the young people kept silent, while Aldous talked about cheese. He not only knew every kind of cheese, but also the history of its origin. His knowledge and memory were awe-inspiring. After dinner the conversation switched to films and Maria wanted to know if I had an interesting assignment. I said that I had an idea for a Cagliostro film. Aldous was very much in favor of it; he himself thought that Mesmer and his experiments with animal magnetism and hypnosis were “extraordinary.” He told us about some phenomena which sounded quite uncanny, and named several books I should read, when unexpectedly Norman corrected him about the author of one of them. I forget the name and the issue; all I remember is Aldous’s exquisite Oxford English cutting sharply through Norman’s nasal Brooklynese and with a few withering words putting him in his place. But, unwithered, Norman stood up to his idol. A conspicuous tremolo in his voice betrayed his nervousness as he said bravely: “It’s easy for you, Mr. Huxley, to ridicule me, who never went to college; nevertheless, I’ve read a great deal about occultism, Mesmer and others, because it fascinates me.” Suddenly Huxley’s face lost its haughty expression and became soft and embarrassed. It seemed to me that he blushed. Leaning forward, he put his hand on Norman’s arm and warmly apologized: “I really am sorry. Of course you are right, please excuse my remark. I should have mentioned. . . .” and on went the discussion, now on quite equal terms.

  After the Huxleys left the transfigured Norman exclaimed: “I felt like throwing myself on the floor and letting him walk on me to the door.” Soon afterward, Norman died very young and several years later I came upon one of Huxley’s short stories written in his youth, which shocked me by the rather crude anti-semitism one of the characters expressed.

  Before he left for his training, Peter invited me to have dinner with him at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, as he sometimes did when he wanted a quiet tête-à-tête with me. When I arrived I found Harold Clurman waiting for me at the reserved table, and was pleased that he was dining with us. We ordered our drinks; then Peter appeared with a young woman, Virginia Schulberg. I had met her before; she was the wife of Budd Schulberg, son of the Paramount executive. Budd’s first novel, What Makes Sammy Run, was much talked about. Virginia was strikingly lovely, her figure neat and slim. She walked and moved with an exceptional grace. The shoulder-length dark hair was held back by a black velvet ribbon; she wore no make-up, and with her shining eyes and rosy complexion she had an aura of wholesomeness and outdoor living, although at the moment, probably because of me, she was so tense and nervous that it made everyone uncomfortable. I knew immediately that she and Peter were in love. In spite of Harold’s efforts, the dinner lacked gaiety. With Peter leaving in the next days this was quite understandable. “Jigee,” as Peter and Harold called her, did not talk much and left soon. Peter was to meet her later, after he had driven me home. As soon as we were alone I asked if his infatuation with Virginia was as serious as it appeared. He said yes, and that she intended to ask Budd for a divorce. “She is a wonderful girl, Mother.”

  Peter was twenty-one and although his book had been a literary success and he had had film jobs, his ability to support a family, especially now as a Marine private, was, to put it euphemistically, dubious. Virginia was twenty-six, she and Budd had a two-year-old girl, and since her marriage she had lived the luxurious, carefree life of the Hollywood rich. But I have never considered economic security more important than love.

  In the following days most of my time was spent with Jigee in the parking lots of office buildings, waiting for Peter who had endless last-minute errands. We used these hours to get acquainted with each other. She had heard all sorts of opinions and judgments of me, some harsh, many exaggeratedly admiring. I knew less about her, but I foresaw that she would need a lot of courage to face the future. How would Budd take it? And Peter somewhere on the other side of the globe . . . it might be months, perhaps years, before they could live together. While we were thus sharing sadness and anxieties she became very close to me. We both knew that once Peter was gone we would need each other. At the moment things were not too bad: Peter’s camp was near San Diego and we could visit him on Sundays.

  Jigee went to Mexico and returned shaken and unhappy but determined to leave Budd. She told me she could not feel guilty for loving Peter and that the failure of her marriage was not her fault alone. This was probably true, but the Schulberg family disagreed with her on that issue.

  The boot camp was a rough experience for Peter and the more I heard of the “Marine spirit” the more I loathed it. No, I was not made to be the mother of a Marine. He shared his tent with four other boys, all from an orphanage in Texas and none older than seventeen. Until they were recruited they had known nothing but life in the orphanage. They made ugly, anti-semitic remarks and Peter told them to cut it out, and that he was a Jew. They were deeply shaken and confessed that they had never seen a Jew before. For days they went out of their way to show him their repentance, cleaning his boots and rifle and doing all the disagreeable chores for him.

  Jigee’s parents were working-class Americans, ruined by the Depression. The father, Robert Ray, a handsome man but twenty years older than his wife Henny, was always talking about the happy days when he traveled with his parents in a covered wagon. These memories must have left in him an unceasing restlessness and when I knew him in his old age, and divorced by Henny after twenty-five years of marriage, he was moving back and forth in his trailer, from Santa Monica to the Mojave desert, looking up old pals from his prospecting days. The trailer had become a substitute for the covered wagon. He was a distrustful, lonely man, full of prejudice against Jews, Negroes, Hollywood, his sons-in-law, and the whole “damned, new-fangled” twentieth century. But he adored his daughters. Henny was a hardworking housewife if ever there was one, and a romantic. Having divorced Robert she married her “high school sweetheart,” a night clerk in a modest beach hotel, who played the violin and wore his hair long. It was snow-white.
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br />   The Rays’ two daughters, Jigee and Anne, were helping their parents financially. Anne, the elder, was handsome, vivacious, very witty, but not as lovely as Jigee. She had a good job as an executive secretary, was efficient, independent and very much in love with a young, successful screenwriter, Melvin Frank, whom she soon married. Before she met Budd Schulberg Jigee had been a dancer in the Paramount chorus. Budd’s mother, Ad, had had strong reservations about the marriage and after it broke up, warned me of Jigee’s “destructive character.” But the broadminded young generation, Budd’s sister Sonja, and Stewart his younger brother, remained her friends. Later I understood that what Ad called “destructive” was Jigee’s negativism, her quick “giving up,” an admitted distrust of herself and a frequent misconception about the motives of others.

  As long as Peter was in training Jigee used to meet him in La Jolla or Coronado beach, close to his camp, and spend Sundays with him. On other days she would come to see me with her little, curly-haired Vicky. We spent Sundays on the beach. When I was taking a walk Vicky would usually appear at my side and silently slip her hand into mine, trying to keep step with me; with this handclasp she also took hold of my heart.

  But even the training of a Marine comes to an end, and Peter was shipped to the Pacific. My dreary, unsatisfactory work was no distraction nor remedy for the persistent worry about his where-abouts and assignment, the longing and uncertainty. We guessed that he was in New Caledonia, undergoing further training. Jigee and I shared his news and forwarded it to Berthold, who, between outbursts of energy and frustration, was trying to find a foothold on rocky, slippery Broadway. After he had staged They Walk Alone, in which Elsa Lancaster appeared in the part created by Beatrix Lehman, he was preparing a play with Oscar Homolka.

  His book of poems, Fürchte Dich Nicht, came out and received great praise. Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Alfred Polgar and Herman Broch wrote enthusiastically about it in refugee newspapers and weeklies, which were the intellectual sustenance of the emigrants. He had found a happy relationship with a Viennese actress, Elisabeth Neumann, also a refugee, a courageous, loving, cheerful human being. I had met her when I was in New York for a few weeks vacation. Berthold was much more at peace with himself, and also with me and Gottfried. We saw each other often, and also Edward when he could tear himself away from his lessons and rehearsals.

  Max Reinhardt was in New York, staging Rosalinda, which was nothing else than good old Fledermaus rewritten and revamped by Gottfried and another G.I. It turned out to be Max Reinhardt’s last success. As I remember, it ran for more than a year. Gottfried and I went to Toscanini’s NBC broadcasts, to which Eleonora provided the tickets. We were happy; the Russians were winning the battle of Stalingrad.

  There was no visible effort at MGM to find a new story for Garbo, until one day Bernie Hyman asked me excitedly to come to the projection room and see a Russian film, which a European producer, Mr. Rabinowich, had imported and intended to show in the States. The title of the film was The Girl from Leningrad. It was a moving, simple story about a wounded soldier and a nurse, made during the Russian-Finnish war, but changed into the Soviet-German conflict. The menacing presence of the Nazis was not so much seen as constantly felt, in the black winter forests which could just as well have been somewhere near Leningrad. I asked Greta to see the film, and she was very impressed. However, MGM decided against it. Perhaps Garbo’s enthusiasm was not emphatic enough, or they did not want to make a film sympathetic to the Soviets, or L. B. Mayer felt compelled to glorify the deeds of the Red armies in his own way. The Song of Russia was chosen instead of The Girl from Leningrad. This story had been concocted by director Gregory Ratoff, a gregarious White Russian with a hilarious accent, and two leftish screenwriters. Anna Louise Strong, for many years a Moscow correspondent to American papers, was called in as “technical advisor.” I saw her often in the corridors of the Thalberg building: a large, white-haired woman leaning heavily on a cane, flanked by her collaborators (one of them later recanted his “sins” before the Committee on UnAmerican Activities). The story was not merely a tribute to the sacrifice of the Russian people; it was also intended to exploit the then much publicized Garbo/Stokowski romance. Ratoff told it in a nutshell: “Russian girl falls in love with famous American conductor, who arrives in Russia to give concerts but gets involved in the scorched earth policy.” Mr. Ratoff wanted me to convince Garbo to play the girl, “a magnificent role and written especially for her.” He described the scenes in which she sets the torch to the harvest, while her lover conducts Tchaikowsky’s 1812, Overture. “Garrrbo is making scorrrched earrrth,” cried Gregory, carried away and rolling his rrr’s. “All alone she scorrrches the Rrrussian earrrth, while Stokowski—I mean, Rrrobert Taylor—conducts.”

  Ultimately The Song of Russia was played by Susan Peters and Robert Taylor. I did not see it, but even the most fanatical pro-Russians assured me that it was perfectly dreadful. Nevertheless, it became one of the many unjustified accusations of communist infiltration of Hollywood, which L. B. Mayer had to explain before the Committee on UnAmerican Activities.

  And so the search for a Garbo story continued with the usual frustration, until Bernie Hyman, who had Garbo’s interest sincerely at heart, suddenly died at the age of forty-two. Despite his procrastinations and sentimentality, he was kind and a real friend.

  * He obviously meant the contradiction of being a socialist but removed from the realities of the life of the working class.

  37

  STALINGRAD, THE DEFENSE OF LENINGRAD, the landings in Africa and Italy, the relentless bombardments of German cities, all led us to believe that the end of Hitler was nearing. But any hope of a national uprising, an anti-Nazi underground movement—based on Breda’s predictions—proved to be in vain. The Gestapo was monstrously efficient and the working class accepted with inexhaustible docility the demolition of their homes, terror, misery and death.

  In 1942 the Molotov Report revealed for the first time the atrocities in Poland and Russia, but most Americans refused to believe it, saying: “Soviet propaganda.” I was hiding the gruesome reports from my mother. As long as Sambor was occupied by the Germans I tried to convince her and myself that Dusko had escaped with the Soviet garrison.

  The Japanese were in the Philippines, spreading so far out over the islands of the Pacific that they threatened Australia. We did not know where Peter was. The mail was slow and irregular.

  Then ultimately the unavoidable but predictable occurred: Gottfried’s falling in love with a young woman he was soon to marry brought an end to our relationship. It is senseless to compare one’s own grief with the enduring horror suffered by millions, but the consciousness of unspeakable tragedy makes sudden loneliness even more desperate and hopeless. It was difficult to extricate myself from an involvement which, for ten years, had been a vital part of my life. I was very fond of Wolfgang and Lally and, in the years they had lived in California, Max Reinhardt and his wife Helene had shown me affection, friendship and sympathy, which I fully returned. Else, his former wife, was a friend in spite of our long established disagreements about love and divorce. She had been a daily visitor in our house, and Mama, who had admired her on the stage, was always glad to see her, amused by her eccentricities.

  •

  The constant changes of residence had delayed Berthold’s American citizenship, and to achieve it at last he decided to return to Santa Monica for six months, and just as he had resented my past happiness he now resented my sadness. “Whoever touches your heart does not foresee that he is unleashing an avalanche!” he told me bitterly.

  Max Reinhardt’s seventieth birthday was in September, 1943. He celebrated it in New York in excellent health and hardly looking his age. A few months before he had staged Irwin Shaw’s Sons and Soldiers which, alas, had not been a success, and he was planning with mellow resignation a production of Offenbach’s La Belle Helene. The last time we saw each other he wryly admitted that he would prefer not to be regarded in Americ
a as “a specialist in musicals.”

  A few weeks later Wolfgang told me that his father, who had never been ill in his life, had lost his speech. After a few weeks he was better and it seemed that he would recover. But another stroke paralyzed his right side and when his wife arrived from California, he was dying. Both sons were with him, while we in Mabery Road—Berthold, Else, forgiving at last, Lally, Hans and Mama—were waiting in the living room, hoping against hope.

  For Else, Max Reinhardt remained the only man in her life; for Lally, a myth, whose indestructible charm she constantly discovered in Wolfgang; for Hans, a master, the first one to give him sympathetic encouragement. To Berthold and me he had always been, in one way or another, an enormous influence in our artistic life, even when we opposed him. To be “discovered” by Reinhardt had meant more to me than the best contracts at royal theaters. However, in Hollywood the glory was gone and it always gave me a jolt when I heard a nasal voice call him “Max.” The Workshop with its young, raw and inexperienced students, made it impossible to stage unforgettable performances, but on that long October night, while we waited for the call from New York, I remembered an incident I had witnessed one evening when Reinhardt was rehearsing a Maugham play. The unassuming Workshop auditorium was almost empty, only a few students were lolling about in the chairs, backstage someone was banging the piano. Reinhardt was showing a young man how to play the scene preceding the last-act curtain. The action was silent; everyone has left, only the butler tidies the living room, empties the ashtrays into the fireplace, drinks the liquor left in the glasses, puffs up the pillows on the couch and blows out the candles. All this is done with musical accompaniment. With inimitable grace and precision, Max Reinhardt was acting this pantomime in perfect timing to the slowly descending curtain. I was watching in breathless enchantment and was loath to have the curtain come down. . . .