I had not written to Berthold about the St. Joan project because it was still at a preliminary stage. Gabriel Pascal and Wolfgang Reinhardt had approached Garbo about it. This was the same Gabriel Pascal who had bought my first film story, when our Truppe collapsed, and to whom G. B. Shaw gave the rights to film his plays. He came to Hollywood and we had several amusing and almost promising meetings. The only memento left of our negotiations is the following cable:
SALKA VIERTEL 165 MABERY ROAD SANTA MONICA CALIFORNIA WILL YOU GIVE GRETA FOLLOWING MESSAGE QUOTE HAVE ARRANGED ON GRANITELIKE BASIS MAKE BEST PICTURE EVER MADE WITH YOU FROM JOAN STOP ALL INTRIGUES OF OTHER PRODUCERS MAJOR COMPANIES ETC MAKE ME SMILE BECAUSE I KNOW YOU FEEL THE SAME AND ARE CLEVER ENOUGH NOT LET YOURSELF DOWN IN THIS DECISIVE TURNING POINT OF YOUR CAREER STOP I AM WITH YOU FAITHFULLY AS YOUR PRODUCER AND THERE IS NO OBSTACLE WHATSOEVER THAT I CANNOT LAUGHINGLY OVERCOME UNQUOTE DEAR SALKA CABLE ME YOURSELF HOW MANY WEEKS YOU NEED FOR DEFINITE SHOOTING SCRIPT I FEEL IT WOULD BE MORE LOGICAL IF YOU COME ALONG WITH WOLFGANG AS SOON POSSIBLE AND WORK WITH ME HERE ON SHOOTING SCRIPT BECAUSE I MUST HAVE EVERYTHING PREPARED ON BASIS OF SHOOTING SCRIPT BEFORE I LEAVE TO FETCH GRETA AFFECTIONATELY
GABRIEL PASCAL
I kept the cable because I have been always sentimental about Pascal since he had told me that he was a Gypsy.
My dearest Salka [wrote Berthold]:
June 1945
It was quite insane to take over the play (Brecht’s The Private Life of the Master Race) and to work incessantly for eight days and nights under most absurd circumstances, knowing that it was impossible to achieve a good performance. Nevertheless, those incredibly tense eight days made me feel young again and, at least, I have introduced a few new American actors. Two of them even had success. It impressed Brecht that I immediately lost the check I received as the reward for my sin, and essential for paying the rent. (I got it back.)
I liked working with Brecht. In the most desperate emergency he remains a man—utterly unhysterical. Edward was most critical but, as always, objective and swayed neither by love nor hatred—the Incorruptible, God bless him.
Today I shall see Polgar for the first time since Bruno’s death. It affected him deeply. It has also shaken me to the roots of my being. How is Liesl bearing up?
Your Berthold
Sad and unexpected as Bruno Frank’s death was, I was comforted by the thought that he had lived long enough to see the crumbling of the Nazi power. Thomas Mann said: “He was a ‘Sunday’s child’ even in his death.” Resting after lunch, he died in his sleep. I went to Liesl and found her sitting at his bedside, staring at him uncomprehendingly. The peaceful expression, the smile on his face, showed how, painlessly and without struggle, his life had ebbed away.
Soon after Bruno, Franz Werfel, ill for some time, died of a heart attack. It seemed as if he also had kept his strength up to see the day of the German surrender.
Six weeks later Peter got leave of absence. In the last months of the European war Jigee and little Vicky had been staying with me and now, with Peter home, the house became much livelier and everyone was much happier. Mama read fairy tales to Vicky, who, with great seriousness, corrected her English pronunciation. In his free time Thomas, Vicky’s favorite vehicle, carried her piggyback around the block.
Also back from the wars were Irwin Shaw and Robert Capa. Irwin was already much admired and praised for his short stories in the New Yorker and had begun to work on his novel, The Young Lions. He and his lovely Marian were addicted New Yorkers, but used to spend part of the year in California, where Marian had her family, and Irwin was wooed by the studios. Broad-shouldered, athletic, full of exuberant vitality and always ready to laugh, he and the graceful, poised Marian were an engaging couple, most welcome on Mabery Road. Robert Capa made meteoric appearances at which first we clashed but afterwards became great friends. Oliver Garrett, who had been in Africa for the Office of War Information, told us about his experiences with the Vichy Generals. One of the more pleasant things which had happened to him in North Africa was his running into Françoise Feyder doing propaganda for the Free French. “How is Salka?” was the first thing she wanted to know.
Then just as everything appeared a little more hopeful, the Atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima—loathsome, horrifying as all the atrocities of the Second World War. Some people, among them my own friends, whose humanity and compassion I had never doubted, thought that the thousands of burned bodies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were less terrible than a prolonged war, and the sacrifice of thousands of American lives. Some saw the great promise that the channeling of atomic energy held: warmth to the Arctic, cooling of the African desert, abundance for barren countries. Mercifully the future, although menacing, is unknown to us. Fumbling, we try to cope with the sins of the past and their reverberations upon the present.
•
Christopher Isherwood’s Prater Violet was published and had a great success. Its hero, Dr. Bergmann, modeled on Berthold, received extremely flattering tributes. One critic wrote: “Dr. Bergmann is a lion molested by flies.” Berthold commented:
These are the outbursts I had in London, which Christopher remembered, and which now tell a belated truth. I am concluding my career as a tragic Punch. But I am happy for Christopher that the tortures we endured together during the filming of Little Friend have not been in vain. As Wedekind says: “Frau Poesie schafft ohne Graus, beneidenswertes Glück daraus.”
40
IT HAS BEEN SAID OF HOLLYWOOD that once you are “down and out” your friends abandon you and, lonely and poor, you spend your evenings grieving for those glorious days, when you were invited to Pickfair. This was not true in my case. The loyalty of my friends remained unwavering. Actually, it was during the lean years that 165 Mabery Road established the reputation of a “literary salon,” and I myself—to borrow Sam Behrman’s expression—of a “salonière.” This was mainly due to the informality and the haphazard intermingling of the famous with the “not famous” and the “not yet famous.”
I had met Charles Chaplin in the Thirties; we had been seated next to each other at a dinner party once or twice, the first time after he had finished filming The Great Dictator. He was possessed by his work, and it was captivating to watch his never-ceasing absorption, his constant improvising of situations.
When Chaplin became the victim of a witch hunt, we saw each other quite often. A desperate girl, urged by a Hollywood gossip columnist, had filed a paternity suit against him with all the sensational trimmings which made it a criminal case. For the patriots of the Right it was the occasion to punish Chaplin for having remained a British subject, and for his flirtations with the Left.
It was also the year of Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech and Senator McCarthy’s investigations of communism in the U.S. Invisible and powerful, the FBI was practically in control of the studios. However, those worried about fascist trends in the country were relieved when the jury at the Chaplin trial—they looked rather grim in the newspaper photos—returned with the verdict “Not Guilty!” “It’s still a free country, Charlie,” said a woman juror, warmly clasping Chaplin’s hand.
He married Oona O’Neill soon after the trial. I met her at a small dinner party given by Tim Durant, an old friend of Charlie’s. She was eighteen, beautiful, poised like a Goya princess, and expecting her first child. Charlie was reenacting the whole trial, playing the judge, each of the twelve jurors, the district attorney who fascinated him, and his own lawyer, whom he deeply disliked. For an encore he repeated his already famous speech for Russian War Relief, which had so greatly augmented his troubles.
My sons had left me. Hans was still in Germany and Thomas had gone to Vermont to study at the University in Burlington, “working his way through college” as a handyman in the hotel where he also roomed. It was difficult to imagine my impractical dreamer “handy” for any hotel, but he seemed to manage. I knew that the main reason for his studying in the East was to be near his father and to spend his ho
lidays with him.
Many of my friends had settled in Mabery Road. Fred and Renée Zinnemann, with their little son, lived at the ocean end of the street; Oliver and Charlcie Garrett bought the house next to them; Christopher Isherwood moved into my garage apartment. He still looked like an adolescent; one could detect the fine lines around his blue, wide-open eyes, only because they were lighter than his sunburnt face.
In the morning, on his way for a swim, he would stop by for a cup of coffee and a chat, thus reviving for me the old Wychylowka breakfast tradition. The chat would transform itself into an absorbing discussion, which on my side tended to be rather emotional. At this time I was “unbalanced” to say the least, but Christopher had unlimited patience and understanding. Then one of us would say something atrocious and hilarious, and suddenly we laughed and the world became bearable again.
One evening I had guests for dinner, Donald Ogden Stewart, now married to Ella Winter, the widow of Lincoln Steffens. She asked: “Isn’t there a house nearby we could move into and be your neighbors?”
“You can have the corner house,” I said. “The one opposite the Zinnemanns. It’s for sale.”
The Stewarts only came to Hollywood when Don was writing a film. In spite of her anthropological curiosity about the “Hollywood people,” Ella, a handsome brunette and passionately political—her book about Russia, “Red Virtue,” was a best seller—was never at ease with them, but she acquired a kind of Galgenhumor about the movies as Don loved living in California. Also the four-figure weekly checks were not to be sneezed at, especially by a generous man who never failed to come to the aid of friends and causes.
The next morning, as I was preparing breakfast, the Stewarts stuck their heads through the kitchen door and announced that they wanted coffee and that we were neighbors. They had just bought the house on the corner. Amazed that the real estate office would open so early, I was very pleased.
Immediately after his demobilization Peter and Jigee decided to realize their long-cherished dream of having a ranch. Somehow Jigee liked to picture herself as a pioneer woman facing the rugged life; Peter loved the outdoors and physical work. There were still some unexploited places along the coast and he found fifteen acres of most beautiful land in Zuma Canyon, twenty miles north of Santa Monica, and only half a mile from the ocean.
It was taken for granted that the two pioneers would build their house themselves, but luckily they had good friends of whom one was a carpenter and the other a plumber. I remember that one day, when I drove out to see the progress they were making, I found Jigee sitting on the roof, nailing down shingles, and Peter, helped by his friend Robert Parrish, dragging and hewing the frames of doors and windows. Vicky, her hands full of nails, was helping too. I believe that this was the happiest time of Peter’s marriage.
I had not met many women as intelligent and spontaneously warm-hearted as Jigee. I knew that she was fond of me, however, in Peter’s presence she would often become tense and sharp. It took me a while to realize that she was jealous, even of me. Also she became restless and dissatisfied, and the pioneering in Zuma began to lose its charm. When Peter signed a contract to write a film in Switzerland—it later emerged as The Search with Montgomery Clift—she was glowing with excitement, as she had never been to Europe and was eager to see it with Peter. For a brief moment she had pangs of guilt toward Vicky, who would stay in Zuma with her grandmother Henny, and Arthur.
Only a few weeks after Jigee and Peter were gone, Melvin Frank, Henny’s son-in-law, phoned me one night that Henny had had a stroke and was in the hospital. Anne was expecting the birth of her second child at any moment and they would be grateful if I drove out to Zuma, first thing in the morning, to look after Vicky. Grandpa Ray had stayed with her overnight.
When I arrived at the white ranch house under the sycamores, Vicky, unkempt and unwashed, was standing on tiptoe at the kitchen stove, stirring the porridge. She was a wisp of a child with dark eyes and a halo of short golden curls; on the floor were little mounds of shells, stones and gulls’ feathers she had collected on the beach. Grandpa Ray was looking for something in the frigidaire. I convinced him that they should come with me to Mabery Road until we knew more about Henny’s condition. We gathered the shells and feathers, left a note for Arthur, took Bo, the Alsatian, locked the doors and drove home.
All day we waited for news. Finally Grandpa, who could not bear “sittin’ around and doin’ nothin’,” went to the hospital to find out for himself.
Vicky was already asleep when Anne arrived with Melvin. Henny had died without regaining consciousness. They had cabled Jigee, urging her to return immediately. I thought that even in her sorrow it was essential for Jigee to be with Peter, and anyway it would take her ten days to come back. I said that I would be happy if Vicky stayed with me. I wrote this to Jigee and she answered how grateful she was and how terrible it would have been for her to leave Peter.
After the first shock subsided, Grandpa left for the desert. Anne was sad and cried often, but soon her little Liz and the new baby boy absorbed her completely. Vicky became the center of Mama’s and my preoccupation, which pleased her greatly. Christopher thought I spoiled her; he believed that children should be seen but not heard.
The pleasant domesticity was interrupted by a call from Henry Blanke, producer at Warner Brothers, who wanted me to adapt a novel, Deep Valley, and write the screenplay. It was a strong and simple story. The demands of my household were easily solved, as I was earning money again! Anna, a refugee from Vienna who had often helped out in an emergency, moved in to take care of my menage and menagerie—dogs, cats and Vicky’s turtles—and I could also afford a gardener.
Work in the studio was pleasant; Blanke, intelligent and cultured, was easy to talk to and the atmosphere in the writers’ building, due to the influence of John Collier, very cheerful. An Englishman, he had introduced the four o’clock break for tea, which turned out to be a great success. We gathered in his office, and his secretary brewed pot after pot for the ever increasing number of writers who discovered a taste for it.
One expected the author of the weird Fancies and Goodnights to be somewhat “odd and eccentric,” but John was nothing of the kind. He had a round pink face, neatly parted dark hair and periwinkle eyes. Natural, simple, interested in people, he also was an inspired cook.
I had to give away my dog, Prinz, who had become unmanageable and attacked children, and it made me sad. My secretary at Warners drew my attention to an advertisement in the Tailwaggers, a magazine dedicated to the welfare of dogs. The owner of a four-months-old English sheepdog was looking for a good home for him. Of all breeds I loved the shaggy English sheepdog most, and unable to resist I called to ask when and where I could see the puppy. “Any time,” answered a woman’s polite voice.
Oliver, who had a meeting at Warners, offered to drive me. After some impatient searching in North Hollywood we found a dead-end road and a bungalow with the obligatory hibiscus bushes on the front lawn. A young, very pregnant woman stood on the porch waiting for us. She showed us into the living room, where a disconsolate three-year-old girl was clinging with both arms to the most beautiful dog I had ever seen. He was so big that I could not believe it was the four-month-old puppy; the thick, shaggy coat made him look like a medium size haystack. His color was deep, charcoal-gray with a lighter underbrush and a white mop hid his eyes; one sensed their intelligence.
“I don’t want Timmy to go!” sobbed the little girl.
The mother explained to me that with the new baby coming they had to move to another place, where it was impossible to keep a big dog. “Children forget so quickly . . . we’ll get her a kitten.”
I could see that she was most anxious to have the whole thing over with. Oliver’s sports-roadster stood in the driveway. She whistled. “Timmy adores going for a ride.” The dog came running and as soon as he saw the car went berserk with glee and jumped into the back seat. I could hear the little girl crying and I wanted to comfort her, b
ut the mother stopped me, saying we should leave quickly. Timmy did not even look back as we drove away.
Standing on the back seat like a conqueror, he put his soft paw on my shoulder. His white mane was blowing in the wind, his tongue was out, and I adored him.
Timothy’s reception at home was not enthusiastic. Anna’s only comment was a sharp: “What, another dog!” Mama found him too hairy and too emotional. Frieda the dachshund fascinated him, but I was the center of his universe and he never left my side.
Peter and Jigee returned from Europe, reclaimed Vicky, and settled down in Zuma. Jigee seemed happy; Peter had finished his novel The Line of Departure, and took a job, as I remember, with Twentieth Century-Fox.
The Nuremberg Trials were coming to an end and the pitifully small groups of survivors of Dachau and Auschwitz began to arrive in the States. The tattooed numbers on their wrists, the eyes which still reflected the horror, haunted me in sleepless nights.
There was no news from Sambor. In New York Edward contacted Jewish organizations which were tracing concentration camp survivors. I telephoned the Soviet ambassador, Mr. Umanski, in Washington, to ask his help, as Sambor was once more under Soviet rule; but I could not get through to him. A woman from Sambor informed me that she had received an unverified report about her own brother, a friend of Dusko. Apparently both had tried to escape by jumping from a train taking them to a concentration camp and were killed by the S.S. I did not tell my mother. Each morning I exerted all my cunning to get to the mailbox before she came downstairs. In that way I succeeded in intercepting a letter addressed to her. It was from Viktoria.
The Kindness of Strangers Page 39