The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel

  Scribbled in pencil on a page torn from a notebook, she wrote that she was anxious to know how we all were, how we had survived the war and added that she was sorry to give us bad news about Dusko: “In 1943 he came to my house begging me to hide him, but as we are living in a rented place I could not do it, and since the last German Aktion I have not heard from him again.” She was not on speaking terms with Hania, who had left Sambor with Adam. She, Viktoria, and her husband, were well. They had four children and “would Salka, who had always been like a sister to me, send us a food parcel?”

  A cold horror took hold of me. The German word “Aktion,” the only one clearly written and correctly spelled, killed all my hope that Dusko was alive. I prayed that the story of his desperate escape were true, that he had been spared the gas chamber. All her life Viktoria had been a member of our family, and the callousness of her report was so shocking that it took me a long time to recover.

  I wrote her that she had forfeited the right to appeal to my sisterly feelings. She had cruelly denied shelter to a hunted Jew, whose father and mother had given her love and devoted care since she was born, and that she had allied herself with murderers and torturers. My tears stained the paper and I had to stop. Could I reproach this cowardly woman for not risking her life? Hadn’t others, more powerful than she, stood by indifferently when these unspeakable horrors took place? She was only one among millions. And to think that it was the same little Viktoria, who in her nightshirt had followed me to Papa’s room and climbed on his bed and like a bird ate the corn kernels from his hand.

  I tore up the letter, mailed a CARE package to Sambor, and never told Mama what Viktoria had written. But Mama must have sensed that I was keeping bad news from her. She stopped going to the mailbox, her trembling got worse and she could no longer write to Rose and Edward. Her attempts to type were touching but unsuccessful. While I was in the studio Else Reinhardt and Miss Wiesen (short for Wiesenthal from Augsburg), a new friend and courageous soul displaced into Hollywood households, used to come and keep her company.

  In the evening she would talk to me about people who were dead long ago, like old Lamet, the tall, white-bearded Jew, who had owned the inn at Wychylowka.

  “He died on a cold, sunny, winter day—a Saturday,” Mama said. “They all had gone to the synagogue and left him with his great-grandchildren, two little girls of four and five. He was sitting on the bench by the stove, and the little girls were singing and dancing on the bright spot the sun made on the floor. Their mother came home and said something to old Lamet, but he did not answer. She saw that he was dead. He had a beautiful death . . . You remember how many children and grandchildren they had?” I remembered and I thought of “the last German Aktion” in 1943.

  41

  THE SCREENPLAY OF Deep Valley was almost finished when the studio workers went on strike. It started with the set dressers demanding higher wages and recognition as a separate union, then the carpenters, painters and readers (story analysts) joined. The latter and the cartoonists—young men and women in blue jeans, and pullovers, red scarves around their necks, cigarettes sticking in the corners of their mouths—were conspicuously the fermenting element of the “revolution.” Sympathetic to their cause, I contributed to the strike fund.

  Then pickets lined up in front of Warner Brothers and writers and secretaries had separate meetings in the cafeteria opposite the studio to decide whether they should cross the line. One of the writers suggested that we had better wait and see what the secretaries decided, because he “could not dream of working without his secretary.” This sounded convincing and we stepped out onto the sidewalk to watch what the “girls” would do. About thirty of them came out and for a while they stood undecided, watching the slowly moving pickets and the studio police, who were protecting the entrance. Finally an energetic young woman threw back her head, said “What the hell!” and ran defiantly across the street and through the passive picket line. The others promptly followed; only two, one of them my secretary, hesitated. I went up to them and asked what had happened at the meeting. They told me that at first most of them sympathized with the strikers but one girl, who had worked for Ayn Rand, swayed them by insisting that the strikers were just a bunch of communists and that a decent person had to be against them. . . .

  The writers decided to stay out until the mass picket lines were withdrawn, but the writer who had been collaborating with me on the final version of the screenplay, declared that he refused to be “intimidated” and would be on hand in his office. I said I would not, and Henry Blanke, our producer, suggested that we work at home and have our conferences at his house.

  It was customary at Warner Brothers that when a film was to be previewed the producers, director, writers and technicians (but not the actors) who had worked on it dined with Mr. Warner. And so after Deep Valley was finished, I was invited to the executive dining room before we all took off to one of the Warner Brothers’ theaters on the periphery of Los Angeles county. The atmosphere around the table had the same ostentatious “camaraderie” I had noticed at similar functions at MGM. I imagine such also must have been the Gemütlichkeit when Stalin’s staff was dining with their boss.

  Mr. Warner was telling us about the communist menace and that thousands of Jews had been killed in Russia. He asked me how my mother escaped. I said that my mother had lived two years under Soviet rule, and that in my hometown, Sambor, Jews had been treated decently during the Soviet occupation, and that official anti-semitism did not exist. My collaborator interrupted smilingly: “Salka is a communist, Mr. Warner.” It was supposed to be a joke—but it prompted Blanke to jump to my defense: “She is not!” he said. “One need not be a communist to say that Soviet anti-semitism is not to be compared to the horrors the Nazis committed.”

  I said: “It is just as unconstitutional in Russia as it is here, but uncontrollable in individuals.” As no one could deny that anti-semitism existed in America the discussion ended.

  The preview was a success, and Mr. Warner especially expressed his great satisfaction with the screenplay. This was the last time I was to work at a major studio, but it took me several years to realize why.

  I had paid off debts and a large part of the mortgage, my name was on the credit list of an interesting film, and my agent was optimistic about my future employment. For a while I could have managed with the money I had earned, if the U.S. Treasury had not suddenly dug up past taxes that Berthold still owed. Only a new mortgage—“refinancing” the bank called it—could save the house. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” says Blanche Dubois in Streetcar Named Desire—well, so have I: a New York dramatist, as I remember one of the first clients of the now legendary Mr. I. P. Lazar, had signed a fabulous contract with one of the studios, and wanted a house near the beach. The rent he offered me was enough to pay the monthly installments on the mortgage and also left a small sum for food, telephone and gasoline. Mama and I liked fruit, vegetables and cottage cheese, and we could also afford a pound of meat for Timmy, who was no longer a puppy.

  My tenants had no need for the garage apartment and as Christopher had left on one of his long voyages, this time to South America, I decided to move to his room. Mama preferred the one downstairs, previously Peter’s den, panelled with pine, with bookshelves and all the books she wanted to read. Each of us had a bathroom. The roof-deck provided a grand view of the sea and the Canyon. There I cooked our meals on the electric plate, a present from Greta. To ease the transition from bourgeois comfort to narrow bohemian quarters, Aldous and Maria offered me and Mama a house they had in Wrightwood, a mountain resort on the edge of the Mojave Desert. They insisted we take it for a few weeks as they themselves had moved to another one more suitable for them. Of course Timmy was also invited. That summer Edward could not come to Santa Monica. He and Clara had only a brief holiday and were spending it in Canada. Their absence, and a tragic event which no longer permitted me to see my niece Margret, increased the sad emptiness of
this summer. Mama was very depressed and I thought a change of scene would be good for her.

  In a remote way Wrightwood reminded me of the Carpathian Mountains. Its landscape was not yet spoiled by real-estate billboards, and bungalows and log cabins were haphazardly scattered in the woods. Instead of the smell of wild berries and mushrooms, one was rewarded with dry whiffs of sage, which the wind blew from the desert.

  We had a lot of space in the house and I induced Greta to come to Wrightwood and stay with us. The Huxleys and Krishnamurti, the gentle philosopher from Ojai, Friedrich and Iris Ledebur, with their adolescent son Christian (still “Boon” to us), were also in Wrightwood. It was one of Friedrich’s endearing qualities to attach himself to saints and philosophers, although he himself rarely showed mystic inclinations.

  After our return, undaunted I settled down to work on an original screenplay. On Sundays Mama and I would drive out to Zuma where the younger generation gathered: Irwin and Marian Shaw, who spent their summers in a beach house not far from Peter and Jigee, and a charming young couple, Bob and Cathy Parrish. There were picnics and hotdogs and much reminiscing about the war. Very few of the young writers and directors were interested in Brecht’s Galileo which was performed at the Coronet Theatre in Beverly Hills, directed by Joseph Losey. Charles Laughton, who had translated it, was a superb Galileo; otherwise the performance was uneven. But many scenes were very impressive. The Beverly Hills audience did not understand the play nor did it care for it. The success of Galileo, just like Brecht’s and Losey’s, had to bide its time.

  Our modest quarters limited my hospitality; nevertheless friends dropped in for tea and a chat on my “terrace.” Restless and uprooted, Eleonora and Francesco Mendelssohn would appear during their brief visits to California; Eleonora persisting in her heroic determination to gain a place in the American theater, Francesco either terribly depressed or unduly elated, too eccentric even for Hollywood. Both had nobly rejected the idea of returning to Berlin: “The name Mendelssohn obliges.” The Grünewald villa was a heap of ashes but the Rembrandts, Titians, Corots, van Goghs and Goyas had been saved, and restored to their Italian mother.

  It was around that time that George Schlee became an increasingly important influence in Garbo’s life. A Russian lawyer, he had emigrated to the United States and was managing the maison de couture of his talented wife Valentina. Broadway actresses and the most exclusive of “The four hundred” were dressed by her. Educated, intelligent and hospitable in the old Russian manner, Schlee was well liked in society, and literary and artistic circles. He persuaded Garbo to spend part of the year in New York, trying to alter her rejection of a more social life. The summers always brought her back to California and she would rent a house in Santa Monica or Beverly Hills. Perennially beautiful, she would appear unexpectedly to fetch me for walks on the beach, and wistfully we would discuss a vague idea for a film no one would want to make. However, it appeared we were both wrong, because one day George Cukor called and invited me to lunch. It was ages since I had seen him. As always, he was bubbling with ideas and good humor. He began telling me how disgraceful it was that in six years MGM had not been able to find a story for Garbo, their greatest and most international star. He had just read a biography of George Sand and was certain that it contained all the romantic elements for a Garbo film. I had never thought of Garbo as George Sand but Cukor’s enthusiasm was infectious. When I was fourteen I had devoured her interminable novels Indiana and Consuelo, and I remembered my grandmother’s indignation about her morals. Nevertheless, I thought that most of George Sand’s biographers were biased, condescending and ironical. Only a few condoned her many lovers, her trousers and her socialism. Cukor suggested we talk to Garbo. She was in favor of the project.

  Luckily, a friend and neighbor in the Canyon had rescued from the Nazis some of his valuable French books, and lent me George Sand’s letters to Alfred de Musset, Chopin, Liszt, to her lawyer, to the tutor of her children and to her despicable husband. More dramatic and interesting than the well-known relationship with Chopin was her passionate affair with the young, dissipated, alcoholic genius Alfred de Musset. George Sand’s Elle et Lui, Leone Leoni, Le Journal Intime, Musset’s poems, his Confessions de l’Enfant du Siècle, and all those grandiose outbursts in their letters had recorded, as on a fever chart, the ups and downs of a love they considered immortal. What an advantage it was for posterity that they had no telephone!

  It took me more than six months of intense work to write a film treatment. As Cukor predicted, great interest was immediately shown by British Independents. In Hollywood Walter Wanger, in association with Eugene Frenke, took an option on my script. Afraid of the technical difficulties and the hardships in post-war Europe, Garbo chose them as producers. However, having seen La Duchesse de Langeais, a French film (with Edwige Feuillère) from a distinguished screenplay by Jean Giraudoux, Wanger, for the usual Hollywood reasons, found the Duchess more “worthy of Garbo” than the less blue-blooded and more Red-oriented George Sand. As my main objective was that Greta resume her artistic career, I did not try to argue. I told myself that it was much safer to remake a French film than plunge, under Wanger’s guidance, into the vortex of George Sand’s passion. George Cukor bowed out. Wanger engaged Sally Benson, the author of Junior Miss, to write a new screenplay of La Duchesse de Langeais. Garbo was unhappy with it and Wanger promised it would be rewritten, but the film proved difficult to finance and the project collapsed. The display of dilettantism, inflated egos, incompetence, and a hypocritical, indecent disregard for the sensibilities of a great actress had been unsurpassed, even in the history of films. It made Garbo once and for all renounce the screen.

  •

  The “Hearings of the U.S. Congressional Committee Regarding the Communists’ Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” had started in Los Angeles. Only the satirical genius of Karl Kraus could have done justice to the personalities of Congressmen J. Parnell Thomas, Rankin and Stripling, and their utterances. The investigations were timed to influence the forthcoming Presidential elections. A third party emerged in American politics, supported by “Arts, Sciences and Professions” and called the Progressive Party, which nominated Henry Wallace.

  As the film workers’ strike went on, through many phases and jurisdictions, the Un-American Committee subpoenaed writers, actors, and union organizers suspected of Leftist activities. Jack Warner and L. B. Mayer had to explain why they had made such subversive films as Mission to Moscow and Song of Russia. William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives was attacked but spiritedly defended by its courageous director and producer. “Friendly witnesses”—self-appointed Redbaiters—eagerly denounced their colleagues. On television one could see chairman Thomas’s bloated face and hear his voice, which he drowned by the incessant pounding of the gavel. Was it possible that there were people who had voted for this man?

  The hearings in Los Angeles preceded the big show in Washington, where nineteen writers and directors had been subpoenaed. “Progressive” Hollywood protested and formed the Committee for the First Amendment. More than five hundred prominent Americans signed a protest against the hearings. Large sums were given for publicity and nationwide broadcasts. Thomas Mann was cheered when he addressed a meeting, saying: “I have the honor to expose myself as a hostile witness. I testify that I am very much interested in the moving-picture industry and that since my arrival in the United States nine years ago, I have seen a great many Hollywood films. If communist propaganda had been smuggled into them it must have been most thoroughly buried. I, for one, never noticed anything of the sort . . . As an American citizen of German birth I finally testify that I am painfully familiar with certain political trends. Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged ‘state of emergency’ . . . That is how it started in Germany. . . .”

  Of the nineteen summoned to Washington, eight were quietly dropped from the list of the Un-American Committee, t
he others became the Hollywood Ten. The eleventh, Bertolt Brecht, was an alien and took a different stand. I listened to the radio. Extremely punctilious about the interpretations of his poems, which the Committee suspected were Marxist, he explained to Chairman Thomas: “Of course I studied Marx. I do not think intelligent plays can be written today without such a study.”

  The Committee was baffled, but did not permit him to read a statement. They asked if he knew Gerhard Eisler, a German Communist held on bail by the U.S. Immigration authorities, and a brother of Hanns. “Did Eisler visit you when he was in Los Angeles?”

  “Yes,” said Brecht, “he did.”

  “To what purpose?” asked Mr. Thomas suspiciously.

  “We used to play chess,” said Brecht.

  “Did you discuss politics?”

  In his calm, friendly voice Brecht answered: “Yes, we also discussed politics.”

  I could hear the audience laugh, the pounding of the gavel, and then the sixty-four-dollar question (I have never found out why it was worth sixty-four): “Mr. Brecht, have you ever been or are you now a member of the Communist Party?”

  “No,” said Brecht. The Committee was utterly unprepared for this, and even some of Brecht’s friends were surprised. The Chairman could do nothing else but thank him for having been a cooperative witness. Immediately after the hearing Brecht boarded an airplane, which took him to Switzerland. Then he went to East Berlin. Several weeks later Helli sold the house in Santa Monica and followed with the children.