Of course, Fred Thomson couldn’t refuse a lady’s plea, and so he showed up on set, suffered through makeup manfully, hit his marks, and played his scene as I—very respectfully—asked him to. When I saw my husband on film for the first time in the editing room, I was overjoyed. He was a natural! A star! But I knew I had to be cautious; I couldn’t push too hard. Fred would have to come to this decision on his own, and it would take time. I thought the vacation in Europe with Doug and Mary might help; he’d be the odd man out, the only one not in the business.
So we waited in our train compartment for Hollywood itself, in the form of its newly crowned king and queen, to arrive. Which it did—with the ferocity of a hurricane.
Mary and Doug burst into the train compartment where we’d been waiting, laughing, exclaiming, Mary’s arms full of flowers, Doug energetically shaking his hat, dripping with raindrops and rose petals.
“Fran! They dropped buckets of petals on us when we docked! From an aeroplane, Fran!”
“I thought they’d tear the missus to pieces, but boy, what a reception!”
Mary flung herself in my arms, the flowers scratching my cheek but I hugged her tightly anyway, while Doug, still laughing, bounded over to Fred and gave him a hearty handshake.
Even as I was caught in Mary’s slightly hysterical embrace, I saw the exchange out of the corner of my eye. Fred, so tall, loomed over compact Doug. And Doug registered this with a fleeting sour expression before pumping Fred’s hand up and down, then pretending to arm wrestle with him. Fred, however, simply pulled his giant paw away and patted Doug, fraternally—although I suspected Doug didn’t take it that way—on the back.
Uh oh, I thought. Right before Doug handed Fred his dripping umbrella to hold.
“Fran, have you ever seen such a thing?” Mary fell down onto a chair and surveyed her clothes—she had a rip on one sleeve, and her collar was torn. “I never imagined a reception like this! You’d think we were royalty!”
“We are,” Doug exclaimed, leaping over to Mary’s side. “Haven’t you read the newspapers?”
“Fran, I couldn’t have been more wrong!” Mary pulled off her hat as the train began to lurch away from the station. We would be in London within an hour. “I was so afraid of what might have happened to my career, but you know what someone said? ‘The world loves lovers,’ and that’s so true. Our fans, our dear, dear fans, couldn’t be happier for us! You should have seen the mob when we were in New York! We went to the Follies, and the show absolutely stopped when we were recognized. They must have clapped for ten minutes straight, and then Douglas had to make a speech before the show could go on!”
“I’m so happy,” I assured her. “I’m so relieved for you both.” I nestled down with Fred on a sofa, and waited for Mary to ask how our trip had been so far.
But Mary didn’t; she kept popping up from her seat to fix her hair or brush her clothes, or sit in Doug’s lap, or relate another amazing headline or letter—she and Doug had received congratulations from the White House, Buckingham Palace, from the emperor of Japan, even! She babbled and babbled, more keyed up than I’d ever seen her. And Douglas was determined to physically reenact it all, so that by the time the train slid into Waterloo Station, I was exhausted just from watching him.
Fred never said a word; he laughed and nodded in all the right places, the perfect audience. But I knew that he felt the way I did. That Doug was ridiculous—but he had always been somewhat ridiculous to me, a man who made up for a stunning lack of intellect with an excess of physicality, a full-body sleight-of-hand so that you wouldn’t notice the shortcoming. But to my dismay, Mary had changed, too. Even after so little time together, I couldn’t help but notice that she had morphed into someone—something—I could barely recognize. She’d always been so levelheaded, so earnestly anxious to be worthy of the respect and adoration of her fans—that was one of the things I loved the most about her. That she understood how much she owed others, that her position was one of privilege but never permanence. But this Mary Pickford—Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks—seemed to take all that love, adoration, for granted. As if it were her due.
I bit my tongue even as I longed to take her down a peg or two—I felt I was the only person in her life besides Charlotte who might have a chance at rescuing her from her new self, but now was not the time. The entire world, it seemed to me, was waiting for us at the station.
The moment we stepped out of our compartment we were swallowed up by the most enormous crowd I’d ever seen. Faces—so many faces! Faces eerily white in the glare of photographers’ flash-lamps, which kept bursting with frightening “pops” that punctuated the frenzied screams pounding my eardrums. I knew that I was yelling—but what, I couldn’t say, because I couldn’t hear my own voice. Pummeled from all sides, I searched for Fred, taller than anyone else, and I was able to cling to him, and scream that he should grab Mary, too, which he did; he steered the two of us through the crowd that pressed in closer, toward the waiting touring car—a car with its top down, which made me freeze with terror.
“Mary! Doug! Our Mary!”
Doug managed to grab the back of my coat; he was sputtering, reaching out to grab Mary, and I was stunned to see the anger, the jealousy in his dark eyes as he finally retrieved his wife in time to push her into the car. Someone stepped on my foot; a hand grabbed the back of my skirt as someone tried to shove me aside to get to Mary, but I wrestled out of the woman’s grip so that I could hurtle myself into the car, where I plopped down next to Fred. A glowering Doug was staring at him.
Mary, however, was flinging kisses to one and all; there was an enormous bouquet of roses in her lap, the ribbons torn to shreds, most of the petals gone from the flowers. As the car began to push away, just as Mary flung one more kiss, someone yanked her arm, and she was torn out of her seat as we all screamed in terror.
Fred grabbed her by the waist and kept her inside the car; miraculously, she was released from the crowd. She slumped back in her seat with a stunned expression on her face.
I hadn’t been able to move; I was unable to process everything that had just happened. But I managed to catch Doug’s expression, and was again shocked by the anger, the jealousy, as he glared at Fred.
“Unhand my wife, please, Thomson,” he said, and then attempted to grin his anger away. “You have your own, you know, old chap.”
“Sorry.” Fred shrugged. “I was only trying to help.”
“Well, don’t.” Doug’s eyes were deadly serious as he still tried to charm with his million-dollar movie-star smile. “I can do the job myself.”
“Of course.” Fred nodded, then we sank into silence, which was just as well, as the screams of the crowd when our car began to slowly pull away from the station made any conversation impossible. Lord, people were hanging from windows! Climbing lampposts like monkeys! Perched on the tops of roofs! Running alongside the car, panting, yelling, throwing things inside—flowers for the most part, but teddy bears and boxes of candy, too, until I was afraid we might be buried alive.
Fortunately, we pulled up to a back alley entrance of The Ritz, and bobbies were somehow able to keep the hysterical crowd from following. We got out of the car and stared at each other, panting, unbelieving; Fred and I were appalled, terrified. But Mary and Doug were grinning like they’d won a prize for something.
“Tupper, shall we?” Doug said to Mary, giving him her arm.
“Hipper, my pleasure,” Mary replied with a regal bow. They ascended the stairs to the hotel, as Fred and I fell dutifully back, a few steps behind. And I remembered there used to be a time when Mary apologized to me whenever she had to stop and sign autographs; there used to be a time when she understood how to be a friend as well as a movie star.
“Lord and lady-in-waiting to the king and queen,” I snapped.
Fred nodded, his jaw set; I’d yet to see him angry, and wondered if this was what it looked like. “I don’t know about you, Fran, but I think this could get real old, real quick.”
>
I looked ahead at Mary, arm in arm with King Douglas. The girl I knew and loved, the dedicated workaholic, the dutiful daughter, the loyal friend who sat next to me so many sultry evenings on the porch, confiding and laughing and sharing ambitions and fears and dreams—she had to still be in there. Beneath the invisible tiara that I could plainly see, perched regally on those golden curls.
“Perhaps it won’t be like this all the time,” I whispered back.
All I could do was hope, because we had several weeks ahead of us and already I was thinking that this might have been the most foolish thing I’d ever agreed to in my life. Even more foolish than going to war. Because unlike the war, this time I wasn’t so certain that I’d come through it intact.
—
The next morning, I was startled awake by a pounding on our hotel room door.
“What on earth?” I poked Fred, but he was still snoring. So I wrapped myself up in a robe and ran to the door of our suite.
Mary, clad only in a nightgown—a very sexy nightgown, I couldn’t help but notice; nothing like the prim Victorian cotton nightgowns I’d seen her in before; this was satin, with thin straps and a plunging neckline—ran into the room, her hands covering her face but even so, I could tell she was blushing.
A furious Doug, in his pajamas, came stomping in behind her.
“Oh, Fran! Fran! I never—I opened the curtains, you see! To take in the morning air, to see what our view was. And—oh, Fran!” Mary’s hands slid from her face, which was still scarlet. But her eyes were dancing with delight. “There they were! All of them—all those dear people! Hanging from trees, staring up at me from the pavement below. And they all saw me! In—this!” She gestured toward her nightgown.
Fred, sleepily tying the belt around his robe, stepped out of the bedroom, took one look at Mary in full dishabille—and more significantly, at a hopping-mad Doug—then turned on his heel and headed right back inside, shutting the door loudly.
“They saw my wife!” Doug exploded. He strode around the room, swinging his arms, his hands balled into fists. “They saw her like this!”
“Oh, Douglas!” Mary giggled, rosy and twittering, and I couldn’t help but feel that I was witnessing a play, written and performed entirely for my benefit.
“We have to move out of here! We have to go somewhere quiet!” Doug thundered.
And so we did. No one asked Fred or me if we wanted to leave; it was simply expected that if Doug and Mary wanted to go somewhere else, then so did we. Reluctantly, we bade farewell to the luxury of The Ritz to stay at a secluded estate, at the invitation of some Lord and Lady Something-or-other.
And the same exact thing happened the next morning.
—
At the Tower of London, where we were given an exclusive tour after regular hours, we tramped up and down, watched Doug hang from his hands outside a tiny stone window while Mary feigned terror, applauded as he bounded up narrow, steep stairs two at a time, as if he were filming one of his movies. It occurred to me that Doug was always on, always playing to the camera whether or not it was there.
It was a lovely day. I wanted to linger at everything—the crown jewels, the tiny room where the doomed little princes were kept—but Doug raced through it all as if he were leading a charge, pausing only to clown in front of the impassive guards in their tall, furry black hats, or to exclaim to the awestruck tour guide that he’d love to borrow some of the armor for his next movie.
“Look here, Mary,” he said when we reached the ghostly quiet of the Tower Green. “This is where Henry the Eighth beheaded all six of his wives!”
“Actually,” I said after a moment. “He only beheaded two of them, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The other four died natural deaths.”
The look Doug gave me! I hadn’t been on the receiving end of such a scolding look since I was in primary school. He pursed his lips, his eyes went dead, and with a childish huff, he turned and stalked away.
“Thank you, Fran, dear,” Mary replied as she watched Doug storm off. “How very informative! But, well—perhaps it’s best, in the future, not to contradict Douglas. You know how men are—they do love to tell us women what’s what!”
“But, Mary, you’ve never let any man tell you what’s what in all the years I’ve known you.”
“It’s not like that, Fran—it’s just—it’s just a little different, please try to understand.” Mary raised her eyebrows in such a meltingly pleading way, I had no choice but to swallow my anger, smile weakly, and nod.
Still, as Mary hurried after Doug, I hung back, taking deep breaths. How petty of that man! How fragile his ego—how strong his hold on Mary! He was so ignorant—this wasn’t the first time I’d been appalled at his lack of knowledge and, now that I thought of it, I’d never once seen him reading anything other than a fan magazine—but ignorance is one thing. Jealousy—for he was jealous of me, I realized with a small, victorious thrill—was quite another. The idiot was jealous of me, of my friendship with Mary.
Then a black mood settled over my shoulders like a heavy, musty old shawl. If I were to remain close friends with Mary, I was going to have to put up with Doug’s jealousies, flatter and soothe his vanity, swallow his insults and ignore his fits of temper.
And I didn’t want to. Being with Fred had taught me that I shouldn’t have to; that there were men in this world who weren’t threatened by women. He’d not only taught me, I realized; he’d spoiled me for any other man, forever.
“Come along, Miss Smartypants.” I looked up; Fred was smiling down at me with wry humor in his eyes. “Let’s go mollify the king. Maybe I’ll let him win at arm wrestling. That should make him happy.”
“You are the best husband in the world,” I declared as we strode, arm in arm, after Doug and Mary. “I adore you.”
“The feeling is mutual.” Fred leaned down to kiss my cheek.
I had to stifle a laugh, however, as Doug, seeing our intimacy, suddenly grabbed Mary about the waist and pulled her to him in a passionate embrace that made the tour guide—and the guards—practically swoon with admiration.
“Goodness, Douglas! What on earth has gotten into you?” Mary gasped, laughing and blushing.
Fred and I exchanged a look. But kept our mouths shut.
—
The morning of the Chelsea Garden Party. A glorious sunny day, the four of us all decked out in our finest. Mary wore a lovely dark blue organza tea dress with a fluttery wide-brimmed hat; I was in an equally lovely embroidered linen dress with a becoming satin bow. We were both in elbow-length white gloves, and we giggled as we surveyed ourselves in the mirror of my dressing room.
“Who’d have thought it, Fran? That me, little Gladys Smith from Toronto, would be all decked out, as prim and proper and fancy as the queen herself!”
“I couldn’t have imagined it, either. What a long way we’ve come!” And for a moment, as Mary beamed at me, I could almost pretend that it really was the way it used to be, between us.
Then I heard a cough, and I dropped Mary’s hand as if it were a hot stone. Turning, I beheld an impressive Doug and Fred in tails and top hats, although I couldn’t help but notice Fred was the more handsome, the lines of the tails accentuating his slim height, while Doug, to be honest, looked a little dumpy in his.
“Well, aren’t we lucky?” I asked Mary. “To be escorted by the two most handsome men in all of England?”
Fred clicked his heels and bowed, very exaggeratedly, but Doug seemed to take me at my word, for he gave me the first approving smile he’d yet to bestow, and thanked me sincerely.
Outside, we stepped into two separate open cars. “Do you think this is safe?” I asked one of the bobbies who was riding with us.
“Don’t worry,” Mary and Doug’s escort, the actor George Grossmith Jr., replied airily. “This is a civilized party. And we are a civilized people. After you, Mr. Pickford.”
Mary, Fred, and I all gasped; Doug froze, but then smiled gamely as Grossmith, recognizin
g his error, began to sputter an apology.
“It’s all right, old man. I’m flattered to be known as the man who escorted Mary Pickford to England.” And in that moment I finally found a shard of admiration and affection for Doug. At least he was no Owen Moore; how many times had I witnessed Owen, when similarly addressed, respond with fisticuffs or threats?
I settled down with Fred in our unattended car—“Presumably, our lives aren’t worth as much,” Fred whispered as I grabbed his hand and giggled—and the two motors began to thread their way through surprisingly quiet streets. I relaxed.
“Mr. Grossmith was right,” I said with relief. But then the small motorcade turned a corner, approaching the grounds of the party.
I stiffened; Fred exclaimed. For before us was a throng; a great gaping stampede of people screaming at the tops of their lungs at the first glimpse of Doug and Mary. It was far worse than the scene at Waterloo Station; as the crowd reached in and grabbed Mary, bodily tearing her out of the car, I screamed and heard Grossmith sputter, utterly appalled, “I say, unhand that lady!”
Fortunately Doug grabbed his wife about the waist and held on for dear life; in a flash, Fred had leaped out and was helping Doug stagger out of the car with his arms around Mary. Whose face registered pure terror; she was white as a sheet, her eyes huge, her mouth crookedly shaping cries and gasps.
“Mary!” I darted after Fred, and watched—again with admiration—as Doug, strong despite his small stature, managed to stay on his feet with Mary perched on his shoulders. The four policemen were simply staring at the crowd with their mouths open, so I ran up and hung on to Mary’s skirt as Fred, reliving his football days, charged in front, clearing a path as best he could.
I’d never heard such a sound—pitched shrieks and hysterical cries. Tears in people’s eyes; blind worship and adoration. At one point I locked eyes with a terrified Mary and I knew what she was thinking—of that moment when we snuck in to see the showing of The Poor Little Rich Girl, and we both first recognized the effect Mary had on a crowd. At the time it had been scary, but now it seemed like a wade in the kiddie pool compared to this desperate dive through an ocean of—well, “fans” wasn’t quite the word. What was the right word for these people, these weeping and laughing and hysterical people who so desperately needed Mary and Doug, needed to project their every hope and dream on these two who beamed upon them from their movie screens even during the darkest days of the war that, after all, had only just ended?
The Girls in the Picture Page 24