The Girls in the Picture

by Melanie Benjamin

  “The Hollywood way.”

  “I don’t like the way that sounds, but yes.”

  “I can’t wait to suggest it to Mary! But I think I’ll wait until we’re all back home. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.” I hope.

  “But will Doug?”

  I turned back to the mirror and gave my nose a final pat with the powder puff. No, Douglas Fairbanks would not be thrilled, not at all. But I knew Mary well enough; private life was one thing. Her career was quite another. That she would not bend or reshape to please her man. Any man.

  “Let’s go dancing, darling.” I rose, presented myself with a twirl, and Fred kissed my hand.

  “Like a queen,” he teased, with a grin.

  “There’s room for more than one.” I took my handsome husband’s arm, and we left for the ball. Where I found myself, astonishingly, the belle. For who was the host of this military ball but none other than my old friend Major Brereton!

  Just as Mary was introducing me as “And of course, my scenarist—” Major Brereton looked at me and exclaimed, “Lieutenant Marion!”

  “Major—I mean, General!” I saluted smartly, noting the gleaming star on his uniform. Then we both laughed and shook hands; he seemed genuinely happy to see me.

  “What, Fran? Who is this?” Mary’s eyes were wide with wonder, while Doug’s smile was a little tight, but still professionally magnetic.

  “Someone who once told me a woman’s place was not in a war.” I smiled at the general.

  “A statement I still stand by.” General Brereton bowed. “However, the lieutenant here was as brave a soldier as I’ve seen, and while I didn’t exactly enjoy escorting her across the Rhine, I have to say it wasn’t a hardship, either. She required no special handling. She refused offers of help, if I recall. And we’ve all seen your film over here, American Women in the War. It was very enlightening.” He nodded tersely, and I knew that would be all he would praise me for my work. But it was, at least, praise.

  All of a sudden I was acutely aware that I was wearing a shimmering, low-cut ball gown and not a mud-splattered uniform. Still, I did not imagine the respect in General Brereton’s eyes—and in the eyes of Fred and, surprisingly, Mary. Mary had really never seen me out of her shadow; she’d not had a chance to witness me on my own. I was touched: Mary could still be genuinely happy for me.

  “We’re so proud of Fran,” Mary burst out, and the evening was simply perfect, after the disappointment of the morning.

  “Miss Pickford, might I open the ball with you?” The general remembered his duties and his manners; Mary was the guest of honor, and it was protocol for the two of them to dance the first dance.

  Mary rose, a delighted smile upon her lips. Until Doug stood, too, and grabbed her by the arm. I held my breath, poised to leap to my friend’s aid, but Doug didn’t go any further than that; he didn’t yank her back or grip her too tightly.

  With another stiff little smile, he said, softly but so that every one of us at the table could hear, “You promised me, Tupper, darling. Remember? You promised that you’d never dance with any other man. Only me.”

  It took all of my self-control not to remind Doug that this was simply ornamental, a matter of protocol, nothing more. It was what was done. Surely he couldn’t expect Mary, with her public profile requiring so many of these formal events, never to dance with anyone but him?

  Mary’s face fell, but then she looked up at Doug, and her eyes softened with understanding as she spoke to him tenderly, almost as a mother to a petulant son. “Of course, Douglas. Of course I remember. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry, General, but as you can see, I made a promise to my husband.”

  And with that, Mary took her seat again, and General Brereton was left looking ridiculous.

  But only for a moment. With a polite nod to Mary, he turned to me and bowed. Delighted, I walked toward him. And I smiled at my handsome, proud husband as the music started and the general began to twirl me around in a sober, stiff-armed waltz. I smiled at Mary, as well. And nodded sympathetically when she flashed me a little grimace, a little shrug.

  But that didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the spotlight as it fell on me with blinding, unexpected—but most welcome—brilliance.

  After their triumphant honeymoon, they came home to Pickfair, Douglas’s former hunting lodge high up the mountain in the Beverly Hills that they’d remodeled into a mock-Tudor castle worthy of the new king and queen: four stories, twenty-five rooms, stables, tennis courts. They came home to their own studios, which had been built while they were away. They came home to reign over Hollywood, hand in hand.

  Every morning Mary awoke in a bed so enormous it could have held her, Mama, Lottie, and Jack back in the day, along with all their costumes and hand props. A bed as big as the biggest room they’d ever all crammed into on the road. A bed as big as the future.

  And Douglas was there, right beside her, always clad in the finest linen pajamas. They rose, and Douglas commenced his calisthenics, jumping jacks and handsprings and sit-ups and somersaults, then went off to jog around the house for a while. When they dressed, they went to separate dressing rooms; Mary’s closets were hung with the finest fashions, sober but luxurious suits, dainty tea dresses, beaded or chiffon evening gowns—all a bit more sophisticated than what Papa Zukor had always picked out for her. She was Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks now; she would dress accordingly.

  If she was going to the studio, she always chose a suit; it was awkward enough having to attend business meetings between takes in costume as a little girl. At least when she first arrived, people would see her as who she was: the head of a major Hollywood studio.

  Douglas’s closets were filled with fifty pairs of handmade shoes, fine linen and silk shirts, tailored suits, custom tuxedos, as well as dungarees and flannel shirts and pants for his various athletic endeavors—golf and tennis and polo and rowing and riding. But usually he was dressed in a suit when he joined her in the soothing breakfast room with its eggshell-colored walls. For breakfast, even if they had houseguests, it was typically only the two of them. Their guests could sleep until noon, but Douglas and Mary had to be at the studio by seven.

  After eating sparingly, both of them—Douglas had a tendency to put on weight even with his vigorous exercise regime, while Mary, of course, had to look as slender as a little girl on-screen—they stepped into the waiting car, a 1920 Hudson touring limousine, driven by a liveried chauffeur. Mary would sit up straight and inhale the perfumed air, surveying her kingdom of gardens and stables and the first in-ground swimming pool in Los Angeles, one of Douglas’s many gifts. In that pool was a canoe; they often posed in it with guests for photographers.

  Winding their way down the hilly drive, they sometimes remarked on a new house going up, for more and more movie people were building homes in the Hollywood hills. Aeries, where they could perch and survey their kingdom. But none ascended higher than Pickfair; none dared.

  If they had a little extra time, Mary would speak into the tube-like apparatus that allowed her to talk to the chauffeur, ensconced behind a window, and ask him to stop at Charlotte’s cozy little cottage at the foot of the hill. Of course, Mary had assumed that Mama would live with them at Pickfair, but Douglas had most vehemently said no to that, and built Mama her own house down the hill.

  Mary would knock on the door, which was always answered by Mama herself; what her two servants did all day, Mary had no idea. For Charlotte insisted on doing everything herself. Mary would kiss Mama on the cheek and say hello to her niece, little Gwynnie, if she was up—goodness, the little girl looked exactly like her mother, poor thing!—then invite Mama to dinner if Douglas was amenable, or promise her a lunch over the weekend if he was not.

  It wasn’t that he wasn’t amenable, she corrected herself. Douglas loved Mama. But sometimes, there simply wasn’t room. And Mama wasn’t always comfortable around some of their more refined guests, Mary had to admit after Douglas pointed this out.

  After the mor
ning ritual, she’d step back into the car—Douglas would have been reading the newest fan magazine while she was inside—and they’d take off toward the studio, passing the Hollywood Hotel, rows of neat little houses, orange groves, down Sunset, with its wide bridle path in the center of the boulevard. They’d drive by studios, some destined for oblivion almost as soon as the last nail had been hammered, the business was becoming so crowded; others established, like Famous Players–Lasky and Mack Sennett’s madhouse.

  Then they’d turn into the gate of their studio. Pickford Fairbanks Studio, as the sign said, and Mary never drove beneath those arches without at least a little smile of satisfaction, before she assumed the dignity required of her. Douglas did, too, and the two of them would look at each other with wide eyes, and hold hands in supreme satisfaction.

  And then they drove into their kingdom.

  Eighteen acres at the corner of Santa Monica and Formosa. The former Hampton studios. When United Artists was formed, it was a studio without a lot; the business offices were established in New York City, where all studio business offices were located. Charlie had built his own studio only a year or two before, when he’d signed with First National (another studio without a real shooting lot). So he had his own lot, and Griffith still worked across the country at his studio on Long Island. Which left Douglas and Mary without a place to shoot their movies, so they’d snapped up the Hampton studio and refurbished it.

  Sometimes—many times—Mary lay awake at night, going through the ledgers in her mind. Each partner had to put up their own financing for their own movies (and their own studio lots). United Artists was privately owned; there was no stock, no investors, no bankers—precisely the point, because there were no money men to answer to, to have to please: recut a film when they didn’t like it, make what they thought you should make, not what you wanted to. But that left the studio dangerously undercapitalized, floating from picture to picture, and they also, alone of the major studios, did not have their own chain of movie theaters for distributorship. Hiram Abrams in the New York office had decided they would rent theaters, and coaxed the owners to pay their rental fees in advance, promising only the next Mary Pickford or Douglas Fairbanks—which was enough, of course. Still, unlike studios such as Famous Players, United Artists didn’t have a year’s worth of pictures already in the can to sell, a catalog the salespeople could go out and hawk. Running a business and making movies meant slowing things down; at the most, Mary felt she and Douglas could put out two or three films a year apiece. Chaplin and Griffith were even slower.

  Still, it was worth it, the agonizing over every penny, every costume, every prop. For they were free, they were in charge. They were DougandMary.

  They would walk to their respective dressing room/office bungalows, blowing kisses at the very last. Then makeup, costume, going over the day’s shooting schedule, signing the checks and forms. Then shooting all morning under the hot lights. A break for lunch together in one of their bungalows, usually in costume, usually a photographer there to capture the quaintness of Little Mary in her pinafore dining with Douglas in his dashing pirate’s outfit. Sometimes Charlie would join them in his Little Tramp costume, even if he wasn’t filming. It was all for publicity. All for the studio.

  Then more filming, often late into the evening. Some evenings Mary was too exhausted to change clothes, so she went home in costume, dined in costume, only removing it when she went to bed. Even though the thing would be stiff with perspiration, she never stopped marveling that it was made for her, and her alone; that the years of putting on stained and ripped costumes encrusted with the perspiration of all the other actresses who had come before were over. Long over. Even when she was slumped in her dining room chair, tiredly picking at her dinner dressed as a ragamuffin, she still was able to remember how far she’d come, and breathe a swift prayer of thanksgiving.

  Still, those exhausting evenings—sometimes all she could do was run a rough towel over her face before dinner, to remove at least the top layer of the heavy camera makeup that suffocated her pores—were the evenings she preferred. Those were the evenings when it was only she and Douglas dining together, side by side at their enormous dining room table, talking about their days, discussing camera setups (although Douglas relied far more on his director than Mary did), casting, publicity. She’d usually try to get him to think ahead about marketing, for he was prone to putting that off. But good marketing had to start early. Billboards, she was always telling him! Billboards sell movies and you have to secure those weeks ahead of time!

  But too many evenings weren’t like this. Too many evenings were Douglas’s favorite evenings—evenings when the house was packed with guests, the dining table at capacity. Everyone visiting Hollywood now wanted to visit Pickfair first; it was like the Buckingham Palace of California, someone said—probably Charlie. And Mary thought that was only appropriate. So, like King George and Queen Mary, she put up with the inconvenience, the loss of privacy, for it was her duty.

  “How’s the duke, Doug?” Charlie once asked during lunch at the studio.

  “What duke?” Douglas looked up in surprise.

  “Oh, any old duke,” Charlie replied airily, and Douglas and Mary both laughed. Because Charlie was right; a week without some duke, any old duke, visiting Pickfair was rare indeed.

  Douglas loved it; the more royal, the better. Potentates and politicians, too. Charlie was there; Charlie was always there to make Doug laugh, to egg him on. Mary once asked him if he ever dined at his own house, to which Charlie replied, “But your cook is so much better than mine, Mary!”

  Well, he was. Because Mary made sure of it. It was her obligation to make Pickfair the most fabulous symbol of Hollywood, the most refined, sophisticated, and elegant. She could still wince at her lack of education, look back with horror at her hardworking, ragtag childhood. Now that she was queen, she must represent Hollywood to the rest of the world, give it legitimacy, refinement. She owed it everything.

  So she made sure that not only her cook was the best in Hollywood, she made sure everything at Pickfair was the best in Hollywood. The linens, the carpets, the drapes, the china, the silver, the gold plate. Fortunately Douglas was a teetotaler, so she didn’t have to worry about the awkwardness of serving fine wine during Prohibition and pretending it was left over from before. And she always had her own sip of gin before dinner, sometimes after, in the privacy of her dressing room.

  It didn’t hurt anyone, her little occasional nip. She had to hide it from Jack and Lottie, of course, who would have taken it for themselves. And who, the poor dears, definitely did have a problem. Lottie had gone through two husbands, left her little daughter to be raised by Charlotte, with Mary’s help. Jack had married that little Olive Thomas, who had died hideously in Paris from an overdose, and so it wasn’t only alcohol that gripped him. Those two had the family curse. Mama, too, probably, but then again it didn’t matter, for Mama deserved every bit of comfort she could take, and she didn’t make a scene or get herself arrested like Mary’s siblings. She drank quietly in her own home.

  But Mary, of course, didn’t have to worry about any of that, because she was fine. So she nipped a little before dinner? Who wouldn’t, when faced with the daunting responsibilities she had? Who wouldn’t be slightly intimidated by the thought of the duke of York staying the night and reporting back to the queen of England herself how he’d been treated at Pickfair? Toronto was never far away when Mary was dressed, draped in diamonds, and waiting to descend her grand staircase and greet her famous guests. How could she, little Gladys Smith, talk to people like George Bernard Shaw? Only a small glass—teeny-tiny!—of gin would calm her nerves and unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth. And Douglas need never know, because she was so discreet; she always gargled with Listerine after.

  Miraculously, that nip would get her through the evening and at precisely ten o’clock, no matter what they were doing—playing charades in the library, watching a new film starring one
of their guests—Mary rang for the butlers to show up with cups of Ovaltine for everyone, the signal that it was time to go to bed.

  After all, everyone, except visiting royalty, did have to go to work early on the morrow.

  And work was the thing that Mary craved—simple work. Oh, those days when it was her and Frances and Mickey on the set, only worrying about their art, what the camera captured. Not worrying about the money it required. Mary longed for those days, and perhaps that’s why she agreed to star in Frances’s directorial debut for United Artists, The Love Light.

  “Mary, let me tell you a story,” Frances had said in Europe, one afternoon when Douglas and Fred were off doing manly things. Frances and Fred had been to Italy prior to meeting the Fairbankses in Southampton. “I saw this beautiful girl in a small Italian village. You know some of the German soldiers were kept safe in Italy, when their ships were wrecked offshore. This girl was a heroine. She had been a lighthouse keeper with her father and when a ship ran aground, she fell in love with the soldier. But months later she found out he was a spy, using the lighthouse lamp to signal German ships. And despite her love, she turned him in, and he was executed. The villagers told me this story, and pointed to the beautiful Italian girl with brown eyes—and the fair-haired baby with blue eyes in her arms. And I thought, this would make a movie. A wonderful movie. Don’t you agree?”

  “It will be my next one!” Mary was still soaring from the dizzying heights of her marriage, her fame, the likes of which had never been seen. The newspapers bore this out; after their European honeymoon, the press spent oceans of ink trying to puzzle what had happened in normally staid, stoic England. Why respectable people had thrown themselves at Doug and Mary—who before had been merely movie stars—and wept and torn their clothing and seemed so desperate with need for them, to see them, to be in their presence.