The Girls in the Picture

by Melanie Benjamin

  Still, apparently they didn’t speak well enough; they were told to broaden their vowels, speak slower, and hit every consonant equally hard. It wasn’t unheard of, these days, for dinner parties to end with all the guests sitting around the table hearing each other recite, sharing tips and breathing exercises. Gone were the wild days of drunken charades after dinner; now everyone was sober as a judge, for tomorrow, or the next day, they had to face a sound test at the studio.

  “He has a voice! John Barrymore has a voice!” Mary was visiting MGM one day when a young man—earphones still clamped over his ears—stepped out of a small building and proclaimed it to all the land, jumping up and down with triumph.

  You either “had a voice” or you didn’t. And many of Mary’s contemporaries did not. Vilma Banky, who’d done so well with Goldwyn with her delicate blond beauty, playing against suave male stars like Valentino and Ronald Coleman, unfortunately had a guttural Hungarian accent and could barely speak English. She announced her “retirement” shortly after her sound test. Ramon Novarro, who was so boyishly charming on-screen, had a Mexican accent that made him sound like anybody’s gardener. His career was over.

  So was Aileen Pringle’s, John Gilbert’s, Alma Rubens’s, Pola Negri’s. Overnight, houses were on the market, cars were being sold, belongings shipped back to wherever their owners had come from. And an army of new hopefuls was marching east from New York—and Broadway. Talent scouts filled the bulk of the seats at Broadway plays and fought over anyone with two legs, a pretty or handsome face, and a pleasing speaking voice. Acting skill not required.

  Mary and Douglas, ensconced at Pickfair, untouchable—at least for a while—put it off for as long as they could, as did a few other stars like Clara Bow and Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo. Charlie refused even to wire his studio, he was so disgusted by the idea of sound. “But you have to,” they pleaded with him. “We can’t ignore this. Our films have to turn a profit!”

  “The Little Tramp can’t speak. It would break the spell,” he said, his own voice—a pleasant baritone with traces of a cockney accent—ironically perfect for sound.

  But Mary and Douglas couldn’t afford to be so self-righteous. Fortunately, they were their own bosses and so didn’t have to go through the terror of a sound test, knowing they could be let go any minute. They refurbished Pickford-Fairbanks studios for sound productions at enormous cost, and prepared to make their first talkies. Well, Douglas fudged a bit; his first “talkie” was the silent The Iron Mask, but he recorded a prologue in which he recited a poem; his voice was good for sound, although Mary could tell that his heart wasn’t really in it. Douglas was all action, all movement—like Charlie in certain ways, although Charlie’s movements were controlled, small, and Douglas’s were enormous leaps and bounds. Still, they shared a same graceful physicality. And in sound, of course, you couldn’t move more than a few inches away from the microphone.

  Mary’s first talkie would be Coquette, a film in which she would play a southern flapper, a flirt, whose lover is murdered by her father. Shorn curls, a grown-up role, and sound—all at once, her career was staked on terrifyingly unfamiliar ground. And Mama wasn’t here to guide her and tell her everything would be fine.

  No wonder she “went to bed” very early the night before.

  That first day on the set was terrifying! Always, she looked forward to the first day of shooting; her crew remained the same, they were all one big happy family who looked forward to working together. They respected and deferred to Mary but she also felt protected by them on set. Everyone wanted her to succeed, to look and act her best, because their paychecks depended on it.

  The moment she walked on the set for Coquette—on rubbery legs—she saw the trepidation in every eye, even the lowliest grip. Even those whose jobs had nothing to do with sound, like the costume ladies, looked deathly pale. As if this was no longer a film set, but death row.

  Back in 1909, when she first started out, everyone was unsure of themselves, too. But it was different; back then nobody had anything to lose. They could take risks without worrying about the consequences because who cared? They’d all just go back to what they were doing before, touring or on Broadway or vaudeville, living out of a trunk because that’s all they knew.

  Now, however, Mary—and her director, her cameraman, the lighting director, all the crew, the extras, especially the new sound engineer—had everything to lose. Mary most of all.

  Everything was so strange on a talkie set! The comforting thing about filming silent movies, oddly, was all the noise. The noise of the camera, whirring and clacking. The director calling out directions and cues as the camera was whizzing away. The orchestra playing mood music. It had taken a special concentration to perform among all that chaos, but there was something safe about it, too. The hum of collaboration, the din of happy professionals who knew their jobs. It was a safety net, all that racket; it was what they all knew, had invented themselves, this method of making movies.

  But now the slightest noise could be picked up by the sound engineer. The camera, once so mobile, so friendly—Mary’s shadow, following her faithfully as she clowned around—was encased in a giant soundproof closet. It couldn’t move, and neither could the actors; all staging had to be static. The microphones did not have a big range, and were large and unwieldy; they were often placed in vases of flowers or hidden in lampshades, and the actors were always positioned right next to them, unable even to turn their heads.

  Outside the soundstage—that’s what they were called, these enormous, cement-block, soundproof buildings where they now filmed—it was different, as well. No more dashing in and out of sets to watch what was being filmed, laughing along at the jokes or sobbing at the tragedy being portrayed. Concrete paved over everything, even the beautiful flower gardens, to deaden the sound, and huge red lights ominously flashed when filming was going on, to prevent anyone from opening a door and ruining a take.

  Mary’s biggest tool as an actress, aside from her face, had always been her supple body; now she had to stand or sit perfectly still so as not to rustle her dress; the microphone would pick up even the softest movement of fabric and magnify it ten times over, ruining the take.

  But she had a voice. She was stage-trained. And so, while far from confident about the final result, she wasn’t afraid of speaking on film; she declaimed loudly, distinctly, clipping every consonant, broadening every vowel as she’d been instructed. When filming was finished, while no one knew for sure what the reception would be, neither did anyone rush out to sell their homes. There was a feeling of a job done as best it could be, under these strange new circumstances.

  Coquette did well; reviews were, for the most part, encouraging and of course, as Mary’s first talkie, her fans came out in droves so the box office was decent. Little Mary Grows Up, the headlines screamed, and she even won an Academy Award—the second one in history—for Best Actress.

  Of course, she and Douglas—along with L. B. Mayer, Cecil B. DeMille, Fred Niblo, Conrad Nagel, and others—had been instrumental in founding the Academy in 1927. Some people carped about her win but Mary felt that truly, she had been awarded only for her performance, not all the money she had donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She was very proud when she received her statuette; the standing ovation was heartfelt, for if Mary Pickford could succeed in talkies, then so could the rest of them. Mary should have been relieved; she should have assumed the danger had passed, and all would be rosy again, just like it had been, before. Before Mama died; before the talkies came.

  But she was not relieved; she couldn’t help but think that the success of Coquette was simply curiosity on the part of a public who wanted to hear Mary Pickford’s voice. And now that they had, there was no reason to return. Unless she gave them one.

  “Let’s do a movie together, the two of us—the king and queen. A grand love story to resemble our own,” she suggested to Douglas, who was—losing interest? In her? Or in himself? Or in Hol
lywood?

  Douglas did not feel the urge, as Mary did, to reinvent himself for sound. “Maybe this is it, Tupper,” he said, when the grosses for The Iron Mask were tepid. “Maybe this is it for us. We’ve had a good run.”

  But Mary wasn’t ready to accept it. Yes, she heard the whispers that now she had proven herself in talkies, it was time to retire, to let a new generation of sophisticated women like Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer, married to Irving Thalberg, and Joan Crawford, married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.—that adorable little boy of Douglas’s had grown up—take her place.

  The feeling was that as Hollywood rang in 1930—cautiously, trying to weather both sound and the Crash of October of 1929—the mood of the country, too, was changing. People were out of work, had lost their fortunes; nobody was making money hand over fist in the stock market anymore. Salaries were being cut in Hollywood, to make up for all the changes.

  And child-women like Mary, like Lillian, like Janet Gaynor, were through. Washed up. A symbol of a more innocent time. Nobody wanted to worship a little girl with curls anymore. And even though her curls were shorn, that was what Mary knew she was, in the eyes of the public. Her hair could be as short as Peter Pan’s, and the public would still see her as that little girl. The ghost of that little girl, at any rate; never again would Mary be that sprite who had made her famous.

  But who would she be, now? That was the question that kept her up at night.

  “Let’s forget Hollywood, and take a trip,” Douglas implored instead, and she agreed—if he would make a movie with her first. For years, their fans had begged for the two of them to star together but it never made sense; why split their profits, when they were both making money on their own? But now they weren’t. So why not film The Taming of the Shrew—perfect for Mary to show off her stage voice and for Douglas to do his usual physical antics?

  Perfect for a couple who weren’t quite sure if they were still in love.

  —

  “Hipper, dear, can we retake that?” Mary asked one day on the set, when she hadn’t felt she’d made her entrance right; her heavy Elizabethan gown had gotten caught in the doorframe. “I think I can do better. Would you mind?”

  “As a matter of fact, I would,” Douglas snapped at her, for the first time ever. In public.

  “But, Douglas, dear, I think—”

  “For God’s sake, don’t you get it? No one cares anymore, Mary. Let’s just get this thing over with.”

  She swallowed her retort; it wouldn’t do to argue in front of the crew. Shakily, she waited for the next setup.

  Douglas didn’t speak a word to her off camera for the rest of the day. And she had no idea why. She was losing him, losing her career, losing everything and what could she hold on to? Who could she turn to now that Mama was gone?

  Not Fran, who wouldn’t understand. Not Fran, who was moving smoothly into writing talkies at MGM; her Anna Christie, starring Greta Garbo, had been a smashing success. Garbo Talks! the headlines roared. Yes, she did. Because Fran put the words into her mouth. Just as she had once found the perfect phrases for Mary.

  No one would understand, but someone might help her forget, take her mind off her growing irrelevance, the feeling that she—only thirty-nine!—represented what some were already calling the Stone Age of Hollywood. Someone young, someone handsome, someone who adored her.

  Buddy Rogers—her costar in My Best Girl—was filming nearby. That movie, her last silent and one of her best, had been a big success. Buddy was twelve years her junior and worshipped her; their flirtation on-screen—and off—had been so real, Douglas couldn’t bring himself to watch the entire film. Mary had welcomed his adoration; what woman, nearing forty, wouldn’t be flattered by such a young, handsome man’s attentions? But she’d kept the relationship platonic, of course; it was fine for Buddy to gaze at her as if she were the Mona Lisa, but she never so much as held his hand, off camera. She would never do to Douglas what she had done to Owen. Douglas was—well, he was Douglas. Hipper. Duber. Her consort. She could never betray him.

  Unless Douglas strayed first. Which he would never do. Would he? They were DougandMary, MaryandDoug.

  But she no longer had golden curls, and he no longer could leap quite so high.

  The Taming of the Shrew did not make money—she knew it wouldn’t from the very first take—and Mary went off with Douglas on a trip around the world, as promised. A trip around the world! Once, it would have represented heaven; together with Douglas in a stateroom for weeks on end, no prying eyes, no worries about Beth or Owen or Mama, only the two of them, touching, nuzzling, cuddling, stroking. Waving to their adoring public in exotic cities; “DougandMary” sounded the same in every language.

  Now, it was hell. Separate staterooms seemed prudent, as they brought so much luggage—that’s what they assured each other. Douglas simply wouldn’t stay still; he had no desire to sit next to her on a deck chair, watching the waves or reading or even holding hands. He had to clown around on deck, intent upon impressing everyone on board; everyone, except his wife.

  “Why can’t you stand to be with me?” She couldn’t help herself; she had to ask, just like any other shrewish wife, which she supposed she was. And that was as devastating as anything else; that they had turned into just another husband and wife who nagged and argued and had nothing to talk about at dinner.

  “Why do you have to have the weekly box office telegraphed to us in every port?” Douglas asked in response. “Why do you insist on reading scripts? Why won’t you stop thinking of work?”

  “You used to like that about me,” she whispered, but Douglas pretended not to hear. His face—so tan, too tan; sometimes he received letters asking if he were really a darkie—tightened, he straightened his tie, then stalked out. She would see him later, at the captain’s table, where they’d put on an act, pretending to be the happily married, enchanted, favored-by-the-gods couple everyone wanted them to be. They were doing the best acting of their careers on this trip.

  Mary missed home; she missed her own cook, her own bed. She couldn’t eat exotic food, and was growing weary of dry toast and coffee. She was tired. She’d been working since she was five. And being on a cruise with Douglas in his current state of mind—what was it, exactly? What was making him irritable, twitchy, driven by something she couldn’t begin to identify and so could only continue to do the things she’d always done, because once, that was enough? Was it simply her hair that bothered him so? The talkies? Middle age? Whatever it was, he was unhappy and, like the man-child he was, intent on making everyone close to him unhappy, too.

  It was a lot like work, that’s what this cruise was. Being with Douglas—the miraculous being who had rescued her from Owen and placed her on top of the world like the cherry on top of a cake—was suddenly a lot like work.

  The crowds were still the same; that was the one saving grace of the entire trip. In India, in Budapest, where American silent films still played, they remained the king and queen, their public as feverish, as adoring, as ever, screaming their names, crying whenever Mary deigned to shake a hand or touch a shoulder. But as soon as they returned home, Mary sensed a change in the very air; there weren’t as many photographers and reporters waiting for them when the ship docked. It was a week before Photoplay asked her for an interview about the trip. And there weren’t nearly as many welcome-home floral arrangements in the entryway of Pickfair; she didn’t have to pack them all up and send them to local hospitals, as she once would have done.

  Douglas must have sensed it, too, for he packed his bags again almost immediately and took off, this time not asking if she wanted to join him. She kept track of him through telegrams and once in a very great while he would show up at Pickfair, unannounced. He wasn’t making any films and he didn’t appear very interested in sharing the burden of running UA. He couldn’t seem to be able to stand being around her even in their beloved home; he bounded away from the house at dawn—their cozy breakfasts together only a memory—and played end
less rounds of golf or clowned around with Charlie, then took off again without telling her his plans.

  Ignoring the spiteful headlines—Are Mary and Doug Through? Is Pickfair No Longer a Love Nest?—she threw herself back into work as she always had, because she had no idea what else to do. Work and Douglas. Kiki, a film in which she played a French streetwalker, did miserably. She didn’t even go to the premiere, loyally staged at the Chinese Theater by Sid Grauman, who was merely being kind. A Mary Pickford movie was no longer an Event.

  And what on earth did she know about playing a French streetwalker? Once upon a time, she’d known her strengths as an actress; now, she wouldn’t have been able to name a single thing she could do that any other actress couldn’t. Everything about making these new films was so foreign to her. All of a sudden, she had no idea what to do with her hands—her hands! The first thing any decent actress learns to deal with. She, who had been heralded as the most natural actress of her time—suddenly, she had hands.

  One day Adela called. “Mary, have you heard of Lady Ashley? Lady Sylvia Ashley?”

  “No, Adela. Who is that?” Mary struggled to make her speech as clear as possible; she’d had a couple drinks with breakfast, because she didn’t have anywhere to go. And no one was there to care whether or not she did.

  “Douglas has been seen with her in London. Many times. It seems they’re an item.”

  “Douglas does like to go out, Adela. I can hardly keep him home these days! But there’s nothing to it. Douglas and I are fine, we’re fine!”

  She hung up, roamed the house—the vast, empty house, walls echoing with the memories of happier times when everyone wanted to come, everyone wanted to breathe the same refined air as she and Douglas did. People did still come, sometimes; after all, she was Mary Pickford, the woman who ran United Artists, the woman who helped found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the woman who had founded the Motion Picture Fund, so that industry folks down on their luck would have a place to live. She was still the reigning queen of Hollywood society; she just happened to be without a king at the moment.