by Mark Bailey
And Hayworth was not someone who could handle her liquor. Her behavior became erratic, her temper flared. She’d often insist on driving through the Hollywood Hills after drunken arguments with her previous husband Orson Welles, who feared she was intent on killing herself. Years later, her fifth and final husband, James Hill, said he’d seen the look Hayworth acquired when drinking only one other time in his life: “during the war, on a machine gunner carrying a Browning automatic.”
As for her then-husband, the Argentine-born Haymes, he could have used a porter for all the baggage he brought to the marriage. Nearly $200,000 in debt (a combination of unpaid taxes, alimony, and child support), he was facing deportation because he’d traveled to Hawaii (not yet an official state) without certifiable proof of American citizenship. (And also because, allegedly, Harry Cohn wanted him out of Hayworth’s life.)
But Joseph and His Brethren looked to be a turning point for both husband and wife—but more so for Haymes. Hayworth had recently renegotiated the terms of her contract with Columbia to include not only a $50,000 loan for her husband, but also his full access to the studio’s lot and an option on his services as a screenwriter. He’d also begun to manage his wife’s career. In fact, with the ridiculous notion of costarring alongside his wife in Joseph, Haymes had actually grown a beard.
Playing the biblical hero Joseph would have been deliciously ironic for a man that Confidential magazine had nicknamed “Mr. Evil,” but Haymes soon discovered that Columbia had not only cast a relative unknown in the part, but that Cohn had banned him from the set. Haymes was outraged. And now, at the Polo Lounge, he had a filmmaker’s ear one final time.
Grabbing the phone from his wife, Haymes accused Odets of not properly explaining the psychology of Hayworth’s part to her and of being in the studio’s pocket. He made veiled threats, then he hung up.
* * *
Her sex-symbol status was fading, and her relentless partying was accelerating the aging process.
* * *
The next morning, Haymes called Columbia and said Hayworth wouldn’t be coming in that day. A few days later, her lawyers informed the studio that because the picture hadn’t started on time, it was breach of contract, and she was owed her full $150,000 fee. The already-shot footage of Joseph and His Brethren went on the shelf. Two years later, Columbia severed its ties with Hayworth for good, replacing her with Kim Novak. Cohn, with his trademark cruelty, is reported to have said, “All you had were those two big things and Harry Cohn. Now you just have those two big things.”
Not surprisingly, her marriage to Dick Haymes was by this time long over. The final blow had been an actual blow. At the Cocoanut Grove on a similarly boozy night shortly after the Joseph incident, Haymes struck Hayworth in the face. She went home, packed her bags, and never returned.
THE COCK ’N BULL
9170 SUNSET BLVD.
THE CLOSEST THING Golden Age Hollywood had to a genuine English pub, the Cock ’n Bull opened on the Sunset Strip in 1937 and outlasted a full half-century’s worth of fly-by-night operations around it. Founded by Jack Morgan and managed by his family until 1987, it was adopted by such British expats as Richard Burton, Somerset Maugham, and Alan Mowbray, as well as Americans F. Scott Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Sinclair Lewis, John Carradine, and Robert Mitchum. Jessie Wadsworth, Hollywood’s first female talent agent, kept an office upstairs and generally ended her days at the bar. On one such occasion, Wadsworth was looking on as actor Sonny Tufts threw a punch at another patron, which accidently caught Wadsworth square on the jaw. Morgan kicked Tufts out and told him never to return. He was back a few weeks later. A real drinking man’s place, so sacrosanct was the Cock ’n Bull that it was where the Bundy Drive Boys gathered to mourn the passing of the great John Barrymore.
But the Cock ’n Bull’s greatest contribution to world culture was only tangentially related to its high-profile clientele. The joint served classic pub fare such as prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, and Welsh rarebit, but its signature drink was something of a curveball. (And, as these things often are, a happy accident.) According to head bartender Wes Price, Morgan—who by the 1940s was distributing his own brand of Cock ’n Bull ginger beer—found himself saddled with too many cases of Smirnoff vodka and a surplus of his own brew that would go bad if he couldn’t unload it. In a desperate bid to avoid pouring all this beautiful ginger beer down the drain, Price mixed the two ingredients, added lime, and served it up in a copper mug. Tough-guy character actor Broderick Crawford was the first customer to give it a try. He liked it. Had a bit of a kick to it. And with that, the Moscow Mule was born: “The Drink with the Velvet Kick.”
MOSCOW MULE
2 OZ. VODKA
1 HALF A LIME
GINGER BEER
Pour vodka into a copper mug filled with ice, then squeeze in lime juice. Top with ginger beer. Serve with stirring rod. Substitute Collins glass for mug if necessary.
VERONICA LAKE
1922–1973
ACTRESS
“My appetite was my own and I simply wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Veronica Lake is best known for her trendsetting “peek-a-boo” hairstyle and a decade of signature roles: I Wanted Wings (1941) with Ray Milland and William Holden; Sullivan’s Travels (1941), written and directed by Preston Sturges; and three films noir with Alan Ladd, The Glass Key (1942), This Gun for Hire (1942), and The Blue Dahlia (1946). She was notoriously difficult on set, the result of emotional/psychological problems dating back to her childhood (when, according to her mother, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic). She was strongly disliked by both costars and executives, so much so that when her initial contract with Paramount expired in 1948, the studio decided she wasn’t worth the trouble. Lake made two more movies before briefly turning to television and the stage, then disappeared altogether. A New York Post reporter found her in the early 1960s at a Manhattan all-women’s hotel, working as a barmaid. Her autobiography, in 1970, failed to return the meteoric starlet to the public eye; her memorial the following year was attended by a few strangers and only one of her three children.
THE INVITATION WAS THE first surprise. It was December 1941, and Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels was to open in New York City in just a few weeks. With the premiere looming, the film’s leading lady, Veronica Lake, invited the entire cast and crew to an impromptu reunion on New Year’s Eve.
Sturges himself hadn’t known about the party before the invitation showed up in his mailbox. Though he’d long since had his fill of Lake’s surprises—like when she arrived on set six months pregnant (a previously undisclosed detail that threw the director into a he-had-to-be-restrained-type rage). But this surprise, what looked to be a fun party, was much more pleasant.
In 1941 Lake’s private life was a secret to most. She’d had her moments on the nightclub circuit, tossing a few back at Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip after it first opened, even though she was only seventeen at the time. But mostly she was an introvert. While shooting I Wanted Wings, William Holden repeatedly invited her out for drinks, but each time she insisted that she’d prefer to remain in her hotel room. Holden, like everyone else, assumed that the teenager was too shy or square to hit the booze—or that her husband, art director John Detlie, had forbidden it.
The fact was, Lake simply preferred drinking alone, ordering her drinks through the hotel’s front desk. Not even Detlie knew the full extent of her boozing. Sure, by the end of the decade, stories—factual or otherwise—of her drunken exploits and random sexual encounters would be a dime a dozen. But on this New Year’s, her private life was still a total mystery. Lake had just given birth to her first daughter, Elaine, and even though her husband was about to leave for the recently declared war, she appeared to be a wife and mother with a very bright future.
* * *
Wiliam Holden repeatedly invited her out for drinks, but each time she insisted that she’d prefer to remain in her hotel room, Holden, like everyone else, assumed that the teenager
was too shy or square to hit the booze.
* * *
The New Year’s Eve bash, it turned out, was where the mystery began to unravel. Though Lake and Detlie had just purchased a house in Mandeville Canyon, the actress had opted to throw the party at her parents’ modest home in Beverly Hills. In itself, this wasn’t strange—except that Lake’s stepfather had been battling tuberculosis for years, and he wasn’t doing very well. So there was one rule: no one could enter his room or disturb him in any way.
Lake’s parents seemed unconcerned. The guests were adults. They knew how to behave. Lake, however, was still a teenager, and once the party hit full swing, the one rule was quickly broken by Lake herself. It seems she hated her stepfather. According to accounts, the tiny, four-foot-eleven actress had a few cocktails, then a few more, and before long, she decided to lead a procession of revelers through her stepfather’s bedroom in a “snake dance,” whooping and hollering all the while. Now this was a bit more strange, yet still short of real gossip mag fodder, that is, until Lake reportedly started to strip. In the middle of her New Year’s party, Lake performed a striptease for her bedridden stepfather, as several lingering partygoers looked on.
Years later, after Lake wrote her autobiography, the facts of her childhood could explain such events more soberly; but to cast and crew that night, only one thing seemed perfectly clear: Wherever he was, William Holden would be scratching his head.
GIRL CRAZY (1943)
To the studio, this movie defined no-brainer: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, two of MGM’s most bankable actors, starring in a remake of the 1930 stage musical Girl Crazy, featuring hit music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin. Rooney and Garland had already proven themselves a potent onscreen combo in eight previous movies, which included three musicals directed by Busby Berkeley. And Berkeley had signed on to helm. The movie would practically make itself. Or not …
Within minutes of shooting, cast and crew noticed that star (Garland) and director (Berkeley) were each barely keeping it together. Garland had always drunk booze by the gallon. She was now just days away from ending her marriage to bandleader David Rose and, right before shooting, had begun an affair with actor Tyrone Power. At some point during principal photography, she would call Power to say she was pregnant with his child.
At the same time, the brilliant choreographer Berkeley had the kind of obsessive streak that makes for stunning dance-numbers, but his bedside manner as a director would have made a drill sergeant blush. Garland hated him.
Unbeknownst to anyone but Berkeley himself, he had decided to drastically change the production number “I Got Rhythm.” Berkeley’s new idea involved hoisting Garland, pregnant, and Rooney into the air by their ankles via stunt-wire with pistols firing all around them.
The sequence, budgeted for five days, took nine and ran nearly $100,000 over budget. The guns and spinning and the help-me-I’m-so-fragile had left Garland such a nervous wreck that her doctor insisted she couldn’t dance for another three weeks. And just like that, Berkeley was canned.
Production resumed a month later under the direction of Norman Taurog, who had an Oscar under his belt and had, like Berkeley, previously worked with both stars. Taurog also had ideas about one of the first scheduled scenes—a staged automobile ride in which Garland’s character abandons Rooney’s on a stretch of road outside Palm Springs. Taurog declared it would be shot in Palm Springs itself, not the cost-effective MGM lot—and not for creative or continuity reasons either. Taurog did it because Rooney simply wanted to hang out in Palm Springs.
Thus was the entire production relocated to Palm Springs for a weeklong shoot that was further delayed by equipment failures, sandstorms, and the sudden disappearance of Garland, who was later found in Los Angeles in hot pursuit of Power.
Eventually five and a half months after filming began, Girl Crazy wrapped, at a total cost of $1.4 million, more than $300,000 over budget. MGM seemed unusually blasé about it all, but then clearly they’d already guessed the final outcome: Girl Crazy was the hit MGM expected all along, earning almost $4 million at the box office.
CAROLE LOMBARD
1908–1942
ACTRESS
“I couldn’t settle down; it would kill me!”
Throughout the 1930s, Carole Lombard was the undisputed “queen of screwball.” Her best known film, My Man Godfrey (1936), garnered a Best Actress nomination. The highest paid star in Hollywood at the time of her death, she was also legendary as a party hostess, and much beloved by her peers. Lombard was only twelve when she got her first film role, as a tomboy in A Perfect Crime (1921). She was reportedly discovered by the film’s director, Allan Dwan, while playing baseball in the street near her mother’s Los Angeles home. After cutting her teeth in Mack Sennett shorts, she arrived as a leading lady during the early years of sound. Lombard starred opposite her first husband, William Powell, in Man of the World (1931) and her future second husband, Clark Gable, in No Man of Her Own (1932). (She and Gable didn’t marry until 1939.) Lombard’s breakout role came as Mildred Plotka in Twentieth Century (1934), directed by Howard Hawks. She turned down the opportunity to costar with Gable again in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night to take a starring role in Bolero (1934); then she received top billing in Hitchcock’s lone American comedy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941). Her final film, To Be or Not to Be (1942), was criticized for its satirical treatment of Nazis at the time of release but is now considered a classic. Lombard died tragically young, at age thirty-three, in a plane crash while traveling to appear at a rally for war bonds.
PUTTING CAROLE LOMBARD IN charge of the Mayfair Ball seemed to many an odd decision. For one thing, the actress had a reputation for being more than a little wild. Not out of control necessarily, just unpredictable. There were the funny pranks: She once threw a party where the guests, to their surprise, were greeted by nurses and interns who took away their clothes and issued hospital gowns in their place. There were the funny comments: The first time she rode a horse, she observed, “I don’t know why the hell everybody thinks this is so great. It’s like a dry fuck.”
None of this recommended her for hostess of the Mayfair—an exclusive ball, held annually, to which only the brightest stars in Hollywood’s constellation were invited. It was always an exquisite affair, and Lombard took it as a point of pride that this one—held at Victor Hugo’s on January 26, 1936—would be no different. Her theme for the evening was white: white gowns for ladies, tailcoats and white ties for men. The guests, more than three hundred of them, complied. All except one: Norma Shearer, the wife of MGM producer Irving Thalberg (and one of the Mayfair’s sponsors), decided to wear a vibrant red dress. Her reason being something along the lines of “because I can.” Lombard’s reaction was even less circumspect. “Who the fuck does Norma think she is?” Lombard did not whisper. “The House Madam?” Lombard wanted to punch her. She wanted to kick her ass out. But then this was the Mayfair Ball and Lombard was the hostess, so instead she just went to the bathroom and cried.
* * *
With that, they started to dance. It soon dawned on Gable that Lombard wasn’t wearing anything under her elegant white dress. It soon dawned on Lombard that there was evidence of growing excitement under Gable’s elegant white tuxedo.
* * *
Clark Gable, who had watched the whole thing unfold, knew a damsel in distress when he saw one. He and Lombard had worked together a few years prior on No Man of Her Own. After a rocky first few days, which began with Lombard ripping a Herbert Hoover button off of Gable’s lapel, the two had become close. She had been married during the film’s production, as was he, and for the first time in Hollywood history, this actually seemed to matter. The only thing she gave to Gable was a gift at the wrap party: a ham with his photo attached. But now Lombard was divorced. And he was … separated? Maybe. It was always hard to tell with Gable.
As Lombard emerged from the bathroom, Gable sauntered over and said his favorite line from No Man of Her Own: “I g
o for you, Ma.” She considered him for a moment, then said “I go for you, too, Pa.” With that, they started to dance. It soon dawned on Gable that Lombard wasn’t wearing anything under her elegant white dress. It soon dawned on Lombard that there was evidence of growing excitement under Gable’s elegant white tuxedo. Wanting fresh air, they left and hopped into his swank new Duesenberg convertible for a few trips around the block. When Gable invited the hostess back to his room, her response was: “Who do you think you are, Clark Gable?” It wouldn’t happen that night. But as the story goes, the next morning Gable awoke to find two white doves flying around his hotel room. (That can’t help a hangover.) There happened to be a note tied to one of the doves’ legs: “How about it? Carole.”
CHATEAU MARMONT
8221 SUNSET BLVD.
OPEN!
IF YOU MUST GET in trouble,” Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn once said, “do it at the Marmont.” Famed for its luxurious bungalows, discrete staff, and rich history, the Chateau Marmont has been Los Angeles’s celebrity inn of choice since the 1930s.
Modeled after the Château d’Amboise in France’s Loire Valley, the Marmont was originally opened as an apartment building in February 1929, but high rents and the Great Depression forced owners to turn it into a hotel. One of the Chateau’s earliest long-term residents was Lloyd Bacon, director of The Singing Fool (Al Jolson’s follow-up to The Jazz Singer). He lived in one of the hotel’s two penthouses, and his parties eventually became one of the hottest invites in town. Clark Gable turned up with new flame Carole Lombard in tow. Stan Laurel—who, according to one account, was “barely tolerated” at such affairs—often had to be carried back to his suite. Robert Benchley, famously terrified of the traffic on Sunset, hailed cabs to drive him from the Chateau back home to the Garden of Allah—which was directly across the street.