The Loveliest Woman in America

by Bibi Gaston

  Her adventures on the coast were fresh and exciting, but life in New York hadn’t changed one bit. Her mother, Gertrude, demanded she visit and as usual made Rosamond feel indebted to her because she watched the boys while Rosamond was gone. Seeing the boys was the bright spot although they’d grown. She wondered whether Little James would finally speak, and was it possible she’d transferred her bad feelings about Big Bill to Little Billy? His meekness always surprised her. Nothing had changed, but she felt strangely disoriented, not like a mother at all. She liked the role, she wrote, but her body still felt quite her own. She looked forward to seeing her father, Amos, but dreaded having to negotiate with Big Bill. Nothing would have changed in that department, either. He was still padding around the same old East Side parties, behaving like a surly animal toward her while charming the pants off some new dame.

  Rosamond soon learned that Big Bill wasn’t just up to his old tricks, he’d thought up some new ones. He was now spreading rumors that she was having an affair with Bobby Lehman, his old friend and boss at Lehman Brothers. But there was nothing she could do to stop him. She didn’t like the sound of divorce; after all, he might still come around. Once she heard from MGM, she’d get back on a train with the boys, and if Bill tried to stop her, then, at last, she’d divorce him. On March 28, 1934, she wrote in her diary, “Cut him out of your life. You’re really too good for him. He hasn’t a generous or sympathetic emotion about him. He’s just attractive. Damn it that’s it.”

  Before long, she wrote Zoe with the news:

  We agreed on October 1 because MGM said they had no play ready now. So I’m going to get at least six weeks of stock this spring and summer. Nasty idea! The whole situation amazes me. Every morning I wake up with a funny feeling. What has happened? Ah yes, I’m going into pictures. Strange how you and I and George Cukor should turn up together in California after all these years. I’ll love being near you, that’s one thing. And I guess it will be terribly good for me to get completely away from Bill for a winter. He has really behaved so badly, now he accuses me of sleeping with his boss! And yet I’m so lacking in self-respect that I can’t get over him. It was lovely to get back to the little boys. Billy is a charming child, very humorous.

  On top of the rumors, she’d come back to a new round of Big Bill’s not-so-loving nicknames, like “sugarcoated bitch,” and “witchie la biche.” When he saw the headlines in the Hearst papers, “Contract Sealed,” Bill couldn’t wait to sink his claws in and rip her to pieces, telling her again that all she wanted was fame and publicity. Her photograph in the papers was awful, he said, and she agreed it wasn’t the best. The camera added girth, so that spring Rosamond went to see Cornelia’s personal physician, Dr. Berman, in New York, to have a metabolism test to discover why she got fat so easily.

  The spring was filled with parties, rehearsals, and gland injections administered by Doc Berman. She had time on her hands and time to spend with the children. So, on a cold and rainy spring weekend, Rosamond took five-and-a-half-year-old Little Billy to Coney Island, where she spent the first full day she’d ever spent with him. She mused at the number of questions he asked and she answered, how motherhood forced one to be self-sacrificing, and how Billy was a darling, gallant little boy who had lots of energy to be cheerful and friendly—but she grew bored waiting for him to chew his chicken. At night she said the Lord’s Prayer with him, and she wrestled with whether to teach Little Billy to pray. He wouldn’t turn off the light at night, explaining, “I never close my eyes.” He asked her questions about God and told her he’d put her in a tiny halo. Rosamond described God as the spirit of good but she had a hard time describing spirit. She worried about Little Billy turning into a version of Big Bill. It was a mother’s, even a part-time mother’s, worst fear. “Inheritance is a strange thing,” she wrote. “Billy even loves flowers, just as Bill does. He’s always picking them and bringing them in.”

  That spring, Bill quit his job with Bobby Lehman. The man who said that he “bet on people” didn’t think Bill was a good bet anymore. He told Rosamond that Big Bill was in a “bad state of mind,” and “too sensitive.” At a party at Lehman’s weekend cabin, Bobby confided in Rosamond that he was leaving his wife and placing his bets on another woman. She confided in him that she felt responsible for at least part of Big Bill’s bad mood. Without her knowing, she told Lehman, Amos had brought a complaint before the bar. “If it wasn’t for my family Bill could practice law in New York,” she said. Lehman assured Rosamond that Big Bill’s disposition was his own problem.

  Rosamond described that spring in New York as the era of “cellophane and publicity.” She heard a man on the radio describing “the age of cellophane,” but she added the part about publicity. “Everything is wrapped in cellophane now, even books. And everything is preyed upon by the hound of publicity,” she wrote. “I half hate publicity and at the same time realize its power. I run from it and that makes the hound chase even faster.” Hardly a day passed without hyped-up press reports about Rosamond Pinchot in showbiz lingo. She called them stupid blurbs. “I curl up inside with disgust and then I remember it’s better to be mentioned in any way than not at all.” The press was in pursuit while Rosamond wrote that she was sick of herself, “…Sick of the futile life I lead, sick of the untidiness of it and the waste.”

  George Cukor and Rosamond

  It wasn’t just the age of cellophane, it was the age of air travel. Cukor and Selznick dashed between New York and Los Angeles, the first studio jet set. They’d touch down in Gotham, ring up Rosamond, and they’d all dash off to parties together where they were surrounded by what Rosamond described as “richly costumed society people,” men dressed “like Henry the Eighth,” and women with “frozen faces.” As always, Cukor and Selznick brought their yelling and sarcasm with them. At dinner with Cukor and Dorothy Parker in April 1934, Rosamond found it hard to decide who was more obnoxious. Splitting hairs, they were both clever, and while George was funnier, he and Dot were equally imaginative. Both so voluble, however, they exhausted each other and succeeded at completely shutting each other up. Cukor left the party spent and speechless. Rosamond hated the evening. “Life seems meaningless,” she wrote.

  David O. Selznick’s hot pursuit didn’t make her feel any better. Despite the presence of his wife, Irene, he’d see Rosamond at a party, follow her around, corner her, and kiss her. One night in April she resisted, and David, her new boss, decided she’d better know the score: “You can be the worst flop ever and you can be a triumph,” he threatened. Rosamond looked away. “Look at me!” he insisted. So she smiled, laughed, and played the game. When Rosamond wrote Zoe that David was propositioning her constantly, Zoe became angry, but Rosamond wasn’t entirely sure if Zoe was angry at David or Rosamond. Rosamond wrote Zoe again in June:

  I’m keeping Dave off and being cold, first because I don’t have goings on with married men, second because I like his wife Irene and third because her Pa is Louis B. Mayer! But I do like Dave. People always tell me I have perverted tastes.

  In the middle of May, Rosamond spent several days at Milford. When time permitted, she wandered into the forest and stripped off all her clothes to take the sun. Spring played its tricks that the whip-poor-will knew all too well, so it stole away in the crevices. On May 16, Amos and Rosamond took the seven o’clock train from Milford to Philadelphia to lend their support to Gifford and Cornelia in Gifford’s bid to become Pennsylvania’s next senator. After learning of his defeat, Gifford met with reporters to help them cobble together a dignified election postmortem, then offered the traditional family salute. Rosamond comforted her proud, gray-faced uncle, as did Cornelia, but on their way home, she was consumed with futility. Uncle had lost, Father was in New York with his new family, and nothing seemed the same, comforting, or even familiar. In fact, she thought, nothing was the way it should be.

  When she moved out of 444 East Fifty-second with Bill in 1933, Rosamond thought that given a little time her life would soon
settle down and she’d find a home. She’d had sixteen addresses by the age of thirty-four, not including her encampments in Europe with The Miracle or her sojourn to California. Now, she felt her beloved Milford slipping away:

  Staying in Father’s house when his family is there is no fun at all. In fact, I loathe it. There’s always the feeling of resentment against Ruth and Mary. If it weren’t for them, this house would have belonged to Gifford and me. What a lovely time we would have had in it. But now we’re just outsiders…being so close to 30, I resent Mary’s darling youth. What’s more I foresee better times ahead when she’ll delight in stealing my gentlemen. How easy that will be too. The prospect of getting old is most unpleasant. People will say “How she’s gone off. What a huge monster of a woman.” Ah yes. That’s the penalty of having been lovely once.

  What was lost in Milford was usually countered by some unexpected gain in New York. There was her upcoming movie contract, the bubbly late nights with her queue of gentlemen callers, and her beloved friends scattered about. Still, she didn’t share her fears with anyone: how her days were crowded but the nights were filled with longing for Big Bill, his occasional tenderness and their laughter at the silliest things. For years she thought she’d find someone to replace Big Bill, someone to love again, if she wasn’t, God forbid, one of those women who loved but once in life.

  Their love for each other had washed out to sea like some old weather-beaten buoy. Usually she’d let the longing wash over her and the heaviness linger in her chest. But sometimes the longing got the best of her and he was the only one who furnished what was familiar: that lizard feeling of slow, languorous love, of loss. She didn’t want to be miserable, but she knew his mean presence like her own potato nose in the mirror, and his meanness made her feel alive. She and Bill were stuck at a crossroads, it seemed. So on the bad nights, instead of counting to ten or saying her Mississippis, she’d phone him up. Sometimes he’d answer and she’d hang up, but there were times when he answered and she’d ask him to come over. He’d growl, but he usually found his way through the night, up the elevator, and into her apartment. As soon as he arrived, she thought maybe she deserved all his nastiness; after all, she’d fussed the evening away preparing for his arrival, dusting her face with specks of glitter, knowing it was totally and utterly hopeless. All her primping made her feel pathetic, but when he arrived, slouching in as usual, his coat open with his belt slung low on his hips, she’d feel a sense of relief, a brief cessation from the longing. He was home. She’d watch him sit down on a little chintz chair, the one he was too big for, and she’d lie on the bed feeling dreamlike and sultry and they’d talk, but it just went round and round.

  On a spring night, May 23, she called, he answered, he growled, she asked, and he slunk over as usual. That night, she gussied and slipped a white nightgown over her new leanness thanks to the gland injections, but he wasn’t interested. Helen Hayes was speaking on the radio. They had once loved everything she had to say, but now Helen bored him. He shouted over her voice, mostly about nothing. He went out onto the roof. After a while Rosamond joined him on one of the wicker chairs. She watched how the moon fell on his profile, which made him appear exciting and handsome but then, with no warning, nothing said, he got up and walked away. She waited, thinking he would return, but he had no interest in her or the moon or anything else. He went into the living room to lie down on the couch. Eventually, when she went in to ask him to join her, she heard the elevator door and rushed from room to room. Then she ran out on the roof and, barefoot, she climbed onto the railing. Looking down to the dark street below, she saw him come out from under the apartment house awning and walk down the street toward First Avenue. With toes gripping the stone, she sobbed and sobbed under the clear moon and considered jumping off the parapet.

  …I’m still thinking of it. How simple that would be. No more striving for the vague things that I’ll never attain, no more misery. If it only weren’t for Father. My suicide would kill him too. It would make his life intolerable. Tonight I reached another low in unhappiness…. Now I ought to be through. Tonight he behaved so hideously. Again he deeply hurt me. But still I look forward to getting back at him, to making him say that he loves me. I’d never do anything to hurt him. Never.

  By the first week of June, that desperate night was just a memory. On June 4, 1934, Elsa Maxwell called a rehearsal of the June ball in which Rosamond was to pose in a “historical pageant of society beauties and naval officers.” Rosamond arrived late, as usual, and the “so-called society beauties” turned up even later, too late to rehearse. Elsa Maxwell ran around looking distracted, so Rosamond “pulled out to do a bit of shopping.” That night, before the ball, her date, George Gallawich, picked her up to take her to dinner at the Casino. “The one nice thing about dinner was the chicken livers,” she wrote, but she wished George was less presentable and more amusing:

  We wandered around, danced, saw the great comedian Jimmy Savo and went up to Mrs. Roosevelt’s box. Sitting beside Mrs. Roosevelt was Mrs. Hearst. That’s an example of what a girl can [be]! Mrs. Roosevelt, all teeth, kissed me. On the way home George insisted on doing the same in a different way.

  Although Big Bill wasn’t interested, other men were making regular “declarations of love.” Rosamond wrote, “Nowadays I never believe anything men tell me.” So she went about her business, making appearances, primping, and making diary entries of her odd little encounters with the “on tops.” On Monday, it was tea at Cecil Beaton’s. On Tuesday, it was off to the Vogue studio to sit for a photographer named Hueme:

  The photo is for Vanity Fair so I guess it had to be “arty.” Anyway they pinned my hair into mad tufts, up on my head. Draped me in black velvet and stuck bunches of peonies under the straps of my brassiere. Then he took me in affected positions.

  On Wednesday, she spottted Katharine Hepburn who shared the same hairdresser with her at Ogilvies:

  She remembered me and put out a wiry hand in greeting. Immediately brought up the subject of Cukor, our mutual friend. She was very friendly, not at all the snooty dame she used to be. The mouth was scarlet and spread half across her face, huge but rather thin lipped. Her cheekbones stood out sharply. Her eyes were blue, I think, and not very noticeable. She spoke in that valuable and synthetic way that is typical of actresses.

  On Thursday, it was back to lunch at the Colony where Rudolf Kommer introduced her to H. G. Wells. “He wasn’t an impressive fellow,” Rosamond wrote. “He had a voice as high as a woman’s. Somehow he reminded me of a Welsh Terrier.” And on Friday, she went out to Milford where, upon arriving, “the air smelled so sweet, of spring and hemlocks.” But by Sunday, she dreaded returning to the city, “I feel a little too sentimental and soft for hard boiled New York,” she wrote.

  By midsummer, Rosamond was squeezing all there was out of a day. David O. Selznick, her married “boss,” was still in hot pursuit. On June 14, Rosamond hosted a huge party at the River Club for David and George to thank them for launching her career in Hollywood. That afternoon, Rosamond walked down Lexington Avenue where the vegetable stands were full of midsummer’s cherries and raspberries. She stopped at a beauty parlor to have her hair turned up and nails painted, then went off to a gland appointment at Doc Berman’s where she was pleased to learn that her weight was down to 144. In the evening, her date, again the not so amusing but presentable George Gallawich, picked her up in an open roadster. “The driving was lovely,” she wrote. “There was gold in the west. My hair flew wildly. I wore the new blue and polka dotted dress and had absolutely nothing under it. The back was cut down to my waist and there was a bustle and a puff in the front. On my feet I wore flat heeled gold sandals.” After dinner, she and her date arrived at the River Club just in time for her guests to appear, Cukor, the Selznicks, Conde Nast, the Whitneys, Liz Arden, the Paleys, and of course, Bill Gaston, who slinked around the perimeter with some unknown broad. It was a good warm night for a party and Rosamond, having recovered from the nigh
t on the parapet, was tight and felt full of self-confidence. As the evening got started, David took her by the arm and pulled her out to the terrace above the river where they were joined by Bill Paley. The three leaned against the rail in the dark, cocktails in hand, and talked about nothing for a while when all of a sudden a couple emerged from the bushes at the end of the terrace. “If ever I saw two guilty looking people!” David shouted. Upon hearing Selznick’s wisecrack, Bill shouted and pointed at Rosamond, “Hey, that’s my wife!” Great confusion broke out with raucous laughter and good-spirited sparring, and thankfully no one came to blows. The party wore on, and Bill disappeared with his date back into the bushes. The remaining revelers swam and conversations had quieted down when Selznick turned to Rosamond and whispered, asking whether she was wearing a brassiere. Just as his wife, Irene, wandered off, David started his regular round of chasing and kissing and this time begging to take Rosamond home. The situation was getting out of hand, so Rosamond went to find Irene in the basement with a group of men sprawled out on the floor playing a drunken game of craps. David followed her and wasn’t in much better shape; in fact, his head nodded and he appeared to be collapsing when suddenly he surprised everyone by peeling $20 bills out of his pants pocket, making a delirious last-ditch effort to win the hand before turning over and falling asleep on the floor. When he started to snore, Irene decided she’d had about enough and said she wanted to go home. But David was fast asleep, so Irene Selznick directed Rosamond to kick her husband. Rosamond hesitated. After all, kicking her boss wasn’t the recommended means of getting ahead; but at that point, Rosamond was taking orders from the highest authority in the room. Rosamond looked twice at Irene and then administered a swift-heeled blow to the backside of her new boss. David looked up at Rosamond with his heavy face and sagging lips as Irene announced, “We’re going home, honey.” “No, we’re not,” David said slurring his words. “I’m staying.” Irene then began to drag her husband off the floor and into the corner where they huddled and argued and kissed before he pulled out his wallet and handed Irene a wad of bills, telling her to go home. As Irene left the room, David leaned over to Rosamond and said, “I’m taking you home, darling.” Rosamond turned and whispered to one of the craps players, asking if he would take her home. The two ran out of the room and up the stairs while behind them Rosamond could hear David in pursuit, she said, “like a great buffalo.” David called her name. Rosamond didn’t answer. As they left the building, he pursued her out into the street as the craps player hailed a cab and Rosamond slid into the seat next to him. David then opened the door, demanding the craps player get out. Rosamond thought David looked fat but there was something quite attractive about him. “No, Dave,” she insisted, “go back and take Irene.”