Years after the event itself, mother said that receiving the Academy Award for her performance in Mildred Pierce marked the end of her Hollywood. I thought that was a curious statement particularly in retrospect. But the more I though about it, some of what she may have meant began to take shape. The 17 years she spent at Metro were not only the Golden Age of Hollywood but the golden years of her own career. She climbed the ladder to stardom rapidly and rode the crest of fame with a joy and a dedication unmatched by most other stars. She loved being “the Star” and she devoted all of her considerable energies to the perpetuation and nurturance of her career. She had to battle every inch of the way but for the majority of her career she had won more of these battles than she lost. Then with the departure of her mentor, Louis B. Mayer, and the beginning of world ware, major changes began to take place over which she had no control. I think she felt that her studio family had deserted her and a lonely bitterness began to seep through the entire fabric of her life. Willingly and happily she had traded Lucille LeSeuer for Joan Crawford and become the creation of the publicity department. Now they had abandoned their publicly-spawned offspring for the younger stars. Joan Crawford was on her own for the first time in her adult life. This feeling of abandonment must have signaled a return of all the old fears and a lot of the old pain of her childhood.
Signing a contract with Warner Brothers, she not only took less money, she knew she was taking second best. Metro was “the” studio and everyone knew it. Warner’s’ roster of stars couldn’t compare with MGM’s nor did the caliber of the films they turned out. It was a come-down, the beginning of the long descent she battled for the rest of her life. She was already beginning to feel old and cast-off, though she was only in her mid-thirties at the time. By all rights she should have just begun to come into her own as an actress, but instead she found herself out of work, cruelly labeled “box office poison” and in the position of having to make a “come-back”. In those days as now, come-back really implied having already failed. For her, failure was the worst indictment of all. Hadn’t she devoted her entire being to the pursuit of stardom? Hadn’t she sacrificed her personal life and three marriages to her career? Hadn’t she made every major decision and most minor ones in favor of her work over everything else? And this was what she got in return … “box office poison”. Her big house was mortgaged to the hilt and practically shut down to four rooms. Yet she had still held out for something worthwhile, a picture that would be worthy of her stardom again.
She won that battle in the eyes of the world, the press and the studios by capturing the Academy Award but privately she knew it was a victory of enormous irony.
Years before when she had been on the board of the Academy, she’d had a fight with them over their policy of allocating the awards. She told me that the awards were more of a dole and a reward to the studios rather than a fair vote of the members on the basis of merit. The policy was to rotate the awards from year to year so that no studio would win in the same category two years in succession. She strongly objected to that procedure particularly on behalf of the actors. It meant that no matter how brilliant someone’s performance was, if a star at the same studio had won the award the year before, no one at the same studio had a chance the next year. She lost her fight with the academy and walked out, vowing that if she was ever nominated and won the Oscar she wouldn’t be there to accept it.
The irony was that in 1946 when she was nominated for Mildred Pierce, the first picture (except a walk-through in Hollywood Canteen) she’d done in three years, she was at home in bed with pneumonia. Whether it was perversity or anxiety or genuine illness, the result was the same: she was not present at the Academy Awards to accept her Oscar in person.
I remember the night vividly. Mother had been in bed most of the day and friends had called periodically to see if she was going to be well enough to attend. When it became apparent that she was going to remain in bed, the phone stopped ringing for several hours. Then the all important call came through … she had won the Oscar for best actress of 1945. Her health seemed to improve dramatically. She bounded out of bed and took a shower. Then she put on some make up and got into her prettiest negligee and satin bed jacket. She brushed her hair and waited for the photographer to arrive. Her director, Michael Curtis brought Oscar to her and the photographer snapped pictures of the three of them together from all angles. They shared some champagne and congratulations.
After everyone had left, I sat with her for a while. Even though I was just about six and a half years old, I knew this was a big moment. She sat in bed holding Oscar and turning him around to view him from every angle. She let me hold him for a few minutes and he was surprisingly heavy. Then we walked down the stairs and placed him all alone in a niche at the bottom of the staircase. Mother stepped back to admire him. Turning to me she said with a note of sarcasm, “I said I wouldn’t be there, but I never thought it would turn out like this!”
Though she received two additional nominations in 1947 and 1952, she viewed the rest of her career a constant uphill battle. Some of the joy had gone out of it for her. She had reached the peak too soon, and too young. She felt like she was backsliding, a slow and painful decent brought on by forces she couldn’t see and circumstances she couldn’t control. So she dug in deeper and became more hopelessly entrenched in her preconceived notions and all the while clinging desperately to the maintenance of her previous image as a real star. It was the image alone that she nurtured and with it she tried to turn back the clock. It was then that she became a fanatic about her public appearances and began to drink more than before.
It was then too that the fan mail began to take on more importance. It at least was a measure of her old glory and she devoted herself to answering every last piece of it and autographing every single photograph with the name of the recipient and a personal message in her own handwriting. The fans became the source of her last vestiges of hope and the wellspring of her claim to stardom. As her pictures steadily declined she had to have something to hold onto, something to sustain her and the fan mail was like an infusion of her life’s blood.
Our house became a veritable production line geared to servicing the prodigious amount of letters and requests for photos. She spent thousand and thousands of dollars on updating the 8x10 photographs and providing the mailing envelopes. She had two secretaries, one who worked at the house and one who did only fan mail. However, mother signed every single letter and each photograph.
Half the downstairs was turned over to this production line for days on end. Several fans would be asked to volunteer and Chris and I worked for hours on Saturday and Sunday. The photomailers had to be addressed and then a picture attached. Mother would sign the photo and then it had to be stuffed into the mailer and sealed. Hundreds of pounds of those photomailers left our house on Sunday evenings.
Part of her personal publicity campaign was the secretary’s job of noting on the calendar every birthday and anniversary she’d ever heard anyone mention or read in the trades. There were spouses’ birthdays and children’s birthdays. When I was still a child, the top of each page on the calendar was filled with these notations. At the end of the year, the secretary dutifully typed them onto the new calendar, omitting the divorced and the deceased. The secretary sent appropriate wires and mother was notified in advance each week so she could dictate special notes if she wanted. That practice went on until she died. What started out as a little more than a memory jogger, turned into part of the stardom hype and finally became a trademark that gave her something to do long after the work and the public life had ended. It was the last vestige of the image and the career and in later years answering the mail was just about all she had left to remind her of the glory and sustain her sense of purpose.
But in the years after her Academy Award she was just doing battle with the world. She was fighting for her life and it took a heavy toll on all of us.
CHAPTER 10
Chris and I spent the winter of
1946-47 back east in New York but I don’t know why. Mommie still had her apartment on East End Avenue, but we didn’t stay there with her more than a few days at the most. She’d rented a big house for us in Bedford Village, upstate New York, and that’s where Chris and I lived with three servants: Miss Brown, who was our nurse and the older couple who ran the house.
Before we left for the house in the country, Mommie took us to lunch at the “21” Club, after which we were going to see a matinee performance of the Broadway musical called Annie Get Your Gun starring Ethel Merman.
Mommie had just won the Academy Award for Mildred Pierce that year and she was a big star again in New York. We’d heard rumors that there was a lot of unrest in New York that winter, but mommie didn’t pay much attention to it, even though in Los Angeles she had a body guard named Lou Bennett. However, just as we were finishing lunch and getting ready to leave “21”, Uncle Bob Kriendler, the owner, came to the table to talk with her. It seemed that there was a sizeable crowd gathered outside the restaurant waiting to see mommie. They were not just the usual small, faithful band of fans who followed mommie wherever she went. We knew all of those women by first name. I had known Bernice, May and Bea since I was just a year old. They and the others in the regular group were lovely, sweet women who just became friends over the years. But this was different. This was a crowd who was getting tired of waiting to see a famous movie star. Uncle Bob looked very concerned and told mommie that he was going to have the waiters line the short walk up the couple of stairs between the restaurant and the street where our limousine was parked.
Mommie hurried us into our little coats and hats. I was seven and Chris just four. Our nurse, Miss Brown was with us and mommie told us to hold onto her hand tightly when we left the restaurant and head straight for the limousine, no matter what happened. I looked at her, wondering what all this was about. Outside I could see a big crowd pressing against the iron grillwork at the top of the stars. I could begin to hear what sounded like angry voices filtering through the restaurant’s heavy glass and iron front doors. Uncle Bob was on the phone … calling the police. He wanted mommie to stay inside the restaurant until the police arrived.
Mommie said that she’d never had any trouble with fans before and that they were probably just cold and tired of waiting. As soon as she went out to see them, she thought they’d calm down. Uncle Bob emphatically disagreed with her and pleaded with her not to try and leave just yet. Mommie said we’d be late for the matinee she’d promised us if we waited any longer and decided to take matters into her own hands. Uncle Bob made all the waiters form a living wall around mommie, Miss Brown, little Christopher and myself.
The moment the restaurant doors opened, I could feel a rush of cold air and hear the angry shouts of the huge crowd. The strange, angry people were everywhere! They were down the stairs in a flash surrounding our little family and knocking down some of the waiters. They were hanging from the roof that covered the stairway to the street. It couldn’t have been more than thirty feet from the front door of the restaurant at the door of our limousine, but we couldn’t get there. Literally hundreds of people were shoving pens, pencils and autograph books at mother. She was separated from us by this hoard of shouting fans who pushed and shoved and jabbed at her. Miss Brown had been knocked down and nearly trampled by the mob. I was absolutely terrified. I clung to my little brother and tried to protect him from the mob with my own body. But I was little too and the big people pushing and shoving and falling all over us simply swept the two of us up in their own momentum. We were clinging together crying terrified by the chaos.
Mommie realized that she’d lost us somewhere in the crowd and she began screaming for her babies. I heard her voice over the others begging the crowd not to hurt her babies! Everybody was yelling … the people in the mob were yelling … mommie was screaming … the waiters from “21” were shouting for the crowd to calm down and finally the police arrived with their nightsticks. Mommie was nearly hysterical with terror. Chris and I were sobbing and clinging together. I couldn’t see anything but dark coats and flying autograph books, but I did manage to keep my brother and myself from being trampled underfoot. A policeman grabbed us and carried the two of us, still clinging to one another, to the merciful safety of the awaiting limousine. The police pulled mommie from the mob and once she was inside the car, the police slammed the door. The driver couldn’t move the big limousine an inch. There were crazy people rioting all around us, beating on the car and climbing on top of it, peering upside down into all the windows. It was a nightmare.
More police arrived and forced the crowd off the car and onto the sidewalk. Then the policemen and their cars made a path for us and the chauffeur slowly began moving the long black car away from the crowd.
Miss Brown was not with us. She’d been stabbed in the head with a ball point pen and had to be taken to the doctors.
Mommie calmed us down and wiped our tears. She looked us over carefully to see if we’d been hurt. Since we appeared only to be shaken up, she decided that the best thing for us was to go to the matinee … it would take our minds off what had just happened.
We got to the theater just as the orchestra had started the overture. In the darkness, an usherette lead us to our aisle seats in about the tenth row. Mommie sat with us until the play started and then left. Poor mommie spent the entire show in the bathroom, throwing up. She finally had to go back to the apartment and go to bed.
Chris and I had a wonderful time. Miss Brown was back from the doctors by the second act. For years after seeing that musical, I wanted to be just like Annie Get Your Gun. But I must admit, after that incident I didn’t care for either fans or large crowds.
The next day we drove up to the country. Mommie spent the weekend with us and then left for the city.
I had schoolwork to do every day, since I’d been taken out of regular school in California to come on this trip. Chris was luckier … he wasn’t in school yet, so he got off easy.
In the afternoons, the two of us would build snow men, igloos and play other winter games. There was a wonderful little hill not far away and Miss Brown would often walk us over there with our sleds. After dinner Miss Brown would read to us for a while and then we’d listen to radio shows until time to go to sleep! Our favorite, of course, was Jack Benny. After a few weeks with no other kids to play with, it got sort of lonely. Sometimes mommie came up on the weekends and sometimes she didn’t.
Once Uncle Charles McCabe came to visit us and brought some beautiful pheasants he’d shot. Years before Uncle Charlie took mommie into the Poconos where they went walking in the woods and Uncle Charlie taught mommie how to shoot again. I remember the stories because she still had a beautiful rifle with a hand carved stock. I had come across it once when we were cleaning out the basement at our house in California. She said she didn’t want to shoot it any more but she couldn’t bear to give it away. She loved Uncle Charlie. I knew that by the way she looked when she told me the stories about the Pocono mountains and walking in the woods with Uncle Charlie. But, she said, Uncle Charlie was married and would not divorce his wife. She had tears in her eyes when she got to that part of the story. Poor mommie, the two men she’d really, really loved were both married when she loved them. One was Uncle Charlie and the other was Clark Gable.
When Mommie arrived for Christmas, she had Uncle Greg Bantzer with her. It was a total surprise to see him and we were delighted. Chris and I put on a little play for them which Miss Brown had made us rehearse over and over again. Mommie and Uncle Greg applauded and we gave our ceremonious little bows.
CHAPTER 11
When I was a very little girl, Christmas was like a department store delivered under our tree. Santa Claus came down the chimney in the living room and filled the house with toys and clothes and music.
We always had a huge tree. It touched the ceiling and filled half the room. I used to sit for hours looking at the lights dancing their way merrily across the shiny red, blue, g
reen and silver balls. The radio would be playing hours of Christmas carols and cook would make wonderful special holiday goodie treats. It was a glorious, exciting time.
Friends would come to visit bringing armloads of presents and the mailman made two deliveries a day to unload cards and packages by the dozens. People I never met would send beautiful gifts, many of them handmade. Each year there would be another little pearl for my add-a-pearl necklace and savings bonds which mother put away in the bank for me.
Christmas Eve was when mother opened her presents. When I was very young, she would open them after I had put out the cookies and milk for Santa Claus and had been tucked into bed. As I grew older she allowed me to stay up and have Christmas Eve with her.
Her presents were always in the formal blue and white living room. They were beautiful packages and so many that even wrapped, they filled the couches and chairs. We were hardly ever allowed in the living room because it had a white carpet which got dirty very easily and there were a lot of little antiques on the shelves which we were not allowed to touch.
I used to stand in front of those shelves with my hands tightly clasped behind my back and be fascinated by the miniature furniture on display. There were also little porcelain boxes with old fashioned pictures painted on them. I used to look at the pastoral paintings of ladies in long full skirts and gentlemen with short pants and lace cuffs and wonder what story they were telling.
It wasn’t until years later that I had the courage to sneak into the living room by myself and actually pick up one of those little boxes. I could hear my heart beating and kept a wary ear tuned to catch the sound of approaching footsteps. I almost felt like a criminal and my hands were shaking. Very carefully I picked up my favorite little porcelain box, noting exactly where it had been placed on the shelf. I wanted to put it back precisely so that no one would ever know. Slowly I turned it around to look at all sides of it, then upside down to look at the bottom. There was painting on all sides and some French words I couldn’t understand.
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