You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood's Golden Age

by Wagner, Robert J

  Ann Warner was a very upbeat lady, vivacious and full of life, even though theirs was a difficult marriage. In the silent days, she and Jack had had an affair, which eventually resulted in his divorcing his first wife and her divorcing her husband Don Alvarado, one of the many actors who vied for Rudolph Valentino’s public after Valentino died. (To give you some idea of the incestuous nature of Hollywood, Don Alvarado later went to work for Jack at Warner Bros., using the name Don Page.)

  Ann had at least one other serious affair after that, with Eddie Albert. As for Jack, monogamy was not part of the marital deal as he understood it. Yet he was mortally afraid of his wife. I’ve never understood why, but there it is. Whatever their private compromises, they stayed married for the rest of their lives.

  There was an intense clannishness on the part of the Warners. For that matter, that same clannishness played a part in the character of almost all the men who formed Hollywood. That, and an extreme competitiveness.

  For instance: In the 1950s, Jack euchred his brother Harry out of the studio. Jack had suggested to Harry that they sell out and retire to enjoy their families and the fruits of their labors. TV had rolled in, the audience was declining, they were both getting older, and it wasn’t fun anymore. The argument was convincing, and Harry went along with it.

  But Jack was bluffing—he had no intention of retiring. After their combined shares were sold to financier Serge Semenenko, Jack bought back all the shares in a prearranged sweetheart deal. (Semenenko had a coarseness all his own; my wife Natalie once told me that when she met Semenenko for the first time, he stuck his tongue down her throat. Even Jack wasn’t that crude.)

  Warner Bros. was now the sole possession of Jack Warner. Harry had a stroke soon afterward and was never the same man. When Harry finally died, Jack didn’t go to the funeral, but then he probably would not have been welcome. Sixty-odd years later, Harry’s side of the family rarely, if ever, speaks to Jack’s side of the family.

  Clan loyalty dies hard.

  I played a lot of tennis at Jack’s house. The tennis court was professionally lit, so you could play at any hour of the night. He didn’t look like it, and God knows he didn’t act like it, but Jack was a very good tennis player, as was Solly Baiano, his executive in charge of talent. But you had to be wary of Jack on the court—his calls about a ball being in or out of bounds could be highly questionable.

  Did Jack cheat? I wouldn’t put it like that. But I would say that his competitive nature led him to make consistently dubious decisions. Let’s just say that after playing tennis with Jack Warner, you had an increased respect for what Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and Jimmy Cagney had to go through for all those years.

  After Jack died in 1978, Ann stayed on at the house until her death in 1990. At that point, David Geffen purchased the estate and the furnishings for $47.5 million. Jack’s house was the last entirely intact estate to be sold in Beverly Hills, and the money Geffen paid set a national record for a single-family residence.

  Geffen is a man of taste, so I’m sure he’s maintained it as Jack and Ann would have wanted, but somehow I can’t imagine that house without those two around to liven it up.

  In stark contrast to Jack’s house was that of Lew Wasserman, the head of MCA Universal. Lew was of a different generation than Jack and had very different politics—Lew was a Democrat, while Jack was a conservative Republican—so it’s not surprising that he had a very different temperament as well. If he liked you, he was warm and accommodating, but to those people toward whom he was indifferent, or simply in business with, Lew could be one cold fish.

  Lew’s house was quite modern, and was an authentic reflection of his personality. It featured stark lines, but also art that he understood, including paintings by Vlaminck and lots of Impressionists. Lew would usually entertain at Chasen’s, but he would also occasionally invite guests to his home. In either case black tie was called for, because that’s the sort of couple that Lew and Edie Wasserman were.

  Interestingly, the homes of the great movie moguls didn’t seem to have much direct relationship to their personalities as reflected in the movies they made. The contrast between Jack Warner’s house and Jack’s films, for example, was staggering. Warner Bros. movies typically featured snarling mugs like Cagney, Bogart, and Eddie Robinson and tough women like Bette Davis, but his home was the height of rarified style. If I had to take a guess, I would say that his movies represented Jack as he actually was—dapper, energetic, and cracking cheap jokes—and the house represented him as he wished to be.

  Joe Schenck ran United Artists and was the chairman of 20th Century Fox. Yiddish has a word for Joe Schenck: haimish. Joe was a rabbi to everybody in the movie business. He was round, unassuming, unpretentious, and wise.

  After Norma Talmadge divorced him because she was having an affair with Gilbert Roland (later, she would marry George Jessel—there’s no accounting for taste), Joe built a neoclassical mansion on South Carolwood Drive, just west of Beverly Hills. There he spent the rest of his life entertaining beautiful young women, including Marilyn Monroe. Joe died in 1961, and subsequent owners of the house included Tony Curtis and Sonny and Cher.

  Darryl Zanuck, who gave me my career, built one of the last great homes to be constructed along the Santa Monica stretch of beach. Darryl’s movies were evenly divided between light entertainments in garish Technicolor (such as Betty Grable’s films), grim film noirs (Nightmare Alley, Call Northside 777), and westerns that could have been film noirs (My Darling Clementine, The Ox-Bow Incident). Darryl was always an innovator, a ceaselessly active man—I can barely remember him standing still.

  Darryl’s house at Santa Monica beach, 546 Ocean Front, was a three-story white clapboard house that could have been transplanted intact from New England or upstate New York. Darryl and his wife Virginia Fox hired Wallace Neff to design the house; when the job was finished in 1937, Virginia hired Cornelia Conger to do the interiors.

  You would never know that it was the home of one of the most dynamic moguls of his time, for there was nothing theatrical about it. Virginia’s collection of Staffordshire dogs and English china was displayed over the fireplace, and the whole house had a restrained English feel to it. The furniture was Chippendale and Old English, the wallpapers were hand painted—Virginia had excellent, refined tastes.

  I suppose you could characterize the style of the Santa Monica beach house as predominantly Virginia’s, but Ric-Su-Dar, Darryl’s other residence (which he named after his children, Richard, Susan, and Darrylin), in Palm Springs, was not really any more in keeping with his own personal style—which was, in a word, swashbuckling. Darryl was a man’s man, a ladies’ man, and extremely competitive at everything to which he turned his hand.

  Darryl F. Zanuck’s Santa Monica beach house.

  Time + Life Pictures/Getty Images

  Darryl raised his family at the Santa Monica house, and some of his favorite employees were nearby—Ernst Lubitsch, for one, had a place a little farther down the Pacific Coast Highway. It was a perfect place for entertaining, and Virginia hosted many elegant Sunday afternoon buffets. She was a very gracious woman—that seems to have been a job requirement for the wives of the moguls—and I liked her tremendously.

  The house at 546 Ocean Front clearly meant a lot to the Zanucks. Darryl’s son Richard—who used to be handed over to me to babysit, and who grew up to be a great producer in his own right—eventually bought the house from his mother and lived there for years with his own family.

  Dick Zanuck was a remarkable man in so many ways—the obstacles he had to overcome in order to carve out his niche! He once told me the story of how he took over Fox. It was after The Longest Day, and the studio was in the doldrums. Dick went to Paris to be with his father, who was thinking of coming back and taking over the studio . . . again.

  “You know all these young people,” Darryl told him. “Do you know anybody who
could run production? Here’s what I want you to do. At dinner tonight, bring me a list of people who could run the studio.”

  That night, Dick handed his father a note. On it was just one word: “Me.” And that was the beginning of Dick’s reign as a studio head.

  Dick sold 546 Ocean Front some years before he died in 2012, but I’ll always remember it as the Zanuck house. And Darryl and Dick Zanuck will always be in my heart.

  Me with my young friend Richard Zanuck and his first wife, Lili.

  Courtesy of the author

  As my own career began to flourish and I began circulating among my fellow movie stars in areas full of money, I encountered a number of surprises. For instance, James Cagney’s house on Coldwater Canyon.

  The house itself looked like an unpretentious Connecticut farmhouse. It had two stories—the exterior of the first story was finished in fieldstone, the second floor in shingles.

  It was not large, with only six or seven markedly small rooms, and a warm, rustic interior. Jim’s study was very masculine, with roughly finished boards, lots of books, a card table, and a piano. The house had been completed just before World War II, and that’s where Jim lived when he was making a movie in town. Otherwise, he was in the east, at either of his farms in Dutchess County or on Martha’s Vineyard.

  The Beverly Hills house wasn’t exactly a cottage, but it seemed incomprehensible as a residence for a great star like Cagney. But then Jim wasn’t your typical great star. He always felt that Jack Warner was taking advantage of him, but he was never really successful away from the studio. He broke away a couple of times—once, briefly, in the thirties, and later, during the war and after, when he set up Cagney Productions with his brother Bill.

  But the pictures Jim made for himself showcased him not as his fans wanted to see him—snarling, taking on the cops and the world with a gun in his hand—but as he wanted to see himself: in literary material such as Johnny Come Lately or The Time of Your Life, in which he played a quiet, reflective man in transition. Those pictures would disappoint, and he would troop back to Warner, grumbling the entire time.

  There were very few personal touches in Jim’s Hollywood house. One of them was a track that he had constructed right on Coldwater Canyon—his property encompassed ten acres—where I would jog his trotters when I was a teenager. I got the job through the Dornan family, who were good friends of his. There weren’t a lot of grooms around Hollywood at that point, so I lucked into the job.

  I was just a kid at that point, so he didn’t have to be nice to me, but he always was. That’s the kind of man Jim Cagney was. He liked people, he was very open, and he was very compassionate about animals. If you cared about animals, Jim was your friend. Since I was young and loved horses, I was one of his people. Ten years later, I died in his arms in What Price Glory—one of the great thrills of my life.

  Inside Jimmy’s house was a dance studio with a wooden floor and a record player where Jimmy would practice, either to make sure he could still do the steps he’d been doing since his days as a chorus boy in New York or to lose weight for a movie. Dance was Jimmy’s main exercise.

  There were never any parties at Jimmy’s home; he and his wife kept to themselves, and I don’t remember him socializing much at all, except for the occasional night out with the Irish mafia—Pat O’Brien, Frank McHugh, etc.

  Jim never displayed much affection for the town of Hollywood—he seemed to regard it as a necessary evil, the financial basis for his real identity as a horse breeder and farmer—but he kept that house to the end of his life. Every winter, when the weather back east got nasty, he and his wife would come back to California and get in touch with their small circle of friends. It was something of a pain—Jim wouldn’t fly, so they had to drive across the country—but by that time the Coldwater Canyon home had become a refuge for an elderly couple.

  Men like Jim didn’t usually hop around when it came to real estate. Likewise Fred Astaire—he built his house in 1960, some six years after his beloved wife Phyllis had died, and he lived in it for the rest of his life with his daughter Ava and his mother. When Ava left home to get married and his mother died, he lived there with a housekeeper. And he continued living there after he married Robyn Smith in 1980, until he died seven years later.

  Fred’s home was tastefully done, but not what you might expect—classy, but in a slightly bloodless way. It had designer written all over it, which I suspect was a function of Phyllis’s not being around to personalize it. In addition to books, the library had Fred’s Oscar and his Emmys, but it also had a pool table and a backgammon table. Over the fireplace was a portrait of one of Fred’s prize racehorses. (Half the people in my life have loved horses; the other half have loved dogs.) The dining room was done in period English furniture and Georgian silver.

  Fred’s artwork was particularly interesting, as most of it had been done by friends or family rather than by professional artists. Over a cabinet in the dining room was a painting by Ava, and Cecil Beaton had contributed a painting of Fred’s beloved sister Adele. I remember a couple of paintings of birds that had been done by Irving Berlin. They were quietly witty and charming, just like their owner.

  In thinking about those times, I’ve realized that the watchword for the Hollywood lifestyle then was “diversity.” Whatever one’s taste in either people or houses, it could be met. My friend Cliff May was one of the men who saw to the latter. Cliff was the primary practitioner of what would come to be known as the California ranch house. Beginning in the early 1930s and continuing until his death in 1989, Cliff designed more than eighteen thousand ranch houses all over America and as far away as Australia.

  Cliff looked like a cowboy. He was slender and handsome, with pale grayish eyes, sandy hair, and an ambling walk. And to his dying day he loved the ladies.

  He was a sixth-generation San Diegan, born in 1908. When he was a boy, he would summer at his aunt’s Monterey-style adobe in Santa Margarita, but the influence didn’t immediately take. Cliff never studied architecture; rather, he was a musician—a saxophone player. His father thought music was a ridiculous business and nudged him to do something else. That something else turned into various pursuits—piloting, horses, many other things.

  In 1931 he left San Diego State without graduating and he needed to make money. As he recounted to me, he started producing Mission-style furniture, and the pieces sold. Then someone offered him a vacant house in which to display his furniture, and the house, which had been on the market for months, quickly sold. He furnished another house that was for sale, which was also snapped up, and then started building his own. Within four or five years, Cliff had built more than thirty houses in and around San Diego. And then he came to Los Angeles.

  In Cliff’s early days as an architect, his style looked a lot like nineteenth-century Californian; he called one of his houses a “haciendita,” which gives you some idea of his traditionalist background.

  His great motto was “The plan is shaped by the materials.” His most famous work is probably the Roper house, which he designed on speculation in 1933, a fairly modest place that showcased his basic architectural ideas and a muted color scheme. Cliff had a formula that stayed the same no matter the fundamental style of the house:

  Fit the house to the site; the facade the public sees is often fairly bland.

  Use natural materials (plaster, hand-worked beams, roof tiles, terra-cotta pavers).

  The patio—or courtyard—is key.

  The overall effect was gracious and relaxed. Cliff’s houses were built to be enjoyed; with their wide verandas and muted color schemes, they felt comfortable. The breakfast room was always oriented toward the rising sun, the living room for southern exposure.

  Cliff designed to the market; it wasn’t unusual for him to simultaneously work on several different houses in completely different styles. In the 1950s he designed several hundred tract houses
in Long Beach that, while ranch houses, derived from the International Style and had very little of the historic detail he loved. They were fairly inexpensive, and they relied on open floor plans with a lot of light and private courtyards.

  In the second half of his career, Cliff began getting commissions from movie stars and other wealthy clients, and he returned to his love for period details. Cliff could be completely innovative; in 1952 he designed what he called his Experimental Ranch House for his own family. The roof was primarily fabric and was made to roll up; most of the interior walls were on rubber wheels, so the spaces could be reconfigured at will.

  Yours truly with my elegant and talented friend Cliff May.

  Mary E. Nichols / Architectural Digest May 1987

  Our bedroom on Old Oak Road.

  Mary E. Nichols / Architectural Digest May 1987

  The signature Cliff May bird tower at our house. He gave us six pairs of Slow Roller pigeons that gave us so much pleasure.

  Mary E. Nichols / Architectural Digest May 1987

  I was honored to buy a house that Cliff had designed for his own family. Architectural historians refer to it as Cliff May House #3, which was built in the late 1930s on Old Oak Road, right off Sunset Boulevard. Cliff and his family lived there for fourteen years; then, in 1949, he added another 3,200 square feet, very nearly doubling the size. After I bought it in 1982, Cliff remodeled it yet again for our family.

  It’s a low, rambling house, a brilliant solution for fitting a horse ranch into what was a suburban lot. It had a shake roof and a stable on the property for the horses that he, my wife Jill, my daughter Natasha, and I loved to ride. Originally it had three bedrooms, a maid’s room, three patios, a stable, a tack room, and a paddock. Over the years both the house and the horse areas were enlarged. The remodels made it one of Cliff’s California ramblers; it ended up designed like a wagon wheel, with the central living space in the center and several corridors leading out from there to the bedrooms and offices.