by George Baxt
“Now come on, Arnold, you’re not trying to tell me you suspect some kind of a link then? She was young, naive, an innocent kid of twenty. She knew from nothing. She’s even apolitical today. She doesn’t vote.”
“She can’t. She’s not a citizen.”
“Oh.”
“Oh. I’m not accusing the lady of anything. I’m just thinking out loud. Anything’s a possibility in the espionage racket. So she’s finally getting to meet Guiss tonight.”
“Yeah. Dinner at his Bel Air mansion. Very secluded, highly guarded.”
“Just the two of them?”
Villon referred to a memo on his desk, information from Lisa Schmidt by way of Martin Gruber. ‘There’s to be Guiss’s girlfriend, Risa Barron. Then there’s the guy who’s supposed to be co-producing, Werner Lieb. Figureheads, of course. Von Stroheim has already made it quite clear that he’s in charge.”
“They sat still for that? No ego problems?”
“Not according to Lisa, and that girl of yours is good, she’s very good,” said Villon.
“Strange. Still, these are only the preliminaries. Let’s see how they behave when the actual shooting is underway. Who else?”
“Gustav Henkel, who wrote the first script.” Villon rubbed his chin.
“There’s a second script?”
“It’s in the works now. Bertolt Brecht’s writing it.”
“What’s a Bertolt Brecht?” asked Arnold.
“Brilliant German writer. The Threepenny Opera and a couple of others.”
“What’s The Threepenny Opera?”
“I don’t know. I never saw it. And then there’s William Haines.”
“The movie comic? He hasn’t been heard from in years. Where’d he crop up from?”
“After he was washed up in pictures eight years ago … too many boys…”
“One of them?” Arnold might have been alluding to an alien from outer space.
“Right. He took to interior decorating, and thanks to Joan Crawford, who gave him his first crack at it, he’s found a whole new career for himself. He’s one of the few guys Garbo ever spends any time with.”
Arnold asked, “What about the secretary, Martin Gruber? Do you think he’ll be in attendance?”
“Very much so.”
“That’s good. I don’t trust him.”
"That’s good and you don’t trust him. So what’s good about it?”
“It’s good because he passes on the word to Lisa.”
“For a nice price.”
“And it’s bad,” elucidated Arnold, “because informers are rats to begin with and I don’t trust any of them. Somewhere along the line he’ll foul up.”
“Maybe he won’t.”
“All informers foul up sooner or later. They get too cocksure and they then slip up. Guiss has run through an impressive list of secretaries, not one of whom came to a good end except one broad named Lise Koch who’s running a concentration camp in Germany.” He rubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray. “It’ll happen to Gruber. Sooner or later he’ll make a dumb move. They always do.” He shook his head sadly. ‘They always do. Aren’t any of the picture’s big hitters invited?”
“You mean von Stroheim or any of the cast? Not as of this memo from Lisa. I think Guiss wants Garbo all to himself. He’s a big fan of hers. He drools at the very mention of her name. Come to think of it, what wouldn’t I give to be there myself?”
SIX
It was later that afternoon when von Stroheim had his meeting with Alysia Hoffman. Lisa Schmidt had efficiently tracked down the actress after getting her phone number from Mercedes de Acosta, and the shrewd de Acosta had advised Alysia to stay home near her phone, foreseeing an imminent summons to meet the Emperor von Stroheim.
Still pretty, thought Lisa as the receptionist ushered Alysia into the office. The crow’s feet are beginning to appear around the lips, the eyes have a strange hardness, probably brought on by the hell she must have gone through getting out of Europe, but her height and her coloring are right.
Von Stroheim was surprisingly gentle with her and the actress was admirably composed. “You are an old friend of Greta’s?” He was slapping the riding crop gently against the palm of a hand. Alysia told him they first met in Sweden nineteen years ago when she had traveled from Germany, where work was scarce, to see if there were opportunities in the burgeoning Swedish film industry.
“You speak Swedish?”
“In silents it didn’t matter,” she said with a smile. “Once my career shifted into high gear, I made films all over Europe. France, Italy, Austria. We all did.”
“Of course,” said von Stroheim. “I myself had many offers, hut I was too busy here then. So you want to be Greta’s stand-in.”
“I need the job.”
“Your height and your coloring are right. You agree, Schmidt?” Lisa considered saluting him but swiftly thought better of it. “I think Miss Hoffman would be perfect.”
“Women.” He spat the word contemptuously. “You always stick together.”
“I wouldn’t take that as gospel,” said Lisa slyly. She could see the actress was now uneasy.
“Don’t be impertinent.” His eyes shifted back to Alysia. “Miss Garbo suggests it might be generous on my part to also find a supporting role for you in the film.”
“She’s so kind.”
Von Stroheim refrained from making an ugly comment about the star, still bristling over her firm demand that Alysia be hired as her stand-in. “There’s a small but interesting part that you might be right for. A heretic, a follower of Joan. She gets stoned to death by a mob.” He said it with such relish, Lisa expected him to cackle with glee.
“I know I can handle it.”
“Of course you can.” He was on his feet and pacing. “But remember this. I’m a fanatic where realism is concerned. I plan to use real stones.” He bent over, his face against hers. “Real stones. You don’t flinch? You don’t protest? You don’t say thank you very much but I’ll remain behind the cameras? I don’t frighten you?”
“Mr. von Stroheim," she said calmly, evenly, in a voice that won Lisa’s admiration, “after what I’ve been through these past two years, nothing can frighten me.”
He was back behind his desk. “I am satisfied. You arc hired. Miss Schmidt will make the necessary arrangements. You will have the shooting schedule a week before we will begin.”
“And when is that?” She couldn’t disguise her anxiety. Lisa wondered if she ought to offer to lend her a fiver.
“That will be decided within the next few days. We only moved into the studio at the beginning of the week. We are still casting. And I’m awaiting the decision as to whether or not we shoot in Technicolor.” He said with gusto, “Can you imagine what Technicolor will do to enhance the battlefields? Rivers of real red blood flowing past the dead and dying, the agonizing cries of the horses as they are brought down and crippled, the geysers erupting from decapitated bodies, oh by Christ this wall win me the Academy Award those bastard cretins have denied me for years!”
Lisa Schmidt excused herself and hurried to the bathroom to throw up.
“Lottie.” Garbo spoke her housekeeper’s name gravely. Garbo was in her Spartan bedroom sipping a cup of bouillon, preparing to bathe and dress for Guiss’s dinner party. Her housekeeper was laying out the ensemble Garbo had chosen to wear. ‘The coming months may be very difficult for you.”
Lottie looked up from the slipper she was polishing. She said quickly, “Nothing is easy, I always say.”
“Ah Lottie, so you are a philosopher!”
“Miss Garbo, from the time I decided to go into service, I knew there’d be a rough go ahead of me. Do you mind if I tell you how I feel about myself and others in my position?”
“But no, of course not. It would be such a privilege!” She might have just heard she’d won the Irish Sweepstakes.
“Well, ma’am. I think we’re unique. It takes a special kind of person with a special kind of perso
nality to decide to wait on others. You know what I mean? Maids, butlers, housekeepers, we’re special. And good ones are damned hard to find, as you well knew when I finally landed on your doorstep.”
“Oh how well I knew. You have been so good to me, Lottie.”
“And you’ve been good to me, ma’am, and very generous. I’m the only domestic in Santa Monica who owns a frayed chinchilla opera wrap.” She smiled, which she did infrequently. “I love parading around in it in my bedroom.”
“Oh I’m so glad you like it. I wore it in The Temptress, oh, so many years ago… It was a silent movie.”
“I know. I saw it. You were great.” She cleared her throat. “You see, we go through hell when we’re interviewed for jobs. When I came here two years ago …”
“Is it that long we’re together?”
“Yes ma’am, two years. I remember telling my parole officer, ‘Garbo’ll never hire me. When she hears I did time in San Q. she’ll get turned off.’ ”
“But I didn’t, did I? I was so fascinated! To have someone working for me who had the courage to poison her husband.” Garbo’s hands were clasped and the look on her face was sheer ecstasy.
“Poison. The son of a bitch took forever to die.”
“Oh you have found that out too? How difficult it is to rid ourselves of people who no longer amuse us. Oh, if only I had your courage. How you must have agonized before finally lacing his soup and cocoa…”
“Hot chocolate.”
“How you must have agonized before deciding to kill him.”
“I didn’t agonize at all. The only thing that drove me nuts was how long it took him to die. Of course I’d read up on poisons and then it was hell getting enough of it to prove fatal. He would just slurp and slurp and ask for seconds and I tell you, that was so damned frustrating! I really began to get this feeling of inadequacy. I mean some friends were with me when he suddenly looked up from my special lentil and split pea number … the bacon and the thinly sliced leeks are what do the trick,” she winked conspiratorially, “and he gasped, ‘Holy shit!’ and fell face down into the soup. Well I was so relieved I said, ‘Well it’s about time’ and my big mouth did me in. Anyway, I had a real shrewd lawyer—Isadore Marino, half wop, half Jew—and he saved my neck. Anyway, you were saying? The road ahead’s going to be a tough one to travel?”
“Yes. A very tough one. Joan is a very difficult character to interpret, and von Stroheim is a very difficult man to work with. And I must cope with this strange smorgasbord of co-producers and writers and musicians and refugee actors, all of them undoubtedly with a method all their own. Ach God how we shall clash!”
“My money’s on you, Miss Garbo.” Lottie was attacking the slipper with fresh gusto.
“Is it really?”
“Miss G., when you’re on the screen, everybody else gets wiped off.”
Garbo was sad. “Not always. Constance Bennett stole my last film from me. And she’s such a terrible person.”
“It was such a terrible picture. Oops. Sorry.”
Garbo laughed. “Don’t be sorry. Your honesty is refreshing.” She looked at her wristwatch. “I must start dressing. The car will be here soon.”
“You’ve got plenty of time. It’s picking up Mr. Haines first. He’s miles from here.”
“And now they tell me the film will be in Technicolor. I have never filmed in Technicolor. I will insist on tests. Technicolor is for musicals. I must make sure I do nor look like Betty Grable.” She crossed to her floor-length mirror and stood with her back to it. Then she looked over her shoulder at her mirror image, a familiar Grable pinup pose. After a few moments she was satisfied she would never look like Betty Grable.
Guido’s was an unprepossessing and inexpensive Italian restaurant near the Goldwyn Studios. In a quiet booth toward the rear of the establishment, Lisa Schmidt sat having dinner with Alysia Hoffman, both having settled on veal piccata and spaghetti.
“This is so good,” yummy-yummed Alysia. “How really kind of you to invite me to dinner.”
Lisa twirled pasta on her fork. ‘To be perfectly honest, I didn’t have anything else to do and I was in no mood to sit around my apartment reading Fannie Hurst. Anyway, I like the way you handled von Bastard.”
“Is he really all that terrible?”
“I’m sure it’s mostly affectation. He’s still living back in the old days when he made his masterpieces, even though the studios butchered them.”
“Still, how many directors have been capable of those masterpieces. Greed is soul-stirring.”
“Are you Jewish?”
“What?” Alysia almost dropped her fork. Lisa’s steady gaze never left her companion’s face. “Jewish? Me, not at all.”
“Then why did you have to leave Germany? You’re still a big star there. Why give up your career to go through an exile’s hell?”
Alysia sipped some Chianti. “How do I make you understand?”
“It’s not important, really. I mean I’m a nosy bitch and I know I ask too many questions…
“No no no no. It’s a perfectly valid … valid, is that right? Valid?”
“Perfectly valid.” The veal was stringy.
“Good. It’s a perfectly valid question. You see, Lisa, Jews are not the only refugees fleeing Hider. I was … how do you put it? Yes a rebel, a firebrand. I rebelled against the Nazis and what they stand for. And I was very outspoken. Foolishly, I suppose.”
“I think you have guts you haven’t used yet, Alysia.”
“Guts?”
“A colloquialism for strength, bravery.”
“Ah yes. How nice. Thank you. So I was outspoken and I started to get into trouble. Goebbels, who has control of the movie industry, warned me time and again about my overactive mouth. Well, I thought I was big enough a star to pooh-pooh his threats. But ach, no. Soon I was being followed, my mail was being opened, and they investigated lovers who might have been yids and some of course were…
Lisa placed her fork quietly on her plate and studied the woman who was talking and eating ravenously.
“And then they were questioning my friends.”
“What about your family?” asked Lisa.
“I have no family. I was married back in ’26 but that didn’t last very long. I haven’t the vaguest idea where he is now. His name was Heinrich, he was a prize fighter.”
“Like Max Schmeling?”
“Oh not so good, though Schmeling has capitulated to the Nazis, I heard, when I was in Mexico.”
“It must have been hell getting to Mexico.”
“Of course first I tried to get a visa into the States, but I was rejected. I made a deal to do a movie in Spain for Franco, a terrible script but it was a good excuse to get me out of Germany. While in Spain, I had an offer to do a film at the Cherubusco Studios in Mexico City with Luis Buñuel. You’ve heard of him?”
“Yes. He’s brilliant.”
“Well, this film never got made. But it wasn’t cancelled until after I arrived in Mexico City, so I was safe. The authorities let me stay. But there were no more offers of work. My money was running out and soon I was scratching about to survive. It wasn’t easy.”
“But it helped improve your Spanish.”
Alysia laughed. “I was already fluent in Spanish. I was always very good with languages. Soon my English will be better, no?”
“I’m sure it will be. Dessert?”
“Oh I don’t think I have room!”
“You’ve got to try Guido’s zabaglione. It’s one of the few things on the menu he doesn’t have to be ashamed of. Go ahead and order, I have to call an actor I’ve been trying to get in for an interview tomorrow. Order me a pot of espresso, honey.”
Alysia lit a cigarette as she watched Lisa cross to the wall telephone on the opposite side of the room. So beautiful, she was thinking, so very beautiful. Somehow she seems miscast in the role of von Stroheim’s assistant. Still, it was good to be friendly with her. She had learned soon after her arriva
l, you can never have enough friends in Hollywood.
William Haines, former MGM star and now a successful interior decorator, couldn’t contain his enthusiasm for the young man chauffeuring this splendid limousine. And it was splendid indeed. There was an impressively stocked bar and a small refrigerator with hors d’oeuvres, peanuts and pretzels, several decks of cards, a checkers set and a chess set and a Parcheesi game. And there was the young man propelling the car smoothly on the road to Garbo’s home in Santa Monica. That profile, those broad shoulders, a splendid youth, even if his accent was by way of the Katzenjammer Kids.
Haines crossed a leg and began his campaign. “What’s your name?’’
“Ludwig."
“Like in Beethoven?”
“Oh yes, sure.”
“How long you been in this country?”
“Not long.”
This is hard work, thought Haines. But quite a challenge to an old campaigner. “How long have you been driving for Mr. Guiss?”
“Long time.”
“Oh. So you worked for him in Europe.”
“Long time I leave Europe.”
Haines thought. Get your story straight kid. I’m not. He was beginning to enjoy himself. “Since you’re not long in this country and you’ve been driving a long time for Guiss, what have you been doing in between?”
“Driving.”
Smart cookie, thought Haines. “Is that all you do? Drive?”
“I only drive.”
“Don’t you ever putt?”
“Pardon.”
“Forget it. Inside joke.” He slumped down in the seat. He was looking forward to seeing Garbo but not looking forward to the cast of characters he suspected would be their dinner companions, like anyone else with a healthy inquisitive nature, he was glad for the opportunity of a firsthand look at Albert Guiss. He was glad Garbo was going to do Joan, because there was something he wanted her to try and do for him.
He hated asking another favor. After his fall from grace eight years earlier when Mayer set out to destroy his career and his credibility in Hollywood (I wonder if the old bastard ever found out I serviced Gable a few times?), Garbo had been one of the few people who had come forward on his behalf. At the time he had thought she was barely aware of his existence. They’d been working on the same lot for almost ten years, but never once did she say a word to him when they passed each other. True, she was aloof to just about everybody else in the studio (“She’s very shy. Bill. Don’t be upset”) but after all, didn’t she appreciate he was Metro’s court jester? Always clowning around, always saying campy, outrageous things about everyone and anyone, until he himself was the butt of cruel laughter and derision.