by Anne Edwards
However, this was still unknown to me when the plumber arrived in record time. As soon as he entered the house, he appeared to have second thoughts. I was wearing a light-cotton robe and was in my bare feet. When I tried to get him to come upstairs with me, he was sure I had invited him over for sex and there had been no “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Explosion!” He turned to leave as quickly as he could. I grabbed him by the arm. Then I cried, the tears running down my cheeks as I pulled him toward the staircase. I never saw a more terrified man. Finally, he followed me up the stairs, crossly mumbling. (I learned later it was a moderate curse, something like “Fuck all bitches!”)
When he walked into the bathroom, Dale now three scotches the better, he stopped short and stared in utter astonishment. He kept mumbling as he worked to disassemble the toilet bowl and tenderly, most tenderly, the pipe where Dale’s rubber glove had become twisted and still painfully bound her hand. When she was free I suggested we go straightaway to the hospital as her hand looked just awful and she had a fever. However, she fell asleep on the big bed almost as we helped her to it. Her hand was badly bruised and swollen. I watched over her for an hour or so, the plumbier remaining downstairs in case he was needed. Finally, as she was talking feverishly in her sleep, I woke her up and with that kind man’s help, managed to get her into his truck and to the hospital where her hand was put in a cast. She had badly broken a wrist bone and a dislocated a finger as well as having endured painful skin abrasions.
The sun had replaced the moon by the time we returned from the hospital. Thankfully, Genevieve had cleaned up some of the mess and had mellowed into a more cooperative attitude. We were on our way to a livable situation. Once the trash and dirt was removed, the interior of the house was warm and comforting as well as being quite handsome and luxurious. I later learned that Mme de Boussieu (who had moved to Paris shortly after her lover’s death) had found it difficult to rent the house to full-time local residents. At the same time, she was loath to sell it and so had turned to film companies for it to be hired out as a location. To the French the Villa Roquefille brought back dark, painful memories; to me, that history was uplifting as I realized how many lives had been saved.
Jay arrived three days later, as planned. Dale had extended her visit for another week so that her hand would be strong enough to drive the station wagon back to Gstaad. One morning I was standing at the far end of the bedroom terrace, which overlooked the road that went by the villa, and saw Genevieve getting onto a moped. She put the thing in full gear. It revved up in a monstrous sound. It was a curious sight. A portion of Genevieve’s much-padded derrière hung over each side of the seat as she zipped down the hill in a flash—full steam. A half hour later she returned. I heard the rear door slam, and shortly thereafter she trudged up the stairs with a tray of darkly brewed coffee, thick cream, fresh crescents, butter, and jam. (Although the Queen of Speed on her moped, Genevieve was a tired foot soldier off her vehicle, her considerable weight an impediment to fast action.) Her early-morning trip was to the boulangerie where on my account (“the rich American lady”) she also bought bread for lunch and double the amount for her family, and did the same thing at the butcher and charcuterie shops. It was tradition, I was told. And though, of course I knew this was not true, I decided to let it go as I did not think the hundred dollars she received monthly for her services (as arranged by Mme de Boussieu) was fair pay, even given the fact that the cottage in which she and her family resided was rent-free.
Genevieve and Gerard finally got the house in shape. Petit Gerard fell in love with our poodle family and kept them running and scampering up and down the grounds—exercise they had never experienced before. There were always bowls of flowers from the garden in the main rooms and fresh-picked oranges in a large dish on the kitchen table. Genevieve had a warm spot for the dogs and although I tried to stop her, she continued to bring home from the boulangerie day-old sweets for them, served with saucers of cream. “Cream is for cats,” I told her. But the dogs were quite happy to lap up the cream, and she just smiled triumphantly. The warmest spot, however, Genevieve reserved for Jay.
I don’t think she knew anything about homosexuals and if she did, certainly did not realize that Jay was one. Late one night, sometime after eleven, I was reading in bed when I was jarred by a commotion in the far end of the hallway outside Jay’s “suite,” which consisted of two connecting bedrooms, so that he could have a private sitting room. Jay had on his sophisticated Asian robe while Genevieve’s fleshy body was barely covered by a flimsy nightdress. She was pulling on his arm. The dogs were in a dither, Biba snapping away at the hem of her ludicrous garment, Chrissy running around in circles, and Sandy barking (if I understood dog language, I would venture to say that he was egging his family on to further attack this strange creature).
“What is it?” I managed.
Jay pulled himself loose and shooed the dogs away. Genevieve turned and, sobbing quite dramatically, ran down the back staircase, the kitchen door slamming behind her as she exited the house.
In a declarative voice, Jay explained: “When I went to my room, there she was splayed on my bed! Her breasts spilling out of that obscene nightdress like two mammoth, rising yeast bowls of dough! No pretty sight, I’ll tell you! Can you believe it! How the hell did she get there? And in a nightdress? She came down from her house in a see-through night dress! It’s insane!”
“She’s got a crush on you,” I said, trying to control my desire to laugh.
“Well, she better get over it fast!” he said and turned on his heel—the dogs dutifully following behind him—and entered his room, not shutting his door until the poodles were safely inside. It took me very little time to adjust myself to life in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, perhaps due to the many likenesses it shared with Southern California: the gracefully curving coastline, the whiff of the salty sea the gentle summer breeze brought, the palm trees swaying in the soft-blowing wind, and the buildings—so many in the pastel colors so dear to California architects. The coastal highway wound itself just below our villa, weaving along the edge of the sand and sea much as the Pacific Coast Highway snaked its way from San Diego past Santa Monica, Malibu, up to Santa Barbara, and beyond. The younger Frenchwomen wore huge sunglasses (now popular), and sunbathed near nude on the decks of private hotels (well, at least, breasts exposed and wearing a bikini bottom that looked more like a G-string). As the hotels were on the sea and at ground level, their shiny, oiled, tanned bodies could be looked down upon from the windows and terraces of homes built into the cliffs.
Dozens of small seaside villages dotted the coast from Monte Carlo (east of Beaulieu) to Cannes (westward). We were situated less than a half hour’s car ride from Monaco and Nice, both of which had glorious outdoor weekly markets that were dazzling in their array of food and flowers. Cannes and Antibes were an extra thirty-minute ride (providing one did not drive during the heavy traffic hours) along one of the most glorious coast roads, equal—but not quite in my memory—to California’s magnificent Pacific Coast Highway. The best time to traverse this route was from noon to three p.m. when the French always stopped work to enjoy a relaxing lunch. What was strikingly different in the landscapes of Southern California and the South of France were the Corniches, where cliff-clinging villages had been built centuries earlier. I was fascinated with the old graveyards, well kept, many grave sites marked by porcelain flowers. I tried to plan some excursion, if only for a few hours, on one day of the weekend. I particularly liked market days, when we could buy a freshly baked loaf of bread and tomatoes that smelled redolently of the earth and sun. I can still remember the glorious taste of that humble meal, sprinkled with salt and a pinch of fresh pepper.
On weekdays I put in my usual long hours of writing. But on the weekends, with Jay at the wheel, we took to the highway and the narrow, curving, rather dangerous upper roads. Jay was a supercautious driver, seldom reaching the allowable speed. The French not being as polite as the Swiss, we were always being honked at, which d
id not bother Jay in the least as he kept to his snail’s pace. Often a driver would shout out offensive epithets. We learned very quickly that we were in a German car—and in this part of France, anti-German vitriol that had built up during the Occupation twenty-five years before had not been squelched.
I was deeply into my current book on the lives that had been thrown asunder by the blacklist. This novel had obsessed me to a degree that no other previous work had done. I had remained in close touch with Bob Rossen’s former secretary, Eleanor Wolquitt (now living in New York), and she had become irreplaceable in terms of research, traveling to DC to obtain copies of testimonies of friendly and unfriendly witnesses during the years that HUAC had such a manic hold on our country. I had renamed the book Shadow of a Lion (a Shakespearean quote) as I felt Post Mortem gave the false impression that the fallout due to the blacklist had ended, when I knew it had not.
I did not close my mind to the book on those weekend outings, for so many old friends and expats had relocated to the South of France. As in London, they hung together. Most remained bitter toward Hollywood and their expulsion during the McCarthy period. Suspicions festered—who had secretly named names; animosity flared—at those who had regained a foothold back in their profession, be it in Europe or in the States. Afternoons and dinner were often shared with them. Nearly twenty years had passed since they had been forced to leave home. They carried the past with them in unlocked areas of their minds and their hearts. Small incidents, words, names could bring forth a swell of emotions and recollections. The monkey still clung to their backs; the elephant remained in the room. I vowed I would not let that happen to me. Shifting what talent I had into writing books, not film scripts, had helped me to refresh my priorities. Now that I was writing about those times I had to chain my emotions. “No sliding back!” I would tell myself and try to abide by my own decree. This was difficult, however, when we were gathered together. All someone had to say to start a good two hours of dragging out the past was, “Did you read the reviews on Kazan’s new movie?” Or, “Well, that son-of-a-bitch-Reagan is going to run for a second term as governor of California!” (Reagan had notoriously betrayed the entire membership of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president by giving names of his constituency to the FBI and the Committee.) They had not integrated into the life of the people of France; their current political, economic situation was seldom discussed, nor were the French films that were being made by French companies right on their doorstep at the Nice Studios, unless someone like Jules Dassin (and so one of them) was involved. (He was, in fact, filming Promise at Dawn, the project that Sidney and I had once worked on.)
There was plausible reason for this. The French liked Americans—especially the tourists who helped rebuild their businesses and bank accounts. But they seldom opened the doors to their homes to those of us who were now living in their cities and towns. When in their company, you lunched or dined in restaurants. They came to your home—but never seemed comfortable in doing so . . . even when they were fluent in English. They also had little patience for those who did not speak their language correctly. That would include me—as I never could get the right accent and often mixed my tenses.
With the parade of Hollywood expats who I saw and welcomed to Villa Roquefille and with my deep involvement with Shadow, I had very little extra time. Catherine came down from Switzerland whenever she could, often bringing a girlfriend, or as on one memorable weekend, a group of six or seven of her chums—male and female—who I found stretched out on mats all over the living room one Saturday morning. It was glorious to see her and to spend time with young people who were set to devour the world in one large gulp.
Catherine was a beauty—if I as a mother have the right to say so. In California she had adopted a somewhat gamine look—short-cropped hair, trim clothes. Now she was a full-bloom flower child, her mahogany tresses shiny, loose and long, her skirts full and filmy. Still, her straightforward approach to life had not changed, nor had her work ethic, nor the uncommon common sense with which she could surprise you.
Hardly a week went by that I did not have guests. Vera flew over and stayed for weeks, working on a novel of her own in two upstairs rooms across the hall from Jay. They got along famously. Neither ever let the other get away with anything. “Stop being so polite to me!” she once ordered him. “That’s what happens to me when I am in the company of an old woman who is too vain to put on her glasses to look where she is going!” he once retorted. She laughed raucously.
Vera and I would take long walks together along the shore, talk about the problems we were having with our work, and exchange opinions on just about anything that took our fancy. Confiding in Vera was comfortable. She looked at things with a clear eye, no mist or sugarcoating. “If you can’t communicate with a man and the sex has lost its fervor, what else is left?” she said of my decision to divorce Leon. “You have a career. You are independent of his support. I’ve known Leon for years. He’s like the blindsided captain of a ship who steers it into an iceberg and then expects everyone on board to go down in the deep waters with him. He’s entombed himself in that apartment of his with steps that could lead to a scaffold. It’s his penance. But it damn well should not be yours!”
Vera’s presence was more bracing than the salty winds that came to shore off a rolling sea. I loathed to see her return to the States but Paul Jarrico and his new lady, Yvette, came shortly after her departure and brought with them a fresh wind. Yvette was French, formerly married to a Czechoslovakian, politically involved in his troubled country’s postwar problems. Putting aside Paul’s inclination to speechify, he was a very likeable character. He had been nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay of the lighthearted Ginger Rogers film Tom, Dick and Harry (1942, directed by Garson Kanin) as well as producing—on a shoestring—Salt of the Earth (1953), an iconic left-wing movie about the hardships of Latino mine workers in New Mexico, an impressive endeavor as almost all members of the company were either unprofessional actors or blacklisted filmmakers. Gaining an American release was impossible at the time. Yet, because of its unique history, the film had gained stature abroad and in private showings in the States. Certain that one day he would be famous for what he considered his contribution to cinema, the trunk and backseat of his car (which seemed the only permanent home he had at the time) was piled high with every paper that carried his words. There were hundreds of letters from “famous people” to him, and reams of notes he had made on his day-to-day doings and thoughts. There was only room in the front seat for the two of them. Yvette accepted this with good nature and by taking a minimal amount of her own belongings.
My old friend Lester Cole spent a weekend with us that first summer. He remained bitter, testy at times, but he had a new love, Kay, an attractive American divorcee, an intelligent, amiable woman who seemed able at times to gladden his moods from gloom to cheeriness, and when in the latter state, Lester could be extremely warm and entertaining. Harold and Ruth Buchman were now living in Cannes, as, of course, so was Sidney. Friends from London, John and Harriet Collier, lived up the coast a bit in a villa that Napoleon supposedly had bought for his sister, quite a bawdy lady as the story went. John was one of the few English writers who had been blacklisted in Hollywood, where he had immigrated in the midthirties having already become a critically acclaimed short-story writer in England. He notably contributed to the screenplays of The African Queen, I Am a Camera, and Her Cardboard Lover. He had a terrific story mind, very offbeat. A short bulldog of a man with bushy black eyebrows and a wry smile, he often took pleasure in belittling himself. He was now reflective of his Hollywood years. “I sometimes marvel,” he wrote, “that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer.” But he did regard himself a fantastic chef and insisted on having these big gatherings where he did all the cooking, always finding some exotic fish or animal body part that was seldom served (for good reason). Once nearly all the guests came down with food po
isoning (I was laid up for a week after that meal), and on another occasion only an hour after dinner had been served, John had to be rushed to the hospital with such strong stomach pains he could not stand up.
Jules Dassin had a residence in Lausanne, Switzerland, and offices in Paris. But he shot most of his films at the Victorine studio in Nice—seldom bringing Melina Mercouri (now his wife) with him. Melina devoted much of her time as a political activist and campaigned diligently against the ruling junta in her native Greece. Her passport had been confiscated, her citizenship revoked, and she had been forced into becoming an exile from her beloved country. The similarity of their situations had initially brought them together. Sadly, now it seemed to be placing a wedge between them. Mainly, I suspected, because Jules had turned away from his activism to his work as a producer and director, while Melina had distanced herself from acting and had become more deeply involved in the political chaos in her native Greece.
One morning Jules rang me. He was working on postproduction of a film at the Victorine and having serious problems with the quality of the sound mixing. He once again wanted to get in touch with Leon and hoped he might be with me in Beaulieu, as he had not been able to reach him in London. I told him that we were now permanently separated and that I did not know where he was. “I thought you two had pulled it together,” he mused.
“I’m afraid not. How’s Melina?” I asked.
“She’s fine, but we’re having some difficulties of our own at present. I always seem to be coming in the front door when she’s leaving through the back.” We consoled each other for a few minutes, and then he asked if I would have dinner with him at La Reserve (a fairly midway point for the two of us). It was a Friday night and I was free. Jay could drive me there and I could take a taxi back (not an expensive fare).