I had to go to court with Howard to have my contract approved because I was a minor. There were a couple of photographers around and my first almost professional publicity photograph was printed in the California newspapers. I was launched. But none of it seemed quite real. It was a fairyland for the living and with all new people and movie make-believe. I don’t suppose I ever sat down and applied it to life as I had known life. Limited though my experience was, and God knows it was, New York was real and California was not. ’Twas ever thus.
In a used-car lot near Charlie’s office I found a 1940 gray Plymouth coupé for $900. I thought it was heavenly. The price certainly was. I told Charlie about it – he immediately lent me the money to pay for it. The office made all the arrangements and I was a car owner. Not bad for eighteen and a new kid in town. I had my license – now Mother had to learn. The car was freedom. No more depending on anyone to get any place. A relief.
There were many lunches and much time spent with Howard. He wanted me to drive into the hills, find some quiet spot, and read aloud. He felt it most important to keep the voice in a low register. Mine started off low, but what Howard didn’t like and explained to me was, ‘If you notice, Betty, when a woman gets excited or emotional she tends to raise her voice. Now, there is nothing more unattractive than screeching. I want you to train your voice in such a way that even if you have a scene like that your voice will remain low.’ I found a spot on Mulholland Drive and proceeded to read The Robe aloud, keeping my voice lower and louder than normal. If anyone had ever passed by, they would have found me a candidate for an asylum. Who sat on mountaintops in cars reading books aloud to the canyons? Who did? I did!
Howard wanted to have some good, special pictures taken of me. He knew a super photographer named John Engstead and set a day for us to do it. They would be taken at Howard’s house, which I had never seen. I might even meet his wife, ‘Slim,’ whom he spoke of so often and who had been the one who showed him my pictures in Harper’s Bazaar in the first place. I was given directions on how to get there and finally found it. My sense of direction has always been wanting – that is, north, south, east, and west direction, not life direction.
He lived in Bel-Air on Moraga Drive in the most beautiful house I had ever seen. It was a ranch-type house, all on one floor, with beamed ceilings, beautiful wood floors, antique country furniture – rich and comfortable and tasteful. The grounds were large. There were stables – both he and Slim rode. There was a pool. And I met Slim – a tall, thin, incredibly beautiful and unusual woman only seven or eight years my senior. She had great personal style. I was led back to her bedroom, which was gigantic – like a bed-sitting room; her dressing room had more shoes than I had ever seen – handbags on hooks – open shelves filled with sweaters – a room-size closet filled with clothes of all descriptions – an enormous bath. Howard’s bedroom, dressing room, and bath adjoined it. Did kings live any better than this? He and Slim had decided what I should wear – some things of hers, one or two of mine. One dress was silver lamé. John Engstead arrived with cameras, and my first portrait sitting began. The backgrounds were an enormous fireplace, a chair – all very simple. He was marvelously easy to work with – not unlike Dahl-Wolfe. I didn’t spend much time with Slim that day, but I liked her immediately, though I did feel shy with her. I thought both people and the house they lived in overwhelming. The portraits were the best I’d ever had, and still are.
After a few months Mother got restless and found a job around the corner from Reeves Drive that was pleasant and not too taxing. She was more efficient than anyone her bosses had ever known – they felt lucky, and they were. She learned to drive – badly. She got a license, but was what is known as a careful driver, hugging the curb at thirty miles per hour. She was always nervous behind the wheel, stemming from an accident she’d had when she was a girl when some chickens – some chickens? – somehow flew through a window of the car in which she was riding, causing glass to break and providing her with a lifelong scar on her arm. I wasn’t a hell of a lot better.
So the weeks went by – and the months – and I hounded Charlie every day – ‘What does Howard have in mind? When will I go to work? I’m going out of my mind not working.’ I was merciless. He tried to pacify me – ‘When Howard is ready, that’s when you’ll work.’ Charlie was going to co-produce a film with Howard made up of different stories concerning the war amalgamated into one. One episode concerned a young Russian girl who parachuted into a field and met a soldier – it was short, but they were thinking possibly I could play that. What a thought!
Meanwhile, Howard would have me come to Warner Bros., where I started to work with the music coach, Dudley Chambers. Howard thought I might sing. He took me onto a set where Lewis Milestone, the famous director, was making a film with Anne Baxter and Farley Granger. He introduced me to Milestone and we watched a scene being shot. And more stories were unfolding – what Howard had said to Katharine Hepburn on Bringing Up Baby – how he and Cary had thought of something marvelous to do in a scene – the dialogue between Howard and Rita Hayworth on Only Angels Have Wings. How he had given Hayworth her first break, but she hadn’t listened well enough, so he didn’t want to be bothered with her after that. She was damn good in it nonetheless.
Howard’s record spoke for itself. I learned much later that he had always wanted to find a girl from nowhere, mold her into his dream girl, and make her a star – his creation. He was about to begin. When I would ask Howard if he had anything specific in mind for me, he was noncommittal.
He said he thought he’d like to put me in a film with Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. I thought, ‘Cary Grant – terrific! Humphrey Bogart – yucch.’ Howard’s idea was always that a woman should play a scene with a masculine approach – insolent. Give as good as she got, no capitulation, no helplessness. Oh, he had something in mind, definitely, but it would be a long time before I knew what it was. A perfect example of Howard’s thinking was His Girl Friday, which was a remake of The Front Page, but changing the star reporter to a woman – Rosalind Russell. And it couldn’t have worked better.
The next six months were spent in reading aloud, studying singing, listening to Howard, meeting some people whose names had been mythical to me – and mostly heckling Charlie about work.
Jean Feldman was an old and close friend of Cole Porter. She told me that on Sunday nights (or was it Thursdays?) he always had a few soldiers who had no place to go – no home nearby – to dinner and always invited young actresses to dine and dance with them. We went one summer eve in 1943. Cole Porter lived in Brentwood, in an unpretentious but beautiful house on Rockingham Avenue. He was a fairly small, very neat, very elegant, well- and soft-spoken man who made me feel completely at home. His taste was impeccable – the food at his house was incredibly good, immaculately served. It was incredibly good fun and the soldiers were thrilled to be there. Drinks were always served early, and in summer out-of-doors – then food – then dancing. I became a regular – it was the continuation of my Monday nights at the Stage Door Canteen, only slightly more luxurious. I started off calling him Mr Porter, but he insisted on Cole. He walked with a cane – Jean told me of his ghastly accident with a horse, how he was constantly in pain and never complained, never mentioned it. There are all kinds of courage. I had marvelous times in that house.
One day I was having lunch at his poolside and was the last to leave. Finally he walked me to the door. At that moment the door opened. Standing there in white shirt, beige slacks – with a peach complexion, light brown hair, and the most incredible face ever seen by man – was Greta Garbo. I almost gasped out loud as Cole introduced me to her. No make-up – unmatched beauty. It was the only time I saw her at anything but a distance.
I had also been to Howard’s house a few times for dinner. I had gotten to know Slim better – liked her more at each meeting. She was clearly very, very bright, very original in looks and thought, and very straightforward. And with humor. They all had that – p
articularly Slim, Jean, and Charlie. That saved me. I could put up with anything if I could laugh.
Howard’s friends were Victor Fleming, the director, and his friendly wife, Lou; Harry Carey and his wife, Ollie; Johnny and Ginger Mercer; Hoagy Carmichael; Lee Bowman and his wife, Helene; Hal Rosson – great cameraman; Gary Cooper. There were many more. Some of them, including Van Johnson, used to race motorcycles up and down mountains on Sundays. It was on one such day, I believe, that Van Johnson was seriously hurt. Howard admired Van’s perseverance – the fact that no accident would stop him. I was introduced to people slowly – Howard didn’t want me to be seen too much, particularly before I’d done anything in films. One night in the fall of 1943 Howard and Slim gave a really big party – Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Charlie and Jean (Charlie being the only known Jew who seemed to have gained entrance to Howard’s private life). I stayed close to the piano, listening to Johnny Mercer singing his and other songs, Hoagy Carmichael playing the piano. Lee Bowman was a terrific dancer and I spent a lot of the evening dancing with him and flirting, of course. At one point I was near the piano, dancing by myself – in my own world, but aware of Hawks and others at the far end of the room watching me out of the corners of their eyes. There is strength in being a new young face thrust into a group of people too used to one another. I guess I used that. I wanted something of my own, and, failing that, was willing to flirt outrageously with a man like Lee Bowman. I went a bit far that night and Helene Bowman was less than thrilled with me, for which I could not blame her one bit. Lee took me home – somewhere along the way it was daylight, and I remember sitting on a diving board in my evening dress and then dancing with him. Harmless, and I enjoyed it completely. And that’s as far as it went. Howard and Slim thought the evening was a great success as far as introducing their protégée was concerned. They were pleased. That’s all that mattered to me.
Elsa Maxwell gave an enormous party at Evalyn Walsh McLean’s house, and Jean and Charlie took me. That was a star-studded evening. Mrs McLean was wearing the Hope Diamond, which just looked like an enormous piece of glass to me. The women were all in flowing gowns, adorned with their best jewels; I was in a short tailored dress and sat on the steps in a corner, feeling very alone but watching in awe the movie stars – old, medium, and new – greeting each other and vying for center stage. Names – names – names, and I had to pretend to be cool. I managed until one of my heroes, Robert Montgomery, sauntered over. Robert Montgomery – I couldn’t believe I was meeting him. He sat on the steps and talked to me – actually flirted with me. I thought him wildly attractive. It was time for me to leave, he took me to my car, asked me for my phone number. I gave it to him. He said, ‘Too easy.’ It never occurred to him I might be an innocent virgin who hadn’t a clue as to what he might have in mind. I suppose those men were used to women giving themselves gladly. Nothing could have been further from my mind. That was one of my first experiences with the game that was meant to be played between men and women. I knew nothing, but nothing, except how to go so far and no further. I wanted my romance to be the real thing – total – so I was not good material for that part of the Hollywood scene.
Such was the extent of my social life until the end of 1943. That September I was given a nineteenth-birthday-party lunch by Elsa Maxwell, to which Jean, Hedda Hopper, Mrs McLean, and a few other people were invited. It was a nice thing for her to do. She had a cake for me, and Hedda Hopper wrote a small piece in her column about it. That was my first mention in an important Hollywood column. Was I impressed with myself!
One day before the year’s end Howard asked me to come out to Warner Bros. He had been working on an idea that had been germinating for some time in his head. He had told me about his friendship with Ernest Hemingway, about their manly pursuits – hunting, shooting together. And fishing, natch. He owned the rights to a book of Hemingway’s that I had never heard of called To Have and Have Not and had thought he would someday make a movie of it. He wanted to use Humphrey Bogart as the male lead. Bogart was making a film called Passage to Marseille at the time and Howard said, ‘Let’s go down on the set and see what’s going on.’ Not a word about the possibility of my working. The Passage to Marseille sound stage was enormous and bare. Howard walked me over toward some light where the set was and the next scene was being lit by the cameraman and his crew. Michèle Morgan was sitting on a bench on the set. Howard told me to stay put, he’d be right back – which he was, with Bogart. He introduced us. There was no clap of thunder, no lightning bolt, just a simple how-do-you-do. Bogart was slighter than I imagined – five feet ten and a half, wearing his costume of no-shape trousers, cotton shirt, and scarf around neck. Nothing of import was said – we didn’t stay long – but he seemed a friendly man.
My first California Christmas was eventful only in that the sun was shining and it was swimming weather, as opposed to the white Christmases I had known. Howard and Slim gave me a beige gabardine suit and a brown silk blouse, which I never took off. Jean and Charlie gave me a silk scarf and a white silk shirt. They were the best-quality clothing I’d ever had and I was thrilled with them. Mother and I spent the day quietly and cozily, calling New York and speaking to the family. Wrote to everyone else. It was our first holiday time completely alone, but we were in California after all and that wasn’t too bad.
Just after Christmas I was called to the studio by Howard and he gave me the only present I wanted from life. It was a scene from To Have and Have Not. He was going to make the movie – he had Bogart – it would start in February 1944, and he wanted me to test for it right after the first of the year. I read the scene – it was the ‘whistle’ scene. I was to do the test with John Ridgely, an actor under contract to Warner Bros. whom Howard had used before and liked. I couldn’t believe it. Was it really true I might actually get a part – go to work? I was on cloud ten – a very high, comfortable cloud, far from reality. He had mentioned the possibility of using me to Humphrey Bogart and it was fine with him – he’d been shown my first test, of course, and would be shown the second. Bogart was in Casablanca entertaining the troops and would not return before mid-January. Howard said he’d rehearse Ridgely and me every day, but nothing was definite – a lot depended on the quality of the test and Jack Warner’s approval. It was very generous of John Ridgely to test with an unknown – he was getting good parts at Warners and was offering his time with nothing to gain but goodwill. Another example of an actor’s generosity to another actor.
Not a word was to be said to anyone until a decision had been made. Charlie knew, of course, and when I called him, hysterical with joy, he laughed and said, ‘See, I told you something would happen when Howard was ready.’ In response to questions I dared not ask Howard (I could ask Charlie anything), he told me he thought my chance of getting the part was good – that Howard would not be making the test unless he thought so too.
I stopped everything but study from that moment on. The character’s name was Marie, but the man, Harry, called her Slim. It was a good scene, very adult, sexy – much better than anything I had ever hoped for, with a great tag line about whistling. I’d do the best I could and Howard would guide me – I trusted him completely.
After that we rehearsed every day in Howard’s office – Sundays, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. John Ridgely would sit in a chair opposite Howard’s desk, and I had to sit on his lap and kiss him. I was self-conscious and very nervous. Howard told me how to sit and where – made me do the whole thing while he watched. Kissing is fairly intimate – to do it with a man you hardly know and with your mentor watching and your future hanging in the balance is enough to put fear into the heart of a fairly experienced actor – to a novice like myself it was utterly terrifying. And I desperately wanted to be good for Howard – I couldn’t bear to have him feel he’d signed a dud.
Howard took me to wardrobe, chose a dark shirt and jacket, put a beret on my head, and told me the test would be the next Tuesday. He drummed into my head that he wanted me
to be insolent with the man – that I was being the forward one, but with humor – and told me about yet more scenes he had directed other actresses in to give me examples of the attitude he wanted. I hung on his every word, trying to figure out how the hell a girl who was totally without sexual experience could convey experience, worldliness, and knowledge of men.
On the day of the test I was my usual spastic self. Rose at 6:00 a.m., got to make-up before seven. Over-anxious. Hair and make-up done, with no alterations suggested this time. On the set before nine. Howard looked at my make-up and hair – called Sid Hickox, the cameraman, over. Howard knew how he wanted the scene photographed – me photographed. He wanted a mood created photographically. The molding was beginning for real. Who knew what kind of Frankenstein’s monster he was creating?
I got into my costume. John Ridgely was ready, and we started to rehearse the opening of the scene on the set. We worked quietly, with Howard watching and the crew very much in the background. The day went well. It was a marvelous scene – Hickox was terrific – and Howard gave me such care. He was kind, affectionate (for him that would mean a smile, a hand on my shoulder, nothing too overt). He made me feel secure. At day’s end I felt good about it. So did Howard. All that remained was to see the scene on film and get the verdict. More waiting, more anxiety.
The remainder of the week crawled by. I was on the phone to Charlie daily for news: When would Howard see the test? I drove that man crazy.
On Monday Howard saw the test and Charlie was present. Each of them called to tell me he thought it was good. Howard would show it to me on Wednesday. Another crucial Wednesday in my life! I drove to the studio with my heart in my mouth. In Howard’s office I met Jules Furthman, a writer (he didn’t look like a writer) who was writing the screenplay of To Have and Have Not. Howard took me to the projection room and as I slid low in my seat he ran my test. I was no judge then, nor would I ever be, of myself on the screen. Every fault – and there were many – was magnified, every move, look, the way I read a line – it all made me want to hide. But when the lights came on, Howard turned to me with a smile and said, ‘You should be pleased. Jack Warner saw this yesterday and liked it, so things look pretty good.’ I was afraid to believe it might happen. I’d know in a few days – if I could last that long.
By Myself and Then Some Page 13