On the other hand, the studio system gave you opportunities to fail, to learn, to fail less miserably, to gradually master your craft. And the studio did have a way of taking care of you if it thought you had something. For the publicity tour for Let’s Make It Legal, MacDonald Carey, Joyce McKenzie, Larry Carr, and I were sent on the road. We went through Philadelphia and then on to a lot of Midwest towns, dancing and singing on the stage, then signing autographs as a live attraction before the film. We all lived together, and it was fun.
Mac Carey had been around for years, making a hit on Broadway in Lady in the Dark with Gertrude Lawrence and working with Hitchcock in Shadow of a Doubt and a lot of other movies. Mac was kind enough to take me under his wing and tell me how the studio game was played—what things were important and what things weren’t.
For most of the tour Mac and I roomed together, but just after we got to New York the studio put us up at the Warwick Hotel, right across the street from the Stage Delicatessen. At that point his wife came to town, so I was thrown out of the room. His wife promptly got pregnant, and I’ve always thought I deserved at least some of the credit.
I had been to New York only once before—my dad had taken us there—but I had never been there professionally, and on an expense account to boot, and that made all the difference in the world. I’ve been passionate about the city ever since, at the studio’s expense or my own.
For the most part, I wasn’t disappointed by the people I was meeting around the studio, although Paul Douglas was certainly an exception. He was a brusque, unpleasant man, always carrying around a sour edge about something or another. I’ve never understood why someone would want to live like that; whenever I’ve had a problem with somebody, I confront it head-on. And then I step back and wait. I usually find that the direct approach works.
The perquisites of a rising young actor in Hollywood were and are obvious, and I did my best to get my share.
I met Joan Crawford at a cocktail party and sensed that she was interested in me. She suggested I follow her back to her house in Brentwood. After I got there, she asked me if I would like a swim. Sure, I said. She told me that there were some trunks down by the pool and I could help myself. I went down to the pool, took my clothes off, put on a pair of trunks, and got in the pool.
After a few minutes, Joan came out of the house with absolutely nothing on, did a very graceful dive off the board, swam the length of the pool underwater, and came up right between my legs.
“Hi there!” she said in her brightest, most vivacious voice. It was a lovely, creative invitation, and I responded accordingly. She was a dynamic lover, both domineering—which you might expect—and yielding—which you might not. All in all, a memorable one-night stand.
Around this same time I drove my 1950 Ford convertible into a drive-in restaurant called Jack’s at the Beach. The top was down, the day was lovely, and I was a young actor about town. I looked over, and there was Yvonne De Carlo next to me in her car. She was at the height of her career as well as of the physical splendor that was on display in tits-and-sand Universal pictures like Song of Scheherazade and Slave Girl, as well as noirs like Brute Force and Criss Cross. We looked each other over, and she nodded her head for me to come over. I backed my car up, parked it in the rear of the restaurant, and got into Yvonne’s car.
“I’m Robert Wagner.”
“I know. I’m Yvonne De Carlo.”
“I know. I’m such a fan of yours.”
One thing led to another, and we went back to her house. Three days later, I staggered out, depleted and disheveled. I wasn’t sure what month it was, but I dimly remembered leaving my car at the drive-in. Luckily, it was still parked where I’d left it.
A week later, I ran into Tony Curtis. “You can’t imagine what just happened to me,” he says. “I pull into Jack’s at the Beach. Yvonne De Carlo pulls up next to me! She looks at me, I look at her. Well, to make a long story short….”
I just stared at him, then I began laughing hysterically. Baby, I was in the movies!
It’s interesting how friendships form and either strengthen or recede with time. Tony Curtis and I were friends for years, had a bad falling-out, then patched things up. But Robert Stack and I were pals for more than forty years with never a cross word. Initially, it was based on the fact that each of us possessed an athletic skill the other one was interested in. Bob was a world-class skeet shooter, and he taught me how to shoot; I was a good golfer, and I taught him how to play. Beyond that, we shared a similar background and a positive outlook on life, and we both genuinely enjoyed being in show business.
Bob died in 2003, and I was so moved when he left me a beautiful pair of pearl and diamond studs, accompanied by a note he’d written thanking me for my friendship. Believe me, the honor was all mine.
There weren’t really issues with drugs in those days—the most you’d ever see was some marijuana if you were hanging around musicians. But one way or another, there has always been a need for people to blow off the steam that builds up in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of show business. Take, for instance, OK Freddy.
By common consent, OK Freddy had the biggest cock in Hollywood. It was twelve inches long, with the thickness of a baby’s arm. I never knew his real name—I don’t know that anyone did, as he seemed to be universally known as OK Freddy. Freddy was an extra, and he was always around and always working, mostly because if anybody, at any time, asked him, “Freddy, show us your cock,” Freddy would say, “Okay,” and bring it out—depending on the circumstances and the company, a formula for either enduring popularity or serious jail time. He was a very pleasant, amiable man, but then, most men would be pleasant and amiable if they were carrying what OK Freddy had.
My favorite experience with OK Freddy involved Gary Cooper, who loved practical jokes. Coop was throwing a party at his house, and among those attending was Henry Ford II and his wife. Coop had hired both OK Freddy and Vince Barnett for the evening. Barnett was a character actor who often played the part of a waiter at parties, where he would proceed to insult out-of-town guests or anybody else who didn’t know it was a setup. One of Vince’s set-pieces involved accusing people of stealing silver, but he would also customize his attacks. Once he told Jack Warner he didn’t know how to make pictures, and he also accused Charlie Chaplin of monopolizing the conversation. OK Freddy, also working the party as a waiter, carried a tray of hors d’oeuvres, among which was his massive unit, jostling the garnish and pâté.
For this particular party, Vince Barnett was playing the part of a doctor, and he got into a loud argument with Henry Ford II. Coop came over, pretended to be angry at his guest being insulted, and decked Barnett. When he hit the ground, Barnett bit down on a blood capsule he had in his mouth, and the fake blood cascaded down his chin and onto his white shirt. Mrs. Henry Ford II proceeded to faint dead away! Clearly, they didn’t have people like Vince Barnett and OK Freddy around the country clubs of Detroit.
After With a Song in My Heart was released, the fan mail began to pour in. In those days the studio looked at fan mail the same way that modern TV networks do ratings—as a leading indicator that someone was provoking a reaction. Suddenly, there were thousands of letters every week asking for autographed photos, biographies, fan club information. I was becoming a bobby-sox idol, along with Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson. In very short order, the studio started up a monthly newsletter called Wagner’s World, and my fan club signed up 250,000 members.
By 1952 I was regarded as a rising young star. Darryl Zanuck’s daughter Susan liked me—she liked me a lot. She was just getting out of high school, and I began to take her out. I really enjoyed her company, but I wasn’t in love with her, and the problem was that she was obviously enthralled—when she went to Paris, she brought me back a beautiful gold watch.
I sensed that this could be a very dark part of the woods, with obvious potential for disaster, at least in relation to my career. My father, on the other hand, thought marrying Susan Zanu
ck was a great idea. He liked the dynastic implications and thought the marriage would mean job security for me. Darryl knew what was going on, and since he liked me a lot, he was perfectly happy with my being involved with Susan. I wrote Darryl a letter, explaining the awkwardness I felt, and I told him I certainly didn’t want to hurt Susan, or myself.
Darryl was a class act. “I will always be in your corner,” he wrote in his reply, and he assured me that “this has nothing to do with your career.” He continued to invite me down to the Zanuck house in Palm Springs, where I got to know his wife, Virginia, and the rest of the family. Virginia was a lovely, tenacious woman who took great pride in being Mrs. Darryl Zanuck. Despite all of Darryl’s wanderings—and they were legion—she never gave up. In the end, she got him back.
For a time I went out with Debbie Reynolds, just before she went over to MGM and made Singin’ in the Rain. She was a contract player at Warner’s, and I was a contract player at Fox. We never had an affair, although I think it’s fair to say that she liked me very much. Basically, we were kids together.
As if Susan Zanuck wasn’t enough potential trouble, along came Bella Darvi. Her real name was Bayla Wegier, and she had spent time in a concentration camp during the war. Darryl met her in 1951, placed her under contract, then placed her in his bed. Now that I think of it, it might have been the other way around. Anyway, he paid off her gambling debts, decided he would make her a star, and changed her name. Darvi came from the first letters of his name and Virginia’s. I understand that for a time she even lived in their house.
Bella made three movies for Darryl, none of which was very good. I met her on the lot, and she made it very clear that she would like us to have some private sessions that would have nothing to do with acting. I never thought she was particularly beautiful, but she did have great personal presence that didn’t quite come across on camera.
Did I consider going to bed with her? God Almighty, no! Aside from my affection for Darryl as a man, I also respected him as my boss, and I would never have poached on his territory. Plus, Bella was obviously unstable—she gambled away vast amounts of Darryl’s money. Mrs. Wagner didn’t raise a fool; I went on my way.
With my career gathering momentum and my contracted raises clicking in, it was easier for me to indulge in my passion for music, specifically jazz. I had been brought up on American music because my mother played the piano and we always had plenty of 78-rpm records of the big bands of the thirties—Benny Goodman and so forth.
But my introduction to jazz came courtesy of Herbert Stothart Jr., who had been with me in one of the many military academies where I was interned. His father was a former professor, head of the music department at MGM, and had composed some famous operettas in the 1920s before he came to Hollywood. Stothart was a serious musician, and he had passed his passion on to his son, who exposed me to people like Chick Webb, who had a young girl named Ella Fitzgerald working as his vocalist.
In the early fifties in Los Angeles, there was a lot of jazz being played at clubs like the Crescendo and the Interlude. Chet Baker was always around, as were Jeri Southern and Frances Faye. I became a fan of Stan Kenton and all the people Norman Granz was recording. Supremely, I became a fan of Billie Holiday. Basically, I followed her from gig to gig. And if I was in New York, I always made it a point to go to a place called the Embers, where Peggy Lee liked to work.
I got to know Holiday, who was a tiny little thing; it was like meeting a doll. I thought she had the most fantastic talent of any singer of her time—or ours. Sometimes she was on drugs, and you weren’t sure she was going to be able to make it to the end of the song, let alone finish the set, but she always did. And even if she hadn’t made it, it wouldn’t have mattered, because she sang every note from her soul, and the emotion trumped the notes. (In a sense, Judy Garland was the same way.) I was in New York when it was announced that Holiday was dying, and I tried to get into Bellevue to see her, but I was too late.
I sat there for hundreds of nights listening to these men and women, amazed at how they got to those notes, got to that emotion. Jazz became very beneficial for me. I came from a background where if something was set, it was set in stone. And here were artists, people who were communicating emotion—the same thing I wanted to do—who worked with freedom, who were open, who joined together in an attitude of community and made things happen with great musicality, and who did it while maintaining their personalities. You can listen to three or four notes on the trumpet and know it’s Louis Armstrong—there are thousands of trumpet players, but nobody else has that unique Armstrong sound. It’s the same thing every actor strives for—a tone that’s all their own.
FOUR
“BARBARA WAS THE FIRST WOMAN I EVER LOVED.”
Barbara and me in our only scene alone in Titanic. It wasn’t much of a scene, but it sparked one of the most intense and rewarding relationships of my life. (© TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/EVERETT COLLECTION)
Barbara Stanwyck and I began our relationship on Titanic, although we had actually met years before. For a time, my father had an eight-acre ranch in Chatsworth, across from the racetrack. Martha Scott also lived there, and I used to take care of her horse. We’d go riding, and I would see Barbara and her husband, Robert Taylor, riding. I would go trotting along with them, never thinking I’d be involved with her someday.
Later, Barbara had a beautiful ranch at the corner of Devonshire and Reseda, with her agent, Zeppo Marx. It’s now a shopping center, but when Barbara owned the ranch, it had paddocks that were impeccably maintained and run, like everything Barbara touched.
As Titanic began production, there was an immediate chemistry between Barbara and myself—a lot of looks across the room. At this point Barbara Stanwyck was a legendary actress, universally respected for her level of craft and integrity. She also had the most valuable thing a performer can have: good taste. Besides a long list of successful bread-and-butter pictures, Barbara had made genuine classics for great directors: The Bitter Tea of General Yen and Meet John Doe for Frank Capra, Stella Dallas for King Vidor, The Lady Eve for Preston Sturges, Ball of Fire for Howard Hawks, and Double Indemnity for Billy Wilder. Barbara carried her success lightly; her attitude was one of utter professionalism and no noticeable temperament. As far as she was concerned, she was simply one of a hundred or so people gathered to make a movie—no more, no less.
Titanic was a heavy production logistically, but a pleasant shoot because of the director, Jean Negulesco. Jean had a light, very pleasant personality—whenever I think of him, I think of champagne—and was very helpful to a young actor. He was also a talented artist and asked me to sit for a portrait, which I still have on my wall.
After the picture had been shooting for a couple of weeks, Jean had a party at his house on a Saturday night. I escorted Barbara and stayed close to her throughout the evening. I was enthralled by her and terribly attracted to her, but I couldn’t tell if she returned the favor. She was friendly, but not overly so.
When the party was over, I drove Barbara back to her house on Beverly Glen and took her house key to open her front door. I had to bend over to find the lock, and I only opened the door a crack. I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Would she invite me in, or would she just take her key, pat me on the cheek, and thank me for a lovely evening? And then I straightened up to look at her with what I’m sure was a hopeful expression, and I saw something I hadn’t seen in her eyes before. It was a magical look of interest…and appreciation…and desire.
I immediately took her in my arms and kissed her. I had never had a reaction from a woman like I had from Barbara. A different kiss, with a different feeling.
We went into the house; we opened a bottle of champagne; we danced. I left at dawn.
After that, things happened very quickly. She gave me a key to her house, and I gave her a key to my apartment. If we were in town, we spent every weekend together. She cooked for me—she was good in the kitchen, but then she was good everywhere. We watched the Fri
day night fights on TV, and on Saturday or Sunday afternoons we’d go for long walks in the mountains above Malibu. Occasionally we would go to a movie, slipping in after the lights went down. Whenever we went out, Barbara would wear a scarf over her head, or a kind of hat, so it would be hard to tell who she was.
For the next four years, we became part of each other’s lives. In a very real way, I think we still are.
Barbara proved to be one of the most marvelous relationships of my life. I was twenty-two, she was forty-five, but our ages were beside the point. She was everything to me—a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor and enormous accomplishments to her name.
As a person, she was a great deal like the character she played in Ball of Fire, a stripper called Sugarpuss O’Shea. She had a wonderful, free, open quality in that picture, and that’s what she was like as a woman. Reclusive by nature, she was happy to just stay home, but she read everything. She got me reading books as a way of life and, if I asked her, would help me out with my acting. We only had one scene together in Titanic—I played her daughter’s boyfriend!—so there was a limit to what I could learn by working with her. She taught me what to do with my hands, how to get over my self-consciousness, and how to lower my voice, which I thought was still too high. And she taught me to be decisive with things like entrances.
“When you walk in,” she told me, “be sure you’re standing up straight. Walk in with confidence.” She didn’t want me to sidle into a scene as if I were ashamed to be in the movie. Make the entrance! Take the scene!
Pieces of My Heart Page 5