Hollywood's Hellfire Club: The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn and the Bundy Drive Boys

by Gregory William Mank

  These joined the ancient Chinese wall sconces, Louis XV antique furniture, and a dinosaur egg, which, amidst such surroundings, seemed capable of miraculously hatching.

  Meanwhile, on April 8, 1930, daughter Dolores Ethel Mae (“Dede”) was born. Barrymore joked sourly to the press that his baby daughter looked “a little like Lon Chaney” — he had desperately wanted a boy.

  The man appeared blessed in every way, yet he was restless, chain-smoking, and drinking heavily. After a sailing adventure to Alaska in 1931, Barrymore brought home a new acquisition, a towering totem pole, and he erected it to loom over Bella Vista, its painted, grotesque faces leering at anyone visiting the No. 6 Tower Road estate.

  Lionel his brother was concerned. There were, John had learned, bodies of Alaskan natives entombed in the totem pole, and Lionel Barrymore feared the curse that it threatened to cast down upon the unbowed head of his brother. Years later, Lionel still blamed his brother’s spectacular downfall on the Totem Pole. Lionel was too dependent, emotionally and financially, on the mercies of the film establishment — specifically his studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which had financed his drug addiction — to place the blame on Hollywood.

  The Hollywood of the 1930s was similar to the New York theatre of the early 1920s — racy, violent and sensational.

  Greta Garbo chose to play streetwalker Anna Christie as her first talkie. Paramount imported Marlene Dietrich from Weimar Berlin after her “Lola-Lola” paraded her legs and garters in the S&M classic The Blue Angel. Sound made it possible to hear John Barrymore scream maniacally as his leg was amputated in his second go-round as Captain Ahab, which Warners now titled Moby Dick.

  Edward G. Robinson snarling as Little Caesar, Bela Lugosi drinking virgins’ blood in Dracula, James Cagney shoving a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face in The Public Enemy, Dietrich facing the firing squad in Dishonored adorned in whore makeup and finery — all fascinated the 75,000,000 people who attended the 1931 movies weekly despite or perhaps because of the Depression woes.

  The future Bundy Drive Boys were in the right place at the right time.

  May 1, 1931: Svengali, starring John Barrymore, premiered at New York’s Hollywood Theatre. Based on the George du Maurier novel Trilby, it’s a hip Dracula, Gothic, subversive and rich in black comedy. As Svengali, Barrymore, in his long flowing hair and hellishly curled beard, looks like Lucifer at Woodstock, adorned in dark slouch hat and cloak, driving a lovesick woman to suicide, hypnotizing Trilby (17-year-old Marian Marsh) into becoming both his star diva and bed partner — and magically making the audience love him for it. There are even two baroque bonuses: a nude scene of Trilby (from the rear, and played by Ms. Marsh’s double in a body stocking) and, for a topper, Svengali climactically succeeding in taking Trilby out of the arms of her ingénue lover (Bramwell Fletcher, Barrymore’s future son-in-law) and into the grave with him.

  “Oh God,” Barrymore’s Svengali heartbreakingly prays as he dies. “Grant me in death what you denied me in life — the woman I love!”

  God, amazingly on the side of the Devil, gives the villain his final wish. The ending was similar to du Maurier’s, but so unlike a conventional Hollywood happy ending as to be startling more than 75 years after its release.

  Marian Marsh died at her Palm Desert house in 2006 at the age of 93, where she displayed two of the paintings of her created for Svengali. Years before, she had spoken to me about the joy of acting with John Barrymore:

  Marian Marsh and John Barrymore in Svengali

  Proud, glamorous parents with John Drew

  When I first met John Barrymore, he was sick in bed, at his house, up on Tower Road … Jack Warner and Darryl Zanuck led me upstairs to Barrymore; he was in this great big enormous bed in this great big enormous room. As I walked in, Barrymore was propped up in bed, lots of pillows around him; he sat up straighter….

  “Has anyone ever remarked,” asked Barrymore, “that you resemble my wife, Dolores?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Who?” asked Barrymore.

  And I said, “The butcher on Vine Street, who gives me liver for my cat!”

  Well, Barrymore just laughed his head off!

  Warners fretted that the notorious, 49-year-old Barrymore might despoil their virginal starlet. The front office awaited news that Marian’s panties had hit the floor. However, as Marian Marsh validated, there was no seduction:These were happy days for Jack Barrymore. He was on his best behavior; he was happily married to Dolores Costello, and he wasn’t drinking. Dolores would visit the set with their little daughter, Dede, who was just learning to speak then. The little girl didn’t like that beard! When Barrymore would want to kiss her, she didn’t like that very much.

  Barrymore, always enchanted by animals, paid at least as much attention to Leo, the black cat who was Svengali’s familiar in the melodrama, as to his leading lady. The company soon became used to the sight of Barrymore playing with Leo, and treating the cat to sardines.

  Svengali was probably Barrymore’s greatest cinema performance — he’s the spidery serpent from the Barrymore coat-of-arms. But Hollywood denied him an Academy Award nomination — the 1931 winner, ironically, was Lionel Barrymore, for his portrayal of an alcoholic lawyer who drops dead defending his errant daughter (Norma Shearer) in MGM’s sex saga, A Free Soul. As Margot Peters wrote in The House of Barrymore: Lionel’s performance was very good, yet it was typical of the Academy to award big and fundamentally sentimental pieces of acting. In Svengali, John Barrymore was always subtly ironic. Who was he mocking — himself, the role, the cast, Hollywood? Oscars didn’t go to mockers.

  Gable couldn’t destroy this hated Decker painting

  John Decker established himself in Hollywood — the 1930 census finds him living at 1058 Spaulding Avenue in West Hollywood with a new wife. Clark Gable, meanwhile, was on the rise, a sensation after roughing up Norma Shearer in A Free Soul, for which Lionel Barrymore had won his Academy Award. The new MGM star wanted John Decker to paint his portrait, in the armor of a cavalier.

  He recoiled in horror when he saw the final result.

  “You’ve made my ears look way too big!” protested the future King of Hollywood.

  Columnist Jimmy Starr, retired in his late years to Arizona, told the Phoenix Gazette the whole story:[Decker] did this picture of Gable, and Gable seeing the finished product, said he didn’t like it because it made his ears look too big. Decker was enraged and sued Gable for the money he was to have received for painting the picture. I don’t think he was really that mad and probably it was just a ploy to get his name known in Hollywood, but anyway the judge ruled that Gable didn’t have to pay if he didn’t want to.

  Sometime later [the summer of 1934] the painting went on sale at an auction ... It was purchased by a man whose daughter was a fan of Gable’s. But when he took it home he discovered it was too big to hang on the wall of his house.

  Several nights later I was out shopping for some andirons and by chance I happened to visit the man’s shop. I saw the picture hanging there and, of course, recognized it immediately.

  “Where did you get that?” I said, excitedly.

  He told me about the auction and about it being too large to hang in his house. I asked him if he wanted to sell it.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll sell it for what it cost me — $7.50.”

  You better believe I had the money out and quick. I took the painting home and forgot all about the andirons.

  A couple of days later Variety ran a story about Jimmy Starr being an art collector now that he had John Decker’s painting of Gable. Well, Gable saw the story and came over to my house and said he wanted to buy the picture from me. He offered $500.

  I told him, “Okay, Clark. I’ll sell the picture to you if you’ll sign a paper saying you won’t ever destroy it.” He wouldn’t agree to that.

  Barrymore sketch of John Decker’s astral façade

  The painting still survives — part of the John Decker collection owned
by Charles Heard.

  For all the protests, John Decker was winning favor. Two of his most popular works of that time were his rendition of the Marx Brothers as “Burgomeisters” and a separate painting of Harpo as Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy.” Harpo proudly exhibited the painting ever after, and a visitor once asked him if he liked it.

  “Like it?” Harpo exclaimed. “Hell, I built my new house around it!”

  Decker, meanwhile, enjoyed himself observing the pomposity and the actual idiocy of the Hollywood art establishment and its bonehead nouveau riche collectors. As he later noted:By far the worst offenders in the crime of kicking-the-artist-around are the flighty wives of prominent motion picture producers. They all want to be painted in the manner of Gainsborough, because he placed big hats and flattering dresses and flowery backgrounds in his work.

  There was one producer’s wife who came to me. She wanted me to do an imitation of Watteau to be hung over her new square fireplace. I checked on the possibilities, and learned that Watteau painted most of his work oblong because clients went in for high frames in the rococo age. But, among Watteau’s efforts, I located one square masterpiece he did, which I said I could easily copy, and which would give the producer’s wife something beautiful to overlook her fireplace. I then named my price. She said she’d have to think it over. Three days later she phoned me.

  “Mr. Decker,” she said, “I must tell you honestly that I feel your price is much too high. I’m leaving for England in a few weeks — so I’ve decided to buy an original Watteau and cut it down to fit!”

  Then there was the sweet young blonde spouse of another producer. Sweet, but awfully dumb. She saw an exhibit of my work in Los Angeles, and was so impressed that she asked me to paint her. I agreed. But, an hour before the sitting, she phoned.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Decker,” she cried frantically, “but my husband has suddenly made a lot of money on a movie deal, and now he’s sending me to Europe. He says I should go there because then I can be painted by one of the real Old Masters!”

  And people wonder why artists die young!

  Paul Muni in Scarface

  March 31, 1932: Scarface with screenplay and dialogue by Ben Hecht premiered in New Orleans. The sexiest, most violent and flamboyantly aberrant gangster saga of them all starred Paul Muni as an Al Capone-type gangster and was produced by Howard Hughes. Hecht, who’d been in Chicago during Capone’s beer wars and knew the subject all too well, was one of several writers on the picture, but its true muscle — demanding that Hughes pay him $1,000 at 6 p.m. each day he labored on the script. Howard Hawks directed, and shot the film using real bullets; reportedly Harold Lloyd’s brother, while visiting the set, lost an eye due to a wayward shot.

  Paul Muni starred as Tony “Scarface” Camonte, greased up and naturally scarred, while George Raft as his chief lieutenant Johnny tossed a coin and cut out paper dolls. “Look out, Johnny, I’m gonna spit!” exults Muni as he rejoices in his new machine gun. The real fireworks of Scarface, however, explode in the warped relationship of Scarface and his sister Cesca (played by a wild-eyed Ann Dvorak). Hecht developed an incestuous relationship between brother and sister that crackled throughout the film’s death scenes and machine gun battles:

  Tony: I don’t want anybody puttin’ their hands on you … I’m your brother.

  Cesca: You don’t act like it. You act more like … I don’t know … some kind of … sometimes I think…

  Scarface features various sensations, including Karen Morley as Scarface’s platinum moll Poppy (who berates him in a restaurant for damaging her stockings with his feet), and Boris Karloff as Gaffney, a rival gangster shot down in a bowling alley as he rolls a strike. But the real show is the bristly passion of the kinky Camontes, as Tony and Cesca fight it out together against the cops and the world — Tony shot down in the street under the sign, “The World At Your Feet.”

  There were censorship battles for Scarface, which endured a title alteration: Scarface: Shame of a Nation and, in New York, a revised ending (Scarface going to the gallows). The censors also attempted to axe the violence and the Tony and Cesca kinky chemistry, but for the wrong reason; they felt that Tony’s love for his sister “was too beautiful to be attributed to a gangster”!

  April 12, 1932: Grand Hotel, boasting “More Stars than the Heavens,” premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York City.

  Based on Vicki Baum’s novel, the luxuriantly melancholy Grand Hotel is perhaps the most celebrated movie of MGM’s halcyon days, boasting a gallery of unforgettable performances: Garbo as the heartbreaking ballerina Grusinskaya, who utters the words, “I want to be alone”; John Barrymore as the sardonic Baron, who robs Grusinskaya and makes love to her; Joan Crawford as the alluring stenographer Flaemmchen; Wallace Beery as the tycoon Preysing; Lionel Barrymore as the pitiful, dying clerk Kringelein; and Lewis Stone as the scarfaced Doctor, who mutters amidst the scandal and death, “Grand Hotel. People coming, people going … nothing ever happens.”

  Grand Hotel ’s most iconic episode is the Garbo and Barrymore love scene. From the moment John Barrymore greeted Garbo by kissing her hand and saying, “My wife and I think you are the loveliest woman in the world,” she was in awe of his charm and artistry. Garbo broke one of her long-standing commandments by posing for the press with Barrymore on the set (arranging to sit so his left profile was to the camera); she prepared some “Irak punch” for him when he arrived one morning with a hangover. And after their beautiful love scene, Garbo shocked the company by giving Barrymore a passionate kiss.

  “You have no idea what it means to me to play opposite so perfect an artist!” she cried.

  Garbo and her beloved co-star she said was touched with “divine madness”

  The Best Picture Academy Award winner of 1931/1932, Grand Hotel was a sensation, and John Barrymore’s dashing Baron is one of his flagship film performances. Garbo called Barrymore “one of the very few who had that divine madness without which a great artist cannot work or live.”

  May 13, 1932: RKO released State’s Attorney, starring John Barrymore and scripted by Gene Fowler and Rowland Brown. Fowler based the script on his book The Great Mouthpiece, concerning attorney William Joseph Fallon, the criminal lawyer who defended over 125 homicide cases and never lost a trial. The pre-Code melodrama — Barrymore defends a prostitute (Helen Twelvetrees) in night court, and ends up living with her — is a striking example both of Fowler’s maverick style and the loose moral code of early 1930s Hollywood.

  It was only now that Gene Fowler first saw John Decker. Rowland Brown, Fowler’s collaborator on the two aforementioned films, was en route to RKO with a hungover Fowler to work on the script for State’s Attorney when, as Fowler put it:We chanced to see in Gower Gulch a harried gentleman [Decker] in a condition similar to my own. He was hatless. A flock of blackbirds could be seen flying down again and again to gather hair from the gentleman’s head for the upholstering of their nests. He was batting at the industrious birds, and cursing them.

  Hardly settled in Hollywood, Fowler was already all too eager to lampoon it. Come June 24, 1932, and RKO released What Price Hollywood? — Fowler’s satire on the film colony. As ham actor Max Carey, Lowell Sherman provided a superb send-up of himself and John Barrymore (who was then Sherman’s brother-in-law), and the film plays as an early version of A Star is Born.

  The leading lady of What Price Hollywood? was Constance Bennett, and the blonde star was just the type of pampered cinema goddess Fowler instantly despised. She hated the script. He was not very fond of her. Demanding various rewrites, Ms. Bennett received new pages one day for a scene in which she, as a movie star, was announcing her retirement from the silver screen to embrace motherhood. Not bothering to read the new lines beforehand, she grabbed the script and began rehearsing fully in character, as Fowler knew she would.

  “And I’m going to have a beautiful black baby…!” announced Constance Bennett.

  The stagehands burst into laughter. Constance, in a rag
e, threw her pages on the floor, and demanded Fowler be fired. He wasn’t. What Price Hollywood?, directed by George Cukor, was a hit and Gene Fowler had won a place in the movie colony while simultaneously throwing down the gauntlet at it.

  John Decker sketches — on the set

  To return for a moment to Lowell Sherman — it was during 1932 that he and his wife Helen Costello, Dolores’ sister, divorced. Sherman had just arranged with John Decker to paint Helen’s portrait, and Decker had already begun work when he read in the newspaper of the marital breakup. According to Decker:I raced to the phone and called the actor. “Hello, Lowell!” I exclaimed. “This is Decker. You know that portrait of your wife you ordered? Well, I heard you’re divorced. I’ve got the picture three-quarters done, and I want to know what woman you’re going out with now — I’d like to put the damn face in!”

  Gene Fowler tried to keep his distance from Hollywood, spending summers in Fire Island, where he worked on his books. Nevertheless, cinema colony temptation came his way and he began an extramarital romance with actress Ann Harding. His wife Agnes forgave him and it would not be her only absolution.

  June 4, 1932: John Barrymore, casting aside his fears of family madness, had vowed he’d give up drinking if Dolores bore him a boy. Dolores Costello Barrymore then gave birth to a son, John Blythe Barrymore (later to be known as John Drew Barrymore). As Phil Rhodes later learned, the pregnancy had been a troubled one, as John Decker would visit Bella Vista and loudly reminisce, in earshot of Dolores, how people in postwar Germany ate babies.