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

by Gregory William Mank

  John Barrymore was at the house most of the time. He loved it — it was his second home, and he and John would just be drunk together all the time! John and Mother went a couple of times with Barrymore to Palm Springs, and they left me at his house, “Bella Vista,” way up on the end of Tower Road. Barrymore lived then in only about three rooms of this huge mansion, and they’d leave me there with his Japanese gardener, Nishi, and Nishi’s wife and several children. It was fascinating! Barrymore had been a hunter and collected things, and he had little Indian skulls. Nishi’s kids told me that the hair would still grow on these heads and drop off, and I was just petrified! There was a pool there, but I don’t think there was any water in it — Barrymore was pretty well gone then, and he had a dog he loved named Viola, a big Afghan, and for some reason he was afraid Viola would get into the pool and drown.

  Sadakichi Hartmann was hanging around at Bundy Drive, and he smelled so bad! He chewed raw garlic constantly, and he wore filthy old clothes, and he’d piddle in his pants. I mean, I would go way out of the way to try to not even be in the same room with him! He was a very tall, lanky person with these hands — I’m sure today people would say they were magnificent hands, but he had these long fingers. I remember my mother saying later when I got into high school, “Oh, Sadakichi was such a brilliant man!” And I’d just say, “Egh!”

  The Bundy Drive Boy I just adored was Anthony Quinn. My room at Bundy was off the balcony, and the stairs came right down into the living room. If I had to go to the bathroom, I’d come down, a sleepy little kid, and Anthony Quinn was there saying, “Oh, what a beautiful baby!” He loved children, and I just loved it when he was there because he’d pay attention to me and talk to me too! He would have been my favorite of all.

  Mary Lou also came to know Errol Flynn, then the biggest of the stars who came to Bundy Drive:Well, of course, Flynn was very charming, very personable, and he always took time to talk to my friends when they visited. I especially remember him later in my early high school years, after we had moved from Bundy to Alta Loma in West Hollywood. He would kid with us, and of course charmed all my girlfriends — everybody thought it was just wonderful to come to my house and see all the movie stars!

  I had one particularly close girlfriend from Bundy Drive who had moved to Laguna, and later she came up to stay with me in West Hollywood, and Flynn took us out on his yacht. Wow! We’d be on the yacht in Santa Monica, with binoculars — and you’d see women in the water, trying to swim out to Flynn’s yacht!

  It was as a high school freshman that Mary Lou received her most vivid Errol Flynn memory:I was in 9th grade and in those days the girls were wearing these Viette brassieres — these pointed things that pointed straight out! I was a year younger than the other girls, and you had to wear a Viette brassiere, and I didn’t have any chest — so I had a Viette brassiere stuffed with cotton. So I came home, and the boys were in the bar, and I was standing there chatting, and Flynn just reached over and tweaked this lumpy thing under my sweater! I was so absolutely humiliated!

  One of Mary Lou’s joys at Bundy was the zoo of pets Decker and Phyllis also enjoyed:John loved animals. When he and Mother got married, they had Ginger, a cocker spaniel, who moved to Bundy with us. I think it was my first Easter there that they bought me a little green chicken and a yellow duck, these two little teeny things. They were kept out in the back. Well, they grew, and then a neighbor’s dog got the chicken, and then the duck would just quack, quack, quack early in the morning — and John always had a hangover! So the lady next door volunteered to chop up the duck, and we had roast duck for dinner one night. Everybody looked at it — and, of course, nobody could eat it!

  After that we had little bantam hens running about, and a rabbit, and then of course there was Gus. The story of Gus was that he had been Barrymore’s dog — they were driving out Ventura Boulevard one day, which was country at that time, with great big poinsettia fields out there. Somebody had all these dachshund puppies in a child’s playpen, selling them on a corner. So they stopped and Barrymore bought this little dachshund puppy, Gus. Well, Barrymore was always drunk or never home, and this poor little dog just wandered around, and Barrymore finally had his nurse/secretary, a nice young gay man, bring Gus down to us. So Barrymore (whose short-term memory was gone by this time) came to Bundy later, looked at Gus, and said, “Oh, I have a dog who looks just like that!” And we said, “That is your dog.” Then Barrymore passed out, woke up later, heard my mother yell “Gus!” and said, “Oh, that’s strange! My dog is named Gus, too!”

  So we had Gus, and a little black and tan dachshund to go with him, and they named her Tallulah Blankhead (not Bankhead!). And at one time, Errol Flynn caught a raccoon in a trap up at his home on Mulholland, and John brought that down to the house. I remember keeping it in a big cage, but it was mean, its ankle was festered, and we couldn’t get a veterinar y to come out. The zoo finally came out and took it away.

  All in all, these were happy days for Mary Lou.I was so young, but as I say, they’d take me everywhere. I can remember going up to Fannie Brice’s house several times. They’d just put me in the pool and I’d be very happy — I’d hang onto the side and kick and splash! John loved to cook — he made the English-type steak and kidney pies. I thought they were horrible, and they made the house smell so bad, but people seemed to think they were wonderful. He loved to cook and entertain, and when he had money, he just blew it on the best food and booze. And of course, John loved making headlines — he didn’t care how!

  1940 was a big year for most of the Bundy Drive Boys. Errol Flynn was starring in The Sea Hawk, a dashing performance in vivid contrast to his on-set behavior. On March 14, 1940, Warner Bros.’ executive producer Hal Wallis fired off this memo to studio manager T.C. Wright:For the past few days I have been getting a lot of reports via the grapevine about Errol Flynn. Also, Mike [Curtiz] has told me he loses hours every day on account of Flynn and is days behind because of him, that he doesn’t know his lines, etc.

  I also understand that Flynn is late on the set practically every day, that he was called to work the other afternoon at 4:30, and at 9 o’clock said he was cold and that he was going home and proceeded to leave before the set was finished… Why do you as Studio Manager tolerate a condition of this kind?

  Flynn’s behavior wasn’t much better on The Santa Fe Trail for Warners, again with the beautiful Olivia de Havilland, the despised Michael Curtiz, and as Custer, young Warner contractee Ronald Reagan. As the future U.S. President told film historian Tony Thomas:Errol was a strange person, terribly unsure of himself and needlessly so. He was a beautiful piece of machinery, likeable, with great charm, and yet convinced he lacked ability as an actor. As a result, he was conscious every minute of scenes favoring other actors and their position on the screen in relation to himself. He was apparently unaware of his own striking personality.

  W.C. Fields starred in Universal’s My Little Chickadee tempestuously with Mae West, and their onscreen antics weren’t as colorful as their offstage hostility. Ronald J. Fields remembered:I think it was an ego problem. If you think about it, she was the female W.C. Fields, so there was a clash right on that issue. Just as Mae West would be going into a scene, W.C. would say to an interviewer on the set, “Ah, there goes Mae West — a fine figure-eight of a woman, and so well-preserved.“ And he once said, “Mae West is a plumber’s idea of Cleopatra.” That would get to you!

  My first book on W.C. came out in 1973, and I was doing the talk shows, the radio shows. The first radio show I was going to be on was in L.A., and the producer asked me if I would mind sharing the mic with Mae West. He said, “I know this is going to take away a little bit from promoting your book,” but I interrupted right there and said, “No, I’d love to meet her.” So I get to the studio, and there’s no Mae West. I asked the producer, “Are you expecting her soon?” and he said, “Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Fields, when we asked if she’d go on with you, she said she didn’t want to meet another Field
s as long as she lived!”

  More fun was The Bank Dick, with W.C. as Egbert Souse, coping with a horrible family, nearly smashing a bratty daughter with a huge vase, and getting the bank inspector (Franklin Pangborn) drunk and nauseous (offering him pork chops fried in lard). Fields prepared the script under the nom de plume of “Mahatma Kane Jeeves,” appalling the Breen Office, which responded with a barrage of censorship no-nos — no “nude figure of the girl, standing by the lake,” no use of the word “stinko” or reference to “castor oil,” etc., and climaxing with: “and, most vitally — nix the reference to the ‘Black Pussy Café.’ It would, however, be acceptable to say ‘Black Pussycat.’”

  It was shades of 1933’s International House and W.C.’s “It’s a pussy!” but he didn’t get away with it this time. It was the Black Pussycat Café, where Fields had this timeless exchange with the bartender, played by Shemp Howard:

  Sadakichi by Decker

  Fields: Was I in here last night and did I spend a twenty dollar bill?

  Howard: Yeah.

  Fields: Oh boy! What a load that is off my mind! I thought I’d lost it!

  Noting the 1940 election, Fields also wrote a book, Fields for President. In the book W.C. made special commemoration of August 18 (“the day I smoked my first marijuana cigarette”) and wrote, “Remember, folks, cast a vote for Fields and watch for the silver lining. Cast several votes and watch for the police.” Again, the humor was ahead of its time. An early 1970s reprint of Fields for President became a brisk seller.

  It was also in 1940 that John Carradine enjoyed his role as Casy, the preacher martyr in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath. He had ascended to top character actor rank, and 20th Century-Fox now paid him $1,000 per week. Carradine celebrated by buying a yacht, The Bali. Some of David Carradine’s most vivid early memories of his father are as skipper of The Bali, which he preferred to sail in rough seas. As David wrote in Endless Highway:Once we were caught in a bad squall (actually a mini-hurricane) and Dad relived Captains Courageous for real. The wind ripped the sails off the masts and he ran before the storm on bare poles with seas as high as the masts. We all almost bought it. My strongest memory of that incident was when the storm first hit us broadside. The ship keeled over to starboard to the point that the gunwales were in the water. I was on the other side of the deck with Bruce and Mother, clinging to the sheets while the waves hit us broadside, almost drowning us each time. I was absolutely terrified and utterly thrilled. Dad was at the helm, windblown, pipe in his teeth, watching the swell for his next move, yelling orders to his crew. It was actually better than Captains Courageous.

  Thomas Mitchell had meaty roles in Our Town, The Long Voyage Home and Swiss Family Robinson (for which John Decker did the promotional artwork). Alan Mowbray sliced delicious ham in the lead role of The Villain Still Pursued Her (which featured Carlotta Monti in a bit as a streetwalker). Anthony Quinn left Paramount and joined Warner Bros. where, as Ann Sheridan’s dance partner in City for Conquest, he met fellow cast member Elia Kazan. It was Kazan who later directed Quinn in the road company of A Streetcar Named Desire and in 1952’s Viva Zapata, for which Quinn would win an Academy Award.

  John Barrymore, meanwhile, starred in a travesty at 20th Century-Fox called The Great Profile. Decker, Fowler and Hartmann found their way to Fox, posing with Barrymore, who, in the film, was wearing a Hamlet costume — “God forgive everyone concerned!” wrote Fowler in Good Night, Sweet Prince.

  “Can’t you get me out of this?” Barrymore asked Fowler, referring to his agonizing marriage to Elaine.

  It was also during the shooting of The Great Profile that Barrymore told the press of ten “extremely fine actors worth watching for pointers.” They were Lionel, Spencer Tracy, George Sanders, Paul Muni, Henry Fonda, Roland Young, C. Aubrey Smith, George Raft, John Carradine and Maria Ouspenskaya. As Young and Carradine were Bundy Drive members, there was likely a celebratory party there that June night in honor of Barrymore’s choices. Parties erupted there for lesser reasons.

  The Great Profile is the film that won John Barrymore the honor of placing his hands, feet and profile into the celebrated cement of Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. On the night of September 5, 1940, Barrymore, in blue suit and flanked by The Great Profile co-star Mary Beth Hughes (whom Elaine described as “the blonde bitch playing my part”), made their way to the forecourt before a cheering crowd. Barrymore signed the slab “To Sid — A Great Showman — Jon Barrymore.” He noted his error and the cement was smoothed as he corrected his misspelling.

  The real trouble, however, came later. Grauman told the press that Barrymore, who was to enter his profile into the cement along with his hand and foot prints, would merely pose his profile near the cement — a plaster cast would provide the actual profile imprint later. However, as Barrymore posed, either a) He actually placed his profile in the cement in a fit of ad-libbed bravado or b) Grauman, in his own fit, suddenly shoved Barrymore’s profile into the goo. News accounts of the evening support the latter, as Barrymore sputtered, cursed and tried to get cement out of his left eye and ear. Mary Beth Hughes ran to a nearby bar to get Barrymore a drink.

  “I feel like the face on the barroom floor,” said John Barrymore — perhaps his only printable quote about his immortality at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

  In Good Night, Sweet Prince and Minutes of the Last Meeting, Fowler recreates the first summer at Bundy Drive with almost idyllic grace and nostalgia. One charming vignette presents Decker, “who had on a hayseed hat and a paint-smeared shirt that hung outside his trousers and partly concealed a huge rent in the seat,” watching plums drop off a tree in his back yard, as he prepared to paint the scene. Sadakichi had suffered a hemorrhage on his Indian reservation home, claiming he had survived a 60-hour seizure without water or any attention. He recovered at Decker’s new home, reclining in a beach chair, listening to “The Dance of the Hours” on a portable radio, keeping time to the music with a fly swatter, claiming he was perhaps the only one in the world who could dance properly to it, and berating Fowler for not buying him a coffin.

  John Barrymore was there, pretending to be aghast at Fowler’s failure to provide a casket, hailing Sadakichi’s slow death as “the work of a great professional.” After Sadakichi wandered off, his friends looked for him and found the old man in the garage, seated behind a large gilt picture frame, as if to create a live portrait of himself.

  At dinner, Sadakichi carved the beef, and responded to Barrymore’s query as to the most beautiful words in the English language. “The words most beautiful to me are Sadakichi Hartmann,” said Sadakichi Hartmann.

  Then there was the late summer night that some of the gang decided to read aloud Macbeth. Sadakichi, of course, would star as Macbeth, Decker Lady Macbeth (W.C. Fields was Barrymore’s choice, but he was home asleep), Barrymore was Macduff and Fleance, Roland Young was Banquo, Duncan and the Witches. Gene Fowler, cast by Barrymore in all the bit roles, protested that he’d rather be the audience. There was only one copy of the play at 419, so Karl Steuver, Barrymore’s “keeper,” embarked on what Fowler called “a midnight mission” to wake up neighbors and beseech copies of Shakespeare’s allegedly cursed tragedy.

  As Steuver banged on neighbors’ doors, Decker amused the gang, dressing up in a top hat, a shawl Barrymore had worn in the silent film Beau Brummel, gluing fur to his chin, and playing Abraham Lincoln liberating the slaves. He followed up as Uriah Heep from David Copperfield (which must have especially amused Roland Young, who’d played that wormy role in MGM’s 1935 film version) and, as a topper, put flour on his face, added wrinkles with crayon, and — voila! — became no less than Sadakichi Hartmann. Steuver, meanwhile, came back with two more copies.

  “Perhaps you should play Lady Macbeth without the opera hat,” Barrymore said to Decker, still in his Lincoln whiskers and flour-and-crayon face. “Unless, of course, you see her as the mannish type. And come to think of it, she was.”

  They prepared to bring the tragedy
to life, Sadakichi performing a little dance. “Now,” directed Decker, “let us turn to page 19.”

  Of course, page 19 in Decker’s script was not the same page 19 in either Barrymore’s script or Sadakichi’s script. As Gene Fowler put it, “The Tower of Babel must have been exactly like this.”

  They stopped. Decker suddenly segued into a non sequitur tamper tantrum, demanding to know why Sadakichi never praised his “beautiful” art work. Sadakichi called him a caricaturist. Decker bellowed, Sadakichi cackled, Barrymore sang “Blow the Man Down,” Decker’s dogs barked furiously, the neighbors called the police…

  Gene Fowler left with Roland Young in the latter’s limo at 4 a.m. Dropping off Fowler at his home on Barrington, Young expressed it à la the Bard himself: “Decker, and not Macbeth, does murder sleep!”

  On September 15, 1940, the New York Times published an interview with Gene Fowler, conducted in his Hollywood office. Fowler spoke of his recent near-death in the car accident, how he had looked over his life and reviewed what he should and shouldn’t have done:And I decided that the great waste had been the time I had put in writing things that I didn’t want to write. The time gained was that time that I’d spent writing to suit myself. And I like to write books. The last one, Illusion in Java, cost me 18 months of work, $25,000 in travel expenses and contracts for $90,000 worth of movie work that I turned down. It brought me in just two weeks’ salary — $4,000.