I won’t say that gossip alone ruined Dorothy Lamour’s marriage—but it didn’t help. Enforced separation from her husband, who worked in Chicago, had as much, perhaps a little more, to do with it. But the continual items in the newspapers and magazines that Dorothy was out with this man one night and another the next couldn’t have been peaceful reading for her husband. Mind you, he’d given her carte blanche to go out with whom she wanted to, but there’s quite a difference in saying, “Darling, I want you to have an amusing time when I’m not there,” to reading that his “darling” was having an amusing time when he wasn’t there. (Pause.)
Randolph Scott’s marriage is another that went on the rocks via separation and gossip. His wife preferred horses and Delaware to films and Hollywood. So she lived in Delaware and Mr. Scott lived in Hollywood. Mrs. Scott told Mr. Scott that it was all right with her if he went out with other women when she wasn’t there. And Randy, no less generously, told Mrs. Scott she could go out with other men when he wasn’t there.
Mrs. Scott did more. She wired Randy that a girl she knew was visiting Hollywood and would he show her around. Randy, being an obedient husband, took his wife’s friend to dinner at the Trocadero. (Pause.) Within the next few days, every reporter in Hollywood—and there are nearly four hundred—was informed that Randolph Scott was going places with a pretty woman and that it signified the end of his marriage.
Randy told me that his wife was furious. He reminded her that it was she who’d asked him to be nice to the girl. “Yes,” she wired back, “but I didn’t expect you to be that nice to her.” “But I wasn’t,” Randy wired back. They made it up that time, but things were never quite the same. (Pause.)
Of course, the happy marriages aren’t written up in the papers. It’s hardly a news story to say that the Paul Munis are never apart—she’s even on the set when he’s working; or that the Warner Baxters have been married twenty-one years; (Pause.) Even such career women as Myrna Loy have made a pretty good thing of marriage. (Pause.)
Only we must consider this—that if a woman star has made a mistake in the man she’s married, she’s not forced by lack of money and lack of opportunity to make the best of it.
(Pause.) A lot can happen in a Hollywood day. I’m not trying to say that as much couldn’t happen right here in this city, but in Hollywood all the big names, that we know as intimately as the names of our brothers and sisters, give a kind of glow to things. At least they did four years ago, when I first went out there.
I remember a special morning when Robert Taylor called me up and asked me to play tennis. And, believe it or not, though we play the same brand of tennis, I turned him down. That same day William Powell had asked me to dinner at his house. I turned that down too, because a wire had just come from my syndicate asking for an interview with Cecil B. de Mille. This was to take place at his country home—Paradise Ranch, somewhere up in the hills. I was furious. Here I was with an invitation to play tennis with Taylor and dine with Powell. Moreover I’d planned to fly to Catalina that afternoon and learn something of Leslie Howard’s new plans.
To be honest, I wasn’t absolutely sorry to forgo the Howard engagement because the interview would have to be conducted on Tay Garnett’s yacht and I’m one of those seasick girls. I’d had another interview before with Leslie under the same conditions and we caught some fish and talked vaguely about life and love. But I’d rather interview Dracula on good dry land. (Pause.)
Anyhow, I started out to Mr. de Mille’s, who’d been kind enough to invite me for the weekend. I didn’t know what to expect. One of my illusions before I went to Hollywood was that the stars lived in fantastic houses and on enormous estates. Usually it isn’t so. Even in such Beverly Hills houses as Joan Crawford’s, your immediate impression is that any personal taste that might exist has been subordinated to the taste of an interior decorator.
But the de Mille ranch promised to be the exception. De Mille is an individualist. I was going to interview the man who recreated the American bathroom. Abraham Lincoln, in the White House, had the first bathtub with running water in the country, but Mr. de Mille had made the bathroom an exquisite sanctum and if he could do that much with a mere bathroom, what was his ranch going to be like? I still regretted that dinner date with William Powell, but I was game.
A secretary met me at the door. In a few seconds, she had told me the rules:
1. A husband and wife cannot come there together—a husband alone or a wife alone is quite welcome. This rule is waived only once a year on the birthday of Mrs. de Mille.
2. There’s no such thing as getting food before twelve in the morning.
3. Guests must not believe in the rumor that women were frequently murdered in the night. It was just another Hollywood story. This last was to make me feel at home.
I broke loose from the secretary at this point, went outside to where the first meal of the day was being served in the middle of a tennis court. I presented myself to Mr. de Mille.
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you serving steak and soup on the tennis court?” De Mille explained that the tennis court used to be a patio and he liked the view from there, and they used to eat on the patio, and he was dashed if he’d eat anywhere else just because he’d inserted a tennis court. I was getting that Alice in Wonderland feeling.
I listened to de Mille outline the afternoon routine to his guests. “Some of you people have got to clean out the swimming pool. The rest will come with me on a mountain hike. (Pause.) We may meet a mountain lion.”
“You mean we ought to go armed?” asked a timid guest.
“No,” said de Mille complacently. “I have a revolver. You’ll find some canes in the hall.” The guest looked a little green as he turned back to his steak and soup.
“Don’t worry,” de Mille assured him. “Your sticks will come in useful if we meet rattlesnakes.” I don’t remember the name of that guest, but something tells me he chose to stay and clean out the pool.
This was my introduction to Paradise Ranch. I asked where the telephone was and called up William Powell. “I think I’ll be free for a late dinner,” I said.
Now I have to confess to a complete hiatus in my memory of that afternoon—except that I didn’t go mountain climbing and I didn’t clean the pool. I’d been up till three the night before, covering the Academy Dinner. So after lunch I tottered to the room assigned me and fell into a deep sleep. (Pause.) Perhaps I had a confused dream of playing tennis with Robert Taylor in the middle of a patio. (Pause.) Perhaps the peacocks screaming on the terrace made me believe that guests were murdered in their sleep. (Pause.) Perhaps in my dreams I heard the field mice on the bureau eating away at my purse, for there were really field mice, and it was—or had been—a real purse. (Pause.) But my dream couldn’t have been as weird as the reality to which I presently woke up. I looked out the window. It was about seven o’clock.
Men in Russian blouses were hurrying across the patio. Had the Revolution come? I pulled myself together. I must be on the spot to report it. I fixed myself up quickly at the mirror and dashed downstairs just in time to see a strange ritual. Cecil B. de Mille was mixing a cocktail. He wore white gloves, like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Upon the cocktail shaker, as if the ice inside wasn’t enough, there were bells, which with every motion of his elbow played “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”
Being from England, where the same tune is used for “God Save the King,” I stood stiffly to attention until I was rudely brought back to mobility by the whispered advice—this time from a de Mille yes-man—that until eight o’clock the women had to be subservient to the men.
“If this seems difficult,” he said, “remember you’ll each get a present from that tree.”
I looked at the tree. It was a sort of Christmas tree loaded with all kinds of presents from imitation jewelry to huge bottles of Chanel Number 5. But meanwhile, the process of women being subservient to men had begun. The women were helping the men be seated at table very much as
a mother puts a child in a high chair. It was all right, I was assured; in another half-hour when de Mille gave the word at eight o’clock, the world was going to be all for women again. But I can’t report upon that because this was the exact moment when William Powell’s car came for me. By this time, I was honestly sorry to leave. Some day I’m going back—just after eight.
That was three years ago, and I still feel a little like Alice in Wonderland. (Pause.) In talking to you, I’ve tried to be very practical and very serious. (Pause.) I’ve tried to tell you something about the director as the great vitalizing force in pictures. (Pause.) I’ve tried to tell you how people break into movies. (Pause.) Also I’ve discussed impartially the question of if, when, and how motion pictures are educational. And I’ve tried to tell you a little about the personalities of Hollywood and their problems.
But it’s impossible to crowd into an hour all that I know or think or guess about Hollywood. After four years out there, I’d be silly not to admit that I’m a little person circulating about a great medium. It’s too big for me—too big for any of us, too big for most of the people who direct its destinies.
Once in a while a great figure has appeared on the horizon and led it through a mighty exodus. Griffith was one, Thalberg was another. There is no such person now in Hollywood—no single person whom we, of the movie industry, believe capable of controlling this vast art in all its many manifestations. But there’s some boy growing up in America now who by some combination of genius and luck will answer Hollywood’s great problem.
Now that we have every device of nature itself—nature’s color, nature’s sound. And technicians have made experiments in nature’s three dimensions so that figures on the film will seem to have the corporeal reality of life itself. Now that we have all this—what are we going to do with it? Now that we’ve a way of saying in pictures almost everything that used to be said in books, how far do you want us to go? And what do you want us to say?
I regret to state that I was a dismal flop as a lecturer in Boston, the first stop. I was so intimidated by the Boston clubwomen that I was afraid to raise my eyes from the written page. I grew more confident going west, and by the time I hit Kansas City, I had them rolling almost literally in the aisles. A cocktail party had preceded the lecture, which I could now give from memory with only a casual glance at the papers. I felt I had done extremely well and Scott was delighted when I telephoned him with the good news, before flying back the same night to Hollywood.
When I called him the next morning, I was in tears and read him the scathing attack on my lecture by the Kansas City stringer for The Hollywood Reporter. This was when Scott asked John O’Hara to be his second for the duel he threatened with the editor of the Reporter. When John O’Hara declined, Scott mumbled something about his being a coward and he would get Eddie Mayer, who was warned by O’Hara and spent the morning composing excuses. Luckily the call never came. I vowed no more lectures in a letter to Johnny, after I told him, “It took me a long time to get over my short lecture trip. I lost too much weight and my nerves got jangled. I think I’m too high strung for that sort of work.”
Among the several short short stories I wrote under Scott’s tutelage was one called “Ostrich.” Remembering how the Duchess de Guermantes had hastened to a party in advance of the time when she expected word that a relative had died, for then she would be unable to go, I wrote on similar lines, about a debutante whose grandmother was expected to die and who rushed to an important party before receiving the dreaded telegram.
I planned a plot for a story, “Janey,” a thinly disguised version of Scottie and her father. He was amused when I showed it to him; it was so exactly what was happening at that time in their lives. The notes for the story were in my “Scott” folder.
Description of Janey
[This of course was almost a life-size description of Scottie.]
Weight 110 pounds
5 feet 4½ inches
golden hair with a flame behind it. Wide apart blue eyes, the blue of a summer day with a hint of thunder, flecks of yellow around the pupil like a bright sun in the sky.
A little mouth that when she is cross looks like a short “u” upside down …
Perfect teeth
A forehead that is a combination of the best in Priscilla Lane and Ginger Rogers.
Complexion—a soft piece of finely woven creamsilk—dipped in a pink-gold dye.
She is vivacious and so busy—can’t sit still—always getting things up—and leaving them for others to finish. A terrific prevaricator (except on fundamental things)
Her athletic accomplishments—a superb diver.
She is trilingual—German, French, Italian—her father having lived in Europe until she was 14 (this is why she is still “Janey”—thinks she is still the ideal American girl)
Plot
Story of a girl, 17, daughter of a middle-aged professor, a man who in early 20’s was the literary mouthpiece of flaming youth.
His daughter has read all the stories—and loved them—she is surprised that he has such knowledge and understanding of the hot, sweet, exciting problems of youth—can hardly believe he wrote them because he now seems such a timid old soul. He can’t believe he wrote them either—and wishes he never had. He now dislikes so much the type of wild heroine he used to write about so prolifically.
The story that makes him writhe most is “Janey”—(his Josephine series)—about a girl just the age of his daughter and her complete counterpart in looks—no wonder—“Janey” was her mother (she died when the girl was 8) who breaks every rule—and just manages to get away with it without paying.
The daughter read “Janey” when she was 13—and has never forgotten it. She is now, at the age of 17—“Janey” to the life—but this type of girl is no longer fashionable.
The story deals with the father’s determination to kill the “Janey” in his daughter—without her being aware of it—and the daughter’s determination to be “Janey”—only more so. Both the father and the daughter win—in their own fashion.
The story could open at a debutante dance with the girl having a hot necking session with a Yale boy—à la Janey. She is a fascinating little minx with the looks and line of Scottie. (Her father doesn’t know she is at the deb dance—thinks she is at Bryn Mawr College), but you’d never guess this from the girl’s conversation. To hear her talk, you’d think she could twist papa around her little finger (like Janey does).
After the dance, a swift heady drive back to college with the daughter, a little intoxicated, driving. (At one bend they skid right round three times.) She gets back to the college to find her father waiting for her. (He had come up unexpectedly to see her, finds she has gone to the dance—and is VERY ANGRY.) She is furious because he bawls her out in front of the boy (with whom she is madly in love). The boy is secretly on the father’s side. He is a quiet, serious, ambitious youth who drinks—but just a little—is in love with the girl, is fascinated by the Janey side of her, but also irritated by it.
“You told me to write about what I know,” I reminded Scott.
He laughed somewhat ruefully. He had recently tried to reach Scottie by telephone at Vassar on a Saturday afternoon and learned that instead of studying—she was behind in her grades—she had taken off somewhere to see a football game. After telephoning all over the Eastern Seaboard, he had tracked her down at the home of her close friend “Peaches” Finney in Baltimore. He was very angry with Scottie, bawled her out for ten minutes without repeating himself, and slammed down the receiver after predicting she would come to a bad end.
*The story with Scott’s corrections appears as an Appendix.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHAT I LEARNED
HOW VALUABLE WAS SCOTT FITZGERALD’S education for me in actual fact? Scott’s death prevented my graduation from his College of One. But in a sense I have had my diploma through my daughter, Wendy, who graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr. Her honors paper was titled, “
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Tragic Experience of the Creative Hero.” She has her M.A. and is now studying for her Ph.D. My son wrote a book when he was sixteen about his experiences in Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia the previous summer. The New York Times rated his Journey Behind the Iron Curtain with the 100 Best Books For Children in 1963. The reviewer for the Times, comparing Robert’s book with five others on the same subject written by adults (including John Gunther’s two books culled from his Inside Russia), stated: “Of the books here, the best introduction to Communism by far is teenager Robert Westbrook’s … The point that comes through in young Mr. Westbrook’s tale—and which escapes much other and more learned literature in this field—is that communists are people too—good people and bad people, pleasant people and boors …”
The torch has been passed. The seed Scott planted with his dying years will bloom forever in the dust of his bosom.
Of course I have not remembered everything I learned in our College of One. If I had to take my examination now, twenty-six years later, I would have to bone up for several months, as any college graduate would have to do. Following Scott’s habit of grading his knowledge, I would say that in the areas in which I studied I know as much as any fairly bright college graduate who has forgotten some of what she has learned. Perhaps I know a bit more of poetry and literature. I have the same amount of confidence and assurance in participating in discussions on the subjects I studied so assiduously as the sole student in Scott’s college.
A two-year course or even four years cannot educate you in the complete sense of the word, but it gave me, as I said at the beginning of this book, a key. It widened my horizon. I know where to look. I know how to evaluate. I am curious. I am open for new ideas and facts. The politicians and biased historians cannot fool me any more. To understand the present and future, you must know something of the past. I can relate today to yesterday. I am involved. I make up my own mind. I ask questions.
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