The Duke invited Merv to his dressing room for a drink. Once there, Duke drank and talked, and Merv mainly listened. He was one of the most candid actors Merv had ever met. If he thought something, John didn't seem to censor his tongue before he spoke. “That Hungarian Jew, Curtiz, tells me you hang out with Rock Hudson,” John said. “Better keep your pants zipped up around that cocksucker. God damn it, what I could have done with a face like Hudson's. Too bad it's wasted on a queer.”
Merv and John chatted for about an hour before John was called to the set. “C'mon, walk with me.” He handed Merv his flask. “Hang out this afternoon. When I'm not on camera, I'll slip over to join you, and I'll take a drink from my flask. Guard it with your life.”
On the set, Merv encountered Curtiz, who seemed to inspect and assess the odd combination of tall John with short Merv. “Hey, kid,” he said to Merv, “Wayne here walks like a fairy and gets away with it. You can't! If you're going to be in my next picture, you're going to have to learn to walk like a man.”
John seemed to take a liking to Merv, who had no other work, as his meager part in the picture was finished. He spent the rest of the week hanging around the set as “John Wayne's flaskboy,” as Merv later put it.
John was being smeared in the headlines by Esperanza Baur, his second wife. He'd met her in 1941 when she was working as a prostitute in Mexico and had married her in 1946. But by 1953, she was blackmailing The Duke to get “the largest alimony settlement in history,” as she vowed.
Duke called her Chata. “She turned into a stark raving bitch,” he told Merv.“She's trying to destroy me. She claims I beat the shit out of her. Maybe I've slapped her around once or twice, but the puta once tried to kill me.” The Duke/Chata divorce resembled a soap opera, as she spread sensational and scandalous stories, with the expressed intention of destroying both his reputation and his career.
Merv lent a very sympathetic ear, especially when Duke confessed that Chata had hired private detectives to follow him everywhere. To complicate his life, Duke had met a Peruvian starlet, Pilar Palette Weldy, while scouting for a film location. He seemed quite taken with her, but was trying desperately to keep her hidden from Chata's detectives. There was more. Duke was also still involved with Gail Russell, with whom he'd launched an affair in 1947 when they'd made Angel and the Badman.
Merv turned red. Unknown to Duke, Merv was seducing Gail's husband, Guy Madison, although his marriage was also heading for the divorce courts.
On the last day of the shoot, Merv invited Duke to “use my spare bedroom if you want to slip away with one of your lady friends. Chata will never find you there.”
Duke looked at him for a moment, as if mulling over the idea. “I think I'll take you up on that, kid.”
After the movie was wrapped, days went by before Merv heard from Duke again. Every day Merv read a story in the papers about the steamy divorce. At one point Chata told the press that “John Wayne is an awful man — a drunk, violent, unfaithful.” Merv worried that these allegations would harm Duke's career, but his fans remained faithful, turning against Chata.
Months after her contested divorce from John, Chata was found dead in a hotel room in Mexico, with dozens of empty liquor bottles scattered about. When she was sober enough, she had been writing a memoir. She told a Mexican reporter that her memoir would forever destroy John Wayne. “No one will go see one of the bastard's movies ever again. I'm also writing about how lousy the great John Wayne is in bed. And he calls himself a man.”
At the time of her death, her incomplete manuscript, although viewed prior to her death by the Mexican reporter, had been stolen from her hotel bedroom.
Finally, a call came in one Saturday night from The Duke. “Kid, I've decided to take you up on that offer. Gail and I need to slip over for the night.”
“I'm going out on a date, but I'll leave the key under the doormat,” Merv said. “Stay as long as you want.”
“I'll owe you one, kid,” John said.
Merv turned down the offer to meet Gail Russell (a.k.a. Mrs. Guy Madison). Ironically, Merv's date that night was with her estranged husband, who at that point was living apart from his wife.
***
The next morning, while Merv was preparing his breakfast, he heard a loud noise coming from his guest bedroom, into which John Wayne had taken Gail Russell the night before. When Merv had returned home around three o'clock that morning after a hot night with Gail's husband, Guy Madison, he didn't bother to check the guest room. Duke's car was not in his driveway, and Merv just assumed that the lovers had already departed.
While still seated at his breakfast table, Merv looked up as the door to his guest bedroom was thrown open. Over his scrambled eggs, he encountered a bedraggled Gail Russell, staggering out of the room in a bathrobe that was split open to reveal all her goodies. He turned from the sight of her. The press often compared Gail's beauty to that of the screen goddess, Hedy Lamarr, but on this particular hungover morning, Gail looked more like Harpo Marx after a bad night.
Merv had been following Gail's career in the newspapers, reading detailed and careerdestroying accounts of her drinking problem. She'd been convicted of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, which led to Paramount dropping her after she'd filmed Air Cadet in 1951. She'd been offered no more movie roles after that. To make matters worse for her, she was in the midst of divorcing Guy, who at the time was her sole means of support.
All Merv could do was offer black coffee and sympathy. He had no intention of telling her that only a few hours before, he'd been sucking on her husband's cock.
Angel and the Bad Man (1947):
John Wayne with Gail Russell
“I'm Mrs. Moseley,” she said, sitting down and tightening her robe to conceal her breasts. “As if you didn't know.” He was aware that Moseley was Guy's legal name.
Behind her currently shattered face with its hungover droop, he detected an incredible doeeyed beauty. In spite of her failed life and outofcontrol drinking habits, she still projected an image of innocence and vulnerability that he'd seen in such pictures as Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948) with Edward G. Robinson and The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland.
Over coffee, she told Merv, “I ran into Jane Russell the other day. I knew the bitch when we attended Van Nuys High School together. I told the big tit cow that there was room for only one Russell in this town, and she'd have to change her name. Fans still come up to me and say, ‘Jane, will you sign my autograph book?’”
Merv got up and squeezed Gail some fresh orange juice, inviting her into his living room. Her fragile appearance mirrored an even more fragile psyche. Yet he was blunt with her.“You've got to stop drinking and get your career back on track. You could be a bigger movie star than ever if you straighten yourself out.”
“Thanks for the advice, but no thanks,” she said. “I know how at ease you are with an audience. Not me, boy. I'm selfconscious because I know I have no real talent. I'm afraid. I started drinking on the set because I couldn't bear to face a camera. My insides feel like a fist is gripping my guts every time I see a lens. My face breaks into a sweat, and my hands grow clammy. Sometimes when I open my mouth to say my lines, my throat constricts. Nothing comes out. It's always been that way. Back in Chicago when my parents would invite company to our house, I'd run and hide under the piano.”
“But you seem selfassured on the screen,” he said.
“It's all an act,” she said.
“That's why it's called acting.”
“Don't get smartass with me!” she said, her face turning harsh. Up until then she'd been open and vulnerable with him, but perhaps his remarks had been too flippant. She suddenly looked threatening and hostile.
She deliberately dropped the glass of orange juice onto the tile floor, shattering it before storming off to the guest bedroom. In about half an hour, she emerged with a small night bag colored a shocking pink and chartreuse. She was wearing a white summer dress with red polka dots and had r
epaired her face as best she could.
With that angry look still on her face, she confronted him in his living room. “Call me a taxi,” she commanded. “I'm going home.”
“I'll drive you,” he volunteered. “I have no work today.”
“Welcome to the club,” she said. “I have no work any day. That fucking whore The Duke married is dragging me into her nasty divorce trial against him. By using me, she's hoping to get more money out of him. And more Godawful headlines for me. Just what I need. As if things weren't bad enough for me already.”
“I'm sorry,” he stammered, wanting her to leave as she was making him uncomfortable.”
“Not as sorry as you're going to be, big boy,” she threatened him. “Guess what I found hanging in the closet of your guest bedroom? Clothes belonging to my husband. I should know them when I see them. I bought them for him.” Her eyes glanced nervously around his living room, as if seeing it for the first time. “So this is where the queer bastard has been spending his evenings now that Rory Calhoun's out of town fucking Marilyn Monroe.”
Merv was acutely embarrassed that Gail had discovered details of his affair with Guy.
“Talk about getting messed up in a divorce,” she said. “Like Chata with The Duke, I'm gonna take Guy for every penny he's making on that hit TV series. His fans wouldn't want to know that their favorite action hero takes it up the ass.” She stood at his front door, looking back at him. “Oh, by the way, if Guy doesn't cooperate and meet my demands, I'm gonna destroy his career. Not only that. My revelations will destroy your career too—not that you have much of one.”
As she slammed the door in his face, he experienced panic. She seemed like a very determined and very wronged wife. His first thought was that he hadn't called her a taxi, but then he figured she'd see the pay phone booth on the corner. He immediately went into his kitchen and called Guy at the studio to tell him about his confrontation with his wife.
“Oh, shit!” Guy said. “I've got to hang up and call my lawyer.”
Fortunately for Guy, his attorney hired a private detective who during the two months leading up to the divorce proceedings managed to compile an extensive dossier on Gail's secret lesbian life.
“It was a Mexican stand-off,” Guy later told Merv. “She had me, and I had her. If she wants to work another day in this town—and she does—she doesn't want to be branded a dyke. I reminded her what that did to Lizabeth Scott's career.”
In time, Merv and Guy drifted off to other boyfriends, and much to Merv's relief, Gail never aired her explosive charges in a divorce court. The last years of Gail's life were spent in and out of sanatoriums.
Despite his ongoing affair with Gail, The Duke would deny until the end of his days that there had ever been anything going on sexually between him and the ravenhaired beauty. Merv, however, knew differently.
In spite of her threats against him, Merv was still saddened to read about Gail's death on August 27, 1961. In her small oneroom apartment in Brentwood, Los Angeles, her partially decomposed body wasn't discovered until a week after her death. She'd died from a heart attack attributed to alcoholism. In her apartment, police found thirtysix empty vodka bottles, which ironically represented every year of her young life.
***
When Merv drove up behind a yellow convertible parked in his driveway, he suspected at first that Rock Hudson had come for an unannounced visit. Then he spotted his old friends Paul Schone and Bill Robbins sitting on his stoop. They'd driven down from San Francisco with an enormous amount of luggage, which included three large stage trunks, each resembling something from the wardrobe department of a Hollywood studio.
Bill and Paul rushed to embrace Merv and kiss him as part of a longdelayed reunion. Suddenly, from out of the bushes jumped Johnny Riley, who'd driven his friends south to Los Angeles in that yellow convertible.
After the many setbacks of his on again, off again Hollywood career, Merv later recalled that “the reunion was one of the happiest days of my life. It was great being back with the old gang.”
Those trunks, it turned out, belonged to Bill, and they were filled with stage gowns. In between his fewandfarbetween dancing jobs, he'd become a nightclub entertainer who regularly appeared in drag doing impersonations of movie queens who included Mae West. “Bill was always the lady of our group,” Johnny said, mocking him but not in a meanspirited way.
All three men complimented Merv on his new looks, as he was suntanned and fit, weighing less than he ever had in his adult life. Whereas Merv was being appraised, he was also doing a quick evaluation of his friends. If anything, Bill seemed more effeminate than ever, while Paul and Johnny were movie star handsome, seemingly born for show business careers. He jealously suspected that either of them would project a more intense and more masculine screen presence than he did.
As the sun set that afternoon, Merv invited his rediscovered friends to the back yard for barbecue. All three of them emerged after showering wearing swimming trunks. Johnny and Paul were barechested, showing off their sixpacks, but Bill demurely covered his frail chest with a white Tshirt. “My God, fellows, you guys would put Rock himself to shame.” Merv obviously didn't include Bill in that appraisal. “Until you get jobs, I think I'll hire all of you out as hustlers.”
Merv meant that as a joke but no one laughed. He scanned each serious face. For a moment, there was nothing but silence. “That's how I make my spending money,” Johnny confessed. “That's how I bought that new convertible. It should come as no surprise to you, ‘cause you know I was doing that back in San Francisco when I was just a kid.”
Although Merv did indeed remember that, he was still surprised, since in all their longdistance calls, Johnny had never revealed that he was still hustling. “Of course, if I meet a guy who's really cute, I give him a freebie,” Johnny said.
“What about you guys?” Merv asked, turning to Bill and Paul.
“I've turned a trick or two,” Bill said. “Believe it or not, there are a lot of men out there—most of them married—who get off fucking a drag queen.”
“Not me!” Paul said. He seemed adamant. “I can only get it up for goodlooking guys with big dicks. I'm a size queen. I couldn't make it with some repulsive old queen.”
“And you, Merv?” Johnny asked. “Confession time. How many casting couches have you worn out?”
“None, absolutely none,” Merv said. “Maybe that's why my career has stalled. On Monday I'll take you to the studio and show you a film I was hired for, and then you'll see why I'm not setting Hollywood on fire.”
By ten o'clock that night, all three of Merv's guests were sleepy and wanted to turn in early. Bill and Paul agreed to share the guest room, and Johnny said he'd sleep in Merv's bed “for old time's sake.” Back in his living room, Merv called Roddy McDowall and asked if he could bring his friends over the following afternoon for one of his Sunday soirées. “All of them are great guys: Bill Robbins, Johnny Riley, and Paul Schone.”
Roddy readily extended an invitation to Merv's three friends, saying “the more the merrier. I just hope they're handsome.”
“Johnny Riley looks like a more masculine version of Tab Hunter,” Merv said. “Eight and a half inches—and very, very thick. I've had him. Paul Schone looks like a young Gregory Peck. I don't know his measurements. I've never fucked with him.”
“And your other friend, Bill Robbins?” Roddy asked.
“Oh, yes,” Merv said. “Do you mind if he dresses up for the occasion?”
“I get it!” Roddy said. “I hope he comes as Bette Davis and does all the dialogue, especially that ‘what a dump line,’ from Beyond the Forest. See you tomorrow,” he said. Before hanging up, he blew a “kisskiss” into the phone.
Chapter Six
Merv became almost jealous of how his friends in Los Angeles embraced Bill Robbins, Paul Schone, and Johnny Riley, taking these young San Franciscans directly to their bosoms. Bill was a hit at Roddy's Sunday afternoon soirée, thanks in part to his dra
g imitation of Marlene Dietrich in her Destry Rides Again costume. And throughout the course of the party, Johnny seemed to have three or four of the most attractive actors in a cluster around him. But despite the popularity of Merv's other guests, it was Paul that Roddy invited to sleep over that evening after the party ended.
When Merv's household woke up the following morning, Merv invited Johnny, Bill, and Paul to the Warner lot where he treated them to a showing of his uncredited appearance in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Based on a story by Ray Bradbury, the film's beast was a hibernating dinosaur. Awakened by an atomic test north of the Arctic Circle, it terrorizes New York City. In later life, Merv remembered his one line in the film, wherein he was cast as a radio announcer: “Well, folks, here's another of those silly reports about sea serpents.”
Merv confessed to his friends that he'd fallen for the star of the picture, Paul Hubschmid, who had been defined by some press agents as “the most beautiful man in postwar German cinema,” and who was billed in the United States as Paul Christian. The Swissborn star had been a leading man in a number of Austrian stage and film productions.
“I made several plays for him,” Merv confessed to his friends. “But I don't think he ever knew I even existed.”
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms —made for just $250,000—was a financial success, grossing five million dollars. It did nothing, however, to advance the American career of Paul Christian, much less Merv. The picture did go down in film history, however, as the first movie to deal with a prehistoric monster unearthed by an atomic explosion. As such, it spawned many other equally cheap imitations.
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 30