Hollywood Madonna

by Bernard F. Dick

  Loretta may have thought she was the star of DeMille’s homage to the Third Crusade, but she was overshadowed by Wilcoxon, who gave the same kind of high testosterone performance he gave when he played Antony to Claudette Colbert’s Cleopatra. At least in Cleopatra, Colbert was the main attraction; in The Crusades, Loretta was not. Dressed in costumes that trailed down her body and would have concealed the slightest bulge—if there were any (not yet, fortunately)—Loretta was Berengaria, the Navarrese princess whom Richard reluctantly weds but, in a typical movie turnaround, eventually grows to love. Historically, theirs was a marriage of expediency. The DeMille version, scripted by Dudley Nichols and others, has Richard join the crusade—not because Jerusalem has fallen to the Muslims, who toppled crosses, burned bibles, and enslaved Christian women (as vividly depicted at the beginning of the film)—but to avoid an arranged marriage with the French princess Alice, the mistress of his father, Henry II, a fact that was not commonly known. Richard deserved his sobriquet, “Lionheart.” He was a pragmatist who marries Bergenaria because his men are starving, and the king of Navarre can provide them with grain and beef.

  The most problematic historical figure in The Crusades is Saladin (Ian Keith), the Muslim leader and Sultan of Egypt, whom Dante (Inferno, Canto 4), believing that Saladin’s sense of justice and forgiveness has exempted him from eternal punishment, places in limbo. DeMille’s Saladin is an amalgam of fact and myth. He is correctly portrayed as a benign ruler, ruthless when necessary but generous to his captives. As an example of his magnanimity, the writers devised a subplot in which Berengaria is captured by Saladin’s soldiers. Earlier in the film, Berengaria flirted innocently with Saladin. Since Loretta specialized in playing the coy maiden, the scene works splendidly, with Loretta and Keith letting their eyes do the courting. Saladin falls in love with Berengaria, who agrees to become his wife if he will spare Richard. Her selfless offer is pure invention: Berengaria was never captured, and Richard achieved a significant victory at Acre, portrayed in the most impressively photographed sequence in the film, with exploding fireballs, bodies tumbling into the moat, and boiling oil poured from the ramparts.

  Although it is true that Richard failed to take Jerusalem, he succeeded in negotiating a treaty with Saladin that gave pilgrims access to the holy city. In the film, Saladin, realizing that Berengaria loves Richard, frees the Christian captives, one of whom is she. There is no treaty; instead, Saladin forbids Richard to enter Jerusalem. In a moment of superhuman strength, Richard breaks his sword in half, giving the cruciform hilt to Berengaria to place on the tomb of Christ, which seems to be in a cathedral. Again, the writers have taken extravagant liberties. In Mark 15:42, the tomb is described as hewn out of rock, its entrance closed by a large stone. Also, the four evangelists agree that the tomb was empty when two (Matthew), three (Mark), or several (Luke) women, or one (John) arrive on the climactic third day and discover that the stone had been rolled back. Biblical scholars might care, but what mattered was the exquisitely photographed scene at the tomb, wherever it was. Loretta strikes a beatific pose, looking as if she were about to take the veil. Richard, too, becomes a believer. “Oh, merciful God,” he exclaims, as he watches the Christians wend their way toward Jerusalem. From their enraptured faces, one almost expected the couple to embrace the contemplative life—Berengaria in a convent, and Richard in a monastery.

  Of all of DeMille’s re-creations of the past, The Crusades was the least successful, finding favor with neither the public nor the critics. But to DeMille, the film was a labor of love that eventually cost $11.9 million. He set a cap of $100,000 for costumes, and, to save money, had the scimitars and helmets made in the machine shop. A specialist was hired from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to authenticate the crossbows and armor. DeMille insisted that Richard’s and Saladin’s horses look majestic, yet different in appearance. Trifles upset him: The crosses on the knights’ coats of mail were too small; perspiration seeped through Wilcoxon’s costumes.

  When filming ended in May, Loretta’s pregnancy was still not noticeable. But she could not undertake another film that year. By the time The Crusades premiered on 25 October, she was less than two weeks away from having Clark Gable’s child. Earlier, in June, Gladys decided that Loretta should take a sabbatical from Hollywood. They would travel to Europe for a much needed vacation. She would inform the press that her daughter’s dizzying schedule had caused a host of health problems, exhaustion being one. Rest, relaxation, and a change of pace were the answer. It was impossible for someone of Loretta’s reputation to travel unnoticed. She arrived in London in early July, when tennis star Fred Perry was Wimbledon’s main attraction. Soon rumors began circulating that she and Perry were romantically involved. In loose-fitting but appealingly feminine dresses, Loretta had not lost her ability to attract men; nor men, their fascination with women who can be provocative without being a tease. Loretta denied the rumors with her usual finesse, no doubt disappointing reporters looking for a story.

  The real story, however, was that Loretta was beginning to show. She could not give birth in London or anywhere but California. Gladys decided it was time to return home and weave the final strands in the web of deception. Mother and daughter arrived in Los Angeles on 21 August, with Gladys acting as spokesperson: “Loretta has been in ill health for some time and lost considerable weight recently.” The truth was just the opposite, but Gladys knew not only how to decorate a house, but also how to conceal a pregnancy approaching the end of the second trimester. Just a few more months to go—two and a half, to be exact.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Great Lie

  Loretta was a regular on Lux Radio Theatre, which aired on Monday evenings from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and featured radio versions of recent and, sometimes, older films, often with their original casts. The radio dramatization scheduled for 2 March 1942 was The Great Lie (1941), with Loretta as Maggie in the part created by Bette Davis. Her costars, George Brent and Mary Astor, reprised their original roles. Although it is seems hard to imagine Loretta in a Davis vehicle, she did remarkably well, modeling her interpretation on Davis’s. Davis gave a subdued performance, devoid of the mannerisms and histrionics that became her trademark and here would have been out of character. Maggie, who lives on a Maryland plantation, is too genteel to play the diva; her fate is to suffer in silence without loss of dignity. Loretta gave a similar reading, using a voice that was subtly Southern and bore little resemblance to her own. Maggie is the fiancée of a reckless flyer (Brent) who goes off and marries her friend, Sandra, a concert pianist (flamboyantly played by Astor), not realizing that Sandra’s divorce is not final and that the marriage is invalid. The flyer then returns to Maggie, who agrees to marry him. But in a woman’s film, nothing ever ends, until THE END appears on the screen. Meanwhile, the women undergo a series of trials until the writers declare a moratorium. Sandra discovers she is pregnant, the flyer is reported missing somewhere in Brazil, and Maggie programs herself into sacrificial mode, offering to adopt the child. The women retreat to the Arizona desert, where the baby is born.

  As often happens in the “missing husband/wife” film (e.g., My Favorite Wife, Too Many Husbands), the flyer turns up. Will the baby go to Maggie or Sandra? Sandra, who was never a poster mother, realizes that the child belongs with Maggie and the flyer. “The child goes with the mother,” she announces, pounding away at the piano, her one and only love.

  Loretta must have sensed some parallels between Sandra’s situation and her own back in fall 1935. Loretta was more fortunate than Sandra; thanks to her mother’s foresight, she was spared the ordeal of giving birth in the wilds of Arizona. By 1935, Loretta knew about plot construction, as did Gladys and Dr. Walter Holleran (Loretta’s physician, well known in Hollywood for his valuable connections with the Los Angeles Archdiocese, connections which proved beneficial to many stars, particularly Loretta). Holleran could lend credibility to the great lie and defuse the rumors circulating about Loretta’s “illness�
� before they exploded in searing headlines, leaving her career in ashes. Gladys, who looked upon real estate as an investment, and encouraged Loretta to think similarly, had purchased a house in Venice in western Los Angeles, known in 1935 for its easy living and sandy beaches (It was not yet Los Angeles’ Greenwich Village). It was the perfect hideout.

  Since Loretta was neither a murder suspect nor a drug addict, it was not that difficult for Zanuck to prevent her from becoming a Hollywood outcast. Loretta had committed a sin only in the eyes of the Church. And if moviegoers in Wilkes-Barre or Oshkosh heard rumors about their idol, they would have dismissed them as Hollywood gossip, no more believable than “eat what you like” weight loss programs and beauty creams promising to restore the bloom of youth by eradicating lines and wrinkles. Although Zanuck and Loretta had no love for each other, he was astute enough to realize he could not incur the wrath of the National Legion of Decency by having a star on his roster who had violated the morals clause in her contract. Others had done the same, but they were not in Loretta’s virginal league. Image is all, and hers had to be maintained.

  The birth was the easiest part. Venice, at the time, was somewhat seedy, the last place a nosy reporter would think of as a movie star’s getaway. On 6 November 1935, Loretta gave birth to a baby girl, whom she called Judith. Exactly why Loretta chose that name is unknown. Perhaps she was thinking of the biblical Judith, whom the Church regarded as a prefiguration of the Virgin Mary. Judith saved her people from the Assyrians by cutting off the head of their general, Holofernes, and Mary was portrayed as the new Judith, crushing the head of the serpent, Satan’s avatar. As an observant Catholic, Loretta would have attended Mass on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption and a holyday of obligation, where the epistle in the liturgy with which she grew up was from the Book of Judith (13:22–25, 15:10). The last verse (15:10) was added to associate Mary with her predecessor: “You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the joy of Israel, you are the honor of our people.”

  Loretta’s Judith would need a different kind of courage to slough off the taunts of Hollywood brats who learned the details of her birth from their parents or know-it-all friends. Children can be unconscionably cruel when they discover another’s secret. Judith inherited Gable’s floppy ears; “Judy’s got elephant ears,” the children chanted as they giggled, making her even more determined to learn the truth about her parents. William Wellman’s response did not help the situation: “All I know is Loretta disappeared when [The Call of the Wild] was finished and showed up with a daughter with big ears.”

  Dr. Holleran was not the only Catholic conspirator. Judy’s baptismal certificate was a fabrication. She was identified as Mary Judith Clark (an interesting juxtaposition of the Virgin and her prototype), whose parents were William and Margaret Clark. The surname “Clark” was her birth father’s first name; “William” was the first name of Gable’s father. Her godparents were Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Troeger. “R. C.” was a common abbreviation for “Roman Catholic.” Was that the case? How “Troeger” originated is a mystery. “Troeger” is German, derived from Trogen, a place name shared by both Bavaria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The 1930 census listed 240 Troegers in Los Angeles, including a Roy C. Troeger. Were Roy and Mattilda Troeger the phantom couple? If so, who knew them and under what circumstances?

  In fall 1935, all that mattered was Judy’s receding into the background, then moving ever so slightly into the spotlight until it was time to introduce her to the Hollywood community, most of whom knew or suspected the truth, but realized that divulging it would backfire. Loretta was an asset; as such, she was protected. All that mattered was that Mary Judith Clark, later to be known as Judy Lewis after her mother married Tom Lewis in 1940, was legitimate, the possessor of a baptismal certificate as well as a birth certificate that identified her more accurately as Judith Young, whose father was “unknown.” One truth, one lie. Regardless, Judy Lewis had proof of birth.

  The first two acts of “The Great Lie” (clandestine birth, semi-falsified documents) had come off smoothly. The celluloid wall of silence did not preclude whispers, but better whispers than tabloid headlines. Now, how to pass off Judy as Loretta’s daughter? Holleran’s connections with the church hierarchy made it possible. In early July 1936, the eight-month-old Judy was brought to St. Elizabeth’s, a combination children’s hospital/orphanage and home for unwed mothers, in San Francisco. For the time being, Judy was an orphan.

  The plight of the unwed mother became one of Loretta’s causes. She was a four-time president of St. Anne’s Foundation in San Francisco, which supports St. Anne’s Maternity Hospital for Unmarried Mothers and St. Anne’s Adoption Agency. Her “swear box” was prominently displayed on the set of every film. Whenever a profanity—or worse, an obscenity—was uttered, the offender was charged proportionately: twenty-five cents for “hell,” fifty cents for “goddamn” and “Jesus Christ.” The proceeds went to St. Anne’s

  By July 1937, the epilogue had been written. The ever-maternal Loretta would be adopting a child, possibly two children. The exact number had not been determined, but it was good press as well as bait for fans who cherish every detail of a star’s life. For them, there is no such thing as trivia. On 4 July, the Los Angeles Examiner reported that Loretta had adopted two girls: June, three, and Judy, twenty-three-and-one-half months. Who June was is unknown. At least Judy’s age was correct. As an actress, Loretta was familiar with the situation-complication-resolution screenplay model. She may have been thinking of adopting two children—or was it a matter of tying another knot in the narrative cord to slow down its unraveling? There is no drama in a single adoption; but a double adoption requiring the adoptive parent to give up one of the children commands greater attention. Which will it be? June was most likely a plot point, introduced to create a dilemma for Loretta.

  Loretta played the adoptive mother as if she were the heroine of a woman’s film. “I am the happiest girl in the world,” she gushed. “Until [the children] came here, I just haven’t known what I’ve been missing.” She had the perfect answer when asked how she found them: “I can’t tell…. That is a secret I hope I never have to reveal.” That part was true. But then the mother of one of the girls supposedly had pangs of remorse. And so, the magnanimous Loretta, no stranger to sacrifice, had to make a wrenching decision. Which child has to be returned to the mother? Loretta had an answer to that question, too: She was too conflicted to “bring herself to disclose … which of the youngsters she must give up … declaring that she realized that she must keep that in confidence and must bow to the natural love of the mother.” The resolution did not have the combination of pity and fear that haunted the Holocaust survivor in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, nor was it in the tradition of the weepie that left behind a sudsy residue. There would be a partially happy ending: One child is better than none.

  The press added to the apocrypha. In one version, Loretta gave up the older child, June (if that was her name) because her aunt (a relative in another version) wanted her back. Then there was the story that Loretta discovered the girls at a Catholic orphanage in Los Angeles when she was there to decorate a Christmas tree. In that account there was no June, but a James, age three, and Judy, twenty-three months. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth? (John 38),” Jesus did not reply. Neither did Loretta.

  The most powerful gossip columnist in America was Louella Parsons. To secure her friendship, such as it was, you had to play by the rules—her rules. Parsons understood the nature of patronage from personal experience: Her patron was newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the model for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941). Hearst made it possible for an Illinois society page writer to become the voice of Hollywood, with a syndicated column that could lavish or withhold praise. Whether the individual was praiseworthy or not was irrelevant. Parsons wanted obeisance, and Loretta willingly gave it. If anyone could deliver the official Hollywood line, it was “Lolly” Parso
ns. And if there were still rumors about Loretta’s adopted daughter, Parsons would quell them. Two weeks before the other papers picked up the adoption story, Parsons had one of her “first exclusives,” as she called them. She reported that Loretta had adopted two “babies.” When Parsons requested a picture, Loretta graciously declined: “I don’t want them to be photographed—not yet. They’re so little and they shouldn’t have a lot of publicity while they are just babies.”

  Loretta and Parsons shared the same religion, although Parsons’ Catholicism did not even approximate Loretta’s. What they really had it common was irresponsible husbands and children who needed more than either could offer. Louella’s first husband abandoned her for another woman when she was pregnant with her first and only child, Harriet, who in 1931 called off her wedding because she realized she was a lesbian. Loretta knew all about skirt-chasing men and women with dark pasts. Louella and Loretta were “sisters under the mink,” as Gloria Grahame said about herself and Jeanette Nolan in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953). Parsons proved a powerful ally. Although she knew about the so-called adoption, she understood Loretta’s predicament. All Loretta had to do is pay homage to her benefactor, which included appearing on Parsons’s radio show, Hollywood Hotel, which premiered in October 1934. Guests could either receive the munificent sum of $18.00 but no publicity, or forego the fee and promote their latest movie, perhaps even perform a scene from it.

  One fanzine writer actually did see the children—or rather Judy and one other child. The writer was Liza Wilson, who was not the voice of Hollywood but who could qualify as one of its oracles. She had become so popular that she only used her first name. A story signed “Liza” carried credibility. The day that Liza called at Loretta’s Bel-Air home, Judy and June were on display. Who June was, and where she came from (an orphanage, a casting agent) did not matter. June was a protatic character, needed for one scene and then written out of a script that had one star and one newcomer, who in a movie would have received a separate credit: “Introducing Judith Young.” The adoption script now had the imprimatur of Parsons and Liza, Hollywood’s equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.