It was not for naught that Douglas captured the imagination and love of the public. The spirit of his pictures, their optimism and infallibility, were very much to the American taste, and indeed to the taste of the whole world. He had extraordinary magnetism and charm and a genuine boyish enthusiasm which he conveyed to the public. As I began to know him intimately I found him disarmingly honest because he admitted that he enjoyed being a snob and that successful people had allure for him.
Although Doug was tremendously popular, he generously praised other people’s talent and was modest about his own. He often said that Mary Pickford and I had genius, while he had only a small talent. This of course was not so; Douglas was creative and did things in a big way.
He built a ten-acre set for Robin Hood, a castle with enormous ramparts and drawbridges, far bigger than any castle that ever existed. With great pride Douglas showed me the huge drawbridge. ‘Magnificent,’ I said. ‘What a wonderful opening for one of my comedies: the drawbridge comes down, and I put out the cat and take in the milk.’
He had a varied assortment of friends, ranging from cowboys to kings, and found interesting qualities in them all. His friend Charlie Mack, a cowboy, a glib, verbose fellow, was highly amusing to Douglas. While we were at dinner, Charlie would frame himself in the doorway and talk: ‘Nice place yer got here, Doug,’ then looking around the dining-room: ‘Only it’s too far to spit from the table to the fireplace.’ Then he would crouch on his heels and tell us about his wife suing him for ‘di-vorce’ on grounds of ‘cruler-ty’. ‘I says, Judge, that woman has more cruler-ty in her little finger than I have in ma whole body. And no baby ever toted a gun more than that gal did. She’d have me a-hopping and a-dodging behind that ole tree of ours till it was that perforated yer could see thru it!’ I had an idea that Charlie’s fanfaronade was rehearsed before visiting Doug.
Douglas’s house had been a shooting lodge, a rather ugly two-storey bungalow set on a hill in the centre of what was then the scrubby, barren hills of Beverly. The alkali and the sagebrush gave off an odorous, sour tang that made the throat dry and the nostrils smart.
In those days Beverly Hills looked like an abandoned real estate development. Sidewalks ran along and disappeared into open fields and lamp-posts with white globes adorned empty streets; most of the globes were missing, shot off by passing revellers from roadhouses.
Douglas Fairbanks was the first film star to live in Beverly Hills, and often invited me to stay the week-end with him. At night from my bedroom I would listen to the coyotes howling, packs of them invading the garbage cans. Their howls were eerie, like the pealing of little bells.
He always had two or three stooges staying with him: Tom Geraghty, who wrote his scripts, Carl, an ex-Olympic athlete, and a couple of cowboys. Tom, Doug and I had a Three Musketeers relationship.
On Sunday morning Doug would organize a posse of cowponies and we would get up in the dark and ride over the hills to meet the dawn. The cowboys would stake the horses and make a camp-fire and prepare breakfast of coffee, hot cakes and ‘sowbelly’. While we watched the dawn break, Doug would wax eloquent and I would joke about loss of sleep and argue that the only dawn worth seeing was with the opposite sex. Nevertheless, those early morning sorties were romantic. Douglas was the only man who could ever get me on a horse, in spite of my complaints that the world over-sentimentalized the beast and that it was mean and cantankerous with the mind of a half-wit.
At that time he was separated from his first wife. In the evening he would have friends to dinner, including Mary Pickford, of whom he was terrifically enamoured. They both acted like frightened rabbits about it. I used to advise them not to marry but just to live together and get it out of their systems, but they could not agree with my unconventional ideas. I had spoken so strongly against their marrying that when in the end they did so all their friends were invited to the wedding but me.
In those days Douglas and I often indulged in cliché philosophizing, and I would hold forth on the futility of life. Douglas believed that our lives were ordained and that our destiny was important. When Douglas was possessed with this mystic ebullience it usually had a cynical effect on me. I remember one warm summer’s night both of us climbed to the top of a large water-tank and sat there talking in the wild grandeur of Beverly. The stars were mysteriously brilliant and the moon incandescent, and I had been saying that life was without reason.
‘Look!’ said Douglas, fervently, making an arc gesture taking in all the heavens. ‘The moon! And those myriads of stars! Surely there must be a reason for all this beauty? It must be fulfilling some destiny! It must be for some good and you and I are all part of it!’ Then he turned to me, suddenly inspired. ‘Why are you given this talent, this wonderful medium of motion pictures that reaches millions of people throughout the world?’
‘Why is it given to Louis B. Mayer and the Warner Brothers?’ I said. And Douglas laughed.
Douglas was incurably romantic. When spending week-ends with him I was sometimes awakened at three in the morning out of a sound sleep, and would see through the mist a Hawaiian orchestra playing on the lawn, serenading Mary. It was charming, but it was difficult to enter into the spirit of it when one was not personally involved. But these boyish attributes made him endearing.
Douglas was also the sportive type who had wolf-hounds and police dogs perched on the back seat of his open Cadillac. He genuinely liked that sort of thing.
*
Hollywood was fast becoming the Mecca of writers, actors and intellectuals. Celebrated authors came from all parts of the world: Sir Gilbert Parker, William J. Locke, Rex Beach, Joseph Hergesheimer, Somerset Maugham, Gouverneur Morris, Ibañez, Elinor Glyn, Edith Wharton, Kathleen Norris and many others.
Somerset Maugham never worked in Hollywood, though his stories were much in demand. He did, however, stay there a number of weeks prior to going to the South Sea islands, where he wrote those admirable short stories. At dinner he recounted one to Douglas and me, the story of Sadie Thompson, which he said was based on actual fact, and which was later dramatized as Rain. I have always considered Rain a model play. The Reverend Davidson and his wife are beautifully defined characters – more interesting than Sadie Thompson. How superb Tree would have been as the Reverend Davidson! He would have played him as gentle, ruthless, oily and terrifying.
Set in this Hollywood milieu was a fifth-rate, rambling, barnlike establishment known as the Hollywood Hotel. It had bounced into prominence like a bewildered country maiden bequeathed a fortune. Rooms were at a premium, only because the road from Los Angeles to Hollywood was almost impassable and these literary celebrities wanted to live in the vicinity of the studios. But everyone looked lost, as though they had come to the wrong address.
Elinor Glyn occupied two bedrooms there, converting one into a sitting-room by covering pillows with pastel-coloured material and spreading them over the bed to look like a sofa. Here she entertained her guests.
I first met Elinor when she gave a dinner for ten people. We were to meet in her rooms for cocktails before going into the dining-room and I was the first to arrive. ‘Ah,’ she said, cupping my face with her hands and gazing intently at me. ‘Let me have a good look at you. How extraordinary! I thought your eyes were brown, but they’re quite blue.’ Though she was a little overwhelming at first, I became very fond of her.
Elinor, though a monument of English respectability, had shocked the Edwardian world with her novel Three Weeks. The hero, Paul, is a well-bred young Englishman who has an affair with a queen – her last fling before marrying the old king. The baby Crown Prince is, of course, secretly Paul’s son. While we waited for her guests to arrive, Elinor took me into her other room, where framed on the walls were pictures of young English officers of the First World War. With a sweeping gesture she said: ‘These are all my Pauls.’
She was ardently imbued with the occult. I remember one afternoon Mary Pickford complained of fatigue and sleeplessness. We were in Mary’s
bedroom. ‘Show me the north,’ commanded Elinor. Then she placed her finger gently on Mary’s brow and repeated: ‘Now she’s fast asleep!’ Douglas and I crept over and took a look at Mary, whose eyelids were fluttering. Mary told us later that she had to endure the pretence of sleeping for more than an hour, because Elinor stayed in the room and watched her.
Elinor had the reputation of being sensational, but no one was more staid. Her amorous conceptions for the movies were girlish and naïve – ladies brushing their eyelashes against the cheeks of their beloveds and languishing on tiger-rugs.
The trilogy she wrote for Hollywood was of a time-diminishing nature. The first was called Three Weeks, the second His Hour, and the third Her Moment. Her Moment had terrific implications. The plot concerns a distinguished lady, played by Gloria Swanson, who is to marry a man she does not love. They are stationed in a tropical jungle. One day she goes horse-back riding alone, and, being interested in botany, gets off her horse to inspect a rare flower. As she bends over it, a deadly viper strikes and bites her right on the bosom. Gloria clutches her breast and screams, and is heard by the man she really loves, who happens, opportunely, to be passing close by. It is handsome Tommy Meighan. Quickly he appears through the bush. ‘What has happened?’
She points to the poisonous reptile. ‘I have been bitten!’
‘Where?’
She points to her bosom.
‘That’s the deadliest viper of all!’ says Tommy, meaning of course the snake. ‘Quick, something must be done! There is not a moment to spare!’
They are miles from a doctor, and the usual remedy of a tourniquet – twisting a handkerchief around the affected part to stop blood circulating – is unthinkable. Suddenly he picks her up, tears at her shirt-waist, and bares her gleaming white shoulders, then turns her from the vulgar glare of the camera, bends over her and with his mouth extracts the poison, spitting it out as he does so. As a result of this suctorial operation she marries him.
fourteen
AT the end of the Mutual contract I was anxious to get started with First National, but we had no studio. I decided to buy land in Hollywood and build one. The site was the corner of Sunset and La Brea and had a very fine ten-roomed house and five acres of lemon, orange and peach trees. We built a perfect unit, complete with developing plant, cutting-rooms and offices.
During the studio’s construction, I took a trip to Honolulu with Edna Purviance, for a month’s rest. Hawaii was a beautiful island in those days. Yet the thought of living there, two thousand miles from the mainland, was depressing; in spite of its effulgent beauty, its pineapples, sugar-cane, exotic fruits and flowers, I was glad to return, for I felt a subtle claustrophobia, as if imprisoned inside a lily.
It was inevitable that the propinquity of a beautiful girl like Edna Purviance would eventually involve my heart. When we first came to work in Los Angeles, Edna rented an apartment near the Athletic Club, and almost every night I would bring her there for dinner. We were serious about each other, and at the back of my mind I had an idea that some day we might marry, but I had reservations about Edna. I was uncertain of her, and for that matter uncertain of myself.
In 1916 we were inseparable and went to all the Red Cross fêtes and galas. At these affairs Edna would get jealous and had a gentle and insidious way of showing it. If someone paid too much attention to me, Edna would disappear and a message would come that she had fainted and was asking for me, and of course I would go and stay with her for the rest of the evening. On one occasion a pretty hostess, who was giving a garden fête in my honour, pranced me about from one society belle to another and eventually led me into an alcove. Again the message came that Edna had fainted. Although I was flattered that such a beautiful girl always asked for me after she came to, the habit was becoming a little annoying.
The dénouement came at Fanny Ward’s party, where there was a galaxy of pretty girls and handsome young men. Again Edna fainted. But when she came to, she asked for Thomas Meighan, the tall, handsome leading man of Paramount. I knew nothing about it at the time. It was Fanny Ward who told me the next day; knowing my feelings for Edna, she did not wish to see me being made a fool of.
I could not believe it. My pride was hurt; I was outraged. If it were true it would be the end of our relationship. Yet I could not give her up so suddenly. The void would be too much. A resurgence of all that we had been to each other came over me.
The day after the incident I could not work. Towards afternoon I telephoned her for an explanation, intending to fume and fuss; but instead my ego took over and I became sarcastic. I even joked lightly about the matter: ‘I understand you called for the wrong man at Fanny Ward’s party – you must be losing your memory!’
She laughed and I detected a tinge of embarrassment. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said.
I was hoping she would fervently deny it. Instead she acted cleverly; she asked who had been telling me all this nonsense.
‘What difference does it make who told me? But I think I should mean more to you than that you should openly make a fool of me.’
She was very calm, and insisted that I had been listening to a lot of lies.
I wanted to hurt her by a show of indifference. ‘You don’t have to make any pretence with me,’ I said. ‘You’re free to do whatever you like. You’re not married to me; so long as you’re conscientious in your work, that’s all that matters.’
To all this Edna was amiably in agreement, and wanted nothing to interfere with our working together. We could always be good friends, she said, which made me all the more desperately miserable.
I talked for an hour on the phone nervous and upset, wanting some excuse for a reconciliation. As is usual in such circumstances, I took a renewed and passionate interest in her, and the conversation tapered off by my asking her to dinner that evening on the pretext of talking over the situation.
She hesitated, but I insisted, in fact I pleaded and implored, all my pride and defences slipping away from me. Eventually she consented.… That night the two of us dined on ham and eggs, which she cooked in her apartment.
There was a reconciliation of a sort and I became less perturbed. At least I was able to work the next day. Nevertheless, there lingered a forlorn anguish and self-reproach. I blamed myself for having neglected her at times. I was cast into a dilemma. Should I completely break with her or not? Perhaps the story about Meighan was not true?
About three weeks later she called at the studio to get her cheque. As she was leaving I happened to bump into her. She was with a friend. ‘You know Tommy Meighan?’ she said blandly. I was somewhat shocked. In that brief moment Edna became a stranger as though I had just met her for the first time. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘How are you, Tommy?’ He was a little embarrassed. We shook hands, and after we had exchanged one or two pleasantries they left the studio together.
However, life is another word for conflict which gives us little surcease. If it is not the problem of love it is something else. Success was wonderful, but with it grew the strain of trying to keep pace with that inconstant nymph, popularity. Nevertheless, my consolation was in work.
But writing, acting and directing fifty-two weeks in the year was strenuous, requiring an exorbitant expenditure of nervous energy. At the completion of a picture I would be left depressed and exhausted, so that I would have to rest in bed for a day.
Towards evening I would get up and go for a quiet walk. Feeling remote and melancholy, I would wander around town, looking vacantly into shop windows. I never tried to think on these occasions; my brain was numbed. But I was quick to recuperate. Usually the following morning, driving to the studio, my excitement would return and my mind would get activated again.
With a bare notion I would order sets, and during the building of them the art director would come to me for details, and I would bluff and give him particulars about where I wanted doors and archways. In this desperate way I started many a comedy.
Sometimes my mind would
tighten like a twisted cord and would need some form of loosening. At this juncture a night out was efficacious. I never cared much for alcoholic stimulus. In fact, when working, I had a superstition that the slightest stimulus of any kind affected one’s perspicacity. Nothing demanded more alertness of mind than contriving and directing comedy.
As for sex, most of it went in my work. When it did rear its delightful head, life was so inopportune that it was either a glut on the market or a serious shortage. However, I was a disciplinarian and took my work seriously. Like Balzac, who believed that a night of sex meant the loss of a good page of his novel, so I believed it meant the loss of a good day’s work at the studio.
*
A well-known lady novelist, hearing I was writing my autobiography, said: ‘I hope you have the courage to tell the truth.’ I thought she meant politically, but she was referring to my sex-life. I suppose a dissertation on one’s libido is expected in an autobiography, although I do not know why. To me it contributes little to the understanding or revealing of character. Unlike Freud, I do not believe sex is the most important element in the complexity of behaviour. Cold, hunger and the shame of poverty are more likely to affect one’s psychology.
Like everybody else’s my sex-life went in cycles. Sometimes I was potent, other times disappointing. But it was not the all-absorbing interest in my life. I had creative interests which were just as all-absorbing. However, in this book I do not intend to give a blow-by-blow description of a sex bout: I find them inartistic, clinical and unpoetic. The circumstances that lead up to sex I find more interesting.
My Autobiography Page 23