Goldwyn

by A. Scott Berg

  As the Dodsworth script progressed, Wyler’s suggestions became more particular. He proved to have an uncanny ear for dialogue that was inappropriate or unnecessary. Wyler’s strongest concern was that Howard “make Fran less of a bitch at the outset.” Even as the story progressed, Wyler contended, Fran should show those elements of her personality that appealed to her husband in the first place. Otherwise he would appear as an unsympathetic fool for ever marrying her. Howard agreed.

  Once shooting began, Wyler had to argue his feelings about Fran Dodsworth all over again. “It was like pulling teeth with her,” he said of his experience with Ruth Chatterton. “She only wanted to play her as a selfish bitch, and I kept trying to make her see that Mrs. Dodsworth had a very good case for behaving the way she did. She’d been a good wife for twenty-five years, and raised their children, and now he’s rich and retiring, and she wants to have a fling. She says to her husband, ‘You’re simply rushing at old age, Sam, and I’m not ready for that yet!’ And that’s true. In her mind, this was her last chance to live a little.”

  Wyler’s fights with Miss Chatterton were monumental, ranging from sarcastic to sadistic. In the wide eyes of David Niven, the director was nothing less than a “Jekyll-and-Hyde character”—“kind, fun and cozy at all other times, he became a fiend the moment his bottom touched down in his director’s chair.... He even managed to reduce the experienced Ruth Chatterton to such a state that she slapped his face and locked herself in her dressing room.” Mary Astor contended that the problem grew from the leading lady’s detesting her role, that “the character was that of a woman who is trying to hang onto her youth—which was exactly what Ruth herself was doing. It touched a nerve.”

  When Niven worked, the actor remembered, “it was perfectly normal for Willie to sit beneath the camera reading the Hollywood ‘Reporter’ and not even look up till I had plowed through the scene a couple of dozen times. ‘Just do it again,’ he’d say, turning a page.”

  More often than not, it was Wyler’s “perfectionist” attitude that was running the production over budget, not his actors’ lack of aptitude. He spent one entire afternoon, for example, shooting a scene of a crumpled letter being gently blown across a terrace. Miss Astor remembered, “He wanted it to go slowly for a way, then stop, and then flutter a little farther, and finally be caught up in a gust and blown over the edge of the balcony.”

  The Goldwyns returned to Beverly Hills on July 4, 1936, and the “fireworks” began immediately. At fifty-seven, Sam Goldwyn experienced a sudden change of life. His recent brush with death had brought him face to face with the ghost of his father—that “sensitive fella” who had died at forty-three. The visitation haunted him forever. From that day forward, Sam Goldwyn moaned constantly about his impending demise. A fear of germs and an obsession about cleanliness, which he had carried since his flight from the squalor of Poland, intensified. And now anyone who displeased him was out to get him; whoever defied him was trying to kill him. “I’m gonna die,” he wailed whenever he did not get his way. Just when he thought the czar had stopped chasing him, Goldwyn found himself being pursued by the Grim Reaper. He took to his bed.

  He had been recovering steadily since his operations, but the doctors said it would be weeks before he could go back to the studio. Frances supervised the conversion of their house into both hospital ward and office. She organized the domestic staff, team of nurses, and production personnel around a strict schedule that called mostly for her husband’s resting. She read every book on diet that she could find, and she oversaw every forkful of his food. She pinned a St. Christopher’s medal to his pajamas.

  Once settled in, Goldwyn inspected the footage of his two films, both practically finished. The amount of excess film Wyler used upset Goldwyn; but the quality of Dodsworth pleased him enormously. Watching a rough assembly of Come and Get It, on the other hand, practically sent him through the roof.

  Hawks had turned the film into something far afield of anything Goldwyn had ever imagined, into what would later prove to have all the ear-marks of a Howard Hawks picture. He had shifted the primary focus of the story into a “buddy movie”—the story of two friends and a girl. What had once been intended to be Miriam Hopkins portraying a “little lame girl who sang so badly that the woodsmen hooted at her” got changed into Frances Farmer playing “a lusty wench.” Goldwyn found every scene caked with bits of business, Hawks-inspired improvisation that detracted from the story. Character actors like Walter Brennan were allowed to steal scenes from the stars. Joel McCrea, who was meant to be second-billed in the film as Barney Glasgow’s son, was lost altogether. “After I saw what [Hawks] had filmed,” Goldwyn would later write Edna Ferber in an attempt to explain how her story got botched, “I suffered a relapse for a full two weeks; it upset me so.”

  In truth, he got on the case the next day. Against doctors’ and Frances’s orders, he went to the studio and confronted Hawks directly. “Writers should write and directors should direct!” rang Goldwyn’s cry across the lot. Hawks said he was walking off the picture. Goldwyn said that suited him, because Hawks was fired. Goldwyn returned to his bed to think how the original story might be restored as much as possible. It dawned on him that Dodsworth had but a few shots to go.

  Wyler received his first invitation to Laurel Lane. On a sweltering July afternoon, he was shown upstairs to the master bedroom, where he found Goldwyn in his pajamas, propped up in bed against a mound of pillows. Frances sat in a chair by his side, with what Wyler thought at first was a fan but was a fly swatter. Goldwyn said how pleased he was with Dodsworth and that he wanted Wyler to finish Come and Get It. Wyler protested that there was still more to do on Dodsworth, including the editing. Goldwyn assured him that could wait, and that he was not the editor anyway. Wyler said, “I can’t just walk into another picture like that. It’s Howard Hawks’s picture.” Goldwyn said Hawks had been fired. “Well, Mr. Goldwyn,” protested Wyler, “I refuse to do it.” Suddenly, Wyler later recalled, “he just exploded and Frances tried to calm him down. But he turned into a madman. He said I had to do this, that it was in my contract, and that if I didn’t do it, he’d ruin my career.” He got so mad that Frances started to beat him over his legs with the fly swatter. Wyler ran out of the house, straight to his lawyer, who told him Goldwyn was right. Refusal of the assignment would result in suspension from the lot. “And,” Wyler realized, “I knew if he was getting somebody else to finish the Hawks picture, he’d get somebody else to finish mine.”

  Wyler spent two weeks on Come and Get It. His contribution to the film comes mostly in the last half hour, in which Hawks’s raucous shenanigans settled down to several dramatic scenes, staged and shot with the straightforward simplicity that was the hallmark of Wyler’s style. Wyler always thought the best parts of the film were the second-unit director’s spectacular logging sequences, which opened the picture, and the film’s first half, “which was Hawks all the way.” Goldwyn saw things differently. In 1936—the year the Directors Guild of America was getting chartered—he had the authority to take Hawks’s name off the film. He substituted Wyler’s in all the publicity until the pinch-hit director said he would not allow it. Realizing it would look fishy to release a film without a director’s name, he got Wyler to agree to a shared credit.

  Goldwyn felt that he had salvaged the film. Come and Get It proved to be the high point in the film career of Frances Farmer, who soon found herself the victim of schizophrenia, sentenced to a lifetime in mental asylums. Edna Ferber wrote the producer “that I have the greatest admiration for the courage, sagacity and power of decision which you showed in throwing out the finished Hawks picture and undertaking the gigantic task of making what amounted to a new picture.”

  Goldwyn leapt from his “deathbed” on a second rescue mission that summer, this time because of a diary. Reporters had been staking out the United Artists Studio throughout the filming of Dodsworth because of Mary Astor, who was fighting to win back custody of the daughter sh
e had surrendered the year before to facilitate her divorce from Dr. Franklyn Thorpe. After work each day, she left for night sessions in court. Another team of newsmen staked out her house. They did not catch up with her, for she was living at the studio, in a luxurious dressing-room apartment, complete with kitchen facilities. When Dodsworth finished filming, the trial went into day sessions. Then it came out that Mary Astor had kept a diary between 1929 and 1934, which contained “a rather overemotional account of a romantic interlude with George Kaufman in New York.”

  “The defense kept referring to the diary in oblique terms,” insinuating it contained proof of her unfitness as a mother, recalled Miss Astor. She and her lawyer saw admitting the journal in evidence as their best defense. Somebody who knew that he figured prominently in the diary and did not wish that to happen released a forged diary into the surrounding hysteria. He hoped the threat of great scandal might provoke Hollywood’s producers to persuade Miss Astor to drop her case or at least the notion of opening this Pandora’s box. The forgery, said Miss Astor, “contained a ‘box score’ of practically every male big name in the business, and it was loaded with pornographic details. Fragments of this forgery were ‘leaked’ to the press.” A warrant was put out for the arrest of the greatest sexual outlaw of the day, the homely George S. Kaufman.

  Sam Goldwyn called a meeting in his office. Still ailing, he sat quietly before Harry Cohn, Jack Warner, Irving Thalberg, Jesse Lasky, A. H. Giannini, Louis B. Mayer, and their legal advisers, and Mary Astor with hers. Thalberg spoke for the producers, saying the actress was about to commit a grave error, that “the trial and the diary would create a vicious scandal. The scandal would give the industry a bad name,” and she would probably lose both the case and the child. Miss Astor’s attorney said he intended to proceed with the case as planned.

  The next day in court, he asked the defense to produce the diary, only to discover that some pages had been removed. Because a mutilated document could not be submitted as evidence, the diary was thrown out altogether. Miss Astor later claimed that clinging to her dignified character of Edith Cortwright pulled her through the weeks of ordeal: “I sat a little straighter, I wore clean white gloves, and kept my hands quiet.” Goldwyn was asked if he intended to exercise the morality clause in his contract. He thought for a moment and said, “A woman fighting for her child? This is good!” He stood behind Mary Astor.

  So did the public. One night shortly after Dodsworth was released, Miss Astor, wearing scarves and dark glasses, sneaked into a theater. The moment the audience heard her first line, which was spoken offscreen, they burst into spontaneous applause. “Nothing has ever warmed me so much,” recalled Miss Astor. The gavel finally came down on the trial, with Judge Knight dividing custody.

  And Dodsworth proved to be Sam Goldwyn’s most prestigious film to date. Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis wired him, “I DO NOT SEE HOW A BETTER MOTION PICTURE COULD HAVE BEEN MADE FROM BOTH THE PLAY AND THE NOVEL THAN YOU HAVE MADE STOP I AM SO DELIGHTED WITH IT THAT I DON’T NEED THE FEEBLENESS OF ADJECTIVES TO EXPRESS MY PLEASURE.” Unfortunately, the film failed at the box office, because—Goldwyn always believed—“it didn’t have attractive people in it.” That flaw ate at the producer. He thought for years of remaking it with an older Clark Gable, but he never did. By that time, the original had become a cult classic.

  Dodsworth was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. With Come and Get It nominated for Film Editing, Walter Brennan for the new category of Best Supporting Actor, and Bonita Granville for Best Supporting Actress, there was hardly a category in which a Goldwyn picture was not named. His films alone received as many nominations that year as any of the major studios—except for MGM, which had five of the ten films up for Best Picture. His only team members to walk away with Oscars were Brennan and Richard Day, for the second year in a row, this time for his sets in Dodsworth. No producer in Hollywood had maintained a higher profile for prestige, except Irving Thalberg, whose big entry in that year’s sweepstakes was Romeo and Juliet. Thalberg’s latest ventures—Camille with Garbo, A Day at the Races, and The Good Earth—were already projected favorites for the next year. Of all Goldwyn’s rivals in the business, he considered Thalberg his closest friend. He still hoped to bring him over to United Artists.

  Goldwyn remained bedridden through Labor Day 1936 and had to pass up a big industry gala at the Hollywood Bowl later in the week for a humanitarian organization. Irving Thalberg, nursing a cold, helped stage the “Everyman” pageant, rehearsing in heavy rains. The following Sunday, September 13, Thalberg was too much under the weather to attend MGM’s annual picnic. His strep throat was rediagnosed as pneumonia. The next day he died.

  All Hollywood mourned. On Wednesday, MGM shut down for the day. Mobs of fans appeared at the B‘nai B’rith Temple to watch the arrival of almost every important figure in motion pictures. Clark Gable, Fredric March, and Douglas Fairbanks were among the ushers. Rabbi Edgar Magnin delivered the eulogy and read a message of sympathy from President Roosevelt. Work on the United Artists lot ceased for five minutes while the service was going on. William Wyler presided over ceremonies on the soundstage where he was directing retakes of Dodsworth. Goldwyn had been unable to attend any of the services. He wired Norma Shearer, “DARLING NORMA YOU HAVE LOST A WONDERFUL HUSBAND AND FATHER AND I HAVE LOST A GREAT FRIEND I FEEL VERY BADLY.” At the end of the day, the bereaved widow came to Laurel Lane and sat at Sam’s bedside.

  Goldwyn suffered another loss in late 1936, when his most trusted employee and loyal friend from as far back as the workbenches in Gloversville tendered his resignation. After nineteen years in the film industry, Abe Lehr had been kicked upstairs as high as he could go in the Goldwyn organization: vice president and general manager. There were no challenges there, and at age fifty-six his health was starting to decline. Looking for a less demanding job, Lehr opened a small talent agency. Goldwyn threw business his way but found little reason to see him again.

  Goldwyn’s year rang out on a sour note. That Christmas, Beloved Enemy opened to sluggish business and reviews. George Haight had completely supervised this muddled Romeo and Juliet love story of a defiant Irish patriot leader (played by Brian Aherne) and the daughter of the Englishman sent to negotiate a peace settlement (Merle Oberon). David Niven was promoted to the level of secondary love interest. “Hank” Potter, after a year on the Goldwyn lot, at last got his chance to direct. He tried to hold the shaky plot together with several scenes of moonstruck speeches between the lovers, staring dreamily into space. Goldwyn had simply lacked the strength to rescue this film.

  Samuel Goldwyn and his company sank into a depression. Sammy found his father in bed all the time, complaining, changing doctors, discussing only his death. In the event of such a catastrophe, Frances Goldwyn believed, everything they owned could be lost. Although her sisters had married, she still had her mother to provide for.

  Frances saw the ghost of her father and became determined not to be deprived of her family’s assets again. She marched into her husband’s bedroom and began cursing him out in the most vile language ever to pass her lips. “Go ahead and die,” she finally said, “... or get up out of that bed.”

  Sam and Frances gave themselves the month of January 1937 to revitalize themselves in the village of Sun Valley, Idaho, a sparsely populated “Alpine” resort built by their new friend Averell Harriman and the Union Pacific Railroad in an attempt to make America ski-conscious. Goldwyn returned to work, eager to take hold of his company once again. Every decision of every day became another contest against death, a struggle to survive.

  SAMUEL GOLDWYN, INC., entered a reign of terror. It would not have another film before the cameras for several months, and an air of insanity fell over the company as their restless leader made up for their lack of motion with a flurry of commotion. The year was rampant with hirings of bright young associates, most of whose heads would roll before their two-year contracts had expired. One of these w
as Samuel Marx, who for the previous six years had been Thalberg’s story editor. After Thalberg died, Marx went to Goldwyn and told him he was not looking to be a story editor again but that he wanted to get into production. Goldwyn was so “disarming” that when they got around to money, Marx cut his prior salary in half, just to accept a position with him. He found his first month of work there “paradise.”

  For another of Goldwyn’s vague production jobs, Beatrice Kaufman recommended Garson Kanin, a self-described “twenty-four-year-old bundle of nerves who had been an early high-school dropout, a mediocre musician, a burlesque stooge, a stock clerk at Macy’s, a drama student, a mildly successful minor New York actor, and the director of one Broadway failure.” Goldwyn sat at his desk staring at young Kanin, who was eager to direct movies, thinking about opening the door to a Hollywood career for him. “Mr. Goldwyn, his right forefinger clamped firmly to the side of his nose, continued to study me through his small gray eyes,” Kanin wrote of the crucial moment. After a long silence, Goldwyn clasped his hands under his chin and said, “in a high, penetrating voice, ‘Sidney Howard tells me you’re a very clever genius.’”

  The next day, Goldwyn offered Kanin a seven-year contract, starting at $250 a week. Almost immediately Goldwyn took to calling his new assistant what sounded like “Tallboy.” Not for weeks did the diminutive Kanin realize the nickname was a source of pride—Goldwyn’s pronounciation of Thalberg. Kanin described his first month with Goldwyn as “euphoric.”

  By the second month of undefined duties, however, “Tallboy” realized that his chances of becoming a director there were remote. “Each of the major studios was making some seventy or eighty films a year,” he said. “Goldwyn, however, made only two or three pictures a year. Each one was expensive and important and it was doubtful that he would ever entrust one to someone who had never before made a movie.” Kanin suggested that he might direct some of the many tests for makeup, hairdressing, costumes, and acting that were done on the lot. Goldwyn said no, that that was a waste of time. Kanin persisted in explaining how it would allow him to practice his talents. “What’s the matter with you?” Goldwyn asked him impatiently. “Jesus Christ, here you are, a young nobody, and you’re getting this great opportunity, and you want to be a test director, f‘Chrissake.” Kanin said he did not want to be a test director, he wanted to be a director. “How can you be a director?” he asked. “You’ve never directed.” Kanin said there had been a time when Willy Wyler and John Ford and Leo McCarey had never directed. Replied Goldwyn, “Don’t you believe it.”