Goldwyn

by A. Scott Berg

  Goldwyn had considered but one actor to play Dudley—Cary Grant. He called Grant’s agent, Jules Stein—a former ophthalmologist from Kansas City, who was quickly turning his Music Corporation of America into one of the most powerful agencies in show business. Stein said there was no way Cary Grant could take the part, that his next four films were lined up. Goldwyn said he would pay anything to have him. Stein said it was a matter not of money, just of time. Unable to let go of the idea, Goldwyn phoned the agent repeatedly. (Many found Goldwyn masochistic in his persistent courting of rejection.) Then, on the day he finally had to cast the role, Goldwyn called one last time, only to learn that Cary Grant’s next picture had suddenly fallen through, leaving the actor with an immediate hole in his schedule. Goldwyn paid him almost half a million dollars—the biggest check he had ever signed for an actor. Grant found the character a “rather conceited, impudent, high-handed magician” and had no genuine desire to play the part.

  Teresa Wright’s costumes for the title role were all made when she announced that she was pregnant again. Goldwyn substituted Loretta Young, whose career had progressed steadily since he had cast her in The Devil to Pay in 1930. She had just played the lead in the film that would win her an Oscar, The Farmer’s Daughter. Self-conscious about the length of her neck, she told designer Irene Sharaff she needed costumes to shorten it; she also liked to wear powder and paint. Goldwyn explained to her that “A bishop’s wife is not a glamour girl,” and he did not “like those three layers of make-up.” She grudgingly went along with the producer’s wishes but did not speak to him for weeks.

  Goldwyn no longer had any directors under contract, and none of any quality seemed to be available. Charles Feldman, an agent Goldwyn could seldom resist, sold him William Seiter, a director who muttered for days that he was not up to the task. With three disgruntled actors on his hands, he never took command of the picture. Three joyless performances began showing up on the screen. After several weeks—and an investment of $900,000—Goldwyn fired Seiter and announced he was starting the picture over.

  “It was killing Sam Goldwyn,” Robert Sherwood observed, “not to have Willy on the picture.” Frances put feelers out to Wyler but got no response. The sudden postponement of Twentieth Century—Fox’s production of The Time of Your Life freed its director; Henry Koster, whose biggest credits to date had been Deanna Durbin movies, leapt at this opportunity.

  “Would you like to work with Laurette Taylor?” Goldwyn asked Koster, in interviewing him for the job. “I’d love to,” the director said. “She’s a great actress. But she’s dead.” Goldwyn looked at Koster as though he were an idiot. “She’s not dead!” he cried. “She was just in here two hours ago, sitting in the same chair you’re sitting in, and I talked to her.” Koster insisted that was impossible, as she had died the year before. Goldwyn buzzed his secretary and barked into the box, “Who was that lady who was just sitting here two hours ago? That actress.” Came the secretary’s reply: “Loretta Young.”

  “See,” said Goldwyn, slapping his hand on his desk. “What did I tell you? She’s not dead.”

  Koster was offered The Bishop’s Wife and accepted it. Goldwyn never did get the leading lady’s name right. The closest he came was in calling her “Miss Yeng.” That did not faze Koster, whom Goldwyn called “Kester.”

  After shutting down for six weeks, The Bishop’s Wife began shooting again. A new script and Koster’s hand leavened it somewhat, but tension still prevailed on the set. Cary Grant as the angel was more detached than Goldwyn liked. It posed a problem for Goldwyn, because Grant had just done him an enormous favor: Despite the actor’s reputation for being money mad, he had taken himself off payroll during the six-week layoff. Nonetheless, somebody had to deal with the ineffective way Grant was playing the angel. Goldwyn came to the set and discussed the matter with him. “You want me to be happy, don’t you?” Grant asked the producer. “I don’t give a damn if you’re happy,” Goldwyn replied. “You’re going to be here for only a few weeks, and this picture will be out for a long time. I would rather you should be unhappy here, and then we can all be happy later.”

  A little later, Koster came to film a love scene, and “Miss Yeng” bridled at being photographed from the left side. Cary Grant refused in kind, making it impossible for Koster to stage the two people facing each other. So he placed the actors at a window, staring out at the stars, Cary Grant stepping in behind her and placing his hands on her shoulders. “What the hell happened to the love scene?” Goldwyn demanded of Koster when he saw the rushes. “I don’t want people looking out the window,” he said; “I want them looking at each other.” Koster explained the problem to Goldwyn, who marched onto the set with his own solution. He asked “Miss Yeng” if Koster’s explanation about her “bad side” was true. She said it was. “Fine,” he announced. “From now on, I can only use half your face, you only get half your salary.”

  The Bishop’s Wife previewed to generally favorable audience response, but it fell in the middle and never bounced back. Goldwyn telephoned Billy Wilder—hotter than ever after Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend. “Wilder,” he said, “we’re in terrible trouble.”

  Appealing to Wilder as a friend, the producer asked if he and Charles Brackett could not look at The Bishop’s Wife and at least identify the problem. The pair watched the film and immediately pointed out a few scenes that needed some “frosting.” Goldwyn offered them $25,000 to fix them. Wilder and Brackett worked all weekend and delivered the pages to Goldwyn and Koster, who had to reshoot the sequences Monday morning. The next preview worked like a charm.

  Goldwyn asked Brackett and Wilder to lunch with him to discuss their compensation. On their way, the two writers decided their entire weekend of work was a lark. “Let’s be generous,” Wilder said to Brackett. “We’ll have to pay ninety per cent of that money in taxes anyway, so why not just tell Goldwyn it was our pleasure?” They arrived at the studio and met the producer in his private dining room. “Now about the money—” Goldwyn started to say, when Brackett interrupted him. “Mr. Goldwyn,” he said. “Billy and I have discussed it, and we have come to the conclusion that we don’t really want any.”

  “That’s funny,” Goldwyn replied. “I’ve come to the same conclusion.”

  With what seemed like another hit picture (and contender for an Academy Award) in the can, Goldwyn threw a party at Laurel Lane for the talent who had worked on The Bishop’s Wife. The stars were all there, along with Gregg Toland and the Henry Kosters. It was a sumptuous meal, served with bottles of a fine Lafite-Rothschild. The Kosters were the last to leave, a little after eleven o‘clock. Halfway out the driveway, Mrs. Koster realized she had left her gloves in the house. Her husband went back to the front door, rapped lightly, and let himself in. Nobody seemed to be around, so he quietly made his way to the dining room to pick up the gloves. As he entered the room, Goldwyn was standing at the far end of the table, carefully pouring what remained in one of the wineglasses back into the bottle.

  AFTER presenting its annual awards at Grauman’s Chinese Theater for the past three years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences moved its nineteenth ceremony to the mammoth Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. With 6,700 seats to fill, the Academy opened the event to the public for the first time, a chance to watch the proceedings from the balcony. Most of the Hollywood community, in evening dress, sat on the main floor, nominees close to the center aisle, where a spotlight could catch winners as they mounted a few steps to the stage. Cedric Gibbons had designed the ten-thousand-dollar neoclassical set—a pylon with six Greek columns forming a semicircle behind a five-foot gilt plaster replica of the Oscar. Presenters and winners would stand at a microphone in the center, then exit stage left to the pressroom. Jack Benny got the proceedings under way at eight forty-five on the night of Thursday, March 13, 1947.

  The president of the Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan, began the evening with a brief “Parade of Stars,” a montage of Oscar-w
inning films. Then Academy president Jean Hersholt presented four special awards, three of them apparent consolation prizes: to Laurence Olivier for “outstanding achievement” in his production of Henry V; to Claude Jarman, Jr., the juvenile star of The Yearling; and to Harold Russell, “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives. ”

  Rex Harrison presented three crafts awards, and by the time he left the stage, there was still no indication of the evening’s big winner. Danny Mandell won for editing Best Years, but Columbia’s Jolson Story beat Goldwyn’s Gordon Sawyer for the Sound Recording award. The English Blithe Spirit won in Special Effects, suggesting there might be a wave of wins for the eleven foreign films among the year’s nominations—which included France’s Children of Paradise, Italy’s Open City, and six British entries.

  Lana Turner announced that Hugo Friedhofer won for his score of Best Years; but Anna and the King of Siam and The Yearling won for best art direction (black-and-white and color, respectively), then again for cinematography—two categories in which Goldwyn did not even have a nominee. Van Johnson presented the Best Song award to Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer for “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” (beating out Hoagy Carmichael, who had written “Ole Buttermilk Sky” that year).

  A little after ten-thirty, a trend emerged. Robert Montgomery handed the award for Best Screenplay to Robert Sherwood. Then Billy Wilder, calling Best Years “the best-directed film I’ve ever seen in my life,” presented a statuette to William Wyler. (Virginia Mayo would later insist she won Wyler’s Oscar for him—“because everyone said, ‘My God! If he can do that with Virginia Mayo ... ’”)

  Eric Johnston, Will Hays’s successor as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, appeared before the microphone to announce the winner of the Best Picture. Twentieth Century-Fox’s The Razor’s Edge was considered the evening’s favorite. MGM, which had waged its own strong campaign in the trade papers, seemed a close second with The Yearling. It’s a Wonderful Life was the choice of the softhearted, and Henry V had the intellectuals’ vote. But the winner was The Best Years of Our Lives.

  Goldwyn, one of his staff observed, “danced up the aisle with a big smile on his face.” He simply thanked the principals involved. He carefully got through his entire list without a flub ... until he reached the end and commended “Hugo Carmichael.”

  Donald Nelson, head of the War Production Board, appeared to present the tenth miniature bust of Irving Thalberg to the producer with “the most consistent high quality of production” that year. He called Sam Goldwyn from the wings to accept that as well. The recipient was visibly choked up.

  The biggest surprise of the evening followed, when the Best Supporting Actor award went not to a veteran scene-stealer such as Charles Coburn, William Demarest, Claude Rains, or Clifton Webb, but to the scene-stealing veteran. Harold Russell became the first actor ever to win two Oscars for the same role. “I’ll never forget coming off the stage for press pictures after being given my second award,” Russell remembered, “and having Cary Grant ... lean over and whisper, ‘Where can I get a stick of dynamite?’”

  Best Years had no nominee in either the supporting or leading lady categories, leaving a single opportunity to get within one of Gone With the Wind’s record of eight Oscars. Joan Fontaine did the honors, citing the performances of Laurence Olivier, Larry Parks, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, and announcing that the winner was Fredric March. The actor was in New York, so Sam Goldwyn made the most of the moment by sending Cathy O‘Donnell before the crowd of six thousand to accept the trophy. Goldwyn forever thereafter counted his Thalberg Award and Harold Russell’s honorary Oscar in Best Years’ final tally, so he could boast that his picture set the record for most Academy Awards, with nine.

  RKO president Peter Ravthon hosted a festive party at his house, which ran into the small hours of the morning. Goldwyn and Willy Wyler did not even greet each other, and they gravitated to different corners of the room all night. But what Goldwyn regarded as Wyler’s ungrateful defection was not going to spoil the evening. Frances observed that her husband acted “like a child who’d got absolutely everything he wanted at Christmas.”

  The chauffeur drove them home and Frances carried herself upstairs to bed. After several minutes had passed and Sam still had not ascended, she padded about the house, looking for him. She found him sitting on the edge of a couch in the dark living room, his Oscar in one hand, his Thalberg in the other. His head bowed down, he was sobbing.

  19 The Plague

  HE WAS EUPHORIC for days.

  David Selznick, Darryl Zanuck, and Jack Warner were among the first to send congratulations on March 14, 1947. “YOU DESERVED EVERYTHING YOU GOT,” wired Joseph Schenck. MGM’s executive producer Lawrence Weingarten wrote Goldwyn that “last night’s presentation was one of the few times that the Thalberg Award achieved its real purpose.” Thalberg’s widow, Norma Shearer, seconded those sentiments in her telegram. “OF COURSE WE SHALL ALL GET A BONUS SHANT WE?” asked David Niven in his wire. “I AM PROUD OF YOU,” said Farley Granger in his. Mack Sennett, paid his respects, saying, “MY HAT’S OFF TO A PIONEER WHO IS STILL PIONEERING.” Sammy cabled felicitations from London. Harry Arthur, one of the most hardfisted exhibitors in the country, told Goldwyn he was now willing to pay him for the honor of running the film in his theater. A Los Angeles Times editorial asserted that “Hollywood can be proud of the picture it selected. ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ represented the better American spirit. It deserves to be seen by people throughout today’s chaotic world.”

  The rest of the year brought so many fan letters for Best Years that Goldwyn had time to read only pages of typed excerpts that his secretary served with the morning mail. The nation’s periodicals covered every aspect of the film. Forbes magazine gathered the “50 Foremost Business Leaders Today” for a banquet in New York; and by dint of Goldwyn’s recent acclaim, they selected him as the most illustrious ambassador from Hollywood. He sat among such household surnames as Dow, Firestone, Ford, Gimbel, Kaiser, Luce, Mellon, Rockefeller, and Sarnoff. The crowning piece of publicity that year was a ten-page spread in the October 27, 1947, issue of Life. Ben Sonnenberg had arranged the in-depth profile of Goldwyn, which traced his entire career in the motion picture business.

  Goldwyn was not about to start eating lotus. His latest success only reminded him of the philosophy to which he had long held: “The higher you climb, the farther you can fall.” Just months after his triumph at the Academy Awards, he told Life reporter Roger Butterfield, “It is not good enough to be good. I never was bad on purpose in my life. Suppose next time I make a stinker? I’m worrying about that.”

  Other problems weighed heavily on Goldwyn as well. The nation was going through its own postwar identity crisis. As always, movies reflected the shifts in taste. Motion picture attendance dropped radically. A survey indicated that the public would much rather watch Ingrid Bergman, Greer Garson, Rita Hayworth, Jennifer Jones, Lana Turner, Gene Tierney, and June Allyson than such longtime favorites as Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, and Myrna Loy. Gregory Peck and Alan Ladd had become more popular than Clark Gable. Garbo, away from the screen for five years, was staging a comeback—a film about the French courtesan Madame de Lenclos. She and James Mason had already made wardrobe tests for producer Walter Wanger, but at the last minute the financing fell through.

  Congress passed the Taft-Hartley bill in 1947, imposing restrictions and responsibilities on labor unions. “The lush economic days of the immediate past are over,” Goldwyn warned the President, who vetoed the bill; “and unless the productivity of both labor and capital increases, we cannot expect to meet what the future holds forth.” Picket lines outside studio gates were a common sight.

  On top of labor’s demands, efforts to force the major studios to divest themselves of theaters cost the independent motion picture producers a small fortune. Big studios lost that much and more in complying with the co
urt orders. Great Britain—which accounted for 85 percent of an American film’s foreign income—announced a new tax of 75 percent on American film earnings in its theaters. “Of 123 pictures sent into the foreign market,” Daily Variety reported, “only 19 paid their negative costs in the domestic market.” Studio net profits in 1946 of $121 million fell off $35 million the next year, another $40 million the year after that. Most studios let go of half their contract talent, putting another 12,000 laborers on the streets. Goldwyn slashed the salaries of his studio’s executives by 50 percent, starting with his own.

  Amid these statistics, George Gallup’s Audience Research, Inc. (“The Gallup Pool,” as Goldwyn called it), reported that 70 percent of New York City’s moviegoers had seen at least one television program. Of those, only a handful were considered “regular televiewers”; but by August 1947, 30,000 television sets had been sold in the greater New York viewing area alone.

  In the summer of 1947, a new specter haunted Hollywood, one far more ominous than television’s fuzzy images. It had been in the winds since February 1944, when a group of vigilantes formed the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. “We believe in, and like, the American way of life,” they told the press:... the freedom to speak, to think, to live, to worship, to work and to govern ourselves, as individuals, as free men; the right to succeed or fail as free men, according to the measure of our ability and our strength.

  Believing in these things, we find ourselves in sharp revolt against a rising tide of Communism, Fascism and kindred beliefs, that seek by subversive means to undermine and change this way of life.