Part 23

He paced his thick white carpet, pausing only to stand in front of the mirror in the room to admire the effect he hoped he was making. “Kay Koverman talks too much,” he raved. “I’ve got to get rid of her. People don’t want me to, but I will.”

“Mr. Mayer,” cut in Mabel, “we have to work day and night to keep this tax measure from passing. I need your cooperation and Kay’s too. I will tell you right now that unless I can have her help with yours and unless you keep her on the payroll, we can’t possibly win.”

That stopped him in his tracks, and not in front of the mirror. He wriggled like a struck fish trying to get off the hook, but Mabel wouldn’t let him free. Finally, he swallowed her line of argument. “And you can have unlimited money to hire anybody else you think we need,” he said, in a typical complete turnabout.

But Mabel needed nothing extra except Ida’s experience and wisdom in developing her strategy. Ida had been in the habit of making half a dozen trips a year to Washington to lobby for MGM interests. In joint Senate-House committee the tax bill was beaten by just one vote. Mr. Mayer said his thank-you to Mabel, but made it clear that he couldn’t really give her any credit. After all, wasn’t it the magic name of Mayer that had worked the trick in Washington? She didn’t enlighten him, but she made a bargain. To make sure Ida was kept in her job, Mabel Walker Willebrand waived her fee for a period of one year for what she’d achieved.

Ida went on working way into her seventies, her back still straight as a ramrod, her hair iron-gray. “I wouldn’t have to do it,” she used to confide, “if I’d provided for myself when I was younger.” Mayer refused to put her on the studio’s old-age pension scheme. It was discovered later that her entire estate, including furniture, pictures, and insurance policies, amounted to less than $20,000. After twenty-two years of it she suffered a stroke and had to go into the hospital, where it was feared she would never walk again. She was forced to sell her car to pay her medical bills. Mayer didn’t lift a finger to help.

Visiting her in the hospital, I remembered a call I’d made on Louis when he didn’t know a horse’s head from its tail and consequently got himself pitched out of the saddle in the middle of a riding lesson. He landed with such a thump that he broke his coccyx. I found him lying in a hammock strung over the hospital bed, and roared with laughter.

“What’s so funny?” he said.

“You. Everybody in town has longed to see your ass in a sling, and you finally made it.”

The room looked like a gangster’s funeral. There were trees of orchids and roses, forests of gardenias and camellias. Ginny Simms, whom he was squiring at the time, had contributed a full-sized cradle overflowing with roses that played “Bye, Bye, Baby Bunting” when you rocked it.

Louis proudly handed me for admiration a sheaf of get-well telegrams and letters, among them a missive from the then Archbishop Francis Spellman returning a check for $10,000--Louis didn’t miss a trick in trying to win friends and influence people. The archbishop sent his thanks, “but I am sure you must have many charities of your own.” I had to read that letter first, aloud.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” said Mayer, his eyes ready to pour tears down his cheeks.

“Not in the least,” I said. “I’m certain he expected at least $50,000 from a man of your wealth and standing.”

“Haven’t you any sentiment?” wailed Louis.

“None. I’m a realist and believe in calling a spade a spade.”

As Ida’s bills piled up and weeks stretched into months of illness, he came up with the noble thought that she ought to go into the Motion Picture Relief Home, where she could live and receive treatment free. He had Howard Strickling telephone to sound me out about the idea. “Let him do that and he’ll be sorry he was ever born,” I said as I slammed down the receiver.

The only alternative open to her seemed to be to sell her grand piano. Two moving men were actually inside her apartment carting off her pride and joy before her heart began to harden and she decided to fight.

* * * * *

We need to flash-back here to Dore Schary, necktie salesman turned press agent, screen writer turned producer, who had gone the rounds of most of the studios--Columbia, Universal, Warners, Fox, Paramount--before he went to Metro. Starting in 1941, he had a phenomenally successful year and a half, making low-budget hits like _Journey for Margaret_ and _Lost Angel_. Schary considered himself an intellectual and was happy to be known as a liberal. He thought pictures should carry a social message, not exist exclusively on their merits as entertainment. “Movies,” he said, “must reflect what is going on in the world.” Quite a few other people working in Hollywood felt the same way.

For twenty-five years a running fight was waged in our industry over “messages” in movies. Among those who fought to keep them out, you could number John Wayne; Walt Disney; Ward Bond; Clark Gable; John Ford; Pat O’Brien; Sam Wood, who directed _For Whom the Bell Tolls_; Gary Cooper; James McGuinness, an executive producer at Metro who literally worked himself to death in the cause; and myself. On the other side stood some equally dedicated people who were convinced they were battling fascism in the days when Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese war lords threatened the world. Many of these politically unsophisticated innocents were used mercilessly by another group who set out in the thirties to infiltrate Hollywood--the Communists.

They were all in favor of propaganda messages; tried to squeeze them into every possible picture. A hard core of professional conspirators baited the hook to land the big stars, to use them to glamorize, endorse, and spread the party line. The strategy paid off. So did many stars who fell for it. They were soaked for millions of dollars in contributions to the party itself and its “front” organizations, like the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which had four thousand dues-paying members at its peak. Leader of the Communist faction was John Howard Lawson, who organized the Screen Writers Guild. He had forty or fifty card-carrying colleagues to help him manipulate the strings that stretched throughout our town and controlled the dupes.

Lawson and his gang flourished in the thirties and during the war years. They got what they wanted by convincing the stooge writers, directors, and stars who fell for what was called the “progressive” line that they were serving humanity by turning out pictures dealing with “real life.” That meant throwing patriotic themes to the winds and focusing instead on bigotry, injustice, miscegenation, hunger, and corruption. What did it matter if audiences still hankered for entertainment and stayed away from most “message” pictures in droves? The Communist answer was: “Better to make a flop with social significance than a hit for the decadent bourgeoisie.”

After World War II was over, however, the decline at the box office of “message” movies finally persuaded the industry as a whole that it was poor business to persist in foisting off “messages” on to the public. It was a decision that combined one per cent of patriotism with ninety-nine per cent of public relations and avidity for profits. Battling communism has never been easy in a town where Sam Goldwyn once confessed: “I’d hire the devil himself as a writer if he gave me a good story.”

Dore Schary and Metro came to a parting of the ways over a “message” picture in 1943. He wanted to film a script called _Storm in the West_, which was to be a sort of Western, only the villains would be easily identifiable as Hitler and Mussolini. Metro’s executive committee wouldn’t swallow that, but Schary refused to yield, and Mayer released him pronto from his $2000 a week contract.

David Selznick immediately picked up Schary as a producer for David’s new Vanguard company. Then when Vanguard was put on ice, he farmed Dore out to RKO, later let him join that studio as its head of production. That job lasted until Howard Hughes, who had meantime bought RKO, criticized another movie, _Battleground_, that Schary badly wanted to do. So contract number three was torn up, and Schary was at liberty again.

This was now 1948, and the anti-Communist campaign in Hollywood was out in the wide, open newspaper spaces. The town had endured a strike sparked by Communists, which saw John Howard Lawson and his “progressives” marching in picket lines around Warner Brothers studio in Burbank. After one of these “peaceful demonstrations,” seven tons of broken bottles, rocks, chains, brickbats, and similar tokens of affection were cleaned up from streets in the area. Congressman J. Parnell Thomas steered his House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee to investigate our labor troubles, check into propaganda in our pictures, and make a name for himself in the headlines.

Forty-one people from the movie industry were called to Washington to testify before the House investigators. Nineteen of them announced in advance that they weren’t going to answer any questions as a matter of principle. So the Committee for the First Amendment blossomed overnight. That amendment to the Constitution, remember, guarantees freedom of religion, speech, of the press, and right of petition. The committee which was christened for it covered John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Evelyn Keyes, and a whole lot more.

They sashayed off to Washington the day Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was due to testify. The producers had been shouting “witch hunt.” They took full-page ads alleging that the industry was being persecuted. Bogey and Betty Bacall and the rest thought they’d lend their lustrous presence in the hearing room to support Johnston.

But Parnell Thomas pulled a fast one on them. The first witness put on the stand wasn’t Johnston but John Howard Lawson, who screamed abuse and yelled “Smear!” until the guards had to be called. In evidence against him there was a copy of his membership card in the Communist party. There were nine more cards on view, too, to identify the full complement of the group that came to be known as the “Hollywood Ten”: Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Herbert Biberman, Adrian Scott, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr., Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, and Alvah Bessie.

On their sorrowful way home from Washington, Bogey, Betty, John Huston, and Evelyn Keyes limped into my living room. I poured a drink or two, and we got to talking. They’d been had, and they knew it. I wanted to know from Bogey how they could have let themselves be suckered in. When Bogey started to answer, John Huston interrupted him.

It hadn’t been a good day for Bogey. He turned on John to get some of the steam out of his system. “Listen,” he snarled, “the First Amendment guarantees free speech. That’s how we got dragged into this thing. Now when I try to talk, you’re trying to deprive me of my rights. Well, the hell with you. I’ll have another drink.” And he talked. In fact, they all did.

One of the witnesses before the House committee was Dore Schary. He was called to Washington along with producer Adrian Scott and director Edward Dmytryk, who had worked for him on _Crossfire_. He made no bones about his admiration for their work. As for the “Hollywood Ten,” he believed--in the words of one reporter--that they “had a right to whatever they believed and did not necessarily deserve to be thrown to the dogs if it served the best interests of the producers.”

The committee’s chief investigator, Robert Stripling, asked: “Now, Mr. Schary, as an executive of RKO, what is the policy of your company in regard to the employment of ... Communists?”

Schary replied: “That policy, I imagine, will have to be determined by the president, the board, and myself. I can tell you personally what I feel. Up until the time it is proved that a Communist is a man dedicated to the overthrow of the government by force or violence, I cannot make any determination of his employment on any basis other than whether he is qualified best to do the job I want him to do.”

That made him a controversial figure in some people’s judgment. When Nick Schenck wanted to see Schary, he flew out in secret from New York to avoid getting involved in the probing of communism, which was still drawing blood in our town.

Nick, the soft-spoken boss of Loew’s who directed the world-wide empire and its 14,000 employees from his New York office, had a monumental mission to perform. He had come to take a look at Dore Schary, whom Louis B. Mayer now wanted back at Metro as vice president in charge of all productions, as Irving Thalberg’s successor, as Mayer’s crown prince. And Schary was insisting that if he took the job, Louis would have to keep his hands off Dore’s key decisions.

Nick Schenck approved of the plan. Schary received contract number four--seven years “in charge of production” at $6000 a week. He started in on July 1, 1948. In my July 19 column, I wrote: “It will be ironically amusing to watch some of the scenes behind the scenes now that Dore Schary is the Big Noise at Metro-Goldwyn-Moscow. He testified on the opposite side of the fence in Washington from Robert Taylor, James K. McGuinness, Louis B. Mayer, Sam Wood, and other men with whom he will work....”

As soon as he read that, Mayer shut the studio gate in my face. But I didn’t have to go there to get news; my friends inside telephoned me every day. Two weeks later Louis telephoned: “I’ve got to see you.”

“Impossible. How can you? You barred me from the studio.”

“I mean at your house.”

“Louis,” I said, “fun’s fun. What makes you think you can come into my home when I can’t go into your studio? Turnabout is fair play.”

But he badgered and bullied and begged until I agreed to see him at five o’clock that afternoon. He was standing on the doorstep as the clock struck. He came in, and we shouted at each other for an hour. “How could you do this to me, write such a column?” he kept bellowing.

“How could you do it to yourself and the studio? You fired him for putting messages in your pictures. Now you take him back as head man. You don’t agree with anything he stands for. But you’ve given him the power to do as he likes, and he’ll get you out.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, who else was there?”

I’d never seen fear in his face before. I saw it then. Before he left, he invited me to breakfast the next morning at his house on Benedict Canyon. I guessed what would happen there.

We were having a second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Somebody came in. I didn’t turn around. “Dore just arrived,” Mayer said. “Will you speak to him?” Of course. Moving into the library where Schary was waiting, Louis muttered a brief hello, then left us.

“You were mighty hard on me, weren’t you?” asked Schary.

“I intended to be,” I said. “I think messages should be sent by Western Union. I don’t believe they have any place in motion pictures. Your politics should be a thing apart from your business.”

“If I promise to put no more messages in my pictures, will you be my friend?”

“Yes. But I doubt whether you can. You’re too full of your own ideas.”

“You have my promise. Will you shake hands on that?” We shook hands, but I gave him fair warning: “The moment you start putting messages in, I’ll be on your back again.” But, sure enough, the “message” pictures got into production again.

This was the time that Ida Koverman faced stark poverty through her prolonged illness. She had to have a job. I went to Schary and asked him to take her back on the payroll. He was only too willing to have her. He needed her.

Ida went back on salary for the last five years left to her. She had to walk with a cane for those years. The cane appeared the day she returned to Culver City in a black limousine, which carried her from set to set. Clutching the cane, she made her entrances to cheers, crowds, and an outpouring of affection from everyone who saw her. On her last Christmas on earth I dropped by on my way home from the office to give her a check. I asked: “What did Louis send you?”

“Go into the living room. You’ll find a shoe box. Take off the lid and you’ll see.” It was filled with homemade cookies.

While I was at her home, a huge silver bowl containing five dozen American Beauty roses arrived from K. T. Keller, president of Chrysler Motors Corporation. When I got back to my house, I called Louis Lurie, a friend of Louis B. Mayer, told him what had happened, and asked him to mail a check to Ida immediately, so she’d have it Christmas Day. He wrote a check on the spot for $250.

She lived to see King Louis deposed from his throne. It couldn’t have given her any joy, because she wasn’t that kind of woman. The mammoth studio, in spite of all its stars and resources, was being driven to the wall by this thing called television, which Hollywood despised. Metro lost millions when Mayer was in charge of production in the late forties. When Schary took over the job, there were some early money-makers, but not enough to offset the other kind, which he couldn’t resist making.

Time and again he crossed swords with Louis. If the dueling threatened to go against him, he was quick to appeal to Nick Schenck for support. In the end Schenck had to choose between Mayer and Schary. He chose Schary, who in turn was ousted years later and, when he left, collected a million dollars. Louis spent the rest of his life burning with hatred, trying in vain to take over MGM in legal battle he could never win. At his funeral Jeanette MacDonald appeared to sing “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.”

The fight against communism waxed and waned; so did the newspaper headlines. It took me off on a two-year lecture tour of twenty-four cities. I found myself the second vice president--the first was Charles Coburn--of an organization called the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. John Wayne was president. As the Congressional probing continued, the studio bosses, true to form, shoved their heads into the sands like ostriches and, to protect the millions invested in unshown movies, hoped that trouble would simply go away. People like me, who dared to mention that trouble was still hanging around, discovered that strange things happened to them. Like the subpoena from Washington that didn’t exist.

_Variety_ weighed in to report news of trouble ahead for Hopper:

HEDDA’S RED RAP STIRS STUDIO TALK OF FILM REPRISAL

Hedda Hopper’s columnizing that she “knows” the names of many Reds in Hollywood--with a resulting subpoena by the House Un-American Activities Committee--has some publicity-advertising toppers of major companies doing a quiet canvass among themselves of what their studios’ attitude should be toward the syndicated writer.

Their thought is that Miss Hopper has a perfect right to say whatever she pleases. However, she is largely dependent on studio press aid for news, and there’s some question as to whether such cooperation should be continued....

Although the pub-ad chieftains--and presumably company heads and other execs--are sizzling at Miss Hopper for further needling the Washington probe, probability is that there will be no concerted action to cut off her news sources or otherwise penalize her. Similar thoughts have arisen in the past concerning other columnists and have never worked out.

Industry execs feel that not only Miss Hopper, but all writers whose living depends on Hollywood should take a cooperative attitude.

The truth was that no subpoena had been issued, and none ever was. Someone had planted the story on that unsuspecting publication. Of all the items about me that were printed in its columns over the months ahead, only one hurt. That was a front-page, banner-lined interview with George Sokolsky, the Hearst political commentator and an old friend. He’d wept openly on my shoulder--I top him by an inch or two in high heels--at the 1952 Republican convention in Chicago when Ike Eisenhower walked off with the nomination instead of Bob Taft.

When George arrived in Los Angeles on a lecture tour, he was nabbed by a _Variety_ reporter and quoted as saying that Hopper was a political babe in arms. That stung. A year went by before I got a chance to set him straight--in an elevator descending to the lobby of the Waldorf Towers in New York. I felt better when he wrote me afterward:

I was asked a question which did not include your name and which I answered without knowing it referred to you. When the question and answer appeared in print, I was chagrined to find that it was made to apply to you personally.... We differ slightly on methods, but that is not as important as that we agree in principle. I regard myself as a missionary trying to win back the lost souls.... Perhaps your sterner creed is more correct than mine, and I do not want ever to quarrel with you over this particular difference. You must do it your way, and I shall have to do it mine. Please forgive me.

The pot shots loosed off in my direction from some quarters of our town didn’t cost me any sleep. I was raised to believe in the stern tradition of “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” Abraham Lincoln put it a touch more graciously: “If I were to read, much less to answer, all the attacks on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.” I believe in that, too; the quote is printed on a sign that stands on my desk.

Hollywood’s top brass is used to buying things, but they couldn’t buy me or my silence. Dore Schary once offered to put the Hopper name up on a big Broadway sign, but it wasn’t hard to refuse that bit of coaxing. All the major producers threatened to pull their advertising out of the Los Angeles _Times_ unless I sweetened up my printed opinions of their pictures. That suited Publisher Norman Chandler just fine. Advertising space was very tight, Norman told them. “I like the way Miss Hopper expresses herself, and you’ll be doing me a service if you cut back on ads.” They didn’t cancel a line. I didn’t hear about this until three years later. Everybody should have a friend like Norman Chandler.

I was flattered in a different way to learn that _Confidential_ had its West Coast gumshoe toiling for six months to find something to pin on me, past or present. Howard Rushmore reported that they finally quit empty-handed. “We wasted our time,” he said dolefully.

“I could have told you that before you started. I’ve never knuckled down to anyone in Hollywood. I’m not beholden to anybody, and I’ve never had romances with any one of them from the day I came out here.”

* * * * *

It’s impossible to talk about movie politics without finding John Wayne on camera hammering away with both fists. He’s a rock-ribbed Republican who wears his creed like a medal. It’s affected his popularity no more than Frank Sinatra’s been hurt by his sympathies for the other side of the street.

Duke Wayne had no hand in politics until he smelled that Communists were infiltrating the movie business. Then he sat down in James McGuinness’ house one night with Sam Wood, Adolphe Menjou, writer Morris Ryskind, Ward Bond, Leo McCarey, and Roy Brewer of the A.F. of L. That’s how the Motion Picture Alliance was born.

Duke likes to tell about a producer who warned him the next morning: “You’ve got to get out of that MPA. You’re becoming a controversial figure. It will kill you at the box office. You will hit the skids.” He says: “I hit the skids all right. When I became president of the MPA in 1948, I was thirty-third in the ratings of box-office leaders. A year later I skidded right up to first place.”