Part 8

In the early days Los Angeles socialites lent their gardens and exteriors of their houses to movie making on a business basis, donating proceeds to charity. But they didn’t invite picture people in to dine with them. The dividing line still exists, though it’s narrower than it used to be. For one thing, international leaders and celebrities don’t give a damn about Los Angeles society when they visit here. They want to meet and be entertained by the stars, because they give the best parties and are more fun to be with.

Now Sam Goldwyn mingles with Mrs. Norman Chandler and the music crowd since they’re both deeply involved in fund raising for the music center housing the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Opera Company. Danny Kaye and Jack Benny conduct concerts for the symphony. One that Danny did brought in $185,000. But movie people can no more get into the Los Angeles Country Club for either love or money than they could when Cecil De Mille battered in vain on its doors.

Harpo Marx, whom I adore, once told me he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t join a local country dub. “That’s easy,” was my reply. “You belong to a different club, where they don’t take in Christians. So in a way they’re sort of even.”

“I never thought of that,” said he. The following day, Eddie Mannix, a feisty Irishman, joined Harpo’s country club.

Generally speaking, Los Angeles society in the beginning would have nothing to do with the movie crowd; now the movie industry has little to do with Los Angeles society. In some cases the bar went up because they worked in movies, sometimes because they were Jews. Our town and every suburban Podunk across the nation have something in common with that prejudice.

Hollywood treats the subject simultaneously as a joke, a jinx, and a business risk. Sinatra and the Clan allow themselves the privilege of kidding each other as “wops” and “kikes” but protest publicly against racial discrimination. One comedy star doesn’t wince when men on his payroll refer to him as “Super-Jew.”

When Louis B. Mayer first saw Danny Thomas, who is a professional Lebanese, on a night-club stage, he liked everything about him except his looks. “I would put you under contract immediately,” he told Danny, “except you look too Jewish. I want you to have some surgery to straighten out your nose.”

He imagined it was doubt about the possible result that made Danny decline with thanks. “Well, then, I understand you have a brother. Here’s what we’ll do for you. We’ll have his nose done _first_ as a sample.” He was amazed when that offer was turned down, too.

Because of his “lady complex,” I was approached by Louis, who begged me to get his daughters into our most private private school, whose principal was a friend of mine. There was no point in mincing words. “Mr. Mayer,” I said, “they don’t accept them.”

“But they’ll take my daughters,” he snapped. “Can’t you tell the head mistress how important I am?”

“It won’t do any good. You can’t win that one. They will not take Jews.” He had no choice but to accept the truth, no matter how disagreeable.

When Samuel Goldwyn was preparing _Guys and Dolls_, I heard he was talking about having Frank Sinatra play Nathan Detroit, the gambling man, brilliantly played by Sam Levene on Broadway. I bearded Samuel in his den. “Sinatra’s no more fitted for that part than I am. He’s a great entertainer, but not in that role. Nobody but nobody can play it like Sam Levene. Why don’t you get him?”

“You can’t have a Jew playing a Jew,” Sam said calmly. “It wouldn’t work on the screen.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What was that you said?” He repeated his words. “I could slay you for that remark,” I exploded.

“But you won’t.”

“But someday I might,” I warned.

So in Hollywood only Christians are allowed to portray Jews. Gertrude Berg was thrown out of _A Majority of One_ to make room for Rosalind Russell--Gertrude read about the switch in the New York _Times_ after she’d been promised the part by Dore Schary. Otto Preminger’s casting transformed _Exodus_ into a Protestant epic. _Anne Frank_ emerged as milk-and-watery Millie Perkins. _A Catered Affair_ served Kellys instead of Cohens.

Sam stayed on speaking terms with me until _Porgy and Bess_ came along, and he hired as director Rouben Mamoulian, who had performed the same task for DuBose Heyward’s _Porgy_ as a straight play, before it was converted into a musical. During the following eight months Mamoulian had fresh arrangements orchestrated, persuaded a distinguished list of Negro players to forget their fears that the movie would be an “Uncle Tom” show.

Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey, and others had turned down Goldwyn’s approaches. Only Sammy Davis, Jr., had agreed to perform. Mamoulian explained individually to each holdout how he would direct, with full recognition of the fact that humanity has come a long way since Porgy first saw the light of Catfish Row. Satisfied that there’d be no reflection on their race, they signed contracts with Sam--who decided to fire Mamoulian and hire in his place Otto Preminger, whose style is distinctly Prussian. He engaged Preminger before he told Mamoulian he was through.

Outraged, I let fly at Sam in a column. I admired this talented, foxy man from the days when he was Sam Goldfish, an immigrant from Poland. I knew him as Jesse Lasky’s partner when Geraldine Farrar came out from New York to make _Joan of Arc_ in 1915. In fact, I made a couple of silent pictures for him. I helped get an honorary Oscar for Harold Russell, the miraculous, handless ex-GI in Sam’s _Best Years of Our Lives_. Harold also collected one as best supporting actor, thus squeezing out Clifton Webb, who was the favorite that year in that category.

Samuel was Mr. Charm himself then; we were friends, especially if he’d had a tiff with Louella. But a few lines in print ended our life-term friendship. He hasn’t spoken to me since. It’s gall to him that _Porgy and Bess_ was one of his few failures, a dull, photographed opera with no heart, soul, or finesse, where Mamoulian could have made it a thing of beauty, like the original _Porgy_, which had me weeping tears of compassion as I first saw it in a New York theater.

* * * * *

Beverly Hills is my home. I’ve lived in the same house there for twenty-two years. When I walk my gray French poodle, Beau Beau, a gift from Ann Sheridan, I pass the house of Ned Washington, who wrote such scintillating songs as “My Foolish Heart,” “I’ll Walk Alone,” “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Across from him resides Pete Smith, retired now, whose movie short subjects had audiences in gales of laughter for more than a generation.

Then there’s the home of Ann and Jack Warner, with its private golf course and tennis court. In the drawing room hangs her portrait by Salvador Dali, the finest he’s painted.... There’s the house of Mr. and Mrs. Bruno Pagliai. We knew her first as Merle Oberon, then as Lady Alexander Korda. After their divorce she married Lucien Ballard, one of our finest cinematographers. She longed for children but could have none, even after several operations. So after her marriage to Bruno, she adopted a boy and a girl.

Next to the Pagliais live Ketti and Kurt Frings. Ketti adapted for the stage _Look Homeward, Angel_, which boosted Tony Perkins to stardom. Kurt is the agent who got Elizabeth Taylor the first million-dollar picture salary in our history.

Turning into Roxbury Drive, I pass the home of Lucille Ball, who knew joy and sorrow there with Desi Arnaz and now is happy as a lark with her new husband, Gary Morton. Tallulah Bankhead and I were among the dinner guests in that house once, when Tallu was appearing the following day on “I Love Lucy.” Desi seated me on his right, a place which Tallu insisted should be hers. But Hopper can be stubborn as an Amish mule, and the brickbats started to fly. We couldn’t get her out of the house until 1:30 A.M. At the “Lucy” filming Lucille was nervous as a cat over the events of the previous night. She forgot her lines for the first time in her life. Tallulah, who’d been appalling during rehearsals, sailed through her performance like Eleanora Duse.

Lucy’s neighbors are Mary and Jack Benny, who’ve never changed marriage partners or their way of life. Jack doesn’t stop working; Mary, like Gracie Allen, refuses to set foot on a TV sound stage again.

Up the street, you find Jeanne Crain and Paul Brinkman and their six children, all happy as hooligans. Better look sharp as you pass or you’ll trip over roller skates, a tricycle, or a baseball bat on the sidewalk.

Next door is a house of sorrow--Rosemary Clooney and her five children live there with no husband or father to guide them. José Ferrer moved out. Also on this street are the Ira Gershwins; the Thomas Mitchells; Aggie Moorehead in the house where Sigmund Romberg used to make music and feed us every Sunday night. In this block, too, stands the Spanish house where Liz Taylor lived with her parents when she was making _National Velvet_, too young to be interested in men or even boys.

Then I pass what was once the home of Sir Charles and Lady Mendl, a monstrous Spanish affair that Elsie Mendl made over into a thing of beauty. Never was an off-color joke allowed to be told when she was present. Ludwig Bemelmans, who had a Rabelaisian sense of humor, repaid her hospitality by adorning the powder-room walls with some outrageous pictures. She took one horrified look and ordered the walls repainted immediately. Elsie, ninety-five pounds of energy, fun, and good taste, received Sir Charles in her bedroom only after she had granted him permission via his valet.

Charles and I used to walk by the mile together, apparently the only residents of Beverly who applied their legs to such purpose. Though he’d known seventeen European monarchs in his day--including the Duke of Windsor, whom Charles didn’t much care for--he steadfastly turned down my pleas for him to write the Mendl memoirs.

Charles earned his knighthood as press attaché to the British Embassy in Paris when Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister. MacDonald, unsophisticated as a newborn baby, fell into the clutches of a wise and beautiful woman. He was indiscreet enough to write her letters that a schoolboy would have blushed over. The problem was how to recover them without scandal or the outlay of a mint of money.

Someone thought of Charles Mendl, who had a way with the ladies and adored them one and all. He was delighted to accept the assignment. The lady was so pleased with him that she produced the letters for them to read together, roaring with laughter. She presented them to him as a souvenir of many happy hours, and she collected a few thousand pounds for her trouble. The Empire was saved; Charles was knighted.

* * * * *

No wonder psychiatrists flourish in our town. There are nearly two hundred of them. Bedford Drive and Roxbury Drive, where their consulting rooms are concentrated, are known as Libido Lane and Couch Canyon. Louis Mayer once had his whole family analyzed by the same woman. I went to her once to see how she’d react to my being a patient.

“You’d have me on the couch in nothing flat,” she said. “Out you go.” I went.

_Six_

The one and only exclusive interview I had with Marlon Brando lasted half an hour. As the minutes ticked by he sat posed like Rodin’s “Thinker” contemplating a bust of Stanislavski. He paid no more heed to me than if I’d been a ladybug squatting on the back of his canvas chair. With a snap of the fingers, I brought him out of his trance. “Have you been listening, Mr. Brando?”

“Sure.”

“Do you care to answer my questions?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Then may I tell you that I didn’t want this interview? Your producer, Stanley Kramer, insisted that I do it. You needn’t submit yourself to further agony. Thanks for nothing, and good day.”

I walked off the set of _The Men_, and I haven’t set foot on any Brando set from that day on. Every studio he has worked for has tried to coax me back. But I can’t be insulted twice, not if I know what’s going to happen.

I regard him as a supreme egotist, for want of a better term, whose good performances, like those in _On the Waterfront_ and _A Streetcar Named Desire_, I recognize. I understand that he refers to me as “The One with the Hat.” He has been known variously as “the male Garbo” and “Dostoevski’s Tom Sawyer.” He’s doing extremely well without my support in piling up millions. He’s a dedicated ringleader in a current melodrama which can be called “Viva Brando; or, The Actor’s Revenge.”

When he originally landed here in 1950, he carried his entire wardrobe in a canvas satchel: two pairs of blue jeans, four T shirts, two pairs of socks, and the works of the philosopher Spinoza, who teaches that everything is decreed by God and is therefore necessarily good. Marlon immediately labeled Hollywood a “cultural boneyard.”

He said then: “My objective is to submit myself to what I think and feel until I’m in a position to think and feel as I please.” It took ten years to do it, but he made it in spades in _Mutiny on the Bounty_. He also said: “The only reason I’m here is because I don’t yet have the moral strength to turn down the money.”

When Stanley Kramer telephoned him in Paris about doing _The Men_, Marlon had two questions: “Do you want me for more than one film? How much will you pay?” From a $50,000 fee for _The Men_, he went, via _Streetcar_, to $150,000 in _Viva Zapata_. More recently, he held out for every cent of net profits, leaving the studio to collect nothing more than a percentage of the gross as distributor. His asking price now is a million dollars a performance.

The town should have known what to expect on the strength of reports from Broadway and his nerve-racking portrayal in the theater of Stanley Kowalski, the cave-man lover of _Streetcar_. Irene Selznick, who produced the play, gave an opening-night party at “21” which Marlon reluctantly attended. Jerome Zerbe, the society photographer and columnist, was there, and Irene asked if he’d invite Marlon over to be photographed with her, not for publicity but for her personal album.

Crossing the room, Zerbe passed on the request to Marlon, who turned him down flat. “Why should I be photographed with her?”

“Well, she’s your producer, after all.”

“Means nothing to me,” said the newest sensation of Broadway, aged twenty-three. Zerbe broke the news to Irene and exchanged no more words with Marlon until Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie, arriving late, picked their way through the crowd to Zerbe and made a fuss over him.

Now Marlon could see that Jerome was socially “in”; he made a beeline for him. “I’ll pose for that picture now,” he offered.

Zerbe, a proud man, was halfway toward the door on his way out. “You won’t pose for me,” he said flatly. “I wouldn’t photograph you if you were the last man on this earth.”

I once put a question to Marlon asking his opinion of acting as a profession. “If you’re successful,” he replied, “it’s about as soft a job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you’re unsuccessful, it’s worse than having a skin disease.”

Social ailments of various kinds hold a strange attraction for him. When reporters used to ask him about some chapters of his younger days, he would tell them he couldn’t give an adequate answer because at the time he wasn’t feeling too well. The favorite theme cropped up again when he was making _Mutiny on the Bounty_ in Tahiti. By then, the joke was on him, but he was drawing $5000 a day overtime and spouting another favorite thought in slightly altered words: “After you’ve got enough money, money doesn’t matter.”

He arrived in Hollywood with a hole in the knee of his only pair of pants, and a large-sized chip on his shoulder. Though there were stories of such generosity as tipping a New York shoeshine boy with a five-dollar bill “because I felt sorry for him,” he appeared to resent spending money, even a dime. If he could get an agent or reporter to buy him a dinner, a drink, or even a cup of coffee, he was in a good mood for hours. He refused to load himself down with a house, swimming pool, convertible, fancy wardrobe, or any such items which the “cultural boneyard” usually regards as the accompaniments to a soaring career.

Producers, if they can, cultivate extravagance on the part of the stars. They see to it that their puppets stagger under piles of possessions and towering stacks of bills. Studios will lend money so it seems easy to buy the house with the swimming pool at $200,000. The debt becomes a sword to dangle over the star’s head if he shows signs of resentment about making a particular picture. Arguments about “artistic integrity” are as effective as paper darts against a studio that holds the mortgage.

To his credit, in more ways than one, Marlon was in no danger on that score. “Just because the big shots were nice to me,” he told a reporter, “I saw no reason to overlook what they did to others and to ignore the fact that they morally behave with the hostility of ants at picnics.”

He is turning the picnic tables with a vengeance on the “ants.” Their one-sided admiration of Brando (they used to call him “the best actor in the world” on weekdays and a “genius” on Sundays) got chipped when Twentieth Century-Fox cast him in a stinker called _The Egyptian_. He objected, but they imagined they had soothed him and went ahead building sets, making costumes, signing other players. When the first day of shooting arrived, Brando did not. Instead, his New York psychoanalyst sent a telegram: BRANDO VERY SICK.

* * * * *

Breaking a contract is a refined art, which skillful performers conduct with the finesse of brain surgeons. A classic case is provided by Jerry Lewis after he broke with Dean Martin when they were under contract to make three more pictures for Hal Wallis.

Wallis had the legal right to have them complete the contract, no matter what carnage would have resulted. Martin and Lewis’ agents, the Music Corporation of America, talked to him but they got nowhere. Attorneys tried to argue with him, but Wallis is, among other things, a stubborn man. It took a press agent to recall the time-tested formula.

“You call Mr. Wallis,” the agent told Jerry, “and invite him to lunch at the Hillcrest Country Club. Sit him down and say: ‘Have you ever had a picture that began, Scene one, take eighty-five?’ Tell him that you’re ready to devote six months of your life to his next Martin and Lewis picture; that you understand his problem, so you’ve reserved a suite at Mount Sinai Hospital for him as your guest. Because you know he’s going to get a coronary from the aggravation that’s coming to him.”

The press agent continued: “Also tell Wallis: ‘You know my own medical history. I only pray to God we don’t get in the middle of this thing before I have to take to my bed again.’”

Jerry took Hal Wallis to lunch at Hillcrest and said his piece. Wallis heard him out, then conceded: “I get your point. I’ll start with you alone in a new picture next month.” No further movie with Dean Martin was discussed.

Marlon didn’t get off so lightly when he tangled with Fox. The studio pushed Edmond Purdom into _The Egyptian_, which was a great mistake, and sued Brando for two million dollars. He settled by agreeing to play Napoleon in a turgid flop called _Desirée_.

The studio bosses are proof positive that you can fool yourself most of the time over stars who, when the fancy strikes them, delight in doing in the people who put up the money. The producers ignore any flop these highly prized players make and hypnotize themselves by repeating over and over: “We can’t go wrong this time; it’s our turn to be lucky.” They blind themselves to the fact that these stars jeer at the money men, make fools of them, regard them deep down as their sworn enemies with the I.Q. of idiots.

Marlon got into stride when he made _One-Eyed Jacks_, a simple Western that was going to cost no more than $1,800,000 and a few months to complete. First casualty was the director, Stanley Kubrick, who retreated in the early stages of production and abandoned the field to Brando. On his first day as director, Marlon threw away the script and announced: “We’re going to improvise.” For the next half year, he and his crew ran up production bills of $42,000 a day.

He had them spending hours on the shores of the Pacific waiting for the water to “look more dramatic.” He’d start the cameras, then sit with his head between his knees for twenty minutes or more until he got in the mood. As a good democrat, he let his actors vote for the last reel they liked best, and that was the ending he used, though he didn’t care for it himself.

When the front office at Paramount got uneasy and costs passed the $6,000,000 mark, Marlon turned surly: “I’m shooting a movie, not a schedule.” There were days, I’m sure, when Y. Frank Freeman, head of Paramount, would have liked to clobber him, while Marlon went on playing his favorite mumbling, lurching, behind-scratching character--himself. Paramount has long since given up hope of getting its money back, much less of making a profit.

But when _Mutiny_ came around, Metro recited the old mumbo jumbo: “We can’t go wrong on this.” Sol Siegel, who ran the studio, would settle for nobody but Marlon as top star. That little decision, along with several other lulus along the way, cost well over $20,000,000 before the picture was wound up. Marlon enjoyed $1,250,000 for his contributions, along with ten per cent of the gross and an incredible contract giving him the final word on scenes taken on Tahiti.

Screen rights to the original novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall were bought by the late Frank Lloyd, a fine, free-lance director, for only $12,000. In order to make the picture and gather the cast he’d set his heart on, he was compelled to sell those rights back to Irving Thalberg at Metro for precisely what they had cost.

Metro’s first flash of creative genius called for Wallace Beery to play Captain Bligh in the breath-catching tale of eighteenth-century mutiny on the high seas aboard the British merchantman _Bounty_. They envisaged the sadistic captain as a comical old coot pursued by his wife and twelve children. Talked out of that, Thalberg signed Charles Laughton, who for weeks had to be rowed slowly around Catalina Island, flat on his back on the floorboards, to teach his protesting digestion that seasickness was not permissible during working hours.

Louis B. Mayer didn’t think much of the script: “Where’s the romance?” he demanded. Gable didn’t like the idea of playing Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutineers and his finest role up to that date. Eddie Mannix talked him around: “You’re the only guy in the picture who gets anything to do with a dame.” I’ll never know why they didn’t reissue the old _Mutiny_ after Clark’s death--it would have made $5,000,000 and saved Metro a truckload of ulcers.

Frank Lloyd’s picture was ten months in the making, from his first background shooting on Tahiti to its presentation in November 1935. The bills amounted to $1,700,000, the most expensive MGM production of those days. Front-office opposition grew stronger month by month. To satisfy Nick Schenck, a rough cut was sent to New York with the strict understanding that it would be run only for him to see. He had it screened before an audience of four hundred people and afterward delivered himself of this undying judgment: “Tell Thalberg it’s the worst picture MGM ever made.”

* * * * *