Little Me Page 16

  Magdalena Montezuma-the meanest Spic in pictures!

  Free!

  As one last gracious gesture toward the man I had inadvertently shot, I insisted on having Mr. Musgrove’s body collected from the morgue and turned over to me for decent, Christian funeral services. A private ceremony was held at Forest Lawn with a few simple floral arrangements from the gardens of Casa Torquemada. (I felt that it was in extremely poor taste for Magdalena Montezuma to send Mr. Musgrove a ten-foot-square blanket of white orchids! But what can you expect from a Spic like her?) After a eulogy, beautifully delivered by Aimee Semple McPherson, I followed the remains to the crematorium and placed all of Mr. Musgrove’s photographic work in the casket just before it was lowered into the flames. I felt it only right that it should go with him. Under the circumstances, it seemed the very least I could do.

  1932 had indeed been a difficult year but then everything turned out for the best.

  above: Mr. Musgrove at Ossining

  below: Ditto at Forest Lawn

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE END OF AN IDYLL

  1933

  My blissful life with Mr. Buchsbaum • Toward a more varied career • Morris suggests that

  I lend my talents to rival studios • Trying out for famous rôles • My desire to play Cleopatra

  I reject Shakespeare • G.B.S.-another famous correspondence • Nights on the Nile

  One terrible night • Mr. Buchsbaum’s farewell tribute • Widowhood

  MY “MURDER TRIAL”—the term by which the radical press tried to denigrate a powerless woman’s last-ditch attempt to preserve her chastity—had taken a more terrible toll of both my husband and me than I realized at the time. When I was proclaimed “not guilty,” dear Morris burst into tears and wept uncontrollably all the way home in the car. And I—once the terrible ordeal was over—fell prey to a complete crise de nerfs. So shattered was I that I felt totally unable to have my darling baby daughter come home for her Christmas holidays. The absence of her merry voice, her staccato little foot-steps left me desolate but, under the trying circumstances, it seemed better for Baby-dear to have Morris spend Christmas with her at Radclyffe Hall while I passed a long, sad Yuletide with only Letch Feeley, who understandingly hurried to my side as soon as Morris was on the train.

  In glancing over these last few pages, I feel that I have spoken mostly of my fabulous public career and very little of the rich, happy life of “togetherness” which I shared with my dear husband, Morris Buchsbaum.

  The life of a great Hollywood film star is so hectic who can wonder that the divorce rate is high? Yet I can truly say that my marriage to Morris Buchsbaum was one “made in heaven.”

  Because of the great difference in our ages, because Morris and I were each completely absorbed in careers that kept us apart for weeks on end, because Morris had waited fifty years before being “hooked” (as one unfeeling columnist so crassly put it), those who did not know us well scoffed at our marriage, giving it but a short time to endure. There are even those who have so little regard for the truth, so little feeling for two people “head over heels in love,” that they had the gall to claim that I “tricked” my darling Morris into marriage! So much for those Philistines. I would simply like to state—and I believe that the facts prove me to be correct—that my marriage to Morris Buchsbaum was one of the few beautiful and enduring things in Hollywood. Who knows what we might not have achieved together had not The Greatest Director of All called my darling Morris to Location for Script Conference on His Truly Divine Picture?

  Let me tell all sneerers, cynics and doubters right here and now that Morris Buchsbaum worshipped me! What other explanation could there be for a man’s utter and complete selflessness?

  To give just one example—and those who know the keen competition, the dreadful jealousies between producers in those days will appreciate this— Morris came to me at the beginning of 1933, right after my ordeal in the courtroom, and said: “Belle, we’ve been shlepping through hell together. You need a little change. Retirement maybe?”

  I denied this fervently. Was I the sort to let Morris and the studio down?

  “I was afraid you’d say that. Such a hokachinik! ” Morris said sadly. “Everyone at the studio said you would.” (They knew a “trouper tried and true” when they saw one.) “But maybe you should try a different type picture at a different studio. A gonif like Louis B. Mayer you should favor. You know, change your luck. Mine, too.” How like that saintly man!

  Having given me carte blanche to “test my wings” at a different studio for a picture or two, Morris even went so far as to make an adjustment in my contract to release me from Metronome and even offered to invest in any picture any other studio would be willing to make with me as its star. In fact, so big a man was Morris Buchsbaum that he even suggested that I go to Europe, taking Momma with me, to do long and intensive work on carving a career there! Of course I refused.

  Thus “set free” of dear old Metronome with all of Hollywood to choose from, I was like a child in a candy store! I began “pounding the pavements” again—if riding from studio to studio in a Dusenberg town car can be called quite that. I felt that I needed a complete change of pace and, as so many exciting new projects were opening up around town, I was eager to try something entirely different.

  At RKO, for example, they were filming that sweet story Little Women (a picture about four young sisters), which was being directed by my dear old friend and admirer George Cukor. “Katy” Hepburn was to star as “Jo” with a cast including Joan Bennett, Douglass Montgomery, Edna May Oliver, Spring Byington, Nydia Westman, Henry Stephenson and Paul Lukas. I suggested that, if the “script” could be somewhat rewritten to bolster the part, I would consider playing “Beth,” the youngest sister who is literally too good to live. There was a great deal of talk about this all over the RKO “lot,” but in the end the rôle of “Beth” went to Jean Parker. I guess that Hepburn was just afraid to appear with a real star.

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had a number of properties that interested me. Peg O’ My Heart, for example, might well have been written with me in mind. However, through favoritism of the rankest sort, the rôle went to Marion Davies, a capable little actress but, as Morris said, not in my class at all. And just because she was Swedish, Queen Christina went to Garbo. In spite of the fact that Noël Coward was one of my oldest and dearest friends from the English “chapter” of my life, Paramount foolishly gave the lead in Design for Livingto Miriam Hopkins. Although I was too good a sport to consult them, I know that the co-stars, Gary Cooper and “Freddie” March, the director, Ernst Lubitsch, and Noël all would have preferred me. By another fluke I lost out on appearing in Reunion in Vienna with John Barrymore. What should have been my rôle went to an unknown English actress named Diana Wynyard. However, “Jack” Barrymore paid me a compliment so eloquent that it almost made my loss worthwhile. “Belle,” he said, “the only other actress I know who, today, could match your performance in that part is Sarah Siddons.” Just imagine!

  Another bitter disappointment—this time again at M-G-M—was Dinnerat Eight—its all-star casting including precious Jean Harlow, “Jack” and Lionel Barrymore, “Wally” Beery, Billie Burke, Lee Tracy, “Eddie” Lowe and Marie Dressler. George Cukor again directed. One would have thought that with such a large cast something could have been written especially for me. But no such luck. Darling Marie Dressler suggested that I might be carried in with an apple in my mouth, but I felt that if I could not have a truly meaty part I would rather stay out.

  Because Baby-dear was in an Episcopal boarding school, I had a natural interest in religion. I offered my services as star of The White Sister, but for some reason that was never made quite clear to me, the rôle was given to Helen Hayes, a competent performer. At Paramount my desire to play a nun in Cradle Song was somehow ignored.

  However, the same studio was planning an all-star production and everyone said that I would be absolutely fantastic as the star of
Alice in Wonderlandand staunch, reliable old Dudley du Pont and Carstairs Bagley even telephoned to encourage me to take a screen test as Alice. “Belle, darling, it would be the camp of the year,” Dudley said. “You be Alice and we’ll be the queens. Do it with us, for laughs.” Those darling boys were so gay, how could I refuse? Just thinking of myself as the star of a huge cast that included Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, W. C. Fields, Edward Everett Horton, “Jack” Oakie, “Ned” Sparks, May Robson, Polly Moran, “Skeets” Gallagher, “Dick” Arlen, Roscoe Ates and Mae Marsh (who had thrilled me so in Birth of a Nation) sent chills up and down my spine. We rehearsed together for weeks and, while it didn’t seem to me that Dudley and Carstairs were exactly right as the Red Queen and the White Queen, I appreciated their faith in me. Over drinks, Travis Ban-ton designed the simple dress I was to wear in my test. (He said that it brought out all of my most girlish qualities.) On the day of our test the studio was mobbed with famous faces. I had been nervous about playing comedy, considering myself more of a dramatic actress, but any fears of mine were quickly quelled. The visiting stars and other “top” names shouted with laughter at my performance with Carstairs and Dudley. There was thunderous applause at the end of each “take.” When it was all over, I was mobbed with admirers. Adorable Carole Lombard was laughing so hard that Clark Gable and Leslie Howard had to help her out. “Alice?” Carole gasped through tears of merriment. “Have you ever thought of co-starring with Shirley Temple?” No idle compliment when one recalls that sweet little Shirley was America’s biggest box office attraction during the thirties.

  Flushed with triumph, I returned immediately to Casa Torquemada to await the call from Paramount. Can you imagine my shock when the choice rôle of Alice went to an unknown child named Charlotte Henry! As for poor Carstairs and Dudley, the parts of Red Queen and White Queen were given to

  Edna May Oliver and Louise Fazenda. The boys were very philosophical about it. “You can’t fight sex,” they said. Studio politics again!

  However, I was rewarded by a call from RKO. They offered me the lead in King Kong. “But I thought that you’d already chosen Fay Wray,” I said. “That’s right. We want you for the ape.” A practical joker! I slammed down the telephone in a rage and told Morris that I was ready to return to Metronome. “Again the hokachinik begins. I could plotz,” he said endearingly.

  I decided that if I were to create a truly great film, once again I would have to find my own story. It was then that I stumbled across a fascinating historical character, Cleopatra. I learned at the time that Cecil B. DeMille was preparing just such a film with Claudette Colbert (a darling girl, but all wrong for the rôle); however, I was so angry at Paramount Studios for their shameful treatment of me that I decided to come out first with my own version of Cleopatra. Dudley du Pont, one of Hollywood’s leading intellectuals, put me in touch with two versions of that great ruler’s life. One was a play by William Shakespeare entitled Antony and Cleopatra. This I read and rejected immediately because I did not care for the lines and also because the story had an unhappy ending. The other one was written by an Irishman named George Bernard Shaw. This was called Caesar and Cleopatra. I preferred this version, but again I had very definite reservations. While I liked the idea of Cleopatra being a very young girl, I did not care for Caesar as an old man. Dear Dudley, trying as always to be helpful, suggested such leading men as George Arliss, Wallace Beery, Francis X. Bushman, George M. Cohan, Charles Laughton, King Baggot, Will Rogers, Cyril Maude and a roster of “name” character actors. However, I had someone more like Letch Feeley in mind as my leading man. Dudley said he understood exactly how I felt and reminded me that one of the last lines in Caesar and Cleopatra is when Caesar promises to send Cleopatra a sort of replacement who is “brisk and fresh, strong and young, hoping in the morning, fighting in the day, and revelling in the evening.” That certainly described Letch! This character was Marc Antony. Dudley said that maybe Shaw had a sequel in mind. He suggested that I write to Mr. Shaw (Dudley knew him quite well and always called him “G.B.S.”) at Ayot St. Lawrence. Dudley said that Shaw had had a number of famous correspondences with other great actresses and that any exchange between us ought to be worth its weight in gold. He and Carstairs Bagley dictated the letter, which they told me to begin “Dear George.” Some weeks later I received a letter from the old gentleman which Dudley described as “too priceless.” “While your mentality is ideally suited to Cleopatra,” Mr. Shaw wrote, “your age would suggest the rôle of Ftatateetah—unless you were considering me to play Antony.” It made no sense at all and, realizing that Mr. Shaw was almost in his dotage, I decided to take over the “script” myself, as I wanted to beat Paramount, DeMille and Claudette with my own version of Cleopatra, called Nights on the Nile, which I thought romantic. Dudley said that he would help me on the “q.t.” and that he didn’t even want screen credit for his assistance. He said that it would be fun to play a character called “Paula Doris” but I told him that while that sort of thing might be “okay” on Sunset Strip, I didn’t want it in a family-type picture.

  We planned to write the whole scenario outside of Hollywood where there wouldn’t be any “leak” as to our plans. Dudley chose Santa Catalina Island as “not too near and still not too far.” I took several typewriters, Letch Feeley as “script consultant” and Momma as chaperone. Dudley brought his friend, Felice, a young Mexican bull fighter, and a Latin teacher from Hollywood High School to check on historical accuracy. Within two weeks we had the story “licked” although the Latin teacher kept saying that it was “glutted with anachronisms.” Dudley pointed out that so were the stories by Shakespeare and Shaw and that he’d love to have a dollar for every inaccuracy in the DeMille “shooting script.” I agreed. Knowing that Claudette would play Cleopatra as a brunette, I decided to play her as a blonde. I also chose to drop Julius Caesar from the picture (Carstairs Bagley, who would have been my choice, was appearing at the Chicago World’s Fair that summer and was not available) and to focus entirely on the Cleopatra–Marc Antony love affair. I also rewrote the ending as it all took place so very long ago that nobody remembers exactly what did happen. Nor did I want Cecil B. DeMille to be able to accuse me of “plagiarizing” any of his picture. He never did.

  Dudley suggested that it might be fun if we did everything on “location” in Egypt, but I settled for a stunning piece of real estate out on the desert not far from Palm Springs. This I named Belleville. On it I had built such permanent “sets” as the Sphinx, the Great Pyramids, the Library at Alexandria, the bazaars of Cairo, the royal palace, the Temple at Karnak, the Nile, the Suez Canal, Rome and the Vatican. I erected a “tent colony” for the six thousand “extras,” stage hands and “grips,” an apartment hotel for the supporting and featured players and little Egyptian-type villas for the executives and more important actors. I had a lovely house designed, in the Egyptian manner, for little me, and for Magdalena Montezuma a much smaller house out near the menagerie where we kept the elephants, camels, horses, mules, crocodiles, parrots and snakes. Magdalena had one more picture to do for Metronome before deserting poor Morris (who had made her a star) for a new studio. Grudgingly, she consented to appear in Nights on the Nile to “wind up” her contract. To quote “Señorita” Montezuma’s own ungracious words, “I’d play a dromedary to get out of my contract with this stinking pesthole filled with whores and faggots.” Imagine! When I, myself, carefully supervised the activities of all the “extras” and “bit” players at Metronome! That was the sort of gratitude she showed to my darling Morris, to the studio and to me!

  above: Marc Antony surprises Cleopatra bathing in the Suez Canal.

  Cleopatra offers a basket of asps to Calpurnia, Marc Antony’s faithless wife

  All roads lead to Rome and to a happy ending for Mr. and Mrs. M. Antony!

  Cleopatra puts her pearl necklace in Marc Antony’s champagne

  Momma suggested that Montezuma might be “perfect” as a camel. (She has such a sense of humor!
) But for a so-called “star” with a big “name” and a weekly salary of $10,000, I had better uses. “Filmdom” was amazed to learn that I had been forgiving enough to cast Magdalena Montezuma in what was to be the picture of my career, after her abominable treatment of me in ¡Viva Tequila!, but, as Dudley du Pont said in one of his many tributes to me, “Beneath Belle’s whipped cream exterior beats a heart of solid granite.”

  I decided to do the “big thing” and give Magdalena the sort of rôle she really could “play to the hilt”—that of arch-villainess. She was to be Calpurnia, Marc Antony’s faithless wife. I envisaged Calpurnia as a much older woman, of Nubian origin, to whom Marc Antony had been lovelessly joined as a boy by his wicked uncle, Brutus (Basil Thyme). As they are both of the Roman faith, divorce is out of the question, yet Calpurnia keeps right on dallying with slave boys of her own ethnic group until she finds out that Marc Antony has fallen in love with beautiful, young Cleopatra. Bent on revenge, she goes to Egypt to murder poor Cleopatra. Her low scheme is thwarted when Cleopatra innocently hands her a basket of asps (I used real ones for authenticity) and she is fatally stung. It was a “juicy” part and I even supervised Montezuma’s costumes myself. How is that for magnanimity? If most of Montezuma’s scenes had to be cut, it was only because of the great length of Nights on the Nile.