Little Me Page 17

  By sparing no expense and working seven days a week, around the clock, we finished the film that summer. I felt dreadful having to keep Baby-dear in boarding school during her holidays, but I knew that she would understand. We finished the picture on her third birthday and I went directly to Honolulu to rest from the crushing ordeal. Nights on the Nile had cost almost ten million dollars, but I knew that we had a “hit on our hands.”

  The première at the Buchsbaum Bessarabian in Los Angeles was a gala night indeed, everyone was there. A line of limousines and town cars a mile long waited to deposit celebrities at the entrance. Searchlights raked the skies. I had had the entire theatre redecorated in honor of Nights on the Nile, and rising above the marquee was a statue of me as Cleopatra just ten times life size. The film lasted exactly five hours and seventeen minutes. Every second of it was a milestone in movie history.

  “What did you really think of it, darling?” I asked Morris as we left the theatre to face the spontaneous ovation Manny and I had prepared.

  “Don’t. Please,” Morris whispered. “I’m speechless.” And they have the nerve to say that man didn’t worship me!

  A huge party was planned for after the showing, but somehow I got separated from Morris in the throngs at the theatre and never went to the party at all. Instead, Letch and I drove to his little beach “shack” at Malibu just to have a friendly drink, talk over old times and the pictures we planned to make together.

  I have no idea what hour it was when we were rudely roused from our rêverie by the jangling of the telephone. “Belle, honey,” Momma cried, “you better come right home. It’s Morris. He’s dying!”

  My heart was in my mouth as Letch’s roadster screeched up the driveway at Casa Torquemada. I dashed to our bedroom. There was my adored and adoring husband lying, fully dressed, on the bed we had shared so blissfully. His evening shirt was open and a thin rivulet of blood trickled down its starched white bosom.

  “Morris!” I cried. “Speak to me! What has happened?”

  Half rising from the sa’tin coverlet and struggling for breath, he paid me his beautiful deathbed tribute. “Nafkeh!” he gasped. “Ten million dollars. Ten million simoleons! So it’s nothing. Only mazumen, yet. Only Buchsbaum’s gelt so a schikseh nudnik like the Poitrine should dress herself like some hootchymakootchy Araber koorveh and make a real mishmash picture with some no-talent goy putz like Letch Feeley . . .”

  “Morris, darling,” I cried, “are you all right?”

  “All right? Oi! You should ask. Ask me again I should tell you the answer. It’s yes. All night long at the movie house . . . five fablugene hours at thirty-three thousand dollars a minute and a gonif like you asks Buchsbaum . . . Ay! Better I should plotz than see another picture with a gurnisht like you!” A convulsive shudder passed through his entire body. “Ausgeschpielt,” he breathed. He sank back onto the pillows, lapsing almost completely into the vivid tongue of his faraway European childhood. But even at this moment my Morris could praise me!

  Widowed again

  “He’s going fast, poor mockie,” Momma said, standing breathlessly at the foot of the bed.

  “The will,” Morris whispered, raising his head weakly. “My will. The envelope I wrote to Faber, Farber, Ferber and . . .”

  “You mean this, Morry?” Momma said, holding a stamped envelope over his head. “I’ll take care of this for you. Don’t you worry.”

  “Ah! The dybbuk . . . the alte kockeh . . . the . . .” Morris said no more. He was dead when the doctor arrived. A basket of asps—the ones I had used in Nights on the Nile—was found in Morris’ bathroom. They said at the studio that my late husband had driven there immediately after the première of my picture and demanded the venomous reptiles “for personal use.” My poor Morris, too moved by my performance to want to go on producing lesser films, had taken his own life! Sometimes a talent such as mine can be a curse!

  Oddly enough, for such a keen businessman, Morris died leaving no last will and testament, no instructions as to the disposal of his enormous holdings. Although we ransacked the house in search of the vague document poor Morris had mentioned with his dying breath, nothing could be found. Perhaps his talk about a will had been just a figment of my imagination. Darling Momma, warming her old bones at the fireplace in her sitting room, had no recollection of his mentioning anything about it at all. Thus Morris’ personal fortune, Casa Torquemada, the mighty Metronome Studios—everything he possessed became mine. It was when I heard this that I crumpled completely and had to be put to bed under full sedation in a state of total collapse.

  True blue Dudley du Pont made all of the arrangements for what is still considered to be the most unusual funeral in the history of Hollywood. The entire “industry,” I am told, turned out in one seething, sorrowing mass. But so shattered was I by shock, by grief and by fatigue that I remember nothing— nothing—of this farewell tribute to a great producer. I recall only that I was wearing a full-length gown of white mourning from Worth with five rows of ruffles at throat, cuffs and train; black lingerie and accessories from the Veuve Soignée Shop on Wilshire Boulevard; a modified Empress Eugénie hat created by Agnes; and Gunther’s black fox capelet as loyal Letch Feeley helped me down the aisle at dear Morris’ high requiem mass.

  Letch at 23

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ON MY OWN

  1934

  I become sole owner of Metronome • A new broom! • Keeping a brave face

  in spite of my sorrow • Baby-dear • Seeking better material for my films • Difficult

  authors who have known me • Loneliness • Letch • My wedding

  SUCH WAS MY DESOLATION that I was unable to do anything for weeks. I finished out 1933 very quietly in a mountain hideaway, my solitude dispelled only by occasional visits from such old, tried and true friends as Letch. No chance again this year of having my precious Baby-dear home for Christmas. How unfair to the psyche of an innocent infant to invite her to pass the festive Yule season in a house of sadness! Instead, my secretary sent Baby-dear a letter of explanation, enclosing a generous check. Thus I brooded over my deep loss, in loneliness, while Morris’ estate was inventoried and his many affairs put in order.

  But I soon realized that I was being grossly selfish and negligent in my duty. Here I was, the sole owner of the world’s greatest film studio, thinking only of my own troubles! Metronome, with its acres and acres of sound stages, was my domain. Its thousands of loyal employees my people. How could I “let them down”? Feeling just like the Dowager Queen Victoria, I drove sadly down Buchsbaum Boulevard to the Metronome Studios on the first business day of 1934. Except for the special black-tipped cigarettes I had ordered from Benson & Hedges, I showed no exterior signs of mourning. This, too (though criticized openly by my enemies), was meant as the ultimate sign of respect to my late husband. Morris had always hated me to wear black. “Like a crow you look!” he would scoff. Thus I affected bright, butterfly colors, painted a vivid smile on my trembling lips and turned a brave face to the world. How little they could know of my inner feelings!

  Although Morris’ personal fortune was solid and a source of great comfort and satisfaction to me (I had known so little financial security as a child that I especially wanted it for my own baby girl), I was dismayed to examine the books at the studio. For such an astute businessman, Morris had permitted many practices that stuck me as downright “slipshod.” Even some of my own films, I noted with surprise, had been allowed to show distressing deficits. This I remedied by showing no quarter to the inefficient “bunglers” who had foolishly been entrusted with the fortunes of Metronome. I “sacked” them immediately and, after a long, disquieting talk with Momma, I saw the logic of placing her in sole charge of the studio’s finances. Momma, I felt, with her native caution and thrift, could easily do the work for which Morris had paid a department of more than fifty shiftless and—I felt—dishonest accountants. Momma had her own unorthodox bookkeeping methods and often said that she didn’t
want any “nosey Parkers” prying into her records. This caused considerable difficulties some years later, but it worked splendidly for a time and represented a large saving in salaries, which I split between Momma and me, as all of the work would be on our shoulders.

  As I deplore anything that “smacks” of favoritism or “nepotism,” the next employee to go was Morris’ nephew, Sheldon. Out of kindness, my late husband had placed this unpleasant and untalented youth in the story department at Metronome, where, instead of turning out unusual and original “scripts,” Sheldon had done little but “carp” about the unsuitability of certain stories for me and vice versa. He had also been most unpleasant about Morris’ passing, his funeral and his estate. Instead of rushing to comfort his “beloved” uncle’s widow, Sheldon had done nought but create trouble and dissention. As most of the story department seemed to be more or less of Sheldon’s “stripe,” I discharged the vast majority of those “smart aleck” college boys at the same time. (Please do not misunderstand me. I have nothing but the highest respect and regard for education, but just because a boy has graduated with honors from Columbia, Harvard, Princeton or Yale, he has no right to sneer at the opinions of an internationally famed actress whose weekly salary is more than his yearly “take.”) In their stead I placed Endive Kissner, my personal hairdresser for the past troubled year. Endive may not have had a fancy “Ivy League” education, but she and I were interested in the same kinds of stories and we could see “eye to eye” on the sort of material that would be right for little me. As Momma always said, “A girl can learn a lot more useful information in beauty culture school than she can in some old convent!”

  Magdalena Montezuma’s contract had expired with 1933. However, when I arrived at the studio I found great heaps of her greasy cosmetics, her disgusting Spanish dresses, obscene foreign novels such as La Catedral and Testamente Nuevo all over her dressing room. These I deposited outside the studio gates, instructing my maid to telephone her maid as to their whereabouts. As far as I was concerned, Montezuma was a conceited, talentless troublemaker and her absence would mean a saving of more than half a million dollars annually! As my own duties had more than doubled since Morris’ passing, I added her salary to my own.

  “A new broom,” they say, “sweeps clean,” and that is just what I intended to do. Within a month I had bought off the contracts of those actors who had shown signs of jealousy, hostility or indifference to me. With such gifted thespians as Letch Feeley, Helen Highwater, Carstairs Bagley, “Tex” Lonestar, “Al” Apatia, Vivienne Vixen, Dudley du Pont—those who had shown me nothing but loyalty and friendship—things were different. They, and dozens of other true-blue fellow-performers were rewarded handsomely. (Alas, Baby Betsy Kerr’s contract had to be bought off. At thirty, I considered her a little too old to assay further child rôles.) Carstairs and Letch were immediately elevated to full stardom. Letch’s many outstanding gifts had been too often overlooked. Carstairs, I felt, would be the one logical actor in “filmland” to star in a series of movies directed at American youth. Dudley du Pont, one of the few actors I know with “horse sense” enough to save for a “rainy day,” had planned to retire from pictures. He had, after all, started with D. W. Griffith and was rounding out his silver anniversary as a matinée idol. I would not hear of his going. I needed my friends! “But, cutie-pie,” Dudley said in that frank, man-to-man way of his, “think of the ecstasy! A little decorating shop of my own. No more corset, no toupee, no more chin strap, no more good conduct clauses.” By begging and doubling his salary, I was fortunate in getting him to stay on at Metronome as combination producer-director-advisor and talent scout.

  By March the “deadwood” was cleared out and my “team” was in “fighting form.” All that remained was to find a good vehicle for little me. The public reaction to Nights on the Nile had been so marked that Dudley, Endive, Momma and all of my most trusted advisors decided that I needed a definite “change of pace.” During an informal conference in the Plaza del Cocktail at Casa Torquemada, we were discussing all sorts of the most unlikely possibilities when witty Dudley said, “Darling, maybe if you changed sex.”

  “Ha!” Letch laughed. “She sure would be a pip as a man.”

  That started it! Still in his bantering manner, Dudley began reeling off a “never-never” plot about a beautiful young monarch of a mythical kingdom who, in order to avoid a loveless marriage, disguises herself as a boy and runs away on the eve of her wedding. She meets a virile young hunter (Letch Feeley) who is a runaway prince in disguise and they live together like brothers without his discovering her true gender until a lovely bathing scene in a sylvan glade. And so on until the happy ending where their two warring nations are united through their marriage. Dudley decided to call it The Queen Steps Out. There were a lot of objections. Letch didn’t understand the plot. Momma kept saying that it was very familiar to her. But Endive and I loved it. Having great faith in first impressions and “snap” judgment, I told Dudley that he was to write and direct and that we would start work immediately. It was one of my finest films, of that I am convinced, but somehow it was “jinxed.” There was terrible trouble with my camera “angles,” with the bathing scene (during which Letch caught the most terrible cold and, in an unexplained fit of pique, blacked Dudley’s eye) and with the Hays office.

  The picture opened to wonderful reviews, for me, personally, at least. Percy Hammond wrote: “In masculine attire Miss Poitrine is every bit as convincing a male as her writer-director, Dudley du Pont.” How’s that for high praise? But the picture was beset by trouble. The publishers of George Barr McCutcheon’s Beverly of Graustark brought suit for plagiarism and there was so much talk that Elinor Glyn, Paramount, M-G-M and several other studios were going to do the same thing that our lawyers felt it best to withdraw the film entirely.

  I decided to seek greener fields for fresh material. Nothing Endive had read in True Story appealed to me. I tried to commission Frederick Lonsdale to write an original story for me, but he never replied to any of my letters. Through Dudley, I approached Ivor Novello to compose an operetta suited to my vocal range. “CAN PROSTITUTE ART ONLY SO FAR” was his cabled reply. Well! Mr. Novello may have been willing to accept my money, but I would have nothing to do with a man who used such language! I was, after all, a widow, a mother and the one person pledged to see that Metronome turned out clean pictures for the family trade. The replies of both Gertrude Stein and James Joyce were favorable, as far as I could tell, but as Letch said, “Jeest, baby, if they can’t even write a sensible letter, how the hell can they write a whole script?” I agreed.

  With so many pressing problems at the studio, with only an echoing empty house of memories to return to after a long, taxing day, I was beginning to lean more and more on dear Letch and on his sensible, down-to-earth judgment. Dudley du Pont was a pet, of course, but he was often too rarified in his tastes and opinions to suit simple little me. I am a man’s woman, and although I have achieved signal success in difficult fields—acting, producing, business, writing—did not want to be a bitter, dried-up career “gal.”

  The busy executive

  Oh, I had a host of friends, to be sure. “Winnie” had opened up her new club, the Bar Sinister, a fashionable boîte de nuit on Sunset Boulevard. She had married “Al” (“The Violinist”) Pizzicato as he lay riddled with bullet holes from one of those savage “gangland” shootings in which innocent bystanders, such as he, are sometimes the only victims. After his death, “Winnie” discovered that he was actually a Sicilian prince, but too democratic to use his title in a republic such as ours. “Winnie” was not and it was wonderful to have Princess Pizzicato (someone of my own class) to reminisce with. But I needed more than just an old girl-friend to make my life complete.

  Lying sleeplessly in bed, I asked myself frankly: “Would darling Morris want to hold you forever?” The answer was No! I telephoned Letch Feeley that very night. The following morning I permitted Manny to inform the press that we wer
e engaged.

  Finally I was to know the glamour and the thrill of having a real church wedding with bridal attendants, ushers, pages, flower girls and all! I was even to be a June bride!

  There was quite a bit of red tape and confusion with most of the nicer churches in the Los Angeles area. None of them seemed big enough for the sort of wedding I wanted, anyhow. Therefore I planned my own church wedding and built my own church on the back “lot” of Metronome. It was a perfect copy of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, only somewhat enlarged for the guests and camera crew.

  I so wanted to have Baby-dear as my tiny maid of honor, but I decided that, to bring her all the way across the continent to be with her Mommy and then, right after the nuptial excitement, to have Mommy and her new “Daddy” dash off on an extended honeymoon, leaving her all alone in a strange environment, was psychologically unsound. “Better let sleeping dogs lie,” I told myself, and chose “Winnie” instead. After all, I had known “Winnie” much longer. For bridesmaids I selected the twenty-four loveliest brunettes under contract to Metronome and I even brought Baby Betsy Kerr back as flower girl, as I knew no children. For Letch I chose two dozen of our leading actors and as best man, jovial Carstairs Bagley.

  There was only one “fly in the amber”: Morris had been dead for only seven months and I was still in mourning. Although, as I said earlier, Morris did not approve of me in black, I had to think of how things would look to the eager outside world were I to be married, so soon after his passing, in white. I discussed the problem with Dudley du Pont, whose taste I have always found infallible, and he came up with the perfect solution. “Sweetie-pie,” he cried, “wouldn’t it be divine to bill you as the Black Widow! Send out black invitations engraved in white. You wear black with your bridesmaids in tones of gray (which will photograph much better). In that way no one could possibly criticize.” Clever Dudley! Describing this beautiful, beautiful event in Vanity Fair, my great friend and “booster,” Alexander Woollcott, said: “No one in his right mind could possibly describe Belle Poitrine’s taste as even ‘dubious.’ ” Dudley’s originality and sense of “rightness” had been vindicated. It was a glorious occasion. Our troth was solemnized by a sweet justice of the peace from Van Nuys whom the wardrobe department had costumed in authentic copies of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s robes (originally made for Stuart Harris in Oh Henry! ). The cathedral was “S.R.O.” as was the reception held in the exquisite gardens of Casa Torquemada. After cutting the mammoth black cake for my guests, I tiptoed upstairs to my virginal little bedroom where the newsreel “boys” took motion pictures of me changing into my black sequin going-away dress. Then, through a shower of wild rice, Letch and I dashed for our car and away, away, away!