Little Me Page 18

  It was farewell, house of sorrow! Farewell, “pesky” old studio! I was a new little bride going off on a twelve-month honeymoon around the world with a real, live prince charming. I was Mrs. Letch Feeley!

  The “Black Bride”

  “Chums”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A BEL AIR HOUSE WIFE

  1934–1940

  Our honeymoon • A difficult period of adjustment • Homecoming • Unhappy memories

  A new beginning: Château Belletch, show place of Bel Air • Trouble at the studio • I declare the

  income tax unconstitutional • F.D.R. and little me • Litigation • The critics turn against me • My enemies

  at work • Financial worries • Trouble at home • Letch’s coolness • Letch seeks “greener pastures”

  The Belletch Baby Starlets • Enter Mlle. “Tootsie” la Touche • Jealousy • The glorious yacht

  Belle de Mer • Tragedy strikes at sea! • Widowed again • Bereft, bankrupt, beleaguered

  IN LOOKING BACK OVER the turbulent years of my life I can now see, with the “wisdom of hindsight,” that the turning point came when I allowed Letch Feeley to “rush” me into what was to be the longest, but the unhappiest, of all my marriages.

  Oh, I felt that I was ecstatic at the time, that this was a true mating of beautiful bodies, pure souls and keen intellects. When I think of how our marriage must have looked to the average reader of “fan” magazines—the shopgirl, the typist, the farmhand, the shipping clerk; all of the Little People who worshipped the image of me—I can see a match of the sort on which dreams were made. And, pray, why not? I was at the peak of my popularity. I had youth, beauty, wealth, influence, power and fame. And I had just wed a “celluloid god”—the movie hero and matinée idol whose very name was a synonym for wit, charm, looks and virility. Letch and I had everything, or so it would seem. And so it did seem, for a time, to little me.

  As with all people in the “public eye,” there were naturally malicious, “back-biting” stories circulated about Letch and me by my enemies. They said, for example, that I was “old enough to be his mother.” This, of course, is the sheerest nonsense! Although there were a few years’ difference in our ages, the “gap” was in no way noteworthy. Letch was twenty-two at the time I married him—a mature, intelligent, well “set-up” young man who looked older than his years. I was but a tiny bit his senior. So much for that. Other gossipmongers spread stories, unflattering to both of us, to the effect that Letch married me for my money. That is too ridiculous. At the time of our wedding Letch was receiving slightly more than a quarter of a million dollars annually from the studio, plus a bonus of one hundred thousand for each picture he made with me. (He was cast in no others.) In those happy days, before the Government of the United States was seized by radicals, Socialists, Communists, “brain trusters” and other “riffraff,” that amount was perfectly adequate for a young bachelor with simple tastes and no responsibilities. (As a wedding gift, I tore up Letch’s old contract and wrote a new one, increasing his income to a point where he wouldn’t—couldn’t—feel like a “kept” man.) Ours was purely a “love match,” but trouble soon started to brew, although in my bridal happiness, my golden hopes for a perfect future, I was perhaps unwilling to recognize it.

  I believe my first inkling that Letch was not the most attentive of husbands occurred on the verdant campus of Radclyffe Hall in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania when, as a bride of two days, I took Letch to call on Baby-dear. Like any normal mother, I wanted to see my little girl, wanted her to meet her new father and wanted to explain to her why it would be impossible to have her spend her holidays at home, as Letch and I were bound for Europe and our honeymoon. I was cut to the quick when Baby-dear did not even recognize her own Mommy! But the worst was yet to come! The interview was not going well. Vivacious and interesting as I tried to be, there were long silences, embarrassing lulls in the conversation. When I turned to ask Letch if he did not agree that Baby-dear’s hair should be slightly lightened, I saw to my dismay that his gaze was riveted on a group of older girls playing baseball in their brief “gym” suits. “Letch,” I said more volubly, “I am speaking to you!”

  “Huh?” Letch replied absently. “Excuse me. I gotta see a man abouta dog.” He wandered off and was not seen again for hours until he happened to be discovered in the Upper School dormitories! Can you imagine the shame I felt for my child and myself? We had a frightful “set-to” in the Philadelphia Ritz that night, during which Letch destroyed several thousand dollars’ worth of Louis XVI furniture.

  In New York I “made up” with Letch by taking him to Abercrombie & Fitch and equipping him completely for all of his favorite outdoor sports. As he had never been to the “big city” before, I planned to show New York to him (and vice versa) with trips to the Metropolitan Museum, the Cloisters, the Statue of Liberty and so on. However, my husband’s idea of culture in Manhattan began with the dinner show at the Casino de Paree and ended with the two o’clock floor show at the Paradise. Such refined favorites of mine as Armando’s, the Central Park Casino, and the Coq Rouge bored Mr. Feeley. But he couldn’t get enough of the unclad girls at the Palais Royal, the Hollywood, the Nudist Bar or similar vulgar places of “entertainment.” It was a relief to board the Normandie and sail for France.

  But, if anything, Paris was worse than New York. Letch cared nothing for the Louvre, the Opéra, the Comédie-Française, not while he had the Folies-Bergère, the Lido, the Moulin Rouge and heaven knows what other sordid spectacles, on either bank, to see. It got so that I dreaded to visit Alix, Vionnet and others hautes couturières for fear of what I might, or might not, find in our suite at the Meurice upon my return. We lingered in Paris long enough for me to choose from the fall collections. But when I became restive, Letch showed no desire to move on. The blow fell on Letch’s twenty-third birthday (October 20, 1934) when, as a special treat, I took him to the opening night of Offenbach’s lovely operetta, La Créole, starring my great favorite and the toast of Paris, Josephine Baker. Letch had been drinking quite heavily at Harry’s Bar (“Just tell the driver ‘Sank roo do noo.’ ” That was, unfortunately, all the French my husband spoke!) and dozed stertorously in his seat during most of the first act. I suppose he had expected a great star like Mlle. Baker to appear wearing nothing but a bunch of bananas. However, when he “came to,” there she was on stage, wearing a sedate crinoline and singing in her own true soprano. Letch stood bolt upright. “What the hell is this,” he shouted, “Africa Speaks? I can hear all the coon-shouters I want back home!” A riot was narrowly averted. We left Paris the next day.

  Thus it went all over the world—a troop of girl bellringers in Zurich, a flamenco dancer in Seville, a female impersonator in Munich (that was a good joke on Mr. Feeley! Ha-ha!), a “belly” dancer in Cairo, a lady bath attendant in Tokyo. I sensed that Letch—a poor boy used to none of my advantages— would be better off at home, with a busy schedule of screen commitments to keep him out of “mischief.”

  Alone with me, Letch could be the dearest, sweetest, tenderest, most affectionate husband any girl could ask. But “turned loose” in the outside world, he just wasn’t big enough to withstand the many temptations offered there. No question about it, “all play and no work made Letch a bad boy.” I heaved a sigh as our taxi halted under the Moorish porte cochère of Casa Torquemada in the summer of 1935.

  I was eager to resume my film career and even more anxious to find good rôles to keep my new husband occupied. Although he said he was in no hurry to return to the “lot,” I told Endive Kissner to lose no time in “lining up” an impressive array of films for the two of us to do together. What a pity that only one of us was a dedicated performer! Had Letch cared less about “loafing,” drinking and sailing we might, today, have been like the Lunts. As it was, Letch wandered off on his own every afternoon (while I was busily running Metronome) and many evenings as well.

  Although Elisabeth Bergner and Marlene Dietr
ich had recently made abortive attempts at portraying the rôle, I was most interested in doing a biographical film on Catherine of Russia, with Letch as Potëmkin. After all, as Momma said saltily, what could a couple of krauts know about a Russian empress? Letch said he didn’t want to get mixed up with a lot of Bolsheviks, but I gave orders to the studio to proceed at once.

  As we still were not ready to “shoot” by December, I wrote to Baby-dear’s school, with joy in my heart, asking to have my little precious sent home for Christmas. The holiday was a disaster. Letch met Baby-dear at the station. When she got to Casa Torquemada, she was quite sick and had to be put to bed. Mumps was the doctor’s diagnosis! Letch came down with it three weeks later! And, if I do seem overly loyal to my own sex, I must say that my fiveyear-old daughter was a much more grown-up patient than my husband, although perhaps it is true that she suffered far less severely. To avoid contagion, I took a suite at the Beverly-Wilshire. Unfortunately, having mumps in common did little to strengthen the bond between Letch and Baby-dear. I was heartsick, but I realized that it was better for her to be back at school with people of her own age and mentality. She and Letch just didn’t “hit it off.”

  Nor was Baby-dear the only reminder of Morris Buchsbaum that made Letch nervous and “moody.” He seemed to resent the whole house where I had lived as another man’s wife. At least he was in it as rarely as possible.

  Hoping to please him and give him something that was “all his,” I searched quietly around the Los Angeles area for a place where Letch might feel more at home. It was through Momma that I stumbled on just the right thing. Among Morris’ personal papers was a mortgage to a most imposing French château in Bel Air, the exquisite home of a retired French inventor and his wife. M. Outré was now dead and his widow, owing to imprudent investments, penniless. Realizing that I was doing the poor old soul a favor by ridding her of a piece of real estate so costly to maintain, I quietly foreclosed and

  offered her a very generous price for her furniture—all of which was very old. Naturally, as the French will, she haggled a great deal but, in the end, took my check and returned to France. (Without one word of gratitude, need I say?)

  It was a terrible wrench to have to part with dear old Casa Torquemada, but Spanish was going out and I was able to get a fair offer for the house and grounds from a psychiatrist who wanted to establish an exclusive rest home in a quiet, residential neighborhood.

  After renaming the new place Château Belletch and holding a two-week housewarming, I settled down and hoped that Letch would, too. But an unexpected turn of events at the studio occupied so much of my attention that I had little thought to devote to Letch Feeley. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal had absolutely moved into Metronome Studios!

  Needless to say, I was furious at this unparalleled intrusion upon free enterprise. How dared they demand to “snoop” in private financial records, disbursements, confidential contracts and agreements? “It is as though,” I said on the historic three-hour, coast-to-coast radio broadcast which I bought (following Father Coughlin and pre-empting the Eddie Cantor, Manhattan Merry-go-round and Major Bowes shows), “that Man in the White House, like some despot of yore, insisted on reading my diary, raiding my larder and ransacking my lingerie! ” My impassioned plea for civil rights created a landslide of correspondence, and one sponsor even asked me to consider replacing the Eddie Cantor comedy hour on a permanent basis. But what quarter could a poor defenseless woman expect from a dictator who would even make so bold as to close all of the banks in our great nation? The savage barbarian hordes of red Russian Communism descended on the Athens that was mighty Metronome, sacking and despoiling with their Bolshevistic battle cry of “Soak the rich!” After an unspeakable siege, lasting the better part of two months, it was announced that the studio “owed” the government a tax debt in excess of eight million dollars while I, who had always remained aloof from such iniquitous practices as paying taxes on the salary I had earned and the little I legally inherited as Morris’ helpless relict, was “stung” with a personal bill of such astronomical proportions as to “wipe out” all but a fraction of my poor, hard-come-by savings. I was also publicly reprimanded, dragged through the mud by the radical press and made a figure of fun by such leftist publications as The New Republic, The New Yorker, Time and the Christian Science Monitor.

  It was then that I availed myself of the rights of a citizen and declared the income tax unconstitutional. The litigation was costly and seemingly endless. I fought like a tigress but by the time I appealed my case to the Supreme Court (1937), Mr. Roosevelt and his “henchmen” had done their “dirty work” all too well, even going so far as to attempt to “pack” the highest tribunal in the land in order to defeat little me. Presidential coercion had succeeded not only in poisoning the courtiers, “toadies” and sycophants of the “bench” against me, but it had been so far-reaching as to discourage any lawyer in the nation from representing me! I was ready, like Portia, to present my own brief. But the Supreme Court wouldn’t even hear my case! My plea was unanimously voted down and “thrown out.” Again, my name was on all the front pages. I was, it seemed, persona non grata in every quarter, but not entirely without a staunch following of noted political thinkers and students of jurisprudence. As Charles Evans Hughes said, “Miss Poitrine’s limitations as an actress are exceeded only by her logic as a litigant.” Albert Einstein was quoted as saying: “The workings of the woman’s mind amaze me.” Henry Ford spoke of me as “utterly astounding.” Heywood Broun wrote: “Belle Poitrine is the most original thinker since Caligula,” and even F.D.R. had to concede that “if the rest of this nation showed the foresight and patriotism of Miss Poitrine, America would rapidly resemble ancient Babylon and Nineveh.”

  Not only were the court costs prohibitive, but I was subjected to crippling fines, in addition to usurious interest on the unpaid “debts” which the governmen claimed that Metronome and I owed—a severe financial blow. Nor, as Manny said, had the notoriety done my career “any good.” My enemies were only too anxious to level against me such charges as “reactionary,” “robber baroness,” and even “traitor”! Traitor indeed! I point now with pride to the fact that, long ere the Committee on Un-American Activities, the Minute Women, the Economic Council and other such notable “watchdog” organizations were so much as heard of, I was Hollywood’s leading bulwark against Communism, fighting single-handedly “creeping socialism” against such insuperable odds as the Fascio-Communist troops of the NRA, PWA, WPA, CCC and an army of more than twenty-two million mercenaries whom F.D.R. employed secretly, through the transparent ruse of regular “relief” checks.

  Needless to say, my art suffered drastically during this turbulent period. Could it do otherwise? Even though I have always had a genius for “throwing myself” into every rôle and “playing it for all it’s worth,” no actress can be expected to do her best work when her fortune, her reputation, her livelihood, her home and her nation itself are all imperilled. Such sweeping distractions are hardly conducive to “Oscar”-winning performances. I tried my hardest, with little help, may I say, from my husband and leading man, but somehow the outside pressures were too severe.

  Having (through my unflagging effort and devotion) achieved stardom, a fortune and a world-renowned wife at an age when most young men are casting their first vote, Letch proceeded to neglect them all. Never a “quick study,” he now made no attempt to learn his “lines” and many a mile of film was wasted, many a scene—sometimes involving as many as a thousand fellow thespians—was taken thirty, forty, fifty times because Miss Poitrine’s co-star and “helpmate” had never learned his part. Each time Letch “went up” in his “lines,” I was the one to be patient, helpful and apologetic while he indulged in outbursts of temperament, profanity and abuse, blaming others, going into “sulks” and, on more occasions than I care to count, storming off the “set” for the rest of the day. As for his finances, I was never privileged to know exactly how much money Letc
h had “salted away.” It was I who paid for our little home, the food, the liquor, the servants—even Letch’s bills at his tailor and the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Never once did he buy me a single gift, and for our third anniversary he gave me a dislocated jaw. (But that is another story.) As for his private monies, they were rapidly dissipated in drinking, gaming and carousing. More than once I was confronted by professional gamblers, “bookies,” loan “sharks,” gangsters, “thugs” and “finger men”—people of a class I did not even know existed—to repay my husband’s staggering losses, “or else . . .” I shuddered to think that someone so dear to me could even associate with such a sinister milieu. And at three different times during our turbulent marriage strange girls, with the commonest of accents, telephoned to announce to me that Letch had sired their unborn children! Having the deepest of maternal instincts, my heart fairly bled when I thought of the darling pink and white “bundles from heaven” I would have proudly given my husband. “Ah, you’re too old” was invariably his ungallant and untrue retort whenever I suggested “starting a family.” Letch had made it abundantly clear that he did not care for the company of my own precious daughter. I now felt it wiser to keep Baby-dear in school and—during the summers—at a camp run by the Society of Friends all year around. Her presence only made Letch more distant and irritable and, in the hurry of buying Château Belletch, I had neglected to consider a room for Baby-dear, so there was no place to put her, anyhow. (I sometimes feel that God, in His infinite wisdom, wants us to have these inexplicable little lapses of memory. It almost always works out for the best.)