Crowned Heads (3 page)

Barry took exception to another oft-reported “fact.” It was not the famous director Derougemont who gave her the name Fedora. She was known as Maria Fedorovnya when she worked for Improstein in Berlin, but it was she herself who thought up Fedora as a first name. Derougemont’s only part in the matter was to suggest that she drop Fedorovnya, which people had trouble both pronouncing and spelling, and find a better marquee name.

True, Barry said, that she went to St. Petersburg in her early teens, untrue that she began as an actress at the Bureinsky Theater there. She was engaged not as a player but as a “helper of wardrobe,” as such people were called, and with the Peterhof Company. It was with them that she made her stage debut.

Her German pictures, unfortunately, with the notable exception of her first,
Der Grimme Sensenmann,
have been lost or destroyed, but movie stills of the time show her as pudgy and sulky, with no more hint of the splendid creature she was to become than the caterpillar gives of the butterfly before spinning its cocoon. Improstein, who saw her at the Peterhof and encouraged her to come from Moscow to Berlin, said in his memoirs
*
that she was a docile cow, but one who gave sweet milk. She never, however, became one of that notorious stable of girls he maintained in the Tiergarten Allee—which was sportingly referred to as the “Augean Stables” because of both its ample size and the inability of the authorities to clean it out—but occupied quarters of her own choosing and financing while she undertook her first screen role, that of the barmaid in
Der Grimme Sensenmann,
released in America as
The Grim Reaper.

Barry showed Marion the photographs from this period, painstakingly assembled for the Tole biography, and she could easily trace the early emergence of the dainty butterfly from the stolid caterpillar. Fedora was no sylph, but little by little the fatty tissues disappeared, the eyes lost their puffiness, the mouth its rather ridiculous fruity shape. Improstein, presumably, had paid to have her teeth capped.

“If you check the early fan magazines,” Barry noted, “they say she’d met Vando by that time. He was working on his experiments at the Bagratian Clinic outside Moscow, and it’s possible he’d already had something to do with the physical alterations.”

“Did he operate on her eyes?”

“Come off it—of course he didn’t. That’s the kind of show-business gossip that always attaches itself to people like Fedora.”

The story of her next move, from Berlin to New York, was so at variance with reality that in talking about it Barry first reiterated the published “facts” and then told Marion the truth as he later had it from Fedora herself.

“Actually, all the biographies agree in this, but none is correct. Here’s the way they tell it. After the Armistice, Derougemont arrives in Germany from France and goes to a party at Improstein’s house, where
Zigeuner
is being screened. He sees the lovely Maria Fedorovnya, offers on the spot to buy her contract from Improstein, who agrees to sell it to him. If you read his memoirs, Improstein says he later considered it the rashest and most ill-advised act of his career. Despite the fact that through his movie earnings at UFA he was later able to help finance the Weimar Republic, he was at the moment in financial trouble and he actually did sell her contract; but not to Derougemont, who had never been to Berlin at that time, and who, by the way, was not even the Frenchman he claimed to be.”

“Maurice Derougemont wasn’t French? What was he?”

“Hold your horses—that comes in a minute. Back to the fan mags. With the agreement in writing, Derougemont goes whooping off into the street, buys a fur coat and a dozen roses, presents himself at Maria’s door, flashes an engraved card and a dentist’s smile, and lays the coat at her feet, the roses in her arms, and the contract in her hand. He tells her to be ready and packed on the morrow, he books passage, first class, but with discretion, mind you—the staterooms are on different decks. There follows a merry transatlantic whirl. La Fedorovnya is a sensation on the dance floor and a celebrated guest at the captain’s table. She arrives in New York harbor gazing starrily up at the Statue of Liberty and doing cheesecake poses for a mob of press and photographers against the mahogany rail of the
Hohenzollern—
same coat, same contract, new roses.

“She has a gay old time in Manhattan, including a trip to the zoo, where she wants to see ‘zee polar-r bear-r-rs—they remind me so uf home,’ then a nifty drawing room on the train and the trip to sunny Cal. Add more roses, more executives—the coat seems already to have been Hollanderized and gone to cold storage; no doubt the change in climate—and the script of
Zizi
is tucked into her little pink mitts. Buzz buzz buzz, and off to the studio for make-up and wardrobe tests and interviews, then into production, then to preview in Glendale, then to stardom, and there you have Fedora, born if not bred.”

“None of that is true?”

“A fiction from start to finish. Now I’ll tell you about Derougemont. Maurice Derougemont, you see, dear Marion, was not French at all, as he claimed to be, but American. He came from San Francisco and his name was Moe Roseman. When he met Fedora he was a two-bit shill in front of a burlesque theater in downtown Los Angeles. Sam Ueberroth, who later became Samuel L. Ueberroth, producer, was his sidekick, and with straw hats and snappy bow ties they hawked the charms of hula-skirted lovelies to be discovered inside. Moe was at that time seeing a good deal of Sam’s sister, Viola, who was a secretary at AyanBee, and it was through her that he first encountered Maria Fedorovnya. By the time Sam was making major films, Viola had attained a position of eminence as an important agent.”

Barry had known Viola for years, and though she was occasionally faulted for her sharp tongue, he had found her profoundly loyal to her friends. He had importuned her to talk to him about Fedora, and she had adamantly refused. She did, however, recall for him the precise details of her and Moe Roseman’s initial encounter with Fedora. It had been on a Sunday, and Vi had expressed the wish to go to the beach. She and Moe caught the Venice Short Line from downtown; the car was hot and smelly, and bore only three passengers: a young couple and Fedora. Fedora was crying, and feeling sorry for her, Viola moved beside her to discover what the matter was. She met with a stream of what sounded like gibberish, but Moe recognized it as Russian. He could speak a little and thus a line of communication was opened. During the trip they talked, and he learned that she was an actress who had come from Berlin, where Abe Bluhm of AyanBee studios had offered her a contract. It was Bluhm who bought her contract from Improstein, and he then had left Berlin for Vienna, telling Maria to get to New York on the next boat. Which she did, but hardly in the manner described earlier. She traveled third class on the
Kronprinzessin Carolina,
was terribly seasick, and arrived sans fur coat and sans roses, to be taken in tow by a member of AyanBee Pictures’ office staff, who checked her into a cheap midtown hotel, where he left her for two days. She spoke hardly any English and the city terrified her.

With the same paucity of fanfare, she was met in Pasadena by a man in a secondhand roadster, in which he drove her to a hotel—little more than a rooming house, really—on Melrose Avenue, and deposited her. A dapper fellow, the man wore a gray flannel suit and spats, which Fedora found odd, considering the hot weather. He also sported a gray felt hat with a natty silk band, the brim turned rakishly up on one side and down on the other. “What kind of hat do you call that?” she asked him in her broken English. “That?” he replied. “That’s a fedora. Why?” She shrugged and tilted her head critically to one side. “I like it,” she replied.

No one at the studio seemed to know who she was or what was to be done with her. She languished for endless weeks, picking up her salary check on Fridays with the secretaries and the grips, and believing she had made a dreadful mistake. She had never seen the Pacific Ocean and made up her mind one Sunday to go unaccompanied to the beach. On the train she was drowned in a wave of self-pity and homesickness. Enter Moe Roseman and Viola. His American tongue fumbled over the Russian syllables of her last name and he said, half kidding, that she ought to get another one. “I have,” she said. “What?” he asked. “Fedora,” she said. “Fedora’s a hat,” he said. “I know,” she said. “I want to he a high hat.”

So she had the name before she had anything else, except the face. Later, the “high hat” remark was misinterpreted as meaning that she wanted to be snooty, but at the time she meant only that she wanted to be important, famous. It did not take long, and both Moe Roseman and Viola Ueberroth were pivotally involved. Moe had been peddling a scenario around the studios, one which in fact Sam Ueberroth had written. It was titled
Zizi,
and since “Fedora” had been put under contract personally by Abe Bluhm, Moe thought he sniffed possibilities at AyanBee. He and Vi tricked Fedora out in a glamorous outfit, borrowed some furs, a large dog, and an important-looking car. Sam, in a chauffeur’s uniform, drove Moe and Fedora to AyanBee, where Viola had telephoned down to the gate to have them passed onto the lot; the pass read “Madame Fedora and Maurice Derougemont.” Bluhm was still in Europe, and his partner, one Jake Amsteen, was minding the store, though the right hand of Bluhm never let the left one of Amsteen know when it was washing, or what. Though he knew nothing of Fedora, Amsteen was impressed. Moe used the French boulevardier’s accent he later became famous for, Fedora was charming, Amsteen was conned. “Derougemont” encouraged the mogul to look over the
Zizi
scenario, and a month later the picture went into production, Fedora starring, Moe directing. When Bluhm returned from Europe he was furious, since none of these proceedings had been made known to him, but when the picture was played in test dates, everyone started asking who Fedora was. They shortly found out. The picture made some money and its star created public interest, receiving sufficiently good notices to be given the important role in
The Phantom Woman,
which was directed by Moe Roseman, now known professionally as Maurice Derougemont. Together they did a number of her early American films. She rose to stardom at the same time as Talmadge and Normand, she was vamping along with Theda Bara and Valeska Suratt, she played Thaïs soon after Betty Blythe did
Queen of Sheba,
which Fedora far outgrossed, she worked cheek by jowl with Swanson, she beat Norma Shearer into talkies by one year. Barry now showed Marion some interesting documented facts in the Tole book. Shearer was listed as being seventy-four when the book was published. Swanson was seventy-seven. Normand had died forty-six years before at thirty-one, Talmadge had retired twenty-seven years before at thirty-three. Fedora’s birth date in the available studio biographies was given as June 1895; the date had been verified in yesterday’s obituaries.
*

“Are you implying the date’s not correct?” Marion asked.

“I’m implying nothing, I’m merely stating so-called facts. What actress doesn’t lie about her age? But you have to remember, she was a patient of Vando’s. Now, here’s a little sidelight for you: I once heard some movie people talking about casting a part in a picture, that of an old courtesan. The name of Swanson came up; she would be perfect, they said—that brace of bared teeth, all those wrinkles…. A quiet voice from another corner, a woman friend of Swanson’s, said, ‘She hasn’t got them, you know.’ ‘Hasn’t got what?’ ‘Wrinkles.’ And she hasn’t; or damn few. It’s a remarkable quality about that face, and the tone of the flesh, that age hasn’t mangled it as it has so many other faces of equally famous but younger beauties. But if at seventy Swanson looked, say, fifty, what of Fedora, who at almost eighty looked forty!”

Barry asked Marion what she thought of this, and all she could do was shrug, hold out her empty glass for more wine, and tick off on her fingers the items that had been repeated for years. Vegetarian diet, organic foods, no drinking, lots of sleep. Swanson subscribed to this regimen to guarantee her own agelessness. Dolores Del Rio was said to have maintained her youthful looks by various means, all probably fictional: eating gardenia petals; having wax injections under her skin, which required her being strapped to the bed so she couldn’t move or roll over, which would have made her face lopsided; sleeping until four and keeping herself supine when possible; avoiding sun and other strong light. As for Fedora, there was the obvious vote for a series of face-lifts, but a woman can go only so far with the plastic surgeon before she looks embalmed. Then there were the other theories, resulting from her connection with Dr. Vando. Sheep semen, monkey prostates, the Swiss sleep cure. Vando, they said, for years smuggled her biannually into his Basel institute, where she would be put to sleep by injection for periods upward of a month and a half, and fed intravenously, after which she would arise from her bed newly rejuvenated, a rebirth of Venus. But how many rejuvenations over the decades would it have required for Fedora to maintain her agelessness?

Barry refilled Marion’s glass and then his own, carrying it to the window. The twilight had waned, the lights of the apartment beyond the garden wall had gone on, oblongs of orange in the gathering dusk. Barry held his glass up, squinting at the wine against the light. “Lovely color, this Vouvray.”

“Indeed.” Marion sipped, waiting; Barry was thinking again. She gave him a verbal nudge. “Was it at the Louvre that she told you she liked it?”

Barry nodded, and turned from the window. He switched on some lamps, then sat again. “Are you famished?”

“I’m getting there.”

“There’s a little French place around the corner—”

“Wait, wait. I want to hear about the Louvre first.”

“You have to understand about that meeting. It wasn’t anyone else’s Fedora then, just mine.”

“How d’you mean, ‘just’ yours?”

“I mean you don’t bump into Fedora every day; she doesn’t just appear and start talking to you—”

“Why did she talk to you?”

“Impulse, perhaps. Maybe she wanted to speak with an American—we were still popular in Paris after the war. She’d been cooped up in the Sobryanskis’ château for six years, she was tired of Switzerland—said they were trying to make her fat. But the way I saw her that day, she might have been just anybody. And the remarkable thing was I liked her, I really liked her. It was this way: