Crowned Heads (30 page)

Though Nellie Bannister had been an actress for more than fifty years, now, in her early seventies, she was almost retired, except for an occasional TV commercial; but she lived comfortably on her carefully planned annuities. She was sometimes inclined to go off the deep end in the matter of gifts—and was famous among her friends for an impulsive generosity. She always liked to look on the bright side of things, she never wanted to hear bad of people, and her loyalty was an oft-cited example of virtue among those who knew her. In her youth she had been considered a beauty; what traces remained she was not prepared to fuss over, not even for the sake of a TV commercial. Yet even with age her looks remained warm, inviting, grandmotherly, pleasing to behold.

When Nellie and Hilda got home it was Naomi’s turn for The Belle Telephone Hour. Naturally, both Phyllis and Naomi were excited to hear of the unexpected meeting with Bobbitt—excuse it—Robin Ransome. Where had he been hiding all these years? they wanted to know. Was he just another has-been? What did he look like? Hadn’t he been one of those spoiled movie brats you were always reading about? Sipping her martini while Naomi passed the Ritz crackers and Liederkranz, Nellie said nothing could be farther from the truth. Generally it took a mother to spoil a child, but Robin’s mother, Lady Ransome, had never even come to Hollywood. As for the has-been business, like most child stars, Bobbitt had merely grown up and gone on to other things. He harbored no yearning for movies, he wasn’t one of those who, once having got out of the business, was always hanging around the fringes, trying to get back in. Bobbitt wasn’t interested in being rediscovered; he had other fish to fry.

Between them the girls recalled all the movies:
Bobbitt, Bobbitt and Alfie, Bobbitt’s Flying Carpet, Bobbitt and the Magic Castle, Bobbitt and Missy Priss, Bobbitt Royal, Bobbitt in the Enchanted Forest, Bobbitt Over the Moon, Bobbitt’s Lucky Day,
and
Bobbitt Forever.
Ten in all. Oh, said Naomi, aren’t we forgetting
Bobbitt in Love
? Such a bomb; and there went Bobbitt’s career down the drain. Nellie passed the Ritz crackers, conceding that the picture had not been good, but then it was not taken from the Bobbitt books, they’d made the story up in an effort to bolster Bobby’s career, but by that time his Adam’s apple had dropped and besides, everybody knew how fickle audiences could be.

And what, continued Naomi, sucking the pimento from her olive, about that dreadful Aunt Moira; a woman like that was bound to influence a child’s psyche, and not for the better. And nightmares … Naomi remembered Hedda Hopper or was it Louella Parsons saying—

Oh, bother what Louella or Hedda had said, Nellie protested mildly. It was true that as a child Bobby had been prone to nightmares; he had been put into the hands of a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, who determined that his troubled dreams were caused by the purely imaginative flights of fancy engendered by the world he lived in. The doctor had deemed them no cause for alarm, but it became essential that the books he read and the movies and television he watched be carefully monitored. But after all, Bobby Ransome had not grown up as Mrs. Jones’s boy or Mrs. Smith’s; he had lived the celebrated life of a miniaturized adult in the fantasy land that money and fame had provided him with.

God had somehow endowed him with those qualities adults look for in their children: looks, graceful manners, a bright, inquiring mind, plus the supreme talent merely to be himself before the camera. Even Louella had pointed out that the reason he made such a marvelous Bobbitt was that he was able to lose himself in that purely imaginative world Bobbitt inhabited, for it was not to see him in the real world that audiences packed the theaters, but in the fantasy one that lay beyond the real.

It was true, Hilda spoke up; people had wanted to forget their troubles just as much in the fifties as they had in the thirties or forties, and the notion of Bobbitt flying around on a living room rug was not as juvenile as it might have appeared; everyone wanted to go somewhere, if only to Baghdad in a movie.

The whole thing had been an accident anyway, Nellie said. Master Bobby Ransome’s career had begun at the tender age of ten, when Viola Ueberroth accidentally came across him in a Dublin tea shop. Here was this little Irish lad sitting with his aunt, whom he was visiting from Galway, where he lived. It was a chilly afternoon and together they were having a “cuppa” the national beverage. The boy was bundled up so only his face peeked out from under his cap and muffler, but it was a remarkable face, or so thought a chance visitor to the tea shop, she having a “cuppa” herself. Viola, having noted the boy, had been suddenly inspired by an idea—her sudden “ideas” having made her the important person she was. In his expression, his demeanor, his bright, cheery looks, and more particularly his angelic expression, in all this was something that struck Miss Ueberroth so strongly that she was compelled to make herself known to the boy and his aunt, and to inquire if there might be any possibility that he could play a little part in a movie.

That was how it began. Removing the cap and muffler from around the boy’s face, Viola was delighted to discover that he was even more beautiful; he had the enchanting looks one finds in some of Gainsborough’s work, and it was with this impression that she hurried to London, where she was to meet her brother, Samuel, then engaged in casting a film. Bobby Ransome was brought to London, Samuel concurred in his sister’s opinion, and the boy was given a screen test, then whisked away to Rome, where he was handed some pages with lines to learn and quickly put in front of a camera in a movie that, as it happened, starred the eminent actor William Marsh, and Sam Ueberroth’s girlfriend Lorna Doone, and in a cameo role, the once-great Fedora. Bobby proved himself an adorably natural performer, easily able to hold his own in scenes with the older, more professional actors, and when
The Miracle of Santa Cristi
was released, Master Ransome came in for a large share of attention and critical acclaim.

His appearance in the movie, however, had been managed only with difficulty and through the persuasive powers of both Ueberroths. Studio publicity provided the information that Lady Ransome, of the old Irish peerage, whose antecedents went far back into the pages of Irish history, did not want her child being a “picture player.” The mother herself not being present on the set, the task of looking after Bobby fell to the father’s sister, Aunt Moira, and through all the havoc of the celebrity that was to follow, Aunt Moira kept strict watch over her charge. She had been the object of considerable speculation during the shooting of the film, a thin, obscurely driven spinster who stood beside the camera, watching Bobby’s every move and gesture, nodding or shaking her head, depending on the quality of his performance.

Nobody knew exactly why his aunt rather than his mother was looking after the child, except that Lady Ransome had to see to the running of a large estate—the father was in banking, and one day Bobby himself would succeed to the peerage. Both Louella and Hedda twanged away at this fact as if it were the only string to their harps, while Walter Winchell’s column noted a barrage of dukes, earls, and viscounts, all friends of the Ransomes, who were well connected in London court circles.

His career might have ended after one film, except that Viola Ueberroth had another “idea.” This was that Bobby should play Bobbitt, and she went and told Papa Baer just that. Emil Baer—or “Papa,” as he was called—had been persuaded by his wife, Heidi—his “Mama” Baer—to invest what little capital they had saved in buying the rights to the Bobbitt books, which, though they were not known in America, were extremely popular in England. Until Viola approached him, Emil Baer had been turning out cartoon musical shorts featuring puppets animated in stop action. Baer Comix was located in small quarters near the old Monogram lot in Hollywood, and Papa Baer was far from successful. His dream was one day to make a full-length puppet feature with one of the Bobbitt stories, but it was Viola’s notion that instead of puppets he use live actors, and to this end she brought Bobby Ransome to Mr. Baer’s attention. Since brother Sam had, at Viola’s suggestion, put the boy under personal contract, and could also lend a hand with the financing, it was proposed that the movie could at last be made.

The Bobbitt books told of a London wartime waif discovered in a bombed-out ruin by a warden during an air raid. It became a famous introduction: the child stumbling from the blitzed ruins after the Luftwaffe has flown over, innocently asking, “’Oo put out th’ lights?” He strikes a match, and in its glow, surrounded by a total wartime blackout, is Bobbitt’s face, the winsome, heart-tugging face that was to become known to millions. His parents having been killed in the raid, the child is taken in by the kindly and rich Lord Wickham and his family, and brought up under the tutelage of the butler, Alfie, and the nanny, Missy Priss—Willie Marsh and Nellie Bannister respectively. “Popping up out of thin air,” and accompanied by his friends, Bobbitt experiences all sorts of magical adventures—flying on an Oriental carpet to Baghdad, discovering a treasure in an enchanted forest, jousting with a knight at Camelot—after which adventures all three are restored safely to the Wickham manor in East Devon. The rest of the casting was seen to perfectly: Cathleen Nesbitt played the grandmother, Mary Astor Lady Wickham, Reggie Gardiner Lord Wickham, Angela Lansbury the upstairs maid, Gladys Cooper the aunt, and Richard Haydn the eccentric uncle who invents the contraptions that whirl Bobbitt from place to place. Since it was discovered that Bobby Ransome had musical talents as well, each picture featured several numbers, many of which made history—“Lotsa Pluck,” “Gonna Dance Off Both My Feet,” “Ditto,” “Hokum and Bunkum and Bluff,” “Really Truly True,” and “For Old Times’ Sake.”

The first, modestly budgeted picture earned back its cost in the first week of play dates, and theater owners began clamoring for the “little tyke” to make personal appearances. The box-office child-star tradition had already been established: Jackie Coogan in
The Kid,
Jackie Cooper in
The Champ,
then Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, Deanna Durbin, Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney, and now the country had a new star, Bobby Ransome.

While plans were rushed for the second Bobbitt story, the flesh-and-blood version was sent on a whirlwind cross-country tour, making stage appearances. Nothing like him had been seen, it was said, since the child prodigy Mozart played at Versailles. In blue serge shorts and an Eton collar, with his dimpled knees and mop of blond curly hair, with his great big Bobbitt smile, he ran out on stage and proved a phenomenon, wrestling with the too-tall microphone, joking with the audience, and in no time he had them all in his hip pocket. He played piano and accordion, he sang the songs and did the dance routines from the picture, he walked on his hands, did imitations of William Marsh as Alfie, of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, of Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, of Eddie Fisher and Johnny Ray, and when he finished with an impression of Charles Laughton reading the Twenty-third Psalm there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

And that, more or less, was how Bobby Ransome, the little lad from Ireland, became a prince of Hollywood; known as “America’s Fantasy Child,” he was the most angelic, best behaved, most loving child imaginable. In the glare of enormous publicity he became the hero of children all over the world. Now he was “The World’s Fantasy Child.” People seldom called him “Bobby,” for always he was “Bobbitt,” or sometimes “The Gainsborough Boy,” as Viola had dubbed him after their first meeting in the tea shop. A craze began that swept Davy Crockett from popularity, replacing his coonskin hats on youngsters’ heads with the little Bobbitt cricketer hats, while their elders sported Alfie’s striped butler vests on campus. Two new catch phrases entered the language. In the midst of his wonderful adventures Bobbitt was always asking, “But is it really truly true?” and was assured that it was. The line caught on; everyone imitated Bobby’s engaging speech defect, and at cocktail parties they said, “But is it weelly twooly twoo?” In
Bobbitt and Missy Priss,
the nanny scooped him up for a hug and said, “Bobbitt, I love you.” Said he, gazing out of those saucerlike eyes, “Ditto.” They wrote a song, “Ditto,” which Bobbitt and Missy Priss sang together; it climbed the Lucky Strike
Hit Parade
in weeks and remained there so long that Dorothy Collins and Snooky Lanson were hard pressed to find new ways of presenting it. With the release of the third film,
Bobbitt’s Flying Carpet,
Bobbitt had become Big Business. Gone was Baer Comix, and Baer Productions was now flourishing in a more elite location in Panorama City, with the happy cognomen of Shady Lane Studios. It was a new, CinemaScoped, stereophonicked Bobbitt, and Bobby Ransome’s smile grew as wide as the screen itself. Everything, in fact, Louella and Hedda grew more saccharine, the public grew more eager, Bobby’s fans more fanatical, Samuel Ueberroth more important, William Marsh more famous, Bee Marsh more ecstatic, and, most terrifying, little Bobby just grew.

What, Papa Baer was heard to wonder, would happen when his voice changed? No one dared answer, no one dared think. “Please don’t let Bobbitt grow up” was a plea that became a prayer. Bobbitt was not an adolescent, he was a child, with a child’s heart and mind and imagination, and everything possible was done, every sort of chicanery practiced, to keep him that child. His hair was left long and boyishly curly, he was made to wear the Eton collar he had made famous, the little velvet suits and patent leather shoes that were his trademark, and he lived in the fantasy land he had been catapulted into, in a castlelike house that was every child’s dream palace.

Pictures of Bobbitt were everywhere. His face was on all the movie-magazine covers, his image on everything from balloons to T-shirts. There were Bobbitt dolls, with Bobbitt costumes—fireman, policeman, cowboy, marine, knight in armor, regimental guard—there were Bobbitt plates and mugs and breakfast bowls. There were Bobbitt lamps, Bobbitt boats, Bobbitt planes, Bobbitt trains, and “Bobbittmobiles.” There were Bobbitt flying carpets, Bobbitt tops, Bobbitt phonographs. There was a Bobbitt dollhouse. There were Bobbitt comic books, sweatshirts, blue jeans, sneakers. There were Bobbitt camping outfits, Bobbitt sailing outfits, Bobbitt race car outfits, all with the “official seal” of Shady Lane Studios.