Hollywood (29 page)

“Don’t do that,” he admonished. “There’s enough talk about me now.”

“But most of that talk,” I said, “you’re responsible for yourself.”

“Is that so?” he asked, bristling.

“Like that crack of yours to McCarey on the
Ruggles of Red Gap
set.”

He smiled his sweet smile and confessed, “I couldn’t resist it.”

During the shooting of
Ruggles of Red Gap
, Leo McCarey, anxious to finish a scene one night, insisted on working overtime. Some time after eight-thirty, still shooting, he stopped a take and said to Laughton, “
Jesus
, Charles, do you
have
to be so nancy?”

And Laughton replied, “But, my dear fellow, after eight o’clock a bit of it is
bound
to show!”

Success is hard to handle, but failure is harder. Some years after our work together, Laughton’s star began to fade. The offers came in less frequently. The public was apparently tiring of him. He began to play supporting parts. They became smaller and smaller.

It is difficult to be good in a bad part. I remember going to the Radio City Music Hall with Bob Sherwood to see a Deanna Durbin picture in which Charles played a
supporting part. It was called
It Started With Eve
. Toward the end of the picture, Laughton had a long, sappy death scene. He did his best but, just before he dies, it was given to him to say, “I’m—so—so—
happy
!” At which point, Bob leaned over to me and whispered, “For ‘
happy
,’ read ‘
hammy
.’”

Many years after we had worked together, I was at a dinner party at the Samuel Goldwyns’. Laughton was seated on Mrs. Goldwyn’s right. I was on her left. We were facing each other across the table.

Billy Wilder’s delicious comedy
Some Like It Hot
was going to be screened by the Goldwyns and we were all looking forward to it. The picture had been shot at the Goldwyn studios, so Mrs. Goldwyn knew a great deal about the day-to-day problems that had been encountered, especially those involving Marilyn Monroe.

“Sam has solved just about every problem that the motion-picture business ever presented,” she said, “but the one he never
has
been able to solve, and I don’t suppose anyone ever has, or will, is what to do with difficult, sometimes impossible actors or actresses. I mean to say, it’s so hard because once you’re into the picture, then they’ve got you. What can you do?”

Two drinks before dinner and a glass of wine had affected me and I heard the pompous side of me take off.

“Well, Frances,” I said. “You must be alert to the situation at the very beginning. When you start a picture and it turns out that you have someone in it that’s difficult, I don’t care who it is, or how that difficulty manifests itself, when you recognize it, the thing to do is to take a stand immediately. Take charge. Never lose control, not for a moment. Let them know that either they’re going to do what they’re supposed to do, or else get rid of them at once. That’s the only way.”

Charles looked up from his soup and said, “Why
didn’t
you?”

When films dried up for him, he created a remarkable one-man show of readings. As always, he was nervous and uncertain, and before embarking on this project, called my wife, his longtime friend, and asked if he could come out to the country, where we were then living, to do something for us. It turned out to be the one-man show he was planning.

After dinner, he stood up in the parlor and read for two hours. It was wonderful. The Bible. Shakespeare. Mark Twain. Edgar Allan Poe. Rudyard Kipling. E.B. White.

Still later, he was to organize the First Drama Quartet with himself, Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke, and Agnes Moorehead, for a staged reading of Shaw’s
Don Juan in
Hell
that became a Broadway triumph.

Back in California, he formed an acting group that met three or four times a week in the basement of his house on Curson Avenue to read and rehearse scenes from classical repertory. He became a teacher, a coach. Later, a director.

He invited us to see a production of
The Cherry Orchard
in a tiny hall on the outskirts of Hollywood. He had assembled a company of unemployed and unemployable players, convinced Eugenie Leontovitch to play Madame Ranevskaya. He cast himself in the supporting part of Gaev, her brother, and directed the whole company as though he and they were truly Russian. It is a play I go to see performed at every opportunity, but I
have never seen its quality as fully realized as in Laughton’s production, not even by the Moscow Art Theatre.

Toward the end of his life, Laughton effected something of a comeback as a screen actor, appearing in
Salomé
,
Young Bess
,
Hobson’s Choice
,
Witness for the
Prosecution
, and others. Billy Wilder admired him and was planning to build up the part of the bartender, Moustache, in
Irma La Douce
for him, but Laughton fell ill. Billy knew the situation but pretended that all was going forward as planned. He conferred constantly with Laughton, sent him various versions of the script, and kept hope alive until Laughton succumbed to cancer.

I called on him a few weeks before his death. He was in New York at the St. Moritz Hotel. He had asked for rooms overlooking Central Park. He was a great lover of nature, of birds and animals and flowers, and was able, his wife told me, to sit looking out of the window at the park for hours on end.

He seemed to be wasting away before my eyes that day but he talked cheerfully enough, and joked. He recalled grand days in London with my wife, when she had gone there to the old Vic, to play Margery Pinchwife in
The Country Wife
, and the Laughtons had acted as her guardians.

As we sat there in the fading light that late afternoon, pretending that the tea-bag tea was good and that the cookies were scones, I could not help but reflect upon the long and active and unique creative life this man had lived. I could scarcely find in that wan, translucent, bony figure on the bed the face of the fellow with whom I had worked. Only his blazing eyes seemed alive.

I thought of the fat boy from Scarborough, helping out after school in his father’s small hotel, then being sent down as an apprentice to Claridge’s, in London. He was put on as an assistant night clerk but did not last long. The guests complained. He did his work well enough, was courteous and polite, but they found that he
looked
too alarming. The management put him into several other jobs and finally had to sack him.

In London, he had been smitten by the theatre bug. He went to the theatre whenever he could. He began to read theatrical publications, books, and plays. He dreamed of going on the stage, unlikely as that prospect seemed. Somehow, he got into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. World War I. He went into the Army, and was a good soldier. Constantly attempting to improve himself, he used his service in France to learn the French language, which he continued to use and to improve for the rest of his life.

After the war, he returned and finished his courses at the Royal Academy, where he was most impressive in his graduation parts. After an inauspicious debut in
The
Government Inspector
, he got a job in an Edgar Wallace play called
A Man with Red
Hair
in which he made a success. He then went into Sean O’Casey’s
The Silver Tassie
. After that, he was an actor in demand.

I thought of his great parts.
The Devil and the Deep
.
Payment Deferred
. Of his unforgettable classic bit in
If I Had a Million
, where he blew the most celebrated raspberry ever.
The Private Life of Henry VIII
.
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
,
Ruggles
of Red Gap
,
Les Misérables
,
Mutiny on the Bounty
, one after the other.
Rembrandt
,
The
Hunchback of Notre Dame
.
The Paradine Case
. On and on.

Now it was ending, but there was no reason for sadness. Here was a man fulfilled. Here was someone who had beaten the odds. Martha Graham has said, “The unique must be fulfilled.” Charles Laughton was an example of this precept.

And, I thought, he will soon be dead. And how much longer for me?

What matters, then? The life he lived, the work he did. Film actors or directors leave something tangible in the way of a legacy. There they are, those films, to be run and rerun for whatever turns out to be forever. This is what matters to the living.

All our quarrels and bitterness, our clashes and spat words fall away to nothing, not even dignified by memory.

What matters, I thought, watching the fine actor as he lay dying, is what he did while he was doing it (to him), and what he has left behind as a record of his work (to us).

I wanted to ask his forgiveness, but he was too tired.

Every movie star is a leading character in a fairy tale. Once upon a time (July 16, 1911, in Independence, Missouri), a little girl was born. She was christened Virginia Katherine McMath. While she was still young, her mother and father were divorced. Her mother resumed her maiden name, Lela Rogers, and took little Virginia to Hollywood. Lela tried without success to break into the movie business as a scenario writer. Virginia, aged six, was offered an acting contract. Her mother turned it down.

They moved to Texas. Lela went to work for
The Fort Worth Star
as a reporter, later became its theatre critic. Virginia Katherine began to dance, sing, mimic, and act on the local amateur show-business scene. Before long, her first professional engagement materialized. She was signed as a substitute dancer for Eddie Foy, who was touring his act.

The Charleston struck, a dance craze such as had never before been known. The vitality of the dance suited Virginia’s style perfectly. She became an expert. Charleston contests were being held everywhere. Virginia won them all, and minor fame, as well. An enterprising vaudeville producer put together an act around her. “Ginger and Her Redheads.” Virginia Katherine McMath was no more. She was obliterated, melted away by the sunlike spotlight of success. In her place stood, or rather, Charlestoned, Ginger Rogers. She Charlestoned her way across Texas, through Oklahoma, across the Mid-West and found herself, eventually, at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago.

Paul Ash, the local favorite, was a bandleader who produced stage shows that supplemented the feature picture. Ginger, then sixteen years old, became the darling of Chicago, appearing week after week in the stage show at the Oriental with Paul Ash.

One week, a comedian named Jack Pepper was on the bill. His real name was John Edward Culpepper, but he thought Jack Pepper more suitable. He found Ginger Rogers pretty suitable, too. He kept her up late, night after night, selling her the idea that they were fated for each other. What could be a more telling sign from above than the fact that his name was Pepper and hers Ginger? How would that be for a name for the act? Pepper and Ginger. Ginger and Pepper? No. Pepper and Ginger. Sure. Sounds better.

In later years, Jack Pepper was to claim that he gave her the name Ginger for purposes of billing. Ginger denies this, pointing out that she had already appeared in
Texas with that act called “Ginger and Her Redheads.” There is no argument, however, about the next name change. Both agree that in 1929 she became Mrs. Jack Pepper. The marriage lasted no more than two years.

She did a musical short with Rudy Vallee called
Campus Sweethearts
, but no one seemed to take notice. She went to New York and worked constantly in clubs, in vaudeville. Out on the road. Fairs. People who remember her in those days say that she was the hardest working, most professional and determined young performer of them all.

She landed a small part in a Broadway musical called
Top Speed
, and made an impression. This led to her first feature picture, a Paramount film shot in the East,
Young Man of Manhattan
. She played a supporting part opposite Charlie Ruggles, sang a song called “I’ve Got
It
but
It
Don’t Do Me No Good,” and spoke that unforgettable line—“Cigarette me, big boy!” It was echoed through the 1930s.

Her next show was
Queen High
with Charlie Ruggles and Frank Morgan. Movies again:
The Sap from Syracuse
with Jack Oakie,
Follow the Leader
with Jack Oakie and Ethel Merman. Broadway again: George Gershwin’s
Girl Crazy
. In this, at long last, she made an enormous hit. Her career was under way. For Pathé, she made
The Tip-Off
. Then came
The Suicide Fleet
,
Carnival Boat
,
The Tenderfoot
,
Hat Check Girl
. She went from studio to studio.

“I did anything in those days,” Ginger recalls. “I just wanted to stay an actress. I did second leads and third leads and straight pictures and musicals and mysteries. The truth is I don’t even remember all the pictures I made. They’d just say, ‘Go to Stage Eleven,’ and hand you some script and you’d learn it and go on and do it and a lot of the time I didn’t even know the
name
of the picture. Of course, I
do
remember
Gold Diggers
of 1933
and
Forty-second Street
—both at Warner’s. I
think
. Then it happened. Finally. That great, wonderful, unbelievable accident—getting together with Fred Astaire. I was under some kind of a nothing contract to RKO, and Thornton Freeland was going to do a musical.”

“When was this?”

“About nineteen thirty-three, I think. Or thirty-four. Gene Raymond was the leading man and Dolores Del Rio was the leading lady. And there were these two small parts. They didn’t really tie in as I remember but they knew we could do a number. The idea in those days was to get an idea for a dance, say like the Charleston, and then they’d have somebody write a song for it. Well, in this picture—
Flying Down to Rio
—it was ‘The Carioca,’ by Vincent Youmans, and what a song that was!

“Fred hadn’t been having too great a time in pictures either. Of course, he was a star on Broadway teamed up with his sister, Adele, but even though he had done these tremendous shows on Broadway, they didn’t cotton to him out here. They made a test and Fred once told me that the report on his test read, ‘Can’t act. Slightly bald. Dances a little.’ But because they were thinking of doing musicals, RKO signed him and right away loaned him to M-G-M to do one little number in
Dancing Lady
with Joan Crawford. Then
Flying Down to Rio
—‘The Carioca’—hit for both of us.”

“I’ll say,” I said. “I’ll never forget it. It tore up the screen. Nobody’d ever seen a dance team like that. Not on the screen, anyway.”

“And we were off,” she said. “They saw right away what they had and Pan Berman bought one of Fred’s big hits,
The Gay Divorce
, with that Cole Porter score. ‘Night and Day.’ My God, was
that
something! You remember how they had to change the title of the picture because the Hays Office wouldn’t let them call it
The Gay Divorce
? So it had to be
The Gay Divorcée
. Anyway, that was a real hit for us, and the dance they stuck in that one was called ‘The Continental.’ We did
Don’t Let It Bother You
and
Let’s Not
Leave
. Then we did
Roberta
, and after that Irving Berlin wrote
Top Hat
for us. Those were some days. I don’t think I ever worked so hard in my whole life. That Fred. He never stopped till he dropped. And that’s how he made you feel, too. A lot of wonderful things’ve happened to me, but that was the greatest. All we thought about was the work and making each picture better than the one we’d done before.”

The films, the teaming, the style, were a landmark. Mark Sandrich directed most of them, and he once said to me, “Isn’t it curious how difficult it is sometimes to learn the simplest thing? Take an Astaire-Rogers dance. Now, most of them were worked out by Fred with Hermes Pan, and they were, in their way, living works of art. But do you know it took us well into the fourth picture before we found out how to cut an Astaire-Rogers dance number?”

“How
do
you?” I asked, always anxious to learn.

“The trick is,” said Mark, “never to cut away from it. Now, for the first three Astaire-Rogers pictures we did what we’d always done. Keep the story going, cut away from the numbers to keep it alive. Who would dare have nothing but a dance going on on the screen for, say, five minutes? We’d always believed that you had to keep the yarn moving and keep the jokes going, so while they were dancing, we’d cut to Helen Broderick coming in, and do a take at her guy with another woman and then cut back to the dance. And then we’d cut to someone else coming in and sitting down to do something, or do a joke. Then back to the dance, then cut back to the plot where they’re whispering about should they call the cops if the heroine doesn’t show up by midnight, or whatever the hell. And all the time we’d cut back and forth from these bits of story to the dance. Now the dances always did very well, but nobody thought they were really going through the top of the roof. So, instinctively, we began cutting a little bit less, then less, and still less. And somewhere, working on the fourth picture, I said, ‘Why not shoot the dance and just stay with it? Never mind all the rest.’

“Well, this got a lot of objection, especially from the people who’d been around a long time and knew exactly how everything should be done. You know the types. And there were plenty of hot arguments. Tell you the truth, even Fred and Hermes weren’t too sure they wanted to risk it, but I insisted and pointed out that cutting away from the dance was like interrupting somebody’s number on the stage. I said to Fred, ‘When you did “Night and Day” on the stage in
The Gay Divorce
no one cut away to anything.’ Well, that sold him I think, and we tried it and after that we never did it any other way.”

The Astaire-Rogers output was carefully marshaled. They made a picture a year for a time. No more. In between, Ginger made other pictures, usually straight, while Fred and Hermes brooded about numbers for the next Astaire-Rogers.

Ginger was ever ambitious and courageous.

John Ford was on the RKO lot preparing to make
Mary of Scotland
with Katharine Hepburn and Fredric March. The studio had bought the successful Maxwell Anderson play and was planning it as one of its most important productions of the year.

In Anderson’s version of the story, there is a small but showy part—Queen Elizabeth. Anderson had taken the dramatic license of giving Mary and Elizabeth a great scene together, although history has no record of their meeting. Anderson’s point was that they
should
have met.

Ginger had seen the play in New York. Perhaps because she envisioned herself stealing the picture with a comparatively small part, she went to Pandro Berman and announced that she wanted to play Queen Elizabeth.

He said no, but Ginger did not get where she was by taking no for an answer. She persisted. He argued against it, saying he had no intention of putting one of his big stars into a small part.

“There are no small parts,” said Ginger loftily. “Only small actors.”

Pandro had never heard this old theatre chestnut and was momentarily impressed.

“I’ll tell you what I’m willing to do, Pan,” she said, “and you can’t turn me down on this because I’m asking it as a personal favor and one of these days you’re going to be asking
me
for a favor. So what I’m asking is this: let me test for it. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Berman wearily.

Ginger did not insist upon making the test immediately. She wanted time to prepare. She engaged Constance Collier to coach her. She asked Mel Berns, head of the RKO makeup department, to work with her.

Berns went all the way. He shaved part of her head, painted an Elizabethan face on her, and shot some makeup tests secretly on a weekend without letting anyone know he was doing it.

On another weekend, the test itself was made, with full makeup and costume and other players. The story is that they put a phony name on the slate. Constance Elliot. When the test came on in the projection room, everyone went wild.

“Sign that girl!”

Later, they found that the object of their enthusiasm was their own Ginger Rogers.

It was left to Berman to talk her out of the idea.

“Ginger,” he said, “we just can’t have this picture with Ginger Rogers as Queen Elizabeth. It sounds ridiculous. It
is
ridiculous. Jack Ford says he’ll quit and Kate—”

“Yes?” asked Ginger briskly.

“Kate didn’t say anything. She hasn’t even seen the test.”

“Why not?”

“I mean she hasn’t seen it yet.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, Jack’s the one in charge. So let me put it this way. If you can convince him, I won’t stand in the way.”

“Where is he?” asked Ginger, her eyes ablaze.

But John Ford agreed that Ginger Rogers as Queen Elizabeth was not a good idea. Ginger begged, pleaded, cajoled, and threatened, but this was one battle she lost.

Some thirty years later, remembering the old days at RKO, we reviewed the Queen Elizabeth test.

“They should have given me that part,” said Ginger. “I would have been sensational.”

One of Ginger’s successes was
Stage Door
, in which she finally did appear with Katharine Hepburn.

George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber had written the play, and following its Broadway run, the film rights were acquired by RKO. By the time Gregory LaCava, the director, and Morrie Ryskind, the screenwriter, had finished, the result was something like a distant cousin to the original
Stage Door
. A rough cut was shown to Kaufman.

“Have you any suggestions?” he was asked.

“Only one,” he replied. “I think under the circumstances you ought to call it ‘Screen Door.’”

Another Kaufman title idea comes to mind. Howard Hughes was spending a part of his fortune in an attempt to make a star of Jane Russell. He succeeded to the extent that she was well known to the public even before she made her first film. Each publicity still revealed more of her capacious major endowment. When at last the film was ready for release, it seemed that every twenty-four sheet in New York bore that famous, reclining figure and its beckoning bosom over the title
The Outlaw
.

Walking down Broadway, George and I counted five such billboards.

“They've got the wrong title on that picture,” he said.

Ever the straight man for him, I asked, “And what is the
right
title, George?”

“They ought to call it,” he replied, “‘A Sale of Two Titties.’”

Ginger Rogers and I used to perform this kindergarten jingle (with appropriate gestures and steps). The place was RKO; the time, about 9:00 A.M.; the occasion, the beginning of every shooting day of the two films in which I directed her:
Bachelor Mother
and
Tom, Dick, and Harry
.