Hollywood (30 page)

Our act began accidentally. I greeted her on the first morning with the first line (nervous, I suppose). She astonished me by replying with the second. We finished together.

The following morning, we did it again. From then on, it was a standard routine. It survived because it epitomized the theme of our relationship. “I will show you the way!” we sang at each other—and proceeded to do so.

We had a large roster of stock players on the lot at that time, handsome boys and pretty girls. They all had sponsors who would bring them around to the various sets each day, hoping to find a bit or a part or a line. Directors were expected to use as many of the stock players as possible.

There was a soda-fountain scene in
Tom, Dick, and Harry
, involving Ginger on a date with a young man played by Burgess Meredith, and in it we were able to use a good many of the stock players. The scene consisted of an argument between Ginger and Burgess. I thought it might be interesting as a counterpoint to see a couple in the booth just beyond them having a warm, loving exchange.

One of the stock boys on the lot was named Jack Briggs. He was extremely attractive and said to be talented. The casting department had recommended him many times. As we were lining up the shot, he happened to turn up, and I asked if he would like to play the silent bit.

“You bet,” he said.

“Mind you, Jack, there’s not much to do. It’s just background.”

“Never mind,” he said. “I want to be in this picture.”

I rehearsed him and a girl. A short time afterward, we began to shoot the scene. I had worked on the Ginger-Burgess exchange, so my attention went to the background. Jack Briggs was indeed talented. He conveyed perfectly the ice-cream parlor intimacy I had asked for.

In the middle of the first take, Ginger stopped and said, “Sorry.” She left her seat, came over and asked, “Is that what he’s going to do?”

“Who’s going to do?”

“That kid in the background. You don’t think it’s distracting?”

I looked over at Briggs who seemed about to leave this life. Here was his whole career going down the drain and he had not yet said a line.

“I’ll take care of it, Ginger.”

She returned to her seat.

“Maybe a little less, Jack,” I said.

“Right,” he whispered.

On the next take, he did not only a little less, he did nothing. The effect was ruined. I went over to Ginger and tried to explain what I was getting at.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “I think it would be great, but you know, without all the bouncing around.”

“Don’t bounce around, Jack,” I said, “but do what I told you.”

This time he nodded, apparently unable to speak.

“Who is that?” asked Ginger.

“Jack Briggs,” I said. “One of the stock boys.”

“Well,” she said. “Okay.”

With each succeeding shot I gave Briggs further encouragement and finally had one that pleased me and did not upset Ginger.

I was drafted by the Army before the picture was finished, and completed the editing on twenty-four-hour leaves.

About two years later, overseas, I read some news from Hollywood in
Stars and
Stripes
. Ginger Rogers had been married. The groom was a young actor named Jack Briggs. It took me a minute or so to remember where I’d heard that name before. Of course. Jack Briggs. The guy she was ready to have me fire. I wondered if the whole thing could be a practical joke on me. No, it was true. She married Jack Briggs and stayed married to him for six years. How they got from the ice-cream parlor to the altar I have never yet learned.

In Ginger’s day, stars had power. She had been at RKO as one of their most important contract stars for seven years.

Some time after she left RKO, she went to Paramount to do
Lady in the Dark
. Although not particularly suited to the role of the magazine editor in Moss Hart and Kurt Weill’s dazzling show, she was the outstanding musical performer in films at that time and the compromise was made.

Paramount and RKO were neighboring studios but since each lot involved several acres, distances were considerable. At RKO, Ginger had always had her own suite of dressing rooms, improved and refurbished and enlarged each year to keep her happy. Finally, it was a large establishment with a kitchen, bedroom, sitting room, hairdressing and makeup room, wardrobe and fitting room, and so on. At Paramount, they tried to outdo RKO and furnished her with a spacious bungalow in addition to an impressive trailer to use as a portable dressing room, and a special rig for location days.

One day, the director, Mitch Leisen, was shooting a fantasy sequence, with a cloud effect. The floor would never be seen. The dance number was going to be done in and around the mist.

The special-effects men were in charge. They are among the Hollywood elite, difficult to replace: technicians with mysterious secrets. This time, even they were having their problems. The area was huge, three connected sound stages. The specialeffects men had never attempted to cloud as large an area as this and, apparently, did not have sufficient equipment. By the time they had finished clouding the last part, the first part had begun to disappear.

“Hold the lights.”

“Hold it! Don't move around so much.”

“Close the doors.”

“Stand still.”

Someone would come through the door and a breeze would ruin the effect. It was one of those hell days. The cloud effect, produced by using a kind of oil, began to get all over the costumes and camera and makeups.

Work continued all morning. Miss Rogers was ready, made up, and rehearsed, the playback track was ready, as was the chorus, but the clouds were not. Finally, Leisen broke for lunch. The special-effects men stayed and tried to figure out new ways to proceed.

After lunch, the routine began again. Everyone ready but the clouds not.

“Standing by.”

“Not yet. Just a little more in the middle.”

“Tell everybody stand by. It’ll be any minute now.” A little after three in the afternoon—the company dispirited at not having made a shot all day—the specialeffects men and the cameramen pronounced it ready.

Ginger started for the set but stopped and said to Leisen, “I’ll be right back.”

“What’re you
talking
about?”

She leaned closer to him and said, “I’m sorry, Mitch, but I’ve got to go.”

“Jesus, Ginger!” said Leisen. “We’ve been working for seven hours. It’s all set. It’s delicate. Critical. Couldn’t you just do it once?”

“I
have
to
go
to the
bathroom
, Mitch,” said Ginger tightly. “Do you want me to announce it to the whole company, for heaven’s sake? I
have
to
go
to the
bathroom
.”

“Couldn’t you—couldn’t we just make the one shot, honey? Just one?”

“Mitch, I’ve got to
dance
in it and everything. I’ve got to go.”

“All right, Ginger. But listen, for God’s sake, will you hurry up? We’ll try to hold the effect.”

She flounced off the set, followed by her hairdresser, her maid, her wardrobe girl, and her press agent.

Leisen informed the special-effects men that they would have to hold the effect for a few minutes. They were lying all over the sound stage with gas masks on and slowly pumping the clouds in.

“Keep pumping it in. Don't let it go. Keep it even.”

Every few minutes, the camera operator had to wipe the oil off the lens. The extras were ready and standing by.

“Nobody leave the set, now!” shouted Leisen. “We’re going to shoot this in about one minute, one minute and a half.”

The minute did indeed get to be a minute and a half. Then five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty minutes later it was hopeless.

“All right. Kill ’em.”

“Hold the arcs.”

“Effects out.”

The effort had gone for nothing. The company and the crew sat and waited. About forty-five minutes later, Ginger came sailing onto the set looking lovely and ready to go.

Mitch Leisen, who had aged several years in the forty-five minutes, looked at her and said, “Where the hell have you been?”

“Don't talk to me like that,” said Ginger. “I have a perfect right to go to the bathroom.”

“It took you forty-five minutes to go to the bathroom?” he asked, outraged. “Where the hell did you go?”

“Why, to RKO,” she said logically.

Mitch Leisen began to laugh uncontrollably.

When he told me about it, he said, “We never did get the shot that day. In fact, we didn’t get it for another two or three days. But that thing with Ginger, it was sort of a Pavlovian thing. They’d given her this beautiful dressing room at Paramount and she had a sensational portable, but she was accustomed to her own pot, that’s all. She’d been seven years in that dressing room at RKO, and we found out later that she wasn’t using the Paramount accommodations at all. First thing in the morning, she’d go to her own old rooms at RKO and get made up and dressed and then she’d drive through the gate from one lot onto the other lot, and that’s how she worked it. So, naturally, when she had to go to the bathroom, she went back to her old studio. I mean, she was a
star
when she was a star.”

The first time I saw Ginger was in 1928, when she was doing songs and dances and snappers in front of Paul Ash’s band at the Paramount Theatre. I see her often now. The impressions are interchangeable, because Ginger is a genuine movie star and, therefore, a permanent presence. People grow older, but stars remain. A movie star is a creation that, like a painting or a statue or a symphony, does not age.

In 1938, many in Hollywood made fun of
Alexander’s Ragtime Band
because, while it spanned fifty years or so, Tyrone Power and Alice Faye did not grow older. Perhaps the makers of that film knew best, after all. Who would have wanted see a white-haired
Ty or a shapeless Alice? Better by far to leave the ideal intact. What the hell. A movie is a dream and anything can happen in a dream.

In 1967, when a festival of Ginger Rogers films was being planned, the young man in charge told me that the job of selecting a representative dozen or so was “utterly nonplusing.” Since
Young Man of Manhattan
Ginger had appeared in some seventy-five feature pictures. Which of her films could best demonstrate her unique comic gifts:
Vivacious Lady
?
The Major and the Minor
?
Tom, Dick, and Harry
? Which of her dramatic roles would be most compelling:
Kitty Foyle
?
The Primrose Path
?
Stage Door
? As to the musicals, which of the ten in which she co-starred with Fred Astaire should be shown?
Top Hat
?
Roberta
?
Shall We Dance
?
Carefree
?
The Story of Vernon and Irene
Castle
?
The Gay Divorcée
? Faced with so many choices, the festival’s planners wisely decided to put together a compilation of her musical work.

The magic of Astaire-Rogers (and of Hermes Pan, their dance director) cannot be explained, it can only be felt. Around the studio, it was rumored that their off-screen relationship was strained. No matter. On the screen, where it counts, they created a style, a mood, a happening.

Making a film is hard work. For a leading actress, it involves rising at 6:00 A.M. or 5:30 A.M. Studio. Makeup. Hairdressing. Wardrobe. Lines. Rehearsals. Changes. Hit those marks. Watch those lights. Act, feel, be charming but don’t move your chin. Hold it, she’s sweating again. Makeup! Quiet, please! Quiet, please! Hold it down! Roll ’em! Take six! Speed! Go! And so on. A full day of tense, exacting work seldom nets more than three or four minutes of screen time.

We talk easily of Ginger’s seventy-five feature pictures, but is there any imagination that can total the sum of human effort and strain and stress that went into their making? In a lifetime of work, of striving for excellence, of seeking ephemera, of pondering imponderables—only the result matters.

Robert Burns, in his day yearned:

He did not foresee the screen.

I attended several of the festival’s programs with Ginger. I watched her as—by means of this “Power the giftie gie” her—she saw herself as the rest of us see her.

“What do you think?” I asked after one of the screenings.

“I don’t know,” she replied, her attention to the past. “It was a lot of hard work, that I
do
know.”

“But it doesn’t look it, Ginger. That’s why it’s magic.”

“Okay,” she said, and smiled for the first time that afternoon.

August 1954. I was involved in planning the first theatre production of
The Diary of
Anne Frank
. The dramatists—Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett—and I journeyed to Amsterdam to consult with Otto Frank, Anne’s father, and others in the story. We wanted to cover the ground and to absorb the atmosphere completely as possible. This involved visiting Anne’s school and playground; the Franks’ apartment; the route by
which they traveled to their hiding place; and, finally, the hiding place itself. Prinsengracht 263. We moved through the still active enterprise on the lower floors— packaging pectin for jelly-making—and made our way to the attic area. Talk ended. We moved about quietly. At one moment, I was possessed by the shuddering notion that we, not the missing ones, were the ghosts. Alone, I wandered into a tiny space that I recognized at once, from Anne’s description, as her room. Table (for homework), chair (for dressing), cot (for lying awake). The only décor was the mass of pin-ups on the wall: the Royal Family, two or three boys (friends?), a number of Dutch film stars (male, grinning professionally), Winston Churchill, and—Ginger Rogers in a
Tom, Dick, and
Harry
still, smiling her celebrated smile.

How had the still found its way to this place? What had Anne Frank seen in that face? Mr. Frank told me afterward that Ginger Rogers was one of Anne’s favorites.

The story was Sam Goldwyn’s obsession always. Perhaps it is this factor that explains not only his success, but the length of his career.

Shortly after the formation of the Goldwyn company, he organized in 1919 an autonomous unit within the company called Eminent Authors Pictures, Incorporated. He began by signing Gertrude Atherton, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Rupert Hughes, Gouverneur Morris, Basil King, LeRoy Scott, and Rex Beach.

It was Goldwyn’s idea that the writers should prepare original material, adapt the work of others, and be involved with the production throughout its various stages.

In at least one instance, the theory paid off. Rupert Hughes, in 1921, wrote and produced
The Old Nest
. This was a screen adaptation of a story he had written for the
Saturday Evening Post
eight years earlier. It was an ambitious family epic, moving over a long period of time, and earned for the Goldwyn company a profit of well over $1 million. This translates into something like a $10-million profit on a film today.

Although the Eminent Authors Pictures plan did not work out to Goldwyn’s complete satisfaction, he did not abandon his theory and continued to engage the finest, most successful writers he could get.

When I came to work for him in 1937, the name plates on the doors in the Writers’ Building read: Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, Donald Ogden Stewart, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Howard, Anita Loos and John Emerson, Sam and Bella Spewack, Dudley Nichols, Robert E. Sherwood.

At one time or another, Goldwyn employed Thornton Wilder, Edna Ferber, Francis Marion, Montague Glass, Joseph Hergesheimer, Elmer Rice, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Morrie Ryskind, Howard Estabrook, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, William Anthony McGuire, Nunnally Johnson, Willard Mack, Harry Wagstaff Gribble, Preston Sturges, Maxwell Anderson, Mordaunt Shairp, Rachel Crothers, John L. Balderston, Rose Franken, S.N. Behrman, Sonya Levien, Jo Swerling, John Howard Lawson, John Van Druten, Niven Busch, Arthur Kober, Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Paul Gallico, Harry Kurnitz, Leo Rosten, James Thurber, John Patrick, John Collier, Irwin Shaw, and Damon Runyon.

“They think I’m crazy,” said Goldwyn. “I tell them the story is the most important thing and they think I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy, Mr. Goldwyn,” I said.

“They tell me stars and spectacle. They tell me Technicolor and production values and gimmicks and some of them, f’Chrissake, they think sex…You’re damn right I’m not crazy. The story.”

“Certainly. Everyone loves a story.”

“A
good
story,” he said, correcting me.

“Yes. A
good
story. It’s one of the ways we get a sense of form out of the chaos we live in.”

“Chaos. You said it.”

“It’s probably one of the first things everyone remembers. A story being told. A bedtime story.”

“Nobody ever told
me
a bedtime story,” he said absently.

“But most people,” I said. “And isn’t it interesting that when we’re kids, little kids, we sometimes want to hear the same story over and over again so that we can react in the right way at the right places, laugh or be scared or excited or applaud? And then pretty soon, we want to make up our own stories and tell them—imagination begins to be important. And sometimes, if we can’t invent a story, we tell about something. What happened in school today or about a trip or an accident we saw. And hardly anyone ever tells it exactly as it was. We all like to embellish it with a few little touches of our own—it’s a right way of making the story ours. Listen, when you come right down to it, life itself is a story.”

He regarded me gently and said, “That’s very good, my boy. Very nice. Very well said. I tell you what. Go and write that down for me.”

“Write what down?”

“What you just said.”

“I don’t know if I can remember it exactly, Mr. Goldwyn. I was just talking.”

Suddenly, he was on his feet. “God damn it!” he thundered. “If I tell you write it down, write it down! Who said anything about exactly? What do you mean you were just talking? What the hell good is that? That’s all you do around here f’Chrissake is talking. Is that what I pay you for? You think? For nothing? For talking? You know your trouble? You talk too much. Talk, f’Chrissake. What can you do with it? Can you release it? Would the exhibitors buy it? Now, I’ll tell you what to do. You go to your office and you write it down. Like I told you.”

I went back to my office and wrote it down. Like he told me.

Monday morning
. A letter from my friend Robert Ardrey. He is in despair. The failure of his play,
How to Get Tough About It
has hit him hard. He and Helen had hoped to marry shortly after the opening. Now the plan has been indefinitely postponed. Helen has returned to Ardmore, Oklahoma, to teach school. Bob has remained in New York, at loose ends. He appears to be running out of confidence.

He is one of the best writers I know, and it seems monumentally unjust that he should be having such a hard time while glib hacks here in Hollywood are earning thousands per week for adapting, trimming, revising, polishing, and borrowing. What
can be done? Goldwyn needs a writer for
The Cowboy and the Lady
. It is right up Bob’s alley. Do I dare suggest it?

Monday afternoon
. I have behaved impulsively and, as is usually the case when this happens, committed a blunder.

I asked for an appointment with Mr. Goldwyn. Granted.

“Mr. Goldwyn, have you decided yet on a new writer for
The Cowboy and the Lady
?”

“No. They’re all lousy.”

“Who?”

“All the ones that goddamn Sam Marx keeps bringing up. I’ve had them all. I know them. I can tell what they’re going to write before they write it even.”

“Maybe you ought to get someone
new
. You know what I mean? Fresh. Somebody who hasn’t been around so much.”

“That’s what
I
say,” said Goldwyn. “But who knows where to find people like that?”

“Well, listen, Mr. Goldwyn. There’s this marvelous young playwright from Chicago. He’s a protégé of Thornton Wilder’s and…”

“Thornton Wilder would be very good. He’s a good writer. Find out if he’s available.”

“All right,” I said, deflated. “But in case he’s
not
, I think you ought to consider this boy.”

“What’s he done?” asked Goldwyn nervously.

“Well, he wrote a play called
House on Fire
and practically every producer and director in New York went wild about it and finally it was produced and directed by Arthur Hopkins and…” I hesitated for a split second, trying to decide whether to lie, to exaggerate, or to obfuscate.

“…and it flopped,” said Goldwyn.

“Not completely,” I said. “It wasn’t a smash but—Anyway, then he wrote another play called
How to Get Tough About It
and Guthrie McClintic bought that.”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Goldwyn. “Guthrie McClintic.”

“Yes. Well, he bought it.”

“And what happened?” Goldwyn asked.

“It hasn’t opened yet,” I lied at once. “But this fellow’s marvelous—and listen, what can you lose? Give him a chance. Bring him out and let him work on the material for a few weeks. I’m sure you could get him for—I don’t know—maybe three or four hundred a week.”

Goldwyn looked at me as though I had uttered an obscenity in the presence of his wife.

“This is the writer you’re recommending for me?” he asked. “A three-hundred-dollar-a-week-writer?”

“Well, he’s—maybe he’d want—”

Goldwyn’s voice went into a key one tone higher. “Do you know this picture is going to cost maybe two million, maybe two million three by the time we’re finished?”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“You heard that and you want me to put on a two-hundred-dollar-a-week writer on a picture’s going to cost—”

“I said three or
four
hundred, Mr. Goldwyn. Not two.”

He looked at me again, this time with pity, then waved the back of his hand at me four times. I counted.

“Go away,” he said.

I went away.

Tuesday afternoon
. I told my Ardrey story to Sam Marx. No sympathy.

“Why didn’t you take it up with
me
, for God’s sake? I’d have told you how to handle it.”

“Impulsive,” I said.

“You didn’t know beforehand you’d strike out with a proposition like that?”

“I suppose I should have. Do you think there’s anything I can do?”

“No,” said Sam. “It’s too late now. You’ve mentioned the guy’s name and that’s it.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “I didn’t. I don’t think I ever did.”

“You
didn’t
mention his name?”

“No. I’m
sure
I didn’t. In the first place, I knew it would mean nothing to Goldwyn, and in the second place—I don’t know. I know I just didn’t.”

“In that case,” Sam advised, “wait a few days and make him sound like somebody else.”

“Why a few days?” I asked.

“Because,” said Sam. “I would judge your stock with Goldwyn now is selling at about one and a half.”

Friday afternoon
. I can hardly believe it. This morning, Goldwyn asked me to join him at lunch. Moss Hart is coming into discuss a story. He knows that Moss and I are friends.

Lunch began gaily but ended badly. Goldwyn did not respond to Moss’s story. Afterward we sat around the table, awkwardly trying to find a way to end the meeting. All at once I muttered, “God damn!”

“What did you say?” asked Goldwyn.

“Nothing.”

“You’re upset about something. What is it?”

“Well,” I said, “I had a call this morning from Robert Ardrey and he tells me he’s probably coming out here to do a picture at Metro, and I’m
furious
with myself.”

“Why?”

“Because, God damn it, he’s the
perfect
writer for
The Cowboy and the Lady
and I know him and why the hell I didn’t think of him in time, I can’t imagine. I’m just
sick
about it.”

“Who is Robert Ardrey?” asked Goldwyn, blankly.

“
Robert Ardrey
,” I said, impressively. “He’s a fantastic writer. Isn’t he, Moss?” I looked at Moss, significantly.

He looked at Goldwyn and said, “Fantastic.”

“And perfect for
The Cowboy and the Lady
,” I said. “Wouldn’t you say, Moss?”

“Perfect,” said Moss.

Goldwyn looked at Moss Hart and said, “
You
couldn’t write
The Cowboy and the
Lady
. It’s not your kind of picture at all. Not your cup of tea.”

“You’re right,” said Moss. “It’s not right for me. It’s right for Robert Ardrey.”

Goldwyn finished his coffee, looked at me, and said, “Have you got his telephone number?”

“Ardrey’s?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well,
get
it, God damn it!” said Goldwyn. “You hardly ever do anything around here f’Chrissake. You haven’t even got this man’s
telephone
number.”

“Well, maybe I can get it from Metro,” I suggested.

“Metro!” yelled Goldwyn. “You’re going to call up f’Chrissake Metro? What’s a matter with you?” He looked at Moss, helplessly. “This kid’s supposed to be a smart kid and every day he says something stupid.”

“I think you could get his telephone number from the Dramatists Guild,” said Moss, sagely.

“Did you hear that?” asked Goldwyn. “Call up those dramatists and get that man.”

“It may be too late,” I said.

“Sure, it’ll be too late,” said Goldwyn, “if you sit there f’Chrissake on your ass and don’t get to work. Get him on the phone. Tell him it’s a great picture. He’ll get lost at Metro. It’s a factory. Tell him. And he can get twelve-fifty a week here.”

“And a ten-week guarantee?” I asked.

“Certainly.”

I moved around to the other side of the table, embraced Moss, and was on my way.

I phoned Ardrey.

“Bob, I’ve got a job for you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s right here at Goldwyn’s.”

“Doing what?” asked Bob.

“Writing. What the hell do you think?”

“Writing a movie?” asked Bob.

“Jesus, Bob,” I said. “You sound real dumb. I hope you improve your dialogue by the time you get here, otherwise you won’t last twenty minutes. As it is, I’ve got you a ten-week guarantee.”

“Oh, God,” he said.

“Plus your fare out here. I think you ought to fly.”

“No,” said Bob. “The way my luck’s been going, I’m sure to crash.”

“Fly,” I said. “By the way, how does three hundred a week strike you?”

“Really?” he asked, unbelieving.

“Or six hundred?”

“Come on, kid.”

“Would you settle for a thousand?”

Silence.

“Bob, listen. Your contract with Samuel Goldwyn is for ten weeks at twelve-fifty a week…Bob?...Bob, are you there?”

Finally, a new voice, I heard Bob say, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

Robert Ardrey came to Goldwyn’s. On the first weekend, we went together to Tucson, Arizona, where we met Helen, who had traveled there from Oklahoma. We stood together in a small desert church and they were married.

Back at Goldwyn’s, Ardrey made good (although not on
The Cowboy and the Lady
) and went on to a long and distinguished career as a Hollywood screenwriter. Having achieved Hollywood fame and fortune, he was now in a position to return to his first love, anthropology, and has since contributed
African Genesis
,
The Territorial
Imperative
, and
The Social Contract
.

“What did you think about the Edna Ferber book?” Goldwyn asked one day as I was telling him the story of Robert E. Sherwood’s
Abe Lincoln in Illinois
, upon which he had asked me to report.

“Crazy about it,” I said.

“So is Frances,” he said, “but you two are the only two, Talboig. Everybody else thinks it’s old-fashioned.”

“What do
you
think, Mr. Goldwyn?”

“Me? Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ve given it a lot of thought and I believe I have come to the conclusion that the trouble with that Edna Ferber story is—it’s old-fashioned.”