Marlene (28 page)

We sent sums of money to a contact man in Switzerland, a certain “Engel,” for the purpose of liberating hundreds of prisoners from the German concentration camps and bringing them to America. I never got to know this Mr. Engel, but he must have been a wonderful person. He undertook this service to humanity regardless of the risks such activity involved. At the beginning, when the concentration camps were being set up, it was still possible to help prisoners escape and to bring them into Switzerland in secrecy dressed as monks or nuns, thanks to a secret organization that functioned perfectly. They were given clothes and cared for, and as soon as they had recovered, they were flown to Los Angeles.

I remember a great popular composer, Rudolf Katcher, who was very ill at the time of his liberation and who died shortly
thereafter. He had written the song “Madonna,” known all over the world.

But most of our wards recovered quickly. Our task was to teach them English and then find jobs for them. Lubitsch and Wilder tried to offer these men and women a new chance in America, and often they were successful.

The most difficult to help were the theater people. They were still imbued with a sense of their former importance. They didn't like us Americans. Nevertheless, they settled down in the United States, and we did whatever we could to find them work.

I remember the day when Rudolf Forster had been summoned to the Warner Studios for a screen test (arranged by Lubitsch), for the role of a king. He came up to me and said that he didn't like the throne, and he refused to take the screen tests.

Lubitsch had infinite patience. Nevertheless, Forster, after a time, decided to return to Hitler's Germany. His departure discouraged us, since we had tried hard to make his exile less painful. We had done everything humanly possible to find roles for him, but this egocentric person wanted to remain the star he had been in Germany.

I don't know what became of him after he returned to his homeland. Since he wasn't a Jew, he probably overcame his disappointment at not having found a throne to his taste in America.

Thank God we didn't have many failures of this kind. We had even set up a fund from which we could help some war victims for several years. Some of them had suffered so severely, physically and psychologically, that it was difficult for them to adjust to a foreign language and a foreign country. These refugees could not work like the others. Nevertheless, they deserved a comfortable life.

With time, the number of refugees was reduced. The tightening of security measures in the concentration camps made escape almost impossible. Only men with a great capacity for resistance, who had to help load new victims on the freight cars, could escape when they were outside the camps and not too far from the Swiss border. There they arrived on foot, hiding by day and continuing the trek by night.

The Swiss arrested those refugees without identification papers, and stuck them in “camps.” But these bore no similarity to the horror camps which they had left behind. Mr. Engel would free them, one after the other, and send them to America—a long and tiring procedure.

Our aim was to rescue some of these unfortunate souls, and it gave us the feeling of being useful. The organization continued its activity when the United States entered the war in 1941. Army training camps were quickly set up. All artists who could entertain and relax the newly enlisted soldiers were sent on tours through these camps. We traveled mostly in buses; the programs were hastily put together, but the enthusiasm of the artists helped to overcome a lot of the difficulties. Great comics like Jack Benny or George Jessel led groups and also performed themselves. The awareness of being on native ground gave them a feeling of security. This changed during the war. The next step consisted of selling “bonds,” a kind of loan to the government to finance the war effort. On such tours, we were accompanied by a group of Treasury Department officials. Our tours were exhausting—six to eight hours a day, and sometimes also an evening performance. I had to go into factories and call upon workers to give a certain percentage of their salaries as a loan to the government. I gave speeches according to instructions, and even went so far as to pit one factory against another as rivals. This strategy proved very productive. All by myself, I raised a million dollars, which flowed into the Treasury Department coffers.

All that effort was supposed to contribute—at least in my eyes—to the ending of the war as quickly as possible.

I also worked in nightclubs in the evening. Spurred on by my bodyguards from the Treasury Department, I turned to the half-drunk audience with the zeal of a traveling salesman. I gratified every mood of the potential bond buyers.

The Treasury Department had entered into an agreement with American banks, which made it possible to have access to all current accounts, even in the middle of the night, in order to find out whether the checks I received were covered or not. During
this procedure in the nightclub, I had to sit in the donors lap and wait until I got a nod from the Treasury Department agent signaling that everything was in order—or that we had been hoaxed.

One evening in Washington, I was summoned to the White House. I arrived at about two o'clock in the morning. The Treasury Department officials remained in the car.

President Roosevelt was standing—yes, despite his polio he was standing—when I was ushered into the room. Then he sat himself down in his chair, looked at me with his bright eyes, and said, “I've heard all about what you are doing to sell bonds. We are very grateful to you for this. But I expressly forbid you to confuse acquisition with prostitution. From now on, you will no longer give any performances in these night spots. That's an order!”

“Fine, Mr. President,” I said. I was sorry I couldn't stay there longer. If I had had to, I would have gladly slept on the floor.

I was brought back to my hotel, and from then on, I worked only during the day, which, however, didn't prevent me from giving performances on the streets. The “sales fever” continued for a long time.

I was too exhausted at that time to remember what happened later. I received a medal with the thanks of the secretary of the treasury and a magnificently printed document, and the matter was closed.

My zealous activity, however, did not prevent the same department from demanding belated tax payments from me at the end of the war, even though a law forbade taxing members of the Armed Forces.

I had hardly been discharged and landed at LaGuardia Airport when the gentlemen from the Treasury Department pounced on me.

It took years before I had paid off all my debts. I no longer had any money, but that didn't matter. The tax authorities have enormous power, against which it's useless to fight. They suck everything out of you, and you're completely helpless vis-a-vis these vampires. I can sing a song about it.

I filmed
Kismet
before I enlisted in the army. Not many words need be wasted on my role in this film, but I needed money for my family to live on during my absence.

The great costume designer, Irene, and I spent hours pondering the costumes for the impossible person I was signed to portray.

Now, for the first time, I was working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. For a long time we had envied the actresses who worked for this company, since they enjoyed special conditions: They were flattered and spoiled by the directors. I took lessons for the “exotic” dance I had to perform, half sitting on my heels, which made me laugh so much I lost the rhythm. Irene and I had an idea that was not very feasible, but which at first had struck us as something quite extraordinary.

The idea was to design a pair of trousers out of hundreds of tiny gold chains, which would jingle softly at every movement, and glitter under the spotlight. This had never been done before. I spent hours on my feet while two men tied the gold chainlets to my ankles and crouched between my legs with tweezers in order to fasten the single links to each other. They loved the work. I, on the other hand, was utterly exhausted with my legs so spread out.

In the studio, this extravagant idea was still a topic of conversation, and then came the day when, after I had tried all the dance steps, I appeared on the set.
The Rites of Spring
—take note!—was being played, and as prescribed, I took my first step. Suddenly all one heard was crack, crack, crack, the sound of the chainlets breaking, one after the other, then two, six at a time, until I stood there without pants …

General panic. I was shoved into a car and driven to my dressing room. Irene wept on my shoulders.

“We must find something else,” I said to calm her, “and forget about the chains.” But Irene turned a deaf ear.

I was sent home, and she was summoned to appear before the big boss, Louis B. Mayer.

Suddenly I had a brilliant idea, something perfectly safe,
something that would cause no complications. “Gold,” I thought, “how is a golden effect achieved on the screen?”

It occurred to me to paint my legs with gold paint.

I wasn't particularly proud, I was simply in a big hurry to call Irene and to tell her that I found the solution to our problem and that we could set to work on the very next morning.

The next morning she was in my dressing room at six o'clock. Two makeup artists armed with brushes zealously painted my legs. The whole room reeked of paint; the floor was strewn with golden spots, but the effect was simply fabulous. Irene smiled again; at nine we had to be in the studio. Nobody had believed that we would be able to solve the problem in less than twenty-four hours.

At nine on the dot I climbed onto the set. The whole team cried “Ooh!” and “Ah!” The photographers bombarded me with the light of their flashbulbs. The director, William Dieterle, came, nodded approvingly, and the music began to play. I danced, this time without the slightest incident; the gilding held fast. An hour later, I suddenly became very cold, and trembled like a wounded bird. Heaters were brought in to warm me up—in vain. Nevertheless, I worked through the day, good girl that I was. The studio doctor examined me in my dressing room, while I tried to wash the color off my legs with alcohol. He told me that the studio was not covered by the insurance companies for something like “the present case.” No one had thought of including an applicable clause in the contract in the event that the paint should permanently close the pores in the lower half of my body. (That was why I was so cold.)

I reassured the doctor. I didn't want to give up the paint. We already had one day's work behind us and simply had to go on (since a day in the studio cost a fortune). Meanwhile, my legs had turned green, and I hid behind chairs and curtains until the doctor left.

My experience with gilding went back to my first days at Paramount. Since I was supposed to appear blond on the screen, and refused to have my hair bleached, I used gilding. Not, of course, a liquid one, as with my Kismet legs, but a simple powder I had bought in a specialty store. After my hairdo was fixed, I
sprinkled it over my hair. Suddenly it looked bright, and acquired a brilliance unachievable any other way.

I still hear the objections of the cameramen: “You'll see! The color will fall on your face! You'll see!” And I imagine Gary Cooper in front of me drawing himself up after a passionate kiss with a gilded nose! Well, you couldn't see it on the screen, but Cooper, nice young fellow that he was, did have to “dust off” his nose several times during the day.

When you're a pro and understand something about photography, you can always find ways and means to overcome difficulties. Most actresses let others concern themselves with things that do not expressly belong to their “sphere of competence.” Not me.

On the day after the great premiere of the “gilded legs,” the rushes arrived at MGM and everybody was relieved and congratulated me.

Ronald Colman was the star of this masterpiece entitled
Kismet.
I didn't really get to know him. He was rather cool and tight-lipped. And here I don't mean “English reserve.” That I know and appreciate. We simply didn't suit each other.

Before I went into the army—directly after this film—I got all the requisite inoculations so that I could go overseas without risk. My swollen arm hurt me, and I hid it from the camera so as not to disturb the beauty of the cinematic creation. Ronald Colman shrunk from any bodily contact with his partner, in this case me. The studio even changed directors during the shooting in order to persuade him to give expression to the love that was supposed to be burning in his heart. But when he finally roused himself to do so, he naturally grabbed my sore arm with its needle marks. I screamed in pain.

I don't think
Kismet
earned much money for the studio.

As soon as the shooting was over, I left the studio and my beloved Irene: I left the Hollywood I knew forever.

Contrary to what people believe, Hollywood was not a small familial community, where everybody knew everybody else. Here, one was hardly aware of the war. I broke the few bonds I had.

I left with a light heart, without any great fanfare, without a word of farewell. And that suited me fine.

“I once had a beautiful fatherland.”

—Heinrich Heine

A
N ORDINARY HOUSE. I
go there every day I go there just as one goes to an office—in a hurry, so as not to be late.

I've drawn a line across all my own plans, across my wishes, all my yearnings, all my prospects for the future. I go down there and I sit down. I wait. Everybody waits. The people look worried, some sit, others pace up and down. The air is filled with smoke. Announcements come over the loudspeakers.

Numbers are called as in a lottery. Men get up and go out, and leave their chewing gum on the revolving doors.

Where are they going? No answer. Here one doesn't receive an answer to questions—but every question seems superfluous.