My Autobiography (33 page)

He went on in this way, holding us absorbed, telling us of his visions and beliefs; he admitted he had plans to amalgamate both the theatres and the studios, but said he would be willing to give it all up to cast his lot with ours. He spoke in an intense, patriarchal way: ‘You think I am your enemy! But I am your friend – the artist’s friend. Remember, it was I who first had the vision! Who swept out your dirty nickelodeons? Who put in your plush seats? It was I who built your great theatres, who raised prices and made it possible for you to get large grosses for your pictures. Yet you, you are the people who want to crucify me!’

Zukor was both a great actor and business man. He had built up the largest circuit of theatres in the world. However, since he wanted stock in our company, nothing came of our negotiations.

Within six months Mary and Douglas were making pictures for the newly formed company, but I still had six more comedies to complete for First National. Their ruthless attitude had so embittered me that it impeded the progress of my work. I offered to buy up my contract and to give them a hundred thousand dollars’ profit, but they refused.

As Mary and Doug were the only stars distributing their pictures through our company, they were continually complaining to me of the burden imposed upon them as a result of being without my product. They were distributing their pictures at a very low cost of twenty per cent, which ran the company into a deficit of a million dollars. However, with the release of my first film,
The Gold Rush
, the debt was wiped out, which rather softened Mary and Doug’s grievances, and they never complained again.

*

The war was now grim. Ruthless slaughter and destruction were rife over Europe. In training camps men were taught how to attack with a bayonet – how to yell, rush and stick it in the enemy’s guts, and, if the blade got stuck in his groin, to shoot into his guts to loosen it. Hysteria was excessive. Draft-dodgers were being sentenced to five years and every man was made to carry his registration card. Civilian apparel was a dress of shame,
for nearly every young man was in uniform and, if he was not, he was liable to be asked for his registration card, or a woman might present him with a white feather.

Some newspapers criticized my not being in the war. Others came to my defence, proclaiming my comedies were needed more than my soldiering.

The American army, new and fresh when it reached France, wanted immediate action, and against the seasoned advice of the English and French, who had had three years of bloody combat, it plunged into battle with courage and daring, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties. For weeks the news was depressing; long lists were printed of the American dead and wounded. Then came a lull and for months the Americans, like the rest of the Allies, settled down in the trenches to an ennui of mud and blood.

At last the Allies began to move. On the map our flags began edging up. Each day crowds watched those flags with eagerness. Then the break-through came, but at a tremendous sacrifice. Big black headlines followed:
THE KAISER ESCAPES TO HOLLAND!
Then a full front page with two words:
ARMISTICE SIGNED!
I was in my room at the Athletic Club when that news broke. In the streets below pandemonium broke loose; automobile horns, factory whistles, trumpets began howling and went on all day and night. The world went mad with joy – singing, dancing, embracing, kissing and loving. Peace at last!

Living without a war was like being suddenly released from prison. We had been so drilled and disciplined that for months afterwards we were afraid to be without our registration cards. Nevertheless, the Allies had won – whatever that meant. But they were not sure that they had won the peace. One thing was sure, that civilization as we had known it would never be the same – that era had gone. Gone, too, were its so-called basic decencies – but, then, decency had never been prodigious in any era.

T
OM
H
ARRINGTON
sort of drifted into my service, but he was to play a part in a dramatic change in my life. He had been dresser and handyman to my friend Bert Clark, an English vaudeville comedian engaged by the Keystone Company. Bert, vague and impractical, an excellent pianist, had once talked me into going into partnership with him in the music-publishing business. We had rented a room three storeys up in a downtown office building and printed two thousand copies of two very bad songs and musical compositions of mine – then we waited for customers. The enterprise was collegiate and quite mad. I think we sold three copies, one to Charles Cadman, the American composer, and two to pedestrians who happened to pass our office on their way downstairs.

Clark had put Harrington in charge of the office, but a month later Clark went back to New York and the office was closed. Tom, however, stayed behind, saying he would like to work for me in the same capacity as he had worked for Clark. To my surprise he told me he had never received a salary from Clark, only his living expenses, which did not amount to more than seven or eight dollars a week; being a vegetarian, he lived only on tea, bread and butter and potatoes. Of course, this information appalled me and I gave him a proper salary for the time he had worked for the music company, and Tom became my handyman, my valet and my secretary.

He was a gentle soul, ageless-looking, with an enigmatic manner, the benign, ascetic face of St Francis, thin-lipped, with an elevated brow and eyes that looked upon the world with a sad objectivity. He was of Irish descent, a bohemian and a bit of a mystery, who came from the East Side of New York but
seemed more fitted for a monastery than for living on the froth of show business.

He would call in the morning at the Athletic Club with my mail and the newspapers and order my breakfast. Occasionally without comment he would leave books by my bedside – Lafcadio Hearn and Frank Harris, authors I had never heard of. Because of Tom I read Boswell’s
Life of Johnson
– ‘that’s something to put you to sleep at night,’ he giggled. He never spoke unless spoken to and had the gift of effacing himself while I had breakfast. Tom became the
sine qua non
of my existence. I would just tell him to do something and he would nod and it was done.

*

Had not the telephone rung just as I was leaving the Athletic Club, the course of my life might have been different. The call came from Sam Goldwyn. Would I come down to his beach-house for a swim? It was the latter part of 1917.

It was a gay, innocuous afternoon. I remember that the beautiful Olive Thomas and many other pretty girls were there. As the day wore on a girl by the name of Mildred Harris arrived. She came with an escort, a Mr Ham. She was pretty, I thought. Someone remarked that she had a crush on Elliott Dexter, who was also present, and I noticed her ogling him the whole afternoon. But he paid little attention to her. I thought no more about her until I was ready to leave and she asked me if I would drop her on the way into town, explaining that she had quarrelled with her friend and that he had already left.

In the car I remarked flippantly that perhaps her friend was jealous of Elliott Dexter. She confessed that she thought Elliott was quite wonderful.

I felt that her naïve banter was an intuitive feminine trick to create interest about herself. ‘He’s a very lucky man,’ I said superciliously. It was all chit-chat to make conversation as we drove along. She told me she worked for Lois Weber and was now being starred in a Paramount picture. I dropped her off at her apartment, however, with the impression that she was a very silly young girl, and I returned to the Athletic Club with a sense of relief, for I was glad to be alone. But I was not more than five minutes in the room when the telephone rang. It was
Miss Harris. ‘I just wanted to know what you were doing,’ she said naïvely.

I was surprised at her attitude, as though we had been cosy sweethearts for a long time. I told her I was going to have dinner in my room, then go straight to bed and read a book.

‘Oh!’ she said mournfully and wanted to know what kind of a book, and what kind of a room I had. She could just picture me all alone, snugly tucked up in bed.

This fatuous conversation was catching, and I fell in with her wooing and cooing.

‘When am I going to see you again?’ she asked. And I found myself jokingly chiding her for betraying Elliott, and listening to her reassurance that she did not really care for him, which swept away my resolutions for the evening, and I invited her out for dinner.

Although she was pretty and pleasant that evening; I lacked the zest and enthusiasm that the presence of a pretty girl usually inspires. The only possible interest she had for me was sex; and to make a romantic approach to it, which I felt would be expected of me, was too much of an effort.

I did not think of her again until the middle of the week, when Harrington said she had telephoned. Had he not made a passing remark I might not have bothered to see her again, but he happened to mention that the chauffeur had told him that I had come away from Sam Goldwyn’s house with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. This absurd remark appealed to my vanity – and that was the beginning. There were dinners, dances, moonlit nights and ocean drives, and the inevitable happened – Mildred began to worry.

Whatever Tom Harrington thought he kept to himself. When one morning, after he brought in my breakfast, I announced casually that I wanted to get married, he never batted an eye. ‘On what day?’ he asked calmly.

‘What day is this?’

‘This is Tuesday.’

‘Make it Friday,’ I said, without looking up from my newspaper.

‘I suppose it’s Miss Harris.’

‘Yes.’

He nodded matter-of-factly. ‘Have you a ring?’

‘No, you’d better get one and make all the preliminary arrangements – but have it done quietly.’

He nodded again and there was no further mention of it until the day of the wedding. He arranged that we should be married at eight O’clock, Friday evening.

On that day I worked late at the studio. At seven-thirty Tom came quietly on the set and whispered: ‘Don’t forget you have an appointment at eight.’ With a sinking feeling I took off my make-up and dressed, Harrington helping me. Not a word passed between us until we were in the car. Then he explained that I was to meet Miss Harris at the house of Mr Sparks, the local registrar.

When we arrived there Mildred was seated in the hall. She smiled wistfully as we entered and I felt a little sorry for her. She was dressed in a simple dark grey suit and looked very pretty. Harrington quickly fumbled a ring into my hand as a tall, lean man appeared, warm and congenial, and ushered us into another room. It was Mr Sparks. ‘Well, Charlie,‘ he said,’you certainly have a remarkable secretary. I didn’t know it was to be you until half an hour ago.’

The service was terribly simple and resolute. The ring Harrington had fumbled into my hand I placed on her finger. Now we were married. The ceremony was over. As we were about to leave, the voice of Mr Sparks said: ‘Don’t forget to kiss your bride, Charlie.’

‘Oh yes, of course,’ I smiled.

My emotions were mixed. I felt I had been caught in the mesh of a foolish circumstance which had been wanton and unnecessary – a union that had no vital basis. Yet I had always wanted a wife, and Mildred was young and pretty, not quite nineteen, and, though I was ten years older, perhaps it would work out all right.

The next morning I went to the studio with a heavy heart. Edna Purviance was there; she had read the morning papers, and as I passed her dressing-room she appeared at the door. ‘Congratulations,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you,’ I replied, and went on my way to my dressing-room. Edna made me feel embarrassed.

To Doug I confided that Mildred was no mental heavy-weight; I had no desire to marry an encyclopedia – I could get all my intellectual stimulus from a library. But this optimistic theory rested upon an underlying anxiety: would marriage interfere with my work? Although Mildred was young and pretty, was I to be always in close proximity to her? Did I want that? I was in a dilemma. Although I was not in love, now that I was married I wanted to be and wanted the marriage to be a success.

But to Mildred marriage was an adventure as thrilling as winning a beauty contest. It was something she had read about in story-books. She had no sense of reality. I would try to talk seriously to her about our plans, but nothing penetrated. She was in a continual state of dazzlement.

The second day after our marriage, Louis B. Mayer of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Company began negotiating a contract offering Mildred $50,000 a year to make six pictures. I tried to persuade her not to sign. ‘If you want to continue your film work, I can get you fifty thousand dollars for one picture.’

With a Mona Lisa smile she nodded to everything I said, but afterwards she signed the contract.

It was this acquiescing and nodding, then doing completely the opposite, that was frustrating. I was annoyed both with her and with Mayer, for he had pounced on her with a contract before the ink on our marriage licence had time to dry.

A month or so later she got into difficulties with the company and wanted me to meet Mayer to straighten out the matter. I told her that under no circumstances would I meet him. But she had already invited him to dinner, telling me only a few moments before his arrival. I was outraged and indignant. ‘If you bring him here I shall insult him.’ I had no sooner said this than the front-door bell rang. Like a rabbit I jumped into the conservatory adjoining the living-room, a glassed-in affair from which there was no way out.

For what seemed an interminable time I hid there while Mildred and Mayer sat in the living-room a few feet away, talking business. I had a feeling he knew I was hiding there, for his conversation seemed edited and paternal. After a moment of silence I was alluded to, and Mildred mentioned that perhaps
I would not be home, whereupon I heard them stir and was horrified they might come into the conservatory and find me there. I pretended to be asleep. However, Mayer made some excuse and left without staying for dinner.