My Autobiography (56 page)

We stayed away from Hollywood for five months. During this trip Paulette and I were married. Afterwards we returned to the States, boarding a Japanese boat in Singapore.

The first day out I received a note which read that the writer and I had many mutual friends, that for years we had just missed meeting each other and that now, in the centre of the South China Sea, was an excellent opportunity. Signed ‘Jean Cocteau’. Then P.S.: perhaps he could come to my cabin for an aperitif before dinner. Immediately I suspected an imposter. What could this urbane Parisian be doing in the middle of the South China Sea? However, it was true, for Cocteau was doing an assignment for the French newspaper
Figaro
.

Cocteau could not speak a word of English, neither could I speak French, but his secretary spoke a little English, though not too well, and he acted as interpreter for us. That night we sat up into the small hours, discussing our theories of life and art. Our interpreter spoke slowly and hesitantly while Cocteau, his beautiful hands spread on his chest, spoke with the rapidity of a machine gun – his eyes flashing an appealing look at me, then at the interpreter, who spoke unemotionally: ‘Mr Cocteau – he say – you are a poet – of zer sunshine – and he is a poet of zer – night.’

Immediately Cocteau turned from the interpreter to me with a quick, birdlike nod, and continued. Then I would take over, getting deeply involved in philosophy and art. In moments of agreement we would embrace, while our cool-eyed interpreter looked on. Thus, in this exalted way, we carried on through the night until four in the morning, promising to meet at one O’clock for lunch.

But our enthusiasm had reached a climax; we had had it! Neither of us showed up. In the afternoon our letters of apology must have crossed, for their contents were identical, both profuse with apologies but careful not to make any more dates – we had had more than a glut of each other.

At dinner-time, when we entered the dining-room, Cocteau was seated in the far corner, his back towards us. But his secretary
could not help but see us, and with a weak gesture indicated our presence to Cocteau, who hesitated, then turned and feigned surprise, and gaily waved the letter I had sent him; I gaily waved bis and we both laughed. Then we turned soberly from each other and became deeply engrossed in our menus. Cocteau finished dinner first, and as the stewards were serving our main course he discreetly passed our table in a hurry. However he turned before exiting and pointed outside, indicating ‘We’ll see you there.’ I vigorously nodded approval. But later I was relieved to find he’d vanished.

The following morning I promenaded the deck alone. Suddenly, to my horror, Cocteau appeared around the comer in the distance coming towards me! My God! I quickly looked for an escape, then he saw me and to my relief darted through the main saloon door. That finished our morning promenade. Throughout the day we kept up a game of hide-and-seek avoiding each other. However, by the time we reached Hong Kong we had recovered enough to meet momentarily. Still there were four more days to go before reaching Tokyo.

During the voyage Cocteau told an amazing story: he had seen in the interior of China a living Buddha, a man about fifty, who had lived his whole life floating in a jar of oil, with just his head exposed out of the neck of it. Through years of soaking in oil, the body had remained embryonic and was so soft that one could put a finger through it. In what part of China he saw this was never made clear, and eventually he admitted that he had not seen it himself but had heard about it.

In the various stopping-off places we rarely saw each other, unless for a brief how-do-you-do and farewell. But when news broke that we were both sailing on the
President Coolidge
going back to the States, we became resigned, making no further attempts at enthusiasm.

In Tokyo Cocteau had bought a pet grasshopper which he kept in a little cage and often brought ceremoniously to my cabin. ‘He is very intelligent,’ he said, ‘and sings every time I talk to him.’ He built up such an interest in it that it became our topic of conversation. ‘How is Pilou this morning?’ I would ask.

‘Not very well,’ he would say solemnly. ‘I have him on a diet.’

When we arrived in San Francisco I insisted on him
driving with us to Los Angeles, as we had a limousine waiting. Pilou came along. During the journey he began to sing. ‘You see,’ said Cocteau, ‘he likes America.’ Suddenly he opened the car window, then opened the door of the little cage and shook Pilou out of it.

I was shocked and asked: ‘Why did you do that?’

‘He gives him freedom,’ said the interpreter.

‘But,’ I answered, ‘he’s a stranger in a foreign country – and can’t speak the language.’

Cocteau shrugged. ‘He’s smart, he’ll soon pick it up.’

*

When we arrived home in Beverly Hills, news from the studio was encouraging.
Modern Times
was a great success.

But again I was faced with the depressing question: should I make another silent picture? I knew I’d be taking a great chance if I did. The whole of Hollywood had deserted silent pictures and I was the only one left. I had been lucky so far, but to continue with a feeling that the art of pantomime was gradually becoming obsolete was a discouraging thought. Besides, it was not easy to contrive silent action for an hour and forty minutes, translating wit into action and creating visual jokes every twenty feet of film, for seven or eight thousand feet. Another thought was that, if I did make a talking picture, no matter how good I was I could never surpass the artistry of my pantomime. I had thought of possible voices for the tramp; whether he should speak in monosyllables or just mumble. But it was no use. If I talked I would become like any other comedian. These were the melancholy problems that confronted me.

Paulette and I had now been married for a year, but a breach was widening between us. It was partly due to my being worried and absorbed in trying to work. However, on the success of
Modern Times
Paulette was signed up to make several pictures for Paramount. But I could neither work nor play. In this melancholy frame of mind I decided to go to Pebble Beach with my friend Tim Durant. Perhaps I could work better there.

Pebble Beach, a hundred-odd miles south of San Francisco, was wild, baneful and slightly sinister. I called it ‘the abode of stranded souls’. It was known as the Seventeen-mile Drive; it had deer roaming through its wooded sections, and many pretentious
houses unoccupied and for sale; there were fallen trees rotting in fields full of wood ticks, poison ivy, oleander bushes and deadly nightshade – a setting for banshees. Fronting the ocean, built on the rocks, were several elaborate houses occupied by millionaires; this section was known as the Gold Coast.

I had met Tim Durant when someone brought him to one of our Sunday tennis parties. Tim was very good at tennis, and we played a lot together. He had just divorced his wife, the daughter of E. F. Hutton, and had come to California to get away from it all. Tim was sympathetic, and we became very good friends.

We rented a house set back from the ocean half a mile. It was dank and miserable, and when we lit a fire it would fill the room with volumes of smoke. Tim knew many of the social set of Pebble Beach, and while he visited them I tried to work. For days and days I sat alone in the library and walked in the garden, trying to get an idea, but nothing would come. Eventually, I deferred worrying, joined Tim and met some of our neighbours. I often thought they were good material for short stories – typical de Maupassant. One large house, although comfortable, was slightly eerie and sad. The host, an agreeable chap, talked loudly and incessantly while his wife sat without uttering a word. Since her baby had died five years ago, she seldom spoke or smiled. Her only utterance was good-evening and good-night.

At another house built on the high cliffs overlooking the sea, a novelist had lost his wife. It appears she had been in the garden taking photographs and must have stepped backwards too far. When her husband went to look for her, he found only a tripod. She was never seen again.

Wilson Mizner’s sister disliked her neighbours, whose tennis court overlooked her house, and whenever her neighbours played tennis she would build a fire and volumes of smoke would cover the court.

The Fagans, an old couple, immensely rich, entertained elaborately on Sundays. The Nazi Consul, whom I met there, a blond, smooth-mannered young man, did his best to be engaging. But I gave him a wide-berth.

Occasionally we spent a week-end at the John Steinbecks’. They had a small house near Monterey. He was just on the threshold of fame, having written
Tortilla Flat
and a series of short
stories. John worked in the morning and averaged about two thousand words a day. I was amazed at how neat were his pages, with hardly a correction. I envy him.

I like to know the way writers work and how much they turn out a day. Thomas Mann averaged about 400 words a day. Lion Feuchtwanger dictated 2,000 words, which averaged 600 written words a day. Somerset Maugham wrote 400 words a day just to keep in practice. H. G. Wells averaged 1,000 words a day, Hannen Swaffer, the English journalist, wrote from 4,000 to 5,000 words a day. The American critic, Alexander Woollcott, wrote a 700-word review in fifteen minutes, then joined a poker game – I was there when he did it. Hearst would write a 2,000-word editorial in an evening. Georges Simenon has written a short novel in a month – and of excellent literary quality. Georges tells me that he gets up at five in the morning, brews his own coffee, then sits at his desk and rolls a golden ball, the size of a tennis ball, and thinks. He writes with a pen and when I asked him why he wrote in such small handwriting, he said: ‘It requires less effort of the wrist.’ As for myself I dictate about 1,000 words a day, which averages me about 300 in finished dialogue for my films

The Steinbecks had no servants, his wife did all the housework. It was a wonderful ménage and I was very fond of her.

We had many a discourse and in discussing Russia John said that one thing the Communists had done was to abolish prostitution. ‘That’s about the last of private enterprise,’ I said. ‘Too bad, it’s about the only profession that gives full value for your money, and a most honest one – why not unionize it?’

An attractive married lady, whose husband was flagrantly unfaithful, arranged a
pas de deux
with me at her large house. I went there with every adulterous intention. But when the lady confided tearfully that she had had no sexual relations with her husband in eight years and that she still loved him, her tears dampened my ardour, and I found myself giving her philosophical advice – the whole thing became cerebral. Later it was rumoured that she had turned Lesbian.

Robinson Jeffers, the poet, lived near Pebble Beach. The first time Tim and I met him was at a friend’s house. He was aloof and silent, and in my usual glib way I started to carp about the ills
and evils of the day just to make the evening go. But Jeffers never said a word. I came away rather annoyed at myself for having monopolized the conversation. I felt that he disliked me, but I was wrong, for a week later he invited Tim and me to tea.

Robinson Jeffers and his wife lived in a small medieval stone castle called Tor, which he had built himself on a slab of rock on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. It looked rather boyishly indulgent, I thought. The largest room was not more than twelve feet square. A few feet away from the house was a medieval-looking round stone tower, eighteen feet high and four feet in diameter. Narrow stone steps led up to a little round dungeon with slits for windows. This was his study. It was here that
Roan Stallion
was written. Tim maintained that this sepulchral taste was a psychological desire for death. But I saw Robinson Jeffers walking with his dog at sunset, enjoying the evening, his face set in an ineffable expression of peace as though immersed in some far-off reverie. I feel sure that no such person as Robinson Jeffers desires death.

W
AR
was in the air again. The Nazis were on the march. How soon we forgot the First World War and its torturous four years of dying. How soon we forgot the appalling human debris: the basket cases – the armless, the legless, the sightless, the jawless, the twisted spastic cripples. Those that were not killed or wounded did not escape, for many were left with deformed minds. Like a minotaur war had gobbled up the youth, leaving cynical old men to survive. But we soon forget and glamorize war with popular Tin Pan Alley ditties:

How’re you going to keep them down on the farm,
After they’ve seen Paree –

and so forth. War in many ways was a good thing, some said. It expanded industry and advanced techniques and gave people new jobs. How could we think of the millions that lay dead when millions were being made on the stock market? At the height of the market Arthur Brisbane of the
Hearst Examiner
said: ‘U.S. Steel will jump up to five hundred dollars a share.’ Instead it was the speculators that jumped out of windows.

And now another war was brewing and I was trying to write a story for Paulette; but I could make no progress. How could I throw myself into feminine whimsy or think of romance or the problems of love when madness was being stirred up by a hideous grotesque, Adolf Hitler?

Alexander Korda in 1937 had suggested I should do a Hitler story based on mistaken identity, Hitler having the same moustache as the tramp: I could play both characters, he said. I did not think too much about the idea then, but now it was topical, and I was desperate to get working again. Then it suddenly struck me. Of course! As Hitler I could harangue the crowds in jargon and talk all I wanted to. And as the tramp I could remain more or less silent. A Hitler story was an opportunity for burlesque and pantomime. So with this enthusiasm I went hurrying back to Hollywood and set to work writing a script. The story took two years to develop.

I thought of the opening sequence, which would start with a battle scene of the First World War, showing Big Bertha, with its shooting range of seventy-five miles, with which the Germans intended to awe the Allies. It is supposed to destroy Rheims Cathedral – instead it misses its mark and destroys an outside water-closet.