The Patriarch (20 page)

In the midst of this Sturm und Drang, Kennedy was called back to the East Coast. His father had been taken ill with degenerative liver disease and been admitted to Deaconess Hospital in Boston. The train trip across the continent was never an easy one, though it had become faster and more luxurious since the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway rolled out the
Chief
in November 1926. Those willing to pay the extra fare were whisked east—from Los Angeles to Chicago, with a brief layover in Albuquerque—in just under fifty-seven hours, three nights and two days, or so the timetable promised. Along the way, passengers were invited to make full use of the specially designed “two-car set” in the front of the train, which “included a dining car [with room for forty-two passengers] and club lounge, with bath, barbershop, and soda fountain.” From Chicago, passengers such as Kennedy who could afford it boarded the
20th Century Limited
for the day-long trip to Grand Central Station in New York.
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Kennedy arrived in New York in mid-March and would remain there, commuting back and forth to see his father in Boston until early May, when the doctors told him (wrongly, it would turn out) that P.J. was out of immediate danger. Rescue work on
Queen Kelly
continued in his absence. He and Swanson talked regularly on the telephone, though that was not easy. It took several telegrams back and forth to set up each phone appointment. “Shopping today for house furnishings for Mrs. Kennedy,” Kennedy wired Swanson on April 23. “Will call tomorrow. Nothing new.”
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In early April, Swanson and the cast of
Queen Kelly
returned to the Pathé studio to shoot a new beginning and ending for the film. Gloria approved the script, then, after screening the footage from the ten days of filming, rejected it. As she had previously rejected every other suggestion for re-scripting and reshooting, the project was put on hiatus. None of this made Kennedy happy. Swanson was now interfering with his plans to get
Queen Kelly
finished and recoup at least some of his money—and reputation. On April 15, he called the marquis in Paris with the latest bad news: “Picture likely be shelved. Approximate loss between eight hundred and million. . . . Have been unable to get to California to find out how things are because my father’s illness which is dragging on. Nothing can be done. Just keeping you advised.”
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British director/writer Eddie Goulding, who in Kennedy’s absence had grown closer than ever to Swanson, suggested that she draw attention away from the
Queen Kelly
fiasco by quickly making a lighthearted talkie, her first, which he offered to write and direct. Kennedy, perhaps worried that if he did not agree, Swanson would follow through on her threat to return to Paramount, gave the go-ahead and arranged for the film, which would be distributed by United Artists, to be shot at the Pathé studio.

With a new picture to work on, a director/writer she trusted, and a temporary surcease to her
Queen Kelly
travails, Swanson was satisfied for the time being. In New York, Kennedy was busy as usual, juggling multiple, and at times conflicting, business interests. In April, he solidified his control of Pathé, his only institutional connection to the film industry, by having himself elected chairman of the board.
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In May, after two full months in the East and persuaded by the doctors that his father was well past any danger, Kennedy boarded a train from Grand Central that would connect in Chicago with the westbound
Chief
. He arrived in Los Angeles on May 17. The next morning, a Saturday, he was at the Pathé studio when the news he had dreaded caught up with him. His father had died.

The funeral was scheduled for Monday, May 20, at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Winthrop, not East Boston. Kennedy might have requested that the funeral be put off a few days so that he could attend. But what purpose would that have served? There was no widow to comfort. He had no desire to listen to hours of funeral tribute or attend wakes. His father’s friends were not and had never been his. He would grieve by himself, three thousand miles away.

The Kennedy family, now of Bronxville, was represented at the funeral by Rose and Joe Jr. “I was terribly disappointed not to be there myself,” Kennedy wrote Joe Jr., “but I was more than proud to have you there as my own representative and delighted everybody liked you so much. . . . I do not know how long I will have to stay here to finish the job I came out to do, but in the meanwhile, help mother and everybody out as much as you can and I will be with you as soon as possible.”
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He also wrote Jack, whose birthday he was going to miss again, to say that he had tried but failed to finish up his work on the coast “so I could get home and have a little fun with you all at the beach. . . . You may be sure I will get home as quickly as possible and when I do I will get busy on that horse arrangement so that you can do some regular horseback riding. I hope everything finished up well at school and that you are helping mother out as much as possible.”
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—

Q
ueen Kelly
had been quietly shelved, while Kennedy and Swanson figured out if and how it might be salvaged. Eddie Goulding was already at work on Swanson’s next film and first talkie,
The Trespasser,
a “weepie” about a poor Chicago secretary who marries a rich young man. When the man’s father has the marriage annulled, the secretary is left alone to raise the baby. Kennedy had read the script on the train returning to Los Angeles in mid-May. “Just finished reading story out loud to Ted [O’Leary] and we both cried,” he cabled Swanson from the train. “If that isn’t the greatest motion picture that anyone ever shot I want to go back to stock manipulation. I could see you in every scene. You certainly did a marvelous job. I am so happy for you.”
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On arriving in Hollywood, he invited Swanson, Goulding, and a few others to lunch and a script reading at Rodeo Drive. During lunch, Goulding, having decided that the film needed music, asked Swanson if she could sing. “‘She sings beautifully!’” Swanson recalled Joe calling “out like a proud parent. . . . ‘Why, Gloria wanted to be an opera singer when she was young. She’s told me so many times.’ Before I could be embarrassed that he had, as it were, compromised me in front of strangers, I read easily in the eyes of [those present] that our secret was no secret to begin with. I realized that Hollywood saw us as a modified version of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, only unimpeachable because we were both solidly married with children; beyond whispers, therefore, and entirely free of the possibility of louder accusations. So be it, I thought; at least I don’t have to spend the next two months or two years or two decades playing games.”
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The Trespasser
was scripted, shot, and edited in just three months and previewed at the
Rialto Theatre in New York in mid-July. Because United Artists, the distributors, had no first-run New York house available that summer, it was decided to open
The Trespasser
in London in August, then perhaps move it to Paris and Berlin to gather maximum publicity before an American opening later in the fall. Kennedy, who finally had a hit on his hands, though one he had had nothing to do with, was going to enjoy every minute of it. He was smart enough to realize he and Swanson could not attend the European premieres as a couple, so he invited Rose and his youngest sister, Margaret, to sail with him to London on the
Île de France.
Swanson would sail to Paris on the
Olympic
with her own traveling companion, her friend Virginia Bowker. In Paris, she would collect her husband, Henri, and then cross the English Channel with him for the London opening.

According to
Variety, The Trespasser
premiere was nothing less than “a sensational smash”—and both producer and star reveled in it. Kennedy especially, Swanson recalled, was almost giddy with the adulation. His “constant fervent attention” embarrassed her and distressed Henri. Rose appeared oblivious to it all.

The two couples celebrated their London triumph in Deauville, then returned to Paris. While Kennedy attended a series of business meetings, Gloria and Rose went shopping at Lucien Lelong, at the time Paris’s leading couturier, “and ordered our clothes there. It may sound easy, but it was hard work,” Rose remembered. “Gloria had to order something spectacular . . . and, as she was quite short, it was always more difficult. It is always more difficult to dress a short woman than a tall woman. I am not very tall and she only came up to my shoulder.”

While in Paris, Swanson discovered that her husband was having an affair with the American actress Constance Bennett, whom she suspected Kennedy had slept with as well. According to Rose, Swanson threatened to “get a divorce at once” and told Kennedy she would never again appear in public with Henri. “Joe was dumbfounded and flabbergasted.” The last thing he needed was a divorce court scandal interfering with the publicity for his and Swanson’s hit film. “Joe said he had put a lot of money into the picture, also time and effort and he was not going to lose it all for a personal disagreement on the part of the star and her husband.” Swanson agreed and, accomplished actress that she was, made believe that she and Henri were still a loving married couple. “Henri moved to separate quarters in the hotel,” but in public, Rose remembered, “Gloria and he were hand in hand, all smiles and to all appearances very happy.” On September 18, as Rose, Kennedy, sister Margaret, Gloria, and Virginia Bowker boarded their ship bound for New York Harbor, the marquis was there to wave good-bye for the photographers.
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Swanson recalled in the notes for her memoir the near lunacy of sailing home with her lover and her lover’s wife and sister. It was a particularly “crazy experience because by this time J. P. was brazen about his feeling for me, example: After dinner one night, he with his four ladies wife-sister-Virginia and me were sitting in the salon. At the next table was a man who obviously wanted to get a good look at me and was staring— It was embarrassing but was made worse by Mr. K’s telling him to stop, turn around, in no uncertain terms—what his wife and sister thought Virginia and I could never figure out—the whole trip was nerve racking for me—because while someone may be difficult to find on a ship he never left me out of his sight—and if his wife wanted to find him all she had to do was find me. . . . The curious part of the whole situation was that I felt no guilt feeling about Rose. She was an enigma to me. She didn’t show any sign of caring if Joe was possessive of me— She treated me as if I were one of the family—I wanted to say little do you know but I couldn’t because there were times when I was sure she didn’t know and times when I was sure she didn’t care.”
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To her dying day, Rose would deny that there was anything other than a business relationship between her husband and Gloria Swanson. The ridiculous rumors of her husband’s relationship to Gloria, she told her ghostwriter, had begun only because when their boat docked in New York Harbor, she stayed behind in her cabin to avoid being photographed. The reporters greeting the boat, seeing Gloria and Joe on deck without her, assumed that they had vacationed together in Europe. Rose’s story seemed so preposterous that her ghostwriter didn’t include it in her published memoir.
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Swanson did not return immediately to the West Coast but stayed behind in New York to do some publicity work on her new film. Her children, her nanny, and a few friends were imported east to be with her. She no doubt spent some of her nights in New York City with Kennedy, but in hotels or borrowed apartments well out of public view. There was nothing out of the ordinary in Kennedy’s staying overnight instead of returning to Bronxville. In February 1932, while Rose was in Boston giving birth to her ninth child, Kick would innocently include in her twelve-year-old stream-of-consciousness letter to her mother the fact that “Daddy did not come home last night. We do not know when he is coming.”
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Swanson and her daughter visited Bronxville for a Halloween party in 1929, and “little Gloria” went to school with Kick, who was profoundly disappointed when her schoolmates refused to believe that her friend was actually Gloria Swanson’s daughter. (In her memoir, Rose identifies Pat as the child who took little Gloria to school, but Pat was only five at the time, four years younger than little Gloria and not yet in school.) That Christmas, Rose made sure to send presents to Los Angeles for the Swanson children, and Swanson reciprocated by directing her New York assistant to buy the Kennedy children presents. Because her first choice, a “puff billiards game,” was all sold out, the assistant bought a “large horse game . . . quite expensive but [it] was suitable for all six children. Sent army ambulance auto for Bobbie and unbreakable doll for Jean.”
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Swanson and Kennedy’s “secret” would remain Hollywood’s secret, which meant it was never much of a secret within the industry but was guarded from those outside it. The trade press, anxious to protect Hollywood’s image, was not going to turn on its own. Big-city publishers and editors, Hearst among them, had long ago reached gentlemen’s agreements to stay away from gossip about adultery and infidelity. Such subjects were not to be mentioned, even hinted at, unless and until exposed publicly in divorce court proceedings.

There would later be hints, originating with Swanson, that Kennedy intended to leave Rose and his family for her. In the notes for her autobiography, she referred to a church official in a red robe with “a handsome face and beautiful hands” who summoned her to a clandestine meeting in New York and asked her to give up Kennedy. In her memoirs, her ghostwriters elaborated on the story and identified Cardinal William O’Connell of Boston as the red-robed churchman who informed Swanson “that Joe had spoken about our relationship with some of the higher representatives of the Catholic Church [and] sought permission to live apart from his wife and maintain a second household with me.” The story, published in 1980 when there was no one left alive to refute it, does not ring true. Neither does the casual aside, also in the memoir, that Joe wanted Swanson to bear his child. Joseph P. Kennedy was every inch the realist. He did not engage in quixotic quests for the impossible. He had been in and of the church all his life and certainly knew enough about church doctrine and practice to realize that he would never be granted “permission” to live with Swanson. There was no way he would have prostrated himself before “some of the higher representatives of the Catholic Church” to make a request he knew would be denied.
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