Part 15

Marty set out to do over Doris, making her an entirely different kind of woman. A long list of subjects was barred in interviews now. Questions were welcome that let the two of them concentrate on picturing her as the girl next door who never smokes, drinks, or cusses, and always minds her manners. Any queries that probed into the real past were rejected. “Doris is not a movie star,” Marty told me blandly. “She’s a talented girl who through circumstances has been pushed into the limelight.”

That was quite an interview, telling as much in its silences as in its words. They came in to see me together, and that’s how they answered, though they didn’t exactly overflow with information. So they won’t be misjudged, I’ll quote them verbatim:

“How does being married to you affect him?” I asked.

“He couldn’t live without me,” she said.

“Seriously, how has this marriage affected you?”

“I’ve learned an awful lot.”

Marty broke in: “That’s pretty ambiguous.”

“Let me put it this way. We’re both striving to be real good people. Marriage has made a terrific change in Marty.”

“In what way?” I said.

“We’re very serious about our religion, but we can’t discuss that.”

“Why not? I think it should be discussed. Do you go to church every Sunday?”

“No, we’re not churchgoers. But we’re trying to be good people, and we’ve come a long way. It’s helped me to be less impatient. I used to be so impatient. Now I’m not.”

“Our religion,” Marty explained in words of one syllable, “is being good. Take out one ‘o’ and you’ve got God. To do good is to prove God.”

Doris hastened to explain: “For instance, we don’t gossip. We don’t talk about people. We don’t stand in judgment of others. We have only enough time to mind our own business.”

Minding their own business has made Mr. and Mrs. Melcher into a ten-million-dollar corporation. They hold interests in a motion-picture production company, recording companies, music companies, real estate, and a merchandising firm with plans to cash in on Doris’ new-found reputation as a clothes horse by peddling “Doris Day” dresses and make-up.

In spite of, or maybe because of, the dollars that come arolling in, Doris is neurotic about her health, which can cause mighty big problems for a Christian Scientist. When she was sure she had cancer--she was wrong--she put off going to a doctor in case she would be betraying her faith. Her brother Paul, who was going to be her manager on the recording side of her career, was a convert to the same faith; he died of a heart condition in his early thirties.

Both the Melchers keep a tight hold on their money. Their social life scarcely exists beyond having an occasional couple in for an early dinner--carrot juice in place of cocktails and desserts from Doris’ celebrated home soda fountain. She also holds on tight to the clothes she gets from her movie roles. When Irene Sharaff, who designed her _Midnight Lace_ outfits, wanted to borrow one coat to be modeled on the Academy Award night where Irene won an Oscar nomination, she had the devil of a time borrowing it--and it had to go back to Doris the next morning.

As for Al Levy, he had one more bit of business to sort out with Marty Melcher. Century Artists’ client list was shrinking as Marty concentrated on Doris, and the decision was made to sell the agency to MCA, who would latch onto anything in those days that promised to increase their holdings in the industry. There was just one cloud on the legal title when the time came to close the deal--the contract Doris had once insisted that Al sign with her.

“It doesn’t mean anything now,” the lawyers told Al Levy. “So just let us have a release before the first of the year.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, let’s forget it,” he said, by this time deep with David Susskind in Talent Associates, the television production company that Al founded the day after he sent the locksmith and Marty’s relations on their way.

But the lawyers insisted that something had to be done to satisfy Lew Wasserman, president of MCA, that Century Artists was in the clear. “All right,” Levy told the attorneys, “I’ve never asked Doris Day for anything in my life. Fact of the matter is, I put more money into her than I ever took out in commissions. So you give me a check for $3000 signed by Doris--it’ll buy a mink coat for my wife.”

He got the check and gave it to his wife. But Ruth Levy didn’t buy a coat. She put the money in their bank account.

[Illustration: 1. At sixteen, in my first evening gown, made by loving hands--my own.]

[Illustration: 2. My son, Bill, at age of five, relaxing against me at our home in Great Neck, Long Island. Even at that age he loved the Navy, or I did, because I selected a Navy suit for him.]

[Illustration: 3. Ken Murray burping. My beloved mother, Mrs. David Furry, and her daughter Hedda. At a picture premiere. Later at Ciro’s we were joined by Edgar Bergen. I introduced them. She was a bit hard of hearing and said, “Who?” I whispered in her ear, “Charlie McCarthy.” She said, “Is he now?” (_Photograph copyright Vitagraph, Inc._)]

[Illustration: 4. Clark Gable, who won the title of King and deserved it; he was the first I was photographed with when I started my column in 1938. And he was one of my greatest friends until the day of his death. (_MGM photo by Ed. Cronenweth_)]

[Illustration: 5. Charles Laughton, Carole Lombard, and I in the good old days when pictures were fun for everyone except the producers. (_Photo by Fred Hendrickson, Copyright 1940, RKO Radio Pictures, Inc._)]

[Illustration: 6. The beautiful Merle Oberon, after telling me she was divorcing Sir Alexander Korda.]

[Illustration: 7. Jane Powell and I were supposed to look alike. I was once engaged to play her mother at $5000 a week. But Louis Mayer was feuding with me at that time. Someone else got the part, but I got the money. The boy is Vic Damone.]

[Illustration: 8. Ida Koverman, everybody’s pet, between two of her greatest discoveries, Bob Montgomery and Clark Gable. She fought like a tigress to see they got the top roles at Metro.]

[Illustration: 9. Cary Grant and Randy Scott were once young bachelors, sharing life together. (_Copyright 1935, Paramount Productions, Inc._)]

[Illustration: 10. No wonder I look sad. Errol Flynn, Marion Davies, and Cissie Patterson have all passed away. But we were a gay quartet when this picture was taken at San Simeon during one of William Randolph Hearst’s birthday celebrations.]

[Illustration: 11. At the San Simeon wedding of Mary Grace (daughter of Mrs. Grace, one of Marion’s cooks) Doris Duke and Marion Davies were bridesmaids. James Cromwell, who was married at the time to Doris Duke, was a guest of honor and William Randolph Hearst was the host.]

[Illustration: 12. Charlie McCarthy’s Edgar Bergen and I at a fancy-dress do. Our mothers would never have known us.]

[Illustration: 13. I aimed for Duke Wayne, but Charles Luckman got in the way.]

[Illustration: 14. Hedda and the great Hemingway in Havana. We met too late. (_Jerome Zerbe photo_)]

[Illustration: 15. Mario Lanza, the great. His voice is silent but you’ll never forget him. He didn’t sing as well as Caruso, but his voice was much sexier. When he’d sold a million copies of his first record, he received one made of gold and insisted that I present it to him. (_Photo by Earl Leaf_)]

[Illustration: 16. With Moss Hart and Lady Elsie Mendl at the premiere of his _Lady in the Dark_. When Moss and I got inside, there were no seats for us.]

[Illustration: 17. Tony Perkins, Sophia Loren, Hedda, and George Raft. This was Sophia’s first introduction to Hollywood, a party given for her by Twentieth Century-Fox. Jayne Mansfield almost stole the spotlight from her in a low-cut gown with a break-away strap--it broke.]

[Illustration: 18. Designer Omar Kiam, Hedda, and Bill Hopper at the _Marie Antoinette_ premiere, where Norma Shearer, the great Antoinette, wore two evening gowns--one gold, one black spangles.]

[Illustration: 19. Ingrid Bergman and Hedda Hopper signing autographs at Hollywood Canteen during World War II, with a member of the shore patrol looking on. This almost broke up my friendship with David Selznick. I didn’t ask his permission for Ingrid’s appearance at the Canteen. He called up and said: “Now you’ve got me into trouble with Louella.” My reply: “That’s your hard luck.” (_Photo by Joseph Jasgur_)]

[Illustration: 20. James Shigeta, Robert Merrill, Charles Durand, Luise Rainer, and Ethel Barrymore on my Hollywood radio show. I can still close my eyes and remember that lovely voice of Ethel. No one like her; no one will ever forget her. (_NBC Photo by Gerald K. Smith_)]

[Illustration: 21. Stephen Boyd and Hopper when she was handed the Foreign Correspondents’ Golden Globe Award by Vincent Price. (_Los Angeles Times Photo_)]

[Illustration: 22. Hedda, Mrs. Eisenhower, Mrs. Raymond Massey, Mrs. Charles Brackett lunching at Romanoff’s during Mamie’s visit to Hollywood. You may notice how young Mamie and I look. The best brush man in Hollywood worked on our faces and eliminated the lines. When I thanked him, he said, “I’m now retiring and presenting that brush to the Hollywood Museum.” (_Photo by Twentieth Century-Fox_)]

[Illustration: 23. Hedda Hopper receiving a new bonnet from Jackie Gleason, who was playing _Gigot_ in Paris. (_Photo by Jean Schmidt, Paris_)]

[Illustration: 24. Elizabeth Taylor and Arthur Loew, Jr., her devoted admirer, with yours truly, whose hair needed the attention of both Mr. Kenneth and George Masters for this party. (_Nate Cutler Photo_)]

[Illustration: 25. Bob Hope and me on Christmas, 1958, with Southern European Task Force in Vicenza, first U. S. Army Missile Command Base in Italy.]

[Illustration: 26. I’ve got Bob and Lucy just where I want them--at my feet--during a visit on their set. But don’t worry, they didn’t stay there long.]

[Illustration: 27. The conversation must have been dull, or was Darryl Zanuck just pretending to be asleep? I almost didn’t get on the set. The picture was _Roots of Heaven_, directed by John Huston, who never cared for me after my review of _Moby Dick_. I felt sorry for the whale, and it was made of cement.]

[Illustration: 28. I like to think it was a draw between Betty Furness and me where hats are concerned. But in all honesty she had an edge on me. Both of them came from Sally Victor.]

[Illustration: 29. Henry Luce and I trying to impress each other. Jerome Zerbe, in the background, was the winner. He remembered everything we said, but I’ve forgotten. (_Photo by Walter Daran_)]

[Illustration: 30. Mrs. Bob Considine, Gary Cooper, Hedda in Madrid, where the señoritas and señoras followed him as if he were the Pied Piper.]

[Illustration: 31. Perry Como never did take me seriously, and here’s a picture to prove it. (_NBC Photo by Frank Carroll_)]

[Illustration: 32. Two of my best friends: Louella Parsons and Debbie Reynolds at a shower given for Debbie before the birth of her first child when she was Mrs. Eddie Fisher. I bribed the photographer to hold this print. I like it.]

[Illustration: 33. Rudy Vallee, now one of the great hits in New York in _How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying_, listening in on a radio rehearsal of Jack Barrymore and me.]

[Illustration: 34. What a nerve I had showing my legs beside those of Marlene Dietrich.]

[Illustration: 35. Hedda and Elvis sharing a koala.]

[Illustration: 36. Hedda and Robert Preston in Mason City, Iowa, June 19, 1962, when 121 high school bands paraded through the city.]

[Illustration: 37. Whenever I see a picture of George Washington, I always try to get under it and this time I did with Dean Martin. (_MGM Photo_)]

[Illustration: 38. Well, now, look how Senator Javits and Joseph Binns have sliced off my hips, at a party at the Waldorf for Orphans of Italy. (_Photo by Helen Grant_)]

[Illustration: 39. Adolph Zukor, Hedda, Mel Ferrer, and Audrey Hepburn at Friars dinner honoring Gary Cooper, which was his last public appearance. Coop became a star at Paramount Studios, whose founder was Adolph Zukor. But those who arranged the dinner--and they didn’t consult Cooper--didn’t have sense enough to place Mr. Zukor as an honored guest on the dais. (_Photo by Jules Davis_)]

[Illustration: 40. Jimmy Cagney and Hedda Hopper--all passion spent. (_Earl Theisen/Look photo_)]

[Illustration: 41. Barry Goldwater and Hedda Hopper at a luncheon for crippled children in Scottsdale, Arizona.]

_Ten_

In my business I get “genius” dished out to me as regularly as the morning mail. To believe the press agents, every dirty-shirttail boy in blue jeans who comes over the hill from Lee Strasberg’s classes is the biggest thing to hit the industry since Jack Barrymore played Don Juan. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the gangling lad is like a dream brought on by eating Port-Salut cheese too late at night: if you wait long enough, it goes away. There’s that once in a hundred, though, when the press agent is right....

The chief public-relations man at Warners’ was as persuasive as ever: “This one is something special. We think he’s a genius, more or less. I want you to meet him.” So I agreed to go over for luncheon in the commissary, and he introduced me to Jimmy Dean, brought to Hollywood to do _East of Eden_ by Elia Kazan, who had been bowled over by his Broadway performance as the Arab boy in Billy Rose’s production of André Gide’s _The Immoralist_.

The latest genius sauntered in, dressed like a bum, and slouched down in silence at a table away from mine. He hooked another chair with his toe, dragged it close enough to put his feet up, while he watched me from the corner of his eye. Then he stood up to inspect the framed photographs of Warner stars that covered the wall by his head. He chose one of them, spat in its eye, wiped off his spittle with a handkerchief, then like a ravenous hyena, started to gulp the food that had been served him.

“Would you like to meet him?” said the studio press agent who was my escort.

“No thank you, I’ve seen enough. If that’s your prize package, you can take him. I don’t want him.”

“He doesn’t always behave like this,” said my companion apologetically.

“Why now?”

“I don’t know. To be frank, he never acted this way before.”

I went back to my office and wrote a story describing every heart-warming detail of James Dean’s behavior. “They’ve brought out from New York another dirty-shirttail actor. If this is the kind of talent they’re importing, they can send it right back so far as I’m concerned.”

When an invitation came to see the preview of _East of Eden_, nobody could have dragged me there. But I heard next day from Clifton Webb, whose judgment I respect: “Last night I saw one of the most extraordinary performances of my life. Get the studio to run that movie over for you. You’ll be crazy about this boy Jimmy Dean.”

“I’ve seen him,” I said coldly.

“Forget it--I read your piece. Just watch him in this picture.”

Warners’ cagey answer to my call was to pretend _East of Eden_ had been dismantled and was already in the cutting room for further editing. I telephoned Elia Kazan: “I’m sorry I missed the preview. I hear Jimmy Dean is electrifying as Cal Trask--”

“When would you like to see it?” Kazan said instantly.

“Today.”

“Name the time, and I’ll have it run for you.”

In the projection room I sat spellbound. I couldn’t remember ever having seen a young man with such power, so many facets of expression, so much sheer invention as this actor. I telephoned Jack Warner. “I’d like to talk with your Mr. Dean. He may not want to do an interview with me. If he doesn’t, I shan’t hold it against him. But I’d love to have him come over to my house.”

Within minutes his reaction was passed back to me: “He’ll be delighted.” A day or so later he rang my doorbell, spic and span in black pants and black leather jacket, though his hair was tousled and he wore a pair of heavy boots that a deep-sea diver wouldn’t have sneezed at. He carried a silver St. Genesius medal that Liz Taylor had given him, holding it while we talked.

“You misbehaved terribly,” I told him after he’d chosen the most uncomfortable chair in the living room.

“I know. I wanted to see if anybody in this town had guts enough to tell the truth.” He stayed for two hours, sipping scotch and water, listening to symphonic music played on the hi-fi, pacing the floor.

We talked about everything from cabbages to kings. About George Stevens, who ultimately directed him in _Giant_ and who was sizing him up at this time as a candidate to play Charles Lindbergh. “I had lunch today with him,” said Jimmy, “and we were discussing Antoine St.-Exupéry’s _Le Petit Prince_--the writer’s escapist attitude, his refusal to adjust to anything earthbound. Reading Exupéry, I’ve got an insight into flying and into Lindbergh’s feeling. I like the looks of Lindbergh. I know nothing of what he stands for politically or otherwise, but I like the way he looks.”

“Do you fly?”

“I want an airplane next--don’t write that. When things like that appear in print, the things you love, it makes you look like a whore.”

We talked about Dietrich. Would he like to be introduced? “I don’t know. She’s such a figment of my imagination. I go whoop in the stomach when you just ask if I’d like to meet her. Too much woman. You look at her and think, ‘I’d like to have that.’”

Grace Kelly? “To me she’s the complete mother image, typifying perfect. Maybe she’s the kind of person you’d like to have had for a mother.”

Gable, who took up motorcycling in his middle-age? “He’s a real hot shoe. When you ride, you wear a steel sole that fits over the bottom of your boot. When you round a corner, you put that foot out on the ground. When you can really ride, you’re called a hot shoe. Gable rides like crazy. I’ve been riding since I was sixteen. I have a motorcycle now. I don’t tear around on it, but intelligently motivate myself through the quagmire and entanglement of streets. I used to ride to school. I lived with my aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana. I used to go out for the cows on the motorcycle. Scared the hell out of them. They’d get to running, and their udders would start swinging, and they’d lose a quart of milk.”

We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him “through the veil”). He said: “I had studied _The Golden Bough_ and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.”

I turned on some symphony music while he fished his official studio biography out of his pocket, glanced at it, rolled his eyes up toward heaven, and threw it away. While the record played softly, he went into Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.”

When it was over: “I want to do _Hamlet_ soon. Only a young man can play him as he was--with the naïveté. Laurence Olivier played it safe. Something is lost when the older men play him. They anticipate his answers. You don’t feel that Hamlet is thinking--just declaiming.

“Sonority of voice and technique the older men have. But this kind of Hamlet isn’t the stumbling, feeling, reaching, searching boy that he really was. They compensate for the lack of youth by declamation. Between their body responses and reaction on one hand and the beauty of the words on the other, there is a void.”

At that point he casually dropped his cigarette onto a rug and said: “Call the cops.” He went over to the mantelpiece, raised the lid of one of my green Bristol glass boxes that stand there, and, as if speaking into a microphone, said hollowly: “Send up Mr. Dean’s car.”

As he left I told him: “If you get into any kind of trouble, I’d like to be your friend.”

“I’d like you to be,” he said.

“I’ll give you my telephone number, and if you want to talk at any time, day or night, you call me.”

“You mean that?”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

I learned a lot about James Byron Dean, some from him, some from his friends. He acquired his middle name in honor of the poet, Lord Byron, whom his mother idolized. She was a little slip of a thing, a farmer’s daughter, who spoiled Jimmy from the day he was born in Marion, Indiana. Five years later, in 1936, Winton Dean, a dental technician, took his wife, Mildred, and their only child to live in a furnished flat in Los Angeles.

* * * * *

“When I was four or five or six, my mother had me playing the violin; I was a goddam child prodigy,” Jimmy reported. “My mother also had me tap dancing--not at the same time I played the violin, though. She died of cancer when I was eight, and the violin was buried, too. I left California--hell, this story needs violin music.”

Jimmy rode aboard the same train that carried his mother’s body back to Indiana, to be buried in the family plot. He was on his way to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow. “I was anemic. I don’t know whether I went back to the farm looking for a greater source of life and expression or for blood. Anyway, I got healthy, and this can be hazardous.

“You have to assume more responsibilities when you’re healthy. This was a real farm, and I worked like crazy as long as someone was watching me. Forty acres of oats made a huge stage. When the audience left, I took a nap, and nothing got plowed or harrowed. When I was in the seventh or eighth grade, they couldn’t figure me out. My grades were high. I was doing like high school senior work. Then I met a friend who lived over in Marion. He taught me how to wrestle and kill cats and other things boys do behind barns. And I began to live.”

“How old were you then?”

“About twelve or thirteen. Betwixt and between. I found what I was really useful for--to live. My grades fell off--”

“Living without learning,” I said.

“I was confused. Why did God put all these things here for us to be interested in?”

His Aunt Ortense was active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. When he was ten, she took him along to do dramatic readings for her ladies. “I was that tall,” he said, indicating half his adult height, “and instead of doing little poems about mice, I did things like ‘The Terror of Death’--the goriest! This made me strange; a little harpy in short pants.”

“You must have been a worse brat than I was.”