Part 22

They had their offices in a six-room apartment on East Fifty-second Street, rented for $210 a month. A secretary and switchboard operator occupied the living room. The master bedroom was the main office. In bedroom number two sat the script writers, pounding out “Mr. Peepers.” The back bedroom comprised the quarters of Ernie Martin and Cy Feuer, who had the space on a work-now-pay-later arrangement while they labored to produce a show that developed into the Broadway hit of the season, _Guys and Dolls_.

Ernie said to me not long ago, after he and his partner had five hits in a row, including _How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying_: “Hedda, you made me $3,000,000.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never did any such thing.”

“You drove me out of Hollywood,” he said. “I had to quit radio or get an ulcer.” Then I remembered. Ernie, a CBS vice president at the age of twenty-nine, was responsible for censoring my radio scripts for my weekly show. I always popped in three or four items which I knew hadn’t a hope in hell of getting on the air. I’d fight over those paragraphs until the red light glowed and I was on. That kept Ernie and his legal eagles so busy they didn’t have time to argue over the items I really wanted to get off my chest.

The secretary in the living room doubled as cook in the kitchen for luncheon. Meat balls and spaghetti were ladled out to the hungry mob of writers, actors, and directors who haunted the place at mealtimes. “Do you have to smell up the place with all that cooking?” Martin and Feuer would steadily complain. But since they were on the free list until later in the matter of paying rent, spaghetti and meat balls stayed on the menu.

The business was loaded with talents, a bunch of enthusiastic young men who had tremendous fun in the brand-new medium that was just beginning to grow. There were directors who went on to earn international reputations--Delbert Mann, Arthur Penn, Robert Mulligan, Vincent Donehue. There were the writers who set the future pattern for drama on TV--Paddy Chayevsky, David Swift, Horton Foote, James Miller. There was Fred Coe as producer. And David, who developed an itch to produce.

When his six-month trial was over, he was kept on for a further six. Then Levy went into the hospital for a series of operations and stayed out of the business for a year. Al Levy, who has since died, was a good and dear man; he left a glow in every life he touched.

David, meantime, had turned from selling to producing, and he proved himself to be good at it. He helped carry the business right to the top in reputation and influence. But he wanted to make a louder noise. He took on “Open End,” the TV gab fest, and fell flat on his face more than once as a would-be Socrates, most notably when Nikita Khrushchev decided to pay him a visit.

The most flabbergasted man in television when that happened was David. On a previous show he’d had a panel of United Nations diplomats, including a Russian. “I’d like to have Mr. Khrushchev himself if he ever cares to come,” David said casually, as much as to say: “If your wife’s coming to town, stop by for a drink sometime.”

One day his telephone rang. The Russians were happy to announce that Khrushchev would be David’s guest. Within a matter of hours anti-Communist pickets were parading outside Talent Associates, David’s family needed police protection, and his own life had been threatened. For the program, he armed himself with a few carefully prepared words with which to prod Mr. K. and prove that David was no red flag waver. But it was like a gadfly fighting back at the swatter. David did no good for himself or America.

He would have been wiser to stick to easier targets like Hollywood, most of whose inhabitants are personally too scared to hit back. He has taken a swing at Dick Powell, Jerry Lewis, Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, and Tony Curtis, and only Tony has ever come back fighting. “I’ve never met Mr. Susskind,” said Tony, after David had blasted him for having “no talent and no taste.” “And when I do I’m going to punch him right in the nose.”

David, who is unfortunately seldom at a loss for words, had his answer ready: “If I’m not the biggest admirer of Tony Curtis’ talent, I’ve never questioned his virility or strength. He is, in my book, a passionate amoeba.”

Playing in television, which used to be more fun than a picnic, is more like a salt mine now. The latest generation of TV actors, if they click in a hit program, slave six and seven days a week to keep the series going. The new faces soon show signs of bags under the eyes and crows’ feet.

“Ben Casey” is a case in point. Vincent Edwards, who plays the surly, sexy young surgeon in that hour-long, weekly series, enjoyed one day off in the first eight months of production. “We’re in such a bind,” he told me, “we take seven days to shoot a show to keep up the quality. And we’re only four shows ahead of screening time.”

He has the physique of a young bull, and he needs it. He started building muscle as a young swimmer; won scholarships to Ohio State and the University of Hawaii on the strength of his backstroke. Proving again the old axiom that actors are healthiest when they’re out of jobs, his idle years on Hollywood gave him time to go out to the Santa Monica beaches to pick up a permanent sun tan and hoist seventy-five-pound bar bells over his head.

He came in to see me wearing a dark suit, red T shirt, and red socks. His lunch came with him--a mixture of carrot, papaya, pineapple, and cocoanut juice, helped down with yoghurt and a sandwich. “TV’s a marathon,” he said. “I think the grind probably contributed to the death of Ward Bond on ‘Wagon Train.’ I arrive at the studio at seven-fifteen in the morning, and I’m there until seven-fifteen at night. By the time I’m cleaned up, it’s later than that when I get away. On Friday nights it’s usually ten or eleven.”

He has an agent, Abby Greschler, who developed Martin and Lewis in his earlier days and who was responsible for snagging the “Ben Casey” assignment for the thirty-five-year-old giant born Vincent Edward Zoine of Brooklyn. Abby is celebrated in our town for turning away wrath whenever it arises. He interrupts any harsh words from his clients by smiling ingratiatingly and asking: “Now how’re the wife and kids?”

He can’t use this trick with Vince because somehow he’s escaped marriage. “I’ve been at the starting gate a few times, but I rear up and throw my head back. My most serious romances have been with dancers.”

“Why dancers?”

“They’ve always been so healthy, most that I’ve known. Julie Newmar and I used to date off and on for years. She’s a health-food addict, too; makes the most exotic salads.” Diet is a fetish with him. “Foods in a natural state” are the mainstay. He recently showed signs of interest in a girl, Sherry Nelson, who is a jockey’s widow but addicted only to live horseflesh--they play the ponies at the track together.

Besides an agent, he also had a pile of debts when “Ben Casey” came his way. So Greschler booked him, for extra money, into things like the Dinah Shore TV show, which demanded rehearsing at night after the day’s stint on “Casey.” For those appearances he sings in a surprisingly good baritone voice. He once did some ballads and rock ’n’ roll for Capitol Records. “Five years ago one called ‘Lollipop’ got up to number three on the hit list, but we’ll forget that,” Vince said in my office. “I’m afraid the image wouldn’t hold up under it.”

The “image” is an invention of himself and Abby Greschler. It’s straight Madison Avenue talk, but it’s the immemorial style among Hollywood agents to convince the public that every star is superhuman. Casey is supposed to be what Vince has described as a “godlike kind of man,” a mixture of Gable, Brando, and Albert Schweitzer. Just to liven the picture up, Vince has got to be a maverick in his clothes, like the red T shirt, the black shirt and slacks he sported for Dinah Shore.

Greschler has a three-year plan for his protégé which calls for the two of them to form one or more corporations to produce movies with Vince as their star. At the end of the period Dr. Ben will supposedly finish up a millionaire. “If you have to make pictures, what would you like to do?” I asked him.

“Anything but a doctor. I doubt if I’ll ever play one again. I’m so identified with it. I’m only going to do it for three seasons.”

“You’ll do it for five, they’ll offer you so much money.”

“As I sit in this office, I will make a vow. I will say: ‘I’m sorry, I pass. My health is more important.’”

“Ben Casey” has one bit of pleasure he can count on. “I stay up and watch my own TV show. I have to have some reward for all this work.”

* * * * *

There is one face in entertainment that’s new and old simultaneously. Old because it’s been around ever since Mickey Mouse starred in _Steamboat Willie_. New because the old master has been conjuring up a project--it tells American history with life-sized, animated figures of our presidents--that’s as revolutionary as sound was when Jolson sang “Sonny Boy.”

Walt Disney has held on tight to the common touch and contact with everyday people. He maintains an apartment, furnished in grandmother’s style, in one of the buildings overlooking Main Street at Disneyland. On many a Saturday night Walt and his wife will sit up there, tweaking back the lace curtains that cover the windows, gazing at the crowds below like children watching a Memorial Day parade. It’s a real bit of Americana up to date.

He doesn’t acknowledge that anything but clean, good-humored pictures exist. He has never, to the best of my knowledge, sat through a single reel of the off-color, highly seasoned imports from France, Japan, and Italy that flood our screens today. By sticking to purity and fun he makes more money than ever before--and spends it as fast as it pours in.

He once almost lost Disneyland to the bankers who had extended necessary construction loans. But he was saved by the gong. He made a new picture, which earned more money than anyone had anticipated, and the big bad wolves were foiled again. The only living soul that Walt fights with is his brother Roy, who is the professional hard guy in Disney Productions, doomed to keep on wailing: “Walt, you’re spending too much money.”

My own modest contribution to the bank balance consisted of badgering Walt for five years to reissue _Snow White_, since I was convinced that a new audience grew up every season for his picturing of this timeless classic. In the end, he was persuaded and showed his thanks in the heaped-up basket of presents he sent my granddaughter Joan every Christmas.

He insisted on throwing a birthday party at his studio for her, with her whole school class, their mothers and teachers invited. We all watched a special showing of some Disney cartoons, then made our way to the party, which was held in Walt’s private penthouse atop the studio building. As the presents were handed out to every guest, ice cream and cookies devoured, cake cut with its miniature merry-go-round playing “Happy Birthday,” I noticed a detail that Walt had overlooked: the walls of the room had been adorned by Disney cartoonists with murals of rather handsomely equipped females without benefit of clothing.

One little fellow on the guest list wasn’t paying much attention to the gifts or the goodies. His eyes were riveted on the naked girls. “I’ve never seen ladies like that before,” he said when I went over to him. “I like _them_. I think I’ll be an artist when I grow up.”

I relayed the incident, with a chuckle, to Walt. His permanently raised eyebrows arched up an inch or so higher. “Oh, sure,” he grinned, “I forgot all about those pictures. There was only one youngster staring at them? Well, that’s all right. They won’t kill him.”

_Fifteen_

Whenever I stand up to make a speech about Hollywood, there is one question that’s ninety-nine per cent certain to pop up from the audience before we’re through: “Is _anybody_ in the movies happily married?” The only answer I can give, of course, is another question: “Who can possibly say, except the husbands and wives?” I’ve been lied to many times when a marriage was crashing on the rocks and nobody would admit it. Can’t say I blame them. A man and his mate have the privilege of pretending that all is well up to the bitter end, the way people do everywhere.

Three days before she filed suit to divorce Cary Grant, Barbara Hutton said to me: “If only Cary and I could have a baby someday. We both love children. We’d like to have at least three. We’re praying, both of us. Maybe our dreams will come true.”

Barbara, Frank Woolworth’s granddaughter, was a shy, self-effacing woman who allowed Cary to play lord of the manor in their Pacific Palisades house, which had a staff of eleven servants. They moved into it with her son of a former marriage, Lance Reventlow. Cary had by far the biggest bedroom, complete with wood-burning fireplace, beautiful antiques, private entrance, and a private bathroom approximately the size of Marineland. Cary always liked his creature comforts. And if she had dinner guests he didn’t care for, he didn’t come down to dinner.

He asked me to kill the interview when Barbara called quits to their marriage seventy-two hours after she talked to me. I did him that favor. Then he married wife number three, Betsy Drake. Number one, Virginia Cherrill, who later found a titled husband, was the blonde in Charles Chaplin’s _City Lights_, and she lasted less than twelve months with Cary. Barbara lasted five years.

With Betsy, he took up hobbies, from yoga to hypnosis. The former Archie Leach, of Bristol, England, ex-stilts walker and chorus boy, had Betsy hypnotize him into giving up liquor and cigarettes. He subsequently gave up Betsy, who finally sued to divorce him.

When Joe Hyams wrote a series of articles quoting Cary as saying he’d been seeing a psychiatrist, Cary denied that he’d said a word to Joe. That outraged reporter promptly retaliated with a $500,000 suit for slander. It came to an unusual but amiable settlement: Cary agreed to have Hyams collaborate with him in writing his memoirs and other articles, with Joe collecting the full proceeds. Joe didn’t know how lucky he was going to be. Once he got at a typewriter, Cary couldn’t be pried loose, asked for no help whatever from his fellow author. So the actor did the writing, and the writer drew the pay. I should be that lucky.

If yoga can’t hold a marriage together, confession sometimes can. One cowboy star talked himself out of a jam for which a less forgiving woman than his wife would have thrown him out on his ear. Talking didn’t come hard to him. He was laconic on the screen, loquacious off. He had some tall explaining to do when the scandal-sniffing hound dogs on the staff of _Confidential_ tracked him down on a weekend at Malibu, spent in the company of one of our bustiest blondes, and I don’t mean Jayne Mansfield.

The sensation hunters had compiled a timetable, at fifteen-minute intervals; the precise time he and the girl arrived in his car; the trip to do some shopping; the swim they took in the sea--every detail of the three days, supported by the affidavits of witnesses. There could be no disputing it. He couldn’t sue. Certain of that, publisher Robert Harrison already had the story on the presses.

Howard Rushmore, the lanky, sad-eyed former Communist who quit the New York _Journal-American_ to edit _Confidential_, gave me the tip two weeks before the issue of the magazine was due to hit the newsstands. “I thought you’d like to know ahead of time,” he said. “I know you’re fond of the guy, and you might like to warn him.”

“It’s a horrible thing to have happen,” I said, “but I appreciate your telling me.”

As soon as Rushmore left, I called the delinquent husband and got him over to my house. “How could you do this, and just after you’re reconciled with your wife?” I said. “If you wanted something like that weekend, why did you go in a car that anybody can recognize? Why didn’t you go further afield--to Santa Barbara, Laguna, La Jolla?”

“I guess I was out of my mind.”

“You must have been. You and your wife are so happy now.”

“How can I tell her?”

“Tell her the truth. Ask her to say, when her dear friends come to gossip, that she knows all about it, and it happened a long time ago. If you’re lucky, she’ll forgive you.”

I heard from him within an hour. “I told her,” he said, “and she was wonderful. Now things are better than ever.” And they remained that way until his death.

There’s probably more temptation to the square mile in our town than anywhere else on earth. A male movie star is bait to all seven ages of women, including female movie stars. A good-looking, virile male can take his choice among literally thousands of girls when it comes to romance. Some of them go into it for thrills, some in the hope of advancing their careers. Some of them get hurt, and some do the hurting. Many sell themselves too cheaply, a few value their favors too highly.

Gable could have had his pick of half the women in Hollywood after the plane carrying Carole Lombard home from a defense-bond drive crashed on Table Rock Mountain, Nevada. He couldn’t appear in public or private without starting a near riot. They flocked around him like moths around a candle--duchesses, show girls, movie stars, socialites--name them, he could have had them. He had the knack of taking just one look at a girl and flattering her to swooning point. He looked like hundred-proof romance, and was, unless you knew about his dental plates, a full upper and lower set. He hadn’t a tooth of his own in his head.

As a newcomer to Hollywood, he’d faced the usual months of torment having his teeth, which were in poor shape, fixed and capped to repair the cavities and fill the gaps. There was one difference between Clark and other recruits of his age group like Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy, and Pat O’Brien. Clark had a rich wife at the time in Ria Langham. On her money, he had all his teeth yanked and a false set installed so natural-looking they deceived almost everybody but a dentist.

The script of _Command Decision_, filmed long after Ria had made her exit and he’d paid her a quarter of a million dollars for the divorce, called for a slam-bang screen battle between Clark and Walter Pidgeon, to be staged near a fire that was blazing outdoors. The two of them mixed it up like heavyweights. In the middle of a wild, openmouthed swing, Clark’s uppers and lowers went sailing out of his jaw straight into the flames. He collapsed on the ground, helpless with laughter. “They ought to see the King of Hollywood now,” he gasped.

Clark’s dentures supplied me with the news beat that he was about to join up as a private in the Air Corps; a friend of his dentist tipped me off that he was making Clark an extra set of teeth, which had to be finished before he left to enlist.

Before Clark was nabbed by Lady Sylvia Ashley, he took his fill in high society. Millicent Rogers, married three times before, considered him the one real man she’d ever known. The Standard Oil heiress’ first husband was a fortune hunter, an Austrian count who revealed himself a hidden hero when he died at the Gestapo’s hands in Budapest in 1944. Her second was “Lucky Arturo” Peralta-Ramos, who won two French lotteries in a row then lost her. Number three was a New York broker, who turned the tables by divorcing her.

Millicent enjoyed twelve unforgettable months with Clark before she said good-by. In his affairs he always had to do the pursuing, as any man should, but she made the mistake of pursuing him. If she hadn’t revealed how much she loved him, she might have captured him. Then he might have been spared the miserable year and a half he had with Sylvia. Millicent sent him a farewell letter that put into words the feelings of every woman for a man like this:

My darling Clark:

I want to thank you, my dear, for taking care of me last year, for the happiness and pleasure of the days and hours spent with you; for the kind, sweet things you have said to me and done for me in so many ways, none of which I shall forget.

You are a perfectionist, as am I; therefore I hope you will not altogether forget me, that some part and moments of me will remain in you and come back to you now and then, bringing pleasure with them and a feeling of warmth. For myself, you will always be a measure by which I shall judge what a true man should be. As I never found such a one before you, so I believe I shall never find such a man again. Suffice that I have known him and that he lives....

You gave me happiness when I was with you, a happiness because of you that I only thought might exist, but which until then I never felt. Be certain that I shall remember it. The love I have for you is like a rock. It was great last year. Now it is a foundation upon which a life is being built.

I followed you last night as you took your young friend home. I am glad you kissed and that I saw you do it, because now I know that you have someone close to you and that you will have enough warmth beside you. Above all things on this earth, I want happiness for you.

I am sorry that I failed you. I hope that I have made you laugh a little now and then; that even my long skinniness has at times given you pleasure; that when you held me, I gave you all that a man can want. That was my desire, that I should be always as you wished me to be.... Love is like birth; an agony of bringing forth. Had you so wished it, my pleasure would have been to give you my life to shape and mold to yours, not as a common gift of words but as a choice to follow you. As I shall do now, alone.

You told me once that you would never hurt me. That has been true ... not even last night. I have failed because of my inadequacy of complete faith, engendered by my own desires, by my own selfishness, my own inability to be patient and wait like a lady. I have always found life so short, so terrifyingly uncertain.