Part 5

David Selznick, in the suite next door, heard the shots and called the front desk. The clerk there telephoned the police. Mannie Sachs, the king of talent scouts for RCA, who had a permanent suite down the hall, had also been startled by the explosions, and came running. He and Selznick hurried into Frank’s room, listened to what had happened. Then they grabbed the mattress with the two holes in it and toted it down the hall, to exchange it for one on Mannie’s bed. When the police arrived to search Frank’s suite without finding a trace of bullets, Frank was as cool as a cat. “You’re dreaming,” he told them. “You’re crazy.”

He had already applied to Harry Cohn for the featured role of Maggio in _From Here to Eternity_ when he flew to Africa in 1952 to be with Ava while she made _Mogambo_ with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly. Cohn had originally doused cold water on his ambition. “You’re nuts. You’re a song-and-dance man. Maggio’s stage-actor kind of stuff.”

Frank had been in Africa five days--days of sitting around with nothing to do but watch his wife work. He killed time by building an outside shower in the woods for her. He rounded up fifty native singers and dancers for a party for cast and crew. He worked harder than on any sound stage to keep from going crazy. Then his agent, Bert Allenberg of MCA, called him back to test for _Eternity_. Frank told me the whole story later:

“I left Africa one Friday night. I had a copy of the scene and I sat up all night on the plane. Didn’t sleep the whole trip. Monday morning I made the test. I finished at 3 P.M. and that night flew back to Africa. My adrenalin was bubbling. I waited five days, ten, then got a letter they were testing five or six other guys, among them Eli Wallach.

“I’d seen him in _Rose Tattoo_ on Broadway, and I know he’s a fine actor. So I thought: ‘I’m dead.’ Then I got a wire from Allenberg: ‘Looks bad.’ My chin was kicking my knees. But Ava was wonderful. She said: ‘They haven’t cast the picture yet. All you get is a stinking telegram, and you let it get you down.’

“Clark would say: ‘Skipper, relax. Drink a little booze. Everything will be all right.’ I left Africa and went to Boston for a night-club date. I got a call another Monday morning that they’d made the deal. I told Allenberg: ‘If you have to pay Harry Cohn, sign the contract; I’ll pay _him_.’”

For Maggio, Frank’s fee was $8000 instead of the usual $150,000. He flew off to join Ava for a few days of fun and fury in Paris. “Then I got a cable from Harry Cohn: ‘Clift already proficient in army drill. Seeing as how you have same routine, suggest you get back a few days early.’ I wired back: ‘Dear Harry--will comply with request. Drilling with French Army over weekend. Everything all right. Maggio.’ I talked to his secretary later, and she said when she opened the wire she screamed. But Cohn didn’t crack a smile. He had a sense of humor like an open grave.”

Unpredictable as always, Frank went with his family to the Academy Awards show when he collected an Oscar for Maggio. “The minute my name was read, I turned around and looked at the kids. Little Nancy had tears in her eyes. For a second I didn’t know whether to go up on stage and get it or stay there and comfort her. But I gave her a peck on the cheek and reached for young Frankie’s hand.

“When I came back, it was late, so I got them home and sat with them for a while. Then I took the Oscar back to my place, where a few people dropped in. I got Nancy a little miniature thing for her charm bracelet, a small Oscar medallion. The kids gave me a St. Genesius medal before the Awards, engraved with, ‘Dad, we will love you from here to eternity.’ Little Nancy gave me a medal and said, ‘This is from me and St. Anthony.’ That’s her dear friend. She seems to get a lot done with St. Anthony. I guess she has a direct wire to him.”

There’s a show-business legend that, abracadabra, Frank’s career started going up like a skyrocket from that moment on. It’s a legend, nothing more. Turning the corner was slow going for him. He still had to play in such flops as _Suddenly_ and find he was turned down for _Mr. Roberts_ because Leland Hayward thought he was too old. He still had night-club tours to make under old agreements. And he still had to work out the switch to Capitol which eventually made him a best seller on records.

It took him a long time, too, to recover from Ava. She hasn’t yet recovered from him. Holed up in Spain, she has been outcast to most Spaniards, who don’t tolerate her flouting of their social rules. Recently she went back to work again, talking a comeback, as so many like her do. The proof, as always, lies in the performance they can deliver before the cameras.

Frank came near the end of the road he’d traveled with her when he returned unexpectedly early one day to his Palm Springs house and overheard her talking with another woman star whom she’d invited down there while he was away. The subject they were discussing, I understand, was Frank’s love-making, which they were downgrading. Those two would do just that. “Pack up your clothes and get out,” Frank yelled. “I don’t want to see either of you again.”

I sat in his dressing room at Paramount in December 1956 when the Ava era finally ended for him. A Hollywood reporter had taken her out driving one night in the desert around Palm Springs, gotten her drunk, and recorded what she told him over a microphone hidden in his car. The magazine story that resulted had appeared that day. Frank sat with a copy of it in his hand, cringing silently in his chair. Ava was quoted as complaining: “Frank double-crossed me ... made me the heavy ... I paid many of the bills.” Even the ashes were cold after that.

That was the year he waged a busy-beaver campaign for Adlai Stevenson, just as he had worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and, four years later, would slave for John F. Kennedy. He was in Spain, filming _The Pride and the Passion_, when he was asked to assist the Democratic convention in Chicago by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on opening night. Eager to oblige, he flew for thirty-three hours through appalling transatlantic weather and reached the convention platform at 8 P.M., a bare thirty minutes before Sam Rayburn, late Speaker of the House of Representatives, was scheduled to gavel the session to order.

No more than four hundred people had filtered into their places in the 25,000-seat auditorium when Mr. Rayburn, fortified by bourbon, started banging away with his gavel. Frank had no choice but sing to a virtually empty hall, while his fine old Sicilian temper flamed.

During the anthem somebody alerted Sam Rayburn to his error. He went over to Frank as soon as he’d finished singing and put his hand on Sinatra’s sleeve to apologize. Frank brushed him aside. “Keep your arm off my suit,” he snapped, and stormed away.

When Bill Davidson wrote the story, Frank had his attorney, Martin Gang, file suit for $2,300,000. He was armed with a telegram from Rayburn asserting that the incident was undiluted imagination. All Davidson had was the word of Mitch Miller, who’d been close enough on the platform to overhear what had gone on there. There didn’t seem to be any other witnesses.

But on a visit to New York soon after, a Hollywood press agent who was close to Davidson bumped into a Madison Avenue advertising man whom he hadn’t seen for years. The old friend happened to tell the press agent about a funny thing he’d seen on the platform at the Democratic convention, which he’d attended on agency business: He’d watched Sinatra giving Rayburn the brush-off. Needless to say, the suit was dropped.

Politics are serious business to Frank--they used to be to me until I got tired of the game and decided to give the young ones a chance. I was doing a bit in a picture at Las Vegas while he was there making _Oceans 11_, and I wanted to talk to him. But he was always too busy. After the 1960 conventions came and went, he was off on the island of Maui doing _Devil at 4 O’Clock_ before he could keep a promise to come over to my house.

From Maui he sent me a letter “giving you all the answers to the questions you would have asked me if we actually did an interview.” He’s a John F. Kennedy man and I was a Robert Taft woman; what better subject for a letter than politics, Sinatra version?

“Every four years,” he wrote, “the same question arises: Should show-business personalities become involved in politics? Should they use their popularity with the public to try to influence votes?

“My answer has always been ‘yes.’ If the head of a big corporation can try to use his influence with his employees, if a union head can try to use his influence with his members, if a newspaper editor can try to use his influence with his readers, if a columnist can try to use his influence, then an actor has a perfect right to try to use his influence.

“My own feeling is that those actors who do not agree with my point of view are those who are afraid to stand up and be counted. They want everybody to love them and want everybody to agree with them on everything.

“I am not sure whether they are right or whether I am right. I only know what is right for me....”

I almost tore up the letter as soon as I’d read it because of its last paragraph: “Maybe it will make a good Sunday piece for you. If you think so, then please don’t start to edit it. These are my thoughts, and if you want to pass them on to your readers, let them stand as is.” I haven’t edited; I’ve quoted, but not all five pages. Life’s too short for that, and you probably wouldn’t read them, anyway.

Though he’s proud to be a Democrat, he’s uneasy about being called a “Clansman.” The Clan consists of the men with which this mixed-up, lonely talent has surrounded himself--Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop, Peter Pentagon Lawford.

“I hate the name of Clan,” Frank once said.

“Did you ever look the word up in a dictionary?” I said. “It means a family group that sticks together, like the Kennedys you’re so fond of. They’re the most clannish family in America. I don’t like Rat Pack, but there’s nothing wrong with the name of Clan.”

What is wrong with the Clan and the Leader, as his gang have christened Frank, is the pull they both have over young actors who would give their back teeth to be IN. Membership dues include generally behaving like Mongols from the court of Genghis Khan.

The Clan was riding high the night Eddie Fisher opened his night-club act at the Ambassador Hotel here, before the _Cleopatra_ debacle got under way. I was in New York at the time. Frank and his henchmen took over and mashed Eddie’s performance. “This was a disgusting display of ego,” snorted Milton Berle, sitting in an audience that included comedians like Jerry Lewis, Danny Thomas, and Red Buttons, any one of whom, if he’d tried, could have joined in and made the Clan look silly. Elizabeth Taylor, on Eddie’s side that night, raged: “He may have to take it from them, but I don’t. One day they’ll have to answer to me for this.”

Steve McQueen was one young actor I managed to extricate from the Clan. I took him under my wing when he was driving racing cars around like an astronaut ready for orbit. “You could kill yourself when you were single, and it was only your concern. But you’ve got a family and responsibilities now. Think of them.” Between his wife and myself, we got him away from overpowered automobiles.

I took to Steve as soon as I saw him in “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I liked his arrogant walk, the don’t-give-a-damn air about him. So did Frank. When he sent Sammy Davis, Jr., into temporary exile for indiscreet talk to a newspaper about other Clansmen, Frank had Sammy’s part in _Never So Few_ rewritten for Steve. When Frank is in a movie, he becomes casting director, too.

He took Steve on a junket to New York when the picture ended, and Steve took along a big bundle of Mexican firecrackers, which he cherishes. He hadn’t previously been any kind of drinker, but in Frank’s crowd you drink. From the tenth floor of his hotel Steve had a ball tossing lighted firecrackers into Central Park. When the police ran him to earth, it took all of Frank’s influence to keep him out of jail.

As a peace offering, Steve had a live monkey delivered to my office in advance of his return. He wasted his time. I don’t like monkeys, so I gave it away and summoned Steve for some Dutch-aunt lecturing when he got back. “I know all about your trip. You were loud, boorish, and probably drunk. You have to make up your mind whether you’ll have a big career as Steve McQueen or be one of Frank Sinatra’s set. Think it over.”

Twenty-four hours later he gave me his answer. “I was out of line. I was flattered that Mr. Sinatra wanted me, but I’d rather stand on my own feet.”

* * * * *

I sometimes wonder about the Leader. His face lit up like a neon sign when he broke the news to me that he was going to marry Juliet Prowse, the South African dancer to whom he was engaged for an hour or so. “I haven’t seen that light in your eye for ten years,” I told him.

But I suspect the men around Frank went to work against Juliet. It’s easy enough to work the trick if you’re determined and unscrupulous. A word dropped into the conversation here and there will plant the doubts. “Do you think she really goes for you, Frank?” “She’ll probably figure on keeping her career.” “You should have met that family of hers--strictly nothing.” Frank was convinced eventually that Juliet wasn’t for him.

With all his talents and power, I sometimes wonder who’s the Leader and who’s being led.

_Four_

When Louella Parsons heard that I’d started work on this book, she telephoned to ask what its title was going to be. “Come, Louella,” I said, “you don’t expect me to reveal that to you, do you?”

“I hoped you would. And I hope you’ll be kind to me in your book because I was very nice to you in mine.”

“You certainly were--you got the facts about me so mixed up that I haven’t finished reading it.”

“Well, anyway, what are you going to write about?”

“I’m just going to tell the truth.”

“Oh, dear,” she wailed, “that’s what I was afraid of.”

* * * * *

In the days when I earned my living as a motion-picture actress, I was one of Louella’s regular news contacts. I had an insatiable curiosity about the town I’d known for years. I got around a lot, and lots of people talked to me. I salted down stories by the barrel load.

Louella would call up and say: “I understand you went to so-and-so’s party last night. Tell me something about it.” I was glad to oblige. Payment came in kind, not cash, when she inserted my name in her column, which helped a working actress.

She really was the First Lady of Hollywood then, for one good reason which nobody was allowed to forget. She was William Randolph Hearst’s movie columnist, and he was lavishing millions of dollars and acres of publicity space on his motion-picture properties, bent on making himself the greatest of all impresarios and Marion Davies the greatest star.

With the Hearst newspaper empire behind her, Louella could wield power like Catherine of Russia. Hollywood read every word she wrote as though it was a revelation from San Simeon, if not from Mount Sinai. Stars were terrified of her. If they crossed her, they were given the silent treatment: no mention of their names in her column.

When Hearst let himself be lured by Louis B. Mayer into putting his own production company, Cosmopolitan Pictures, under MGM’s wing, Louella’s power was apparently complete. She could get any story she wanted front-paged in the Los Angeles _Examiner_ and all other Hearst papers, none of them accustomed to making much distinction between real news and flagrant publicity.

At San Simeon, Hearst’s $40,000,000 Shangri-La in San Luis Obispo County, Louella mingled with the stream of visiting celebrities, stars, and producers that poured every weekend into the fabulous, twin-towered castle or the surrounding marble “bungalows” at the summons of W.R. or Marion. So did I. At the fifty-four-foot table in the Renaissance dining hall, you’d see Garbo, John Gilbert, Errol Flynn, Norma Shearer, Nick Schenck, Beatrice Lillie, Cissy Patterson, Frank Knox, Bernard Baruch. Name the biggest and they’d be there, including, on one occasion, Mr. and Mrs. Cal Coolidge and Bernard Shaw.

Nobody would deny that Louella has talent. She showed at her best with GBS, who was writing some articles for Hearst. All of us invited to San Simeon that weekend had been warned against asking Shaw for an interview. That didn’t stop Louella. He yielded to her persuasions only on condition that he have the right to approve every word of her article after he’d talked to her.

When she went back with the typescript he had her read it to him. After the first few words, he interrupted sharply: “But I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, Mr. Shaw,” she said, batting her big brown eyes, “I’m so nervous just being in your presence. What was it you said before?” He repeated the sentence, which she carefully inserted, and then read another line or two before the irate Irishman pulled her up short again.

This performance went on for some minutes longer before GBS took the manuscript from her hand. “Give it to me--I’ll write it myself,” he said firmly, proceeding to do just that. But Louella wasn’t through yet. When he handed back the completed article to her, she asked: “Oh, Mr. Shaw, won’t you please autograph it for me? It will be such a wonderful keepsake for my daughter, Harriet.”

He couldn’t refuse; he was writing for Hearst, too. So Miss Parsons scored in a triple-header. She collected the only interview Bernard Shaw gave in the United States. She subsequently sold the article to a Hearst magazine. And she has the autographed interview, which someday will sell for another tidy sum.

Some of us San Simeon regulars discovered that Louella isn’t slow to take credit. When W.R. and Marion went abroad on one of the many voyages they made together, we decided to throw a party for them on their return. We intended it as a gesture of thanks for all the parties of theirs that we’d enjoyed. We put on a terrific evening at the Ambassador Hotel, with its rooms crammed with flowers and cockatoos, and split the bill between us: $175 apiece. Louella was one of the party, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t write an article for a national magazine taking credit for it.

She owed a lot to Marion Davies. It was an article praising Marion in _When Knighthood Was in Flower_ that got Louella started with Hearst. It caught W.R.’s eye and prompted him to hire her away from her $110 a week as movie reporter on the New York _Telegraph_ into working for him at more than twice the salary. Over the years Marion shielded Louella from boss trouble more than once. After W.R. died in 1951, she was among those who didn’t exactly hurry to give Marion sympathy.

She did ring the doorbell, however, immediately after Marion had appeared on my television show. She arrived at her house bearing as a gift a photograph of herself in a heavy silver frame. She proceeded to place it in full view on a table in the front hall, taking star position ahead of an autographed portrait of General Douglas MacArthur.

Marion asked me to take a look when I arrived soon after Louella had left. I carried it back to the library, where Marion was sitting. “Do you want this?”

“No,” she said quizzically. I took the frame home to substitute a photograph of Marion standing beside me on the TV show, returning the old frame and new picture to her the following day.

* * * * *

Louella didn’t regard me as a serious rival when I got started as a columnist in 1938. Andy Harvey, in MGM’s publicity department, had recommended me to Howard Denby of the _Esquire_ syndicate: “When we want the low-down on our stars, we get it from Hedda Hopper.” I was signed by Mr. Denby and sold to thirteen papers straightaway, the first to buy being the Los Angeles _Times_.

The betting in town after column number one appeared was that I wouldn’t last a week. My mistake was being too kind to everybody. I didn’t tell the whole truth--only the good. I set out to write about my fellows in terms of sweetness and light, not reality. I began:

Just twenty-three years ago my son was born. Since then I’ve acted in Broadway plays. Sold Liberty Bonds in Grand Central Station. Knitted socks for soldiers--which they wore as sweaters. Made very bad speeches on the steps of the New York Library. Helped build a snowman on Forty-second Street ... when the streetcars were frozen solidly in their tracks. Earned money for one year as a prima donna in _The Quaker Girl_ with only two tones in my voice, high and low--very low. Played in _Virtuous Wives_, Louis B. Mayer’s first motion picture.

I’ve worked with practically every star in Hollywood. Sold real estate here--made it pay, too, but not lately. Was a contributor to one of the monthly magazines. Did special articles for the Washington _Herald_. With a friend, wrote a one-act play. Through pull had it produced at the Writers’ Club and was it panned! Ran for a political job here; thank goodness the citizens had a better idea! Coached Jan Kiepura in diction. Learned about the beauty business from Elizabeth Arden in her Fifth Avenue salon. Made three trips abroad, one to England on business. Put on fashion shows. Have a radio program.

And today I begin laboring in a new field and am hoping it will bring me as much happiness as that major event which took place twenty-three years ago. I can only write about the Hollywood I know. About my neighbors and fellow workers. Amazing stories have been written--many true. Hollywood is mad, gay, heartbreakingly silly, but you can’t satirize a satire. And that’s Hollywood....