By Myself and Then Some (41 page)

I felt less well than I had with Stephen – my feet and ankles swelled and I tended to feel faint – but I never had any real trouble and was very happy with my new house. Bogie always said all he needed was one room, anything more than that was beyond him. He’d had his early theatre training in hotel rooms – that’s where he began his lifelong habit of tucking his trouser cuffs in a bureau drawer so that they’d hang straight and not need a press. That always made me smile – he did it as neatly and naturally as his morning shave.

I went into labor late in the afternoon of August 22. The drama that preceded Stephen’s birth was not to be repeated. Bogie was nervous, but not quite so bad as the first time. I hugged and kissed my cherished Stephen and told him the next time he saw me I’d be home with a brother or sister for him – he expected one his age or at least his size. So down we trotted to good old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and went through much the same routine, except that this time Bogie did not join me in the labor room. The second Bogart was a little slower in coming into the world and the anesthetic was a little slower in being given – always the case with second children, so as not to stop the contractions. At 12:02 a.m. Leslie Bogart arrived – Bogie and I had decided that a girl would be named after Leslie Howard, his first mentor and my imagined love. We kept the first name and eliminated the last. So we had a beautiful daughter. Bogie was awed once more by the magic of
childbirth and filled with admiration for my female capability. His joke had been ‘Be like the peasants – give birth in the fields – toss the kid over your shoulder and keep going.’ Spoken aloud to make him feel it was all going to be easy – as much for him as for me – and to still our anxieties. Afterward he said, ‘And you are called the weaker sex!’

Bogie’s reaction to a girl was not the same as to our boy – he was always gentle, but he looked at Leslie as if she were a fragile flower. He was almost afraid to touch her. Bogie had never thought he’d have children, much less a wife he loved who loved him. I knew he was thinking these things. There he was with a son and daughter, and the wonder of it was humbling – a far cry from his early analysis of marriage: ‘I sometimes wonder if the fucking you get is worth the fucking you
get.’
I always wanted to make a needlepoint pillow with that on it. His progeny gave him yet another reason for life and work – there was so much he wanted to teach them, to show them. I had proved to him that I was right, that he was not too old to be a father. You never are. And they were lucky to have
him
.

Leslie and I returned to our new home, where Steve gave Leslie a curious look, but wasn’t that interested. Whenever I fed Leslie he’d come in and watch, but he wasn’t wild about the attention being paid her. We had a nurse for Leslie. I never believed in not taking care of our own children, and yet if I’d done that, I’d never have done anything else. And I suppose I didn’t really have the patience. I was with them a lot, but every day, all day? I couldn’t have done it. I guess I was still too itchy to be moving in my own life. There were still too many unexplored areas.

A few days after Leslie and I came home, Mildred and Sam Jaffe came to visit. We started on politics – it was Presidential election year. Dwight Eisenhower had been the man each party wanted for its candidate, and Bogie and I had been among many who had gathered in Madison Square Garden to encourage him to return from Europe, where he was Commander of NATO. I, along with the rest of America, liked Ike; I wanted him on our – the Democrats’ – side. But it was not to be. Then there was talk of a new man on the Democratic horizon – the Governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson. He’d been singled out by Truman at a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner and besieged by the press with the usual questions. Are you going to be a candidate? Has President Truman asked you to be the nominee? We watched the
Democratic convention, saw him nominated, heard him make his speech. It was a sound I hadn’t heard in politics since F.D.R. – a cultured voice and perfect diction. But I still was disappointed that that great father figure, Ike, was not to be our candidate. Now Mildred Jaffe sang the praises of Stevenson. She urged me to read John Bartlow Martin’s book on Stevenson, and a few days later she brought it to me. It painted a picture of a man of enormous integrity, purpose, and wit – and I was always a sucker for anyone who could make me laugh, laughter being the best sound there is. Adlai Stevenson had humor and seemed to apply it to politics as well as to life, and the level of his humor was high. The book made me want to know more about him.

Dore Schary, Don Hartman, and Bill Goetz were giving a garden party in September when Stevenson was due in California. Its purpose – to introduce him to film folk and to see who would support him. I accepted the invitation to meet him. Bogie did not. At the party, Stevenson stood on the receiving line. One by one, we were led up to him, and as we reached him, the flashbulbs would go off to record the Historic Moment. I said a few nondescript words – he said something witty – we laughed and had our picture taken. He was friendly, open, warm, on first meeting.

I remember a very well known producer saying to me that afternoon, ‘If you’re smart, you’ll keep your mouth shut and take no sides.’ It was five years after the House Un-American Activities Committee investigation, but now, with the McCarthy fear, Hollywood seemed terrorized. I had never considered myself particularly brave, but I thought then, ‘What have we come to if I can’t voice my preference for Adlai Stevenson? Would it be worth living here if I couldn’t stand up for him?’ He was the candidate I was going to support, Eisenhower smile or no Eisenhower smile. Bogie was still for Ike and was due to go to Denver with Darryl Zanuck for a Republican rally. I was sent a wire asking if I would appear at a rally in San Francisco for Stevenson and do a day’s campaigning in the environs. I thought about it and answered yes. I wasn’t working, my children were thriving, nothing seemed as important as the election. People were fiercely taking sides. Many of our friends were for Eisenhower, and it was hard to argue against him, but instinctively I knew Stevenson was special – a rarity. Something was happening inside my head. I had to go to San Francisco. Bogie began to waver, and then a few days before I was off
to San Francisco, he made up his mind, called Zanuck, and told him he was going with Stevenson. Darryl wrote Bogie a letter saying:

It was the first time I had made a strong decision that went against my husband. We’d disagreed – had our fights like everyone else who lives with anyone else – but I’d never gone off on my own so definitively on an issue so public.

From the day we went to San Francisco, my life and I myself began to change. I was insanely caught up in the excitement of campaigning – lunches, rallies, motorcades, platforms, college campuses. We were assigned to a car a couple behind Stevenson’s. Crowds waving and screaming – it made me feel I was running for office myself, I got very pushy: no one who didn’t have to be was allowed ahead of me in the motorcade! We flew back to Los Angeles on the Governor’s plane, me talking to him all through lunch. His press secretary, William McCormick Blair, asked if we’d be able to campaign in the East, and I said yes before Bogie had a chance to hesitate. We had a week at home with Stephen and baby Leslie and I put on my own campaign to try to sway people, get them to switch to Stevenson. I sold tickets in Romanoff’s to raise money, which Mike in his most royal tones asked me not to do in the restaurant – Mike was a pure Eisenhower man. But I had no patience with anyone who was not for Stevenson – everyone
had
to be. I became fierce – I was obsessed – he
had
to be elected. I could think or talk of nothing else. We’d listen to his speeches, hang on every word, cut out any quote from the newspaper. There was none of the usual campaign hyperbole. For example, when Eisenhower said, ‘I will go to Korea’ – and many thought he won the election right there – Adlai told me he had thought of saying that too, but felt it would be too much of a grandstand play.

Our job was to help attract crowds, as Stevenson was still relatively unknown in much of America. I was sure that the more people saw and heard him, the more would vote for him. I didn’t believe for a moment that he spoke over the heads of the ‘ordinary man.’

We flew East for the final lap of the campaign in New York and Chicago. At every speech from the beginning – every platform, breakfast, lunch – Stevenson would catch my eye and wave and smile at me. To my fantasizing mind he seemed so vulnerable – so passionate about people and their needs – everything both Bogie and I believed in. Clifton Webb said he looked like Dwight Fiske. Fiske, I gathered, was a society piano player, somewhat effeminate, before my time. I didn’t find that funny. Fun was also made of his wave – and they had a point about that, though I would never admit it. It was his built-in modesty, he just held up his hand slightly modestly and halfway and waved, while Eisenhower raised both arms and looked sure and great and like a winner. Everything went just right for Eisenhower – even when Nixon’s finances came into question. The Democratic National Committee published proof that Nixon had access to funds provided by friends – less than a week later he vindicated himself on national TV, talking about his dog, Checkers, and his wife, Pat, with her Republican cloth coat, and proving to the American people’s satisfaction that he was an honest man. Ha! Eisenhower went beyond that – even beyond Joseph McCarthy – on his train at a whistle stop in Chicago, not defending his great friend and former commander, General George C. Marshall.

Bogie said he had a funny idea for a cartoon. He’d be standing at our front door with a child on each side and rain falling heavily and Stephen would say, ‘Daddy, where’s Mommy?’ Bogie, looking sadly into space, would reply, ‘With Adlai.’ It was a funny idea and I laughed, but Bogie knew that I had been deeply affected by Stevenson and, for that matter, he had too.

At every stop of the campaign train, we’d be introduced one by one to the waiting crowds – first Bob Ryan, then me, and then Bogie, and we’d each say a few pertinent, rah-rah words about our candidate. Then Adlai would be introduced and speak for perhaps ten minutes. The grind was rough, starting at 8:00 a.m. and lasting into the night. My memory is that he rarely had time to polish a speech before he had to speak it. Although he had great speechwriters, he himself wrote much of what he said. I always saw him with a yellow pad and pencil, furiously writing away up until the actual moment he was to speak.

Bogie and I left the train before it got to Grand Central Station in order to rehearse for the Madison Square Garden rally. Robert E.
Sherwood had written some marvelous things and got the best people in New York to appear – he cared so much, another extraordinary, exceptional man. It was good to see Bogie and Sherwood together almost twenty years after
The Petrified Forest
. No wonder Bogie talked so often of the good old days – with people like Bob and Madeline Sherwood constantly in your life, they would have had to be good. I flowered with these people – I drank in their attitudes, their spirit. Of course Stevenson had been labeled an ‘egghead’ by the opposition. The people around him, like Sherwood and Arthur Schlesinger, were eggheads as well. They were intelligent, and they cared more about the national good than about themselves. There was no one closely involved with Adlai Stevenson whom I didn’t admire.

Bogie and I went to Chicago for the final rally. In the car en route to the station Arthur Schlesinger told us that Adlai had decided what he would say if he lost. I said, ‘How can he think of such a thing now? He’s not going to lose – he can’t – he’s needed too badly. Now is this country’s chance for something better – they’ll realize it!’ As Bogie said, ‘The American people always do the right thing finally. As they proved with Truman.’ They
had
to do it this time too.

The Governor invited us to Springfield, Illinois, for the election returns. Bogie was horrified at the idea – he wanted to go home. I said we had to go – I couldn’t not be there, it meant everything to me. I begged – I pleaded – I won. But first we had to vote. So we did something truly crazy. We flew to California – attended another political affair at the Biltmore Hotel – collapsed at home with our babies (though, to be truthful, my mind was not on them) – listened to Adlai’s final campaign speech on election eve – rose at seven the next morning – voted – and flew to Springfield. We checked into an old hotel where everyone was gathered. Bogie felt lousy – had a virus, we thought – so he went to bed. But, having come this far, I was not about to miss anything.

After Bogie had everything he needed – or that he could get in that hotel – and knowing I had one foot out the door anyway, he told me to go out with the others for the disaster ahead. Dutch Smith, an old, close friend of the Governor’s, took me to the Executive Mansion. In a room on the first floor, a few people were quietly gathered. There was no air of victory – Jane and Ed Dick, old Lake Forest Stevensonites who had worked tirelessly during the campaign – Buffie Ives, the
Governor’s sister, came in for a while – Ernest Ives, her husband – Bill Blair – Arthur Schlesinger in and out. The Governor was in a private room watching the returns. It was a ghastly night – that quiet in the air that signifies doom. The results got worse and worse, and I worried about Adlai. Dutch said he was all right, he could deal with this defeat. I couldn’t – none of his friends could. I just sat there in deep depression, staring glassily at the television set, unbelieving. The people did
not
always do the right thing, or they could not have turned away from this man! I could feel the cracking of my heart. Dutch came over and whispered that we’d better get back to the hotel – the Gov and his family would be going there soon. And a message came from the Governor saying that he would like Bogie and me to come for lunch the next day in the mansion. Lunch! He thought of everyone, always – everyone but himself.