Hollywood (16 page)

When this splendid annulment of the First Amendment became law the previous month, on June 15, Blaise had received direct word from William Randolph Hearst in New York that the law was specifically directed against the two of them. “Do something,” was the Chief’s injunction to his former disciple.

Edith rose, as George Creel, a youthful forty-year-old, appeared, straw hat set on the back of his head. In the presence of the sovereign lady, the hat was removed. Edith made the introductions, then said, “I must help the President with Colonel House’s latest reports. Oh, what a tangled web we weave …” she intoned, mysteriously, and vanished into the salon.

“Whose web?” asked Blaise, indicating for the younger man to sit. Blaise offered Creel a cigar, which he took.

“Colonel House. I suppose Mrs. Wilson thinks he’s been given too much of a free hand in Europe.” Creel put the straw hat back on. As this was news to Blaise, he affected boredom. “I’ve always thought he was just a message-bearer, a sort of courtier.”

“She would agree with you about the courtier.” Like so many energetic young men new to public life, George Creel could hold nothing back that might demonstrate in the most astounding way his own involvement in public affairs. “She thinks he says yes too often to the President.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“I try not to. Of course, I’ve only been in this job three months …”

“What
is
this job?”

Creel looked surprised. “Information. We try to give the good news about our side, and the bad news about the Huns. In a way, it’s like advertising, though the President doesn’t care for the word.”

Blaise nodded. Creel was now coming into focus. Blaise had expected a bumptious Midwestern journalist; instead, he was faced with a bumptious advertising man, a thinker in slogans, a perfect man for Hearst if not Blaise. “Who decided to abandon press conferences altogether?”

Creel looked away. “Well,” he said—lying?—“I saw no point to them in war-time. I mean, yes, our troops are now in France and, yes, they’ll fight
when they’re ready, but what’s the point in
not
answering that question every time you meet the press? After all, he can’t talk about the military situation, and he won’t talk partisan politics, so why see the press at all? Except someone like you, sir, in a private way.”

“You have the power to shut down a newspaper or arrest an editor who might simply disapprove of the way the war’s being run …”

“That,” said Creel cautiously, “is the purpose of the law that Congress passed and the President must execute.”

“Could this mean the suspension of free speech?”

“In cases where national security so requires, yes. But I’m not the Czar.” Creel laughed without much joy. “I must work with the secretaries of State, War and Navy. Well, Mr. Lansing has already said that he doesn’t trust me because I’m a Socialist! So after one meeting with him, I gave up on the State Department. Now I work only with War and Navy. You know, I’ve already talked to your sister, Mrs. Sanford.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Senator Day arranged it. I told her that it would be a great thing if she were to serve
ex officio
on my committee.”

“And do what?” Blaise was not surprised that Caroline had told him nothing, since that was her way, but he was surprised that the country’s official censor and propagandist should be interested in her.

“I think the ladies can make all the difference. Look at the Liberty Loans. Mr. McAdoo’s going to get his two billion dollars, thanks to the way he’s been using movie people like Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to sell the bonds, and important ladies all around the country to organize the sales, showing that women—at least those women—really believe in our democracy.”

“Which the suffragettes don’t?”

“I’ll say!” Creel blew a huge smoke ring at the Maryland shore. “They undermine the picture I want to paint of us as the first democracy in the world, fighting for other democracies everywhere.”

“But it’s not easy for us to claim to be a democracy if women can’t vote.” Blaise was serenely hypocritical. He liked neither votes for women nor democracy.

“So,” Creel beamed, “thank God for Mary Pickford! I’ve asked Mrs. Sanford to go west. To Hollywood. To influence the motion-picture business. I work pretty well with Pathé News. Fact, with all the news-reel companies. But most of those companies are in the East. Problem is, I’ve got no one out there where just about all the photo-plays are being made. So Mrs. Sanford said that she might go out and see what she could do for the cause.”

The ancient competitiveness between half-brother and half-sister now reasserted itself. “What can she do when she doesn’t know any of the movie people?”

“But they all know her. They know the
Trib
. That’s what matters. Besides, she did meet Mary Pickford the same time I did in New York at that Liberty Bond rally where the stars raised a million dollars in—what was it?—an hour.”

“So she will organize bond rallies …”

“No, sir. She will persuade—as my representative—Hollywood to make pro-American, pro-Allies photo-plays …”

“Which means anti-German …”

“Yes!” Creel’s eyes shone. “The audience for the movies is the largest there is for anything in the world. So if we can influence what Hollywood produces, we can control world opinion. Hollywood is the key to just about everything.”

The lunch with the President was something of an anticlimax after Creel’s revelations. A half-dozen of Edith’s relatives, all named Boiling, and several naval aides took their seats in no especial order, while the President presided at one end of the table and Edith at the other. “You sit here,” she had said to Blaise.

The President now seemed in better health and spirits than Blaise had seen him for some time. “I think
any
place is better to be than Washington,” Wilson observed; then the sudden surprisingly attractive smile. “The only real pleasure for me is knowing that Congress will be in session straight through the summer.” He looked at Blaise. “And without, thanks to Senator Day, Section 23 to harass me with.”

“We’ll have wine,” Edith said in a low voice to the steward.

“But no one is to tell Mr. Daniels.” Wilson’s hearing was acute. “Actually, Mr. Daniels is turning into quite a sea-dog.” Wilson’s long nose twitched, a premonitory sign of amusement. “Not long ago he was seated one evening aboard a battleship, talking to the admiral, when the officer of the day came to make his report to his superior. The officer stood at attention and said the usual—‘I wish to report, sir, that all is secure.’ So the admiral turned to
his
superior, the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Daniels, who simply stared at him until, finally, he realized that
he
was supposed to say something. So Mr. Daniels gave a great smile and said, ‘Well, I declare!’ ” Wilson mimicked perfectly Daniels’s deep Southern accent. “ ‘That’s just fine! I’m mighty glad to hear it. Mighty glad.’ ” The laughter was genuine. Blaise, who had been several times to the theater with the President, was quite aware of the great
man’s incongruous skill as a vaudevillian, mimic and not inexpert tap-dancer. One evening, while courting Edith, he had been seen tap-dancing across Pennsylvania Avenue, singing “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.”

The great big beautiful doll herself helped herself to lobster, and said, “You know, as a boy, Mr. Wilson always wanted to go to Annapolis. He has a real affinity for the sea, which I don’t. When we were in rough water last year, off Long Island, I was so ill that I took down a bottle of brandy from the cupboard just as the boat hit a wave and I fell to the floor—or deck, as we’re supposed to call it. Mr. Grayson found me, on my back, green of face, a brandy bottle clutched to my bosom.”

“A rare sight,” said Blaise, who had taken a liking to both Wilsons, to his own surprise as he was a Republican who would have preferred Elihu Root as president, over-qualified for the post as that brilliant man was. But Wilson was agreeably intelligent; and his first term had been remarkably successful. Now, like the world, he was on an uncharted sea.

“Is it true that Senator Lodge has said that Mr. Wilson is the second-worst president, after Buchanan?”

“He’s never said it to me.” Blaise was tactful. Lodge’s intemperate tongue had caused Henry Adams, at his own table, to shout, “Cabot, I will not allow treason to be spoken in my house.”

“If he did,” Edith was bland, “I shall begin to study the Administration of Mr. Buchanan, who must have had all sorts of virtues if Senator Lodge really hates him all that much.”

Blaise noted, yet again, that the President never mentioned politics at meal-time; also noted that a naval physician, an aide to Grayson, never took his eyes off Wilson, whose chronic dyspepsia had once threatened to make him an invalid.

At Edith’s end of the table, with a brother to her left and Blaise to her right, she could indulge herself while the President told Pat-and-Mike Irishman stories, to the delight of George Creel.

“It’s sad about Colonel Roosevelt, who should be friendly, since he and Mr. Wilson have so much in common …”

“Including the job.”

“
 … and
a war. Though this one is going to be far more terrible than that little one with Spain ever was. But they always seem to misunderstand each other.”

“They are rivals. That’s all,” said Blaise. Then he fished. “The Colonel’s
pretty certain to be the Republican candidate in ’20—against Mr. Wilson, I suppose.”

“Do you
really
think Mr. Wilson will run again?” Edith’s small dark eyes were suddenly mischievous. Did she know? Blaise wondered. Did Wilson know, for that matter.

“Why not? He’ll have won the war.”

“But General Pershing will get the credit, and the people always elect generals, if they get a chance. But never admirals. I wonder why.”

“They might make an exception for Josephus Daniels.”

Edith laughed. Blaise let her off his inquisitorial hook. Certainly, the President looked fit enough for a third term; and vain enough, too. For all Wilson’s charm and good manners, he was still an odd combination of college professor unused to being contradicted in a world that he took to be his classroom and of Presbyterian pastor unable to question that divine truth which inspired him at all times.

After lunch, the President decided that he would like to take a walk, and the captain docked at a small island in Chesapeake Bay, with the exotic name Tangier. Blaise and Creel each escorted a Boiling lady ashore.

The town itself proved to be two parallel streets with freshly painted wooden houses like so many white building blocks set side by side. At the back of each there was a garden and at the front, rather grimly, a family cemetery.

There was no one in sight as the Wilsons led the way down the first street, their Secret Service man nervously looking to left and right: were they walking into an ambush? Even Blaise began to feel edgy, while Creel came right out with it. “There’s something wrong here. The paint’s fresh on that house there—someone’s still painting it, but there’s nobody in sight.”

“Spies?” Blaise could not resist.

“Or worse.” Creel was grim.

One of the Boiling ladies said, “Well, this
is
a fishing village. So I expect everyone’s out fishing.”

“Wives, too?” Creel started as a cat—brown—crossed his path.

“The cats have stayed.” Blaise looked at the President, who stood, puzzled, in the middle of the street.

“No cars, no buggies,” Creel began.

“Not allowed,” said the ship’s captain, who had joined them. “That’s the charm of the place. Though where everybody is is a mystery to me.”

Blaise moved to the head of the presidential procession, joining Mr. Starling of the Secret Service.

“There’s somebody at last,” said Edith behind them. “On the curb there, the old man with the child.”

In the shadow of a willow tree, an elderly man was seated, holding a small boy on his lap. “Good afternoon, sir,” said Edith.

“Lovely day,” said the President, and, hand in hand, they moved across the street toward the old man.

With genial suspicion, Starling said, “Hi, Grandpa.”

“Say, mister,” the old man was equally suspicious and by no means genial, “who’s that man over there with his woman?”

“Why, that’s Mr. Wilson. The President of the United States.”

“This ain’t a plot like last time?”

“Last time? A plot … ?”

“That’s really him, the President?”

“You’re squeezing me,” wailed the child. At which the old man dropped the boy in the dust and stood up. “We thought you was the Germans, coming to take Tangier the way the English did back in 1812. Come out!” he yelled. And the street began to fill with the good people of Tangier.

“Tangerines, I guess we have to call them,” said Creel, journalistically stirred by so much human interest.

Blaise suddenly remembered Creel’s name from long ago. “You worked for the Chief, at the
Journal
in New York.”

“That’s right. I wondered if you’d remember me. Then I turned honest and went on to Kansas and from there to the
Rocky Mountain News
. But I am, forever, school of Hearst.”