Hollywood (20 page)

I had hurt his feelings. “I wanted to see it,” he said, “because I wanted to see it. Everything in my life isn’t connected with my business. Do you think that? Is that what you think of me?”

“No, but I just wondered.”

“The ballet,” he said, “is something I’ve always loved. Maybe because when I first ran away from Poland—wherever I was, in Hamburg, in London, in America, I would love to go to the theatre. But mostly I had trouble with the language. So I started in to love the ballet wherever I was. Now, of course, I understand the language, but I still love the ballet, especially when it’s great. Like tonight. She was wonderful—that Lynn Fontanne. The best I ever saw. Call me up tomorrow and remind me to send her some flowers. Some beautiful flowers.”

I had reason to recall the evening a year or so later, in Hollywood. The American Ballet Theatre arrived to play an engagement. I was working at Columbia at the time and invited Harry Cohn to the opening.

“The opening of what?” he asked.

“The American Ballet Theatre,” I replied. “Oliver Smith is a friend of mine and I have four good seats.”

“Ballet,” said Cohn. “Keep it.”

“But this is a great company, Harry.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I can’t stand ballet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like it where everybody chases everybody and nobody catches nobody.”

A marked contrast, I reflected, between Cohn and Goldwyn, outwardly alike in many respects. The differences between them were small, yet vital.

“Harry,” I said. “You’ve got no class.”

“Who needs class? I’ve got money. That’s
better
than class.”

“I'm not so sure,” I said.

“You think
you’ve
got class?” he demanded. “Your
wife’s
got class. Not you.”

“Who needs class?” I said. “I’ve got money.”

“You haven’t got that either,” he said. “Don’t kid me.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, craftily, “if you had money, would you be working for a bum like me—with no class? I’ll tell you who had class. Aly Khan. He had class.”

“Come on, Harry,” I said. “Let’s talk seriously. I don’t think I can define class, neither can you, neither can anybody.”

“You’re wrong again,” he said. “I’ll tell you about class. It was in the South of France and Aly was married to Rita Hayworth, and he’d bought the most beautiful château down there. I think he bought it from Lady Mendl. And he gave a party. A big dinner dance down there. Black tie and everything. Rita was pregnant. And out on this kind of terrace, they put down a dance floor. Right on the water. You know, overlooking. And it was really unbelievable, but the whole evening went on and Aly—you know how he loved to dance—and, of course, Rita Hayworth was about the best dancer there was— listen, for all I know, that’s why he married her—and he danced with everybody. First, this one and, then, that one, and he danced with everybody but Rita. Who was his wife. I remember I said to Joan, ‘It’s like that song John Golden once wrote, “I Can Dance with Anybody but My Wife.”’ So Joan said to me, ‘Maybe Rita’s not
supposed
to dance. After all, she’s six months’ pregnant.’ But finally—now you talk about class—finally, when Aly, the host, had danced with every woman there, there were about eight, he called the butler over and said something to him and the butler went out and in a few minutes all the lights on the terrace started to get dim. Because the butler was dimming them. And they got dimmer and dimmer until there was just a kind of glow. And then Aly nodded to the little orchestra and they started to play a slow foxtrot. It was ‘Night and Day,’ and then he went over and got Rita. And he danced with her for the rest of the evening. And with nobody else. And if you don’t think that’s class, then you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

It is easy to understand why this event would appeal to Harry Cohn. For one thing, he admired its showmanship. For another, like most roughnecks, he admired gentlemen. Above all, he wanted to be one but had no notion of how to go about it. This was a quality he shared with Sam Goldwyn. The difference was that Goldwyn made it.

In 1932, Goldwyn produced a film version of Zoë Akins’ Broadway success
The
Greeks Had a Word for It.
Since it dealt with a group of modern-day courtesans, the title was on the Hays Office banned list. This meant that if the property were to be filmed, it could not bear its original title, which is why the picture was called
The Greeks Had a
Word for Them
.

Even with the help of Lowell Sherman’s sophisticated direction and sparkling performances from Ina Claire, Madge Evans, and Joan Blondell, the picture failed. Goldwyn withdrew it and rereleased it as
Three Broadway Girls
. Even that did not help.

It was for this picture that Goldwyn had secured the services of Coco Chanel. She came to Hollywood from Paris and did a stellar job. Goldwyn offered her another picture and a term contract but Chanel had had enough. Clearly, she was too individual an artist for factory work, even in a high-class factory.

“She was a great little woman,” Goldwyn recalled. “She didn’t take anything from anybody. And nothing from nobody. Not even from me. Those actresses. You know how they are with designers. They all think they know better. F’Chrissake. I hire the best, the most expensive dress designers and then some star—Miriam Hopkins or Oberon or
whoever—starts telling the designer how to design. I used to say to them, ‘When you go for an operation, do you tell the doctor—the surgeon—how to take out your appendix? Because it’s
your
appendix?’ That’s why I liked that Chanel woman. She had power. She knew what she was doing and she took nothing from anybody. Not even me. Usually, I don’t like the type, but I liked her. I don't know why.”

René Clair recalls that shortly after the release of
The Ghost Goes West
, his brilliant collaboration with Robert Sherwood, Samuel Goldwyn turned up in London and invited him to lunch.

“He offered to me
The Adventures of Marco Polo
and I was sure from the title that it was not for me, but in any case, he was Goldwyn—Hollywood. I was impressed and I took home the material to read. I was right. Not for me. So I met with him and that is what I have told him. Very good but not for me. ‘What do you mean not for you?’ he said to me. I said, ‘It’s not my kind of picture. It’s not my subject or my style.’ Goldwyn said, ‘You’ve only got
one
subject,
one
style?’ I said to him, ‘No, not one subject, but yes, one style, and if I changed that, I’m worried they will not accept it.’ ‘They,’ he said. ‘Who is they?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the public.’ And he said, ‘The public will accept anything if it’s good.’ And I said, ‘But the critics.’ He was very surprised and said to me, ‘You care about
critics
? You worry about
critics
?’ And I said, ‘Of course.’ He said, ‘Do you know how much a critic makes?’ ‘In France, yes,’ I said. ‘I used to be one myself. In America, I don’t know.’ ‘You don’t know,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. The critic of
The New York
Times
makes maybe two hundred and fifty dollars a week.’ ‘Is that so?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and you know what I propose to pay you? Twenty times that.’ I said, ‘My God.’ Then, he looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to sit there and tell me you care what somebody thinks that you make twenty times
more
than?’ And when I said, ‘Yes,’ he was so disgusted he didn’t want to talk to me any more.”

Laurence Olivier has memories of Sam Goldwyn that stem from the time he played Heathcliff in the Goldwyn production of
Wuthering Heights
. This is the picture Goldwyn always referred to as “Woodering Height.”

Olivier remembers: “Shortly after we began, they sent me over to the Western Costume Company or some such place, to get my Heathcliff suit and one of the items proved to be an old pair of boots. They seemed right enough to me, the very thing for tramping the moors, you know, and I wore them. I must say, they were rather uncomfortable and a bit smelly but, after all, Heathcliff was not Beau Brummell.

“Well, God knows where those boots had
been
! Within three or four days, my foot began to swell. Clearly, it was an infection of some sort. I very nearly panicked. I’d heard that poisonings of this sort could be fatal.

“I rushed round to the doctor’s, and was both delighted and dismayed when he told me I was suffering from a severe case of athlete’s foot. I say ‘delighted’ because I had begun to think it was something far worse, and ‘dismayed’ because, good Lord, if you’re going to be incapacitated and in pain, and put to the bother of dealing with an ailment, you do want it to be something slightly more glamorous than athlete’s foot, don’t you? In any case, for some days, my work was limited to medium shots and close shots. I simply could not walk into a room or anywhere else. Goldwyn heard about it, of course, and came down onto the set one day, and said, ‘I hear you’re having trouble. I’ve had it,
too. The same trouble. And it’s no joke. It’s a very, very serious thing. I want you to be very careful. That’s no joke, that athletic feet.’

“And so we went on. I was in great pain, actually. Suffering and limping. Moreover, I was shot full of medication of all sorts. A few more days went by and Goldwyn came down onto the set again. I stood up to greet him—I suppose to show him how much better I was. He came over, looked at me, and put his arm across my shoulders, and I thought, Oh dear, this is going to be embarrassing, all this commiseration, and praise for being a trouper and continuing to work. I hope it’s over soon!

“Then, he beckoned to Willie Wyler. Willie came over, and Goldwyn, with his free hand, pointed to me and said, ‘Willie, if you don’t do something about this actor’s
ugly,
ugly
face, I stop the picture!’ Well, you can imagine. I was stunned. So was Willie, I think. After all, it was the only face I’d brought with me and what was I to do?

“In the end, it turned out it wasn’t so much my face that troubled him as some of the low-key photography, but that was his way. He went right to the point. Perhaps, in the end, that’s the best way.” He looked off into the past and continued, “I wish he’d been running M-G-M when I came out to do the Garbo picture.

“I imagine he’d have sent for me and said, ‘Olivier, you’re no good. Here’s your ticket back to London.’ Instead, they kept telling me how good I was, but—And then, endless obfuscation about my height vis-à-vis Garbo and my youth and my accent and all at once, it seems, I was back in London, realizing what had happened. There were letters later on, and a settlement and somewhere along the line, they put it onto Garbo. I suppose they thought that was the safe thing to do because they might—just might, some day—need me for something. In fact, as it turned out, they did. I never believed them about Garbo.”

For a while there, Ingrid Bergman was just about everyone’s fantasy friend. She turned up in Hollywood in 1938, a beauty of twenty-three, and made a film for David O. Selznick called
Intermezzo
, opposite Leslie Howard. It was a touching, ephemeral story in which she had scored a great success in the original Swedish version.

The unique loveliness of the leading lady captivated us all. Ingrid Bergman was a new personality, however, and difficult to cast.

Selznick admitted he did not know exactly what to do with her. This may have been the reason he did nothing with her for almost three years, and then loaned her out to Metro to make
Rage in Heaven
. A dud. Next, to Columbia for
Adam Had Four Sons
. This, too, failed, but Spencer Tracy asked for her in his remake of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde
, in which she made a considerable impression.

The following year, 1942, she appeared opposite Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
and was, overnight, the biggest star in pictures. There followed
For Whom the Bell Tolls
,
Gaslight
,
The Bells of St. Mary
,
Spellbound
,
Saratoga Trunk
,
Notorious
, and so on. It was not until 1950, after an astonishing and productive decade, that scandal struck and almost ruined not only her career, but also her life.

One of her misfortunes was that her success came when David O. Selznick was preparing
Gone with the Wind
, working an eighteen-hour-a-day schedule on that monumental project, and finding it difficult to fix his attention on anything else.

He thought something would come up. Things did, but, for one reason or another, were not considered suitable, or the deal could not be made, or a decision was postponed until it was too late. Meanwhile, Ingrid Bergman sat.

The Selznicks invited her constantly to their home. She met many people. But no work. There were no parts. At the age of twenty-four, this can be tragic.

She told me once that she had spent whole days walking up and down the beach at Malibu, crying. All she wanted to do was to act. Instead, here she was in a great beach house, getting up every morning with nothing to do, except on those rare occasions when a script would be sent from the studio for her to read or when she had a luncheon invitation. She recalls that the indignity she hated most was the gifts the Selznicks would always send her on her birthdays or holidays: flowers, gold compacts, a Capehart record player.

“But all I wanted was a part,” she says.

When she complained, it was pointed out to her that she was, after all, Swedish, that she was a star, and that she could not just play any old thing.

Somewhere in this time, she came to know Burgess Meredith, who was going to do a stage revival of
Liliom
. He invited her to play opposite him. She implored Selznick to let her do it. To get her out of his hair, Selznick agreed. She went East, played it, and returned. Again, nothing happened.

After
Adam Had Four Sons
, she went back East and did
Anna Christie
. I went to see it and thought she was tremendous. She returned to Hollywood. Still nothing.

The most important film in the making of a star is the one that follows the first big hit. If the second picture disappoints, the star-building process is aborted, the star-to-be becomes a flash-in-the-pan and has to start virtually from scratch. But if it is possible to follow one great success with another, the career is well and truly launched.

Ingrid Bergman’s crucial time came after
Casablanca
. In her case, a fortunate set of circumstances fell into place to provide her with that second smash hit. It was Ernest Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls
.

I had just had a success and was asked by Paramount if I would be interested in taking on the direction. Since I was under contract at RKO, a loan-out would have to be arranged. Before approaching RKO, however, I wanted to make certain I was up to the formidable job and asked for a few days to consider. I took a copy of the book and went off to Santa Barbara. I checked into the hotel, went to bed, and rose at five the following morning. I went into town, had breakfast at an all-night diner, returned to the hotel, and began to read. I read until lunchtime, stopped for an hour; read until dinner, stopped; read again until late bedtime.

The next day, I went through the same routine and finished the book. I walked around for a day—thinking, digesting what I had read. I spent two more days rereading the book and making notes. By the end of the second reading, I had convinced myself that I had at least the beginning of a concept.

I returned to the studio and told Pandro Berman I would like to undertake the job, if the right cast could be engaged.

“Okay,” said Pan, “let me see what kind of trade I can make.”

I spent a nervous week waiting for the outcome of negotiations. One morning, I was dismayed to read in the trade papers that Sam Wood had been signed by Paramount to direct
For Whom the Bell Tolls
. I confess I was also relieved, since I had begun to have misgivings about bringing the difficult, complex story to the screen. Ernest Hemingway had created the device of using the word “obscenity” in place of the real thing. Clearly, this was not going to work on the screen—what would? Well out of it, I thought.

Casting began to be announced. Gary Cooper. Certainly the right choice. Vera Zorina for Maria. Excellent, I thought. She was a remarkable player with unique gifts. I began to wish that I
had
been given the plum.

While all this was going on, Burgess Meredith introduced Ingrid Bergman to Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was a man who responded to women. One of the types he particularly admired was the mysterious, exotic, foreign beauty—Marlene Dietrich, for example. It can easily be imagined what effect Ingrid Bergman had on him. He wanted to do something for her, but what could he do? The part of Maria had been cast. In any case, Maria was Spanish and not at all Bergman’s sort of role. Still, he tried to get it for her, arguing that Zorina was Norwegian.

“Yes,” said the studio, “but she’s dark.”

It was a losing battle and he knew it, but he was trying to impress Bergman. He kept bombarding the studio with objections to Zorina. He had no rights of approval, but behaved as though he did have.

Shooting started, and after three or four days, Paramount executives began to be troubled about Zorina’s rushes. It might have been that Hemingway had shaken their confidence. They decided that Zorina did not look sexy. The rumor spread that they were thinking of replacing her.

The agents went to work, all sorts of replacements were suggested. Some were not available, others did not want to do it. Ernest Hemingway charged into this vacuum, beat on doors, worked on Sam Wood, the director, and despite the obvious obstacles, Vera Zorina was out and Ingrid Bergman was in.

She was not ideal casting, but the film was made in such a superficial way, with a combination of accents and types of all kinds, that it did not seem to matter. The picture was shot in California, not in Spain. The end result was mediocre, but Ingrid Bergman was electrifying. She worked beautifully with Gary Cooper, and revealed powerful sex appeal, unsuspected by those who did not know her.

In
Intermezzo
she had been polite and cool.
Rage in Heaven
was straight.
Adam
Had Four Sons
, corny. But when Gary Cooper grabbed her in
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, when they went into that sleeping bag together, something powerful happened in darkened auditoriums the world over.

The picture was not the over-the-moon success Paramount had hoped it would be but it was important, and Ingrid Bergman scored a personal triumph. Then came the great succession of hits and, within two or three years, she was the most sought-after star in Hollywood.

Back in New York City, New York, Maxwell Anderson was finishing a play called
Joan of Lorraine
. He showed it to his colleagues in the Playwrights’ Company and they all responded favorably.

Maxwell Anderson lived his life remote from the Broadway razzle-dazzle, so it was not surprising to hear him say, at a casting conference, “I tell you who I’m going to have for Joan—that tall Swedish actress—I can’t remember her name, but I saw her in a movie not long ago. It wasn’t very good, but she’s fine. I think her name is Berman. Something like that.”

“Ingrid Bergman?” said someone.

“I believe you’re right,” said Max. “Ingrid Bergman, that sounds right. Yes. I think I’ll have her to play Joan.”

His friends could hardly bring themselves to tell Max that Ingrid Bergman was a great film star, that the chances of her going into a Broadway play for a run were minimal.

But Max Anderson, the innocent, persisted. He flew to Hollywood, went to the Beverly Hills Hotel, somehow got hold of Ingrid Bergman’s telephone number, and called her. He told her he had written a play about Joan of Arc and would like her to read it without delay because he could only stay in Hollywood for a limited time.

Ingrid Bergman told me later she was so impressed by the audacity of this contact that she agreed to everything. She confessed she had only vaguely heard of Maxwell Anderson and was not sure exactly who he was or what he had previously written.

Max delivered the play personally and went back to the hotel to wait for her reaction. It arrived overnight. Ingrid Bergman read the play and was wildly enthusiastic.

“I’ve always wanted to play Joan of Arc,” she told him on the telephone. “I feel an affinity for that character.”

“Yes,” said Max, “you’ll be very good.”

“The only trouble is, Mr. Anderson, that I have two pictures I am committed to do as soon as I finish the one I’m on now.”

“Oh,” said Max, disappointed, “can’t they be called off, or postponed? Or one of them?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, then, what are we going to do?”

“I’d love to play this part in your play, Mr. Anderson, but I wouldn’t be able to do it for a year.”

There was a short pause, after which Max said, “All right, I’ll wait.”

Within a month, arrangements had been made for the following year’s production of
Joan of Lorraine
, to the complete astonishment of the other members of the Playwrights’ Company.

Max was not at all surprised.

Joan of Lorraine
was constructed in the form of a play within a play, the story of the production of a play about Joan of Arc. It involved the offstage, as well as the onstage, interrelationships of the players and of the director, who was played by the vital young Sam Wanamaker.

Difficulties arose involving the actual director of the play, and what could be more natural than that this chore be assumed by the man who was playing the part of the director? Sam Wanamaker took over the direction of the play and all proceeded smoothly.

He and Ingrid Bergman became close friends. After the play had opened and succeeded, they were close enough to speak candidly to each other.

“Hollywood’s ruining you,” said Sam one night. “They’re just using you. You’re doing a lot for
them
, but what are they doing for
you
?”

“They pay me well.”

“But what’s that?” Sam argued. “You’re a wonderful young actress, you shouldn’t be stuck in that Hollywood factory. You should be out in the world, making pictures in Europe with marvelous, creative directors. And then every few years, you should do a play.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said.

“Like Rossellini. Roberto Rossellini. Now, there’s a
director
, not a Hollywood hack. He’s a creator. Have you seen
Open City
?”

“No,” said Ingrid.

“You haven’t seen
Open City
? We’ll have to arrange it.”

Wanamaker arranged a private screening of Rossellini’s masterpiece. Ingrid Bergman was impressed.

“It would be wonderful,” she said, “to work with a director like that, but how do you make it come about?”

“You call him up,” said Wanamaker, “or you write him a letter.” She laughed. “No, I mean it. What’s wrong with that? He’d be flattered to hear from you. Write him. Who knows what could happen?”

Ingrid Bergman wrote a letter to Roberto Rossellini. (“Who knows what could happen?”) Rossellini responded. They arranged to meet. They met. (“Who knows what could happen?”) They planned to make a film together,
Stromboli
, to be shot on the island of the same name. The island’s celebrated volcano did not erupt while they were making the film, but life did.

Bergman and Rossellini fell in love and, in due course, there were rumors that the great star was pregnant by a man not her husband. Could it be true? It was.

Ingrid Bergman and her advisers decided to brazen it out, believing that her position was secure enough to withstand this situation. They were wrong. The bluenoses and the organized moralists raised a protest so loud and potent that Ingrid Bergman was banished from the American screen for six years. In the meantime, she had divorced her husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, and married Rossellini. This did not return her to respectability in the eyes of the great public.

In 1955, Fine Arts, a small independent company took a chance and cast her in a low-budget film called
Strangers
. It went almost unnoticed.

The following year, Twentieth Century-Fox was preparing a film of
Anastasia
and wanted to use Ingrid Bergman in the title role. Strategy meetings were held, officers of the Legion of Decency, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Motion Picture Producers Association were consulted. In time, it was resolved that since the picture was going to be made abroad, Ingrid Bergman might be acceptable. Further, someone came up with the idea of casting Helen Hayes as the old Empress. Miss Hayes, the outstanding Catholic star in America, would help to ease the way.

It worked.
Anastasia
turned out to be a great success. Before this, Ingrid Bergman had made five Italian pictures, which were not shown in the United States. Shortly after
Anastasia
, she was teamed with Cary Grant in
Indiscreet
. Again, following the tradition of the power of two hits in a row, it propelled her into a second career.