In My Father's Shadow (8 page)

How many times did I change my clothes that morning? I drove Marie
crazy, demanding she braid my hair this way and that way until I was satisfied. When the clock struck twelve, I waited in the front hall. And waited. At the slightest noise, I darted out to the driveway thinking Shorty had come for me at last, only to trudge back to the hall. Hours slid by, but I refused to move from my lookout post. The sun was setting the tops of the palm trees on fire, and I was concluding that Daddy must have meant dinner, not lunch, even though it was usually lunch and not dinner. Wait! Wasn’t that crunch on the gravel his car after all?

All that long afternoon, Marie appeared from time to time, shaking her head. I pretended not to see her familiar, comforting shape. She was short, plain, and stout, my Marie, and her wiry hair stuck out from her head as though her finger were permanently lodged in an electric socket. “Will you come to your senses, Madam,” she asked in her soft brogue, “or are you going stand there until the cows come home?”

“There are no cows in Beverly Hills,” I informed her.

“Ach, you’re a stubborn one, you are. You’ll be the death of me yet!”

When darkness fell, and still the phone hadn’t rung with an excuse, an apology, or a dinner invitation from “Mr. Welles,” I began to cry. And there was Marie, hands on her hips, announcing, “We’ve had quite enough nonsense for one day, we have!” And with that, she led me unresisting to the kitchen where she gently dried my eyes and we ate our cold supper with no need of further conversation.

S
EVERAL TIMES A
year and always at Christmas, our household moved up to San Simeon, or Hearst’s Castle as it is known today, where Charlie’s aunt, Marion Davies, lived with William Randolph Hearst. Aunt Marion, who had lost most of her relatives, was extremely close to Charlie. Nor were they that far apart in age: Marion had been thirteen when Charlie was born on December 31, 1910. “We’re more like partners in crime than aunt and nephew,” he liked to say. They certainly shared the same irreverent humor and irresistible urge to tease “Pops,” Marion’s affectionate name for Hearst. During a long, dull evening at San Simeon, Charlie and Marion would exchange a wicked glance and then begin turning somersaults in unison on one of Hearst’s priceless Persian rugs.

Marion Davies was past forty-five when I knew her, and was growing pleasantly plump. No longer the stunning young blond Hearst had plucked from a Broadway chorus line, she was still warm and bubbly and had an
infectious laugh. Marion reminded me of Rita because she was so genuine, so incapable of artifice or pretension. I liked her for not trying to conceal her slight stammer. When Aunt Marion threw her arms around me, stuttering, “Chrissie d-d-darling!” I knew she was sincerely glad to see me. She wasn’t batting her false eyelashes at me or looking over my head and flashing her teeth in a phony smile because someone more important had walked into the room behind me.

On the other hand, I dreaded having to stand before the tall, imposing man I was instructed to call Mr. Hearst. No matter how many times we had already met, I shook his hand and dropped a curtsy as though it were the first time. Something in his manner suggested I was not being formal enough, and, if I knew what was good for me, I would kneel before him and put my forehead to the floor. He looked so old to me—well over a hundred, I figured—that I couldn’t meet his gaze. His hand felt as cold as his blue eyes bearing down on me. “How do you do, Miss Welles?” He had a high-pitched, squeaky voice that didn’t go with the rest of him.

“How do you do, Mr. Hearst?”

“I hope you will enjoy your stay at San Simeon.” He attempted a smile, and I assured him that I would try my best.

I was too young to appreciate the irony of my position—both the child of the man who had made
Citizen Kane
and the stepchild of Marion Davies’s beloved nephew. Marion, Charlie, and my mother feared that the mere sight of “Orson’s kid” might give Pops apoplexy, and so, whenever we stayed at San Simeon, I was kept out of the way as much as possible. Not understanding why I was being isolated made it hard for me to enjoy myself during these visits.

Years later, of course, I knew along with the rest of the world that
Citizen Kane
had so enraged William Randolph Hearst that he became determined to wreck my father’s career and drive him out of Hollywood. What is still not clear to me is whether Hearst ever saw the offending movie himself. My father told me that while in San Francisco for a showing of
Citizen Kane
, he happened to find himself in the same elevator with Hearst. “I invited him to come to my picture, and he pretended not to hear me.” While the story might vary each time my father told it, it was inevitably accompanied by a burst of wheezy laughter and the lighting of a fat cigar.

Mother told me she had seen a pre-release print of
Citizen Kane
with Hearst and Marion at San Simeon a year after she and Charlie were married.
It was customary to show pre-release features after dinner in Hearst’s private movie theater with its red plush seats and wood-paneled walls lined with gilded statues. “The theater looked like a small version of one of those garish, overdone movie palaces from the 1920s,” Mother recalled. “After the screening, WR and Marion retreated to their private suite without saying one word to anyone, while Charlie and I held our breath in horror.”

Yet Charlie had no memory of this screening. He insisted to me on several occasions that neither Hearst nor Aunt Marion ever saw
Citizen Kane
. Their condemnation of the picture rested on the outraged reactions of loyal friends who saw it as a cruel and unwarranted attack, particularly on Marion. In Charlie’s view, Hearst was more distressed by the movie’s insinuation, through the character of Susan Alexander, that Marion was a failed and pathetic alcoholic than he was by any unflattering references to himself.

So who was telling the truth? I’ll put my money on Charlie.

Certainly the San Simeon I knew bore little relation to Xanadu, the fictitious castle in
Citizen Kane
. While we sometimes drove up to San Simeon—Mother, Charlie, Marie, and I—we usually took the train from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo, a distance of some two hundred miles. We were met at the station by one of the hired cars Hearst used to ferry his guests to the castle. The last leg of the journey took about an hour and a half over bumpy dirt roads. It didn’t matter how many times I had made the trip. Each visit I felt as excited as a child on her first African safari.

We entered the wilderness of foothills, valleys, and open plains that was San Simeon, at the time a vast estate of about 240,000 acres. From the edge of the property to the castle on the hill, Hearst’s private road stretched more than six miles, but even from far away, we could see the twin towers of the main house, La Casa Grande. In poor weather when the towers were wrapped in mist, it looked like a hilltop castle in a fairy tale. As our car bumped along in low gear, we had to roll up the windows to keep out the dust.

At one time Hearst had owned the largest private collection of wild animals in the world. Arriving guests had seen giraffes nibbling on treetops, impala leaping across the road, and yaks lumbering down to a water hole. Except for the bears, lions, tigers, and other dangerous animals that were kept caged in San Simeon’s zoo, the animals roamed free, which made our approach to the castle feel like a daring adventure in the wild. I was fascinated by the llamas grazing near the road, lifting their heads to watch us pass—they looked so haughty and full of themselves—but I also liked the zebras galloping across
the plains, the prancing ostriches, and the leaping kangaroos. The road was marked with signs reading
ANIMALS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY
, and I remember that one time we sat in the car for close to an hour, waiting for a bison to move out of the road.

Virginia and her second husband, Charlie Lederer, at San Simeon, 1940.

When at last we pulled up in front of the castle, we were met by the shouts and hammering of workmen. “When is WR going to
finish
San Simeon?” Charlie asked of no one in particular. We all knew the answer: “Never!” The building and remodeling would go on until Hearst’s failing health forced him to leave San Simeon forever on May 2, 1947. Until that day, some part of the castle was always covered in scaffolding; the guest villas, swimming pools, and gardens continued to evolve; and the entire castle complex changed from one visit to the next like an epic in endless revision. We might arrive in time to see a fountain being ripped out or a terrace being moved because the newly planted flower beds needed to be in the shade and not in the sun. Whatever we had admired the last time was bound to have changed. An entire floor might be redone to accommodate some works of art Hearst had just acquired, or what had been an overstuffed room a few months ago was now an open space filled with statuary and leafy plants. Yet the overall effect was one of opulent rooms bathed in light, offering unlimited comfort and pleasure. There was none of the gloom my father evoked in Xanadu with its sinister front gate, its lonely, gargantuan rooms.

As soon as we arrived, Mother and Charlie went off to their guest villa, and I would see even less of them than I did at home. Marie and I were put in “the tower,” which seemed all the more remote because we had to take an elevator to reach our rooms. Mine had a trundle bed and round walls covered in a mural depicting
The Massacre of the Innocents
. It showed Roman soldiers hacking off babies’ heads, blood spurting from mutilated bodies. Now I realize it was probably a Renaissance masterpiece, but at the time, it filled me with horror.

During the day I spent as little time as possible in my room. Each morning, Marie and I went down to the dining room where we had breakfast by ourselves. It must have been festive at night, when the immense chandelier was lit and dozens of guests sat around the fifty-four-foot-long table, talking and laughing. In the early morning only Marie and I were there, dwarfed at one end of the table.

After breakfast we went out to see the gardens, the pools, the fountains, and all the delights of the castle grounds. In fine weather Marie and I spent most of the day outdoors. We might go farther afield and stroll under the mile-long pergola covered with grapevines. The air was fragrant with flowering bushes and the fields bright with lime, lemon, and tangerine trees. Yet, in spite of the loveliness around us, I often felt sad and out of place. The only children at San Simeon were made of stone and stood in the middle of fountains without their clothes on.

Several times a day I asked Marie when we could go to see Aunt Marion. If it was before lunch, Marie reminded me, “Now you know Miss Davies spends the morning in her room and doesn’t see anyone before lunch.” After lunch Marie’s predictable answer was, “We had best keep to ourselves.” When I persisted that I didn’t see
why
we had to “keep to ourselves”
all
the time, Marie sighed. “Now, Madam, I’ve told you a hundred times if I’ve told you once. We’re to stay out of Mr. Hearst’s way and everybody else’s for that matter. You are
not
to go and bother the big people until they ask for you.”

“Yes, Marie.”

There was only one time Mother, Charlie, or Marion asked to see me, and that was before dinner, usually served at nine p.m. By then I was in my pajamas and ready for bed, but Marie led me to the door of the assembly room, where “the big people” were gathered. Hearst permitted his guests to have one alcoholic drink, and only one, before the evening meal, but as I later learned from Charlie, Marion was adept at hiding bottles of gin in toilet tanks, which accounted for the inordinate number of “powder rooms” at San Simeon. Her
friends smuggled bottles of booze in their luggage and hid them in their rooms, but if they were caught, they were likely to find their bags packed and out in the driveway. In any event, by the time drinks were handed around in the assembly room, everyone except Hearst had already had a few. Laughter was loud and long as Charlie demonstrated his skill at standing on his head.

I stood in the doorway, watching. Finally Mother noticed me and called out, “Hello, Chrissie darling!” Then Marion rushed over, flushed and out of breath, dropped to her knees, and gave me a welcoming hug. “How are you, darling? Are you having fun? What did you do today? Tell me everything.” I started to, but she was already on her feet, talking to someone else. So I made the rounds, saying good night, shaking hands, smiling at whoever came lurching forward, drink in hand, to holler as though I were deaf, “Good night, Chrissie!” Then Marion, Charlie, and several others began to sing “Good night, Chrissie!” to the tune of “Good Night, Ladies!” The “big people” were howling with laughter when Marie led me away to the tower.

T
HE LAST LUNCH
I had with my father at the Brown Derby, a popular eatery in Hollywood’s heyday, is the one I remember the best. “I’m going to Italy in a few weeks,” he told me, after we had made our way through the throng of autograph hunters, waiting to pounce on the stars who ate here, some so often they had their designated booths in the lively, smoky interior of the restaurant, shaped like a bowler hat. We were given a less prominent booth near the kitchen, a sign of my father’s lowered status in Hollywood, although it didn’t register on me at the time.