Moving Pictures (22 page)

Marcel set his glass down on the bar. “Sorry, John, I can’t drink to that. I hate my mother.” A sentimental Irish Catholic, Considine was horrified. “Marcel, how can you say that? How can any son possibly hate his mother?” “Because my mother is a bitch and I hate her guts,” Marcel replied. Considine exploded: “Get away from me! Anyone who says he hates his own mother doesn’t deserve to live.” Marcel’s answer was,
“John, thank you for the suggestion. You’ve just convinced me not to go on living.”

In the opinion of Ad, Billy Wilkerson, and other friends of John Considine, it was typical of Marcel DeSano—when he finally got around to taking the life he had been threatening to dispose of for more than a decade—that he should try to punish as many of his acquaintances as possible. They could imagine the sardonic Marcel enjoying in his last moment the guilt of the pious John Considine for contributing to a mortal sin.

Is it nostalgia that makes the directors of the Mayer-Schulberg days seem so much more theatrical than our good ones today? Maybe it’s because Hollywood was then a gold-rush town with the sweet smell of carnival in the air. To watch Mickey Neilan working for Louie Mayer was to watch Peck’s Bad Boy with a megaphone. Louie was still a novice in those days, hanging around the set to learn as much about picture-making as he could, and Mickey was in his prime as one of the young masters. He took delight in tormenting L.B. by going through a scene and then turning to his boss with a puckish grin: “Okay, little boy, you’ve had your movie lesson for the day. Now run along, back to the front office where you belong.”

Mickey was a force in those days when all the front-line directors were self-appointed warlords who behaved as if the cast and crew were their private army. Major studios had not yet set up their factory systems that brought the freewheeling directors into line. By chance, Mickey had been on the
Santa Fe
with us on our second westward journey. An inexhaustible ladies’ man, he never traveled or was seen in public without a beautiful doll, usually his current leading lady: Blanche Sweet, Sally O’Neill, Gloria Swanson, Joan Marsh—you name ’em and chances are, he’d had ’em. I don’t remember which young actress Mickey had chosen to favor as we streamed across the continent, but I do remember an early scent of sexuality, something about that high-spirited couple sharing a drawing room that I was not supposed to know about. And I remember Mickey’s antics: An inveterate practical joker, he would go down the aisle of our Pullman car giving a perfect imitation of the Negro dining-car courier calling out, “Last call for dinner!” when the first had not yet been announced, or impersonating the conductor, “Next stop, Albuquerque!” when we were still hours away.

B. P.’s street stunts for his Preferred Pictures had always walked a fine
line of propriety. But when Mickey opened one of his own movies in San Francisco, while President Wilson was visiting that city in behalf of his cherished League of Nations, Mickey chose an actor known for his resemblance to the President, dressed him in presidential attire and had him driven to the entrance of the movie theater where the impersonator drew a large crowd. “I’ve come to your beautiful city not only to speak in favor of a lasting peace,” he told hundreds of pedestrians who had begun to block traffic for a closer look at their “President,” “but also to urge you to see this latest movie by my dear friend Mickey Neilan. I hear it’s a corker!” The actor was booked at the nearest police station for the Neilanish caper, and Mickey himself was considered persona non grata in San Francisco until the furor died down.

As a ten-year-old I would stand on the set behind the camera, having learned exactly where to position myself so as to be out of the way of the camera crew and the sightlines of the performers, and watch in fascination as the director checked with his cameraman, usually squinting through the eyepiece for his own view of the setup, giving the actors their final instructions, and then sighing softly or shouting harshly, “All right, I guess we’re ready”—sometimes adding with just the right note of jaunty sarcasm—“or as ready as we’ll ever be—this is a take!” Then the assistant director would shout, “Quiet, everybody!”—though that order was not as vital as it was to be at the end of the decade when the microphone could pick up accidental sounds behind the camera—the director would give that magic command. “Action!”, and another motion-picture scene was on its way to making history or clutter on the cutting-room floor.

As the actors played out their tearful dramas and the little orchestra played appropriate mood music, I realize now that I was watching an era coming to an end. After a great leap forward, the silent-movie business was sliding into one of its periodic sloughs. Two of the older companies, Metro and Goldwyn (from which Sam Goldwyn had already departed), were slipping badly. The Goldwyn Studio was an imposing plant on the uninhabited flatlands of Culver “City,” but its management was chaotic. Metro had been equally badly mismanaged. The older order was passing. The now-powerful theater owner Marcus Loew, fed up with the sluggish state of the Metro studio he controlled, approached Goldwyn’s successor, an early odd-ball by the name of Frank Joseph Godsol, and suggested a merger. The Metro studio would be sold, and
Metro-Goldwyn would become a single company located at the sprawling Goldwyn lot on Washington Boulevard.

Since the top executives of both Metro and Goldwyn had been fired, the Eastern stockholders, headed by Marcus Loew, were in search of new officers. At that historic moment the status of L. B. Mayer was anything but distinguished. He was no Adolph Zukor, Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn, William Fox, or even B. P. Schulberg—for during the period when Father and L.B. shared their small studio, the general range of Mayer’s pictures ranged from mediocre to godawful. (His young assistant Irving Thalberg had not yet found his feet as a legitimate tycoon.) You will not find, for instance, a single Mayer picture on Robert Sherwood’s list of top films for 1922-23—not even among the thirty-five additional pictures accorded Honorable Mention. No, Louis’s taste was primitive and mawkish, even for those rather primitive and mawkish days. Mother-love and self-sacrifice was his cup and he encouraged it to overflow. Neither inventive, creative, nor courageous, in fact contemptuous of the virtues my father had, he possessed an altogether different kind of gift. Louie was a politician, a manipulator, and an opportunist who could have given chapter and verse to Machiavelli if only he had known how to write. Perhaps I have inherited my judgment of his character from my father. My own experiences with this Hollywood Rajah—as his gentle biographer Bosley Crowther dubbed him—will speak for themselves.

The New York attorney handling the Metro-Goldwyn merger for Marcus Loew was the astute promoter Robert Rubin. Rubin was the true mover and shaker of the organization, for, having handled Mayer’s business in New York, it was he who brought together the princely Marcus Loew and the still struggling L.B. On one of his rare trips to Hollywood to reexamine his floundering Metro organization, Loew was driven out to our small Mission Road studio by Rubin. Louie was shooting one of his weepy melodramas at the moment,
Thy Name Is Woman,
with his efficient Fred Niblo directing the lovely Barbara LaMarr and “the new Valentino,” Ramon Novarro. The hectic shooting schedule was interrupted for a moment while Mayer, the perfect host, introduced the Eastern mogul to his director and his exotic cast. With wonder-boy Irving Thalberg at his side, Louie was happy to explain how costs were being cut, how pictures of quality were being turned out according to the same economic plan, and their rosy plans for the future.
They had just signed a beautiful young French girl by the name of Renée Adorée, and they also had in the fold a young Canadian actress who could match looks and class with Katherine MacDonald. Her name was Norma Shearer.

Loew met them all and was impressed with Mayer’s charm and expertise in the field of production and with Thalberg’s quiet but clearly knowledgeable persuasion. Compared to Metro, which seemed to have run out of stars and stories and had nothing left but a few rebellious directors, Mayer’s operation impressed Marcus Loew. When he and Rubin returned to New York, they convinced Joe Schenck and the other principal stockholders to place the merged companies in the hands of L. B. Mayer and his youthful lieutenant, Irving Thalberg. Considering the lowly status of L. B. Mayer Pictures at that time, the new deal was a ten-strike for Mayer, as fortuitous as any of those magic balls I had bowled at the Hotel Del Coronado. L.B.’s salary rose to fifteen hundred dollars a week for the first three years. Thalberg’s weekly salary would be six hundred, with a similar figure for Rubin as the company’s secretary in New York. In addition there was an inside deal, a well-kept secret from the body of stockholders, that the Mayer group (including Thalberg and Rubin) would receive 20 percent of the annual profits of the new company. Of that 20 percent, Mayer was to receive approximately 13, Rubin 5, and Thalberg 2.

But there was another great bonus in store for the on-rushing L.B. Remembering how Zukor and Famous Players had swallowed up the Selznick company and L.J.’s proud name in an earlier merger, L.B. insisted on public recognition. Marcus Loew offered him a choice: either Metro-Goldwyn Presents an L. B. Mayer Production, or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Presents. … As hungry to see his name in lights as Thalberg would prove reluctant, L.B. chose the latter.

Two old companies that had been dying on the vine and a small-time independent with a record of mediocre pictures—such were the three stars of the new triangle, three shaky little stars in the Hollywood galaxy. Who could have guessed, as the new sign went up over the old Culver City studio, that MGM would so quickly challenge and finally surpass the establishment studios of the mid-Twenties, Paramount, Fox, First National, and Universal?

I saw that historic sign rise above the vast white front-office building of
MGM. I was there at the dedication with my friend Maurice, whose father, Harry Rapf, had been brought to the new studio as an important member of the “Mayer group,” as vice-president in charge of the “program” or “bread-and-butter” pictures. I sat with Maurice (staring with fascination at the “Prussian” neck of Erich von Stroheim, who sat directly in front of us) as his father stood with L.B. and Irving on the platform facing all the employees of the studio—from stars like Mae Murray, Lon Chaney, Ramon Novarro, John Gilbert, and Lillian Gish to the top directors inherited from Goldwyn, Robert Leonard, Victor Seastrom, Frank Borzage, Von Stroheim, and the irreverent Mickey Neilan, who had departed the “poverty row” Mayer-Schulberg Studio for what he thought would be the greener pastures of the Goldwyn lot.

While the movie stars, along with such visiting firemen as the admiral of the Pacific Fleet, the mayor and local civic leaders, and the drones—secretaries, painters, carpenters, mailroom boys—formed an attentive audience for this unprecedented inauguration, a giant key inscribed “Success” was handed to L.B., proudly sandwiched between his two aides, Harry Rapf and Irving Thalberg.

L.B. had a great love and genuine gift for public ceremony. There were tears in his eyes as he began his acceptance speech. Tear ducts were to Louie B. what diamonds were to Lorelei Lee. When they had first begun sharing the Selig studio, my father’s nickname for his friend Louie was “The Town Crier.”

“I hope that it is given to me to live up to this great trust,” L.B.’s tremulous voice came down to all of us assembled there. “It has been my argument and practice that each picture should teach a lesson, should have a reason for existence. With seventeen of the great directors in the industry now calling this great institution their home, I feel that this aim will be carried out—”

At this sacred moment, there was a disturbance behind us. Mickey Neilan, in the middle of shooting the Thomas Hardy classic,
Tess of the D’Urbervilles,
noisily pushed back his folding seat and called to his crew and cast seated around him, “Okay, gang, let’s get back to the set.” Mickey was still a four-star general in those days and his troops carried out his orders. The entire
Tess
company followed Mickey from the dedication ceremony back to the set. There were snickers and exclamations of amazement at Neilan’s audacity, and for a moment the face of the newly crowned monarch darkened in rage. But then, like a practiced
political campaigner coping with a heckler, he pulled around him the mantle of dignity he had shrewdly designed for himself, and went on with his acceptance speech.

“I fully realize what a great moment this is for me,” Louie intoned, and the tears fell again. “I accept this solemn trust and pledge the best that I have to give.”

The entire gathering rose in a standing ovation. Von Stroheim was applauding perfunctorily. He was shooting Frank Norris’s groundbreaking naturalistic novel,
McTeague
(later retitled
Greed).
Von was on his way not to a normal ten-reel picture but to an unprecedented forty-reel marathon. Far ahead of his time, he believed not in studio shooting but in taking his company to the actual locations—including Death Valley during the hottest days of the year so his actors would not have to feign their suffering from lack of water and heat prostration. He believed in giving moviegoers what
he
wanted, no matter how much it made them squirm.

Mayer’s credo was exactly the opposite, to give the public what
it
wanted, right down to that lowest common denominator: the twelve-year-old mind. Family pictures. Romance. Happy endings. Movies could titillate, but in the end husband and wife, or estranged young lovers, must be reunited. That was Mayer’s Law. The moral standards of middle-class America must be upheld.

Our town had just passed through a series of scandals that had rocked The Industry like our periodic earthquakes: the murder of the director William Desmond Taylor and the revelation that he had been carrying on simultaneous affairs with Mabel Normand, a victim of dope, and Mary Miles Minter, a teenage successor to Mary Pickford in roles of adolescent purity. Mabel Normand’s chauffeur shot Cortland Dines in the home of Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady, Edna Purviance.