Moving Pictures (71 page)

Mother opened with a mean recital of parental neglect: “If you want to see Stuart, you should see him over here instead of letting him see you over there with that Sidney woman!”—“You’re letting Sonya grow up without a father, she’s at such a critical age, she could grow up with a complex of—” To which Father countered: “Now Ad, for once will you spare me your goddamn Freudian theories!”

What Father had come for, it developed, was to reduce his monthly payments to Mother on the basis of her unexpected income from the
budding Ad Schulberg Agency. Hell had no fury like Mother’s reaction to Father’s claim of fiscal instability. All the passion she felt about losing him to Sylvia Sidney, and so publicly and humiliatingly, she poured into the subject of his financial responsibilities to his wife and children. She was not going to let him use what she would earn in the future as an excuse for failing to meet those responsibilities. He fought back: He was earning only half what he did before, and she was beginning to earn thousands a month; it was unreasonable for her to expect him to pay out the kind of money he had given her in the past. If she had her way, he charged, she would not only keep all of her money but get all of his as well.

And what would happen to the money he withheld from her? Mother demanded. Instead of going to a fund for the children’s education, it would go to the gamblers, the bootleggers, and the “hoors.” New expenses lay ahead. Soon Buddy would be off to college. (I had offered to pay my first year’s $400 tuition and thousand-dollar room and board at Dartmouth with my check from RKO, but Mother urged me instead to buy five blue-chip stocks and gamble on the eventual end of the Depression.) With Ad now a full-time working woman, Stuart was to be sent to boarding school near Santa Barbara, Sonya to a girls’ school in Paris. Ad expected Father to put us all through private schools and college and accumulate enough money to pass on to us after graduation. Besides, she had devoted twenty years to Father. He would have been nothing without her. Even a bum like
his
father. And so she and the children deserved half of everything he would ever earn.

“Ad, goddammit, don’t forget I have a million-dollar insurance policy made out to you and the children. When I die, you and the kids will get this plus the money I expect us both to keep making if you don’t kill me with your goddamn nagging about money. Goddammit Ad, it’s not just money you want, you want to punish me—”

“—I won’t kill you, you’re killing yourself with your crazy life and your drinking and—”

“—If I’m drinking too much, that sonofabitch Sam Katz ought to send a case of my best Eddie Kaye scotch to every producer on the lot! Do you know that Publix theater managers are already calling Sam Katz to bring me back now that Manny is on his way out? I know you’re a great expert on talent now, but did you see the piece in
Box Office
the other day? When Gary Cooper didn’t want to play Pinkerton in
Butterfly
—and goddam it I made him in
Wings
—I didn’t try to borrow
a high-priced star from another studio, I cast Cary Grant in it. Okay, so he’s just a beginner? Well, so was Coop five years ago. Take it from me, Ad, Cary Grant is going to be a big star. I’ll be making new stars and I’ll be making money pictures when Manny Cohen is back making newsreels.”

“All right, Ben, all right! So you’re a great star-maker! So great that you’re not running the whole studio anymore!”

“But not for the reasons you think! It’s because that sonofabitch Sam Katz—”

“Ben, you know the trouble with you, you always find excuses for yourself! I wish you spent as much time on your work as you do justifying your mistakes!”

Father went to the antique walnut bar embellished with John Held, Jr., prints. “Ad, you could drive anybody to drink! I was up until three o’clock this morning …”

“At the Clover Club!”

“Like hell I was! In the projection room until midnight. I worked on a script with Bud [Leighton] and Hope [Loring] until almost two. Then I read a story that might work out for George Raft next winter. You talk about ‘that Sidney woman,’ but at least she builds me up, she gives me confidence, you’re always tearing me down! Goddamn-it-Ad! [that seemed to have become her name]—if you don’t stop lecturing me I’m walking out of here!”

“Go ahead, walk out of here, ruin your life—but you’re not going to ruin mine, or Buddy’s and Sonya’s and Stuart’s.”

“You know the trouble with you, Ad, you love money. Well, there are other things in life maybe even more important, like love and—”

“—You think that Sidney woman loves you! She and her mother would drop you in a minute if you weren’t still so important, if you weren’t able to give her parts like Madame Butterfly. …”

As if in open defiance of Mother’s harsh judgment, Father had made himself a drink and was pacing up and down in mounting fury. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ad! If you’re going to be such a great agent you should know the crying hunger for new stars in the Industry, and the bargaining power that gives them. ‘That Sidney woman,’ as you insist on calling her, could go out tomorrow morning and double her salary at Warners or MGM. After all, you were the first one to sing her praises when you saw her on the stage. You were the one urging me to sign her. What makes you think she’s not in greater demand
now than she was when she was still a minor New York actress? If she were as selfish and greedy as you say she is, wouldn’t she have jumped to one of the other studios long before this? Be fair, Ad. I know that isn’t easy under the circumstances, but goddamn it, be fair!”

“You talk to me about
fair?
After the way you’ve disgraced me and the children? At least the heads of other studios keep their mistresses quiet. But you have to be photographed with yours dancing at the Grove!” Her eyes were full of tears, her voice full of rage. “I tried to hide that paper from the children.”

“Is it my fault that this town’s a bunch of goddamned hypocrites?”

“I want that money, Ben. Every week. Even if I have to ask Mendel Silverberg to attach your salary.”

Father poured another drink and called her terrible names. Mother gave it right back to him. Her voice was hoarse and toughened with rage. World-famous names were simply so many hard stones hurled at each other. Bow—Sidney—Cooper—Colbert—Chatterton—Grant…

Father stormed out of the house; the unwieldy Lincoln roadster that he drove poorly even in the best of times screeched down the dirt road out of the Colony. Mother leaned back on the couch and began to sob. I went out to our tennis court, turned on the lights and drove balls against the backboard as hard as I could. Later that night the cryptic diarist put the scene in a capsule: “Dad was over tonight. Awful row. He is getting unreasonable about money. Poor Mom has her hands full.”

The next day Mother stayed in bed and didn’t want to talk to anyone. She called Charley Feldman to take care of the office, and at the end of the day confided her problem to Dr. Dorothy Baruch, the child psychiatrist with whom she had founded the Hollywood Progressive School.

Next evening on his way back from the studio to the Malibu house he again shared with Sylvia, Father lost control of his car and drove off the Pacific Coast Road, over a 12-foot embankment and into the ocean. By the time the force of water stopped the forward motion of the big roadster, the waves had reached the level of the car windows. Pulled from the driver’s seat by rescuers and dragged ashore, he was unscathed. Even the big Upmann cigar between his teeth was still aglow. A cat only has nine lives. Father’s, at that time at least, seemed numberless. Though his power in Hollywood leached away slowly over the years, whenever B.P. and his cigar appeared at the door of the best restaurants, the maître d’ would always show him to a pretty good table.
That weekend I threw myself into the Malibu Tennis Tournament as if it were salvation from family miseries. I ran the length of the Colony beach and did pushups and knee bends until my muscles begged me to leave them alone.

To that tournament I brought an intangible advantage, undigested indignation. Every ball I drove or served or smashed was aimed at Sylvia’s navel, if not lower. I destroyed Junior Laemmle, blasted Felix Young, outhit the cagey Sam Jaffe, outplayed Paul Lukas, and battled my way into the finals with our local Tilden, Irwin Gelsey. To the affable Gelsey it was only a game; to me it was life-and-death, as I played the kind of tennis I usually fantasized about: 7-5, 6-3!

“The Malibu singles cup is mine!” reports the L.A. High School and Deerfield loser. “My game was terrific and at all times I was on the offense.”

Our crowd—Maurice, the Goetz boys, and Al Mannheimer—celebrated by jumping into my Dusenberg and racing to the Mexican border, where we played roulette at the Jockey Club in Tijuana, bet the horses at Agua Caliente, and, at the urging of our evil mentor, Al Mannheimer, ordered a scotch highball at the bar, followed by straight tequila. “From midnight until dawn my stomach burned.” I was discovering the joys and price of alcohol.

For us this was wild adventure. “On our way back from the casino to the hotel,” the diary records, “Walt [Goetz] expressed the quaint desire to get laid and wanted to get a whore to come to the hotel. He didn’t.”

Maurice and I were relieved. We were trying to sound like red-blooded 18-year-olds now, but sex to us was still Clara Bow in trouble, Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson seducing Walter Huston (or Harry Rapf?), Sylvia Sidney getting pregnant and having to be dumped in the lake by Phillips Holmes (Father?).

Next morning was more our style. With the first light, we were down at the dock to find our charter boat to cruise through the Coronado Islands that rise boldly from the waters off Lower California south of San Diego, where the only inhabitants were a large, hospitable, and apparently bilingual family of seals. We fished for yellowtail and battled them like junior Hemingways. The sun smiled and baked down on us, raising blisters on the handsome nose of Al Casanova. We loved the Coronados, the seals, those yellowtail, the mysterious coastline of Baja
incognita,
far from studio headaches and Malibu misalliances.

Home to Hollywood I made my ceremonial farewell rounds of the lots, only this time the circle had widened. Goodbye to Stuart Palmer at RKO, rolling dice, writing his novel, riding high with the success of
A Bill of Divorcement
and Katharine Hepburn. Goodbye to Elaine Rugg, to whom I expressed my tender feelings with a large fish from the Coronados and a tentative kiss—with a gallant footnote in my diary: “I hope I’m not encouraging her too much.” Goodbye to Teet Carle, Freddie March, Oscar the Bootblack, Dick Aden, and all my pals at Paramount. Goodbye to the Mayer girls, Irene and Edith, and up their old man’s. Goodbye to his studio, or rather Maurice’s, as we liked to think of it, and to the chums on our old Culver City playground, comedian George K. Arthur, our protected starlet Jean Parker, the friendly film editor Frank Davis, serious King Vidor, and happy-go-lucky Slickum. Goodbye to my Dartmouth co-sponsors, the pipe-smoking, pretentious Walter Wanger, who tilted with Father, and Gene Markey, the free-spirited and nifty writer. Goodbye to the RKO accounting office, which kept me waiting a full month to the very last day for my $1,500. Goodbye to our loft of racing pigeons whose bloodlines had gone out of control under the careless neglect of our little brothers; goodbye to Eddie and Peggy, king and queen of our loft, whose thoroughbred squabs were never to be trained or raced again. Goodbye to Lucille the cook and Lloyd the tall black chauffeur. Goodbye to the Dusenberg. Goodbye to Windsor Square playmates, Buddy Lesser the sweet and timid son of the
Tarzan
producer and Fred Funk, already college-football material, who explained to me that two snails stuck together in our garden were doing something other than fighting. Goodbye with a half-serious little kiss from Sidney Fox, over at Universal shooting
Once in a Lifetime
with Jack Oakie. “Be a good boy, Buddy, study hard,” said Sidney Fox. To which Jack Oakie added, “And maybe next year we’ll send Manny Cohen to Dartmouth and put
you
in the sunken office.” Goodbye to Mrs. Stanton at U.S.C., to whom I had put off admitting that I felt over my head with
Judge Lynch.
Goodbye to my Siamese twin Maurice.

In the year ahead, we solemnly assured each other, we confronted three great challenges: We would have to get laid—it was simply too embarrassing to face sophisticated Al Mannheimer’s contempt any longer; we would have to make a place for ourselves on our respective campus newspapers; and we would have to earn athletic letters.

A last swim together at Malibu. A last tomcod reeled in from the end of the rickety pier. A last talk with Mother in her office full of chintz and Queen Anne furniture, and decorated with photo blowups of the $5,000-a-week stars she represented. Goodbye to Henrietta Cohn, Father’s loyal, feisty secretary still there from the old New York-Paramount days. And finally, goodbye to Father in his new bungalow-office set apart from the long, yellow-brown-stucco administration building on Marathon Street. I hoped that
Madame Butterfly
with his untested Cary Grant would live up to his high expectations. (It didn’t.)

A respite if not goodbye to the Sidney debate. But never goodbye to debate in general. Not much good at tennis or Ping-Pong, Father loved the volley of the mind, a happy warrior of verbal dispute. A lifelong “Al Smith Democrat,” he said he hated to agree with arch-Republican L.B. but it was beginning to look as if Hoover would make it again. I despised the incumbent and liked the voice of Governor Roosevelt on the radio. “New Deal” sounded good. It promised innovations: federal power projects on the Columbia and Tennessee Rivers to give the private utilities new challenges they’d have to measure up to—government help for farmers being choked off their land by mortgage payments—old-age and unemployment insurance…

Addicts of Gilbert and Sullivan, Maurice and I had sung together, “Oh every boy and every gal/ Who comes into this world alive/ Is either a little Liberal/ Or else a little Conservative…”

Duzie or no Duzie, I was a little Liberal. Heading for Hanover, my mind was about as empty a vessel as ever needed to be filled. I had yet to read Veblen’s
Theory of the Leisure Class.
Hell, I
was
the leisure class. But those breadlines made me nervous. I saw the layoffs at the studio and the threat to cut company payrolls in half.