Moving Pictures (72 page)

“Tell you what I’ll do with you,” Father said as we argued the coming election. “You like Roosevelt, I still think Hoover’ll win—I’ll lay you three hundred dollars to your hundred.” I was afraid to gamble a hundred. “Make it a hundred to thirty-five.” Even those stakes were too high for me. Father was disappointed. “After all, you can afford it, you’ve got your own money now. The RKO check.”

“Mother’s buying five stocks with it—Western Union, Westinghouse Electric, Macy’s, Woolworth’s, and DuPont.”

“Typical, typical. Well, you worked for it, you ought to have a little fun with your money.” He paced up and down, twirling his silver watch
chain around his long, slender fingers. “But don’t listen to me. Mother is right.” He looked at me and smiled sadly. “Your mother is always right.”

“I’ll bet five bucks on Roosevelt,” I said, “against your fifteen.”

“It’s a bet.” Father put out his hand. “My fifteen to your five. And I hope I lose. We could all use a new deal.”

The entire Schulberg-Jaffe family, complete with entourage, Father’s pals, Mother’s young assistant Charley Feldman, Maurice, Leon Becker and Elaine, one great happy-and-not-so-happy family, were at the old Santa Fe station to see me off. I had a suitcase full of current novels and the resolve to read two a day until I got to New York. Fearful of what lay ahead, I was already homesick for Malibu and Lorraine.

But as the train began to pull out and I leaned from the Pullman platform to wave and keep waving, I could see Mother standing to one side with Sonya and Stuart, Father standing apart, waving his cigar, and I knew that never again would there be a home in Windsor Square or a Malibu beach house where all of us would be living together. I watched the group, all thirty of them, my loving, envious, conflicted extended family, fall away, as seen through the lens of a camera slowly irising down to a small circle, a dot, to nothing.

The eastern border of the orange groves had always marked the boundary between my homeland and the outside world. When I reached it I picked up my diary and wrote, as if sending myself a telegram, “Goodbye to Home Sweet Hollywood. New page ahead…”

Edwin S. Porter, the director of
The Great Train Robbery,
gave B.P. Schulberg his first film job. Porter is seen here with an early version of the film projector.

In front of the Santa Fe Chief (c. 1925). At the far left is Pat Powers, an early motion picture boss; stepping just a bit forward to be noticed is mogul Adolf Zukor; next to him, a bit back of course, Mrs. Zukor; and Al Kaufman, Zukor’s son-in-law, who along with B.P. Schulberg was offered $500 a week for life in 1914, when money was money. At the far right is B.P.

Ad and B.P. and an old crony of his, Joe Roche.

The crown princes of Hollywood were not beyond a bit of fun. Here we see Jerry Mayer (brother of L.B. Mayer) and B.P. Schulberg patting the head of a lion badly in need of a hairdresser. The picture was taken
c.
1922 at the old Mayer-Schulberg studio, which was attached to the Selig Zoo. This picture, in fact, was the genesis of the idea for an MGM lion.

The moguls of early Hollywood lived well, but few pictures exist of the interiors of their homes. This is the Schulberg library which was catalogued and its volumes numbered by a professional librarian. Ad’s first career was as a librarian. B.P. was extremely fond of rare books, and on Sundays he would read to his family from the classics.

Jackie Coogan’s tenth birthday party (1924). Coogan is in front at the center. At his left and right are Marjorie Lesser and Julian “Buddy” Lesser, whose father, Sol Lesser, made a fortune on Tarzan pictures. Budd Schulberg is in military academy uniform on the first step at the extreme right. To his left is his sister, Sonya.

B.P. Schulberg, Ad, and baby Budd

In the back row: Leon Errol, comedian; an unidentified person; Al Kaufman; Buddy Rogers; and just below him, Jack Oakie. In the front row: Jesse Lasky of Famous-Players-Lasky, one of the early moguls; B.P. Schulberg in a characteristic stance; actor Clive Brook; Ruth Chatterton; a mystery couple (possibly visiting Romanian nobility or a bogus Bulgarian prince); director Eddie Goulding; comedian Harry Green; and Mike Levee, studio executive and later one of the leading agents.