My Autobiography (55 page)

Since my return to the States something quite wonderful was happening. The economic reverses, although drastic, brought out the greatness of the American people. Conditions had gone from bad to worse. Some states went so far as to print a fiduciary currency on wood in order to distribute unsold goods. Meanwhile the lugubrious Hoover sat and sulked, because his disastrous economic sophistry of allocating money at the top in the belief that it would percolate down to the common people had failed. And amidst all this tragedy he ranted in the election campaign that if Franklin Roosevelt got into office the very foundations of the American system – not an infallible system at that moment – would be imperilled.

However, Franklin D. Roosevelt did get into office, and the country was not imperilled. His ‘Forgotten Man’ speech lifted American politics out of its cynical drowse and established the
most inspiring era in American history. I heard the speech over the radio at Sam Goldwyn’s beach-house. Several of us sat around, including Bill Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Joe Schenck, Fred Astaire, his wife and other guests. ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ came over the air like a ray of sunlight. But I was sceptical, as were most of us. ‘Too good to be true,’ I said.

No sooner had Roosevelt taken office than he began to fit actions to his words, ordering a ten-day bank holiday to stop the banks from collapsing. That was a moment when America was at its best. Shops and stores of all kinds continued to do business on credit, even the cinemas sold tickets on credit, and for ten days, while Roosevelt and his so-called brains trust formulated the New Deal, the people acted magnificently.

Legislation was ordered for every kind of emergency: reestablishing farm credit to stop the wholesale robbery of foreclosures, financing big public projects, establishing the National Recovery Act, raising the minimum wage, spreading out jobs by shortening working hours, and encouraging the organization of labour unions. This was going too far; this was socialism, the opposition shouted. Whether it was or not, it saved capitalism from complete collapse. It also inaugurated some of the finest reforms in the history of the United States. It was inspiring to see how quickly the American citizen reacted to constructive government.

Hollywood was also going through a change of life. Most of the silent screen stars had disappeared – only a few of us were left. Now that the talkies had taken hold, the charm and insouciance of Hollywood were gone. Overnight it had become a cold and serious industry. Sound technicians were renovating studios and building elaborate sound devices. Cameras the size of a room lumbered about the stage like juggernauts. Elaborate radio equipment was installed, involving thousands of electrical wires. Men, geared like warriors from Mars, sat with earphones while the actors performed, with microphones hovering above them like fishing rods. It was all very complicated and depressing. How could anyone be creative with all that junk around them? I hated the whole idea of it. Then someone found that all this elaborate junk could be made portable, and the cameras more mobile, and that equipment could be rented for a reasonable sum. Notwithstanding
these improvements, I found little inducement to start work again.

I still toyed with the idea of pulling up stakes and settling in China. In Hong Kong I could live well and forget motion pictures, instead of languishing here in Hollywood, rotting on the vine.

For three weeks I dallied about, then one day Joe Schenck telephoned me to save the week-end for his yacht – a beautiful sailing boat, a hundred and thirty-eight feet long, that could comfortably accommodate fourteen people. Joe usually moored around Catalina Island near Avalon. His guests were seldom exciting, usually poker-players, and poker did not interest me. But there were other interests. Joe usually embarked with a bevy of pretty girls, and being desperately lonely, I hoped I might find a pretty little ray of sunlight.

That is precisely what happened. I met Paulette Goddard. She was gay and amusing and during the course of the evening told me she was going to invest $50,000, part of her alimony from her ex-husband, in a film venture. She had brought aboard all the documents ready to sign. I almost took her by the throat to prevent her. The company was obviously a Hollywood gyp enterprise. I told her that I had been in the movie business almost since its inception and with my knowledge of it I would not invest one penny except in my own pictures – and even that was a risk. I argued that if Hearst, with a literary staff and access to the most popular stories in the States, had lost $7,000,000 investing in movies, what chance had she? Eventually I talked her out of it. This was the beginning of our friendship.

The bond between Paulette and me was loneliness. She was just out from New York and knew no one. It was a case of Robinson Crusoe discovering Friday for both of us. During the week there was plenty to do, for Paulette was working in a Sam Goldwyn movie and I attended to business. But Sunday was a forlorn day. In desperation we would take long drives, in fact we combed the whole coastline of California. There seemed to be nothing to do. Our most thrilling adventure was to go to San Pedro harbour to look at the pleasure boats. One was for sale, a fifty-five-foot motor cruiser which had three state-rooms, a galley and an attractive wheel-house – the kind of boat I would have liked.

‘Now if you had something like that,’ Paulette said, ‘we could
have lots of fun on Sundays, and go to Catalina.’ So I made inquiries about purchasing it. It was owned by a Mr Mitchell, manufacturer of the motion picture cameras, who showed us over the boat. Three times within a week we looked it over until our presence became embarrassing. However, Mr Mitchell said that until it was sold we were welcome to come aboard and look at it.

Unbeknown to Paulette I bought the boat and provisioned it for a cruise to Catalina, taking aboard my own cook, and an ex-Keystone Cop, Andy Anderson, who had been a licensed captain. The following Sunday everything was ready. Paulette and I started out very early, as she thought, for a long drive, agreeing that we would just have a cup of coffee and go somewhere later for breakfast. Then she discovered we were on our way to San Pedro. ‘Surely you are not going to look at that boat again?’

‘I’d like to go over it once more just to make up my mind,’ I answered.

‘Then you’ll have to go alone, it’s too embarrassing,’ she said mournfully. ‘I’ll sit in the car and wait for you.’

When we pulled up at the boat landing-stage, nothing would induce her to get out of the car. ‘No, you’ll have to go alone. But hurry – we haven’t had breakfast yet.’

After two minutes I returned to the car and persuaded her much against her will to come aboard. The cabin was gaily decorated with a pink and blue table-cloth and pink and blue china to match. A delectable aroma of bacon and eggs frying came up from the galley. ‘The captain has kindly invited us to breakfast,’ I said. ‘We have wheat-cakes, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee.’ Paulette looked down into the galley and recognized our cook. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you wanted some place to go on Sunday so after breakfast we’re going to Catalina for a swim.’ Then I told her I had bought the boat.

Her reaction was funny. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. She got up, left the boat and ran about fifty yards along the harbour and covered her face with her hands.

‘Hey! Come and get your breakfast,’ I shouted.

When she came aboard again she said: ‘I had to do that to get over the shock of it.’

Then Freddy, the Japanese cook, came up all grinning with the breakfast. And afterwards we warmed up the engines, cruised
down towards the harbour and out into the Pacific Ocean towards Catalina, twenty-two miles away, where we moored for nine days.

*

Still no immediate plans for work. With Paulette I did all the witless things: attended race meetings, night spots and all the public functions – anything to kill time. I did not want to be alone or to think. But underlying these pleasures was a continual sense of guilt: What am I doing here? Why aren’t I at work?

Furthermore, I was depressed by the remark of a young critic who said that
City Lights
was very good, but that it verged on the sentimental, and that in my future films I should try to approximate realism. I found myself agreeing with him. Had I known what I do now, I could have told him that so-called realism is often artificial, phoney, prosaic and dull; and that it is not reality that matters in a film but what the imagination can make of it.

It was curious how by accident, and when I least expected it, I was suddenly stimulated to make another silent picture. Paulette and I went to Tijuana race-track in Mexico, where the winner of the Kentucky something or other was to be presented with a silver cup. Paulette was asked if she would present the cup to the winning jockey and say a few words with a Southern accent. She needed little persuasion. I was astonished to hear her over the loudspeaker. Although from Brooklyn, she gave a remarkable imitation of a Kentucky society belle. This convinced me that she could act.

Thus I was stimulated. Paulette struck me as being somewhat of a
gamine
. This would be a wonderful quality for me to get on the screen. I could imagine us meeting in a crowded patrol wagon, the tramp and this gamine, and the tramp being very gallant and offering her his seat. This was the basis on which I could build plot and sundry gags.

Then I remembered an interview I had had with a bright young reporter on the New York
World
. Hearing that I was visiting Detroit, he had told me of the factory-belt system there – a harrowing story of big industry luring healthy young men off the farms who, after four or five years at the belt system, became nervous wrecks.

It was that conversation that gave me the idea for
Modern
Times
. I used a feeding machine as a time-saving device, so that the workers could continue working during the lunch time. The factory sequence resolved itself in the tramp having a nervous breakdown. The plot developed out of the natural sequence of events. After his cure, he gets arrested and meets a
gamine
who has also been arrested for stealing bread. They meet in a police patrol car packed with offenders. From then on, the theme is about two nondescripts trying to get along in modern times. They are involved in the Depression, strikes, riots and unemployment. Paulette was dressed in rags. She almost wept when I put smudges on her face to make her look dirty. ‘Those smudges are beauty spots,’ I insisted.

It is easy to dress an actress attractively in fashionable clothes, but to dress a flower-girl and have her look attractive, as in
City Lights
, was difficult. The girl’s costume in
The Gold Rush
was not such a problem. But Paulette’s outfit in
Modern Times
required as much thought and finesse as a Dior creation. If a
gamine
costume is treated without care, the patches look theatrical and unconvincing. In dressing an actress as a street urchin or a flower-girl I aimed to create a poetic effect and not to detract from her personality.

Before the opening of
Modern Times
a few columnists wrote that they had heard rumours the picture was communistic. I suppose this was because of a summary of the story that had already appeared in the Press. However, the liberal reviewers wrote that it was neither for nor against communism and that metaphorically I had sat on the fence.

Nothing is more nerve-racking than to receive bulletins informing one that the first week’s attendance broke all records and that the second week fell off slightly. Therefore, after the premières in New York and Los Angeles, my one desire was to get as far away as possible from any news of the picture; so I decided to go to Honolulu, taking Paulette and her mother with me, leaving instructions with the office not to send messages of any kind.

*

We embarked at Los Angeles, arriving in San Francisco in pouring rain. However, nothing dampened our spirits; we had time for a little shopping, then returned to the boat. Passing by
warehouses, I saw stamped on some of the freight the word ‘China’. ‘Let’s go there!’

‘Where?’ said Paulette.

‘China.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Let’s do it now or we never will,’ I said.

‘But I haven’t any clothes.’

‘You can buy all you want in Honolulu,’ I said.

All boats should be called
Panacea
, for nothing is more recuperative than a sea-voyage. Your worries are adjourned, the boat adopts you, and cures you and, when finally she enters port, reluctantly gives you back again to the humdrum world.

But when we arrived in Honolulu, to my horror I saw large posters advertising
Modern Times
, and the Press waiting on the dock ready to devour me. There was no escape.

However, I was not apprehended in Tokyo, for the captain had obligingly registered me under another name. The Japanese authorities took it big when they saw my passport. ‘Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?’ they said. Since there had just been a military coup in which several hundreds had been killed, it was just as well, I thought. During our stay in Japan an official of the Government never left our side. From San Francisco on through to Hong Kong we hardly spoke to a passenger; but when we arrived in Hong Kong the austerity thawed. It came about through a Catholic priest. ‘Charlie,’ said a tall, reserved-looking business man, ‘I want you to meet an American priest from Connecticut who’s been stationed out here for five years in ajeper colony. It’s pretty lonesome for the Father, so every Saturday he comes to Hong Kong just to meet the American boats.’

The priest was a tall, handsome man in his late thirties with rosy cheeks and an ingratiating smile. I bought a drink, then my friend bought a drink, then the Father bought a drink. It was a small circle at first, but as the evening progressed it enlarged to about twenty-five people, everyone buying drinks. The party increased to about thirty-five and the drinks kept coming; many were carried aboard unconscious, but the priest, who did not miss a drink, was still smiling and soberly administering to everyone. Eventually I reared up to bid him good-bye. And as he held me up solicitously I shook his hand. It felt rough, so I turned it over
and examined the palm. There were cracks and crevices and in the centre a white spot. ‘That’s not leprosy, I hope,’ I said jokingly. He grinned and shook his head. A year later we heard that he had died of it.