No Greater Love (29 page)

He took them to the Horowitz studios as well, and the children watched for a whole afternoon as he worked on a film with Wallace Beery. Everything seemed to move unbelievably quickly, and George explained to her that they could complete a movie in less than three weeks. He had already worked on three since he’d been there. He wanted to introduce her to Sam Horowitz, too, but he was out that day, and George promised to introduce Edwina to him later.

That night, he took them all to the Hollywood Hotel, where they had dinner, and the children looked around them in awe at the elegance of the decor, but they were even more impressed by what Teddy referred to as “George’s lady.” Helen Horowitz met them at the hotel in a shimmering white gown, her blond hair swept off her face, and her skin like cream that had just been poured as the white dress molded her amazing body. She was almost as tall as George, but she was reed-thin, and very shy. She was eighteen years old, and the dress had been made for her by Poiret in Paris, she explained innocently, as though everyone had their dresses made there. She was polite and shy, and in a funny innocent yet sophisticated way, she reminded Edwina of Alexis. She had the same ethereal beauty and the same gentle
ways, and she seemed to be totally unaware of her own effect on those around her. She had grown up in Los Angeles, but her father apparently didn’t like her spending a lot of time with people “in the business,” and she much preferred riding horses anyway. She invited them all to ride at their ranch in the San Fernando Valley. But Edwina had gently explained that Alexis was afraid of horses. Teddy would have been happy to have gone, but he was content enough staring at the cars they saw everywhere. Edwina was beginning to wonder how she would ever get him to settle down again in San Francisco.

“Have you known George long?” Edwina asked, watching her. She was so beautiful, and in a funny way, also very simple. She had no conceited airs, she was just a very lovely girl, in a very expensive dress, and she looked as though she was very taken with Edwina’s brother. It was heady stuff, and he was very gentle with her. And Edwina watched them as they danced. There was something very sweet about the pair, something wonderfully striking and healthy and young and innocent. They were two people totally unaware of their own beauty. And as Edwina watched, she realized how much George had grown up since he left home. He was truly a man now.

“It’s a shame my father’s out of town,” Helen said. “He’s in Palm Springs this week, we’re building a house there,” she announced, as though everyone did. “But I know he would have liked to meet you.”

“Next time,” Edwina said, watching George again. He had just met some friends, and he brought them all over to meet Edwina. They were all a racy crowd, and yet they didn’t look like bad people. They just looked like they were having fun. They were in a business which almost required it, and which brought fun to thousands
of other people. And whatever it was that they did, or didn’t do, it was easy to see how much George loved it.

The children hated to leave, and after agreeing to extend their stay by a few days, they went back to the studio to watch him work again, and on that particular day one of the directors asked Edwina if she would allow Alexis to appear in a movie. She hesitated, but much to her surprise, George shook his head, and when he declined, Alexis was in dark despair almost until they left. But when Edwina and George talked about it later, he told her that he thought it would have been the wrong thing for her.

“Why let them exploit her? She doesn’t even know what she looks like. It’s fun down here. But it’s for grown-ups, not children. If you let her do this now, she’s going to want to come down here and go wild. I’ve seen it happen, and I don’t want that for her. Neither would you, if you could see it.” She didn’t disagree with him, but she was surprised at his conservative position vis-à-vis his sister. For a boy of nineteen years, nearly twenty, he reminded her more than once, he was surprisingly mature, and he seemed to fit in extremely well in the sophisticated life of Hollywood. She was proud of him, and she was suddenly doubly glad that she had sold the paper. If this was what he wanted, then he would never have been happy there. She had done the right thing. And so had he, when he had come to live here.

The children were despondent when they checked out of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and they made her promise that they would come back often.

“How do you know George will want us to?” she teased, but he looked over their heads at her and made her promise that she would come down and bring them.

“I should have my own place by then, and you can even stay with me.” He was planning to buy a small house with the money he had inherited from Aunt Liz.
But for the moment he was still sharing an apartment with a friend in Beverly Hills, just outside the city. There were a lot of things he still wanted to do, and he knew he had a lot to learn, but he was excited about all of it, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to be a diligent student. Sam Horowitz had given him the chance, and he was going to do everything he could to live up to his expectations.

He took them all to the train station then, and the children all waved as they left. It was like a whirlwind that had come and gone for them, an exciting dream, a flash of tinsel that was suddenly gone, as they sat staring at each other on the train, wondering if it had ever happened.

“I want to go back there again one day,” Alexis said quietly as they rolled toward San Francisco.

“We will.” Edwina smiled. She had had the best time she’d had in years, and she felt eighteen herself again, instead of nearly twenty-eight. Her birthday was in another week, but she had just had enough celebration to last her for the year. She smiled to herself as Alexis looked at her intently.

“I mean I’m going back there to live one day.” She said it as though making a plan that nothing in this world could interfere with.

“Like George?” Edwina tried to make light of it, but there was something in Alexis’s eyes that told her she meant it. And then, halfway home, Alexis looked at her again with a puzzled frown.

“Why didn’t you let me be in the movie that man asked me to be in?”

Edwina tried to make light of it, but Alexis had that same intent look in her eyes that she had had for days. It was a look of intensity and purpose that Edwina had never seen there. “George didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Why not?” she persisted, as Edwina busied herself rolling up Fannie’s sleeves and then glanced out the window before she looked back at Alexis.

“Probably because that’s a world for grown-ups, Alexis, people who belong there, not amateurs who get hurt doing things they don’t understand.” It was an honest answer after giving it some thought, and Alexis seemed to accept it for the moment.

“I’m going to be an actress one day, and nothing you do will ever stop me.” It was an odd thing to say, and Edwina frowned at the vehemence of the child’s words.

“What makes you think I’d try to stop you?”

“You just did … but next time … next time will be different.” She sat looking out the window then, as Edwina stared at her in amazement. And who knew? Maybe she was right. Maybe she’d go back one day and work with George. She had a feeling that he was going to make it. She found herself wondering about Helen, too, about what she was really like, and how much she cared about George and if it might be serious one day. There was a lot for all of them to think about on the way home. And eventually, Edwina fell asleep listening to the wheels as they carried them home, and on either side of her, the younger children slept, leaning their heads against her shoulders. But across from them, Alexis sat staring out the window most of the way home, with a purposeful look that only she understood, and the others could only guess at.

THE NEXT FOUR YEARS IN HOLLYWOOD WERE EXCITING YEARS
for George and the people who had become his friends, The films made included
The Copperhead, The Sheik
, De Mille’s
Fool’s Paradise
, his comedy
Why Change Your Wife?
, and the budding movie industry rapidly turned to gold for everyone involved. With Sam Horowitz teaching and protecting him, George had an opportunity to work on dozens of important movies, and from cameraman he went to third assistant director, and eventually, he began producing, which had always been his dream. The promise he had made Edwina four years before when he first left for Hollywood in 1919, was a reality for him by 1923.

Early on, Horowitz had even loaned him out to Paramount and Universal, and George knew everyone now, but most of all he knew his business. And like the Warner brothers that year, Sam Horowitz had just taken out incorporation papers, and hired several writers and
directors. And Sam was the first to go to Wall Street and interest serious investors by convincing them that in Hollywood there was real money to be made. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had joined D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin to form United Artists, and there were similar groups forming too. It was an exciting era to be involved down there, and Edwina loved hearing about it. It still amazed her that her little brother’s wild dreams had come true. And he’d been right, it was certainly a far cry from running their father’s paper, and this was much more his style than staying in sleepy San Francisco would have been.

Edwina and the children went down to visit him two or three times a year, and stayed in his house on North Crescent Drive. He had a butler, a cook, and an upstairs and a downstairs maid. He was quite the man about town, and Fannie insisted that he was more handsome than Rudolph Valentino, which only made him laugh. But Edwina had long since noticed that the girls around Hollywood seemed to think so too. He took out dozens of actresses and starlets, but the only girl he seemed to really care about was Helen Horowitz, his mentor’s daughter. She was twenty-two years old by then, and even more beautiful than Edwina had thought her when they first met. She had a startling sophistication about her now, and the last time Edwina had seen her with George, she had worn a skin-tight silver lame dress that took people’s breath away as she sauntered casually into the Cocoanut Grove on George’s arm. She seemed oblivious to the stares and the cameras, and Edwina asked him later why Helen was never in her father’s movies.

“He doesn’t want her having any part of all that. It’s all right as long as she’s on the sidelines. I suggested the same thing to him years ago, but he wouldn’t have it. I guess he’s right. Helen’s untouched by all this. She likes
hearing about it, but she just thinks it’s funny.” And something about the way he talked about her always suggested to Edwina that something might come of their friendship one day, but thus far nothing more than a longtime romance ever had, and Edwina didn’t want to press it.

Edwina had just taken the children to see
Hollywood
at home in San Francisco, and was arguing with Alexis about why she could
not
go to see
Loves of Pharaoh
, when the telephone rang, and it was George calling from Los Angeles. He wanted Edwina to come down and go to the premiere of his biggest movie with him. They had borrowed Douglas Fairbanks for it, and he said that the opening parties would be terrific.

“It’ll do you good to get away from the little monsters for a while.” Once in a while, he liked to bring Edwina down alone. But the outcry was too great this time to allow it, and finally two weeks later, Edwina left for Hollywood with all of them in tow. Alexis was seventeen by then and just as lovely as Sam Horowitz’s daughter, except that her hair wasn’t bobbed, and she had never worn silver lame. But she was still a strikingly beautiful girl, now even more so. And people still stared wherever she went. Alexis was a beauty. And it was all Edwina could do to keep her suitors from knocking down their door. She had no fewer than five or six admirers at any given time, but she was still a relatively shy child, with a fondness for Edwina’s much older friends because she felt safer with them. Fannie was fifteen, and surprisingly domestic. She was happy in the garden and baking cakes, and she was happiest when Edwina was too busy doing other things to run the house. Edwina had made several wise real estate investments, and now and then she had to go somewhere to check on them with Ben. He had long since forgotten his romantic dreams about Edwina, and now they were only good friends. He had
married two years before, and Edwina was pleased that he seemed very happy.

And at thirteen, Teddy was already talking about going to Harvard. He liked Hollywood, but what really appealed to him at this point was running a bank. It seemed an odd choice for a thirteen-year-old child, but he had the solidity of their oldest brother, and he reminded her of Phillip much of the time. George was the only one thus far with a wild flair for the unexpected, but for him the quixotic world of Hollywood was exactly what he needed.

They stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel this time, because George had other houseguests, but the children, as Edwina still called them, much to Alexis’s disgust, thought it more exciting at the hotel. Pola Negri was staying there, Leatrice Joy, Noah Beery, and Charlie Chaplin. And Teddy went crazy when he saw Will Rogers and Tom Mix in the lobby.

And Edwina was very flattered when her brother invited her to the opening gala at Pickfair. She bought an incredible gold lame Chanel dress, and in spite of her age, she felt like a young girl. She was thirty-one years old, soon to be thirty-two, but she hadn’t really changed in years. Her face was smooth and unlined, her figure even better than it had been years before. She had had her shining black hair cut in a shingled bob that year, at her brother’s insistence, and she felt very chic in the gold dress, as they walked into the house Douglas Fairbanks had built for Mary Pickford as a wedding gift three years before. They seemed very happy there, and it was one of those rare marriages that worked in spite of the glamorous world they lived in. Few relationships seemed to last from one of Edwina’s visits to the next, except this one.