Notes on a Cowardly Lion (27 page)

Her allegiance had its rewards. She worked with Lahr on radio and did a few one-reelers with him that even now can be seen on old-time movie cavalcades. When he did vaudeville in the off season, she played the “other woman” (Marie) in his cop act, and was even in the chorus of
Life Begins at 8:40
. Between the work and a continual round of café society at Billy La Hiff's, the Stork Club, the Mayfair—memories filter down to long, gay evenings of talk and drinking—these were happy and, for her, anxious times.

Mildred, the girl who made Lahr wait before going out to dinner while Bing Crosby sang “A Penthouse for Two” on the radio, wanted a family and the kind of soft romance that Crosby's crooning implied. She asked Lahr about marriage. In her curious, unreflective way, she never expected that a divorce or annulment of his marriage was anything that could not be handled in a few days with the lawyers. “I was tired of being Bert Lahr's girl, I didn't want to have that label on me. I'd been brought up better than that.”

Lahr tried to explain to her that it was legal to file for an annulment only after Mercedes had been in a mental institution for five years. This was true, but Mildred seems to have disregarded it and seen Lahr's explanation as a decoy. “I thought he was scared of getting married again.” Her statement may have some validity, although Lahr denies it now. In any case, the problem was conveniently out of his hands, at least until the end of 1936.

Just before Lahr went into rehearsals for
George White's Scandals
(1936), Mildred came to him with an ultimatum. “I told him that unless he did something to make it possible for us to get married within a certain time—I think six weeks—I was going to date other men. I was pretty, I'd given him four good years, and I expected his intentions to be honorable.”

“I thought she was kidding” is all that Lahr can recall about his reaction. Mildred's legal adviser had informed her that he would never be able to get a divorce or annulment on the grounds of insanity in New York State. This was true to the extent that there was no precedent up to that time. The six weeks came; nothing was resolved. “He
said
he was trying” is all that Mildred will say. She felt that where there was a will there was also a way.

In late January, while Lahr was in Pittsburgh with the
Scandals
and Mildred was in a show on Broadway, she had one of her friends arrange a date for her. Within days Mildred found herself deliriously in love with love. After six weeks of courtship, she and the man were discussing marriage.

Mildred saw Lahr often. He was upset, but not disconsolate, about the situation. Once she found him standing in front of the Barbizon-Plaza, where she was staying, waiting to catch a glimpse of the man.

Lahr did not need any more complications, especially not from the woman who had salvaged some of his peace of mind and happiness. He had showed his love with signs she could not read, involving her in
his act, giving her a small diamond ring, the very same kind (perhaps more expensive) that he had saved for so long to buy Mercedes.

On March 28, a wire came to his hotel. There was nothing for the imagination to misinterpret:

IT SEEMS THAT OUR FATE IS NOT IN OUR HANDS WAS MARRIED TODAY SATURDAY TO MR JOSEPH, ROBINSON ATTORNEY WE ARE ABOUT TO SET SAIL ON OUR HONEYMOON SOON WILL BE AT SEA AND BERT I LOVE YOU AND HAVE A GREAT ADMIRATION FOR YOU AS ONE MIGHT HAVE FOR A FATHER NOT A HUSBAND SO ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT DECIDED TO GET MARRIED THOUGHT IT BEST FOR ALL CONCERNED BERT DARLING TAKE IT LIKE A MAN I KNOW YOU WILL I AM TAKING YOU AT YOUR WORD I TRUST WE SHALL ALWAYS BE FRIENDS KINDEST REGARDS AND VERY BEST WISHES SINCERELY

MILDRED

He reached for the phone. He wanted to call his lawyer, Abe Berman. But then he put it back on the stand. He was crying too hard to talk.

Buffooneries

If love … is a function of man's sadness, friendship is a function of his cowardice; and if neither can be realised because of the impenetrability of all that is not “cosa mentale,” at least the failure to possess may have the nobility of that which is tragic, whereas the attempt to communicate where no communication is possible is merely a simian vulgarity, or horribly comic, like the madness that holds a conversation with the furniture
.

Samuel Beckett
, Proust

“
ALL I CAN TELL
you is that it wasn't pleasant. I can't remember much about the telegram except that it said something about ‘take it like a man.' Let's just forget about that period of my life, O.K.?” Lahr wants to rearrange his life as if he were plotting a sketch, but the pieces do not fall together comfortably. His previous refusals to permit his biography to be written center on these humiliations of the heart.

“Sure I was hurt. It was a terrible thing, but I never missed a performance. It wasn't the end of the world.” He has forgotten his frenzy. His acquaintances were not as easily fooled.

Because his sweetheart of many years ran away to Miami and married another guy, friends of one of the most famous comedians are watching him day and night … sort of a spy system to see that he doesn't commit suicide … before the gal skipped away she pleaded with the comedian to divorce his wife who had been seriously ill for a long time … and marry her … He informed the gal that it was impossible to get a divorce in New York State. That it would ruin him, anyway under existing conditions. The actor was with a party of friends in a Broadway club when the news came in of Paul McCullough killing himself … All said it was a pity, a tragedy … All but the comedian, who sitting like a ghost, knowing his sweetheart was getting married
(but no one else knew)
spoke up and said, “Why shouldn't a man kill himself when he has nothing to live for?… I think McCullough was right!” McCullough too had lost a girl of whom he was exceedingly fond. When the story broke about the Miami marriage, the club gang
remembered the comedian, as they knew his sweetheart well, and what she meant to him and how he worshipped her.… So now the gang never lets the broken-hearted man alone … They are afraid of him following McCullough's example.

Bill Farnsworth,

Journal American, 1936

“I was terribly upset, it was trouble on top of trouble. Naturally, if it happened now and I was older, I could cope with things. But I was inexperienced with women. I guess I acted irrationally. But men kill for love. It's with you all the time.” Lahr was, in fact, forty, and had lived with two women for half of those years. Off stage, life caught him by surprise; it refused to be dismissed with the robust gaiety that scored so well on stage. “You don't sleep. You wake up in the morning and the walls close in on you. You walk and walk … I suffered. I anticipated marrying Mildred, but she didn't believe me.”

A letter to A. L. Berman dated January 5, 1936, from the clinical director of the sanitarium, indicates that Lahr inquired about a divorce at least two months before Mildred's marriage. Lahr knew about the letter. It would have helped his cause with Mildred, but he hadn't shown it to her. Muddled by Mercedes's plight and a life that had suddenly become intolerably complicated, he remained silent.

The letter makes it clear that Lahr could never expect a recovery.

Her [Mercedes's] reaction, which I append will show you what Mrs. Lahr's thoughts are about her future …

“I'll see that the child [her son] is taken care of properly.
I intend to live with Bert Lahr
. That is the only thing to do. He'll have to stand for it. I am going back to show business. I can't be without money. You know that. If I can't get it, nobody else will. Maybe I'll go in a play. I have a couple of thousand dollars worth of paraphernalia. Sure I have. My boy isn't being brought up properly. I don't like his appearance.”

… For your information, I would like to explain to you that Mrs. Lahr has a defective memory for important events and dates in her life; she is unable to give even a brief account of her early childhood, career on the stage and her married life. Because of her inability to cooperate and to maintain a conversation, she could not possibly appear at a social or public gathering without causing comment and embarrassment. She is unfit to care for her son, and she must be forced to bathe herself properly and to take walks.

On April 7, Mildred returned from her honeymoon nervous and distraught over the rumors she had heard about Lahr's reaction to the
marriage. She was confused by the ambiguity of her emotions and the silence at her return. Lahr knew of her arrival, but he would not phone her; he had made a decision and a difficult adjustment. “She was married. It was all over. I tried to make the best of it.” But Mildred could not erase the previous four years. “I called him up. They said he was pretty sick, carrying a big torch for me. After all, we'd gone with each other for so many years. I was so confused. I didn't know whether I was right or wrong marrying Robby. I discovered I loved them both.” A woman who longed for the affection denied her in childhood, Mildred could not give up her sentimental memories of Lahr or bear the thought of his pain. His voice on the phone was still wounded and sadly humorous. She knew he was drinking, walking aimlessly until sunrise. She knew he was taking friends by Mildred's new apartment, passing back and forth across the street and pointing to the window.

At their first meeting, a pavane of silence and tears, Mildred had no answer for his simple question of “Why?” She needed his friendship as much as the love that filtered through his anger. “I said, ‘Why didn't you tell me?' She said, ‘I didn't want to hurt you.' She hurt me more. I told her, ‘If you'd been frank and come out with it, I wouldn't have felt so badly as this.' I was broken up. I couldn't work well.”

In the months that followed Lahr and Mildred spoke on the phone and met occasionally in frustrated urgency. Mildred raised the possibility of divorcing Robinson. Lahr was stunned and humiliated. He loved Mildred, but after this torment he wondered whether he could ever care again. “I kept thinking ‘Why should this happen to me at the height of my career?' I was full of selfpity.” He could see no possibility for divorce if there were no grounds for it. Willingly at first to try and get over Mildred's sudden marriage, Lahr was ushered back into the drama of indecision. If Mildred wanted a divorce, he loved her enough to pay the costs, but his own conservatism winced at the ugliness of the whole preceedings. Frantic and lonely, he followed any advice that promised the possibility of resolution. His concern led him to one of his cabaret acquaintances—a detective named R. C. Schindler—who knew that marriages were not always made in heaven or dissolved by death, and who set out to find some evidence that would compromise Robinson. “You don't think when you're in that state of mind. I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew I was hurt and wanted to resolve this thing once and for all.”

Whatever evil Lahr read into Robinson's character could not be validated in his private history. According to Robinson's subsequent
appellant's brief, a friend of Lahr's approached him about the possibility of a “collusive divorce.” Robinson flatly rejected the suggestion. Lahr cannot remember the incident; as with much of his life with Mercedes, he has blocked these painful months from his memory. Loving Mildred yet fearing involvement, committed to recovering his emotional equilibrium as well as his loved one, Lahr continued to call Mildred, lavishing husbandly attention on her. Mildred found New York suddenly bleak; it was not merely less ebullient than it had been with Lahr, it was actually hostile. His friends stopped calling or looked nervously away when she met them on the street. She felt alone, and worse, to a woman who longed for the safety of embrace, the object of deep antagonism. Her predicament was compounded by passion; Lahr's hurt was transformed into a frenzied desire to regain the only woman who had been able to order his life.

On July 10, 1936—four months after his marriage, Robinson made legal headlines as the attorney who won a $35,000 love-theft settlement for a cuckolded Florida socialite. Speaking after the trial, Robinson told the press:

This verdict indicates to me that society still places a premium on the sacredness of the marriage union and the sanctity of the home and that here in Florida the rights of residents of other states are respected and persons who violate those rights are punished.

It is against the laws of God and man for a third person to interfere with the marriage status and I hope this verdict will serve as a deterrent to other persons who fail to respect the holy state of matrimony
.

Nearly a month after the legal victory, Robinson enclosed this press clipping with a warning in a letter to Lahr. Either Lahr would desist or Robinson would bring suit against him.

Mildred's indecisiveness and the sudden threat of legal action petrified Lahr. His immediate reaction was to bolt from the scene. With the
Scandals
already closed (it ran only 110 performances), there was only a blank space of time in front of him, time to think of his loss and a hazardous future. Everything in New York held a memory of Mildred, and the press was making good copy out of his jilting. He decided to set sail for London with White and movie director Gregory Ratoff. If he was going into isolation, he wanted good company.

They sailed on the
Paris
, a nine-day voyage that Lahr hoped would clear his head and soothe his sullen disposition. White took charge of
his rehabilitation the minute the trio were on board. He demanded forty dollars from each of them, and immediately sent it down to the cook with a note of greeting. The steward got fifty dollars before the boat was out of New York harbor. Until the docking in Southampton, Lahr lived in luxury beyond even his most fantastic daydreams. For a man who was taking the sea air as heart balm, his memories are more vivid about his stomach. “I never ate so well in my life. A five-pound can of caviar on the table every day. You never saw such food. When we ordered desserts they would come in a swan—iced. We'd phone down ahead of time to order meals—
boeuf bourguignon
, steaks,
pâté de foie gras, coq au vin
—it was the best food I ever ate.”