Bring on the empty horses Read online

  The Star System was the logical answer to the first question asked by investors when it was hinted that they might put money into a film, or by movie-goers when it was suggested that they should buy tickets to see the finished product.

  'Who's in it?' they would cry,

  The Studios expended immense sums providing attractive answers to this question by signing established stars to long-term contracts and by discovering and developing young unknowns to take their place later. Once a Studio was convinced that performers had 'caught on' with the public, great care was taken to maintain their popularity by presenting them only in roles and vehicles in which their special talents and attractions would be displayed to the maximum advantage. On the other hand, when a Studio became disenchanted and convinced that a star's popularity was waning, a wide variety of manoeuvres were employed to bring their mutual contract to a speedy conclusion. The easiest way, of course, was to mobilise the forces of the actor's own congenital insecurity and give him an inferior part to play The actor would fluff up his feathers of hurt pride and — refuse to be seen in such a ‘crappy role':. The Studio then, piously referring to the wording of the long-term agreement between the actor and themselves, would suspend the actor's contract for the duration of the picture and instruct their publicity department to leak the news to the world that their hero was a man who refused to honour his obligations, Certainly if an actor refused to perform, he could not expect to be paid, but the monstrous thing was, that even if the Studio handed an actor a bad part truly believing it to be a good one, and he turned it down, he was not only suspended for the duration of the filming of the picture (probably at least four months), he was also suspended for an additional fifty per cent of that time as a punishment… and the entire period of six months was added on to the end of the contract, Some of us gave twelve or fourteen sulphurous years of our short actor's lives — working off a seven-year contract which had originally been conceived in mutual admiration and respect.

  After one important actress had the guts to take her case against Warner Brothers all the way to the Supreme Court, a ruling was handed down that no contract with an employee could be extended without the employee's consent, and every contract actor in Hollywood blessed Olivia de Havilland… but after her courageous stand, she was seldom offered a role in a Hollywood picture. There were, of course, iniquities on both sides — the Moguls were not the only villains and many stars behaved abominably to those who had discovered them and given them the keys to the local kingdom, but the classic use of a contract as a one-sided weapon has to be this:

  An actor made a great hit in a Broadway play and celebrated the fact by having a not-too-well-camouflaged 'affair' with the wife of a Hollywood producer. One day a representative of the producer's Studio appeared in the actor's dressing-room at the Shubert Theatre and offered him a very lucrative seven-year Hollywood contract. The actor, overjoyed, packed up, kissed goodbye to New York audiences and prepared to become the darling of the world. On arrival in Hollywood he was accorded the 'A' treatment, press interviews, publicity layouts, etcetera: then the boom dropped. One day he was called to the make-up department at 6.30 a.m. to be prepared for 'Photographic Tests' at 8 a.m. In a high state of excitement he arose at 5 a.m. and drove to the Studio. For seven years, thereafter, he was called six days a week to the Studio, if he did not show up his contract was prolonged, if he did — he was paid handsomely, but he never appeared in front of a camera, and when last heard of, though a moderately successful and devoutly alcoholic real estate salesman in Canoga Park, his actor's heart had been broken.

  Twenty-five years before Hollywood turned its first camera, the writer G. K. Chesterton wrote . 'Journalism largely consists of saying, "Lord Jones Dead!" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.' When a film was completed, the next trick was to sell it to the public, and Studios allocated millions of dollars to their publicity departments to this end.

  In the earliest days circus-type ballyhoo had been employed, and the first recorded Press Agent, Harry Reichenbach, was in fact lured away to the 'Moving Pictures' from Barnum and Bailey's Circus, The first film he was hired to publicise was — The Return of Tarzan. His method was effective. He booked into a smart New York hotel just across from the theatre where the picture was opening, and a wooden crate was delivered to his room. He then called room service and, ordered fifteen pounds of raw meat to be served for his luncheon. The waiter on arrival let out a piercing yell and dropped the meat… a large lion, wearing a napkin, was sitting at the table. The waiter sued Reichenbach and the headlines blossomed.

  Francis X Bushman was nervous about the possible non-renewal of his contract so he hired Reichenbach to impress his Studio by underlining his popularity.

  Reichenbach made Bushman walk with him from the Grand Central Station all across New York to the Studio offices. By the time he arrived the easily identifiable figure of Bushman was being followed by enthusiastic thousands, traffic was jammed and the Studio Heads witnessed a most impressive chaos from their windows. What they had not noticed was Reichenbach walking immediately behind Bushman and dribbling several hundred dollars' worth of nickels and dimes through a hole in his overcoat pocket.

  As movies became more sophisticated the publicity departments' efforts did not always keep pace, and Gloria Swanson at Paramount was photographed being transported from her dressing-room to the sound stage in a sedan chair. Finally, however, highly intelligent men took charge, among them Howard Dietz and Howard Strickling at M-G-M, Charlie Einfeld at Warners, Harry Brand at Twentieth Century Fox, Russell Birdwell with David Selznick and Jock Lawrence with Samuel Goldwyn.

  Publicity departments went through their most difficult period when the Studio Heads decided that their stars should represent the sum total of all the virtues they should not drink, swear, nor, above all, copulate, and they must be presented to the public as the All-American Boy or the Girl Next Door. Self-inflicted dents in the façades of these paragons had, therefore, to be papered over without delay, so close contacts were forged with the police departments of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley, and over the years, only a thin trickle of the normal output of nightclub brawls, drunk drivings, scandals, accidents, assaults, attempted suicides and rapes were reported in the Press.

  The policy of the Studios was to sell their pictures on the names of their stars, they had a vested interest in their performers and it was to their advantage to build them up. If they did so successfully their investment was returned with interest, but actors' contracts were long and it was the publicity departments' pains-taking duty to go on piling up grains of publicity sand until they became mountains, so Sat in the end, while the public might say, 'Joe Doakes beats his wife', or, 'he drinks his bath water', it did not ask — 'Who is Joe Doakes?'

  For each production a 'unit publicist' was ordered to remain 'on the set' from the first day of shooting in case anything newsworthy took place: in addition, in the main office, were specialists for the trade papers, general news specialists, magazine specialists, radio specialists, and 'leg men' whose only job was to service the top columnists throughout the country and all the while the still photographers dutifully pumped out reams of cheesecake, home layouts and fashion layouts.

  Publicity campaigns for personalities and individual pictures were not always mounted with the meticulous planning of 'D' Day, and occasionally they misfired. Mae West at the height of her popularity started a picture at Paramount titled, It Ain't No Sin. One hundred and fifty parrots were bought and placed in intensive training to learn to imitate her sexy drawl and to repeat endlessly 'It Ain't No Sin'… the objective being to park the unfortunate birds in theatre lobbies and public places to coincide with the openings of the picture.

  All went well and at last the proud trainers reported that their troops were ready for action, but on the same day the Hays Office (charged with keeping Hollywood's public image clean) announced that the title of the picture must be changed, because It A
in't No Sin was too 'suggestive'. The parrots were then given a crash course in saying — I'm No Angel. As a result the theatre lobbies and public places reverberated with frustrated whistles and rude noises and the dejected birds were sent home in disgrace.

  Warners, with misguided zeal, tried to show their top Tough Guy', Edward G. Robinson, out of character, and persuaded the iron man to be photographed in a bubble bath, but they quickly had to mount a second campaign to nullify the first because whispers became widespread that Eddie Robinson was a ‘poof’.

  Walt Disney's publicity department had their problems too. For the opening of Pinocchio in New York it was decided to hire eleven midgets, dress them in Pinocchio costumes and have them gambol about on top of the theatre marquee on opening day.

  Food and light refreshments in the shape of a couple of quarts of liquor was passed up to the marquee top at lunch time, and by three o'clock in the afternoon a happy crowd in Times Square was treated to the spectacle of eleven stark naked midgets belching loudly and enjoying a crap game on the marquee. Police with ladders removed the players in pillow cases.

  Starting with Clara Bow as the 'It Girl', individual girls were built up with catchy titles. Jean Harlow became 'The Platinum Blonde' and Betty Grable the Pin-Up Girl'. Finally, lovely red-headed Ann Sheridan at a highly publicised dinner party paid for by the Warner Brothers' publicity department was voted by 'The Ten Most Eligible Bachelors in Hollywood' as the 'Oomph Girl'. ('The Most Eligible Bachelors', it is perhaps worth noting, were purely a Warner Brothers' selection and included Edmund Goulding, Errol Flynn, myself and seven others who just 'happened' to be making pictures at, of all places, Warner Brothers — a good 'double play'.)

  As press and public became less gullible and more cynical, the publicity gimmicks gave way to Publicity Junkets, although a few diehards still tried 'Stunts'. Jayne Mansfield got a certain amount of mileage out of wearing her pink nightie in her pink heart-shaped bed inside her pink house with her pink Cadillac standing outside, but nobody believed a word of her being shipwrecked on the pink sand of a tropical island in the Caribbean despite the fact that when she showed up she was covered in pink sandfly bites.

  The junkets became the best — and most expensive — way to get massive publicity for a picture. Reporters, feature writers and columnists from all over the world were transported to the scene of 'Premieres'… (Atlanta for Gone With The Wind) where they were fed, housed, entertained and afforded a chance to meet the stars, and the stories poured out.

  Warners splurged on a five-day junket to publicise The Santa Fe Trail and reporters eagerly accepted invitations to congregate in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wary of Errol Flynn's capacity as a roisterer, the Studio assigned three men working 24 hours a day in shifts to keep him sober and in his own bed, but Errol outdrank and outmanoeuvred the three men, and the (junket lasted twice as long as planned.

  One junket to Mexico City to publicise Viva Villa ended with strained relations between the two countries when one of the American stars of the film, high up in his hotel room, became tired of the noisy adulation of the vast crowd below and decided to dampen down their ardour by relieving himself upon them from the balcony.

  A quite extraordinary rapport existed between many stars and the publicity chiefs of their studios — the sort of understanding that soldiers develop for one another when experiences have been shared — and many stars who had been nursed through marriages, divorces, disasters, scandals, tremendous triumphs and dreadful deflations found themselves quite disproportionately dependent upon the counsels of these men. A risky situation, when one considered the number of cupboards that were clanking with skeletons, and, with Puritanism rampant across the country, how fatal to careers it could have been if there had been a misuse of the keys, but there was a flamboyant honour among the publicity men and I never heard of one of them breaking his vows of silence.

  'Hollywood' was a village and the studios were the 'families': Everyone knew everyone else's business, weaknesses, kinky leanings and good points. We were all in the same boat —involved in the early years of a terribly exciting experiment: it was an international community and there was the maximum of camaraderie and the minimum of bitchiness. At all Studios, employees from the most glamorous stars to the lowliest riveters on the heavy construction gangs felt that they were members of a team, gloried in the success of their 'hit' pictures and occasionally indulged in college humour at the expense of their rivals… 'In case of an AIR RAID' — they chalked up on the main entrance at Paramount, 'Go directly to R.K.O. they haven't had a hit in years.'

  'Hollywood' was hardly a nursery for intellectuals, it was a hot-bed of false values, it harboured an unattractive percentage of small-time crooks and con artists and the chances of being successful there were minimal but it was fascinating and IF YOU WERE LUCKY — it was fun: and anyway — it was better than working.

  'Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do… Play consists of whatever a body is NOT obliged to do.'

  MARK TWAIN

  (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)

  All the major studios kept stables of famous stars. The following is a partial list of those under contract to just one of them from 1939 to 1940.

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

  Greta Garbo John Barrymore

  Clark Gable Lana Turner

  Joan Crawford Ava Gardner

  Norma Shearer Mickey Rooney

  Robert Montgomery George Murphy

  William Powell Sophie Tucker

  Charles Laughton Hedy Lamarr

  Myrna Loy Melvyn Douglas

  Louise Rainer Van Johnson

  W. C. Fields Gene Kelly

  Lewis Stone Ingrid Bergman

  Wallace Beery Spencer Tracy

  Marie Dressler Lionel Barrymore

  Franchot Tone James Stewart

  Robert Young Jeannette MacDonald

  Robert Taylor Nelson Eddy

  Judy Garland Johnny Weismuller

  Greer Garson Esther Williams

  Walter Pidgeon The Marx Brothers

  Elizabeth Taylor June Allyson

  Louis Calhern Eleanor Powell

  Frank Morgan Debbie Reynolds

  Ethel Barrymore

  HEDDA AND LOUELLA

  HOLLYWOOD invented a macabre party game called 'Airplane'. This concerned a sizable transport which owing to some mechanical defect was destined to take off and never again to land, its crew and passengers doomed to fly round and round for ever

  The game consisted of providing tickets for those the players felt they could well do without. Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, unassailably the two most powerful gossip columnists in the world, had no difficulty whatever in finding space, and, a refinement of torture, were usually allotted seats next to each other.

  Compared to Lucrezia Borgia, Lady Macbeth and others, Louella and Hedda played only among the reserves, but with their seventy-five million readers all over the world they wielded, and frequently misused, enormous power. Only Hollywood could have spawned such a couple and only Hollywood, headline hunting, self-inflating, riddled with fear and insecurity, could have allowed itself to be dominated by them for so long.

  The reader must try to visualise that at every Hollywood breakfast table or office desk, the day started with an avid perusal of the columns of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. The fact that many had paid their press agents large sums of money to make up lies and exaggerations and then 'plant' these items with Louella and Hedda, detracted nothing from the pleasure they got from seeing this nonsense in the morning papers… they even believed it when they saw it.

  A large part of their columns was pure fabrication as I can witness. At one point Lord Beaverbrook asked me to cable a Hollywood page twice a month to the Sunday Express. After filing a few efforts I realised that I could not wear two hats — I could not keep my friends and at the same time disclose their innermost workings to several million readers, so I asked for and was given my release from the arrangement. However, before I
could deliver the first article, I had perforce to become an accredited card-carrying member of the foreign press in Los Angeles.

  At that time five hundred journalists were encamped around Hollywood covering the goings-on in the movie capital. My name was added to the mailing list and every day, thereafter, bundles of gibberish arrived at my home, churned out by the public relations officers of studios including, to my great delight, pages of complete fantasy about myself which had been dispatched by the Samuel Goldwyn Studios to which I was under contract.

  It took guts and ability for Hedda and Louella to rise to the top of this inkstained pile of professional reporters, and it took tremendous stamina and craftiness on their part to remain there for a quarter of a century.

  Louella, short, dumpy and dowdy, with large brown eyes and a carefully cultivated vagueness of smile and manner, was a Catholic, married three times, first to a real estate man, secondly to a river boat captain and thirdly to a doctor who specialised in venereal diseases. From the earliest days, she had been a newspaper woman and during her Hollywood reign was one of the star reporters of the W. R. Hearst publishing empire. Her flagship was the Los Angeles Examiner.

  Hedda, who came on the scene later, was tall, thin and elegant with large blue eyes and a brisk staccato way of demanding replies rather than asking questions. Of Quaker stock, she had been married only once to a four-times divorced stage actor twenty-seven years her senior whom she herself had divorced when she caught him cheating on her at the age of sixty-three. An ex-chorus girl, she graduated to small parts on Broadway and in films and was a washed-up, middle-aged Hollywood character actress when she took to journalism as a last resort. Her flagship was the other local morning paper, the Los Angeles Times:

  They were an unlikely couple but they had one thing in common — they loathed each other.

  Hollywood folklore insisted that Louella held her job with W. R. Hearst because she knew literally where the body was buried. In 1924, Hearst had organised a trip aboard his yacht, Oneida. Among others on board were Louella and the producer, Thomas Ince. Far out in the Pacific, so the story went, Hearst entered the cabin of his mistress, Marion Davies, and found her thrashing around naked beneath a similarly unclothed Ince. An altercation followed during which Hearst shot Ince. He, then, carried the body on deck and dumped it over the side. Louella, who was dozing unseen in a deck-chair, was supposed to have heard the splash and reached the rail just in time to see the dead producer bobbing past, and, to cap the legend, Hearst was supposed to have told Louella to keep her mouth shut in exchange for which she was promised a job for life.