The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 21

"Solomonic. There is now pressure on me to commit the United States to a war on Bolshevism ..."

"Russia?"

"In particular, but international socialism in general. I'm speaking tonight in New York. I'm going to say that according to my reading of the Virginia Bill of Rights, our old testament, any people is ent.i.tled to any kind of government it d.a.m.n pleases, whether we like it or not. After all, I don't think the current King George really approves of us. Was the bill returning the railroads to their owners pa.s.sed?"

"No. Mr. La Follette was too busy giving us his view of a future and better world. Or so I was told. I slept on a cot." Burden looked down at the President, who was half a head shorter than he. "When will you be back from Paris?"

"June. No," Wilson antic.i.p.ated the question, "I won't call a special session before I get back even if none of us gets paid his salary."

"It will be hard."

Wilson winced; hand to his jaw. "My tooth. Always when you're about to take a trip, a tooth goes wrong. Let's hope the naval dentists ..." Wilson stopped. The Vice President, Lodge and Hitchc.o.c.k entered the room, each the picture of weary self-importance.

"Mr. President, the Sixty-fifth Congress adjourned at eleven thirty-five," said Marshall, adding roguishly, "not sine die but sine Deo."

"That depends, sir, upon which G.o.d it is that you serve." Lodge was amiably sanctimonious; he also never took his eyes off the President, his quarry.

But Wilson ignored Lodge. He picked up his pen, expectantly. "Is there any legislation awaiting the approval of the executive?" he asked formally.

Lodge said that there was none. Marshall said, "There is the prohibition amendment, Mr. President. But it's not ready. There's a stipulation that if the states don't ratify it in seven years, the d.a.m.ned thing is dead. We'll deliver it to your ship, where you can drink a toast to the prohibition of all alcohol in the United States."

"I will drink the toast only outside our territorial limits." Then Wilson motioned for a youthful watchful man to come forward. He presented him to Burden. "I think you should get to know my new attorney general, Mr. Palmer, and prepare him for his confirmation into this church sine Deo."

Burden shook hands with Palmer. "I'll escort you through the Senate maze."

Slowly Wilson crossed to the door. Then he turned. "Gentlemen," he said, "we shall see each other in December. I bid you good day." Lodge stared at Wilson's back as it receded down the corridor. Great mischief was brewing for Wilson. What, Burden wondered, if anything, for the state?

2.

AT THIRTY-FIVE CISSY PATTERSON, the sometime-still? no one quite knew-Countess Gizycki was as handsome and as original as she had been at nineteen when her parents had bought her a Polish t.i.tle and sent her forth from their palace in Dupont Circle to three wretched years of married life. Today Cissy's hair was redder than it had been when she was a girl, while maturity had given her a distinctly voluptuous look, somewhat undone by wit. Caroline regarded her, if not quite as a daughter, as a younger sister because, "Oh, how I envy you everything!"

Cissy looked about Caroline's office in the Tribune building with a view of F Street's streetcars, traffic jams, movie houses. Currently, an Emma Traxler production was playing to capacity audiences at the Capitol while Emma Traxler herself was on view at the nearby Mercury in "a very special vehicle," as Thomas Ince had called what looked to be suspiciously like a hea.r.s.e for whatever ambition she might have had as a photo-play star. She had played a society adulteress at the turn of the century, which she herself had been in life. But in the photo-play, unlike life, she had fallen out of society, and threw herself from a window of the Waldorf-Astoria. The plot had been stolen from Mrs. Wharton, who had complained to Blaise, who had told Emma, who had warned Thomas Ince, who had said, "Let her sue." Emma Traxler's very mature beauty had been acknowledged by all, but the story was not good and Emma herself-Caroline, that is-was somewhat shaken that she had not noticed the story's shortcomings earlier. But then Tim had been in California during the shooting in New York.

"You must buy yourself a paper. You have the right ink in your blood." Caroline was brisk. "Your grandfather, father, brother, cousin all put out newspapers. So why don't you? There's nothing to it."

"I know there isn't, but what is there to buy? Hearst's got the Herald in the morning and the Times in the evening. You and Blaise have the Tribune, and don't want to sell, do you?"

"No."

"I wonder," said Cissy, "what happens to the Post if Ned finally drinks himself to death?"

"Evalyn publishes. Why not start something new?" Caroline held up the copy of the New York Daily News that Cissy had brought her. Cissy's older brother, Joseph, had started it in June, with some help from his cousin Robert McCormick, now running the family newspaper in Chicago. The News was half the size of an ordinary newspaper: tabloid-size, it was called, and Hearst had laughed at the notion. "No one wants a paper that you can't get a lot of pictures onto a page." But for once the Chiefs cunning in journalistic matters had deserted him. Joe Patterson's tabloid was an instant success, and just as Caroline's brother had been made jealous by Caroline's not-so-instant success with the Tribune, now Cissy was jealous of Joe's astonishing coup, the first in the third generation. Until now, the family giant had been their grandfather Joseph Medill, whose Chicago Tribune had gone to his son-in-law, her father, and now to his grandson, her cousin, Robert R. McCormick. "The boys have got Chicago and New York. Well, why can't I have Washington?"

"Do you have the money to start a tabloid here?"

"In compet.i.tion with you and Hearst? No. That Polish son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h is costing me a fortune."

"Kill him."

"Try and find him." Cissy glared at the painting of Caroline and Blaise and Mr. Trimble, their editor. "At least I got Felicia away from him." The battle between father and mother had rivetted the attention of the popular press for years. Mother had finally won but the cost had been high. Cissy now lived in lonely state in her father's Dupont Circle home; and dreamed of newspapers.

The secretary announced the approach of Blaise. Caroline nodded; he could come in. From the beginning, they had agreed that neither would ever surprise the other in his or her office.

Cissy was delighted to see Blaise. Cissy's reputation had been so damaged by her marital trials that she had then set out, perversely, to damage it all the more in the eyes of Washington's Aborigines. She was moderately promiscuous and she drank "like a man," as the saying went, and she sometimes fell, again like a man, upon others of her s.e.x. Although she was too grand a Washington fixture ever to be shunned, the mention of her name caused a mournful Greek chorus of gossip, mostly invented, and all of it as pleasurable for Caroline to listen to as it was a matter of indifference to the restless, energetic Cissy. "I think I shall write a novel. I'll call it Gla.s.s Houses."

"Who will you throw stones at?"

"Alice Longworth. Who else? And my Polish beast. I begged the Reverend Woodrow to part.i.tion Poland until nothing was left."

"I suppose he laughed at your delicious wit." Blaise enjoyed Cissy, who had, thought Caroline, rather a soft feeling for Blaise.

"He was unimpressed. You've seen Joe's paper?" Cissy held up the Daily News.

Blaise nodded. "I've just won a bet with Hearst. On the circulation. He said the public would never buy a tabloid."

"They're certainly buying this one. I do nothing but envy others. This is a sign of bad character, I know." Cissy looked pleased with herself. "Captain Patterson, he calls himself." She added, with some malice: "It's like the Civil War, isn't it? And my cousin Bob wants to be called Colonel McCormick."

"Well, I'm just Mister Sanford."

"Monsieur is more like it." Cissy was on her feet. "There's a newspaper in Baltimore-"

"Don't," said Caroline. "Blaise bought it and sold it years ago."

"There is a curse on that paper," Blaise agreed. "No one reads it, and it always burns down."

"How lucky I am to have such experienced friends. Tell Millicent I'll ring her," she added, and left.

"Millicent?" Blaise turned to Caroline.

"Smith. Inverness. She's coming back to Washington to live. She's staying with me till she finds a place." Caroline stared down the street at the theater marquee, where she could just make out the "xler" of her other name. "Tim is buying a house in Los Angeles."

"To be close to the Mexican border?"

"I don't think the Justice Department would dare arrest him."

"I would," said Blaise, staring thoughtfully at the Daily News, which he held in one hand and the Tribune in the other.

"I suppose," said Caroline, "it will get worse. George Creel thinks it will. He says Palmer is running for president ..."

"Why not? Everyone else is." Of the two of them, Blaise was the most susceptible to the anti-Red propaganda that was now sweeping the country, Hun now exchanged for Bolshevik as the new Satan.

That spring Tim had been caught in the middle when his strikebreakers movie was released and, to Caroline's horror, it not only favored the strikers, organized labor and the eight-hour week but made fun of the Bolshevik menace. The movie had been immediately withdrawn while Tim had been indicted under the Espionage Act, a singularly capacious bit of legislation which could be used to suppress almost anyone that the zealous Attorney General chose to punish. Caroline had used influence. Since the courts were busy, the case might be allowed to become moot if the Attorney General proved less than zealous. It was Caroline's impression that Palmer did not want to offend the Tribune; on the other hand, the Tribune dared not offend Palmer, whose house in R Street had been dynamited two months earlier, making him, almost, a martyr to capitalism while his neighbors, the Franklin Roosevelts, enjoyed miles of newsprint. The gallant Franklin had rung for the police while Eleanor, soon joined by her delighted cousin Alice, gave solace to the Palmer family, who had been sleeping in the back. No one knew who had done the deed but Communists were suspected. The actual perpetrator had blown himself up, leaving behind, most mysteriously, two left legs. The Tribune had revelled in the anatomical details, and a great nation shuddered at the thought of all its public men being, one by one, blown up in the night. Radicals were everywhere arrested while the Labor Department was now taking advantage of the war-time Sedition Act, which gave the secretary of labor the power to deport those foreign-born citizens whose looks and speech he found disturbing.

"Why did Tim do it?" Tactfully, Blaise had not asked her before; even so, she had still not thought of an answer.

"Well, he is ... radical, I suppose."

"Boston? Irish? Catholic?"

"They can turn. He turned. I think it started when they sent that producer to jail for doing an anti-war film. But I don't know. I've never really talked about it."

"Do you think he's a Red?"

"I doubt it. He's too independent to be anything. He wants," Caroline took the plunge, "me to move to California." She looked at Blaise, who seemed genuinely startled ... pleased?

"You won't."

"I might. I think I may have had enough of this," she indicated, vaguely, the portrait of the three publishers of the Tribune, "for a while. I like the movies ..."

"And the climate. People always say that."

"Actually I don't like the climate. It's rather moldy. But the movies are still so ... fluid, and you can get a grip on them still."

"You'd better work fast. The Jews have taken it all over."

"That's the challenge. Anyway, Hearst is there, or will be soon, he says, once 1920's out of the way ..."

"And he moves to the White House ..."

"San Simeon is more like it. He's richer than ever now Phoebe's dead ... a lot madder, too."

Mr. Trimble was announced. Caroline could not believe that this frail old man who could not stand up straight had ever been the handsome red-haired young man of 1900. Was she as changed for him?

"The meeting's over," said Trimble, settling slowly into his customary chair beside Caroline's desk. The electric fan was directly upon him, stirring the heavy air. "I've had the first call, from a senator who was there, who will be nameless." Trimble still delighted in privileged information, not to mention those stories that the Tribune had been able to run before anyone else. "The President lost control, it would seem. The whole Foreign Relations Committee was on hand-Lodge, Knox, Borah." Which, Caroline wondered, had rung Trimble?-who liked Lodge more than either Sanford did.

"How-lost control?" Blaise sat on top of Caroline's desk, which he knew annoyed her.

"They gave him a hard time on Shantung. Why had he made a deal with the j.a.panese? which he then said he himself wasn't very pleased with either, which sounded weak. Then Borah started cross-examining him about all the secret treaties the Allies had made, and Wilson couldn't remember when he had first known about them and then when Borah asked him if he had known about them when he issued the Fourteen Points, he said no, which was madness-or a breakdown-since the Bolsheviks had already published them and everyone knew. The senators were kind of amazed."

"That is what they came there to be," said Caroline, suddenly sympathetic to Wilson.

"How did it end?" asked Blaise.

"They all had lunch after three and a half hours of grilling." Trimble removed a sheet of paper from his pocket. "He was right embarra.s.sed when he was told that Lansing had said that the j.a.panese would've joined the League even without the Shantung agreement."

"You've written the editorial?" Trimble nodded. Caroline took the paper from his hand. She read quickly and gave it to Blaise, who began to rewrite as he read.

Trimble sighed. "I think the League pointless-for us, anyway."

Caroline experienced a small surge of anger. "Because you Americans want to have the freedom to annex the Mexican oil fields ..."

"It's we Americans, cherie." Blaise was mild. "We also want Siberia, but if we can't get it we don't want the j.a.panese to have it, so we'll all join the League and debate."

"Might be too late. We're both in Siberia," said Trimble, "and they've got more troops than we have. So when Russia falls apart ..."

"Here." Blaise gave the page to Caroline, who read and agreed: the League was the hope of the world. Without the League, there would be another war with Germany within thirty years because of the Carthaginian peace being imposed by the Allies, who not only had broken the terms of the Wilsonian armistice but now meant to bankrupt Germany with reparations. Caroline and Blaise were always in agreement about savage old Europe's propensity to play king-of-the-castle games. But where Europe had a murderous tendency to sink into barbarism, the United States had not yet achieved a civilization from which to fall. Caroline prayed that the prim schoolteacher would be able to hold in line what was still, essentially, a peasant nation, ignorant, superst.i.tious and inordinately proud of its easy pre-eminence.

Trimble took the revised editorial, and limped from the room. "I think they need a different system of government here," said Blaise, getting off the desk.

"So does Wilson. He still wants a parliamentary form of government-after he's gone, of course. What news from Saint-Cloud?"

"The hospital's moved out. It'll be ready for us by spring."

"I'll spend Easter there. You, too?"

"I probably will." Blaise smiled. "But you won't."

"Why not?"

"You'll be in Hollywood, with your man."

"Imbecile."

MILLICENT SMITH, COUNTESS INVERNESS, looked like a galleon with pale pink and yellow crepe-de-chine sails, filled now with hot August air. Two French windows opened onto the small garden at the back of Caroline's Georgetown house. Here every known form of ivy rioted, and no flower ever grew because of the dense shade of a huge magnolia tree. Amidst the ivy, armies of rats were dedicated, like Europeans, to war. "Caroline! I have messages for you. Somewhere. Heloise went to the doctor. Are we dining in? I've forgotten."

"Yes. Just us." Caroline poured herself a gla.s.s of wine. Millicent drank neat gin in great quant.i.ties and showed no ill effect. "Did you find a house?"

Millicent described what she had seen, and complained of prices as did everyone else, including most of the country's workers, who were on strike, inspired, according to the Attorney General, by Moscow. Millicent had had lunch with Alice Longworth, her White House rival. "She's in a very bad mood." Millicent's own mood lightened considerably at the thought. "Nick is never home. She complained of his drinking ..."

"Then she's lucky he's out of the house." Caroline wondered if she would stay in Hollywood.

"But who is he with when he's not home? That's the question. Naturally, I pretended not to know the rumors, and naturally she said nothing about them. She's so political, isn't she?"

"We all are. This is Washington."

"Now. But not in my day. When we were in the White House, it was considered bad form to talk about politics in mixed company. Like money, you know. But I suppose he changed all that."

"Colonel Roosevelt?"

Millicent nodded. "Bully," she said; and laughed. "Douglas Fairbanks does that all the time. I think he thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt. He's awfully attractive, you know."

"All the women in the world agree on that." Caroline had found it difficult to take seriously any of the great lovers of the screen. Aside from their doll-like proportions, she could never relate in any personal way to a face that everyone knew and that the owner himself could never forget that they knew in the unlikely event that he had ever tried. Although political faces were often as familiar as those of actors, the owners were, essentially, still-lifes, unlike the actor, whose face in life and in motion was always more interesting than a photograph forever fixed on the front page of a newspaper.

"I never go to photo-plays," said Millicent, "I simply like the rawness of the life out there in the West. The excess. The formality. So like London in the season."

Caroline could never, easily, follow Millicent's train of thought and so did not try. "Anyway, Mr. Fairbanks is involved with Miss Pickford."

"He gave me a rose." Millicent smiled secretly into her gin.

"That," said Caroline, with supreme fairness, "is something."

"You must act with him." Millicent knew Caroline's secret. In fact, by now most of her friends did. But thanks to her position as a publisher, the press had amiably left her alone: dog don't eat dog, in Mr. Trimble's phrase.

"I'm too old for him," said Caroline precisely. "While he is too old to be my son."