The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 27

"Well, I guess I did wrong by accepting Alice Longworth's invitation to go over to their house for a late-night supper."

Jess knew that Mrs. Longworth's refusal to invite Mrs. Harding to her house on any non-poker occasion deeply rankled. The d.u.c.h.ess's first reaction was shock. "Why now?" she asked.

Harding pretended to misunderstand. "Because we've all missed our supper. And since she's the colonel of our battalion, she wants to feed her troops."

"Well, if it makes her happy," was the d.u.c.h.ess's dour comment. As they started across the rotunda, Senator Lodge, at the head of what looked to be a parade of admirers, stopped to shake Harding's hand. "That was a superb speech, Senator."

"I hope it didn't do any harm." W.G. was his usual genial modest self.

"No. Only good."

Jess was breathing hard now: too much history.

"I have never been through anything like this before," said Lodge; then frowned. "No. The fight to annex the Philippines was almost as bad." He turned to Senator Wadsworth. "I remember right after that vote I met your father-in-law, John Hay, on this very spot, and how pleased he was, we all were." Lodge then swept past them.

The d.u.c.h.ess, possibly eager to annoy Mrs. Longworth, insisted that Jess come, too.

By the time the Hardings arrived at M Street, the small house was crowded. There were the irreconcilables: Senators Borah, Reed, Brandegee, Moses; and the reservationists, Freylinghuysen and the Wadsworths; and the reservationist Democrat, the blind Senator Gore, and his wife.

"Well, that speech was a humdinger!" Folksily, Alice greeted W.G. "You must be very, very proud, Mrs. Harding."

"Oh, I've heard Warren do better."

"But never in a better cause." Jess stared with wonder at all the stuffed animal heads on the walls-game shot by Theodore Roosevelt. Alice, who never remembered Jess nor tried to, saw him staring up at the huge head of a mightily antlered moose. "I'm putting Wilson's head right next to Father's bull moose."

Nick Longworth had not been at the Senate. He had dined at home with his French brother-in-law. Now he greeted the guests with the announcement "The cook's gone home."

"We've got a great many eggs," said Alice.

"I'll cook them." The d.u.c.h.ess marched off to the kitchen, leaving the Colonel of Death's Battalion to savor her victory in the drawing room, her chosen battlefield, among her chosen troops.

Brandegee toasted Alice, who said, "We'll do this again in March, when the final vote comes due-like a foreclosure or whatever they call it, on a mortgage, on Mr. Wilson."

Although Jess was not quite sure why the whole process had to be repeated, it was now clear that the President had lost his League and W.G. had got the country's attention in a big way. He couldn't wait for the next day's newspapers. Meanwhile, W.G. sat between Nick and Borah on a sofa, and seemed unusually content.

In August, the all-powerful Penrose had asked Harding if he'd like to be president, and W.G. had said, characteristically, that as he couldn't run for two offices at once, he preferred to keep the one he had: he'd file for the Senate. This had only excited the fat man all the more. Ohio was the key to the election, and Harding was Ohio's favorite son. After Wilson's imperial approach to war and peace, the country needed a rest, a return to the n.o.ble good quiet McKinley sort of man. Later that month, during a hot night on the verandah of the house in Marion, W.G. had discussed the matter with Daugherty and Jess. After the d.u.c.h.ess had taken her ailing kidney to bed, W.G. had given all the reasons why he could not be nominated, starting with everyone's favorite, General Leonard Wood. Daugherty had dismissed the great paladin with the single word "Epaulets."

"What does that mean?" asked Jess.

W.G. answered him. "Harry figures that no man who was a general in the war is going to get the vote of any man who wasn't a general." W.G. chuckled. "Could be. But Wood's got all the rich Easterners behind him, and they can usually go out and buy you the job."

"Not this time." Daugherty was positive. "He's got no following. n.o.body likes him. Everybody likes you."

"Well, a lot of people here in Marion and over in Washington Court House think the world of me, but I have a feeling there are a lot of places out in Nevada where n.o.body gives a d.a.m.n." W.G. chewed tobacco comfortably; then spit over the railing in a perfect arc.

Jess envied him this necessary skill in dealing with the plain folks. For years, Jess had tried to chew tobacco but his natural tendency to salivate too much had ruined more than one shirt, including several not his own.

"Then there's Governor Lowden." Harding dried his lips with the back of his hand. "He's got Illinois, and he's rich."

"Too rich. His wife's a Pullman. Not even the Republican Party is going to vote for anybody with railroad money."

"There was Lincoln," observed W.G. mildly.

"He was just a hired hand, a railroad lawyer. Lowden married the boss's daughter. So that leaves you."

"You know, Harry, even in my daydreams, I've never seen myself as another Lincoln." W.G. was droll.

Daugherty laughed. "I'll tell you a secret. n.o.body else has either. But I'll tell you another secret. This country doesn't want another Lincoln, ever again. Why, he killed half a million men, and started up all this darky problem. No, sir, we praise Lincoln but we won't elect anybody like that ever again. Same goes for Wilson. Folks want a quiet time now, to make some money."

There was a long silence broken only by the sound of W.G.'s rocking chair. Then an owl hooted in a nearby tree, and Jess shuddered; owls terrified him with their fixed staring eyes and sharp murderous beaks that could slit your throat.

"I suppose," said Harding at last, "we should start moving around and getting the idea talked about. Outside Ohio, there's no way I'm going to be anybody's first choice, but if I'm everybody's second choice, I'll make it." Jess was awed by W.G.'s simple clarity. Even Daugherty, who preferred to do the talking, was struck. He turned in his chair to face Harding, who was now stretching his shirt-sleeved arms. "But the only problem is, what do you do when you're there, and there's no war?"

"Well, you throw out the first baseball of the season."

"That's seemly," Harding nodded, "and enjoyable. But what else in a quiet time?"

"Pray that it is a quiet time. Life's full of surprises. Look at Wilson. He never expected to be a war president or, maybe, a president of the world. So now the man's a wreck. But every so often history just goes to sleep. Let's hope we hit one of those long snoozes."

"And let the folks make money." Jess added his two bits.

"If I didn't know everybody in public life, I'd say I wasn't big enough for the job, wasn't worthy." Harding stood up. "But I do know everybody, so-why not?"

"Good night, Mr. President," said Daugherty, as Harding opened the screen-door to the house. Harding looked back and smiled; then he shook his handsome head and let the screen-door slam shut behind him.

Now Warren Gamaliel Harding listened respectfully to Senator Borah talk about Senator Borah while Senator Gore, a young-looking man with white hair, ate scrambled eggs with a fork that he held in his right hand while his left forefinger made sure that the eggs were securely on the fork. But how, Jess wondered, fascinated, could he tell so accurately just where his mouth was if he couldn't see the fork? Of all the Democratic senators, Wilson hated Gore the most. While of the President, Gore had said, "He finds it disturbing if you look above the third b.u.t.ton on his waistcoat."

W.G. regarded the dark-eyed Mrs. Gore as the most attractive of the senatorial wives, but then she was supposed to be part-Indian. Jess amused himself, thinking of the two together, one part-Indian and the other part-Negro. It was a good thing that the public was never let in on half the secrets Jess Smith had found out, starting back in Washington Court House and ending, for now, right here at the heart of the United States Senate.

Alice Longworth proposed a toast. "Down with Wilson." Everyone drank except Senator Gore, who continued his delicate balancing act. Of course he had been blind since the age of ten and he had had a lot of practice.

4.

IN THE LARGE PICTURE-WINDOW OF Pamela Smythe's "palatial home" above Franklin Avenue stood the greatest of living writers, Elinor Glyn, back to the setting sun. Reverently, Mrs. Smythe presented Caroline to the author of Three Weeks, and Caroline nearly curtseyed to the robust woman, swathed, like a sofa, in a purple velvet cloak that somewhat muted the turbulent ma.s.ses of a glorious red wig that had been parted down the middle of an ursine head out of which peered the intelligent features of a green-eyed Irish girl, somewhat long in the tooth.

"Emma Traxler!" The voice was deep and convincingly upper-cla.s.s, unlike that of Mrs. Smythe, whose diphthongs occasionally suggested sea-caressed Liverpool.

Caroline's hand was engulfed in bear-paws, as bright small intelligent eyes stared down into hers. Task as a hostess accomplished, Mrs. Smythe welcomed other guests, who always arrived as the sun set, dined in the first hour of darkness and then, after an hour of charades, hurried home to bed in order to be able to present rested features to the benignly slanted early-morning sun.

"Miss Glyn. What a ... pleasure. For me." Caroline had selected the exact polite word. But then, from the human point of view, Hollywood was absolute pleasure. Real Russian grand dukes were to be seen alongside self-invented Russian grand dukes, and the conmen were usually more convincing than the Romanovs, thus explaining, Caroline had duly noted, the revolution. In any case, jammed together in a relatively small place, some of the most exotic creatures in the world could be found, panning furiously for movie-gold.

"Mrs. Kingsley tells me you have never been more superb! And according to Kine Weekly, Flower of the Night will gross three million domestically, and with your fans in poor little England alone ... ma foi!"

Caroline mumbled modestly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tim talking to a pretty girl whose famous three-not-two names she could never remember. She did know, as the world knew, that the girl was being groomed by Famous Players-Lasky to replace Mary Pickford, who, that day, had been married to her longtime lover and current partner in United Artists, Douglas Fairbanks, who had recently built an already-fabled-that is, publicized-love-nest for the two of them on one of the wilder Beverly Hills.

"I would so much like to create for you." Miss Glyn was now all business. "You are that rare thing, a woman d'un certain age ... you speak French, of course?"

"Oh, as little as possible."

But Elinor Glyn was now in full high-priestess flow. "A woman of a certain age," she translated, helpfully, "but with allure. What I call, for want of a richer, more specific-for obvious reasons-word, 'it'!"

"It?"

"It."

"It." Caroline offered Miss Glyn her Madonna smile instead of a contract at Traxler Productions. "I would have thought that only women of childbearing age could have 'it.' "

"It is not a reference to menstrual flow." Miss Glyn was sharp and, to Caroline's delight, earthy. "But to that innate seductive power that some women are born with-like you, Miss Traxler-and that other women must acquire the hard way like me ..."

"Surely not too hard," Caroline murmured.

Miss Glyn was not used to listening. "Nay," she said, as if the word were in everyday use and not a blossom plucked from the pages of a vivid fiction, "even a woman of my essential substance, willful, commanding, yes, in appearance and, perhaps, oh, the tiniest bit in real life, can still, when the moon shimmers in the sky and there is a scent of orange blossom upon the air, cause a dashing young Romeo to fall to his knees in an ecstasy of desire ..."

"The position, I hope, is only temporary ..."

"Romeo must start on his knees. The rest depends on-Kismet."

"And it."

"He would not have been on his knees in the first place without it." Miss Glyn was patient. "Now I hear Mrs. Hulbert's Mary Queen of Scots photo-play is a real revulsh."

"Let us say," Emma Traxler was now her legendary compa.s.sionate generous self, "that there are problems."

"I am a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots." Miss Glyn played the bold English card, which never failed to impress Americans, particularly the ones who worked in movies. On the other hand, the real thing was often viewed with suspicion like the young Austrian archduke who had just entered the room. Chinless, in the best Habsburg tradition, Leopold was thought to be inauthentic by half the hostesses of the Hollywood Hills.

"How they must fear you at Windsor, those German usurpers."

"They are Stuart, too, though less than I. Frankly, I would like to have, as they say out here, a 'crack' at Mary. Of course, I'm under contract to Famous Players, but you could always lend yourself to them ..."

"Or they you to us."

"Alas, not now. Anon, perhaps. You see, they are capitalizing mercilessly upon my name, particularly Mr. DeMille, who is truly salacious, don't you think?"

"He goes as far ..."

"One ought not, ever, to be too obvious in appealing to the fiercer emotions. Certainly the man, the hero, the actor must always be smiling and yet, of course, not leering like the village idiot. He should smile with good cheer, and should he through-what shall I call it?-not it-youthful heedlessness make a mistake he does not do so deliberately."

"As in life."

"Yes," said Miss Glyn, not listening, her eyes on the beautiful figure of Mabel Normand, one of the few truly amusing as well as erotic stars in the movies. A Boston girl, Normand was considerably sharper than the usual bovine American star. She was known to play jazz on the set, while her addiction to cocaine had given, as Tim had observed, a new meaning to the phrase "powder-room." Someone was now at the piano, playing New Orleans jazz, and Mabel Normand, all in silver, kept the beat with her whole body; and electrified the room.

"I'm writing a series of little books, The Elinor Glyn System of Writing. In due course, I shall deal with photo-play writing, but first I must master this extraordinary medium, which Mr. Lasky won't give me time to do as he is so busy having me pose with Mr. DeMille and whatever tart they happen to be promoting. How I long to do Three Weeks again, properly! To bring true sensuality to the screen with the kind of accuracy Mr. DeMille is incapable of, particularly when it comes to showing our aristocracy as they really are."

"I know Lord Curzon." Caroline delivered the knockout blow.

"How?" Miss Glyn was astonished. It was well known that Miss Glyn had had an eight-year affair with the onetime viceroy of India, and that he had then married a Mrs. Alfred Duggan, leaving Miss Glyn to read the news of his remarriage in the Times.

"London, I think. I can never remember where I meet people, do you?"

"In the case of so great a personage ..."

"But that's even worse. For me, anyway. If one has heard a great deal of the ... the personage before one meets him, then it is all a muddle between what one has heard of him and what he is actually like. Anyway, everyone knows the Leiters ..."

Miss Glyn sighed her relief. "The American Wife," she intoned, as if it were a movie t.i.tle card. "Yes, of course. So tragic her death. Is it true what they say of Mrs. Hulbert and your president?"

"What do they say?" The enchantingly unworldly Emma now took over from the tough-as-nails Caroline. "And who are they?"

"Rumors. Purloined letters. A pa.s.sionate affair that almost brought to ruins the Ship of State upon the rocks of mad and unbridled desire in Bermuda."

Caroline listened in awe as Elinor Glyn dictated to her a page of romantic conjecture. When she had finished, the lovers alone on Bermuda's pink coral strand, it was Emma not Caroline who said, shyly, "I do hope you're right. I hope they were able to seize some happiness. They say she was very attractive then."

"No trace of it now," was authority's verdict.

At dinner Caroline sat next to the most attractive of the men, William Desmond Taylor, an English director of her own age. Across the table, Tim was flanked by Mabel Normand and the three-named young girl who had appeared in Taylor's recent movie Jenny, Be Good. Although the press had predicted that she would never take the place of Mary Pickford, she and the movie were praised. "Did you go to the wedding?" Caroline asked the question of the day.

Taylor shook his head. "To my surprise I wasn't asked, even though Mary and I have known each other forever. I used to direct her, not very well, I'm afraid ..."

"Perhaps that's why you weren't invited."

Taylor laughed. "If that were to be a law out here, none of us would go anywhere. No. Astrology determined the day and the hour and probably the guest list, too."

"Astrology?"

Taylor nodded. The Negro butler said, pointedly, "You better tuck into that guinea hen while it's hot."

"Thank you." Taylor was as polite to butlers as to stars: the perfect extra man, he'd been called. "Well, at Doug's request, Mary got her divorce from Owen Moore some place in Nevada, on a good day ..."

"Isn't she Catholic?"

"Only when it suits her. Then Doug's astrologist told him that he could begin a new-a fabulous new life-thirteen days after the Ides of March, which is today, March twenty-eighth, 1920."

"Do you believe in astrology?"

"Only when it suits me." They laughed.

Caroline congratulated him on being elected president of the new Screen Directors Guild and he said, politely, that without Tim's help he would have lost. As they spoke of their common business, she noticed that he was attractive to her, something that men, by and large, were not any longer. Tim had become less lover than younger brother in a relationship that had always been based upon a mutual fascination with the telling of stories through enlarged moving pictures. She was addicted now to this shadowy fictional life; and he was in love with it. She had noticed that the few times, lately, that he had found her physically attractive was after a long day in the cutting room, looking at Emma Traxler, whose haunting autumnal beauty aroused him in a way that the forty-four-year-old Caroline Sanford did not in life.

Caroline was pleasantly amazed at the tranquillity-or was it numbness?-with which she had accepted what seemed to be the end of the affair. It was rather as if she were watching a photo-play, starring Emma Traxler, whose genius as an actress was never, never to surprise an audience. They wanted her n.o.ble and magnanimous and brave, and she gave them exactly what they wanted with, as Marion Davies would say, bells on. What Caroline Sanford wanted was something of a puzzle. Naturally, she wanted to watch the movie to the end; and perhaps gasp once or twice into a damp handkerchief in the dark as, on the screen, Emma strode off, resolutely, through machine-made mist, across the moors, which meant from the first hole to the second hole of the Burbank Golf Club. But after the lights came on, what next? Golf?

"I play golf at least once a week," Taylor was saying, his words matching her thoughts, rather the way dreams, at their end, adjust so neatly to the real world's noises. "Do you play?"

"Not for years. I must take it up again. I have a membership-or Tim does-at Burbank." Tim was plainly smitten with Taylor's Jenny, Be Good girl. Caroline wondered how many times he had been unfaithful-a word that made no sense if one lacked all religious faith. She herself had said no to quite a number of young men whose interest in her, she suspected, had more to do with her power to project their images onto a screen than her own faded allure. Perhaps she should try someone her own age, she thought, looking at William Desmond Taylor, who gave every impression of being, in his bright English way, the man-as well as director-for her.

"I thought your death scene wonderful," he said in a low voice, as if there was already some subtle intimacy between them. "Your eyes, in the close shot-and the way the light fades from them, to darkness ..."