There is no movie house in this town so I don’t get to many pictures; but I keep in touch with Olympus by reading Motion Picture magazine and the daily papers. On the whole this is a higher type of entertainment than seeing the films—although I miss Tarzan and Lamour, and I am not getting ahead very fast with my study of trees in the movies, a work I have been engaged in for some years.
The newspapers of course keep one informed of the marriages, births, deaths, separations, divorces, and salaries of the stars. If Gable weds Lombard, I know about it. When Tone and Crawford reach the end of the road, I am informed. Separations and divorces are scented with the same delicate orange blossoms as marriages and elopements, the same romantic good fellowship. One of the most interesting accomplishments of the film community, it seems to me, is that it has made real for America the exquisite beauty of incompatibility. Divorce among the gods possesses the sweet, holy sadness that has long been associated with marriage among the mortals. There is something infinitely tender about the inability of an actor to get along with an actress.
When it is all over, and the decree is final, the two are even more attentive to each other, are seen oftener together, than ever before. It was a writer in Motion Picture who expressed the whole thing most eloquently. He was telling the inside story of the marriage of Hedy Lamarr and Gene Markey, a union that, however felicitous in other respects, was unfortunately not solemnized until after Mr. Markey’s union and disunion with Joan Bennett, described as “Hollywood’s perfect marriage,” and until after the gift (to Miss Lamarr) of a five-thousand-dollar swimming pool by Mr. Reginald Gardiner, described simply as a five-thousand-dollar swimming pool. The writer is explaining how Mr. Markey, after being given his freedom by Miss Bennett, is again seen around Hollywood in the company of glamorous stars, but not really caring for them half as much as he still cared for his ex-wife. “In the finest Hollywood tradition,” says the journalist, “they remain affectionate friends.”
This tradition of post-marital affection, which is discernible everywhere, is having its effect, I do not doubt, on the culture of our land. Occasionally a divorce-court judge is heard pouting about it, but the girls and boys of America eat it up. Marriage is becoming just a sort of stepping-stone to the idyllic life that lies ahead for the graduates of the course; the wedding march is just a prelude to the larger music of the spirit that accompanies the communion between ex-spouses.
There is something else Hollywood has done and is doing. By its adherence, over so long a period of years, to a standard of living well in excess of anything known in the lives of its audience, it has at last communicated to its audience a feeling of actually living in this dream world and a conviction that the standards of this world are the norm. I noticed this phenomenon recently when I was watching a picture called “Dark Victory.”
In this film a wealthy young girl named Judith, played by Miss Bette Davis, on discovering that she has only a few months to live, gives up her swank horsy existence on Long Island and goes to dwell peacefully in Vermont with her newly acquired husband, who is referred to as an “eminent doctor.” This Vermont home is certainly a lovely place—nicely located and well kept up. But in one scene, when Judith was talking about how happy the new life was making her, she remarked, in approximately these words: “Why do people clutter up their lives with horses and things? There [in Long Island] I had everything and was miserable. Here I have nothing and am happy.”
It is this jibe of hers about having “nothing” that I propose to explore. Remember, she was in a remodeled New England farmhouse. At the moment of making the remark she was standing in a kitchen that had been modernized at considerable expense. It contained a large new electric refrigerator worth somewhere around two hundred and fifty dollars, or maybe three hundred. It also had an enamelled stove and (I think) a Monel metal sink. These things run into money, as anybody knows who has ever tried it. With her in the kitchen were two domestic servants and two English setters. One of the maids was a sort of housekeeper, the other was a cook. I should guess that the housekeeper was pulling down around eighty dollars a month; and she was earning every penny of it, too, for in another scene Judith came plunging in with a tray of nicely prepared food and gave the order to throw it away because she had absent-mindedly taken it into the doctor’s laboratory and exposed it to germs. That sort of rough-and-tumble living is tough on housekeepers and they put up with it only if well paid.
All right, we’ll say eighty a month for her. The cook was probably getting sixty-five.
Now let’s look at the rest of this set-up that Miss Judith tossed off as “nothing.” The dwelling was a large Colonial farmhouse that had been restored to make it modern and comfortable. With Vermont the way it is today, full of writers and artists, such houses have quite a market value. I would say that the taxes on the house and land might come to around two or three hundred dollars a year. The insurance would be another two hundred. There would probably be a ninety-dollar annual interest charge on a fifteen-hundred-dollar mortgage that the eminent doctor was carrying either because he had to or because somebody had once told him that a house was more saleable if it had a small mortgage on it.
As for food, heat, light, repairs, etc., I have jotted them down, and on an annual basis they might easily add up to something like this, judging from the glimpses I had of the house, grounds, servants, and general tenor of life there:
I have worked out the above budget carefully and believe it to be conservative and in keeping with what I know of New England property and New England standards in households where there are three in help. So it would seem fairly safe to say that this little establishment where Miss Judith was finding such peace in having “nothing” was costing somebody (probably her eminent doctor) somewhere between eleven and twelve thousand dollars a year.
The interesting and really absorbing thing, to my mind, is that to the members of the audience, sitting there with me in the dark, suffering with Judith through her ill health and sharing her joy in her “simple” surroundings—to them the illusion was perfect: this twelve-thousand-dollar country estate for a brief cinematic moment was indeed nothing. It represented the ultimate simplicity, the absolute economic rock bottom. It is disturbing to realize that even after we have been reduced to Hollywood’s low, we are still rolling in the sort of luxury that eventually destroyed Rome.