Santa Monica,
California
Spring 1927
When Irving’s chauffeur parked outside the enormous white Georgian mansion overlooking Santa Monica Beach, Norma stifled a snicker. “This is a bit much, even for Hearst.”
Irving climbed out of the car. “But doesn’t everyone have a hundred-room beach house with fifty-five bathrooms and a movie theater?”
She took his proffered hand. “I’m willing to bet next year’s salary there are Spanish forts smaller than this.”
Beyond the low-rise gate lay a square garden with two paths laid out in a cross. A marble fountain stood at the center; it was the only modest decor in sight. A matching pair of columns stood at each side of an eight-foot door. To the north and south stretched matching wings that Irving guessed held twelve or fourteen bedrooms apiece. The main building paralleling the shoreline was three stories high, with a widow’s walk long enough for the University of California track and field team to use for sprinting practice.
The windows along the first floor were all flung open to allow a peppy tune to waft in the air. Lots of strings and brass. Easy to dance to. Knowing Hearst, he’d probably hired Paul Whiteman and his orchestra away from the Ambassador Hotel.
“Welcome.” A liveried footman in gray and black opened the front door as they approached. He pointed a gloved finger toward a richly decorated living room, past a pair of French doors opened to the Pacific beyond. “You’ll find the main bar on the balcony overlooking the swimming pool.”
“How many bars do you have?”
“Seven, ma’am.”
“It’s like Prohibition never even happened.” Norma waved to Anita Loos, who was chatting to Gloria Swanson.
Irving had long admired the witty scenarios she had written for Connie and was hoping to lure her to MGM. Perhaps today he could make his opening gambit. En route to the bar, they ran into Buster Keaton who was talking to Lon Chaney—an odd pairing if ever there was one—and then Lillian Gish, who was leaning on a bookcase, halfway through a Sidecar.
Against Irving’s advice, Mayer had signed Lilian to an $8,000-per-week contract. La Bohème and The Scarlet Letter had done well, but not even Babe Ruth could guarantee hitting it out of the park every time. Still, she was a delight to work with and was his only actress who didn’t require a morals clause.
“Why are you alone?”
Lillian jacked a thumb behind her. “I’m avoiding Elinor Glyn.”
Norma hid her face behind her purse. “Oh, God, is she here?”
Glyn was the self-appointed queen of sensual romance novels who had gouged for herself a niche inside the sprawling Hearst conglomerate. She penned scandalous yarns written, Irving suspected, with an eye toward Hollywood sales, which they garnered with predictable regularity because Hearst was always on the lookout for stories that might make for good Marion Davies pictures. They weren’t to Irving’s taste, and with her flaming henna-red hair and plummy British accent, neither was Glyn herself.
“Marion wants her to do a cameo in that innocent-virgin-comes-to-Hollywood picture she’s keen on making.”
“And what about your Bohème co-star?” Irving asked. “Is he here?”
Irving hadn’t heard from Jack Gilbert in weeks. He couldn’t imagine how he’d finished filming Flesh and the Devil after Garbo had stood him up at the altar. He’d even maintained a level of semi-sobriety for the premiere. But by the time 1927 had rolled around and Flesh and the Devil had caught fire with the public, Jack had stopped returning Irving’s calls. Had Garbo dumped him again? Had he gone on a world-class bender? Marion had asked Irving about the possibility of Jack appearing in Show People, so she would have extended Jack an invitation for today. Irving had doubted that he would show up until Lillian told them that Jack and Garbo had already made a big entrance.
“Do they seem happy?” Irving asked.
Lilian nodded. “Even she was smiling.”
A waiter dressed like the footman at the front door passed them with a tray of drinks. Irving took a fresh Sidecar for Lillian, a Gibson for Norma, and a whiskey for himself. “Here’s to—” he cast around the floridly gilded mirrors, the rococo decoration covering the ceilings, and the ostentatious crystal chandeliers, none of which hinted at the sand and surf a few feet away “—to whatever all this is supposed to be.”
They clinked glasses and took celebratory sips.
Irving smiled. Dewar’s, one of his favorite brands, served neat, the way he liked it. After the heart attack, his doctor had told him with a sardonic leer, “Lucky for you Prohibition is in effect; otherwise, I’d be saying lay off the alcohol. I don’t have to worry about you taking the odd whiskey, watered down, one per day at the most.”
“Ladies,” he said to Norma and Lillian, “if you will excuse me, I need to find a bartender with some soda water.”
“Oh, no you d-d-don’t!”
A stuttering actress might have been a contradiction in terms, but Marion Davies’ early career had been confined to looking decorative on the Ziegfeld Follies stage. Now that she was a motion picture star, her inability to utter a complete sentence without tripping over at least one syllable didn’t matter.
“You need to go to the drawing room,” she told Irving.
“Why? What’s there?”
“Who is there, is more the qu-qu-qu-question.” She pointed toward a door that opened onto a corridor. “All the way to the end. L.B. is there with Fred Niblo, Conrad Nagel, Sid Grauman, and some other chap. He kinda looks like you,” she winked one of her huge baby blue eyes, “but not nearly so handsome, which probably means he’s a law-law-lawyer.”
That meant they were talking shop. Movie people always were. Irving sometimes wondered if it was the only conversation they were capable of. Not that Irving minded most of the time. He loved movies and everything about them: how they were put together, how they captured lightning in a bottle, who caught the public’s attention, trying to figure out why good movies failed. On days when his energy ran low, an animated discussion about where best to introduce the villain or set the first love scene always revitalized him.
But even Irving Thalberg tired of talking movies all the damned time.
“Were they asking for me by name?”
“I heard their voi-voi-voices and went in to play hostess. They were talking about Will Hays and how his toothless Production Code will have to grow some fangs; otherwise, those interfering do-do-do-gooders who want sex taken out of the movies might step up their efforts.”
Prohibition had made criminals of regular folks who simply wanted a drink, and had emboldened them to flout other rules, too. Especially women, who were now seen smoking in public, dancing ever-more outrageous dances like the Black Bottom, and running around town without chaperones. As soon as they got the vote, women had started discarding their corsets, snipping off their hair, wearing makeup. The movies reflected these changes, but Irving knew that filmmakers could only push so far before the morally conservative circles retaliated.
“Go on,” Norma said. “Sounds like a discussion you don’t want to miss.”
She could already read him as though he were a child’s picture book. Since that weekend up at Lake Arrowhead, Irving and Norma had elevated their infrequent, chaste dinner dates to real ones, with close dancing at nightclubs and necking in parked cars. They hadn’t made it as far as the bedroom yet. Was she waiting for him to make the first move? He assumed as much, but giving voice to a new fear that stalked him was too daunting, too embarrassing, too uncomfortable. So, for the time being, he made sure that their courtship didn’t venture beyond the heavy petting stage. She hadn’t brought up the subject, which Irving took as a sign she felt the same. Or at least that’s how he chose to see it.
More extravagant chandeliers. Enormous portraits of long-forgotten European nobility. Thick damask drapes of green and burgundy. Carpeting was so new that Irving could smell the wool.
As he approached, male laughter blasted through the open doorway. “But L.B., does the same go for Gilbert?”
“These performers, they’re all emotionally stunted children. Name me one other industry where an employee can punch his boss in the face and think he’ll get away with it.”
“That brawl was six months ago. You haven’t even put him on suspension.”
A heavy silence followed, then, “I’m a patient man.”
Irving took a step backward. This was not a conversation he wanted to be a part of. But his left foot squeaked a loose floorboard. Conrad Nagel poked his head into the doorway. “There you are!”
Five men sat on three overstuffed couches arranged in an open-ended square facing a marble fireplace. An ornate gold ceiling crowned the enormous room, paneled in pale mahogany and lit by a dozen lamps. Cigar smoke choked the air.
Conrad Nagel was a handsome Iowan actor whose rich baritone voice was perfect for the stage should his movie career falter. He waved a fat Montecristo toward the ceiling. “Have you ever seen anything like it? Fourteen-karat gold. The Chief told me that it came from a castle owned by the Earl of Essex, who is a member of the impoverished nobility. Poor bastard.”
Irving nodded hello to Mayer and Sid Grauman. The fifth man was Sol Wurtzman, the pale-skinned, dark-haired New York Jew who headed up production at Fox. Irving waved away Wurtzman’s offer of a cigar and took a seat. “I suspect you’re talking about a subject I’d like to weigh in on.”
Mayer puffed his cigar. “What did I tell you? My boy has a sixth sense when it comes to all things movies.”
“There have been rumblings from the Hays Office,” Sol said, “The prudes aren’t happy with the stories we’re presenting for America’s collective enjoyment. They’re starting to organize.”
“Letter-writing campaigns and marches and boycotts,” Sid added. “My Chinese theater is costing me more than two mill.” He ran a hand through his frizzy hair that mule-kicked all attempts at restraint. “Cecil’s King of Kings will be opening it next month. If I’ve got a bunch of puritans in my forecourt stopping patrons from buying tickets, I’ll be bankrupt!”
“So we get in front of the game,” Irving said.
“Wasn’t I saying exactly that?” Mayer exclaimed. “It’s like poker. You control the game; otherwise, it controls you. Right, my boy?”
Irving nodded. His own father was every bit as ineffectual and passive as his mother was controlling and dictatorial. At some point, William Thalberg had accepted he was no match for the woman he’d married. He had chosen instead to blend into the background, a colorless ghost in the corner armchair, reading his newspaper, adding little to any household decisions.
Louis B. Mayer, by contrast, was a short, barrel-shaped lump of a man. Though not well educated, he possessed the knack of knowing what the American public wanted to see in their neighborhood movie houses. His ambitions and drive matched Irving’s, making them perfect collaborators. Mayer adored his daughters, Irene and Edith, but they were girls. And then along came Irving Thalberg, and the man who wanted a son had met the man who needed a father.
As little as fifteen minutes ago, Irving would have beamed at hearing Mayer refer to him as “my boy.” But those words—I’m a patient man—scraped his ears like an out-of-tune violin.
Irving crossed his legs to make it appear that his casual-sounding suggestion was coming off the top of his head. “Each state has its own censorship board, which means fighting forty-eight separate organizations. That’s unwieldy and inefficient. But if we go to Hays and offer to work with him on formalizing the guidelines, then we’ll have an influential hand in framing those guidelines so that they suit us.”
Sol snapped his fingers. “Playing offence is better than defense.”
“If that’s to be our plan,” Sid said, “Irving and Sol, I think you’re the perfect men to approach Hays.”
“I’ll be glad to,” Sol said.
“Me, too,” Irving said, but his mind was elsewhere. He wondered where Jack was. If he and Garbo had made a big entrance, maybe everything was swell between the two of them. But if it wasn’t, seven bars to choose from was more temptation than Jack would be able to resist, Irving knew . . . unless Garbo had had a soothing effect on him. That was possible, wasn’t it? He couldn’t imagine her standing for his tanked-up shenanigans. But Irving needed to see for himself.
He was about to excuse himself when Mayer said, “I don’t think it’s enough. We need to show the Hays Office, state censorship boards, and all those conservative groups that we are united. Sure, we might brawl with one another for box office. And who here hasn’t spread dirt about a rival? But that’s just business, right? To the outside world, we must present ourselves as a cohesive industry with standards and rules we’ve agreed to agree on.”
“How do you suggest we do that?” Sid asked.
“What about an organization?”
“It needs to be an official one that we all belong to,” Irving said. “No exceptions.”
“I like that,” Sol said, nodding. “But it ought to sound serious. What about an institute? Like the Institute of Fine Arts over at N.Y.U.?”
“We don’t want to look like we’re copying them,” Irving said. “What about an academy?”
“Of what?” Sid asked. “‘Academy of Movies’ sounds a bit amateur hour, don’t you think?”
“We need to show everyone that we’re not in business to film morally ambiguous women flouncing around wearing nothing but their step-ins. Rather, we’ll demonstrate that we’re about the science of furthering our craft.”
“How about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?” The room fell into silence as each man mulled over Mayer’s idea. “And,” he added, “I know how to launch it. The best method of handling movie makers is to hang medals all over them. Or cups, or statues, or whatever—it doesn’t matter. Hand them an award and they’ll kill themselves to produce what I want.”
Everyone laughed, but it was a tentative laugh born of knowing that, though manipulative, Mayer was right. Now more than ever, Irving was glad he’d made the deliberate decision to exclude his name from any movie he worked on. The pall of cigar smoke hanging in the room was eating at his lungs. He stood up.
“I don’t often get to the beach, so I’d like to suck up as many lungfuls of fresh sea air as I can. I’ll see you all out there.”
He hurried back down the corridor. Norma and Lillian were no longer where he’d left them. He stepped outside. A row of two-story columns lined the rear patio. At each end stood a bar where waiters were dropping off empty glasses and refilling their trays. Irving helped himself to a fresh whiskey and took one of the four staircases leading down to an Olympic-sized swimming pool glistening in the April sun. A black-and-white Grecian pattern rimmed the pool; large ivory-white marble squares alternating with small black diamonds tiled the rest of the deck.
On a couple of chaise longues, Norma Talmadge and Joseph Schenck were cocooned in an animated tête-à-tête with King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman. Another bar stood where the end of the tiled patio met the soft California sand.
As he weaved around the poolside furniture, he spotted Ramon Novarro sitting at a wrought-iron café table with a gent who was wilting in his chair. Ramon saw him approach and shot to his feet. “Good afternoon, Mr. Thalberg. I haven’t said my hellos to Marion and The Chief yet, so if you will excuse me.” He scurried away.
Irving slid into Ramon’s seat. “I hoped I’d find you here today.”
“Nobody says no to the great William Randolph Hearst, isn’t that right?” A lock of licorice-black hair fell across the man’s eyes. He pushed it back. “Good to see you, Irving, old chum. How’s tricks?” His dark gaze was less focused than Irving would have liked. And those handsomely striking features of his—the square jaw, the intense mien—were rumpled at the edges, ravaged by spent emotion and downed booze.
“My tricks are fine, Jack. And yours?”
“Couldn’t be better. Absolutely tip-top.”
“I hear that you and Miss Garbo made quite the splash today.”
“All the trimmings.”
“I’d have thought she wasn’t the movie-star-entrance type.”
“And you’d be right about that. But I asked her to do it, anyway.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Flesh and the Devil is a gargantuan hit, don’t you know? We’re a sensation! You’ve got to give the people what they want is what I told her.”
“And she obeyed?”
“She’s in love!” Jack declared, throwing his arms wide. “A woman in love will do anything.”
“And what about a man in love? What will he do?”
Jack pulled a gold cigarette holder from out of the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and flipped it open. He selected a Pall Mall and tapped it on the table before putting it between his lips and lighting it. “Are you pissed because I haven’t returned any of your messages?”
“Not pissed so much as worried.”
He ricocheted forward as though someone had shoved him in the back. “I thought I’d die when she stood me up. I don’t remember anything about the week after the wedding. The non-wedding. But then she called me to see how I was doing. I cried down the line like a newborn. Half an hour later, there she was at my door. I couldn’t believe it! I fell at her feet and kissed her shoes.”
“Jack!” Irving took a swig of his whiskey. It was stronger than his doctor would approve of.
“I know, I know! What kind of self-respecting man grovels at the feet of a woman? It sounds like a scene from one of my more farcical pictures. But I was so goddamned grateful, you know? She’s—she’s a goddess! I worship her. The ground she walks on; the breath she takes. And when she laughs, I melt! I turn into a big blob of candle wax. I know what you’re going to say. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic. But I can’t help it, Irving. I’ve never felt like this about anyone.”
The melody of “Don’t Bring Lulu” floated over the Pacific breeze, filling the silence until Irving was sure that Jack had finished. This friendship, as unlikely as Buster Keaton and Lon Chaney, was a precious gift, but this was a risky tightrope he was treading. As Jack’s friend, he wanted to give him the best advice he could. But he was also Jack’s boss. The man was a valuable asset to the studio, even more so with the success of Flesh and the Devil.
“I’m glad to see that for once our publicity department hasn’t been exaggerating,” Irving told him. “I don’t know if you’ve been reading the movie magazines—”
Jack drained the bourbon from his glass. “I’ve been too busy living this love affair in real life.”
“Flesh and the Devil has been a huge hit, partly because it’s a terrific movie, but also because Mr. and Mrs. Everyman can’t get enough of Gilbert and Garbo.”
Scooping out the ice cubes, Jack pitched them, one by one, on the expanse of golden sand. “I don’t love Greta because it’s good for my career.”
“The heart wants what the heart wants. Isn’t that what you told me up at the Hollywoodland sign?”
Irving had seen this before: the instant where Jack’s personality switched from playful puppy to belligerent prick. His mischievous smile soured into a sneer and the rascally twinkle in his eye grew claws that threatened to slash and shred.
Irving looked down at the empty bourbon glass. He had hoped it had only been Jack’s first drink, but could see now that it was more like his fourth or fifth. He wanted to tell his friend that he ought to watch his step—and his heart. He might be in the intoxicating throes of love, but he was giving his soul to a woman who, for all her gifts, was one of the most detached people Irving had ever encountered.
She struck him as the type who enjoyed a quiet room. A glass of wine, some cheese and crackers, a novel or a game of solitaire. He suspected that she liked people well enough, but a day at the studio fulfilled any need she might have for social interaction. Unlike Joan Crawford, she considered posing for photographs a chore. Unlike Gloria Swanson, she found dressing up laborious. Unlike Marion Davies, parties were a marathon to be endured with one eye on the mantel clock.
In other words, she was the opposite of John Gilbert. And if he thought that his love would transform her into a gaily flitting social butterfly, he was in for a brutal awakening.
But that wasn’t the only facet of Garbo’s enigmatic temperament that worried Irving: he suspected the Swede possessed a streak of sapphic tendencies. He didn’t care much what people did in the bedroom, and with whom—as long as it didn’t interfere with their work, their public image, or their studio’s reputation. He could be wrong about Garbo. It wasn’t like he’d been exposed to many women like that in his sheltered life. And even if he was wide of the mark when it came to Garbo’s predilections, the unassailable fact remained that the woman hadn’t shown up to their wedding. She had left Jack standing there looking like a fool.
It was possible she regretted her actions and that she loved Jack in all the right ways, but Irving had his doubts. If Jack were digging himself into a hole so deep that he might not be able to climb out, what sort of friend would Irving be if he neglected to point out the obvious?
Jack lit a second Pall Mall from the first. “I’ve seen that look on your face before.”
“What look?”
“You’ve come here to tell me something, haven’t you?”
Sun-seeking Angelenos sick of the wintry weather now dotted the shoreline. Some of them were staring at Marion’s gaudily elegant manor house and the ritzy crowd that swarmed its sprawling grounds. Jack’s eyes bored into the side of Irving’s head.
I can’t tell him that he’s squandering his heart on a person who I’m sure will end up leaving him a broken and ruined mess. Who am I to tell a grown man how to live his life? Compromise, Irving decided, was how he’d remain upright on the tightrope.
“You’re on top of the world right now. Flesh and the Devil is the biggest movie of the year, and your romance with Garbo is the fascination of the American public. But you need to keep in mind that nothing lasts forever.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Jack snapped his fingers to catch the attention of a nearby bartender and jabbed a finger at his empty glass. “Is this about L.B.?”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s okay. He’s your boss. You gotta tread carefully. I get that. Truly, I do. I’ve been waiting six months for you to warn me to watch my Ps and Qs. But—” he jabbed the smoldering end of his cigarette toward Irving “—Mister Mayer is all about the money. And I’m a goldmine for him. Why would he jeopardize all that just because I socked him in the nose during the depth of my despair?”
“You punched him hard enough to send his spectacles flying. L.B. is very sensitive to what everyone thinks of him. I’m not saying he’ll go out of his way to sabotage your career, but maybe the smart move is to not give him any encouragement.” The haziness in Jack’s eyes had lifted. Irving didn’t believe in instant sobering up, but he saw a chance to be honest with his friend, so he seized it. “I think that if you don’t take care of yourself, you might become lost.”
Jack clapped his hand over Irving’s, gripping it more forcefully than he would have liked. “You’re a good man, Irving Thalberg. A good friend.”
“I try to be.”
“And I thank you for it.”
Irving endured the agony until Jack released him and fell back into his chair.
A roaring cheer erupted around the swimming pool. Dressed in a sailor suit, Charlie Chaplin was bouncing on the diving board. With each rebound, he vaulted higher and higher, his hands grabbing at the air, his face remaining deadpan. “Jump!” the crowd called. “Jump!” With expert timing, Chaplin thrust his legs against the board, soared ten feet above the gathered heads, tucked himself into a somersault, and hit the water with a sickening belly flop.