Bad Nauheim,
Germany
March 1933
Irving switched off his bedside lamp and lay flat on his back. Outside their hotel window, a lone pedestrian in heavy boots crunched along the gravel sidewalk. He wasn’t running, but neither was he out for a late-evening stroll in the brisk night air.
The hasty footsteps tapered into silence.
Throughout the transatlantic voyage aboard the SS Conte Di Savoia with Charles MacArthur and his wife, Helen Hayes, and the subsequent train ride through the postcard-perfect German backdrop, Irving had been anxiously anticipating their return to one of his favorite places in the world.
At first glance, Bad Nauheim was how Irving remembered it from five years before. Those gabled roofs and copper-green turrets. Tidy flowerbeds with rows of pink peonies and yellow buttercups. But the place didn’t feel the same. Where was the children’s laughter? Where was the oompah-pah music in the strudel cafés and beer gardens? Where was the warmth behind the smiles?
Irving wished he’d brought a glass of water to bed with him. Halfway across the Atlantic his throat had started to burn. He hadn’t mentioned it to Norma because since the second heart attack, she had become extra vigilant about his health. Always fussing, always asking. The throat had cleared up by the time they’d docked in Cherbourg, but had made a rapid reappearance on the train. He couldn’t wait to see Dr. Groedel in the morning.
Sleep felt as far away as California as he lay in the dark marinating in his thoughts. That second heart attack had been a close call, but his recovery hadn’t been as prolonged as the first. When he returned to the studio, he saw it in peoples’ eyes: You’ve bounced back fast, haven’t you? He had, and now he felt invincible! Well, perhaps not invincible, but he’d be thirty-four in a few months and was still in there swinging with the best of them. Maybe he wouldn’t have a short life. Maybe he’d outlive ’em all.
“You awake?”
Norma’s voice startled him. “My mind’s going a mile a minute.”
“This town . . . It’s not the same, is it?”
Irving rolled onto his side to face her. “Nobody seems too happy.”
“Have you noticed how there are no tourists? I think we’re the only ones. There are so few people on the streets.”
“Except that last guy,” Norma said. “Did you hear him? Not running, exactly, but he sure was in a hurry.”
Again, the sound of boots struck the sidewalk outside, echoing off the stone walls and into Irving and Norma’s room. Yelling erupted. Irving didn’t speak enough German to understand what they were shouting, but the words rang out harsh and bitter.
Irving slipped out of bed and opened the drapes in time to see three men in tan uniforms with leather belts strapped over their chests approach an older couple. The three men pushed them into a bank building across the street. The woman cried out and dropped her handbag. The elderly gent raised his arms to protect himself. The tallest hooligan in the brown shirt wrenched his arms away and struck him across the face with the back of his hand. The old man sagged to his knees. One attacker wore long black boots; he kicked the man in the stomach, in the chest, and finally the skull.
Irving picked up the telephone and dialed the reception desk downstairs. “In the street,” he barked at the clerk, “right outside, thugs are attacking an elderly couple. Call the police!”
The silence on the other end of the line was brief, but chilling. “Close your curtains and go to sleep.”
“But those goons, they must be arrested!”
“Those are the Sturmabteilung,” the night clerk said. “My advice, Herr Thalberg, is to mind your own business.”
Irving and Norma stared at the graffiti smeared in black paint on the wall outside Dr. Groedel’s clinic.
“Juden means Jews, doesn’t it?” Norma asked.
Irving nodded. The other words were unfamiliar; however, he recognized the boxy crosses painted with bold daubs of bright red. He slipped his arm around Norma’s waist and steered her toward the entrance.
The doctor’s reception area hadn’t changed. Clean, sparse, smelling faintly of ammonia. The woman sitting behind the desk in a starched nurse’s uniform stared at them, her mouth forming a lipless O. “Wir dachten nicht, dass Sie kommen würden.”
Irving told her, “I’m sorry, but I do not speak German.”
Behind them, Dr. Groedel rattled off what sounded like a rebuke before turning to Irving and Norma. “Welcome back to Germany.” His was the first genuine smile they had seen since their arrival. “Come. Let’s sit down and catch up.”
The doctor’s office was the same, but he was grayer around the temples and the lines framing his mouth had deepened.
“Those words scrawled on your wall,” Irving said. “They can’t be good.”
Groedel nodded gravely. “President von Hindenburg appointed Herr Hitler as chancellor a few months ago. He said it would give Germany the stability, but . . .” He gestured toward the outside wall.
“Surely this is as bad as it gets,” Irving said. “Back home, there are signs that our terrible depression is coming to an end, and President Roosevelt is introducing what he’s calling a New Deal. Recovery is undoubtedly around the corner for you, too. For all of Europe.”
Groedel’s indulgent smile made him look like an uncle stuck with a pair of silly children. What a thoroughly American outlook. An awkward moment, tense at the edges, passed between them. “For a work horse who had a heart attack three months ago, I must say that you are looking more healthy than I expected.”
Irving’s heart doctor had told him that he required six months’ recovery. Six was out of the question—but one month was feasible. He’d set about reading all top ten bestselling novels of 1932, from The Good Earth to Magnificent Obsession. He’d played with Junior for hours on end. He’d read the L.A. Times, The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety each day, cover to cover. He’d started doing laps in the pool. Very slowly and very gently at first, but had worked up to a dozen laps a day. His cautiously optimistic attitude had taken a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, however, when Mayer had visited him.
“I’ve decided to spread your duties among a board of executive producers: Walter Wanger, Harry Rapf, Eddie Mannix, and Hunt Stromberg. They’ve all agreed it’s the best way forward. This is all temporary, you understand, until you’re up and running.” And then he’d added, casual as a Sunday drive, “Oh, and I’ve convinced my son-in-law to join us. Four thousand a week helped him see the light. He’s moving into Jack Gilbert’s old bungalow as we speak.”
Irving had said a silent prayer for Lawrence’s forewarning; it helped keep the surprise from his face. “So,” he had said to Mayer, “it takes five men to do my job?”
“No, just four.” How blithely he had ignored Irving’s sarcasm. “Dave’s a special case.” He gave his shoulder a little shrug, as though what he said had been a trivial detail barely worth the breath it took to mention it.
First LeRoy and Capra, and now Dave. Irving had resisted the urge to sock his boss square on the jaw. “Special in what way?”
“You know how high-strung Dave can get. And his memos! Christ almighty, those things never stop. He’ll need the kid-glove treatment, so it’s best I take him under my wing.”
What a stinking pile of horse hockey.
Irving had feigned a headache. After walking Mayer to his car, he sought out Norma in the nursery. “We’re going back to Europe.”
She had clapped her hands together. “For how long?”
“As long as it takes.”
Irving thanked Groedel for his compliment and told him that he still wanted a thorough checkup, but it was his throat that worried him, and would the good doctor mind taking a look? Groedel did as Irving asked and announced, “Your tonsils have the bad inflammation. I strongly recommend removal. Immediately.”
“How soon can you do it?”
Groedel shook his head like a dog coming out of the ocean. “Nein. This is not possible.”
“I trust you more than any other doctor in Europe.”
“If anything happens to you when you are in my care, I will be blamed. And my country also. Everyone will say that the Nazis have murdered a prominent American Jew.” He flipped open his address book. “There is a surgeon in Paris. He is excellent.”
“Absolutely not.”
A sore throat hadn’t bothered Irving, but he couldn’t ignore acute tonsillitis. Those thugs he’d seen the previous night represented nothing more than a fleeting mania for power. Germany was still a democracy. Surely the vast majority of its citizens wouldn’t stand for outright thuggery. Hitler’s behavior was bound to show itself for the lunatic fringe madness that it was, and historians would banish him to the footnotes alongside the deluded nineteen-year-old Bosnian who had shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Irving closed Groedel’s address book. “You’re going to perform the operation, because to do otherwise will send a signal to those hoodlums that they are to be feared.” Irving refused to blink until Groedel glanced down at his appointment schedule.
“Tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock. Be here at one for the preparation.”
“Honestly!” Norma said to nobody in particular, “have you ever seen anything so blue?”
Irving heard Helen Hayes laugh, but didn’t look up from his book.
“Norma, darling,” Helen said, “where do you think they got the name ‘Mediterranean blue’?”
“Watch how the light sparkles on the water. It’s like diamonds, isn’t it, Irving?”
Past the swimming pool carved into rock, the sea lay glistening in the restful sunlight of the French Riviera.
With his throat no longer feeling as though it were on fire, Irving was, at last, free to enjoy his vacation. Dr. Groedel’s fears had not materialized. Irving’s tonsillectomy had gone textbook smoothly and there had been no death of a prominent Jew for Nazi goons to pounce on.
Nevertheless, Irving and Norma couldn’t get out of Germany fast enough. They missed the cheery, welcoming place they recalled from their honeymoon. These people were glum and dour, carrying their wariness like a backbreaking burden. Even the air, once so crisp and invigorating, now felt dense and congested.
By contrast, the southern coast of France soaked in the golden blush of summery days. Their hotel sat on a wide promontory that protruded into the sea, halfway between Cannes and Nice. Not that Irving or Norma, or Helen and her husband, Charles, had ventured off the grounds of the Hotel du Cap.
“How right you are,” Irving told his wife. “It’s gorgeous.”
“How could you notice it with your nose stuck in that book?” Charles asked. “What the hell are you reading, anyway? I swear they could’ve repealed Prohibition and you wouldn’t have noticed.”
Irving hefted the six-hundred-page volume to let them read its title.
Helen squinted. “Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman. There’s some light poolside entertainment for you. Honestly, Irving, why can’t you read Cimarron like everyone else?”
“I have to agree.” Norma stretched out in her new Lastex swimsuit. It was a vivid indigo color and hugged her hard-won curves in all the right places. “You should be resting your mind.”
Irving had already tried that. He’d burned through Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Booth Tarkington’s Claire Ambler, and had even picked up Anita’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. But he longed for a meatier read, so when he’d seen Stefan Zweig’s biography in an English-language bookstore at the Juan-les-Pins train station, he’d bought it.
He jiggled the book in his hand and told Norma, “I think I’ve stumbled on your next role.”
She lifted her green-tinted sunglasses. “An average woman?” she said. “Is that how you see me?”
“You as Marie Antoinette,” Irving persisted. “The Court of Louis XVI. Versailles. The Hall of Mirrors. Madame du Barry. French Revolution. Their flight to Varennes. The guillotine!”
Norma returned her attention to the sea. She was no longer thinking about the color of the water or how the sunlight made it glisten like diamonds.
Irving watched her for a moment, and then turned as Charles sat up straight and yelped in surprise.
“He’s done it!” Charles tapped a copy of The New York Times that he had paid the concierge an outrageous sum to track down. It lay spread out in front of him, its pages shifting in the offshore breeze. “Roosevelt’s announced the details of his New Deal. Folks, I think we’re through the worst of it. He’s putting thousands and thousands of people back to work. They’ll have income, which means they’ll spend money—”
“Which means people will go back to the movies again,” Helen finished for him. “Let’s hope that they start doing it in time for The White Sister.”
She hadn’t hit it big with moviegoers, so Irving had paired her with one of his best directors, Victor Fleming, in a screenplay written by one of his favorite writers, Donald Ogden Stewart, and cast her opposite Gable. The White Sister should be a sure-fire smash, but it had gone into editing after his heart attack so Irving had no idea how the picture would turn out.
“I hope Paramount, Fox, and RKO can hang on long enough,” Norma said, fanning herself with a copy of Photoplay that someone had left in the hotel beauty parlor. She was on the cover alongside a tantalizing caption: IS THE GARBO RAGE OVER?
Helen and Charles started talking about Paramount’s soprano, Jeanette MacDonald, who had been in Paris on a concert tour and who, according to the hotel’s hairdresser, would be checking in any day now, along with the Basil Rathbones.
Irving ran his book along Norma’s arm. “So? Marie Antoinette?”
He had seen that same spark in her eye when she’d told him that she wanted The Divorcée.
“How far into it are you?”
“About two-thirds.”
“When you’re done, you throw it in my direction. But not too hard. You could knock a girl unconscious with a brick like that.”
He reopened the book to where King Louis XV dies unexpectedly and with him the annulment that the dauphin had been campaigning for. Irving had never visited the Hall of Mirrors, but he’d seen photographs of its overblown extravagance. Even stage fifteen, the largest in the country, wasn’t big enough to house the entire hall. With judicious pre-planning, one-half would do the job, as they’d done with Ben-Hur’s Circus Maximus. He could already imagine the spectacular tracking shots. Those elaborate chandeliers, each one holding a hundred candles. Audiences would come just to see them. Especially if they shot it in color. Yes! The palace of Versailles in Technicolor!”
“Irving, honey?” Norma’s voice yanked him out of the French Revolution. “You’ve got a visitor.”
A hotel bellboy in his smart uniform of cream and gold held out a silver platter with an envelope sitting on it. “Un télégramme, monsieur.”
Irving tore it open and unfolded the cable. His last instruction to Mayer had been to contact him only if the studio had burned down.
He read the contents.
Shocked, he read them a second time.
And then a third.
His eyes landed on Mayer’s final line: I’m doing this for you.
They were still fixed on it when he told the group, “They’ve knifed me.”
Norma dropped her Photoplay. “Who has?”
“Mayer and Schenck.” He waved the cable in the air. “They have eliminated the post of vice president in charge of production.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Helen scoffed. “How can a studio not have someone in charge?”
“Instead of producers reporting to me, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will now have six separate, self-contained units. Each of those units will have a lead producer, and each of those six men will report to L.B.”
“So Mayer’s temporary plan wasn’t so temporary, after all,” Norma said.
“Are you at least one of the six?” Charles asked.
Irving nodded.
“But that’s a—” Norma caught herself before she said ‘demotion.’
But why not say it? He used to be in charge of the whole pie and now he only had a slice.
Charles folded his newspaper. “I bet that article in Fortune helped Mayer decide.”
When Irving had agreed to participate in a profile for Fortune magazine, he hadn’t guessed what a flattering light they would cast him in. They had described him as “changeable as the chameleon industry in which he labors,” and as someone whose brain was “the camera which photographs dozens of scripts in a week.” It had ended by saying that MGM’s system was “the closest to perfection in Hollywood and Thalberg its essential component.”
“And another thing,” Charles added. “You can’t reorganize a complicated business like a movie studio overnight. They’ve been working on this for weeks. And how do they drop the ax? When you’re six thousand miles away.” He pointed toward the sea. “The squid swimming around out there in the Mediterranean have more spine than those connivers.”
Irving’s eyes were back on Mayer’s cable. “And get a load of this parting shot: ‘I’m doing this for you.’”
“NO!”
“Translation: my workload has led to two heart attacks, so he’s reducing the strain of producing a dozen pictures at any given time down to a handful.”
He watched the outrage drain from Norma. Well, that doesn’t seem too bad. You won’t be quite so preoccupied. Nor will you spend every Sunday hidden away in your office working, working, always working. Maybe your wife and child will get to see you for a couple of dinners a week.
“So what now?” she asked him. “Packing up and hurrying home?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But don’t you need to claim your stake?”
This restructuring and its timing were a blatant power grab. Irving couldn’t do much about that. He’d play the game, all right, but he’d play it according to his agenda and on his timetable. He hadn’t cited a return date. As far as he was concerned, this trip had now become an open-ended sabbatical.
“How about we go see Versailles for ourselves?” He held up the Marie Antoinette biography. “And if the royal family fled to Varennes, we probably ought to see that, too. Does anybody know where it is?”
“As a matter fact, I do,” Helen said. “Varennes-en-Argonnes is about a hundred fifty miles east of Paris.”
“Drivable?”
“I’d suggest hiring a local, but yes.”
“And after that?” he asked Norma. “What about London? And Scotland? I hear they’re worth visiting. The weather can be iffy, but I’m happy to take my chances if you are.”
A sheen of tears glistened in her eyes like the water over her right shoulder. She knew what he was offering: the chance to spend as much time together as possible. Once he got back to L.A., he’d have to pitch himself into a monumental battle to maintain his allotted patch of turf. Schenck and L.B. were expecting him to scurry back to Hollywood and beg for scraps.
To hell with that.