Is the pattern of a life predestined? Is fate unconscious choice? Was it coincidence or perverse instinct that led me to love and marry a man whose career was so like my father’s? Even at the start I had seen my lover as my father, had felt the same warm safety when my hand was clasped in his, had heard the same rolling r when he called “Verra”; feared his disapproval, sought praise in the same way.
The nature of their work was dissimilar. Papa knew nothing of the movies’ fake glamour, was never awarded a gold medal for the Hat of the Year. Yet in business these two, years and continents apart, suffered parallel disappointments, achieved early success, in later life knew failure upon failure. Both made profit for others, both risked and lost their own savings. Both struggled on with grace and courage, met blows with fortitude. The similarity lay in a character flaw that made them misfits in a society where success is measured in units of inhuman values. Both loved their fellow men, both were unable to take advantage of weakness or distrust a person until he had proved himself unworthy. Suckers both, used by men who were not misled by such impractical concepts as decency and honor.
Optimism, like all addiction, blinds itself to danger. No less willing than any other addict to face the perils, the optimist abuses reality with reckless confidence. The habit does not bring its victims to jail, hospital or madhouse, but does lead them inevitably to bankruptcy. My character is equally flawed. Papa bequeathed me his rose-tinted spectacles, Igee’s influence aggravated myopia.
Failure was not entirely of our own making. We were victims of maneuvered circumstance that swelled our mistakes to grand defeat. There were indeed good reasons for going into independent production at the time. Igee’s experience was greater than that of many who were then becoming independent producers. Film business flourished, taxes on capital gains were much less than on earned income. He had made his most successful pictures as an independent producer; in Hollywood jobs he had been held down by the decisions and restrictions of studio heads.
I was to be partner in the venture, but never to be bothered by business details. Various papers were brought for my signature. Igee would have liked to film The Mayor of Casterbridge or The Old Wives’ Tale, but money could not be raised on the names of Thomas Hardy or Arnold Bennett, whereas a name attached to such blockbusters as Laura and A Letter to Three Wives gave out the sweet perfume of profit.
“Now you ought to write A Letter to Three Husbands,” teased Igee’s son Freddie. We laughed at the absurdity, but not long afterward Igee quite seriously outlined the idea of a comedy constructed on a similar device. Our first mistake, a miscarriage of whimsy, was considered neither absurdity nor error by Hollywood financiers, who invariably reject new ideas in favor of imitations of a recent success. Soon Igee had the capital, partly from the bank, partly from private backers, a contract for a release by United Artists and studio space at Motion Picture Center.
A stranger group I’ve never encountered than the outsiders who yearned to be on the inside of film production. One was a brassiere designer who had a chromatic fountain in her back yard and a husband who longed to see his name on the screen. A professional moneylender with the soul of Ebenezer Scrooge and the face of a Jewish chimpanzee called himself our company’s executive producer and stole postage stamps from the office. There were so many blue-suited, white-shirted, black-haired young lawyers bringing bleached, mink-draped wives to our expense-account dinners that I could never be sure which of them represented us and which were acting for the promoters. Our business manager asked that his name as Chief Accountant for Gloria Films be added to a list of credits that included such names as Eve Arden, Howard da Sylva, Sheppard Strudwick, Billie Burke and Ruth Warwick, the stars of Three Husbands; and to Emlyn Williams, James Barton, John Ireland and Mercedes McCambridge of The Scarf. One day this impertinent chief accountant panted up to my study to ask that I lend my company the war bonds I’d put away for that happy day when I could quit the movies and give my whole time to writing. When the pictures were released I’d be paid back with interest plus the deferred payment for my story and screenplay.
The experience of moviemaking was costly but cannot be counted a total loss. I worked on the set, revised dialogue, cut words, introduced symbols, altered action with zest and a high heart. In a group dedicated to a common purpose, though that purpose may be no more than the manufacture of light entertainment, personalities clash, jealousies flourish, complaints abound, but beyond the clamor there is the exhilarating force of unified effort. Ours was a happy company, its mood set by the boss and enthusiastically maintained by cast and crew.
With Igee’s big trembling sweaty hand clasped around mine, I saw the preview of Three Husbands along with a typical Santa Barbara audience of retired couples, affluent widows and adolescents who had come in the hope of seeing movie stars in the flesh. I sat tense, hoping for gusts of laughter, treasuring every slight chuckle. Afterward we discussed cuts and alterations, listened patiently to the suggestions of backers, kibitzers and amateur critics. Ten weeks later we went through the same harrowing ordeal with our second picture.
The films were under contract to United Artists. Distribution dates had been fixed. Once again Mr. and Mrs. Goldsmith gave in to addiction; a pair of optimists indulged in happiness. We crossed America in a convertible Chevrolet, halted to eat salami, cheese and matzos under the fir trees of the Rockies, swam in Midwestern lakes. We planned to enjoy New York for two weeks and then sail to Europe for a summer of motoring and to return when the pictures were released.
Who could believe that only six years after the war ended another would start? Every newspaper carried banner headlines, radio comedians were interrupted by news bulletins. In the elevators of our hotel we heard dire prophecies by travelers who had canceled their reservations. But the war in Korea was not our only reason for giving up the holiday. Battles fought in New York offices affected us more directly. The directors of United Artists were engaged in a mighty struggle for power. While they fought the entire organization fell apart. Branch offices were closed, sales staff decimated, the publicity department reduced to a skeleton, release schedules ignored. Bankruptcy was rumored. We hoped this was true. Had the corporation gone bankrupt, we would have been free of our contract and able to sign with a healthy distributor. Every major company asked for the rights to our films. The films were held in storage while interest mounted on borrowed funds. Igee scuttled about trying to raise money for the payment of interest so that he would not lose the films to his creditors. Early the following year, many months after the promised release date. United Artists distributed the film. With regional sales offices closed, the publicity staff cut down, they spent on exploitation about one tenth of what the contract had stipulated.
Artists, actors and writers are said to be temperamental, but never in all of my years have I encountered such prima donnas as hard-headed businessmen fearful of loss, nor seen anyone weep over a dead love with the bitter emotion of a professional moneylender mourning a lost dollar. In the end the mortgages were foreclosed and we lost the films to our creditors.
Ours was not the only independent company destroyed by the battle of United Artists. Other producers could go bankrupt. Igee could not. Neither the ambitious business manager who wanted his name on the screen nor the eager lawyers with their outrageous fees had bothered to inform their client that under California’s community property law a wife is responsible for her husband’s debts. Bankruptcy would have lost for me all future royalties on past work and all reprint payments. I am not sure of the amount we owed because I never quite believed it. I could not feel important enough to owe so much.
The sorriest effect was Igee’s remorse. He had wanted so much to take care of me, to free me for work I enjoyed. So painful the wound, so deep the scars that I had constantly to console him for losing my money. Compassion forbade reproach. On three unforgotten occasions I lost my temper and let my nasty tongue strike at his vulnerability. He forgave more readily than I could absolve myself. The guilt has stayed with me. These few incidents—and perhaps others I don’t remember—have become the ghosts that inhabit my bedroom on restless nights.
Without love financial troubles cause resentment and bitterness, but if the emotion is deep enough and real, love grows warmer and sweeter. Although this may sound like a greeting-card cliché, for us it was the truth. Each needed the solace the other could give. When one lost courage the other offered consolation. We were low in funds but never in spirit, never allowed ourselves to cry poor.
My ravens did not desert me. On a December afternoon, while Igee was at the bank trying to increase the mortgage on our house, I went out to Metro and told a story to Dore Schary, then head of production. Before the day was over MGM had agreed to pay me $50,000 for a hundred-page treatment. My agent asked for an immediate advance so that the tax on this money could be split over two years. Twenty thousand dollars was paid before I’d written a word. Had the agent said I was broke, the studio would not have been willing to pay an immediate advance. To film executives, people with tax problems are more deserving than the bankrupt.
Early the next year I sold MGM another original for a bargain $45,000, and in the first week of February told a story to a group of Paramount executives who agreed to pay $35,000 for the treatment. This is the way things happen in the film business. To feel that the mention of money is tasteless and leave it out is to tell only half the truth. There are two strong influences behind the cruel competitiveness and conspicuous spending of the movie colony: money and renown. And money comes first. Out of the Paramount payment we made secret deposits in New York—a fortunate move, because it would be a long time before I could sell another story or get another job in Hollywood.
I was on the roll of dishonor known as the Gray List.
In 1951 Hollywood was a disaster area. Six years earlier Richard Nixon had won his seat in the House of Representatives by accusing Helen Gahagan Douglas of being soft on communism. The successful example could not be ignored by congressmen striving to prove themselves true patriots. In 1948 members of the Committee on Un-American Activities had gotten their names and faces in the nation’s newspapers by naming as dangerous Reds eighteen Hollywood writers and directors. Of these ten went to jail, not for subversive acts but for contempt of Congress. They had pleaded the Fifth Amendment as reason for their refusal to answer the Committee’s questions. (As a companion in Danbury Prison two of the Hollywood Ten had ex-Representative J. Parnell Thomas, their chief inquisitor. Thomas had been convicted for misappropriation of government funds.)
Now American troops were fighting the Reds in Korea. In the defense industry Communist spies and saboteurs might have been a danger to the country, but the Un-American Activities Committee paid the briefest of visits to towns where arms and planes were manufactured. Such efforts were rewarded with only short paragraphs on the inside pages of newspapers, while the questioning of an unemployed actor, a director who had not been on a sound stage in years or a writer whose name audiences never noticed brought front-page headlines.
“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” The double-edged question placed those who had long ago left the Party in the same position as active members. No doubt the Committee knew the answers before the question was asked, since the FBI had for many years had spies recording the membership of Communist cells. A lie could have led to a charge of perjury. Truth was no less hazardous. Anyone who answered the question affirmatively was asked to name everyone he had ever seen at every meeting he attended. Those who gave the names of friends, co-workers, brothers, lovers, husbands and wives were considered patriots and called “friendly witnesses” by the Committee and Los Angeles newspapers. According to liberals this was betrayal.
Since I’d left the Party before I came to Hollywood, no witness could attest to having seen me at a local unit meeting. If a friendly witness had named me I certainly would have been served with a subpoena ordering me to appear before the Committee. I spoke of my fears to no one but Igee and, with his consent, decided that if I were questioned I’d reply honestly but decline to name any of the Connecticut comrades. Whether, had I been called, I’d have had the courage to take this stand, I’m still not certain. I like to think I would have.
We were preparing to leave for Europe, not in flight from a subpoena-bearing marshal but because Igee was negotiating for a French remake of Three Husbands. No one interfered with our going. In Paris and Cannes, Naples and Rome, Munich and London, the anxieties seemed as unreal as fragments of nightmare. Between lace curtains and knobby brass bed of a hotel room in Paris I wrote the treatment of the story I’d sold to Paramount the day before we left.
A phone call from my agent summoned me back to Hollywood for a story conference at Paramount. Igee had business there too, consultation with lawyers about the Three Husbands contracts. We left sadly, not because we anticipated trouble, but because we hated to miss the season of song. It was April in Paris, the chestnuts in blossom, primroses, tulips and children brightening the paths of the Champs Elysees. Our trunks were left in the basement of the Claridge Hotel and we had reserved seats for a return flight in four weeks.
It’s Friday. My work is done. Paramount has approved my final script. In our garden the roses are in full bloom, the iris has grown tall, geranium and sweet alyssum perfume the air. It has been good to see friends, to spend quiet evenings with books and records; there is even a slight feeling of regret at the thought of leaving on Sunday.
This morning Kenneth McKenna, Metro’s story editor, called to say that a Mr. Sidney wished to speak to me. “Probably to work on a story,” Igee guesses. “I won’t, not unless they let me do it in Europe. I don’t want to be separated from you.” Arrogant, I strut into Mr. Sidney’s office.
He begins by reminding me that Metro bought two of my stories at high prices and adds that the pictures, when finished, cannot be released without my cooperation. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars have declared their intention of picketing theatres showing films that involved the work of anyone named by the House Un-American Activities Committee, California’s Tenney Committee and/or Red Channels. I have not been honored by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but the Tenney Committee has prepared a dossier. To rescue MGM from the dilemma I have only to answer the Tenney charges, one by one, in a letter to Nicholas Schenck, chairman of the board. Mr. Sidney hands me several mimeographed pages.
I read the twenty-five charges. “Suppose I refuse to answer these, Mr. Sidney?”
“Do you want a subpoena?”
I am too dazed to realize that he has no right to threaten or interrogate me. He offers to help me frame answers that will satisfy Mr. Schenck. Whether this is by instruction of higher authority or out of kindness of heart I do not know, but he gives the impression of enjoying the role of inquisitor. Or perhaps he hopes to win his bosses’ approval by bringing in another scalp. In a sepulchral voice he reads the first charge. According to the Daily Worker for some date in 1937 I had been a member of the board of Frontier Films. “Is this true?”
“No. I was not a member of the board.”
“Did you have any connection with Frontier Films?”
“I wrote a script for them.”
“Did you ever attend any board meetings?”
“I was present at several meetings but I don’t think they were board meetings. We discussed the film I was writing. About child labor.”
“Who was present at these meetings?”
I answer that I don’t remember. Mr. Sidney doubts the truth of this. Surely I must remember some names. I tell him that I recall some young men in shell-rimmed spectacles and plaid shirts. In retrospect they seem very much alike. Mr. Sidney says I must answer every question in the following manner:
Is this true? My reason for joining every organization listed in the dossier. Names of people who invited me to join. Did I invite others to join? Did I resign and if so, when.
He reads the questions slowly in a solemn voice. Kenneth McKenna’s face grows rosier. My answers—“I don’t know” and “I can’t remember”—aren’t entirely untruthful. How can I recall every petition I signed, all the checks I wrote in fifteen years? I have been liberal, antifascist and careless. When friends appealed for money or a signature, I never hesitated to give ten dollars or add my name to a distinguished list. A number of charges can honestly be denied. The Daily Worker and People’s World were not scrupulous about using writers’ names, whether or not the accused had actually sat on the committees, made speeches, pledged, sponsored or condemned.
Other questions I answer honestly in the affirmative. “Yes, Mr. Sidney, I was a member of the Hollywood Writers’ Mobilization. A few days after Pearl Harbor all studio writers were asked to join. Nearly all screen writers did.” And “Yes, I did work in the school of the League of American Writers. I taught the construction of original film stories. My pupils were interested only in making money and their ideas were for the kind of light comedy popular at the time. I found it dull, unrewarding work, but I kept at it to help raise money for refugee writers. I quit, I think, during the second season.” I am attacked for having signed a protest against censorship, for having attended a conference on civil rights, for having bought a small share of stock in a Hollywood Community Radio Group and questioned about an item from the People’s World, which reported that I married I. Goldsmith (subversive, indeed!).
The one question Mr. Sidney doesn’t ask is the potent “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” I am relieved. To say that I have never been a member would be untruth but not perjury, since I had sworn no oath and my interrogator does not represent the government. But before I leave his office Mr. Sidney reminds me that in my letter to Mr. Schenck I must answer every question honestly.
Driving home at the pace of a crippled snail, I tell myself that I have no cause for fear, yet my hands tremble on the steering wheel and my foot is none too steady on the gas pedal.
From that Friday evening until Sunday afternoon I lived in a state of irrational fear. A private drama. The Marshal at the Door, or Mr. Sidney’s Revenge, was played and replayed in my mind. A subpoena summoning me to appear before the Un-American Activities Committee could mean that I wouldn’t be permitted to leave the country unless I became a friendly witness and provided the names of fresh victims. Whenever a car drove up our dead-end road I quivered, wiped sweat from my face, scurried up the stairs and locked myself in the bathroom. Like a frightened child I clung to Igee, feeling that he held some mysterious power to protect me from the bogeyman with the subpoena. On Sunday afternoon, when a friend drove us to the airport I kept looking back to see if we were being followed.
In New York I felt no safer. We consulted a lawyer. Sophisticated counsel was expected of an attorney who had among his clients many professional people with liberal leanings. A small man with a shock of black hair and a Napoleonic glint in his eye, he paced the office while I told my sorry tale. His advice:
“Go to the Committee and tell them everything. I can arrange a private hearing for you.”
“I’d have to give peoples’ names, wouldn’t I?”
“You’ve got to make a living, don’t you? It’s the only way you can go on selling stories to the studios.”
“Do you really think I ought to give the names of people I met in all of these organizations?”
“You’ve got to protect your own interests.”
“Then I’ll have to tell them I met you at board meetings of Frontier Films.”
I should like to report that Napoleon quailed, paled, flushed or lost his temper. After twenty years I’m not certain, but I do remember that he changed his mind, showed respect for my qualms about naming old acquaintances, and advised that the best course was for me to leave the country as soon as possible.
To the skinny girl shivering on the El platform in the Chicago wind, this drive would have been ecstasy beyond the magic of a dream. Why, among all the enchanted days, was that afternoon in the Auvergne memorable? There had been broader vistas, greater monuments, gaudier pleasures. Long afterward, seeing a picture at an exhibition, Igee had exclaimed “Look! Your bridge.” In his painting of it, Frank Brangwyn had caught the reflections of those perfect arches. We had arrived in Espalion one afternoon when the light on water was so irresistibly lovely that I asked to stay there to see the bridge at night, in early morning and by noon sunlight. The arches, the river, the reflections have remained sturdier memories than Chartres or St. Peter’s or the castles of the Touraine.
“For two worried people we have a wonderful life.” Igee’s constantly repeated phrase became the keynote of our travels, the abracadabra, the magic incantation. We pitied poor friends who stayed at the Ritz or Crillon and had to rush off to catch planes to Rome, to London, to Cairo and back to Hollywood and had not time to stroll along leafy lanes or handsome boulevards, people too affluent to enjoy the luxury of wasted time, of freedom from engagements, shopping, business meetings. A questionnaire from my publishers asked “Where are you living now?” “In a Hillman Minx,” I answered.
We had bought the car secondhand in Paris, a proud little sedan, cheap enough for two worried people. There were few tourists in the early fifties. The dollar was mighty. At home we felt like paupers, here we were rich Americans among English tourists whose travels were inhibited by currency restrictions.
Our eyes and minds were richly nourished. In late afternoon we explored hills and valleys, ruined fortresses, ancient villages and in late summer twilight I’d shriek that Igee must look here, look there at Cezanne landscapes all muted blues and purples and deep-shadowed green. Why not? Cezanne had painted here. So at once we had to drive to Aries where Van Gogh and Gauguin had worked, and sometime later to Barbizon to appreciate the gray skies and dark forests of Millet and Corot.
Born travelers, victims of literature and guidebooks, we’d readily change our plans for a sight of a cathedral, a window, a palace, a waterfall. “I’ve never seen a glacier up close” … “Bruges sounds so wonderful when you read about it” … “And Verona, Juliet’s house” … “Rothenberg’s supposed to be one of the best preserved of all medieval towns. It’s on the Romantic Road.” For us they were all romantic roads.
Now sometimes when sleep comes hard I think of the winding roads of the Alps and Apennines, the colored rocks of the Dolomites, of the descent from some mountain pass into a valley whose green forests and flowery meadows are punctuated by church steeples and chalets whose balconies overflow with bloody geraniums and whose walls bear pictures of flat, primitive saints; of the Arlberg in winter, when every twig and shrub is encased in ice and snow castles crown the rocks above the frozen river; of the gentler slopes of the Cotswolds and Chilterns, of thatched roofs, half-timbered cottages and stately homes of England. Small pleasures, too, scones and tea, croissants and café au lait, oysters in a seaside café, fresh linen sheets, feather beds, inns that smell of centuries of sleep, fields of golden mustard. Danger, too; thunderstorms, crashing branches, a blizzard on an unknown mountain road, the hairpin turns of the Grossglockner, French drivers, Italian drivers and the time our car broke down and we were attached by a frayed rope to a decrepit truck whose driver kept turning to look back at us and shout “Pericoloso!”
Two worried people had a lovely life. The skinny girl on the El platform would have dreamed of a grander journey, luxury hotels, a costlier car, no need to think twice before spending a few extra francs or lire. We were not always carefree and too often in unlikely places were accosted by our bogeymen carrying debts and disappointments. At one time Igee’s hopes rose with the prospect of a remake of Three Husbands in French and German. Again there was talk of The Mayor of Casterbridge, to be produced in London for Associated British Films. While we pumped a pedalo on the Mediterranean, we argued over structure and dramatic action but when we got back to London were informed that the film company had decided against the plan to make a costume picture. Again in London, Igee’s idea for a television series was greeted with such magnificent promises by an American entrepreneur that an office was hired, star and director engaged, the first film shot. Before it was finished the angel was exposed as a con man who had signed the contracts only to raise money for himself.
Except in the first frightened furious moments of dismay I knew that whatever our losses had been, the gains were greater. Our values had changed. The things I had once demanded of life had lost importance. Success and security were of less worth than the sharing and consoling, small daily delights, the unexpected smile, the touch of a hand, private jokes, the last kiss before sleep. The Hillman was indeed our home. In it we were sheltered, isolated, complete. Intimacy was intense. This was love.
Luxembourg remains in my memory only as prelude to one of the most ecstatic journeys of my life. In June sunshine we drove along the Moselle with its paint-bright villages and tidy vineyards, along the Rhine with its high castles and shiny towns (with the names of Jewish families in Chicago) to Heidelberg, where we ate supper in a tavern out of The Student Prince, then along the Neckar to Lake Constance and into Austria by way of Feldkirchen and the Tyrol.
He had said that he would never go back. The Austrians, he said, had known what was going on when they welcomed Hitler with music and roses. I had begged to see his homeland and when he relented he showed me the country as proudly as if he had created the mountains and glaciers, aquamarine, ultramarine, jade and heliotrope lakes; as if he had designed the onion domes of the village churches, planted the pretty modest flowers of the meadows. First Innsbruck; then Salzburg, with ancient wrought-iron signs (roosters, deer, crowns, roses, horses and wheat sheaves) swinging above shop doors, and above the town its fortress giving focus to the city’s silhouette. In the churches baroque columns and screens made intimate rather than austere the rosy saints, the curly-haired babes and madonnas as young and delicious as the peasant girls in flower-sprigged dirndls. Baroque, too, the pastries in the cafés where they offer fourteen different ways of serving coffee. Not for an instant will Salzburg let one forget that Mozart was bom here; a square is named for him, a café, a puppet theatre and candy called Mozartkugeln (Mozart balls) of the richest chocolate.
At Seewalchen-am-Attersee we discovered Amthof; a mansion built in the seventeenth century as a counting house of the diocese and home for the monks who handled the Church’s funds. Early in this century Erich von Souper’s family had bought and equipped at as a country home. During the war it had been taken by the Nazis and used as a rest home for aviation officers, had later given asylum to displaced persons from German-speaking Romania. The silver, porcelain, paintings and Oriental rugs had been stolen, much of the fine furniture used for firewood. After the war, when Erich and Feli were released from a Nazi prison, they restored it as best they could with depleted funds and took in paying guests. The painted white-and-gold furniture of our tower room was not, Feli dutifully informed us, Venetian but copies made in Czechoslovakia.
Hearing the Viennese dialect, eating Austrian food, Igee was overcome by nostalgia that dissolved his prejudice. He drove to Vienna alone. “Do not ask to come with me. I must see it myself first.” Three days later he was back. Vienna having proved worthy, I was trundled off for a vigorous week of sightseeing before we returned to London and frustration. Two months later we were back at Amthof with scripts and typewriters. We had found our European home.
Through all of our jaunts we worked. Igee had business deals in Munich, negotiations for the remake of old pictures, ideas for new German films. Plans, hopes, disappointment and rejection formed the pattern of his life. The mysterious element, the magic that creates success, had departed. When he left for a meeting with producers and promoters his footsteps were quick and light. When he came back I heard them heavy and slow on the stairs. Then, with my hand in his, I would tell him what idiots those bastards were or what bastards those idiots whose short-sightedness and cowardice kept them from appreciating his brilliant ideas.
Dejection did not endure. There were always other projects, other studios, new financiers. At once he was off for Munich or London, Paris or Rome. As long as he was in motion he kept faith in himself. Sometimes he flew off, leaving me at the typewriter; sometimes we’d pack and start off in the Hillman. I was Mrs. Goldsmith, Madame Goldsmeet, Signora Gol’smitta and Gnädige Frau Goldschmidt. There was always Amthof to go back to. There we were cosseted, coddled, entertained. Diversions were not always planned but came as the result of Feli’s naïveté, Erich’s pretentiousness and the strange ideas of rural Austria.
When mice danced Viennese waltzes in my room promptly at one o’clock each morning, when carbolic acid failed to frighten them off, when strips of metal nailed over gaps in the wood did not keep them from dancing beside my bed, Erich and Feli drove many kilometers to consult “the greatest mice-extinguisher in Upper Austria.”
“Now,” said Feli, “we will get rid of the mouses.”
“Mice, Fell.”
“Mices,” she said humbly. And no matter how often her husband corrected her she continued to talk of the mices.
“When,” asked Igee quite seriously, “will the famous mice-extinguisher come to Amthof?”
The great man did not personally extinguish mice but taught the subject and referred the Soupers to a student, Hen-Mayer, who lived in Seewalchen. Since the name Mayer is the Smith or Jones of Austria, Feli and I trudged for an afternoon through deep snow, visiting Mayers of many professions before we found the mice-extinguishing Mayer living just a few steps from the Amthof gate, above our hairdresser’s shop (he was her lover). After a consultation Erich bought the largest and costliest mousetrap in the nearest town. The mice continued their merry dances. They were too stupid, said Erich using his favorite adjective, to understand that the trap was meant for them. The mice could not be blamed since the “stupid” maids had not been told to bait the trap or even to remove the brown-paper wrapping. For days it remained on a table in the hall while the mice danced their merry waltzes. Erich was even more put out when Igee went to the village store just outside the Amthof gate, bought a few simple old-fashioned traps and in a few days cleared out the pests. Without the assistance of a distinguished mice-extinguisher.
Besides the mice most visitors to Amthof were aristocrats—barons, counts, a duke and dusty princesses in moth-eaten furs and Oriental pearls. All were proud, nearly all poor, most of them protagonists in dramatic stories told me by Feli as we tramped through the snow or lay sunning on the pier after a swim in the icy lake. There was, for instance, the princess who went to the fisherwoman’s house to buy a carp. She heard music. “What is that?” “A poor pianist has rented the room above,” said the fisherwoman. The rich princess fell in love with the poor musician and financed his concerts until he became famous and left her. And there was the baron who had become a Nazi for the sake of the family brewery. His brother had resisted and gone to jail. When the war was lost, his brother was freed and the baron imprisoned. His wife had divorced him and married an American officer—a Jew. Telling this tragic story, the baron wept.
The most fascinating revelations were from Feli herself; about life in the Nazi prison, about the female guards, the male officers, the Jews, gypsies, prostitutes and thieves, children growing up in hell. Several years later I wrote a book about Austria during the Nazi occupation. It was sentimental and contrived out of things I had heard but did not know in my blood and bones.
A young American friend told us he was soon to be married and hoped we could come to the wedding. “Here? How exciting. A wedding in Paris.”
Igee’s big fist smote the frail cocktail table. “What a title.”
Wedding, Paris—box-office words. All we needed was a story. I doubt that we had a glimmer of plot when Igee told the title to Robert Clark of Associated British Pictures. Mr. Clark was looking for a light comedy for a talented young girl under contract to the studio. If I could give them a good idea I could write the screenplay and Igee produce a picture for Audrey Hepburn. Not much later, only a few days I think, I told a story to the grim faces of the board of directors—typically English, the kind of gentlemen who wear bowler hats and carry umbrellas on sunny days. They listened attentively but no smile greeted a funny line, no expression welcomed a surprising twist in the story. They said they would think about it. Apparently they quit thinking when we left the boardroom. But Wedding in Paris was not lost. A wiener schnitzel saved it. Hans May, who had composed music for some of Igee’s films, had a sister-in-law who cooked with Viennese charm. As England was still on war rations and the food dull when edible, we were always glad to be invited by the Mays. One evening while we were digesting the schnitzel Hans told us that Keith-Prowse, the ticket brokers and music publishers, had offered generous backing for a musical comedy if they could find a story.
Igee was not slow to smell opportunity. “Vera has such a story. Wedding in Paris.”
I was cool. The story, I said, had been planned for movies, not the stage. Igee said it could easily be adapted and, marching between the Knole sofa and brocaded chairs, told the story and performed all the parts. A week later we were again invited to dine with the Mays. After zwetschgenknödel and coffee, Hans went to the piano. Sonny Miller, the other guest, took a stance beside him. Sonny looked like the stout, middle-aged tenors who had sung ballads before painted stereopticon slides in the nickel shows of my childhood. He wasn’t much of a tenor but, having written the lyrics, made sure we heard every syllable:
A wedding in Paris,
I’m going to be married.
In love and in Paris….
I was hooked. All my adult life I’d wanted to work on a musical comedy and here was the chance. We were to leave for Italy at the end of the week, but I was prepared to work wherever I might be. The first draft was written in Positano, where I sat beside a window looking down on Moorish houses rising like great white steps from the shore, and on the Mediterranean isle where the sirens sang their songs to Ulysses.
Never having worked on a stage musical, I knew nothing of the technique except what I had observed from a seat in the theatre. The book was rewritten and rewritten and rewritten: in my tower room at Amthof with the Attersee beneath my window; before the electric fire in Charles Hickman’s mews house in Knightsbridge; in hotel rooms in London, Munich and Blackpool; and during rehearsals in the Ladies Room of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre. In America Charles would be called director; in England, where producers are called management, the director is known as producer. With Charles I endured the usual show-business torments, indecision, changes of mood, intimations of failure, actors’ sulks, yet enjoyed a far better theatre experience than I thought possible. The difference between this and American production is comparable to the discipline of Londoners queuing up for buses in contrast to the shoving and pushing of New Yorkers.
A first-act scene needed nourishment. “Please write me some funny lines,” pleaded Evelyn Laye. For several years this one-time idol had not had a role in the West End. She gladly accepted what was then a minor part but playing opposite Anton Walbrook, worked as though she were the show’s star—which indeed she became. In the Ladies’ Room of the St. James’s Theatre (the only quiet place, with the chorus rehearsing on stage, dancers practicing their steps in the lounge, Charles directing dialogue in the bar) I wrote the first-act scene that took the emphasis from the ingénue and gave the lead to Evelyn Laye. On opening night her every line and gesture brought laughter and applause from both balcony and stalls; at the final curtain such stamping and shouting that the Hippodrome seemed to shake on its foundations. We opened on Saturday night and had the advantage of reviews in both Sunday and Monday papers. News of the World printed a front-page story about Evelyn Laye’s triumphant comeback.
We enjoyed a few days of prestige before we drove to Southampton and saw the Hillman hoisted on a crane and lowered to the hold of the Ryndam. Our return to America was certainly happier than our departure two years earlier. On January first of that year I’d written in my diary:
So here we are, 1954, hoping and waiting for a reprieve from debt and worry, climbing back slowly but believing in the miracle of success to free us.
The miracle had come to pass. Once again the ravens had descended to provide sustenance. We were not yet entirely free. The debts would be with us for a long time. Yet we could not feel less than jubilant as we walked the deck singing the songs of the show. Our lives had fallen into a pattern of changing light and shadow, anxiety and disappointment checkered with joy and hope. For two worried people we were having a wonderful time.