“I only had a bourbon and soda, officer. Or maybe three.”
Ramon Novarro was the best known of all Hollywood’s post-Valentino “Latin Lovers.” Born in Mexico to a prominent family, his parents moved to Los Angeles to escape the Mexican revolution. By his teens, Novarro was already working as a singing waiter and a bit player in films. His first hit as a leading man was Scaramouche (1923), and two years later he had his greatest success with Ben-Hur (1925). Novarro was homosexual and would go to well-known gay bars with female stars as his cover. Throughout his career, his studio, MGM, remained determined to keep his orientation out of the newspaper. Novarro continued to act in MGM films through 1935, then fell off the public’s radar. He would not find headlines again until his death, over thirty years later, when he was the victim of one of Los Angeles’s most infamous murders. Having invited two young brothers, both hustlers, up to his Laurel Canyon home, Novarro was severely beaten and then asphyxiated.
IT WAS A DINNER PARTY hosted by actress Una Merkel, and everyone was on pins and needles. The last two guests had just arrived—billionaire eccentric Howard Hughes and his new girlfriend, Ginger Rogers. The problem was Jean Harlow. Rogers hated the libidinous Harlow, a constant star in the Hughes universe and reportedly his onetime lover. It was always a tricky business mixing starlets—and when you poured enough gin on top of that, it became downright dangerous. Still, as everyone sat down to eat, the two women were gracious and perfectly mannered. It was Ramon Novarro who’d become the night’s most memorable guest.
This was in 1933, and Novarro was in a bit of a rut. His brother had just died of cancer. His last few movies had been stinkers. He was still a star in the public’s eyes, still had a contract, and could still make hearts flutter. But everyone sensed the end was coming soon. His best friend, actress Myrna Loy, chalked it up to the obvious: He had started losing his looks.
Novarro was in his mid-thirties, and the ruthless studios had little use for romantic leads unable to remain handsome into middle age, unless they were gifted character actors, which Novarro wasn’t. His contract was up in a year, and there was little hope of renewing it. Added to that was a more devastating truth: Puritanical MGM chief Louis B. Mayer simply hated homosexuals.
Never mind that everyone in Hollywood knew about Novarro’s sexual orientation. In the 1920s, as long as you didn’t end up in a newspaper, MGM was tolerant of homosexuality, which was still illegal and considered deviant in America at large. But if audiences caught wind, then marriages of convenience (what Hollywood called a lavender marriage), terminated contracts, and other such discrimination would ensue.
Novarro was in his mid-30s, and the ruthless studios had little use for romantic leads unable to remain handsome into middle age, unless they were gifted character actors, which Novarro wasn’t.
Novarro had been careful, mostly. Still, for whatever reason, Louis B. Mayer changed his policy in 1933. Something of a tyrant, he decided to rid the studio of any gay actor who wasn’t immensely profitable, i.e., everyone except the rumored bisexual Cary Grant. The defiantly open William Haines and Niles Asther were the first to go. And Novarro looked like the odds-on favorite to be next. True, he was far more discreet, but there had been a few hiccups.
In 1926 the studio discovered that Novarro and Haines had visited a male brothel. Mayer was incensed that Novarro, the recent star of “a religious picture” (Ben-Hur), would have put the entire film in jeopardy. He wanted Novarro fired on the spot, but the star had powerful backers—namely Irving Thalberg and W. R. Hearst—so instead the two actors were forbidden to see each other.
But by 1933 Thalberg was ill and Hearst was about to leave MGM for Warner Brothers. Mayer called Novarro into his office and tried to persuade him to enter a lavender marriage with Myrna Loy. Novarro deferred, telling his boss he’d think about it. Una Merkel’s dinner party was during just this period of introspection. Let it be said that Novarro was far less discreet in his drinking than his carousing. The man had probably accrued more DUIs than any other star in Hollywood, no small feat. And he was not going to face this particular dilemma without a cocktail firmly in hand.
Sometime after dinner, as the table chatted idly in the lull that often falls between dessert and departure, the guests heard a noise. It sounded like someone doing jumping jacks on the second floor, coupled with loud shouts. Figuring that it was some sort of sexual escapade, Hughes told all the women to stay put and went to investigate. What he found wasn’t a sex escapade, exactly, though it was equally scandalous. Hughes and a few other men walked into Merkel’s bedroom to find Novarro drunk as a monkey and jumping on the actress’s bed. He was completely naked, save a bandana wrapped around his head, and he wasn’t shouting, but singing: “I’m Queen Victoria on her deathbed! I’m Queen Victoria on her deathbed!”
Apparently, Novarro had made his decision. He would not marry Myrna Loy. And so yes, his contract would expire and his career would soon be over.
Director Erich von Stroheim was known as a perfectionist, intractable, insane. “What we want is better pictures,” he would declare, “but restraint will never produce them.” In The Wedding March, von Stroheim would put that to the test.
Already rumors were swirling that a scene in his previous film, Merry-Go-Round, had been excised when the actors got too drunk and a few female extras got too naked. At a time when shooting on real locations was considered radical, von Stroheim was a director known to go even further. He insisted that actors wear authentic costumes, too, and eat real caviar and drink real champagne. But even when he ordered the actress Fay Wray off the set of The Wedding March and instructed that the room be boarded up for privacy, no one quite believed it would happen—that he’d shoot a real orgy.
Biographer Richard Koszarski would later sum up the ensuing events as “exactitude bordering on madness.” Von Stroheim was a heavy drinker, and he forced the actors to match him drink for drink as they consumed gin and champagne. Some call girls arrived shortly thereafter and joined in.
As von Stroheim was lining up shots, clothes were peeled off. By the time he was rolling, the actors and call girls had partnered up and were screwing beneath carpets. When a few of the actors had, uh, “nailed their parts,” the call girls noticed a couple of donkeys wandering around. Encouraged by von Stroheim, they began coaxing erections out of the burros, too. Full-on penetration, lesbian scenes, bestiality—the resulting footage still stands as one of the most graphic scenes ever filmed for a mainstream movie.
Not that it was ever to be included in The Wedding March itself. Von Stroheim was fired by Paramount before he finished shooting. His replacement, ironically, was Josef von Sternberg, whose own career would later be destroyed by the exact same kind of insane demands and foolish stubbornness.
For von Stroheim, it was pretty much the end of his career as a director. His antics had pissed off one studio head too many, and within a decade he found himself broke and humbled. But his admirers, including scores of young directors, refused to let the story end tragically. They gave him acting roles and revived his career, most notably Jean Renoir in Grand Illusion and Billy Wilder in Sunset Boulevard. They even let his characters drink real drinks.