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Departure

The electricity off, I stood by the window in my bedroom looking out onto a darkened middle-of-the night street. The previous August day in 1954 had been blistering hot and humid. The coming dawn promised little change. My Spanish-style bungalow was on the fringe edge of Beverly Hills, an area that never appeared on the tourist maps designating stars’ homes that were hawked on the corners of the upper reaches of Sunset Boulevard. The house, which I was within weeks of losing, had been my home for the past two years, the down payment made with the money I had received from the sale of an original story my agent had sold to a major studio. It was my first real home, purchased with the hope that owning even such a minuscule piece of God’s earth would somehow stabilize my life and that of my two young children, Michael and Catherine, both asleep in their beds, with no knowledge of the fragility of our finances.

A small gleam of light from the corner streetlamp filtered through the partially closed Venetian blinds. The surrounding quiet held me tightly in its grip. There were hard decisions I must make and I felt incapable of making them. It is curious how one can remember with much acuity the silences in one’s life. I recall that during one of her many separations from my father, my mother’s brother advised her to divorce my father (for numerous good reasons), and her replying: “Maybe that is so. But will you be there when I wake up alone at three o’clock in the morning?” She never did leave him, but they were more often apart than together.

I had no such reservations about having dissolved my own marriage. My husband, I had come to accept, was a compulsive, addicted gambler who, only days before, I had locked out of the house, his personal possessions boxed and left on the front porch for him to collect when I learned that without my knowledge he had signed over the deed of the house (forging my name) to casino owners to cover losses he could not pay and obviously had been in fear of reprisal and possible bodily harm. I understood his dilemma when it came to light. He felt caught between my expected wrath and the gambling syndicate’s long arm. But this was after years of difficult times and failed attempts to secure help for him (family intervention and an analyst). I now had only six weeks (given to me out of compassion, I had been told) in which to come up with the money (an astronomical $20,000) or forfeit my home. Unbeknownst to them I had the option of reporting the fraud to the police. (I had dismissed this route as my husband was, after all, the father of my children.) The scenario grew darker when deepened by the other problems current in my life.

Was I stressed out? You bet your ass! And I do not scare easily. A Southern lady once had told me that I had “gumption.” I was impressed by this as her grandparents had been born into slavery, and although well educated and successful in her field, she had endured racism at her place of business and in everyday life—as did her children. I like to think that she was right, that I am a fighter, a survivor. After all, we have only one life, no returns or second chances. I had been given some low blows in my short time on earth; I was twenty-six at this time, currently recovering from a year’s battle with polio and was also in political hot water, steamy enough to end my career as it was just beginning to take off. But there had been great times, too: unique experiences, loving presences, what I thought had been sexual gratification served up with love, and yes, plenty of laughter. Laughter, I believe, is the best-kept beauty secret in the world.

During my physical therapy treatments to help me walk again (which I now did, albeit with the aid of my hated “sticks”) I was taught to just put one foot in front of the other and keep going. That was the only course I knew to follow. Writing was all I ever wanted to do. I wasn’t sure how I was going to write myself out of my current situation as I was presently on the studio’s “graylist”—considered politically far left due to the themes of my writings and the groups I had supported (the farmworkers in California who were pitifully underpaid, for one, and for whom I had signed a petition for fairer earnings) and in danger of being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (more often referred to simply as HUAC) in their manic search for writers who might have once belonged to the Communist Party to bring before their body.

I had never been a member, nor can I recall ever having been approached to become one. I knew that made little difference and that just to have been called before the Committee would have made me unemployable in the industry. This was the sinister period of McCarthyism in our country. Led by a thirst for power, Senator McCarthy and the Committee, formed by strong right-wing members of Congress, were out to prove that Communist Russia was engaged in a conspiracy to undermine and eventually take over the country through messages being delivered subversively in motion pictures. A deadly chess game was being played, and I stood a chance of becoming one of their pawns, not because I was famous (which I certainly was not) but because I had close ties to “suspected” members of the Hollywood movie industry who were.

When I was a youngster, the Depression a dark chasm filled with failing banks, unemployment, hunger, and great migrations, Hollywood was a Tinker Bell of hope to families with children (who were a popular commodity in films at that time). I had been one of Hollywood’s thousand-some performing children (ages three to ten, “in-betweens” eleven to fourteen seeming to possess the mark of Cain and unhireable). I never was picked up by the movies but I appeared on stage in “kiddie groups” (then popular attractions) where my birth name Anne Louise Josephson had been shortened to Anne Louise in the Meglin Kiddies and then changed to Anne Edwards when I joined Gus Edwards’s troupe. At ten, I tap-danced on a radio program hosted by comedian Ken Murray (listeners obviously did not think that curious). My dream was never to be a star (or even a supporting player) but to write. I devoured what books I could get at the library. At night I would go to sleep with a small notebook and pencil beneath my pillow and in near darkness sneak-write stories I made up in my head. Even though my scribbles were nearly illegible in the morning light, the stories had been birthed.

At seventeen, having written a high school play, I was “discovered” by a studio talent scout and hired as a junior writer for Metro Goldwyn Mayer (only two miles from my home). Between interrupted college years, my marriage, and divorce, I had sold two original screenplays (after probably ten or more rejects) and my most recent work, a script for live television which had been aired just hours before my current nocturnal turmoil. I had “family connections” as well. My uncle, Dave Chasen, owned the restaurant Chasen’s, perhaps the most famous of all movietown eateries in the 1930s through the 1980s. My early years were softened when my mother and I lived with him and his first wife, my aunt Theo, in a crowded bungalow (I slept in the “dinette,” an L-shaped area off the kitchen, my cot in the corner, folding shutters in the archway for privacy) that would eventually back the original restaurant when it was built.

My extended family were the nobs of filmtown’s elites, who were Uncle Dave’s close friends. To me they were just Uncle Claude (W. C. Fields), Ruby (Keeler), Mr. Baritone (John Barrymore), Jimmy (James Stewart), and Uncle Frank (Capra) and so on down (or up) the list of famous Hollywood players of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947, my wedding reception (a gala affair) was held at Chasen’s. My husband (tall, slim, dazzling green eyes, a movie idol Kirk Douglas cleft in his chin, bright, no hero, but a veteran of the gritty war in the Pacific) was the nephew of Robert Rossen, the brilliant writer-director-producer presently blacklisted after refusing to betray his colleagues by giving HUAC their names as possible “sympathizers of Communist philosophy.” Later, he would sadly go back before the Committee and reel off a long list of names that allowed him to work again. Although able to contribute memorable films, among the liberal population of the industry, he would—like Elia Kazan—be treated as a pariah. But during the time of his reticence to give names, he had little other recourse than to leave the country in order to continue to work. During that difficult period, my husband and I had moved into his and his wife Sue’s home in tony Bel Air to oversee the care of my son, Michael (Cathy still to come), along with the Rossens’ three children while their parents were abroad.

The telephone call I feared receiving that day did come. My agent, Mitchell Gertz, had rung to inform me that a pink subpoena with my name on it commanding me to appear before the Committee was heading my way. An insider had warned him that it was only a matter of short weeks. My close association with the Rossens (Bob having yet to recant his testimony) and their friends as well as my “subversive” script, Riot Down Main Street, sold to the great director King Vidor at 20th Century-Fox (to be permanently shelved), were said to be the source of my “suspicious status.” My screenplay was based on the true story of an American soldier of Mexican ancestry recently killed in the Korean War after an act of great bravery, whose body, when it was returned to his south Texas birth town, was refused burial at the local funeral home and cemetery which were designated “white only.”

The good news was that an original teleplay of mine had just been on view (although attributed to Al Edwards—the first name composed of the initials of my first and middle name—Anne Louise). The story centered on a young man who joins a kibbutz in Israel and is discovered to have been a member of a Nazi Youth gang in Germany during World War II. The members of the kibbutz (including the girl with whom he is now in love) turn on him. In a key scene the Jews have suddenly become the racists. There was one short, violent scene when they attack him, then, realizing what has happened, pull back. The young man tearfully explains that he had changed his name and used a forged passport to get into Israel—not to harm anyone but, in some small manner, to do penance. The girl is unable to forgive and forget and he leaves the kibbutz alone. As one can see, I clearly chose to make a statement: racism is a two-way road.

I have no idea what HUAC might have thought about the last scenario. But as I watched the show with great wonderment earlier that evening, I found it amazing to see people I had created come to life before my eyes and speak the words I had written. Still, I expected little from the telecast other than the pittance I had been paid (and gratefully received) for its purchase. When I finally crawled into bed I had no idea of what I should, or could, do next. The following day, the summer sun blazing high but my head still in a fog, Mitchell Gertz called again. Raymond Stross, an English producer, was currently in Hollywood scouting stories and writers. He had seen the TV show and wanted to meet me the following afternoon in his suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I assumed he was interested in the kibbutz story and could see that it might work well abroad in large-screen format. I agreed enthusiastically to meeting the English filmmaker.

I was not prepared for Raymond Stross. Short (about 5'5") and squarely built, he walked like a bantam cock and was dressed (coiffed and costumed, really) to play Brutus in some new-wave-theater camp production—hair swept over his forehead, heavy gold chains around his neck, the top two or three buttons of his shirt opened to display them. He had a noticeable stutter and his cheeks flushed red when the words he wanted to say did not slip out smoothly.

Upon introductions, he stared at me with great alarm. He had thought, not unnaturally, that Al Edwards was a man. He said something to Mitchell to that effect and added, “You sssee, I pr-pr-produce X-rated movies!” He had no interest in buying the kibbutz story but, as the script contained some shocking scenes and showed a marked style, he thought the writer might be the sort he was looking for. He was—and not very slyly—implying that a woman (especially the one standing before him on two canes and weighing maybe one hundred pounds dripping wet) could not be up to writing an X-rated movie script.

My dander was raised. “What does X-rated mean in England?” I asked brusquely.

“Shhhh-shocking! Not for children! SSSSexy!” he stuttered. “And new!”

“What was your last film about, Mr. Stross?” I inquired, expecting to hear it was pornographic and filled with exposed bosoms and leather whips.

“Pr-pr-prostitution on the London streets!” he replied in a raised, nasal, British voice.

His reply struck me as funny. Prostitution on the London streets! That had been going on since Elizabeth I and certainly centuries preceding her reign. I thought—did anyone really know if Elizabeth I was a virgin queen? I tried to stifle the laughter gathering in me but could not. Maybe it was a nervous reaction, maybe disdain. But it was uncontrollable. Tears ran down my face.

“Smmmmm-smmmmm-SMART ASS!” he shouted. “You have a better idea?”

I have no clue where the following came from as it was not a subject that I knew anything about nor had I seen it covered in the press or mentioned on the radio or TV. But I snapped back, “Artificial insemination!”

There was dead silence in the room. It was the only time I can recall seeing Mitchell Gertz, the ultimate talking-selling agent, struck dumb. Raymond Stross stared at me with his pink-rimmed eyes (booze or late night, I thought and later learned that Raymond, dear, dear Raymond, suffered terribly from allergies). Then, suddenly, he spoke.

“I’ll buy it!” he said without a stutter and walked over to a desk in the corner of the elegant front room of his suite and pulled out a large, leather-bound checkbook. “What is the Writers Guild rate for an outline to a script?” he asked Mitchell.

My agent had not yet grasped what was happening (nor had I) but quickly seized whatever opportunity was being offered. “Three thousand dollars,” he replied loud and clear. Raymond leaned over his checkbook, picked up a pen, began writing, and then, done, stepped in closer to Mitchell and handed him a check—a Cheshire smile on his face. “It’s drawn on an American bank, no wait, perfectly good,” he announced with no hint of hesitation on the second from last word.

Now, in fact, the Guild minimum for an outline such as he was requesting was more like $750, at that time a fair price. However, I could not figure out what script this feisty Englishman was referring to.

“What you want Anne to write is an outline for a story about a woman who has been artificially inseminated and . . .” Mitchell was fishing.

“And it is up to Mi-mi-miss Smart Ass here to come up with a story and make it X-rated!”

“How soon?” my agent inquired.

“A fortnight.”

We seemed to be in Shakespearean territory.

“That would be two weeks?” Mitchell queried.

“Two weeks.”

Raymond shook both our hands and saw us to the door. Mitchell and I walked in silence to the elevator and stood there for a moment. “You’ll return the check to him, of course,” I finally managed. “I can’t write a story about sperm,” I added with some disgust.

“You know, he’s right,” Mitchell declared. “You are a smart ass! Here you stand, held up by two crutches, two kids at home to support, HUAC hotly breathing down your neck, and your home about to be taken from you and you tell me to return”—he shook the check in my face—“three thousand dollars! You are not just a smart ass. You are crazy!”

The elevator doors opened and we got in and rode mutely to the lobby where he sat me down in one of the hotel’s elegant, gold-leafed, green upholstered chairs (classified by some as California-French period ). “Look,” he began, now in a more kindly tone. “You don’t have to write the script, just the outline. That’s maybe fifteen, twenty pages including a little dialogue and some character development . . . nothing more.”

“And if I can’t?” I protested.

“You will.”

He was right, of course. I swallowed my repugnance for the subject and, the following day took myself to the Beverly Hills Library. No books on artificial insemination. Then I went through the more recent newspaper files. To my surprise there was a report of a legal action filed in another state in which artificial insemination was the basis for a divorce and a child custody suit. The husband claimed that although he had approved of the use of artificial insemination, the sperm inserted in his wife’s uterus was not his and therefore he was not responsible for the child’s support.

I decided I could manage that. Courtroom scenes are great to write. But shocking? X-rated? When I got home the first thing I did was type a title on my Olivetti:

A QUESTION OF ADULTERY

At least adultery had the sniff of sex.

I finished a story outline and character analysis plus a few short dialogue passages (maybe, all in all, twenty-five double-spaced pages) in the allotted two weeks, gave it to Mitchell and promptly put it out of my mind—except when I deposited the $2,700 check (discounted by my agent’s 10 percent) in the bank so that I could pay some of my medical bills and put something aside for a rental where we three could have a roof over our heads when the eviction notice came due. Ten days later, with little time to spare, Mitchell was on the telephone.

“You want to fly or take the boat?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Stross loved the outline, submitted it to MGM—where he has a three-picture coproduction deal—and they just gave him the go-ahead. Stross wants you to write the script, $18,000, payable in thirds over sixteen weeks, the first payment due upon signing. I’m coming right over for your John Hancock. Oh, and here’s the extra sugar: he wants you to write it in London. I told him about the kids and he has agreed to pay their passage as well as yours, a nanny in London for their care, and your housing for the term of your contract. Therefore, you can either fly the entire distance with a short stopover in New York, or fly to the East and then cross the Atlantic on a liner. Whatever you choose. He needs you there, however, in three weeks and I have agreed to that!”

I opted for the fly/sail method. I had never previously flown, nor taken a sea voyage (unless the glass-bottom boat from Long Beach to Catalina counts) and, except for a day trip across the California-Mexico border, had never been out of the United States. There had been plenty of travel in my life, back and forth across the country—to Connecticut, Texas, and Oregon—but always by train or automobile. I was, however, more apprehensive about developing my story into a viable screenplay (especially one now agreed to be reset in England) than about my means of transportation to Great Britain. Therefore, I felt the four days on the boat would give me a chance to rework the central characters of my script.

Everyone dressed properly for plane travel in the 1950s, it still being viewed as an important occasion. Several friends came to see us off. I wore a bright blue suit (with skirt, not pants), a gardenia corsage pinned to the lapel of my jacket, a wide-brimmed black straw hat that I thought very glamorous, and spanking-clean, white cotton gloves. The children were dressed in their Sunday best, hair spit-perfect, shoes spotless. We departed from Burbank Airport by TWA (the irony being that Chasen’s was now the airline’s official caterer). It seems to me there was only one class—what we now know as first class. A rather wide aisle divided two long rows of two seats each. There was a steel staircase close to the cockpit that led to the “Sky Lounge” where drinks were served. Our chairs reclined into a kind of chair-bed and there was a heavy curtain that unfolded for privacy.

Michael was seated directly across the aisle from Cathy (my pet name for Catherine) and me. Next to him, at the window seat—to my absolute thrill and amazement—was the great, and notorious, New Yorker and Algonquin Round Table writer Dorothy Parker, who also wrote screenplays and was well known for her sharp wit. (It was Parker who famously quipped when first reviewing a stage performance of Katharine Hepburn’s, “She ran the gamut from A to B!”) It struck me that Miss Parker might not consider a child a welcome traveling companion. However, the plane was full and I thought it better that I not trade seats and remained close to Cathy, who at almost three, I believed needed closer supervision. I assured Miss Parker that my son, four years his sister’s senior, was very bright and I was sure would not be a problem.

They seemed an amiable if curious pair. As we prepared for takeoff, Michael turned and said something in a confidential manner to Miss Parker. She laughed in a truly amused manner and then leaned across him and asked me in a voice with gravel in it, “Are you absolutely sure he is not a dwarf?”

Once in the air, the plane became a bit rocky. There were no jets or real stabilizers at the time. Caught in an air current, planes could suddenly and sharply dip. This occurred shortly after takeoff, and Michael, who was often carsick, turned putrid green. Before I could unstrap him, he had pivoted his head toward the window and vomited right into Dorothy Parker’s expensively suited lap. The steward and stewardess came on the run, extricated Michael and Miss Parker, leaving my son for my attention as they rushed her off. I did not see the doyen of saber wit again until we landed something like nine hours later. She had spent the rest of the flight in the Sky Lounge, obviously imbibing, and could barely navigate the stairs on her descent, having to be held up by the two aides to make it off the plane.

We arrived at Idlewild Airport, New York (now Kennedy), at about eight that evening. A travel agent, hired by the production company, met we three at the gate and escorted us and our baggage to a waiting car which took us to Hoboken where the Dutch liner Nieuw [New] Amsterdam was docked. Departure time was 11:00 p.m. We had two first-class connecting cabins. Michael had been given a small model of a cruise ship as a going-away present and Cathy a lot of coloring books and crayons (her favorite pastime), so I suggested that Michael take Cathy into the adjoining room—the door kept open between the two—and entertain his sister while I got us somewhat organized before we were at sea. Since we were all still on California time, I promised we would go up on deck to watch the ship pull out of port. About a half hour passed when I heard a woman shrieking in the hallway—“We’re sinking! We’re sinking!” I knew this was madness because we were still docked, but I hurried into the other cabin to grab my children just in case.

They were standing side by side, Michael clenching Cathy’s hand. Water was flooding out from the open bathroom door of the cabin and, as the ship was slightly atilt, streaming across the cabin’s short hallway and out the opened door into the exterior corridor. They had put the plug in the bathtub, turned on the taps, tossed the toy boat in, and then became distracted by some other idea. Bathtubs on the ship did not have escape drains. You put in the plug and then followed the warning that it was to be filled only to one-third capacity. The crew were all very kind about the incident and the cabin and the corridor were cleared of water and fairly well dried by the time of our departure.

I remember feeling a great swell of emotion as the ship’s horns blasted and I felt the forward motion of the boat as it moved out into the open sea, the light of day having given way to night, the starry skies and the flickering lights of the buildings along the shore looking a bit like fairy dust. I had been given a reprieve but I still had no clear picture of what our future would be. Sixteen weeks can pass pretty fast—then what? Still, for now, I was determined to enjoy the time and the exceptional experience that I had been granted.

The Nieuw Amsterdam had been converted to a troop ship during the war and then repatriated a year and a half after the war’s end, a backbreaking task that had overtaken all the grand oceangoing vessels postwar. We were traveling in great luxury as all the reclaimed liners were competing in service, perks, and comfort for their share of the traffic—Great Britain’s Cunard White Star ships, the Queen Mary, Mauretania, Caronia, and Aquitania; France’s Île de France and the Liberté; and the United States’ President Coolidge (downed in the South Pacific), among others. Our ship had reemerged (along with her sister ship, the Rotterdam) into passenger service in all her prewar finery, her two funnels stripped of their drab gray paint were replaced with Holland America’s bright yellow hallmark (later the yellow would become a more subdued, but not drab, gray). All her original furniture, paintings, and appointments, which had been stored in San Francisco throughout the war, had been restored and returned to their rightful places on board the ship. The Nieuw Amsterdam was not the largest liner in transatlantic service, but she was called “the darling of the Netherlands.” I fell in love with her and the grandness of ocean liners from that very first night.

When we returned from seeing the boat set sail on its ocean crossing, there was a note under my door informing me that arrangements had been made for the children, as of the following day, to eat all their meals in the children’s dining room at special hours and that there would be staff to supervise them. I was to dine at the captain’s table in the first-class dining room (it seemed that women traveling without a companion were mostly so honored). There followed a list of the hours meals were served and a dress code. Several of the evenings would require formal wear.

With all I had to think about before I left, the dress code for dining had not been a priority. I had not packed (nor purchased) any such items. There was a shop aboard where a selection could have been found. But then, how could I wear such a garment in London when I would either be working or taking care of the kids? Back home, I had not worn an evening gown since my high school prom! No gown for me. Therefore, I ate my daytime meals in the grand dining room and the evening ones, listed as “formal,” in my cabin. I recall that a ship’s officer took Michael on a tour of the radio room and other areas of interest to young boys. I worked on notes for my script in a comfortable deck chair or in my cabin. I did not feel too steady walking around the boat’s slanting decks on my sticks.

On the sunny morning of our fifth day we docked in Southampton. A travel agent met us at the dock to help collect our baggage and to settle us in the boat train that would take us to London—a short journey of about two hours. Vendors came by the aisles with baskets of sandwiches and drinks. The moving view outside the train’s windows was a magnificent slide show of all the great British landscape paintings I had ever seen. I loved the crooked houses and small villages we passed, the Gothic churches with their sky-piercing spires. Sheep grazed on hillsides. And many, many people rode bicycles along paths and through narrow lanes. This was a country I was sure I was going to like.

When we arrived in London, a porter helped me with my hand baggage and the children as we stepped onto the platform.

“Miss Edwards!” a male voice shouted.

“Yes, here,” I replied, expecting another travel agent.

Suddenly, there were several flashes of light. I dropped my sticks and held the children close to me before I realized that a band of photographers were taking pictures of us but why, I did not know. By late afternoon, we had settled into our hotel suite at the Cumberland Hotel on Marble Arch, an elephantine establishment that—although grand—looked as though it had been mummified for the last four decades without making a single change to its pre–World War I decor. There was a newspaper on a table (along with some messages). Within, was a featured photograph of me and the kids . . . under which was printed:

“MISS Anne Edwards has arrived in London from Hollywood with her two children to write the screenplay of her story, A Question of Adultery about artificial insemination, soon to be a Raymond Stross production.”

No doubting the implication. MISS Anne Edwards—two children—artificial insemination. “Oh, Lord!” I thought. “What have I got us into?”

Never did it cross my mind that London would be our home on and off for nearly twenty years. Wherever I had lived within the borders of the United States, my ties had always been to country, not four walls. America was my world. When I stepped onto English soil the first time, I did so, perhaps not as a tourist, but as a working writer—an American writer, at that. Home seemed behind me—across the vast sea I had just traversed. Yet, really, what had I left? An unfulfilled career, an incomplete and troubled life. I know I thought about it, because I wrote in my journal, “What on earth am I going to do when this gig is up?” And then added in parentheses: “(Will there ever be a man—and SEX—in my future?).”

For now it would have to be just one foot in front of the other.