March–April 1928
Voices
Years later, Lola would remember March 29, 1928, with a certain uneasiness. I know all about it because she told me many times.
Fixed in her mind were the tepid spring sunshine, the bright pink hibiscus in front of the Fairbanks-Pickford bungalow at the United Artists studio, the scent of jasmine in the air, the black open-throat dress with white lace trim that she wore, Charlie’s sulking, and the soft lilt of Norma’s chatter. Most of all, she remembered the sense of solidarity and friendship that brought them all together. And what came afterward.
The very name “United Artists” gave Lola a thrill. Artists who worked together. Artists who were united in their determination to control their projects rather than depend on the powerful commercial studios. D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks were all veteran movie people with plenty of contacts and money, but that wasn’t enough. They wanted a voice. They wanted their films to express their artistic vision. In 1919, they did something revolutionary: they formed United Artists. The plan was to produce five films a year, but it turned out to be harder than they’d thought. Feature films were growing more expensive, and artists are not necessarily shrewd entrepreneurs. It wasn’t until they brought in producer Joseph Schenck, whose wife, Norma Talmadge, and brother-in-law Buster Keaton were box office sensations, that the experiment bore fruit.
Now the old friends had gathered on the lot to face together this terrible new monster that imperiled them all: talkies. Almost all of them were there except for Pickford, who had withdrawn at the last minute because her mother had died. There were a couple of new faces, too. John Barrymore for one, and, of course, Lola. Folks were anxious to know if the idols who enthralled them on the screen would lose their allure when they opened their mouths and produced sound. If it turned out that a dazzling vamp cackled like an irate hen, no one would want to spend a whole quarter to see her. And for actors like Lola and Ramón—foreigners with accents—the stakes were especially high. But Schenck had come up with an idea. It occurred to him that if UA’s silent screen greats were to appear on the popular Dodge Brothers Radio Hour, fans would see they had no cause for alarm. The Dodge Brothers show aired on the new National Broadcasting Network, which included some fifty stations. The broadcast would be heard not only in homes, but also in movie theaters, by means of a fifty-five-city hookup.
“It’ll be heard by fifty million people!” Lola had announced excitedly. “I wish you could go with me, Mara, but I know you can’t. You have to be at Marie’s. It’s not that I’d need a hairdresser at a radio broadcast, but I’d love to have you there for moral support!”
“You’ll be fine,” I had said, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it.” And she did. I also read about it in the newspapers.
Looking prim yet stylish, Lola stood next to Fairbanks in the garden in front of the studio, waiting to enter. She giggled nervously. Other stars, including English-speakers, had opted not even to try to make the transition to talkies. Raymond Griffith, one of the greatest silent comedians, had decided that his career was already over. Mexicans like Ramón quaked at the thought that their accents might make them unemployable.
Chaplin, the eternal clown, was uncharacteristically subdued. “What are you going to talk about, Doug?” he said finally, addressing Fairbanks.
“It’s not like you to deflect attention from yourself, Charlie,” snapped Fairbanks. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m scared shitless!” said Chaplin earnestly. “Mic fright!”
“What are you going to talk about, Lola?” asked Fairbanks.
“It’s a secret!” Even now I can imagine her grinning coquettishly.
“I’m going to recite the ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy from Hamlet. Norma’s going to talk about costume and fashion in the movies. What’s the big mystery, Lola?”
“Leave her alone,” growled Talmadge. “I’m sure she has something beautiful prepared.”
“Of course,” Lola told me afterward. “For me, it wasn’t only a matter of proving that I had a decent speaking voice, but also that I could speak English without mangling it. The whole world was waiting for me to fall on my face.”
At last, Schenck guided them into the bungalow, where microphones had been set up. The members of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra took their places. The odor of anxiety filled the space. Chaplin wiped his mustache with his wrist, reminding Lola of a kitten cleaning its whiskers. Norma Talmadge shifted from one foot to the other—an edgy little two-step that made her look like a cat on coals. Everyone knew this broadcast was a potential career-killer. Only Barrymore looked calm.
Schenck gave the signal, and all of them entered the building. Dodge Brothers Company president Edward G. Wilmer took his spot behind the mic. Instead of announcing the artists, he launched into a rambling discourse on the virtues of his latest model, “The Standard Six.” The suspension...the breaks...the efficiency... On and on. Chaplin’s face was as white as an unused chamber pot. The six-cylinder, L-head engine... A bargain at only $835... Lola began to squirm. She suddenly had to urinate, but at any moment Wilmer might wind it up and Schenck would signal her to step up to the mic. She couldn’t take a chance and leave the room.
Shut up! mouthed Norma.
Lola nodded vigorously in agreement.
At last Wilmer sat down and Fairbanks got up. “To be or not to be,” he intoned.
No one remembered what Chaplin said when he took the microphone because he began to stutter so violently that his words were lost in a barrage of “l...l...la...g...ge...uh...uh...”
“Dios mío,” said Lola to herself. “Poor Charlie.”
Lola’s turn came toward the end. She forgot her desire to pee and adopted the air of a Spanish dancer. Chin up. Shoulders back. She stepped behind the microphone with exaggerated confidence and took a deep breath.
Unexpectedly, the orchestra began to play. The artists looked at each other. What was going on? The only one who wasn’t flustered was Lola, who had clearly arranged the whole thing in advance. Her voice rang out, clear and crisp as a chime.
“Ramona, I hear the mission bells above
Ramona, they’re ringing out our song of love
I press you, caress you
And bless the day you taught me to care
I’ll always remember
The rambling rose you wore in your hair...”
I heard it on the radio. You could hardly understand a word she was saying, but what difference did it make? Her voice was lovely.
“By God,” laughed Barrymore when the broadcast was over. “You beat the system, Lola! You were wonderful! People are going to fall in love with you all over again!”
But who knew what the critics would say?
In the morning, I went to Lola’s house early and let myself in. She had given me the key so I could have easy access to her wardrobe, hair paraphernalia...whatever she needed. I was dozing on the sofa when she came downstairs. I’d have to leave for Marie’s soon, but I wanted to be with her when the newspapers came in.
Lola kicked off her slippers and kissed me on the cheek. Luz entered the living room with the morning papers, which the studio had sent over. Lola held her breath. All the East Coast reviews and some from the Midwest were already in. A secretary had organized them, the most glowing on top.
One Atlanta newspaper called her performance “winning” and said they’d like to see more of her, but most of the reviews were horrendous—scathingly critical not only of her but of everyone. The Chicago Tribune was dismissive. “She sang a Mexican song,” remarked Elmer Douglass. In a later edition of the same newspaper, Quinn A. Ryan noted her heavy Spanish accent and predicted that she would flop in sound films. Some critics even suggested that she hadn’t done her own singing. They were even crueler to her colleagues. About Chaplin’s stuttering monologue, Variety noted that, “Movie stars should be screened and not heard.” Who could blame Charlie for being squeamish about talkies after that?
All day long, reports came in on the radio. Schenck made excuses: rainfall in the Northeast and ice storms in the Midwest had hindered reception. Some of the theaters had faulty receptors. Then, notices of audience revolt began to pour in. At the Fifth Avenue Playhouse in New York, Talmadge’s ramblings about fashion had sent spectators over the edge. Crowds screamed, “Take her off the air!” After twenty minutes, management obliged. At Loew’s Grand, spectators stomped their feet and yowled.
In the afternoon, during a break at Marie’s, I called Gabe at the workshop. “I have to go over to Lola’s right after work,” I told him.
“You were just there this morning.”
“I know, but the reviews of the radio broadcast are awful. She’ll be a wreck. I need to calm her down, give her a back rub or something. She’s my best friend, Gabe. I have to.”
Gabe wasn’t happy, but if there was one thing he understood, it was loyalty.
“Okay,” he said. “Try not to get back late.”
“It’s not the end of the world,” I kept telling Lola.
The phone rang. “I don’t want to talk to anyone!” she called downstairs to Luz from her bed.
“It’s Mr. Carewe, señora. He says it’s urgente!”
“Tell him I went back to Mexico,” wailed Lola. “Tell him I died.”
“¡Urgente, señora!”
“Tell him to go to hell!”
“¡Urgente, señora! ¡Urgente!”
“Maybe you’d better take it, Lola,” I said. “If it’s bad news, better to get it over with.”
Dimitri—she never did change his name—pitched sharp little barks at her. “I feel as though I were being pelted with stones,” she moaned. She turned to the dog. “Et tu, Brutus?”
I accompanied her downstairs to the phone. “Stand right next to me so you can hear what he says,” she ordered. “If he fires me, I want you to be there to pick up the pieces.”
“Isn’t it wonderful, darling?” Carewe’s voice boomed through the receiver. He sounded as though he were doing a radio commercial for Black Cat stove polish. “Isn’t it wonderful, darling! My oven shines like new!”
“What’s wonderful, Ed? That Quinn Ryan says I have no future in film?”
“Who cares about Ryan? I’m talking about the song! ‘Ramona’ is flying off the shelves! The record stores can’t keep it stocked! It’s going to be an international bestseller. The movie was already going to be a success, and now the song is going to make it a smash hit!”
Lola breathed a sigh of relief.
“Listen,” said Ed. “We have to celebrate. The minute you finish that turkey The Red Dancer, we should go away together. Just you and me.”
“Are you serious?” Lola directed her gaze at Dimitri, who had followed us downstairs. “Did you hear that, cachorro? Ed has gone mad!”
The “turkey” Ed was referring to was Lola’s current film project, The Red Dancer of Moscow, which he had tried to prevent. The story was too close to Resurrection, he argued. Another beautiful, destitute Russian dancer in love with a nobleman. Another film by Raoul Walsh. Ed ordered his lawyer, Gunther Lessing, to extricate Lola from Fox. The problem was, Lola didn’t want to be extricated. She liked working with Walsh, and she was getting tired of Carewe’s controlling ways.
“I can’t go away with you, Ed,” she told him, “even if you’re right about Ramona.”
Ever since Ed had divorced Mary, he’d pestered Lola constantly to take off with him on his yacht to some distant, romantic island, but what she really wanted was to end their affair.
Lola said goodbye and sat down on the sofa with her new script. Dimitri stretched out on her lap, his nose hanging over one of her legs. She caressed his ears gently. He still had that sweet, pungent puppy odor. Lola scratched him on the head and he wiggled onto his back. “Tummy rub?” she whispered. “How can I learn the role of Tasia if I’m tickling your tummy?”
“Prison!” she intoned. “They’ve thrown the grand duke into prison! I must go to him!”
Dimitri perked up his ears.
“Not you,” she said with a sigh. “You’re not going to prison. You’re just going out to the garden to pee. It’s the Grand Duke Eugene who’s in the clink!”
“Well,” I said. “It looks like everything’s going to be fine. I’ll be off now.”