Hollywood, 1940–1941
Bombs
For months, newspaper headlines had screamed updates in 72-point font. One after the other, territories fell to the Axis. I saved the clippings.
May 10, 1940. Nazis occupy Luxembourg.
May 14, 1940. Netherlands surrenders.
May 28, 1940. Belgium surrenders.
June 10, 1940. Italy enters the war, allied with Germany.
June 21, 1940. Italy invades southern France.
June 22, 1940. France signs armistice agreement. Germany occupies northern France. Nazis occupy Paris. The pro-Axis Vichy capital is established in the Auvergne.
September 13, 1940. Italy invades British-controlled Egypt, launching the attack from Italian-controlled Libya.
September 27, 1940. Germany and Italy sign a pact with Japan.
October 15, 1940. Charlie Chaplin releases The Great Dictator!
The talk in Hollywood wasn’t about the Italian invasion of Greece. It was about Chaplin’s first talkie. Until then, he’d bucked the trend and made only silents, but now he was creating a splash with a new film designed to stir up controversy. Chaplin used his amazing plasticity and comic skills to hone a piercing caricature of Adolf Hitler. He played both the brutal yet clownish dictator of Tomainia and the gentle Jewish barber who looks just like him.
“Well, at least someone is making hay on this war,” muttered Orson.
“The ballet he does with a balloon globe is simply amazing, don’t you think, darling? He’s so graceful and agile. The way he uses his body to create humor is extraordinary.” Lola was lounging by the pool, gorgeous in a baby blue wrap.
“If villainy can be funny, I suppose so,” grunted Orson. “I don’t find the image of Hitler playing games with the world very funny.”
I was spending the afternoon with them at Orson’s house in Bel Air. I’d worked until late the night before, and Marie had given me the day off. Lolly, Gabi, and Lupita were in school, and Lexie was with Doña Lupe. I’d been looking forward to stretching out on a chaise longue and relaxing for a few hours, but Orson was in a foul mood.
Luz brought out a lunch of cold meats, but Orson started with the wine. The sun shone white and angry, and there was no breeze to tame its fury.
“What’s the matter with you, darling?” said Lola. “You’ve been so gruff lately.”
Orson disappeared into the house and emerged a few moments later, smiling.
“I’m sorry, Lolita. Citizen Kane leaves me so drained, I just can’t think straight,” he said. “But I just took my medicine. I should be okay now. Anyhow, Mank wants to make it a straight-out biography, and I have to make him see that he’s being too...well...too literal. This isn’t a biography of William Randolph Hearst. I mean, it’s not just that. It’s an American story, the story of what happens to men when they get too successful too fast, and then think they can control everyone around them.”
“Well, Herman Mankiewicz will just have to realize that you’re the one in charge. After all, it’s your film. You’re the producer, the director, and the star. He’s just the coscreenwriter. RKO has faith in you, Orson. Just put your foot down.”
I nibbled on some ham and sipped my ginger ale. Orson went on and on about how he’d given Mank notes, which Mank had ignored, and how Mank was so drunk half the time that he didn’t know what was going on.
Lola leaned over and kissed him. Orson ran his lips gently over her neck. “I love you so much. You give me the mettle to carry on. I want this to be a beautiful film, the most beautiful film ever made. All the newest cinematographic techniques. Exquisite lighting. Stunning shadow angles. I know you understand.”
“Of course, I understand.”
He unbuttoned his shirt and ran his fingers over his chest. “Kiss me here,” he murmured. “Right here on this little mole.”
His body stank of sweat and alcohol masked imperfectly by Brummel Eau de Cologne.
“Not now,” Lola demurred. “I’m sure Mara—”
“Oh, Mara won’t be shocked.” His tone was slightly mocking. “She knows all about sex. You think she made those four kids with the Holy Spirit?” He winked at me, and I turned away.
Lola pretended not to hear. She began to fidget. “I’ll ask Luz to make us some coffee.”
“I’m going to pour myself a drink,” said Orson. “I’m beat.” He went back inside.
He was drinking more than before, Lola whispered, and he was taking a lot of medicine. It seemed to calm him down and put him in a better mood, she said, so there was probably nothing wrong with it. She’d heard stories about people becoming addicted to certain medicines, but she was sure that Orson was smart enough to keep things under control. But still...so much alcohol, so many drugs... It was worrisome.
Orson returned holding a Scotch.
“Come on,” he teased, tugging on her blouse. “I feel better now. Let’s go swimming.”
“I’ll go put on a bathing suit. You brought a suit, didn’t you, Mara?” She’d forgotten I didn’t know how to swim.
“You don’t need a bathing suit.”
“But Mara is here!”
“She’s seen you naked before. Anyhow, you swam naked in Bird of Paradise in front of a couple of million people.” There was a nasty edge to his voice.
Orson’s moods were getting on my nerves. I got up to leave.
“Mara!” she called after me.
“Let her go!” I heard him say as I slipped through the gate.
By mid-February 1941, they were both divorced. Lola had made just one film since the previous year, The Man from Dakota, a silly comedy set during the American Civil War about a beautiful woman who helps two Union spies sneak into the South to gather information. Audiences loved it. The news from Europe was horrifying, and people needed a laugh. The studios kept on churning out movies, even though times were tough for working men and women, and everyone was sure we’d be drawn into the conflict abroad. Orson didn’t seem overly concerned with Lola’s career. Citizen Kane would soon be released, and that’s what had him holding his breath.
“I was thinking,” Lola said to me one day as I was combing her hair into ring curls around her face. “Maybe it’s time for me to go home. American audiences don’t like foreign actors anymore, except when we play nonsensical characters in trivial films. And now, even those roles are drying up. What is there for me here? In Mexico, people still see me as a star.”
I understood the situation. Lola was nearly thirty-seven already—old for a movie star. She had no work and no prospects. Audiences wanted fresh young faces. Even Betty Grable, at twenty-five, was considered past her prime. Girls like Veronica Lake, with golden hair and long legs, were snapping up the roles.
“What about Orson?”
“I love him madly, and he says he loves me,” she insisted. “Yes, he’s impetuous, but that’s his charm. He has a vigor and vibrancy, and yes, he makes me feel young.”
“But?”
“For now, he adores swimming nude with me in the moonlight and making love under the stars. But he’s a decade younger than me, Mara. What about when I’m forty-five and he’s still a virile young star surrounded by flaxen-haired babies?”
I could have said “I told you so,” but I didn’t. I didn’t want to be cruel.
A few days later, the three of us were having breakfast together, Lola, Orson, and I, at Orson’s house. Usually, he left early for the studio, so I hadn’t expected him to be home.
Lola was pouring coffee. “What if I went to Mexico for a while?” she ventured. I noticed that her hand didn’t waver. She sounded completely unruffled, as though she’d said, What if I went shopping for a few hours this afternoon?
But Orson snapped to attention. “Just like that? Out of the blue? Kane opens in a month!”
“It’s just that... I’ve started to feel out of place here. I’m tired of being ‘the female Valentino,’ the Latin actress, the Mexican. Frida de Rivera wrote to me...well, it’s Frida Kahlo, now that she’s divorced. She says that in Mexico, they’re proud of me—local girl makes good, that sort of thing—and I thought... I mean, Frida has contacts...”
“I have contacts, Lola. I can help you here. Anyhow, how can you even be thinking of such a thing? We’re going to be married! Or don’t you love me anymore?” I noticed that he had mentioned the opening of Citizen Kane before their impending marriage.
“Of course, I love you, darling.” She stood up and wrapped her arms around him. “I just want to...scope out the possibilities. After the opening of Kane, of course.” She didn’t say anything about marriage.
The phone rang, and Orson went into the other room to answer.
“You’ve been in contact with Frida Kahlo?” I said a little reproachfully. “You never mentioned it.”
“She wrote to me a while ago. She sent me one of her paintings. I thought it was a gift, but then, a couple of days later, she sent me a bill!” Lola burst out laughing. “I guess she needs the money, now that Diego has divorced her. The painting’s still in the crate. Cedric wouldn’t let me hang it...it didn’t fit in with his decor...and here, well, who knows how long we’ll be together...”
Orson appeared in the doorway, his eyes spinning out of their orbits. Sweat was dribbling from his hairline to his temples and onto his chin.
“The bastard!” he roared. “I never even mentioned him in the press releases. I said it was a story based on the legend of Dr. Faust. I swear, the words William Randolph Hearst never appeared. And now the son of a bitch is trying to squash the whole project! The best goddamn film ever made in Hollywood, and he’s trying to crush it! That miserable mother-fucking, cock-sucking bastard!”
He picked up a vase from the table and hurled it against the wall. It exploded into a chrysanthemum of splintering crystal.
“Orson!”
I sat there, trembling. I don’t think Lola had ever seen him in such a rage. He wasn’t the same man she’d described making love to her on the beach, in the moonlight.
“Shit!” he screamed, spewing saliva over the table. “Who does the fucking asshole think he is? I was right to make this film! I was right to expose him for what he is! A tyrant! An autocrat who thinks he can control the world, the same as Hitler! I had to expose the son of a bitch! I had to show people who he really is!”
“You knew you were taking on Goliath with this film,” said Lola.
But Orson didn’t hear her. He’d gone to the bedroom to take his medicine.
This is what happened: Citizen Kane had previewed for a small group of publications early in January of that year, 1941, and the critics had liked it. However, celebrity gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had burst in uninvited, and in the time it takes a bullet to tear from a revolver into a victim’s heart, she alerted the Hearst organization that the bratty kid director Orson Welles had made a film shamefully defaming the great newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst. Then she sat down at her typewriter and banged out an article calling the film “vicious and irresponsible,” and Hearst a “great man.” She made Welles look like a reckless thug who was dragging the name of a national hero through the mud. Louella Parsons, Hopper’s rival in the gossip business, worked for Hearst, and blew a gasket when she found out that Hopper had seen the film before she had. Worse yet, her boss was furious because he hadn’t been forewarned about any of it. Hopper, in the meanwhile, continued her full-frontal attack on Orson. Citizen Kane was “appalling,” she said. It was “disgusting.”
However, Hopper wasn’t content with going after Orson. She had it in for Lola, too. She described her as a bauble that hung around the neck of powerful men, and she ridiculed her for appearing in public with Orson before she’d ended her marriage to Cedric. Lola felt like a fawn besieged by wolves.
Parsons demanded a private screening and threatened a lawsuit to prevent the film’s release. All the ballyhoo would have been great publicity if Hearst hadn’t quashed any mention of the film in his newspapers. No ads. No reviews. Nothing. And Hearst controlled half the papers in the country. Orson knew what that meant. It meant no business. No wonder he exploded!
A couple of weeks after that breakfast—it must have been sometime in April—I was back at Lola’s to style her hair. I was just combing it out when Orson barreled through the bedroom door.
“I’m going to call RKO right now! They have to release Citizen Kane on time! According to Variety, it’s going to be delayed!”
Lola and I exchanged glances. Orson was like a line of recurrently detonating grenades. You knew the explosion was coming, but you never knew exactly when or how bad it would be.
“Yes, darling, you should call George,” said Lola softly. “You can’t let them bully you.”
“Damn right I’ll call George Schaefer! He’s the one who should have told me. Why do I have to find out stuff like this from some movie rag! Anyhow, as head of RKO, he has a duty to protect me! Ha, Hearst thinks he’s going to ruin me! I’m going to ruin him, that greedy pig! He thinks his trashy newspapers can destroy Orson Welles? Well, he’s about to see what my film can do to a rapacious, no-good bastard like William Randolph Hearst!”
“George Schaefer is no fool,” Lola told me after Orson had stormed out of the room, “and RKO has a lot of money invested in Citizen Kane. He’ll call together a crack legal team, and if the lawyers say Hearst can’t sue RKO for libel, they’ll release the film on time.”
Lola was right. Not only did Citizen Kane open on May 1 at the RKO Palace in New York, but Schaefer unleashed the most lavish publicity campaign in RKO’s history to ensure its success.
The critics went wild. “An Astonishing Picture!” trumpeted the Hollywood Review. “A first-class film of potent importance to the art of motion pictures,” proclaimed Variety. Here’s the article by Carla Myer of Star World. I’ve kept it with me all these years. Mostly I just saved stuff that had to do with Lola, but this picture was especially significant to me because I’d been in on so many of Orson’s explosions leading up to it. I knew the backstory, let’s say.
Citizen Kane will make movie history, and not just because the lighting and camera angles are spectacular! I attended a screening last night and can report that director Orson Welles’s use of deep focus cinematography to create depth is breathtaking. But what’s going to bring American audiences to theaters is the scandal created by Welles’s depiction of tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
The story begins in Xanadu, the mansion of publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane (played by Welles himself), who utters one final word before dying: “Rosebud.” The story revolves around the quest of reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) to discover the meaning of that word. His investigations reveal how Kane took over the New York Inquirer, using yellow journalism to destroy his enemies, and launched the Spanish American War for his own profit. When he becomes involved in an extramarital affair with a third-rate singer named Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), her career becomes his obsession. Remind you of the Marion Davies story? Well, it’s no wonder that Hearst is up in arms!
According to reliable sources, Hearst actually planted a fourteen-year-old girl in Welles’s hotel room and stationed photographers outside to take pictures when the director walked in! What a scandal that would have been! Fortunately for Welles, he got whiff of the trap and stayed away!
Now Radio City Music Hall has refused to screen the film. Everybody is afraid of big bad Hearst! RKO had originally delayed the official release, but it opened at the RKO Palace on May 1, in New York, as planned, and in Los Angeles on May 8. It will be shown in local theaters throughout the country beginning in September.
In the meantime, Welles appears in public frequently with the lovely Dolores Del Rio on his arm, even though the ink has only just dried on her divorce papers.
Lola ignored the jab from Myer and went shopping. Movie openings always mean parties, and the bashes RKO planned for Citizen Kane would be over-the-top.
RKO executive Arnold Hausen had built a posh Bel Air villa for his new bride, and now he was going to give a shindig there for the most important film RKO had ever made. He wanted it to be in every non-Hearst newspaper, magazine, and gossip rag in the country. Lola knew what her role demanded. She would arrive on the arm of the director and star, and she had to shine.
Gabe understood that I had to do my part. Lola depended on me to look her best, and besides, we still needed the money, especially now that the girls were older. Mercifully, they weren’t babies anymore. Lolly was twelve already, Gabi was nearly eleven, Lupita almost eight, and even little Lexie was four and enrolled in nursery school.
The night of the party, I kissed Gabe good-night and tucked Lupita and Lexie into bed.
“I’ll probably be back late,” I told Gabe, “but I’ll take the car so I can leave before it’s over. Don’t wait up.”
“Okay,” he said. “I know this affair is important to those empty-headed friends of yours, so go and enjoy yourself.”
“I doubt I’ll enjoy myself,” I said, “but I’ll try to nab some éclairs for you and the girls.”
I got to Orson’s house about seven thirty in the evening and rushed to Lola’s room. I had already done a day’s work at Marie’s, made dinner for Gabe and the children, and put the little ones to bed. My feet were aching, but I dutifully combed Lola’s hair into long, relaxed curls.
Luz zipped up Lola’s gown, a strapless black silk Chanel sheath. Lola pulled on the long black gloves that just covered her elbow, then slipped into jeweled, high-heeled sandals. She posed in front of the mirror.
“Too bad I don’t smoke! A jeweled cigarette holder would look great with this outfit!”
“What do you want me to wear?” I asked her wearily.
“Look in my closet. Take whatever you want.”
After four pregnancies, I no longer fit into most of Lola’s gowns, but I finally found a high-waisted lace number with an ample skirt.
I followed Lola and Orson to the Hausen estate in my own car and felt like a duck in the wrong pond as the valet looked my old Ford up and down and took the keys.
The instant Orson entered the ballroom, reporters and guests descended on him like locusts. I eyed a waiter carrying hors d’oeuvres. I tried the shrimp canapés, the smoked salmon on toast, the stuffed mushrooms, and even the caviar. I wished there was some way I could sneak a few into my purse, but those kinds of hors d’oeuvres begin to ooze and smell pretty quickly. Maybe I’d have better luck with the dessert buffet, I thought.
I caught sight of Lola, and I walked over and stood beside her. “Your hair still looks good,” I whispered. The reporters were no longer swarming around her. “Where’s Orson?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “He disappeared into the crowd. Look, there’s Marlene and Erich!”
I knew who Erich was. Erich Maria Remarque was the handsome German author whose novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, had come out in 1928 and enraged the Nazi warmongers with its pacifist message. I looked in their direction. Marlene smiled and waved, and then she and Erich came over to us.
“Erich, mein Schatz,” she said, “go get Lola and Mara some drinks, will you?” As soon as he was out of earshot, she turned to Lola. “I don’t want to upset you, darling,” she whispered, “but look over there.”
Orson, drink in hand, was telling a story—apparently a very funny one—to a pert blonde showgirl who appeared to be about eighteen. She was wearing a red silk evening gown with an impressive décolletage and seemed cemented into a forward lean. Orson wasn’t even coy about gaping. He looked as if he were going to pour gin into her cleavage and then lap it up.
“That’s the way he is,” said Marlene matter-of-factly. “That’s the way they all are.”
Orson looked up and saw Lola. He tore himself away from the décolletage and was suddenly standing next to her.
“I feel faint,” murmured Lola. “I’d like to go home.”
“But, darling, we just got here.”
“Mara will drive me. You should stay. After all, tonight’s your night.”
Lola glanced over at the girl in red, who was staring at Orson. Her lips blossomed into a smile, and she blew him a kiss. He beamed like a fat tabby who had just nabbed a sweet little blond mouse.
“If you’re sure you don’t mind,” he said.
The parking valet must have been astonished to see the glamorous Dolores Del Rio climb into a shabby Ford next to her bedraggled hairdresser. I was home before eleven thirty.
“I expected you after midnight,” Gabe said. He was reading the war news in the Examiner when I came in.
“Lola didn’t feel well, so we left early, but I did manage to sneak out some little cakes.” I pulled squashed Napoleons, brownies, and cookies out of my purse.
“Let’s save them for the girls,” he said.
“Let’s eat two of them ourselves!” I teased. “Get out the champagne!”
He opened the fridge and took out a couple of bottles of beer. We laughed and cuddled and drank Schlitz until we dozed off in each other’s arms.