HOME AND HOLLYWOOD LOST a lot of their joy for me that spring. Even the usually euphoric Felix Young admitted in the privacy of his studio office that the other female stars on the lot—Claudette Colbert Kay Francis, Nancy Carroll, the Broadway import Ruth Chatterton and the glamorous, still-Sternberg-struck Marlene—were complaining of Father’s focusing a disproportionate amount of time and attention on Sylvia, to the detriment of their own careers. And, as even the carefree Feel had begun to realize, the delayed effects of the Crash and the impact of sound had made these times far more complicated. The old order was gone. It wasn’t only Wall Street that had moved in on Hollywood, it was the giants of high finance, RCA and A.T.&T. Through the sound patents they controlled, they were now the true bosses of Hollywood. The Mayers, the Warners, and even Schulberg loomed big on the local scene, but they were merely junior officers in a much larger war between the Morgans and the Rockefellers for control of what was now the billion-dollar Industry.
In terms of individual owners, Hollywood had simply outgrown itself. My uncle the studio manager confirmed this ominous change. It was no longer a question of opening theater doors and letting the movie fans rush in. Now that the novelty effect of talking pictures was wearing off, and the Crash of ’29 seemed to have settled under Hoover’s do-nothing policies into permanent Depression, the public had become more discriminating. No matter how Father boasted of his latest hits, Paramount was losing ground to MGM, which had even bigger stars and firmer leadership. B.P. was in a spot. Mother was right. Mistakes which might have been overlooked in 1930 were examined through a magnifying glass in 1932. Warners was capitalizing on its headstart with Vitaphone. New competition was right next door, on the old FBO lot where Maurice and I used to play when we tired of Paramount’s castles and Western streets. Joe Kennedy, master manipulator, had shaken up the old “B picture” studio through merging RCA and the Keith-Orpheum Circuit to form RKO. Our poor neighbor on Gower Street was now another serious competitor.
Uncle Sam Jaffe was a concerned if somewhat patronizing brother-in-law. In installing him as studio manager, Father had exposed himself to accusations of nepotism. But with his usual eloquence and self-confidence, he had stood up to his critics, insisting that Sam had shown an aptitude for “our business” from the moment that Mother had brought him out from New York, and that he was now the best damn studio manager in the business. Sam, on his part, had grown in the job, with a self-assurance tilting toward arrogance. Still loyal to Father, he was convinced that he could now stand on his own two feet if he had to. Like Ad, he had what Father described as “Jaffe push,” or chutzpah, an eye for the main chance. B.P. had the charm and intelligence to win a thousand arguments. But there was something unprotected or naive about him as compared with Ad’s or Sam’s grittier instinct for survival.
In Father’s office I told him what people were saying about his losing his grip on the studio because of the favoritism he lavished on Sylvia Sidney. As was to be expected, he unleashed one of his brilliant defenses. Since I seemed to be so involved in studio politics—Father’s sarcasm stung—I should be able to find out that none of his other actresses had protested his stewardship of their careers. Nancy Carroll was becoming a full-fledged star, and so was Kay Francis. What I had heard about this distaff mutiny at the studio obviously came from friends of Mother’s. Again he urged me to concentrate on my own work and my own future; let him run the studio and try to work out his difficulties at home. He wanted to read my latest chapters on the lynching book. And since I was on my way to the set to interview Richard Arlen for the Scroll, he’d like to read that piece if I could finish it before catching the train back to Deerfield.
He kept trying to prove that he could be a good father despite the domestic triangle. He read my stories, he encouraged me, he took me to previews and fights, he was almost excessively proud of me—what more did I want? The answer was painfully obvious: What I wanted most of all was a conventional family.
In the tiled library at home, surrounded by classics I had been urged to read, I discussed with Mother her end of the drama. She looked like a beautiful leading lady—Norma Shearer or Eleanor Boardman—playing the role of the woman scorned, the elegant and dutiful wife abandoned for the studio fleshpots. Vigorously pacing up and down, smoking one cigarette after another, she sounded firmer and tougher than I had ever heard her before. She had decided it would be easier on all of us if they arranged a civilized separation, and, after the year required in California, probably divorce. “I don’t know anyone in this town quite like your father,” she said, determinedly lighting another cigarette. “Well, maybe Mank. They’re both brilliant, and charming, and self-destructive. Only for Ben the stakes are so much higher; Mank will never be more than a twenty-five-hundred-dollar-a-week writer. [B.P. was still making his unreal $11,000 per week plus bonuses.] But if Father is no longer head of the studio—”
She paused and drew hard on her cigarette. I knew she was on the verge of tears but a fierce, mean pride made her sound angry. “—I’m sick and tired of waiting up for him, or worrying about him, or wondering where he is or—you’ve been through all this or I wouldn’t discuss it so openly—knowing where he is. I’ve almost reached a point where I wouldn’t care, as long as I thought he could keep his balance.” Her voice was rasping in anger now. “If only he weren’t so damn gullible. The best mind in Hollywood—if he’d only protect it. If he’d only listen to me. I’m the only one who can help him. But he’d rather listen to those hangers-on and hoors who ‘yes’ him to death and tell him only what he wants to hear. It’s so frustrating to see talent like that [and money like that, she might have added, for she loved and respected money almost more than culture itself] slipping through his fingers. I can’t sleep at night, worrying about it. I get up and pace back and forth. No wonder I smoke so much!”
I had always thought of her as tough and formidable but suddenly she looked so small and vulnerable that I had an impulse to throw my arms around her and hug her. But she had never been a hugger: She reached out to our minds, loving us vicariously through the intellectual and creative accomplishments she encouraged with the persistence of a coxswain exhorting his crew to the finish line. So I didn’t put my arms around her. Instead, I watched her pause in her restless pacing to make a surprising announcement: “I’ve decided to hire Mendel Silverberg to work out a satisfactory settlement.” Silverberg was known in Hollywood as one of the smartest, toughest lawyers in town. She caught the expression on my face and went on to explain, “I’m not doing this for myself. I have to protect the children, see that you all get a good education. Dartmouth. A good finishing school for Sonya. And maybe a good boarding school would be the best thing for little Stuart. It’s all very expensive. Tuition, and travel. Your trip back on the train alone cost two hundred and sixty-five dollars, and that doesn’t include meals and tips…”
In Mother’s head there always seemed to be a kind of double-entry bookkeeping: one emotional, the other economic. She was able to weep for the loss of her first and, as it turned out, her one true love—and the breakup of the family she over-romanticized—and, with eyes still moist with domestic rue, she could figure out to the penny what everything was costing.
“And so,” I heard Mother saying, “I’ve decided not to depend on Father—for anything. In all these years he has practically nothing to show for the millions he’s earned—a few apartment houses, some acres in Palm Springs, his Paramount stock, insurance—I don’t think he’s got ten thousand dollars saved—he lives in that dream world of his, with people like Felix and the Sidney woman telling him how great he is—”
More serious pacing and thoughtful inhaling. Time for decisionmaking.
“—So I’ve decided to go into the agency business.”
“The agency business!” I could not have been more shocked if she had told me she was going to join the fallen ladies at Madame Frances’s notorious home-away-from-home for the Hollywood famous. We knew producers and movie stars, big directors, and high-paid writers. Agents—this was forty years before they took over The Industry—were just a cut above the wantons who referred to themselves as “actresses” when they were booked for soliciting on Hollywood Boulevard. The only agent we knew was David Selznick’s maverick brother, Myron. Foulmouthed, hard-drinking, irreverent, looking and acting more Irish than Jewish (like my mysterious Grandfather Simon), Myron would turn the business around. Until he began storming into front offices, stars were merely incredibly high-paid slaves, their three-to-five-thousand-dollars-a-week salaries not protecting them from producers who could shove them into any sort of role or picture they chose and give them an arbitrary starting date. It was standard procedure to finish one picture, take a week’s or ten days’ rest, and plunge into the next. If they rebelled, as some of the more independent or idealistic did, put them on suspension! No more money coming in, and no competing studio allowed to touch them.
When he began to change all this, Myron Selznick was somehow accepted as the son of a pioneer getting back at The Industry for what he and his brother felt was the shafting their father L.J. had gotten. But agents in general were still at the bottom of the Hollywood barrel. And a woman agent! What would people think? It would be a reflection on Father, on all of us!