Nineteen forty was a nervous year for Americans and a brutal year for Europeans. Hitler was beginning a war against Great Britain. Americans, still recovering from the atrocities of the First World War, were not eager to join the fray. The mood in Los Angeles was jittery, but Greg Bautzer seemed impervious to it. After his mother’s death, he moved with law partner Bentley Ryan and boyhood friend Jack Huber to a house at 2092 Mound Street. He busied himself with divorce cases by day and dancing by night. He had momentarily forsaken La Conga and the Trocadero and was patronizing the Victor Hugo, a Beverly Hills nightclub that had been going strong since 1934, a remarkable feat in fickle Los Angeles. He was spotted there in late February dancing with the brainy, raven-haired Gail Patrick, who was married to Bob Cobb, the founder of the Brown Derby and inventor of the Cobb salad. Cobb was also there, making it a threesome, but he was about to become an ex-husband. Hollywood was sometimes described as high school with divorce.
Bautzer was also seen at the Victor Hugo with British actress Wendy Barrie and later with Patti Brilhante. Gliding across the dance floor with a beauty did not mean that he was smitten with her. Dorothy Lamour, a Paramount Pictures star, knew him from various clubs. “Bautzer was a real Beau Brummell and an incorrigible flirt,” wrote Lamour. “I remember seeing him dancing with Lana Turner and smiling at me over her shoulder, but, knowing of his reputation, I didn’t give his come-on a second thought.”
Lamour’s name was on everyone’s lips in April 1940. The Road to Singapore, the first pairing of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and her first film with them, was a held-over hit, and she was opening two more films simultaneously, Johnny Apollo and Typhoon. She had made her first splash in Paramount’s 1936 South Sea adventure Jungle Princess, but her image as an island siren was crystallized in John Ford’s 1937 epic The Hurricane, made on loan-out to Samuel Goldwyn. Lamour had worked nonstop since The Hurricane, often wearing nothing more than a sarong.
Paramount decided that Lamour’s next film would be Aloma of the South Seas. When Lamour complained about having to wear yet another sarong, Jimmie Fidler took her to task. “You’ve won many fans,” he wrote in his syndicated column, “not because you’re a great actress or even a great singer but because you’re simply terrific in those South Seas scanties.”
Dorothy Lamour was born Mary Leta Slaton in New Orleans in 1914. Her dark, exotic looks came from a background that included Creole, Spanish, and Irish ancestry. Her stage name was a variation of the family surname Lambour. The onetime Miss New Orleans was discovered in Chicago by bandleader Herbie Kay, who made her a vocalist in his band and then married her. She was appearing on NBC radio when the band eventually played Hollywood. She decided to give acting a try. Most studios thought her too unusual-looking. Luckily, Paramount needed a female Tarzan. In 1940, Lamour, like so many others in Hollywood, was newly divorced.
Plainspoken and direct, Lamour was perhaps the most down-to-earth actress in the business. Hearst columnist Louella Parsons complimented Lamour’s humble nature in a feature profile: “Dottie, as she is known to her friends, doesn’t put on an act when she is asked to let her dinner get cold and pose for some cameraman, and she does it without a complaint. She naturally likes to make people happy and she has never learned to high hat anyone, whether it’s the doorman at Ciro’s, the girl in the powder room at the Scheherazade or the waiter at the Brown Derby.”
Lamour had an unusual encounter with Bautzer, which could have been taken as an omen. On April 4, Bautzer had an accident that was eerily reminiscent of the one that had led to his father’s death. He was driving to Palm Springs on Old Highway 99, near Crystal Springs, when he crashed into another car. He was apparently the only one injured. Coincidentally, Lamour happened to be driving by shortly after the accident and saw Bautzer on the side of the road, though she didn’t stop. He was hospitalized with a broken leg and put in a cast and on crutches. Later that same month, Lamour and her agent Wynn Rocamora were at Ciro’s, the new club on Sunset with splashy yet tasteful décor that Billy Wilkerson had opened earlier that year. “Greg Bautzer stopped by the table,” Lamour recalled. “The huge plaster cast on his leg didn’t stop him from asking me to dance. Greg was a very determined gentleman. We not only danced; we did a rumba.” Plaster notwithstanding, a romance ensued.
It was interrupted by another hospital visit, as Bautzer suffered an attack of appendicitis. Lamour, meanwhile, had braces put on her teeth, and on April 18 she and her mother left for Hawaii. While there, she graced the premiere of Typhoon and made sure she was quoted—”Where would I be without my sarong?” Being hospitalized caused Bautzer to miss a number of events, including Lamour’s departure and a speaking engagement at the annual banquet of the Newsboys’ Club on Spring Street (Bautzer had delivered newspapers as a boy). He didn’t miss everything, though. He was visited in the hospital by Margaret Roach, eighteen-year-old daughter of producer Hal Roach. A gossip column said that she was mistaken for Lana Turner by the hospital staff.
When Lamour got back to Los Angeles, she resumed her relationship with Bautzer. In June, they drove south for the gala opening of the Del Mar Hotel near San Diego; they returned to the hotel the following month, and Bautzer puckishly played Lamour’s gramophone recordings in front of some vacationing Knights of Columbus. She was embarrassed by the scene he was causing and tried to ignore it. They continued dating for more than a year, adding glitter to the gossip columns with their red carpet appearances and public demonstrations of affection. In October, Lamour was flying east to visit a former boyfriend and booster named Bob Stein. Bautzer saw her off. Their farewell embraces were so prolonged (and pronounced) that the airline had to resort to the public address system: “Will Miss Lamour please board the aircraft!”
While dating Lamour, Bautzer started to land the type of clients for which he had been striving. In August 1940, he represented movie star Paulette Goddard against her own father. At that time, an affluent child was expected to care for an aging parent, and Joseph R. Levee had filed a suit seeking $150 a week for living expenses. Goddard was not concerned with others’ expectations; she was already paying Levee $75 per week, more than enough for an estranged relative. Goddard needed Bautzer to extricate her with a minimum of damage to her good name.
For a lawyer with only three years of legal experience, this case was a jackpot. It was certain to be heavily covered in the press. It was also a delicate matter that, if handled well, could inspire other celebrities to seek his services. Bautzer must have exuded great ability in order to gain Goddard’s confidence that he was right for the case. There was no shortage of prominent lawyers with much more experience who should have been a logical choice ahead of him.
Goddard was born Pauline Marion Goddard Levy (or Levee) in 1910 in Queens, New York. After an apprenticeship with Hal Roach and Samuel Goldwyn, she attracted the attention of Charlie Chaplin, the most famous and powerful filmmaker in the world. He made her his leading lady in the 1936 film Modern Times and then let her sign with David O. Selznick, who groomed her for stardom, which only came after she left Selznick and signed with Paramount. The Cat and the Canary (1939) made her a star, but she was not the only star to emerge from this comedy-thriller. “The Cat and the Canary was the turning point for my movie career,” wrote Bob Hope. They teamed up again for the spring 1940 hit The Ghost Breakers, a glossy, scary, funny vehicle tailored to both of them. When Bautzer met Goddard, she was flush with success, but there was still mystery about her private life. It was rumored that she was married to Chaplin. They neither confirmed nor denied the reports, but her father’s lawsuit required her to reveal that they were, in fact, husband and wife.
That Charlie Chaplin, the most famous man on the planet, would put his wife’s career in the hands of such a young lawyer is hard to believe. In all likelihood, Joe Schenck recommended Bautzer. Schenck had run United Artists for Chaplin, and Chaplin trusted his judgment.
Bautzer began by enlisting sympathy for Goddard. The answer to the complaint, which he filed with the court, painted a grim picture of her father, detailing the hardships his neglect had supposedly caused her as a child. Levee had defaulted on court-ordered payments of ten dollars per week after divorcing her mother. According to Bautzer, his failure to pay alimony forced Goddard to leave school at age fourteen and work as a fashion model in order to support both herself and her mother. In response to her father’s claim that Goddard had great wealth, Bautzer denied that she received $7,000 per week for film work. He maintained that her financial situation was uncertain, because of the six-month option in her contract.
The papers that Bautzer filed in court were almost fictional. Her father’s failure to pay alimony had nothing to do with her leaving school. Goddard was not fourteen at the time of her parents’ divorce; she was sixteen. Furthermore, she had worked as a department store model from the age of thirteen—three years before the divorce. A few years after becoming a model, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies, gaining fame as the “Girl on the Crescent Moon.” At age sixteen she married a wealthy man named Edgar James. At age twenty she divorced him. She and her mother bilked rich men on steamships. And to claim that she had an uncertain financial situation was preposterous; Charlie Chaplin was the wealthiest entertainer in the world.
Notwithstanding all the press, or perhaps because of it, the lawsuit was quietly settled. But the public now knew that she and Chaplin were married.
On September 17, 1940, Bautzer acquired another movie-star client. He and Bentley Ryan filed divorce papers on behalf of Carole Landis, a striking twenty-one-year-old blonde. The former bit player had just been elevated to lead by Hal Roach with the caveman epic One Million B.C. Despite her tender years, Landis’s love life had already made headlines. In 1934, she married Irving Wheeler. Because she was fifteen, the marriage was annulled. Then she married him again, presumably to do it properly. In 1938, Wheeler suspected his wife was having an affair with director Busby Berkeley and sued the hapless dance auteur for stealing Landis’s affections. Landis convinced the court that there were no affections, stolen or otherwise, then divorced Wheeler. In 1940, Landis eloped with a new love, the once-divorced Willis Hunt Jr., a playboy described as a “young yachtsman and dealer of yachts.” Two months later, she hired Bautzer to handle her divorce from Hunt, claiming that he had treated her in a cruel and inhuman manner, embarrassing her with unprovoked physical and mental abuse. In early November, the divorcing couple glared at each other across the foyer of La Conga. He was leaving with sexy actress Martha O’Driscoll. She was arriving with the handsome and influential Cedric Gibbons, head of MGM’s art department.
On November 12, Superior Court judge Ingall W. Bull heard the Landis/Hunt divorce case. Obtaining the divorce and a favorable settlement for Landis was a foregone conclusion. For Bautzer, it was all fun. He and Landis gave a theatrical performance for a packed courtroom that included members of the press. Bautzer called his pretty client to the witness stand and led her through a well-prepared script. She wiped tears from doe-like eyes as she testified that she and Hunt frequently argued over her acting career. Before they married, he had been in favor of it, but he had since become violently opposed to it and developed an “ugly and surly” demeanor. He finally told her that he did not love her. She quoted him as saying: “I no longer care to have you as my wife.” It was just like a scene from a movie. When it was over, she and Bautzer might as well have taken a bow. Husband Hunt never even bothered to testify in his own defense; he knew he could not compete with his adorable wife’s emotional scene. He also knew that if he so much as uttered a word against her, Bautzer would have made him look like a heel on cross-examination. Before the judge could issue a ruling, an out-of-court property settlement was reached.
Landis later dated both Bautzer and Bentley Ryan. Bautzer would ultimately represent her in three divorce cases, a record for him. Sadly, she went on to commit suicide at age twenty-nine over a doomed love affair with married actor Rex Harrison. Hollywood blamed him for her death, and he did not receive any good roles for over ten years.
With the Goddard and Landis cases under his belt, more celebrities turned to him for legal services. In February 1941, Bautzer handled another high-profile divorce case—this one with some unusual twists. He and Ryan represented Marguerite Roach, the wife of comedy producer Hal Roach. Bautzer had been to many premieres and social events with the Roaches and knew them quite well. Roach was an industry pioneer from the silent era, renowned for teaming comic legends Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and for creating the Our Gang (a.k.a. Little Rascals) comedy shorts with child actors. Daughter Margaret Roach had visited Bautzer while he was in the hospital and had a crush on him. Marguerite was claiming that her husband had subjected her to mental cruelty.
In a surprise move, shortly after filing for divorce, Marguerite decided to drop her action in favor of a separation agreement. Her religious convictions would not allow a divorce, so she was willing to live apart from her husband. The couple agreed on a property settlement. Marguerite would receive a half interest in the Hal Roach Studios and title to their Beverly Hills home at 610 North Beverly Drive. Roach agreed to pay her one-third of his income, with a guaranteed minimum of $1,250 per month. Marguerite was given custody of nineteen-year-old Margaret. Their son, Hal Jr., was twenty-one and did not need a guardian.
But the truly shocking turn was still to come. On March 17, a few weeks after the property settlement was signed, Marguerite Roach suddenly died at age forty-five. Her estate, said to exceed $200,000, was left entirely to her two children. The family home was left to Margaret. Bautzer was named a trustee of Margaret’s inheritance, along with Hal Jr. and the Bank of America. At age thirty, Bautzer found himself managing the estate of a deceased client and minding her nineteen-year-old daughter. This was very mature work for a lawyer with less than five years of experience.
A month later, Hal Roach surprised Bautzer by asking him to draw up a petition to appoint him his daughter’s legal guardian. The legal brief stated that the guardianship was necessary to take proper care of Margaret’s property, which now included a quarter of Roach’s studio and the Beverly Hills home. That Roach would choose young Bautzer over his own divorce lawyer shows that he liked Bautzer—and, of course, there was another consideration: Bautzer was one of Margaret’s trustees, with a one-third vote in the management of her property until she turned twenty-one. Nevertheless, Bautzer assumed and discharged these added responsibilities without incident.
By May 1941, Bautzer had decided that he deserved a break from his growing legal practice. He and Dorothy Lamour embarked for Hawaii for a monthlong vacation. Bautzer was late to the dock. Waiting for him to board the Matson liner Lurline, Lamour burst into tears, fearing that he would miss the boat. He arrived just in time to run up the gangplank before it was taken away. An alert press photographer snapped a shot of the couple just before the ship sailed; they look stylish but unhappy that their picture is being taken during a private moment. He is wearing a tropical-weight suit and peering over his shoulder. She is wearing a light-colored dress with a large white corsage and a peaked turban.
Their luck did not improve in Honolulu. Bautzer and Lamour were in a restaurant when people at an adjoining table made unflattering remarks about Lamour. Bautzer jumped to his feet, removed his dinner jacket, and said, “You want to make something of it?” The offending party backed down. Shortly afterward, Lamour made unkind remarks about the inhabitants of Honolulu. An argument ensued. The press picked it up. An editorial on the front page of the Honolulu Advertiser urged the couple to go back to where they came from. They took the hint and ended their trip early. This was the first time the press had reported Bautzer’s tendency to get into public fights. It would not be the last.
Back in Hollywood, Lamour and Bautzer continued dating. “Greg and I had lots of fun, some serious moments, too, and, of course, lots of intrigue,” wrote Lamour. “We would break up for a couple of days, make up again, then break up a couple of weeks later.” At one point, he presented her with his mother’s diamond solitaire. But their engagement was soon overshadowed by world events. “I had just taken a company out of receivership,” recalled Bautzer. “I could see myself president of that company—a millionaire for sure in three years. Boy, I had the world by the tail. Then they bombed Pearl Harbor.”
The Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, pulled the United States into World War II. Three days later, Lamour was waiting for Bautzer to pick her up. It was her twenty-seventh birthday. He had sent her a corsage of white orchids. She had just finished pinning it to her dress when the lights went out. It was an air raid. It angered her—the interruption, the inconvenience, the senselessness of war. She had friends in Hawaii and was upset by the Japanese bombing. It was then that she decided to use her name to sell war bonds.
This gave Lamour an excuse to end the engagement. She told Bautzer she needed to devote herself to the war cause. They could not go on seeing one another. “I knew that Greg was not a one-woman man, but that I was definitely a one-man woman,” wrote Lamour in her autobiography. Romantic questions that would have been important a year earlier, even a month earlier, suddenly lost their gravity when compared with the urgent need to mobilize.
Unknown to Lamour, Bautzer had already performed covert war services for his country. Services that would remain a secret his entire life.