When the firm of Bautzer, Grant, Youngman & Silbert moved to Beverly Hills in the early 1950s, its new offices were nothing special. The space they leased at 356 North Camden Drive was just a hallway on the second floor, with a door to each office. Gordon Youngman left after only a few years and formed a new firm with attorney Fred Leopold. Together they did the legal work for Disneyland. In gratitude, Walt Disney painted the name of YOUNGMAN & LEOPOLD on a second-story window on Main Street, which remains more than half a century later.
After only a few years on Camden Drive, Bautzer, Grant & Silbert moved to 190 North Canon Drive, also in Beverly Hills. When Bernard Silbert left, the firm became simply Bautzer & Grant. Arnold Grant’s offices were in New York, but he frequently came to Los Angeles; similarly, Bautzer frequently traveled to New York. Also practicing in Los Angeles with Bautzer were partners Gerald Lipsky, Woody Irwin, and Jerald Schutzbank. By this time, Bautzer was representing producers, directors, and actors in contract negotiations. The firm’s clients included Katharine Hepburn, Jack Benny, Cyd Charisse, Judy Garland, Farley Granger, Rock Hudson, Gene Kelly, Mario Lanza, Sophia Loren, Robert Mitchum, Patti Page, and Merle Oberon. They also represented producers such as Walter Wanger, Jerry Wald, and Ray Stark.
The new offices were as glamorous as the firm’s clientele. They occupied the four-story building’s entire penthouse suite. Bautzer’s secretary Lea Sullivan recalled, “You got off the elevator and went into a beautiful circular lobby with a door leading to each partner. There were other attorneys there, but their offices were down a hallway.” The Beverly Hills Brown Derby delivered lunch every day, which Bautzer usually ate in his office when he wasn’t taking business lunches.
Bautzer had been living at the Bel-Air Hotel for the past ten years, in a bungalow off a courtyard at the corner of Stone Canyon and Chalon Roads. While there, he socialized with superstar Clark Gable, who also occasionally lived at the hotel. Both men had been involved with Joan Crawford and were still friends with her. They would take long drives together in Gable’s Jaguar to unwind. Bautzer’s hair had started to turn prematurely silver, a dramatic contrast to his youthful physique.
In September 1955, Bautzer and his partner Arnold Grant went to a cocktail party at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The event was a swanky one. The famed hostess Cobina Wright was honoring Madame Wellington Koo, ex-wife of the Chinese politician V. K. Wellington Koo. Bautzer stood with Grant, surveying the party. “You see that girl over there?” asked Bautzer. Grant spied a tall, slender brunette across the room and nodded. “Her name is Dana Wynter,” said Bautzer, “and I’m going to marry her.”
Bautzer’s interest in Wynter was picked up by the Hollywood Reporter: “Greg Bautzer came stag, took one look at Dana Wynter, and sparks flew. Wynter was with someone else, but Bautzer chums noted that he didn’t leave the affair until he had her phone number.” But getting her phone number was not enough to get him a date. Wynter had just finished a film and she was leaving town to publicize it. She declined his first invitation.
Dana Wynter was twenty-four, five-foot-seven, with raven hair. She was born Dagmar Winter in Berlin, the daughter of a German surgeon and a Romanian mother, raised first in England and then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where her father took his practice after Britain nationalized heath care. She studied medicine at Rhodes University in South Africa, the only girl in a class of 150. The school’s drama society sparked her interest in acting, so she returned to London. While learning her craft, she played bit parts in a few films, acted on London radio with Orson Welles in The Private Life of Harry Lime, and met composer Richard Rodgers, who wanted her to play Liat in the Broadway revival of South Pacific. She lost the part because she was taller than Herb Banke, the actor playing Lieutenant Joseph Cable; Carol Lawrence got the job instead.
Wynter went to New York anyway and got her first role on television in Robert Montgomery Presents when Eva Gabor dropped out at the last minute. After appearing on other “golden age of television” shows such as Suspense and Studio One, she was signed by Charles K. Feldman’s Famous Artists Agency and was approached by Columbia and MGM. She turned them down and signed a seven-year contract with Twentieth Century-Fox.
The cultured young woman created a stir upon her arrival in Hollywood, a community that was susceptible to a British accent. She was sponsored by Samuel Goldwyn’s wife Frances, who sat her next to composer Cole Porter at a dinner party. Soon Porter was throwing a party for Wynter. When Darryl F. Zanuck, who ran Fox, called her to his office, she feared that with his reputation for casting-couch moves, he would make a pass at her. To Wynter’s relief, he kept his hands to himself. “You know,” said Zanuck, “you are the last woman I’ve signed as a contract player. I haven’t had much luck with women. I hope I will with you.” He was referring, no doubt, to Bella Darvi, the Polish starlet whom he had launched with great fanfare, and to an utterly hostile reception, both critically and commercially.
When Wynter got home from her meeting with Zanuck, she was surprised to receive a call from him. “You know, Miss Wynter,” he said. “I think you’re in luck. You’re going to have a lead in a picture, but I can’t tell you what it is yet.” It turned out to be a drama of Southern bigotry called The View from Pompey’s Head. Zanuck left town, tired of Hollywood politics and gossip, so producer Buddy Adler, a longtime friend and client of Bautzer’s, took charge of the studio and The View from Pompey’s Head.
While on the press junket for the film, Wynter stopped at the William Morris Agency in New York. There she met the independent producer Walter Wanger. He had recently signed Vera Miles for his next project, a science-fiction movie based on Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers. He took one look at Wynter and saw a body worth snatching. “There’s somebody new in town called Dana Wynter,” he told the owners of Allied Artists. “I want her.” In short order, Miles was out and Wynter was in. Invasion of the Body Snatchers had just finished shooting when Wynter met Bautzer.
Bautzer launched his own campaign. As Wynter passed through Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago on her publicity tour for The View from Pompey’s Head, she was met by masses of flowers and by long-distance invitations from her new admirer. Bautzer offered to fly to wherever she was just to take her to dinner. Wynter declined, saying she was too busy, but he kept calling. Her last stop was at the premiere in New York. She was being entertained there by former beau Viscount Esmond Rothermere, who had flown from London to see her.* Bautzer called and asked to meet her at the airport upon her return to Los Angeles. She weakened momentarily and told Bautzer her estimated time of arrival. “I’ll be there,” he said. “I’ll be at the plane and I’ll take you to dinner.”
She returned the first week of November. As promised, Bautzer met Wynter at her plane. He then took her to the Traders, an exotic Tiki restaurant in the newly opened Beverly Hilton Hotel. They ate a Chinese-themed meal and then went to Ciro’s. To her surprise, Wynter found herself disarmed by Bautzer’s sense of humor and charm. Later she would understand that the secret to his seductive skill was his ability to concentrate on the woman he was with. He listened carefully to everything she said and spoke little about himself. It made her believe she had his complete attention, as though she was the only person in the world. “Every woman fell for it,” said Wynter.
However, even with all his charm, when Bautzer got to “You know, Dana, I’m going to marry you,” she nearly fell off her seat laughing. After she composed herself, she replied, “You’re a terribly nice man, but you’re the last man in the world that I would ever marry.” Bautzer was hurt.
“Why?” he implored. “Why do you say that?”
“Well,” she said, “we have nothing in common. And you have an appalling reputation. It’s very nice of you to say it, but there’s no way.” Finally it was time to call it an evening. “Look, I really have to go. I’m a bit tired.”
Despite laughing at his marriage prediction, she and Bautzer started to date. Even years later, Wynter could not completely explain the mutual attraction. They were so fundamentally different. Their backgrounds, interests, and tastes were poles apart. She was well read. He rarely read anything other than legal journals. On the rare occasions when he did read for relaxation, he read detective novels by Raymond Chandler. Wynter knew that Bautzer had the capacity for more worthwhile pursuits, but she also knew that his life revolved around work. That meant shoptalk and gossip. Who was doing what to whom. Who was in power. Who was out.
Wynter was very different from other women Bautzer dated. Bautzer’s previous romances had been with forceful, domineering movie stars. To carve a career and become a star, each of them had climbed from an unfortunate background and fought their way to the top. When Bautzer went on a date with such a woman, he felt that she was constantly jockeying for position, competing with him for the limelight. Not Dana Wynter. In conversation she let him take the lead. If at times she appeared reticent, it was more from reserve than aloofness. She had little in common with the power brokers who exchanged shoptalk with Bautzer and who knew only the business side of movies. She was fascinated by the aesthetic aspects of filmmaking. She enjoyed meeting Hollywood personalities who thought of film as art, innovative directors like Rouben Mamoulian, who had made the masterly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Queen Christina. When she met studio executives, she was disappointed to learn that most of them cared nothing for the creative side of filmmaking; they were interested only in a product—in financing, packaging, and selling it.
Despite her misgivings, Wynter liked that Bautzer was a lawyer and not an actor; she could never imagine being involved with an actor. Bautzer was twenty years older, but this did not faze her; she preferred the company of older men. And when Wynter spent time alone with Bautzer, she found him enchanting. “He was an original,” she would say years later.
They shared an offbeat sense of humor. Hers was “dark and wicked.” His was “loony.” On a plane trip to New York with Bautzer and David O. Selznick, Wynter took part in a practical joke played on talent agent Ray Stark. While Stark slept, Bautzer and Selznick dared her to take a pair of scissors and cut Stark’s trouser legs above the knees. To their delight, she did it. When the plane landed in New York, Stark had no choice but to wear his newly shortened pants onto the tarmac, even though there was snow on the ground. Reporters meeting the plane were mystified. What made the prank even more satisfying was that Stark never suspected Wynter. He blamed a flight attendant who he thought resented him for not getting her into the movies after he had gotten her into his bed.
In another airborne prank, Bautzer and his screenwriter friend Charles Lederer goaded Wynter into sitting next to Random House publisher Bennett Cerf disguised as a flashy French actress, complete with blonde wig, fake eyelashes, and an excess of lipstick. Traveling next to Cerf, Wynter learned that blondes really do have more fun: the publisher paid her an inordinate amount of attention. When she removed her disguise, Cerf was embarrassed.
Bautzer also encouraged Wynter to be more spontaneous. “Let’s go to Mexico,” he would say at the spur of the moment. She would protest, saying that she needed to pack for the change in weather. “For heaven’s sake,” Bautzer would cut in. “Don’t bother about that. We’ll pick up a few bits and pieces. Let’s just go!” So she went, and it was laughter all the way. When they arrived, there was more laughter, as Bautzer impressed her by water-skiing backwards. Bautzer thought Wynter had the “nerves of a burglar,” and he liked the way she handled a car, driving as fast as he did. In fact, Bautzer liked most everything about Dana Wynter.
What Wynter did not like about Bautzer was the intrusiveness of his social circle. When she entered a room with him, she sensed that there were women who had dated him, or who were friends with women who had. They regarded her as nothing more than the latest in a long line of conquests. Even so, she found herself responding to him. He was attentive and generous. One time he sent a parasol covered with fresh gardenias. Another time he sent a phonograph with a romantic record on it. According to Hedda Hopper, he also sent a $12,000 full-length black mink coat and a sable stole, and he put at her disposal both a chauffeured limousine and an airplane. “How can you not marry a man like that?” asked her coworkers.
They conducted their romance discreetly. Bautzer had recently moved from his bungalow at the Bel-Air Hotel to the Beverly Hilton, as the first occupant of its penthouse. Wynter was living in a two-story wood-shingled cottage nestled behind the Mormon Temple above Santa Monica Boulevard. Bautzer also owned a house in Palm Springs. Wynter spent weekends there with him, hanging out at his favorite celebrity hot spot, the Racquet Club, which was just across the street. In January 1956, he won a mixed doubles tennis tournament there with partner Nancy Kiner against a field of eighty other teams. The pair defeated Barbara Kimbrell and Marion Hawkes 6–3, 7–5 in the semifinals and then trumped Pat Heard and Tommy Cook 6–4, 6–1 in the finals.
In April 1956, over a Chinese dinner at the Palm Springs Beach-comber restaurant, Bautzer proposed to Wynter. She accepted, contingent on her parents’ permission. She flew home to Africa, and on May 3, announced her engagement at a government reception for her and her father in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. A reporter asked Bautzer if he really planned to marry Wynter. After all, he had been engaged numerous times. Bautzer trotted out the well-rehearsed reply. “I hope I’m that lucky!” This time he meant it. “Greg intended to go to Africa with me to ask my parents formally for my hand in marriage,” Wynter explained to Louella Parsons, “but some unexpected business came up and he couldn’t make the trip. But he talked to my parents in Africa by long-distance telephone and they gave their blessing.” When Bautzer met Wynter at the airport on her return, he surprised her with a string trio that played “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” from the recent hit musical My Fair Lady.
Being engaged was one thing; getting married was another. Like his father, Bautzer winced at the idea of staging a large-scale wedding in a caste-conscious community. He asked Wynter to plan a small wedding with him. He even asked her to forgo an engagement ring. She did not object, because she had never accepted jewelry from men. Bautzer was perhaps worried that a long, conspicuous engagement might draw unwanted interference—that there were people who would try to break them up. His fears were not mere paranoia. Bautzer’s past did invade their lives at Teddy Stauffer’s newly opened Villa Vera Hotel in Acapulco, where Bautzer and Wynter were celebrating their engagement. At first it seemed innocent. A mariachi band came out of nowhere and began serenading the lovebirds with “Piel Canela.”
“The moon was high and the stars were shining and it was absolutely magical,” recalled Wynter. “Greg went forward to give the man some money. The man said ‘No, no, no, no. We wouldn’t dream of accepting any money for it.’ At that point I burst into tears because I thought it was extraordinary, a beautiful gesture, and, oh my gosh, the Mexicans, aren’t they sensitive and lovely.” As it transpired, they had already been paid—by Mari Blanchard, who was staying at the hotel. The leader of the band handed Bautzer a note from his former lover. She had hoped to lure Bautzer to her cabana. “I was shocked,” said Wynter. “It was the first time I had been at the receiving end of something quite as unattractive as that. Greg, of course, was furious. Absolutely livid.”
When Wynter shopped for a wedding dress, she went to Saks Fifth Avenue on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. She swore the sales personnel to secrecy and chose a Victorian-style gown, short in the front and longer in the back, with leg-of-mutton sleeves. A thoughtful salesperson lent her a blue garter from her own family.
On June 10, 1956, Bautzer and Wynter were married by the Reverend Charles H. Burrill at the Church of the Wayfarer in Carmel, California. The only friend present was Joe Schenck, who served as best man; the aging mogul had encouraged Bautzer to marry Wynter. Ashton A. Stanley, owner of La Playa Hotel, where they were staying, gave the bride away. “Now, what about the ring?” asked the minister.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Bautzer. “I’ve forgotten the ring!” He called around the Monterey Peninsula for a ring. When Wynter saw it, she was disappointed. It had baguette diamonds, which she disliked, but it was the only ring available, so they proceeded with the ceremony.
After the ceremony, the newly married Bautzers realized that they had a problem. They needed to alert the press, and that meant calling one of the two gossip columnists who ruled Hollywood. But which one? If they called Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons would be furious and they might be blackballed in the Hearst press. If they called Parsons, Hopper would lash out at them in the Los Angeles Times. “You know,” said Bautzer, “I think we had better call Louella.” Wynter pointed out that Hopper had become a great pal. “Well,” he said, “you can’t call them both. There’s always one who has to be told first. So I think we had better make it Louella.” The decision was likely influenced by Bautzer’s business relationship with Marion Davies, mistress of the late William Randolph Hearst and a major stockholder in the Hearst publishing empire. As might be expected, Hopper was piqued and immediately told her syndicated readership that the marriage would not last.
A few weeks after the wedding, jeweler Herb Tobias called the bride. “Dana, there’s a wedding present for you down here,” he said, “but you’ve got to choose it yourself.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake. Who is it from?”
“I’m not allowed to tell you. It’s a secret.”
“Well, I can’t accept jewelry from someone I don’t know. So, no, thank you. I’m not coming down.”
“Oh, Dana!” he sniffed. “All right, I’ll tell you, but don’t tell him I did. It’s Joe Schenck. He’s very eager to give you something, but he thinks you should have the choice. He’s picked out three things.” There was a heavy diamond bracelet, a watch set in a diamond bracelet, and a ring in the form of a daisy. This last intrigued her. It had a round central diamond that was surrounded by petals made of diamonds; the curled stem formed the ring. It was not as valuable as the bracelet or watch, but she was taken with it. “I’m so glad you chose that,” Tobias smiled. “It was Joe’s first choice.” Wynter liked her husband’s best friend very much. She was impressed by Schenck’s lack of pretension. “He was what he was,” she recalled. “I liked him for that, and I think he felt that.” On occasion Bautzer would have a jeweler call to say that he had found an engagement-style ring for her. “No thank you, Greg,” she would say. “It’s too late now, and anyway, I don’t need it. I have this lovely ring that Joe gave me. And how many rings does a person need? So thank you very much, but no thank you.”
The newlyweds purchased a house at 750 Lausanne Road in Bel Air. But when they were ready to move in, the previous owner was still there. For several weeks they lived in Bautzer’s old bungalow at the Bel-Air Hotel. When they finally did move in, they found that the owner had taken all the door handles with him, inside and out. Still, Wynter was relieved that the house was fresh, with no memories of Bautzer’s former lady friends. Other than clothes, Bautzer had few possessions. The only thing Wynter recalled him owning was an eighteenth-century figurine of a man in a long yellow jacket.
Wynter found married life with Bautzer different from their courtship. The fireside intimacy was replaced by a sparkling conviviality. He was always entertaining guests. It took Wynter a while to accustom herself to the social whirl. She hired a chef named Francis Simini to cook Italian food for parties. She got to know the people whom her husband counted among his closest friends, industry veterans such as director Mervyn LeRoy, producer Jerry Wald, and screen-writer Charles Lederer. It was as though Bautzer existed in the center of the motion picture industry. One evening Wynter enjoyed a rare treat: Ben Hecht, considered to be among the greatest screenwriters and playwrights in the business, read a new play of his to her in their living room.
Bautzer was fond of comedians and sometimes he would introduce new talent to Hollywood. Bob Newhart was performing at the Crescendo in San Francisco when he got a call asking if he would come to Los Angeles a day early and perform at a party being thrown by the Bautzers at Romanoff’s.
Newhart recalled the occasion: “My record was just starting to get noticed at the time. I got a call from my agent saying that Bautzer was offering me $1,500 to perform. That was how much I was getting paid for an entire week, doing eight shows, so of course I said ‘yes.’ Before the show I went to his house on Lausanne in Bel Air and met him and his wife Dana. We discussed the kind of material I would be doing, and that was it. But Bautzer didn’t prepare me at all for who would be in the audience. Before I went on he introduced me, and when I stepped out and saw who was there I was in shock. It was the cream of Hollywood. They were all his clients. It turned out to be an informal audition to the big time. I looked one way and there was George Burns. Seated in the back of the room was Danny Kaye. Up front was Jack Benny. When I got to the ‘Driving Instructor’ routine, I looked over to where the imaginary student was supposed to be, and Benny is right in my line of sight and I know he knows I’m timing it wrong, but Jack was laughing anyway. He was a wonderful audience.”
Another swell party was the one the couple gave for King Hussein of Jordan. It was thrown together on a minute’s notice at the request of the US State Department. The king was fed up with formal dinners and wanted to relax one evening, meet movie stars and, if possible, some pretty girls. The Bautzers’ home was besieged with security people, and they were asked not to invite any Jews, a request they refused to honor. King Hussein enjoyed meeting the stars and was enchanted with a petite brunette actress named Susan Cabot, who had recently appeared in the “B” picture The Wasp Woman. After the party, the king asked if he could borrow the Bautzers’ home in Palm Springs for the weekend, which he spent with Cabot. In real life, Cabot was no WASP. Her real name was Harriet Shapiro, and when the king found out she was Jewish, he had to end the affair.*
Dinner parties were an essential part of the Hollywood social scene. As Wynter soon learned, the typical dinner was different than the one at which she had met Cole Porter. The purpose was not to relax and entertain but to grease the wheels of commerce. Guests ate quickly. After dinner the women retired to one room for gossip. The men went to another for cigars, cards, and shoptalk. Wynter was at first bored, then irritated by the ritual. She wanted people to mingle and chat as they did at the home of David Selznick and Jennifer Jones. Wynter regarded Selznick as the last of the intellectual producers, in whose home she could meet the multitalented Leonard Bernstein or Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita.
Wynter also had to adjust to her husband’s culture of gambling. After Bautzer finished a day at the office, he inevitably slid into a game of gin rummy at Charles Lederer’s home. Wynter was hard-pressed to understand the custom. Bautzer explained that he needed to unwind from the day’s pressures. Playing cards cut him off from his worries, like the dropping of a theater curtain. Wynter understood his need to relax, but she was appalled by the stakes: tens of thousands were wagered. During stays in Palm Springs, Bautzer joined the same kind of games. He even bet on his tennis matches at the Racquet Club. Everything was a gamble and not for fun. Wynter saw friendships endangered and careers jeopardized. “The games were too fierce,” she said. “It wasn’t just competition on a friendly, sporting level. It became much more complicated than that. ‘Macho.’ The winning of points off people, testing their nerve.” Dick Dorso had been playing tennis with Bautzer for years. “Let me tell you about Bautzer,” he warned one opponent. “At one point in the set, when he feels it’s apropos, he’s going to give you a bad call. Don’t blow up. That’s what that call is designed to do, to get you so mad that your game goes downhill.” After seeing her husband do this a number of times, Wynter had had enough. “I couldn’t bear to watch it,” she said. “I told Greg I wouldn’t go to the Racquet Club any more.”
Wynter found Palm Springs society equally unprepossessing, a parade of sunbaked old men escorting young girls and leather-skinned biddies wearing short pink tennis dresses and socks finished at the ankle with a bauble. To her there was nothing worse than a Racquet Club dowager dressed in a bathing suit and wearing an enormous diamond ring. At first she had been fascinated, for she had never seen “this kind of showing off.” But then she became disenchanted. “I just missed that period when there was style and there were beautiful people there. I came in at the end of that. The place seemed to be full of old furriers.”
Back in town, as the 1950s came to a close, there was still glamour. Stars dressed to the nines for premieres and parties. In July 1957, the Bautzers attended the Paramount premiere of Beau James, Bob Hope’s dramatic debut. Also attending were Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Fred MacMurray, Burt Lancaster, Ann Miller, and Anthony Perkins. Indicative of Bautzer’s social standing was his presence at two Romanoff’s restaurant events. The first was an A-list gathering hosted by Mike Romanoff himself. Guests included Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Dean Martin, William Holden, and Elizabeth Taylor. The second was a society event hosted the next evening by Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. Motion picture people were not invited. The Bautzers were.
It was at another party at Romanoff’s that then-actor Ronald Reagan sought Bautzer’s advice on going into politics. Reagan had served numerous one-year terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and he frequently attended the same parties as the Bautzers. Wynter thought Reagan dull. Whenever she saw him he told her the same story about teaching his son to swim. One night in the early 1960s, the Reagans cornered Bautzer: “Greg, we’d like to ask your advice on something,” said wife Nancy. “Could we go upstairs for a quiet moment? You and Dana come up with us.” The upstairs room at Romanoff’s was empty. “Listen, Greg,” said Reagan, “I know your involvement in politics. I know that you ran Earl Warren’s campaign [for governor].* I’d like to ask your advice about something. I’m thinking of running for governor. I wonder what you’d think about that.”
Bautzer paused and looked at him. “You know, Ronnie,” he said, “I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know what you stand for. You have no shape. People don’t have an image of you, of what you stand for. So—I wouldn’t vote for you.” Nancy Reagan sucked in her breath. Her cheek bones protruded. She grew rigid. “But if you want that office,” Bautzer continued, “then I think you have to sit down and figure out what you’re going to stand for and then make that clear—to everybody.”
A short time later, in early 1963, Bautzer was appointed by Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown to the State College Board of Trustees. After Reagan was elected governor in 1967, the future president removed Bautzer from the Board of Trustees and appointed his own replacement. Despite this, when Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the presidential race of 1980, he sent Bautzer an invitation to the Presidential Inaugural Ball. Bautzer declined.
During the early part of their marriage, Wynter’s film career was thriving. In 1956, she received the Golden Globe Award for most promising newcomer. In 1957, she starred with Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier in Something of Value. The next year, she made In Love and War with Robert Wagner, another Bautzer client. In 1959, she starred with James Cagney in Shake Hands with the Devil and was cast in Twentieth Century-Fox’s Sink the Bismarck. But Dana did not get all the parts she thought she deserved. Studio chief Buddy Adler, her husband’s client and friend of twenty years, offered her inferior parts and suspended her when she turned down unsuitable scripts. His action was inexplicable. Wynter later came to believe that he was holding a grudge from their first meeting, when he had made a pass and she had deflected it. Wynter wanted out to work in television. Adler eventually relented, and she was allowed to appear in the prestigious Playhouse 90 on CBS.
Her career took a backseat, though, to planning a family. In late January 1959, Wynter was admitted to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital to deliver a baby. Wearing a mask and gown, Bautzer went into the operating room to get her consent for a Caesarean section. On January 29, 1959, Wynter gave birth to a ten-pound baby boy. He was named Mark Regan Bautzer. The hospital tried to accommodate 137 floral arrangements. While it might be thought that the flowers had more to do with Bautzer’s power in the industry than Wynter’s career, she was in fact a star in her own right, receiving abundant amounts of publicity in movie magazines on a monthly basis. On February 3, Bautzer showed up at the hospital in a new station wagon to drive his family home.
Unfortunately for Bautzer, the demands of his career would always create competition for the time he spent with his family. And when it came to his wealthiest and most important client, it was always difficult for Bautzer to say no.
*Rothermere was thirty-two years older than Wynter. At the time they dated, he was a twice-divorced former member of Parliament who owned the second-biggest-selling newspaper in the United Kingdom, the Daily Mail.
*In the book Next to Hughes, Robert Maheu asserts that it was he who was first contacted by the government to arrange the party for King Hussein, and that he asked the Bautzers to host it at their home. Maheu was an ex-FBI agent and covert CIA operative hired by Howard Hughes to serve as head of his operations. Regardless of whether Maheu’s account of the party’s origin is correct, Maheu confirmed the Cabot affair, adding that she had actually traveled with the king all the way to Jordan, and that Bautzer was called upon to sneak her out of the country to avoid an international scandal. Maheu could not say how Bautzer got her out of Jordan unnoticed, but Maheu was very impressed that he accomplished the delicate maneuver.
*Bautzer was not tied to either the Republican or the Democratic Party. He backed candidates he admired regardless of their affiliation. He supported Republican Earl Warren in the 1940s and ‘50s and Democrat Pat Brown in the 1960s, soliciting large donations for each of their campaigns. He gave donations to both parties for his entire life.