The Happy Years (1944-48)

by Cecil Beaton

  ‘With a good cameraman you’d be far more beautiful than ever.’

  ‘That’s not the point — I’d know the way I look. I’m a perfectionist; it would make me uncomfortable if things weren’t as they should be: I’d be humiliated. I remember the first time I made a film in Sweden. I was with older actors, and they were horribly frank about the things that happened to their faces in front of the camera: they described how their chins would go out this way if their heads went that way, so they asked that I should walk round the other side of a table in order that they could show their best profile. It was horribly tedious! But what would happen to me? Even if the public didn’t notice these things, I would! And that would be obnoxious! No — in certain ways I miss the life, but I’m not an actor who must go on in any circumstances. I’m quite modest in my demands, and I don’t have to do it, so what’s the point?’

  She admitted she was still discussing the possibility of playing Georges Sand, but the script was not ready. I could see Greta wearing velvet trousers and smoking a cigar. From Joan of Arc to Christina of Sweden the idea of women in cavalier clothes has a visual aspect that is appealing to her; she would have liked to play St Francis of Assisi, also Lorenzaccio and Dorian Gray. Travesti has obviously titillated her and, since early days, she has enjoyed wearing the more romantic of men’s apparel in her films. Ventriloquists’ dolls and pierrots possess an ambiguity that delights her sense of the perverse. This is, no doubt, the reason why stories have been circulated about her having odd tendencies. Any individual in the public eye is likely to be gossiped about by those who enjoy muddying the waters, and nowhere is rumour and scandal more vicious than in the ‘home of moving pictures’. It is not to be wondered that Greta should be accused of ‘everything in the book’. She certainly enjoys adulation, and is flirtatious by nature. Her appeal is not restricted to the opposite sex. She has long been the object of devotion of many women and children as well as men; in fact, her studio considered that the greatest part of her box-office draw was to women. Homosexuality among men is a subject that distresses her, and she insists that it should never be made obvious that a man possesses instincts which might offend the more ‘normal’ population. As for lesbianism, the idea is repellent to her. She does not so much disapprove as feel that it is ‘against nature’, and she is unsympathetic and recoiling in her attitude. She prefers to ignore the subject which has undoubtedly caused her much distress.

  ‘Georges Sand could make a wonderful story, but it’s eight years since my last film; the war came in the meantime, and there are such difficulties in the world today. My mother-country is in such a poor state — everyone’s money frozen there — and in France and England there’s so much unrest and lack of responsibility — perhaps the same here... There is nothing to go to California for — just an unfurnished house with dreary rayon curtains that are too short and the ugly, ready-made sofas.’

  Yet, although she has long been away from work, she is still most coveted by the film world. Her name is a symbol — a standard of comparison; of this she seems utterly innocent. The greatest impresarios throughout the world would give her anything to work for them but, she says, she has grown old, wrinkled and haggard. The impresarios protest: ‘You are the Divina.’ Oblivious of this fact, alone she strides along Third Avenue, a lonely figure, on her humble errands while a whole world waits for her to carry the torch to brighter vistas.

  Later, at the theatre, she said: ‘Isn’t it strange that these actors enjoy getting up and performing in this way night after night, shouting, ranting, and working themselves so hard?’

  I had previously heard her admit that she dislikes actors for talking only about themselves, and I had been surprised when once, on Fifth Avenue, one of her former ‘leading men’ had walked towards us. I murmured the name, ‘Robert Montgomery’, and Greta immediately ducked. I must admit that Montgomery also looked steadfastly across the street. Tonight I realized how utterly foreign she is to the actors’ code of life. We sat in the crowded, over-heated theatre in seats that were too far back to make it anything but an effort to listen to Shakespeare. The actors, untrained in classical verse and with little knowledge of voice production, did not help to clarify the meaning. G. could not bear the mumbled butchering of the lines by the minor actors, and became exasperated at the amount the central characters talked. ‘Why doesn’t Katherine Cornell just ask the messenger his news instead of talking to him by the hour? And they’re so busy! Why do they keep running in and out?’ Greta could see only an abstract design of movements. Her attitude throughout was down-to-earth, and even as the tragedy moved to a crescendo, she was not moved. In fact, while Cleopatra was being hoisted high into the monument to take the dying Antony into her arms, a man behind us suddenly had a noisy attack of indigestion, and we were shocked into gales of forbidden laughter. His belchings and rumblings and explosions were so appalling that tears poured down our cheeks and our shoulders shook like jelly, while the man, at the back of our necks, continued to make these awful stomach noises.

  When, at last, we left the gloom of Egypt it was to go to the Ritz Tower and drink beer squatting in semi-darkness. Greta said: ‘How sweet that, for me, you sat through that play for a second time! Now, you wouldn’t do that if we had been married five years.’ Greta elaborated on life after marriage. ‘You would say: “Run and get the spray, will you, dear; I see these roses are beginning to get the blight!” Eventually, I’d get so tired of fagging after you that I’d say: “Jehovah, come here!”, and there would be standing by a little negro boy who would do all the running about.’

  Suddenly G. said: ‘Isn’t it strange to come back to these rooms tonight and find they have hung up entirely new curtains, and now I cannot for the life of me remember what they were before — and I’ve been living here for two months.’

  Six o’clock non-arrival — generally so punctual. At last a moonstruck clown presented itself with wild eyes and hair parted in the middle in hay-like wisps. ‘Mr Tennessee Williams, that little man, came to call on me, and we talked about nothing — the weather — and after a bit I said: “Well, I’ve got an appointment”, and he said: “Isn’t there a bar anywhere around here?” And I said: “Would you like some vodka?”, so we both drank vodka. But that didn’t loosen him up — we hadn’t got anything to say. He’s not interesting as a person: he is just a little man with a moustache. The Heavenly Father didn’t make him in the round. He is just not an enlightened person.’

  Williams is anxious that Greta should play Blanche du Bois in his Streetcar film. But she finds the character — a liar — a difficult and unsympathetic one. She went on to explain: ‘In a way I’ve always been a dreamer. In my childhood I came across brutality and the result lasted with me all my life, but I’m an honest, clear-cut person and see things very lucidly. I could never be an involved and complicated person: I’m too direct and too masculine. I couldn’t bear to tell lies, and see things round corners, like that girl in the play.’

  Williams, obviously dejected, suggested that perhaps Greta pays too much attention to plots. She told him that since she left the screen there had never been anything that she could possibly play — all parts are too tinlike her conception of life. ‘The only thing I would ever like to do is The Eagle with Two Heads. That has an atmosphere that appeals to me, and I’ve always wanted to play Elizabeth of Austria.’

  I kept looking at my watch. Two o’clock. 2.10. I left the restaurant and at the corner of the street the lights went red. Nothing to do but wait. Suddenly, at the same moment that she saw me, I saw Greta on the other side of the street. She looked at me with utter amazement, eyes absolutely wild and mouth wide open. This is the first time we have ever met accidentally on the streets. New York is so rambling, and its inhabitants so fast-moving and quickly snapped up in its canyons, that one seldom sees friends or acquaintances by chance. We greeted one another while, simultaneously, an opéra-bouffe-looking Italian gentleman with apointed moustache came up with an autograph req
uest which was refused. We started our walk, veering towards the west side from which one sees unexpectedly pretty aspects of the park. Greta told me that she had just been into a drug store and had said to the assistant: ‘I have a very peculiar request to make to you. Could you let me have a piece of string?’ She now proceeded to put the string around the waist of her mink coat in order to keep it from flying open. What other woman would be so direct and unaffected as to think of tying up her mink coat with string?

  We passed the animals in the Zoo. Greta said that one of them looked like me. It did. Again, at the Natural History Museum, she saw an animal — stuffed this time — that looked like me.

  I still cannot take in my great good fortune of having won her affection. However, the first electric excitement of our meetings has given way to a more natural and cosy feeling of friendship. Today in the cold we stopped at isolated places to embrace one another with tenderness rather than fervour. When we had to part company we did so with reluctance and a grand display of waving. The people on Sixty-Ninth Street thought us demented — we were. But it was fun to wave at Greta’s diminishing figure. A fluttering glove became a smaller and smaller speck, until she was finally hidden in the traffic morass of the city.

  Later that evening, I was hurrying on foot towards my dinner rendezvous, somewhat entertained by my thoughts, when in the dark I saw Greta and her friend flashing towards me. They were black shadows against the half-light, and they strode like mountaineers. ‘The little man’ was wrapped up as if in the Arctic, but Greta was like a great god striding along. They must have seen me in the distance and were both staring and amused. But Greta flashed me such a wonderfully broad and generous smile it was like a gay hand-shake — so full of friendship and friendliness. It was a moment of exhilaration for me, and I was delighted to see how these two were walking along with a large space between them, whereas when we walk we are hand-in-hand with our elbows brushing.

  Saturday evening, December 13th, 1947

  I got back from the Volpone movie to find that Miss Brown had called. I rang back, in fear lest I should wake Greta who has been ill with a bronchial cold. But no — she had put out the light hours ago, had not been able to sleep, had turned on the light and read a little, then later had still not slept. She said that a great gust of sorrow for herself had overtaken her. She felt wretched. I had given her Pavlik’s recipe of camphor, iodine, and alcohol to faire Écossais on her chest. She had done this, and she said she was painted like a savage. I then advised her to put a sock or something around her throat. She suggested: ‘A rope?’ She couldn’t think why she couldn’t sleep because she knew that I was at a cinema and therefore wasn’t thinking about her. However, now that we had talked she would, like a child, put her mind to it and use her will-power to lose consciousness.

  ‘Will you pray that I’m better in the morning?’

  ‘I certainly will. Do you pray?

  ‘Every night.’

  ‘Who do you pray to?’ I asked.

  ‘Jesus, but I don’t hang onto the end of the bed.’

  ‘Don’t you pray to the Almighty Father and the Holy Ghost?’ ‘No — I skip the Ghost.’

  ‘Goodnight, my archangel.’

  I was at a loss to know what to do with myself for Greta was unable to see me today: the poor thing is really ill, and must rest and take things calmly. However, if by afternoon she felt better, we might perhaps go out to breathe fresh air together. I waited most of the afternoon for her call then, having idled time away, I decided to go out for a hair-cut. Of course that caused the telephone to ring. ‘Cecil, are you busy? Are you doing anything?’ It was such a strange voice speaking in pathetic, plaintive tones that I was worried. She had seldom before started a conversation by using my Christian name, and this resembled a wail. She sounded utterly dejected. ‘I’ll meet you on Fifty-Eighth Street by the cinema,’ she said, slurring her words. ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘Oh, wretched — very bad’, and there was a catch in her voice. I ran out of the hotel to meet her, anxious as to the condition I might find her in. After a minute out-of-doors one’s features were frozen. It was far too cold for her to be out; the doctor had told her to stay in until she could take a trip to Florida. I ran along the street, and in the distance saw a very forlorn figure dragging towards me. As she approached, her face was turned somewhat sideways with an expression of great sadness. Weeping, with large tears coursing down her cheeks, she was in extremis, unmindful of passers-by. I did my best to comfort her there and then, and with my arm around her brought her back to my room. She appeared to be in a strange state. Later I discovered what had happened. She had been out to breathe in some fresh air but soon, finding herself frozen, had returned to her room. To overcome her numbness she had taken a swig of vodka which, because of low resistance, had gone straight to her head. She became dizzy, then lachrymose. Even now she made little sense, and kept throwing her head back and flicking her hair: her eyes were dazed. I wanted to give her hot milk and cover her with a rug, but she said ‘no’ to every suggestion. She was sweet, childish and pathetic and, after a time, calmed down. Later she lay on the sofa while I read letters from home to her. I had this morning received a batch of press-clippings from London unfavourably comparing Vivien Leigh’s Anna Karenina with hers. I thought misguidedly that Greta might be interested, but she was only sorry that, having worked so hard on a job, the new film was not a success for me.

  When, later, I took her back to the Tower she had recovered, though still alarmingly weak and tired.

  Monday, December 15th, 1947

  Another empty day was filled when, suddenly, Greta called to say she was well again. In the morning sunlight we set off in high spirits to walk in the snowy park. It was cold and our noses were red, but she said: ‘I don’t know why it is that I love snow so much. Perhaps because, as a child, I lived in a country where, for months on end, there is snow.’ We walked for several hours. We talked about deportment, and her having taken lessons on the ‘Butler method’ of straightening the back, and the correct and healthy way of walking. She had once seen the actress, Ina Claire, another Butler pupil, walking in a peculiar way. ‘What are you doing?’ Greta asked. Ina replied: ‘I’m re-hanging my body.’ Greta talked of The Paradine Case movie, about which she had been to see Selznick in his office with a view to playing the leading role. On being told the story she had said: ‘I don’t like people who commit murders. It is not interesting if someone puts poison in a glass by the blind man’s bedside. I don’t want to destroy — I want to be of help to people. I want to be of help to you, Mr Selznick.’ ‘Are you kidding?’ he asked. ‘No, I’m quite serious.’ So she left his office without the part — or regrets.

  On our way home she was worried when I conducted her across Park Avenue with the traffic-light in our favour so that the onrush of cars had to stop. She asked: ‘How do I know they’ve got any brakes?’ We wended our way to Second Avenue to see a carved angel that she had ordered for a Christmas present. On several occasions now we have visited this antique shop to make inquiries about the angel which was being stripped of some of its dirty gold paint. Each visit has been in vain. Then she was told: ‘The angel is not here; the man who is stripping it wants more money if he is to do any further work on it, but he wishes you to see it.’ So today we went to see the angel by appointment. We mounted some rickety stairs to a downtrodden attic, opened a door, and there, on the floor, the angel confronted us. Greta gave a moan of great pain. She was in the most extreme state of misery: it was as if she had witnessed the death of a friend. ‘Oh no! They’ve ruined it! It’s horrible what they’ve done! Oh no! How awful! No — we can’t stay here now.’ And before the villain appeared, Greta had gone down the stairs again. She turned to me as I followed, and looked up with eyes larger and more tragic than ever. ‘It was a beautiful angel, and they’ve ruined it. Oh, that’s a crime!’ Although she asked: ‘Do I have to pay for it?’, it was the wreckage of a work of art that upset her so much, and she added: ‘I co
uldn’t give that to anyone now.’

  Later I asked her if she had rung up the antique shop about the condition of the angel. ‘Oh no, I avoid unpleasant subjects. I adopt the ostrich policy: I turn away from anything I don’t want to face. But that doesn’t solve anything.’

  CHRISTMAS

  1947

  As Christmastime approached we ventured on shopping expeditions as far downtown as Macey’s. Here Greta tried to buy bargains, but anything cheap struck me as being hideous. I couldn’t pretend to be sympathetic to much of the junk put out as bait to desperate shoppers, and the heat and jostling humanity were somewhat overwhelming: it all seemed rather futile, but Greta enjoyed the challenge for she takes her Christmas seriously. In Sweden, she said, it had been lovely: dark by three o’clock in the afternoon, and all the rooms lit up, and fires and presents. This was the first year she had not had a Christmas tree. ‘Are you religious?’ I asked. ‘In my own way. We each have our own ideas. I don’t go to church and I don’t know how the Heavenly Father works, but I have my own instincts about what is right or wrong.’ She asked herself, without a reply: ‘Can there be any after-life? Do we continue after this? Is there any resurrection?’

  Coming away from the hectic crowds we were both quite upset to see an old woman fall flat on her face in the street. She had misjudged the depth of the kerb and fell on her nose, and her teeth and lips were covered with blood. ‘Oh, how sad life is!’ said Garbo.

  Although Greta had trudged along all day, still she was game to walk in the park. I dumped various parcels at my hotel and joined her for a twilight stroll. As the day faded from the sky the lights in the surrounding buildings appeared like diamonds in the icy fresh air: underfoot the crisp, crackly noises of frost. Except for ourselves the park was deserted. Greta remarked upon the paradox of the nearby mass of humanity, the noise and fug, while just around us were isolation and peace.