The Sun and Her Stars

by Donna Rifkind

  Salka herself was not a founding member of the EFF, though she hosted some membership meetings at her house. In her memoir she made a point to give proper credit to Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle for conceiving the idea and for attending tirelessly to its tedious and frustrating paperwork. Salka was both a contributor to the fund and, in her later years, a recipient of its largesse.

  Donations to the EFF helped refugees in two related ways: by collecting the papers that were necessary for them to enter the States and by providing them with the means to survive once they landed there. Although high-profile male members of the fund lent it credibility and prestige (Lubitsch and the agent Paul Kohner in particular), Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle exhibited a superhuman persistence in pursuing and processing the mountains of paperwork required to orchestrate the legal emigration of each refugee. For example, in order to leave France and enter the United States around that time, an emigrant needed the following documents: two notarized affidavits, one for sponsorship and one for support, along with bank statements; a U.S. visitor visa; a transit visa; an exit visa; a “biographical sketch,” preferably written by as distinguished a personage as one could muster; and a studio contract or some similar employment document to prove that one would not become a public charge in America.

  Aside from contributing part of her weekly salary to the fund, Salka supported it in further ways, primarily by obtaining affidavits. In her memoir, she named the friends whom she personally persuaded to sponsor refugees financially, including Dorothy Parker, Herman Mankiewicz, Donald Ogden Stewart, Miriam Hopkins, and Samuel Hoffenstein. Of these, she wrote that they “generously guaranteed with their bank accounts that none of my protégés would become a financial burden to the United States and I am happy to say that none ever did.” And Salka provided sustenance and support by taking refugees into her home, absorbing them into her social and professional networks, and helping to integrate them into American society with its often bewildering language and customs.

  In February 1939, Salka herself became a citizen of the United States. Although she hated “flag-waving and patriotic demonstrations,” she confessed to being moved as she said the oath of allegiance, feeling immensely grateful toward the country that had done so much for her. Foremost in her mind, though, was what she could do for others as a result of her new status. She expressed her hope that she could somehow get her mother and brother out of Poland as Hitler’s threats of war escalated and the panic of the hundreds of thousands trying to leave Europe intensified.

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  IN HOLLYWOOD, Metro’s internal politics ground onward. Salka’s participation on Ninotchka ended in mid-1939 when Gottfried Reinhardt was fired from the picture after arguing with Lubitsch about a plot point. Until then, Salka had wielded a fair amount of influence on the project, both as Garbo’s representative and in consultation with Gottfried. Evidence of her authority survives in a poignant letter to Salka dated March 1939 from the actor Alexander Granach, a former colleague of hers from Max Reinhardt’s Berlin theaters:

  Dear Salka Steuermann,

  It is said here that you and Gottfried Reinhardt are preparing a Greta Garbo film, one that takes place in the USSR. Since I worked there (as you know) for almost three years, I could firstly (what could I not?) play any role! And secondly, I could provide you with a bag full of experiences. I intend to go to Hollywood anyway…and without diplomacy. I know it’s hard, but I want you to take care of me a little. Salka Steuermann, if your lifeboat is full, I’m not burdened because I row very well. That’s all. And now I hope to hear from you soon, so that the ride should be a little easier for me.

  Some of Alexander Granach’s early life mirrored Salka’s. He was born to Jewish parents in Galicia, spoke at least six languages, and played a variety of leading roles in Weimar-era Berlin, including a complex and dignified Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. After 1933 he fled to the Soviet Union, where he ran a Yiddish theater in Kiev, then was arrested in 1937 by Stalin’s secret police as a suspected German spy. Narrowly escaping imprisonment and death, Granach managed to get to America by way of Switzerland. As he was casting about for a job in Hollywood, Granach wrote his droll entreaty to Salka, imagining her as the pilot of a rescue boat and using her maiden name, Steuermann, to point up its meaning of “helmsman.” Salka’s lifeboat was indeed full, but by all appearances she and Gottfried were able to make room for Granach. The actor joined Ninotchka’s cast in a plum role as Kopalski, one of the three Soviet commissars who become corrupted by capitalism on a visit to the West. Granach went on to play both antifascists and Gestapo agents during his Hollywood career, and during the war he wrote an extraordinary account of his life which was published in English as There Goes an Actor. His livelihood in exile would never have been assured without Salka’s role in his Hollywood launch.

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  IN JULY 1939, Berthold returned again to Mabery Road, having failed to renew his British work visa. The overstuffed house now included Salka’s brother Edward, who was visiting for the summer, along with all three Viertel boys. Among the steady stream of guests was Christopher Isherwood, who had arrived in Los Angeles in May. Salka wrote that Berthold found the atmosphere “too lively” and moved into the apartment over the garage. “Lively” more accurately meant tense. All the adults were worrying daily about the bad news coming from Europe and Salka mentioned also that she and Gottfried were frequently quarreling. Some of their arguments were large-scale. Gottfried would tell Salka that he wanted to leave her because he wanted to marry and have children; but “he always came back and told me that he could not live without me,” Salka recalled in her diary in 1963. And others were minor: “Gottfried liked me to get furious at him and then cajole and seduce me afterwards,” she recalled. “It made him feel irresistible. And how indignant he would become when I did not wait and either went without him or did something else.”

  At Metro, the endless disagreements about Marie Curie were wearing on her. She had turned fifty in June and was out of patience with “people who considered themselves superior only because they were overpaid.” But Salka’s salary, which had now reached $650 a week and was supporting a growing network, was indispensable. Back in April, Gottfried and Sam Hoffenstein had convinced Salka to hire the agent Paul Kohner to represent her. They were sure that Kohner would be able to advocate better for her than she could for herself. It was a delicate situation: studios were naturally hostile to agents and were known to bar them from the lot for demanding raises for their clients. But Salka needed to maximize her salary and hoped that Kohner, a fast-rising Czech-born émigré whom she had known since her earliest Hollywood days, could finesse a deal.

  At a story impasse on the Curie treatment in Sidney Franklin’s office, Salka was still arguing fruitlessly against the producer’s conviction that “no pretty girl would ever study chemistry or physics.” Finally one of the other writers suggested that Salka might go to Paris to interview Marie Curie’s two daughters, one of whom was herself a physicist and might provide some clues about her mother’s motivation. In her memoir Salka noted that “this is one of the things the studio adored: sending someone to the Antipodes, to the South Seas, to the Congo, or at least across the Atlantic.” But this time it was a good idea. Salka’s fluency in both French and Polish (she spoke six languages in all), along with her natural talent for diplomacy, could secure the Curie family’s cooperation. Metro was relieved to kick the story problems down the road, while Salka was hoping she could tack on a trip to Poland to see her mother and brother.

  On the last day of July Salka sailed from New York on the Normandie in beautiful weather. Also aboard the elegant ship was an A-list of vacationing celebrities, all in festive spirits: Norma Shearer, Edward G. Robinson, Charles Boyer, Bob Hope, and the Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn. Salka laughed along with them and kept her anxieties hidden. Her brother Edward was worried about the sign
s pointing toward a new war and feared for her safety. Liesl Frank had asked her to look up and comfort a great many people who were waiting for American visas. Berthold had his own long list of messages for Salka to relay as well. But Salka later remembered that nobody aboard this luxury liner was talking about Hitler. Hoping to see her mother again, she tried to be optimistic. She was glad enough, for the moment, to be on her way.

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  PARIS WAS EMPTIED for the August vacances. The executives in Metro’s local offices were off to rest cures in the countryside. Salka was unpacking in her room at the Plaza Athénée when suddenly her friend Marcel Achard bounded in as a surprise, insisting on hearing all the news from Mabery Road. Achard had reestablished his playwriting career in Paris after his stint in Hollywood. When Salka told him why she was in town, he told her that he knew Eve Curie well and would be glad to arrange a meeting. Eve’s older sister Irène was more difficult, he said, but he had friends who could try to engage her cooperation as well.

  While Salka waited for Achard’s help, she and a photographer toured the vacant laboratories and lecture halls of the Sorbonne where Marie Curie had taught. They inspected the exterior of the unprepossessing Institute of Radium, closed now for the summer recess. In the evenings Salka sat at the Deux Magots café in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with her good friends the Viennese journalist Alfred Polgar and his wife, both of whom had left Austria a day before the Anschluss and were now waiting for U.S. visas. At the surrounding tables were many other refugees, some of whom Salka recognized from her Weimar days. All had the same strained faces as the Polgars. All looked worn down by the monotony of their suspended existence. All seemed newly fearful because of Hitler’s threats against Poland.

  It was now mid-August. Salka learned that both Curie daughters were on holiday separately in Brittany, Irène in the fishing village of L’Arcouëst and Eve about an hour and a half’s drive east, in the resort town of Dinard. Salka set off to find them in a studio-hired Renault with a chauffeur who shouted curses at every other motorist on the clotted roadways.

  In the end, neither Curie daughter offered Salka much, though the chic and beautiful Eve was indeed friendlier to Salka than her severe older sister. Not even an advance letter of support from Berthold’s friend Albert Einstein was able to soften the Curie daughters. Both were certain that their parents’ story would be cheapened by Hollywood, with or without Garbo. Nonetheless Salka tried hard to build a bridge between the Curies and the studio, as she had done with Schoenberg and Thalberg. She pledged Metro’s commitment to keep the picture dignified and honest, arguing that films about great scientists could educate a vast audience.

  In truth Salka found her sympathies more aligned with the Curie women than with the studio. She respected their wish not to simplify their parents’ accomplishments and could not even be sure that the final screenplay would reflect the assurances she was making. She had too little power and knew too well that profit, not veracity, was Metro’s prime motive. Both daughters declined to participate in the end, refusing even to allow Salka to take photographs inside the Institute of Radium. They explained that if they cooperated with her they would forfeit their right to protest the final product. “Not in a position to take full responsibility,” Salka remembered, “I remained silent.” She explained the futility of her efforts in a letter to Metro producer Sidney Franklin: “Dear Sidney, when [Irène] refuses it is as if the Rock of Gibraltar were to refuse.”

  Dejectedly returning to Paris, Salka searched for other scientists she might interview. At the same time she attempted to get a French visa for her mother and brother, but gave up after fruitless hours of waiting in line with all the refugees at city hall. It had been twelve years since she had last seen her brother Dusko. She made arrangements to meet him and Auguste in Warsaw, planning to fly to Poland on August 23.

  In her memoir Salka wrote that when she got back to Paris on August 21, the newspapers were announcing the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and she began to worry about traveling to Poland. Hitler’s agreement with Stalin laid the groundwork for the Führer to attack Poland without Soviet intervention. Telegrams began to pour in for Salka—from Gottfried, from Berthold, from Bernie Hyman—insisting that she return to the States at once. All believed that war was inevitable. But arranging a return was nearly impossible. Ships were crammed to capacity with Americans hastily abandoning their European vacations. Salka learned that no one at Metro was interested in the Curie film any longer, or inclined to instruct her to proceed anywhere other than back to Hollywood. With the studio’s influence, Salka was lucky enough to book passage from Le Havre on the Île de France, set to sail for New York on September 1.

  In the meantime, the telephone in Salka’s room at the Plaza Athénée rang and rang with calls begging her for help. Many of the voices were those of people she knew. Others were strangers, acquaintances of acquaintances. People from every stratum of society were seeking affidavits and she swore to do what she could. The desperation besieged her conscience. “My American passport made me feel guilty,” she wrote later, “because my heartless adopted country refused entrance to the ‘oppressed, persecuted and poor.’ ” In the evening she walked with Alfred and Lisl Polgar through the Palais Royal, the city blacked out and the columns of the palace glowing in the moonlight. The Polgars were sure that Hitler would attack Poland. Salka tried not to believe them.

  In the daylight hours she exchanged tearful telegrams with her mother. Auguste consoled her with a promise to visit the States when her quota number, which Salka had applied for around the time of the Anschluss, at last arrived, and with the good news that Dusko had not yet been called up to the Polish army reserves. On Salka’s last night in the city she joined the Polgars for a final dinner at the Deux Magots. “There were the usual intertwined couples on the boulevard,” she recalled, “and the refugees, who now spoke in whispers. Those I knew approached our table and again I wrote down addresses and promised help.”

  The next day, in Le Havre, Salka rushed to send a telegram to her mother from the pier before the Île de France set sail. The clerk looked at her quizzically as she wrote out the address. “Poland?” he asked. “The Germans are in Poland, madame. It’s war.”

  In her cabin aboard the ship Salka tried to gather herself, thanking fortune that Auguste and Dusko had not traveled to meet her in Warsaw. Sambor was far away from the Polish capital. Perhaps it would be spared. A steward knocked at her door, found her in tears, and encouraged her to go up on deck. It was oppressively hot. The time for sailing had long passed and the ship remained motionless. There were rumors that it would not sail if France declared war.

  The ship was still moored the next morning when Salka was called to attend safety drills. In a moment that would be wildly unbelievable in a work of fiction, she put on her life jacket and gathered with the crowds of passengers, finding herself assigned to the same rescue boat as the renowned cello virtuoso Gregor Piatigorsky and the equally famous violinist Nathan Milstein. Nearby was the Viennese novelist Gina Kaus, whom Salka had known in Berlin and who was emigrating with her husband and sons. In Salka’s lifeboat during the drill, all were wondering whether France and England would go to war. No one had heard any news. The ship remained in port throughout the long day, the air stagnant.

  At ten that night the siren groaned and the Île de France began to move. It docked briefly in Southampton, where the English newspapers were brought aboard. At four in the morning Salka was finally able to grab a copy of the Times and read the headlines. England and France had declared war on Germany. To allay her family’s fears in Santa Monica, she cabled them that she was on her way home at last. A week later she arrived in New York, where she stayed for a few days to try to expedite her mother’s visa. Bernie Hyman phoned to welcome her back to America, overjoyed that she was safe, and then informed her that Metro had decided to abandon Marie Curie. (A version was eventually released in 1943,
starring Greer Garson, after Garbo had left the studio.) Salka, he instructed, should start looking immediately for another comedy for Garbo. She arranged to take the train back to California.

  Poland surrendered within the month and was carved up between Germany and the Soviet Union, which occupied western Ukraine. Sambor and Wychylowka were now under control of the USSR. Communication with Auguste became difficult. Salka heard from the State Department that her mother’s visa had been forwarded to the American consulate in Bucharest. There was nothing to do but wait. The massive human logjam that Europe had become, where survival depended entirely on the ink marks of bureaucrats, had never felt more personal or dire. What were Auguste and Dusko enduring under Soviet occupation? And what was happening to Rose in Vienna? Salka heard that Josef Gielen had somehow been able to escape to Buenos Aires. Had Rose and the children managed to join him, or were they still in Europe?

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  DURING SEPTEMBER IN SANTA MONICA, the eternal sunbathers idled, the fat pelicans skimmed over the milky edges of the surf, and hot Santa Ana winds pummeled the eucalyptus trees. At Metro the extras chatted merrily through their lunch hours and the executives strutted around pompously, flirting with the starlets. Surrounded by blithe indifference, Salka felt half mad with guilt and fear. The disconnect between the terror she had left behind in Europe and the nonchalance on the beach and at the studio wore on her nerves as much as the silence from Sambor and Vienna.

  “One does not wander without punishment under palms,” Berthold was fond of repeating to Christopher Isherwood, who had moved with his partner, a painter, into a house overlooking the ocean, just above the Viertels. Isherwood was teaming again with Berthold to work on an idea for a film about a young German officer who is seduced into the National Socialist party after the Great War. He recalled that the two men spent hours nearly every day in Berthold’s upstairs warren on Mabery Road “in a coma of nicotine poisoning.” They were “two aliens from doomed Europe,” Isherwood wrote, who “carried our twisted, pain-ridden psyches amongst the statuesque, unselfconscious bodies of California, basking in the frank sunshine. Where would these bronzed and muscular boys be, five years from now?”