by Sam Staggs
Chapter 9
It Was a B-Picture Only to Those
Too Lazy to Go Down the Alphabet
Such was Eva’s later opinion of Forced Landing, her first movie. Before that, she appeared for a few seconds, uncredited, in New York Town, filmed late in 1940, and starring Fred MacMurray and Mary Martin. Eva is unlocatable in the picture, meaning that she may appear in a crowd scene or that her bit part was deleted. Forced Landing, a war drama shot in ten days during April 1941 and released two months later, is perhaps not so impaired as Eva judged it. Today it might earn a B minus.
Before, during, and after this inauspicious debut, Eva studied acting, first with Florence Enright (1883–1961), a stage actress in the ’teens who appeared in minor film roles in the thirties before becoming a drama coach. Eva called her “a splendid woman who gave me a genuine approach to the art of acting. She worked with me daily from nine to six at Paramount Studios.” Since the studio method of teaching young recruits how to act is not well known, I quote Eva’s account of it. “When you are new and delivered over for coaching, you work on a miniature stage with a group of actors. In my group were Susan Hayward and Jeanne Cagney (Jimmy’s sister). We would rehearse scenes every day, playing before a small audience whom we could not see. Whenever a new lamb was led to pasture he worked with our group, and thus I had constantly to repeat scenes from plays. This was invaluable experience for me.”
Eva’s next coach was Margaret Webster (1905–1972), a distinguished actress who became one of the earliest female stage directors, notably of Shakespeare, in London and on Broadway, in addition to directing operas in New York at the Met. (She turned down offers to direct pictures.) Webster directed Eva’s second screen test, which took place as a sort of midterm exam after her initial six months of acting lessons. They stayed in touch, and Webster later wrote to Eva “expressing her belief that I would become a good actress.”
Forced Landing is set on the fictitious Pacific island of Mosaque. Eva plays a refugee from the Netherlands. Victor Varconi (1891–1976), the handsome star of silent pictures in Hungary and Germany before coming to Hollywood, plays Eva’s father. These two Hungarians found much to talk about between takes, for he wanted to know how Hungary had changed for better and for worse since he left. Two other stars of silent films, Evelyn Brent and Nils Asther, took small roles in Forced Landing. Susan Hayward, Eva’s colleague from drama class, was briefly considered for Eva’s role.
In one sequence, Eva flies a small prop plane when an emergency on board demands the urgent attention of the pilot, played by Richard Arlen. Under pretext of loading a box of gold cargo, island terrorists slipped in a bomb instead. This is sufficient plot synopsis; in fact, it’s difficult to fathom just what is going on in the caffeinated script.
At twenty-two, Eva has long blonde 1940s hair. Her face, while recognizable, differs radically from the dazzling likeness of later decades. Her nose has not yet been surgically reduced, the chin looks more prominent by several millimeters than she later wished it to be, and her teeth are white though one central incisor is slightly crooked. Eva’s eyes here look Magyar, meaning faintly Asiatic in shape. When she smiles, they become the vestigal ovals of the Far East that one often sees in Hungarians, Finns, Turks, and others of related ethnicity. (Perhaps the Gabors had a Mongolian progenitor after all.) Eva looks close to thirty, although by the time she reached that age her face had begun to move counterclockwise.
As the most photogenic cast member, Eva gets her share, and more, of close-ups. Her face, even as the mere blueprint of future beauty, is oddly riveting. She would have been a striking screen presence even without the knife of gentrification.
For a negligible product, the film received better reviews than expected. The Los Angeles Times called Forced Landing “an effective melodrama of aviation,” adding that “the writers have cleverly contrived the plot and Gordon Wiles, director, has animated the feature through his direction.” As for Eva, the critic found her “interesting, especially in her romantic scenes with Richard Arlen, although one cannot determine all of her qualifications from this production.”
* * *
Eva’s next Paramount assignment was Pacific Blackout, shot in late summer 1941 and released a few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The title of this story, “ripped from the headlines,” refers to the practice of extinguishing all lights, in public and in private homes, to foil enemy aircraft during air raids. “Pacific” in this instance referred to California, even though cities on the Atlantic coast and certain ones inland were also required to go dark.
Robert Preston plays an inventor of military hardware who is wrongly accused of murder by a foreign-born nightclub singer—Eva, forced by threats to her family in Europe into becoming an enemy agent. Eva conveys the character’s tortured conflict in a nuanced performance that reflects her many hours of studio acting lessons. In this picture she has made a leap from Forced Landing in screen presence and acting ability. Eva has also acquired the face that she will keep, with modifications, for the rest of her life.
Her work found admirers in the press. In the San Bernardino Sun, for instance, the reviewer gushed, “Excellent, too, is Eva Gabor, who highlights a splendid performance with a standout rendition of Hoagy Carmichael’s torch song, ‘I Met Him in Paris.’ ” (The singing was dubbed by contralto Martha Mears.) Paramount didn’t agree with such praise. The studio made her redundant.
And now war fever gripped the country. On December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan. Declaration of war on Germany followed on December 11. As an ally of Germany, however reluctant, Hungary reciprocated on December 13 with a declaration of war on the U.S. The American embassy in Budapest prepared to close. All personnel would soon leave, making direct communication between the two countries virtually impossible for the next four years.
* * *
On December 28, 1941, Jolie wrote an eleven-page letter to Eva and Zsa Zsa in Hollywood. It is an extraordinary document for several reasons: 1) It reveals the hidden side of Jolie. Rather than the silly egotist of later publicity, this heartfelt letter testifies to her deep love and concern for her daughters, even as her longwinded, Polonious-like admonitions also make us smile; 2) the frivolous, materialistic Jolie is also there, more involved with fashions, local gossip, and retail profits than with the war that is menacing Hungary; 3) the letter confirms the statements of Jolie’s niece, Mrs. Lantos, that even in the dangerous early 1940s, life in Hungary continued almost as normal for those in the middle and upper classes; 4) it is one of the few surviving Gabor family letters. For these reasons, I reproduce a large portion of it.
“My dear, beautiful children in the far away distance, Zsazsika and Evika, my sweet beautiful fairies, I hardly know how to begin this letter which in all likelihood will be the last one I could send you in Hungarian for quite a while to come. This is being sent to you through the good offices of the American Embassy which is departing tomorrow. One of my letters written in Hungarian has already been returned to me; I also sent another in English since I wrote that one.” [At some point, Jolie’s letter was translated from Hungarian to English as required by the American Embassy in Budapest, where it was no doubt scrutinized for prohibited statements. I quote from the translation, which captures nicely Jolie’s various emotions as well as her florid style.]
“For me to communicate in English is like a mute signaling with gestures. How could I be expected to express that undescribable yearning I have for you when I couldn’t do justice to that even in the native tongue of my beloved Hungary. I am therefore making the most of this opportunity to describe my feelings for you.
“As long as I have been hearing from you and the news was always better and better it compensated me for the fact that I haven’t seen you, Evika, for over two years and you, Zsazsika, for a full year come tomorrow. [Jolie’s count was off; Zsa Zsa left Budapest on February 15, 1941, just over ten months prior to Jolie’s letter.] You can
imagine how depressing it was to hear that all communications had been severed, no more telephone or telegrams. At first I refused to credit this but my optimistic trait soon took over. I am now confident, I simply feel this can’t last long and after it is all over I’ll take the first clipper to fly to you or perhaps you will to me—what happiness that will be.
“To have the strength to endure all this I must feel confident that you’ll behave cleverly and that you will take good care of yourselves and of each other. Needless to say—perish the thought—you must never become estranged or become jealous of each other, grow angry with each other if even momentarily over some triviality. No matter how grave the occasion may appear to you—suppose one of you were to steal the sweetheart of the other, or snitch her nylons, or even flirted with the husband of the other—believe me all of this would be of no consequence compared to the bond existing between sisters, the bond of blood. You must have been aware of that yourselves while you were separated because of the yearning you felt for each other.
“Don’t be stingy with each other in money matters either—the one who happens to have more shall unhesitatingly share it with the other. I do not want to preach but I pray to you, if you really love me and want me to retain my good mood, then take very, very, very good care of yourselves!!! For a mother’s heart is more sensitive than the finest seismograph and I will detect through the ether everything that affects you, both good or ill, even from a distance of 10,000 kilometers.
“Do not let the tempo of your lives make you careless with cars and planes, do not weaken yourselves with dieting lest your lowered resistance make you an easy victim of pneumonia.
“Be self-assured, clever, strong; laugh and exult in that you exist, that you are alive, that you are beautiful and young, that the sun shines and you can go swimming in the ocean. Do not let even the most serious-appearing fiasco sadden you, skip over annoyances and unpleasantnesses as if they were hurdles and if it saddens you that we are so far apart, skip over that, too. Take solace that all must come to pass and that this war will also end soon.
“One other thought. It is not urgent for either of you to become Greta Garbos in a matter of months. (Apropos: Ninotchka is a great hit here.) The longer it takes you to reach your desired goal the better, for as you well know, anticipation is almost better than fulfillment. You have proven yourselves sufficiently to me already. I would not want you to stay entirely idle in this interval for you must keep on learning. You are still very young, other kids of your age are still in school in Switzerland, playing tennis and dreaming about Prince Charming.
“I am worried that your overabundant energies will be even more overstimulated by the rushing American life and that you will be carried away by the tide. Do not be in such a great rush; I fear the inevitable reaction. Come to a halt every once in a while, take each other by the hand, disassociate yourselves for a while from that Hollywood vortex, betake yourselves to some beautiful beach, take a dip in the ocean, recall your childhood when you were playing at Lake Balaton.
[For several pages, Jolie reminds them of childhood pranks and of various boys they chased or who flirted with them.]
“Outside my anxiety over your happiness, I can truthfully assert that I have never led a better and more carefree existence. My stores, thank God, are doing outstandingly well, my personnel is so well trained that managing my stores has become almost play for me. Although the taxes and other impositions on commerce have become fantastically high, the income has also risen in almost the same proportion. I have no financial complaints to make.
“Your father Vilmos is also doing very well and he is most generous with Vörös [i.e., Magda]. I often rue the fact that he had been so niggardly with you, but in those days he really didn’t have it. Your sister Vörös, who has become one of the most stylish women of Budapest, has really behaved most commendably, spending the last fourteen days before Christmas in the Crystallo working from early morning until the night. Business was excellent there also.
“After fourteen days of rewarding but exhausting work, I am spending all day today, Sunday, in bed, dictating this letter from my bed to Sári [presumably a secretary or salesperson] who is nice enough to sacrifice her Sunday afternoon to type this letter.
“So here I lie in my beautifully decorated neobaroque, rattan-woven and green brocaded chaise longue. My bedding is pink silk, I am wearing a light blue, lacy, seductive silk nightgown embroidered with cyclamen, I have a Karády hairdo with a light blue velvet ribbon in it. [Katalin Karády, 1912–1990, was a top film star, perhaps the Hungarian version of Barbara Stanwyck or Katharine Hepburn. She is revered in Hungary not only for her talent but also for her wartime heroism and for her efforts to save Jewish lives.] I am surrounded by a powerful radio, also an automatic record player, a lot of new records, mostly hot tangoes. I wish I had Zsa Zsa’s records from Ankara here.
[She goes on at length about plans for her New Year’s Eve party. A few close friends are invited, and of course Magda and “the Minister,” meaning Magda’s current boyfriend, the Portuguese ambassador to Hungary. More on him presently. Also on Jolie’s guest list is “my latest beau, Vilmos de Gabor,” whom she divorced the previous year and whom she likes far better as beau than as husband.]
“There will only be fifteen of us for the rest of the family is invited to Grandmother’s [i.e., Franceska Tillemann]. Grandmother, thank God, is more beautiful than ever as you can see from the photo and is daily asking for you. She adores you and is very proud of you.” [There follows a roundup of family news, viz., Jolie’s sisters, her brother, and two nieces, and the latest gossip on friends and acquaintances.]
“Now to tell you something of importance, we finally received a telegram from Burhan that the divorce has been granted, thank God. This was also confirmed by Ali Tevfik by mail. Now be careful, don’t rush into some new marriage now that you are free. Duci [another of Magda’s nicknames] wrote you in a previous letter the address in Lisbon where you can write and from where it will be forwarded to me. The letter must be always addressed as follows: On the outside envelope the Lisbon address, inside a second closed envelope addressed merely “Ministre de Portugal.” The letter should be written in English to pass the censorship quicker. You will find out what other language may be used. Try to make sure that I hear from you by sending more letters for I haven’t received all you have sent. You can also write to Ali Tevfik in Istanbul, he’ll forward it. Try every means to have your letters reach me for this is indispensable to my existence. The last letter I received was about Eva’s return from New Orleans. In contrast to Zsa Zsa’s exhaustive account of many pages, Eva wrote only a short page in which she promised to write more the next day. Alas, that longer letter will hardly reach me now.
[The translator added a note: “This is in handwriting from now on.”]
“I now say goodbye, I hope I gave you an exhaustive account. Please try everything, everything to communicate with me, for I am yearning for news of you. Million kisses to each of you separately and together. The good Lord bless every step you take. Take good care of yourselves to make the reunion a happy one. Au revoir! Your mummie.”
* * *
Before Paramount tore up Eva’s contract, the studio used her once more in a bit part, and once more she can’t be found. The picture was Star Spangled Rhythm, a patriotic musical variety show filmed in summer 1942 and starring everyone on the Paramount lot—Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, ad infinitum. After that, Eva dropped out of sight until late 1944, when 20th Century Fox offered her a contract. That one lived up to the familiar complaint, “not worth the paper it’s written on.”
At first, Eva took it for the big break she had yearned for. What better could a starlet hope for than a role in A Royal Scandal, starring Tallulah Bankhead as Catherine the Great of Russia and directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch? Lubitsch conducted rehearsals, began production in September 1944, then fell ill. Unable to continue, he hired Otto Prem
inger to finish the picture. Although cast as the Countess Demidow, a fixture in Catherine’s court, Eva is once more invisible. Her role seems to have existed at some point, for still pictures show Eva with character actor Charles Coburn. She also started out with dialogue, for Eva recalled that on the first day of filming she was “terribly nervous as Tallulah watched and I prepared to play a sequence with Charles Coburn, who had just won an Academy Award.”
Eva and Tallulah bonded, and one day during a lull in shooting Tallulah advised her to leave Hollywood and pursue a career on the New York stage. Eva recalled in her autobiography that since their meeting on A Royal Scandal, Tallulah “has provided fun for the entire Gabor family.” Which was not quite the case. Zsa Zsa and Tallulah loathed each other and quarreled loudly when Zsa Zsa and George Sanders appeared on the Bankhead radio show. Legend has it, however, that the Gabors picked up their “dahlings” from none other than Tallulah.
Had Lubitsch directed A Royal Scandal, Eva’s role might have grown rather than shrinking, for they had formed a liaison—Eva called it a “friendship”—even before her arrival at Fox. On July 12, 1943, Hollywood columnist Hugh Dixon wrote, “Ernst Lubitsch and Eva Gabor don’t care who knows that they care.”
In Orchids and Salami, she devotes two pages to him, more than to anyone else other than family. “I was a habitual visitor in his elaborate Spanish villa in Bel Air,” she wrote. “He was tiny, shorter than I. He had about him a Panlike quality, as though he had just come out of the woods holding a champagne glass. His conversation was all wit. He teased me mercilessly, pulled my leg, laughed at me, and made me love it and come back for more. I will never forget the pleasant evenings in which he managed to make his huge rooms feel cozy as a well-heated shack in the woods. Since I matched his genuine and natural gaity with a gay front which I supplied for the occasion, I suppose Ernst Lubitsch never fully realized how seriously I took myself. I miss the man.”
