by Sally Koslow
Scott will be making $1,250 a week, a fine sum, though there are those like his St. Paul friend, Donald Ogden Stewart, who rake in $5,000. Still, Scott’s wage will be almost as much as what the average Joe makes in a year, a cause for celebration in every way.
I fall asleep knowing I’ve lived my best Christmas and let myself believe that New Year’s, and the future it will bring, will be even better.
Chapter 28
1938
A few weeks later, as we share our morning coffee and read the Los Angeles Times, Scott discovers that the Pasadena Playhouse will perform a play based on his satire from 1922, A Diamond as Big as the Ritz. He hops up from the table, jingling with excitement. Could the next step be Broadway? An F. Scott Fitzgerald renaissance? I sense that Scott allows himself to imagine the literary equivalent of a ticker-tape parade. Life feels plumped by potential.
He calls the theater and requests two tickets in the back. The evening of the premiere, Scott gives me a corsage of camellias and lilies of the valley to pin on my grey silk. He wears his tuxedo, touchingly dated, that he had on the night we first danced, and hires a car. We start with lobster at the Troc, where I am grateful to be someone, not another leggy hatcheck girl waiting to be discovered.
I discreetly comb the room for Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen, who are buying the place, and offer air kisses—which I’m struggling to master without feeling like a British stiff—to William Powell and Merle Oberon. I keep my pen and pad in my evening bag. This is Scott’s night, and the first I hear of a novel he wants to start.
“No one’s written a serious book yet about Hollywood, Sheilo,” he says. “The idea’s been simmering since I was here in 1927. I see the main characters as stand-ins for Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer. Art meets commerce.” His fists crash together like silent cymbals.
Scott always did like a fable. Ten years ago, both he and Irving Thalberg had been boy wonders and Scott has spoken of how impressed he was with the man’s honesty and brains, a golden mogul with a celebrity aura. He was married to a movie star, Norma Shearer, and did it all—picked and rewrote scripts, cast, directed, edited, and produced. If someone told me he made the crews’ baloney sandwiches, I’d believe it. For Scott he is a kindred spirit with the soul of a poet, all Louis B. Mayer is not.
“Old Louie is a lout who represents everything money-grubbing and coarse about the movie business,” he says, “starting with the word business.”
Here is where Scott and I differ. A more judicious sort—I, for example—would flatter, not offend, LBM, who has the ultimate say over his employment at the studio he owns. Not Scott. “Thalberg’s a hero?”
“Power at its best.”
“Even after he died.” Last year, when he was only thirty-seven.
Everyone has a favorite Thalberg story, and I share mine. “By mistake, an invitation to be a pallbearer was sent to Harry Carey, a cowboy actor from before talkies, instead of Carey Nelson, the producer. Afterward, everyone thought Thalberg had reanointed the cowboy, and now he’s a star all over again.”
Scott takes out his notebook, jots down the story, and I feel proud. I like the idea of his book, assuming he can disguise Louis B. Mayer so the man doesn’t roast him on a spit. I love that Scott is hoping to write any novel, and has gotten past Stutz Bearcats and pink Champagne.
“Baby, I used to have a beautiful talent once,” he says, stroking my hand. “It was a comfort to know it was there. I’ve been only a mediocre caretaker but I think I have enough left to stretch out over another novel or two. Maybe what I write won’t be as good as the best things I’ve done, but nothing I write can be completely bad.” Now he looks into my eyes and with pure joy says, “I may be the last of the novelists for a long time.”
Arrogant as the statement sounds, I believe it to be true. Like his shoe size, Scott’s gift is nothing for which he can claim responsibility. It’s his to use or abuse.
We leave the restaurant in a bubble of bliss, but when we arrive at the Pasadena Playhouse no other limos are discharging fancy theatergoers. I wait in the empty lobby while Scott checks to see if we’ve made a mistake about the time and place.
“It’s the students,” he says when he returns. From the tightness in his throat, I see he’s reaching for nonchalance. “They’re doing the play upstairs.”
In our finery, we climb the stairs and sit on a bench in the back of a hall. There is a small, bare stage. About a dozen young people in casual clothes and a few adults who might be their parents or teachers eye us curiously before the show goes on. Scott roars louder than anyone at every joke. When it ends, he claps longest.
“I’m going to go backstage and compliment the cast,” he says, after the one and only curtain call, though there is no curtain. “They may find it encouraging.”
Years of practiced pretending keep me from displaying any sign of pity toward this proud man. Along with criticizing his drinking, sympathy, I now know, is verboten.
He returns minutes later. “Nice kids,” he says. “Though they seemed a little awkward.”
Of course. They assumed you’re dead.
Scott applies himself to the task of mastering screenwriting as if he were solving an algebraic equation. If X is characterization and Y is dialogue, what is the square root of plot? Almost every night, we find ourselves at a film. He prefers obscure theaters to splashy premieres, because—I suspect—he finds it humiliating to go unrecognized as I forage for the rare mushrooms a gossip columnist craves. In fairness, however, his interest is in analyzing what makes the hoi polloi laugh, cry, or offer their harshest critique, the thunder of silence, and a premiere’s audience wouldn’t dare be mute with studio fat cats in the next row.
Scott is never silent. On our rides home, he loves to talk shop and so do I, because the film industry may be the one area where I know more than he.
Bringing Up Baby , or at least Katharine Hepburn’s bone structure, earns praise from both of us. The razzle-dazzle of Comet Over Broadway also rates a gold star. I mention that John Farrow directed after Busby Berkeley fell ill, but only Busby received a credit. “Half the heroes in this town are unsung,” Scott grumbles.
Scott allows that Louis B. Mayer got it right in hiring Josef von Sternberg, one of many refugees fleeing Germany, for The Great Waltz, though he calls the script for Test Pilot “dreck.” I bite my tongue at his Yiddish. We chew over other films MGM should not, in his opinion, have produced— A Christmas Carol (“Dickens is already dead, fortunately”), The Girl of the Golden West (“Get me out before Nelson Eddy yodels”), and the complete Andy Hardy oeuvre (“Not at all how boys think”). Scott, at forty-two, is the authority on what boys think. We even endure A Yank at Oxford, finished after he was dismissed as a writer. “Drivel.” Scott also appraises actors: Ronald Reagan (“plank of wood”) and Olivia de Havilland (“born without oomph”).
Scott is spending long days working on Three Comrades, but his greater ambition is to move forward on his novel. Constantly now, I see him scribble phrases and whole conversations he overhears, because “a writer wastes nothing.” I am flattered when one of my remarks—“if only I could walk into your eyes”—merits the notebook.
Since there is not a movie to see every evening, plenty of nights we stay home, insulated by love’s narcotic pleasures, which make me feel that his other goal—not necessarily in third or even second place—is to please me. I own barely enough vases for the flowers that arrive, and the phone rings every hour. “What are you wearing?” “When will I see you?” “What are you thinking of?” During the evenings at my apartment we jitterbug or fox-trot to the radio, gorge on homemade fudge, or I listen as Scott declaims poetry from memory in the melodramatic tenor he reserves for T. S. Eliot or Swinburne. He is not always reverent, and may shuffle off to Buffalo as he recites. But sometimes he wants to see his friends, and then it becomes New York all over again.
Often I am conscripted for charades, a game taken so seriously by Scott’s tribe that when Marc C
onnelly’s team was up against Ira Gershwin’s, they held rehearsals. I am at the same marked disadvantage on the West Coast as I was on the East. I rarely catch on to the clues and am eaten by humiliation. The Thirty Years’ War? Never heard of it. I try to compensate by spewing studio gossip and lavishly apologizing.
Scott gently reproaches. My desperation makes me look pitiable, he informs me. “Don’t try so hard,” he says. “Pretend everyone bores you.”
Oscar Levant bores me. Ogden Nash bores me. George S. Kaufman bores me. The truth is, none of them are half as interesting as they think they are. Even Dorothy bores me when she yammers on about her dogs. At parties, I prefer to huddle in a corner with Scott where, as if drawn to wet paint, I struggle to keep my hands off him. This leads Dorothy’s husband to say, “You two always look as though you have a secret you’re going to talk about later.”
We are the secret. Our romance holds us captive as we see in each other what others miss. This is the first time that my feelings burn at a blue flame. I look at Scott dressed and imagine the silk of his skin next to mine and the look on his face as our lovemaking reaches a climax.
A few days after Scott turns in his final draft of Three Comrades, the interoffice mail unceremoniously delivers his copy of the script. Approved. More-stars-than-there-are-in-heaven MGM has blessed and ratified his labor. Nonetheless, that night he seethes. “Ted Paramore rewrote my best scene.”
“Pollyanna would like to point out you’ll get a credit on a major film,” I risk saying. I despise a sore winner.
Next week’s news is even better. Eddie Mayer pops into Scott’s office to announce that Hunt Stromberg, one of the greats, wants Scott—single-handedly—to write a script for Joan Crawford. “You’ll like this guy,” Eddie promises. “Rare as an albino elephant, a producer who actually respects writers.”
“Stromberg’s a Gatsby fan,” Scott reports after he and the director meet. Hunt is calling the film Infidelity, to be based on a splinter of a story around which Scott is expected to build an entire script. Joan will play a wife who discovers her wealthy husband with a strumpet—Stromberg’s term—played by Myrna Loy, a star clipping at Joan’s heels.
“It’s a universal subject,” Scott says. “Everyone’s life has locked doors. Married couples know the chance opening of one of these doors may lead to trouble.” He must realize I am thinking of the distress I may be causing when he opened the door that led to me, and quickly shuts down that train of thought. “The problem is they want Joan to be all kitten fur. She was, once. I remember her gowned in the apex of fashion, droll expression, laughing eyes. But that was years ago. Only the leer is left.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Have you seen her lately?”
I have. This town has baked the softness out of her. I hope it won’t do the same for me.
The following weekend, we are invited to the home of the sociable Warner brother, Jack. We drive Scott’s rattletrap under a canopy of sycamores that leads us past a gurgling fountain to a wide cobblestone courtyard. Scott’s hand is on my thigh. I have one of my pinch-myself moments as a valet drives away the car to an unseen parking lot.
Scott goes directly to the pool and tennis party outside, but I sneak into the mansion, designed in a style you might call Spanish clunker. Every furnishing is oppressive, most likely selected by the studio art department. The entrance hall wallpaper, claims Louella, was imported from the imperial palace of China, and has plenty of foo dogs to go around. In the library, the paneling might have been ripped from the Mitford family estate, with leather-bound books bought by the yard, arranged by color. Everywhere, drapery is dense with layers of turquoise shantung, blocking out the dappled California sunlight. Off the main hallway, goldfish swim in a porcelain powder room fixture that may be a bidet.
The rich are different. Their taste is worse.
Outside, a Hawaiian buffet starring a roast pig stands untouched; the unwritten law is that guests don’t partake before Jack Warner digs in, and he is nowhere to be seen. Starlets in orchid and tuberose leis strum ukuleles and undulate their hips as they sing aloha this and aloha that. I spot Scott across a rolling lawn. Joan Crawford is by his side, drinking from a coconut shell.
“I believe you know Sheilah Graham,” he says. “Joan is sharing her ideas for the script.” I read his tone. Joan Crawford is a pinhead. “She thought the wife should be an equestrienne. She sees herself in jodhpurs, perhaps with a whip.”
Miss Crawford gives me a cursory nod, and though we have met many times, doesn’t call me by name. Immune to my smile, she picks up mid-speech. “Remember, Mr. Fitzgerald, in my movies I never lose my man and I never, ever die.”
“Duly noted,” he says, doing an excellent impression of a sycophant.
“Write hard, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Joan Crawford says with queenly disdain as a waitress in a grass skirt refreshes the rum in her coconut shell. Scott isn’t drinking. Fortunately. “Write very hard.”
“Indeed,” Scott says as Joan swans off, her perfume competing with Jack Warner’s rose garden.
“Get hard, Mr. Fitzgerald,” I whisper in Scott’s ear. “Get very hard.” First, Scott looks shocked by my vulgarity, but a moment later he lifts me off the ground, spins me around, and says, “Why Presh, aren’t you the tart? But yes, I will try my best.”
Five minutes later, we are on our way home.
Scott is on a tight deadline, with weeks ticking away, and as excited as I’ve seen him. He has his own project, with no incompetent sidekick, and is reporting to an esteemed producer. But on Wednesday he learns that Louis B. Mayer is changing the movie’s title to Fidelity . “Infidelity” has landed in the linguistic ash can along with “fanny,” “gawd,” “hell,” and “madame” as Hollywood genuflects to the Hays Code.
“I have moved to the principality of prudes, where an animated cow can’t have an udder for fear of offending America’s milk drinkers,” Scott squawks after an early dinner. “The brains come in and sit around a table. They don’t know what they want or where they’re going. The only infidelity you can have in a movie now is asking another man’s wife to pass the salt. Wardrobe must be working overtime sewing bloomers for Joan fit for my Grandmother McQuillan.”
That evening he returns to the Garden of Allah to work. In the morning he phones to say he wrote all night.
It is a blessing and a curse to be the first person to hear gossip. A few days later I discover that LBM is killing the movie. I keep the news to myself, though in a blink, Scott knows he is out of a job.
The next morning he announces that he will visit Zelda. That afternoon deep purple irises arrive with a note in Scott’s loopy, straight-up handwriting.
Missing you will be my privilege, exquisite Sheilah.
Your admiring slave,
Scott
He does not say how long he will be away.
For months Scott and I have been one, our love as close as tropical air. I know he adores me, in bed, out of bed, and he’s strung my life with fairy lights in such a way I thought it meant he couldn’t live without me. I was wrong, as hoodwinked as any innocent who ever lusted for a man owning a wedding ring, even if I’ve stopped seeing it on his hand. I feel stupid, as well as betrayed, underestimating the bond that must link husband to wife. It must go far beyond the sense of gallantry toward a sick woman that he has intimated. Scott has heard the mating call of marriage and escaped to his madwoman for comfort.
I dump the flowers in the garbage. What rot. Fidelity. Infidelity. I am a victim of both.
Chapter 29
1938
With Scott on the run, I refuse to weep. Resolute as a soldier, I marshal my resilience and call on agents, attend back-to-back screenings, and write a chatty letter to Johnny. For the first time I wish I had a close woman friend, a whole-souled female confidant who doesn’t have Dorothy’s misanthropy, but I have never dared to let anyone become overly familiar, lest they divine my true identity. Within a town where I know everyone, I’ve become an island.
The days and early evenings go by, and not bitterly. But after midnight, when I am facing sleep, a faceless woman lurches from the shadows to attack me. Zelda. I remain wide-eyed at two, at four, at dawn, my mind running a B-movie loop of despair. I am tempted by the Nembutals Scott swallows as if they were after-dinner mints, but they terrify me as much as heavy drinking does. Instead, I heat a mug of milk and reread Margaret Mitchell. On my bookshelf, I reverse Scott’s novels so the spines face inward. If I saw even a title, his voice would fill my head.
It is after the third sleepless night, with visions of Zelda careening like pinballs, that I decide, if Scott is in North Carolina, I will fly to London, report on hits from the West End theaters, and enjoy the gentle company of my ex-husband and constant champion, to whom I continue to send a check every month. He deserves it. Were it not for Major John Gillam, I might still be Lily Shiel, crippled by a Cockney accent and graceless manners, her snuffling nose pressed to the glass of the shiny life I enjoy.
With John Wheeler’s blessing and pounds I check myself into the Dorchester, an upper-crust port of call where on my first afternoon Johnny and I meet for tea. What a custom, tea. I didn’t realize I missed its civility until I enter the room, done up in soothing shades of apricot and salmon. Walking to the far corner, I pass tables set with bone china, serious cutlery, and three-tiered stands proffering finger sandwiches—succulent roast chicken, cucumber with minty cream cheese, egg salad flecked by cress—piled below raisin scones waiting for clotted cream and strawberry jam, all beneath a crowning display of pastries, each like a brooch in a jeweler’s window.
