by Sally Koslow
David O. Selznick turns out to belong to the lamentable herd that considers Margaret Mitchell’s oeuvre to be the supreme achievement of the human mind. “I’m forbidden to use one word or phrase that isn’t in the book,” he reports at dinner after the first day at Warner’s. “To Selznick, it’s the Torah.”
My hand freezes as I deliver a piece of sirloin to my mouth.
“Excuse me, Presh. But you won’t believe the reverence. I was asked to portray Aunt Pitty ‘bustling quaintly across the room.’ Can you please explain how anyone ‘bustles quaintly’?”
“Happily.” I stand up, and swivel my hips as I circle the table. “Oh dear, oh dear, Captain Butler,” I say in a spidery drawl, the back of my hand to my forehead. “Where oh where are my smelling salts? I do believe I shall faint.”
“God’s nightgown, Aunt Pittypat.” Scott slips on his own Deep South accent. “There’s nothing quaint about you. I swear you’re into the brandy. Not again?”
He eats two bites of peach pie, excuses himself, and disappears to write well into the night, living up to his personal description as a toiler. In the morning, Scott is gone before I wake.
The next evening I learn he’s been asked to draft the big staircase scene. “Every woman’s favorite part,” I inform him. “Rhett and Scarlett are like dogs in heat.”
“Subtle, that Margaret,” Scott grunts. Again, for the next two evenings he works beyond midnight. Tonight we are sitting in the parlor after dinner, each with a coffee, when I beg him to read me his script. From his battered briefcase in the hall, he retrieves a fistful of heavily marked up pages.
Every time Scarlett opens her pouty little mouth the dialogue turns stilted and flat. I choose to be direct. “I don’t think you’re there yet.”
“I knew it.” He rips the pages to shreds. “Rhett Butler’s drinking and passion and pride are familiar, but I can’t get a bead on Scarlett. She’s mad for her husband yet torments the poor heel. I could wring her skinny little neck.”
It shows. “You’ve got to find a way to like Scarlett. Think of her as a wild panther only Rhett can tame, and while she adores him, the girl is too pigheaded to admit or recognize it. It’s a classic power struggle.”
Is this the underpinning of his relationship with Zelda? Was their sex like our sex? When they’re together, do they still make love? Is she as besotted with him as I am? I can’t imagine anyone more attracted to Scott than I am.
He interrupts my preoccupations to ask, “A clash between top bananas?”
I have a different image in my mind and am grateful to shake it away. “Maybe we should try acting out the scene and see if the dialogue comes to you.”
“Why Mrs. Butler,” Scott says, as if I’ve offered to drop my drawers. “Bless my cotton-picking heart, you are the very reason to rejoice.”
We walk to our own curving staircase. I stand at the bottom by Scott’s side, pretend to lift a long skirt to show a pert ankle, and bat my eyelashes.
He leers. “I’ve always admired your backbone, my dear.”
“You sound like an orthopedist. How about ‘moxie’?”
“‘Moxie’ is for floozies. Too brittle. Pluck? Fortitude? Resolve? Sass?”
“Try ‘sass. ’”
“Scarlett, I’ve always admired your sass.” He twirls an imaginary mustache as I snap my imaginary fan.
“Captain Butler, did you say arse?”
“Scarlett, I admire your resolve, but it will never work with your Ashley Wilkes, that . . . twit. That twerp.” He shakes his head. “Sheilo, I cannot figure out why Scarlett cares for such a nincompoop. Hemingway would call him a fairy.”
I won’t point out how Scott is far more like Ashley than Rhett. “Stay in character. You’re just jealous, Rhett, a snake in the grass unfit to wipe Ashley’s boot. You’re coarse and conceited, and you’re no . . . gentleman.” I work myself up to the point where I shed a tear. If only I’d performed this well in London.
“Sugar, don’t get your knickers in a twist, and hold on.” He races back to the dining room, returns, and pulls a white dinner napkin from his pocket. “Never in your entire life have I known you to have a handkerchief when you needed one, Scarlett dear.” He glowers. “You’re no lady, and this is one night when I won’t let you act like one. You’re not going to turn me out.” He delivers this line with ringing conviction.
“Oh lawd, yes I will.” Oh lord, no I won’t.
“I know you down to your bones in a way that buffoon Wilkes never will. If he truly understood you, he’d despise you. All you care for is money and what it can buy.”
“You scoundrel. Not only are you wrong in every way, you’re skunk drunk.”
“I intend to get a lot drunker before the night is out.”
Please let life not imitate art.
“But not before—” He sweeps me into his arms and begins to carry me up the stairs. Maybe Scott is Rhett after all.
“Take me to the promised land,” I moan. “Ravish me.”
If I remember the book correctly, Scarlett gets pregnant and tells Rhett later that she wishes the baby were anyone’s but his. This is where Scarlett and I part company. I would love to carry Scott’s baby. He would look like both of us, light-eyed and fair-haired, with his talent, humor, and brains, and my stamina, self-control, and hand-eye coordination. Scott would be the same extraordinary father he is to Scottie, whom he writes once or twice a week—heavy on the advice—and misses dearly.
This is what I am thinking when he deposits me on the third step, draws me into an embrace that stops at friendly, and bows from the waist. “Very, very helpful, Sheilo. Thank you. Why did you abandon the theater?”
Before I answer he vanishes into his study, closes the door, and works into the night.
A week later I hear steps behind me. A woman with a hat like a floral tribute for a murdered mobster taps me on the back as I cantor off to an interview at MGM. “Why Sheilah Graham,” says the newest member of our holy order of gossipmongers, “wherever you’re going I’m sure I’ve already been there.”
“Why Hedda Hopper.”
Weak chin, pointy nose, dull brown hair—as ZaSu Pitts has pointed out, she does resemble a ferret. I try to keep my distance because Hedda can lacerate. Unlike Miss Hopper, I am not indifferent to societal rules. My bottomless need for people to like me is too powerful for me to become flat-out malevolent. I abide by the catch-more-flies-with-honey-than-vinegar theory, while Hedda’s approach stops just short of extortion.
“How fortuitous to see you,” Hedda says with a flounce of arrogance, her standard imperious expression intact. Has she tailed me? “I believe my news will be of interest.”
I have news, too—my best scoop in months. Tomorrow I intend to publish that Katharine Hepburn has acquired the film rights for The Philadelphia Story, the Broadway hit in which she played the lead. She will produce the movie on the sole condition that she stars, a highly unorthodox step and to my knowledge, a first for a woman. This, she hopes, will turn around her career. A good thing, since, after last year’s Bringing Up Baby, the Independent Theatre Owners of America put her on their box office poison list.
“Care for a sneak preview?” Hedda asks.
“Go on.”
She approximates a smile that fails to include her beady eyes. “Mr. Selznick was just window-shopping when he brought your lover on board. Not only will he be dropped from the picture, his MGM contract will be canceled and . . .”
I cannot feel my legs. “That’s not news,” I interrupt, though it is, of the most painful sort. “Scott quit.” Scott will be devastated. Scott will be blackballed. This was the last stop for him. “He has another project lined up.” Will Scott abandon both Hollywood and me, fall off the wagon, and flee to Zelda as he did before? “We knew yesterday.” Which is when, buoyant, he turned in new pages to David Selznick.
“I think it is news, Sheilah, though that your Mr. Fitzgerald is a washed-up drunk is not.” She sidles away, her hatted head
held high, flowers wobbling. I picture Hedda making the hat herself, gluing on plastic cherries from Woolworth’s.
I walk as fast as I can to my car and drive to the pier, washed-up drunk ringing in my ears. The pounding of the water always helps me concentrate, and in January, seeing anyone I know is unlikely. I pace the boardwalk, shivering, my thin sweater buttoned to my chin, arms crossed and clutched to my chest. The wind kicks up, and salt water stings my eyes, but this is not how I will let my love story end.
After an hour, I return to the lot and nose around for Hedda, whom I intercept on the arm of George Cukor, the director who yesterday was also ingloriously relieved of his obligation to Gone with the Wind.
“Ah, Sheilah. Your boy was doing fine work,” George says when he spots me.
“That’s terribly kind of you to say. I realize great minds don’t always think alike, but I’m sorry you and David have parted ways.”
George rolls his eyes. “Buy you a cup of coffee?”
It’s Hedda I need. “Rain check?”
With that he busses both of us on the cheek, excuses himself, and I’m left with the ferret.
She waits for me to speak. “Spit it out. Why are you crawling back?”
“What would you say to a horse trade?” Our conversation is abbreviated, but the deed is done. We are businesswomen first, writers second, each looking out for our own interests.
From there I drive to Paramount to call on B. P. Schulberg, head of production.
“You’re home late,” Scott says. Since this morning, wrinkles seem to be etched more deeply across his cheeks and forehead. “You’ve heard?”
I will my own face to go blank. “What is it?”
“I may have set the screenwriting record, Presh. Dumped again. Finito .” I hear an echo of the strain I recall from the Pasadena Playhouse as he slides two fingers across his throat execution-style. “I couldn’t make the grade as a hack. Like everything else, it takes a certain amount of practiced excellence. Whoosh. My contract’s gone with the wind.”
I shake my head and gasp. What I do not say is that perhaps he’ll be offered a contract from another studio. Hollywood is not that forgiving, nor is Scott that gullible.
“I see you’re worried, Sheilo.”
Nor am I the actress I think I am.
“It’s going to be all right,” he says. “I want time to start my novel and maybe some stories. You know the Saturday Evening Post used to pay me four thousand a pop?”
Ten years ago.
“And maybe there’s freelance work in town.”
I think of Scottie’s tuition at Vassar. Zelda’s fees at her very expensive sanitarium. Scott’s bills for Dr. Nelson, who visits often. Scott’s made a dent in his debts, but his expenses loom large, and even if I earned enough money to help him, he’d be too proud to accept it. But I say, “Of course you’ll find work, darling, and I want nothing more than to see you writing again.”
Late that afternoon I take Scott by the hand, lead him to his bedroom, and try to show him how the contract between the two of us is eternal. As his words fill every empty spot, I believe he is telling me the same thing. I touch each faint seam engraved on his face. My fingertips graze him everywhere as I bask in our tenderness. I want our lovemaking to last forever.
Over breakfast, I dive into “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood ” in the Los Angeles Times. “Good God,” I shriek. “Katharine Hepburn’s snagged the rights for The Philadelphia Story. She’s going to try to line up a producer and director who’ll let her star.”
“Smart,” Scott says, “because she can forget landing the part of Scarlett. Selznick would never believe her as a woman Rhett Butler chases for twelve years.”
I grimace. “I wish I knew how Hedda got that item.”
“She probably threatened to castrate someone.” Scott shrugs. “Could you hand me the sports section?”
Ten minutes later, on schedule, the phone rings in the hallway. “Would you get it?” I ask, feigning interest in a review of Gunga Din.
Scott returns fifteen minutes later, doing the McQuillan jig. “What did I tell you, Sheilo? I’m not the last-place hack after all. Maybe penultimate. Looks like I’ll have to dredge up the old youthful razzle-dazzle one more time. I landed a job, fifteen hundred a week, and not only that, I’m going back East, to college.”
Chapter 36
1939
B . P.’s son Budd could be taken for a Bar Mitzvah boy, tall and gangly, with a halo of dark curls and an unfortunate stutter. In fact, he is twenty-five and writing a movie about the winter carnival at his alma mater, Dartmouth. I prevailed upon B. P. to convince Budd to hire Scott to coauthor the script and pray that Scott never learns of my conniving.
The job requires a trip to Hanover, New Hampshire. I am accompanying them as far as New York, where I’ve scheduled an overdue meeting with John Wheeler. I also plan to indulge in Broadway shows, shop at Bonwits, and shriek with the Roseland Ballroom crowd when Frank Sinatra performs. After Scott joins me, we’ll go to El Morocco and up to Harlem for jazz—when I’m not arranged like a bouquet of flowers, awaiting him in peach silk lingerie at our hotel suite.
I would be elated were I not alarmed. “My TB’s flared up,” Scott informed me—night sweats, coughing, fever—and New Hampshire in February will be far from hospitable. But canceling is not an option, and as I look at Scott now from across the aisle on the plane, he seems to have willed himself to become healthy and not much more than twenty-five himself. Since we boarded, he and Budd haven’t stopped yammering about their hallowed Ivy League, Scott’s Roaring Twenties, and primarily the Fitzgerald oeuvre, which Budd studied at Dartmouth. Could there be a more flattering reprieve from literary extinction?
After a few hours, I put away my book, say good night, and climb into my berth as the old pro regales his disciple with tales of E.E. Cummings, Edmund (aka Bunny) Wilson, and Ernest Hemingway, and draws Budd out on what it was like to grow up as a Hollywood prince. Novel fodder.
Seven hours later I wake to Scott looming over me. His skin has lost its rosiness. On the floor by his seat he points to “a gift from Dad” and flashes a lupine grin. “To toast our success.”
The empty magnum of vintage Mumm may as well be a destroyer headed toward his career. Scott is blotto. “You’ve got to stop this now,” I whisper, “or you’re going to regret it.”
“She’s back, the high priestess from hell,” he says, and stumbles to his seat.
We land at Idlewild, and hail a taxi. Scott is invigorated—too invigorated—but Budd most likely sees only his partner’s high spirits. Before they meet with the movie’s director, they drop me at the Weylin. My suite is complimentary, management’s appreciation for putting their hotel on the map when I reported that Lupe Vélez was charged a hundred twenty dollars extra for carpet damage. (“An overenthusiastic tango with Gary Cooper.”) I wish Budd good luck and Scott a tearful goodbye.
“Better not call me,” he says, his voice sweet as jam and miraculously sober. Perhaps he didn’t drink as much as I’d feared. “I’ll phone you from Hanover.”
As the days pass I find myself too worried to parse the attributes of gabardine over chiffon, nor am I in the mood to applaud the Rockettes, cheer Frank, or watch movies at either the Roxy or the Paramount. I muster enthusiasm for Pins and Needles and DuBarry Was a Lady, the best plays of the season, because keeping up on the theater is, after all, my job. Mostly, I brood about Scott. When he finally calls on Wednesday, his remarks about Dartmouth—“Princeton’s earnest kid brother”—are so thoroughly carbonated with happiness, I sense his overindulgence from two hundred and sixty miles away.
“Please don’t drink,” I beg. He terminates the conversation, reminding me that he will be home by Friday.
Friday comes and goes. The phone is silent. Frantic, I wire Scott and receive no reply. After ten minutes of the play Stars in Your Eyes I leave and stay awake all night. In the morning I wire again: PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE SAFE AND WHEN YOU WILL RET
URN MISS YOU MORE THAN I CAN SAY.
Early Saturday, with still no word, I call the Hanover Inn and receive a frosty reply. “Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Schulberg are no longer guests.” Only on Sunday do I hear from Budd. “B-b-bad news, Miss Graham.”
I imagine my love staggering ’round the campus, under the influence, burning with fever. “Scott’s dead!” I scream.
“N-n-no. Mr. Fitzgerald’s alive, but s-sick, very sick. We went on a real b-b-bender. I shouldn’t have g-given him Champagne. But I’ve never enjoyed listening m-more.”
Liquored up, Scott can schmooze with the grandiosity of an Oxford don, whether he’s discussing the downfall of the House of Medici or the hairdo of Alice B. Toklas. Budd reports a garbled tale of a missed train, a lost overcoat, a slip on an icy ski jump, a fraternity house brawl, and a reception hosted by the English department that, he admits, was “inauspicious.”
No wonder. Professors prefer their authors dead, leather-bound and shelved, not arrogant, sly, and pissed.
“I’m also sorry to say we were both fired.”
The least of it. “When will you and Scott be back here?” I manage to ask.
“That’s the thing. Mr. Fitzgerald—”
“I think at this point you can call him Scott.”
“We’re in town—”
“For Chrissake, where?”
“The Weylin wouldn’t check us in given . . . let’s just say we’re both a bit . . . mangy. I tried six more hotels. Then S-Scott came up with D-Doctor’s Hospital. He has a fever of almost 104 degrees—and”—I swear Budd is crying—“Miss G-Graham, if you c-come down here and t-take over, I’d b-be eternally g-grateful.”
Twenty minutes later a taxi drops me at the hospital. I thank a teary Budd, who, when I turn around, is gone. A physician on Scott’s case explains that the patient is being shot through with penicillin for a bronchial infection and appears to be responding. Thank God.
I find Scott alone in a large room, tucked under a sheet that matches his pallor. Stripped of drunkenness’s veneer, he looks fragile as he gazes at me with glassy eyes. I kiss his high forehead and stroke his hair. Nothing will scrub away my love. Were anything to happen to Scott, I would be a husk, stripped to nothing. I think of how cruel I was to my own sick mother and I am flooded with profound remorse and a need, this time, to do better.
