Price of Fame
Page 32
CLAUDIA: It’s a pile of whitewashed sand!
PILATE: Augustus Caesar found Rome made of clay and left it marble.
CLAUDIA: I do not care a fig what you leave Palestine made of, provided you leave it with a fortune made.
PILATE: Will you never tire, Claudia, of trying to make me into another Julius Caesar?
CLAUDIA: Should I not be ambitious for you? Is not that a virtue in a wife?
PILATE: Not the greatest.
CLAUDIA: What then?
PILATE: (A pause) Fidelity.
CLAUDIA: But fidelity is no longer the fashion in Rome.
Clare proceeded to switch the scene to Jerusalem, and dramatize the familiar story of Pilate washing his hands of Christ’s trial and crucifixion, followed by the less familiar story of Claudia’s conversion. But soon she had doubts that cameras would ever roll, “for reasons which have nothing to do with my script,” she wrote a friend, “and a good deal to do with the panic that television has caused in Hollywood.”13 Besides, she had a creative problem, in that she wanted Jesus to be an off-screen character only.
“I could show Christ in my story,” she said to a reporter, “but who would play Him?” H. B. Warner had portrayed the Savior successfully in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 epic, King of Kings. That, however, had been a silent picture. “He did not have to talk.” Now the actor would have to be heard, “and I feel that Christ spoke more to the heart than to the ear. Also, the accent would be hard to manage. No, I won’t show him.”14 This meant that Pilate’s Wife would lack the most desirable Hollywood commodity: a charismatic, handsome, heroic male star.
Setting the script aside until she was next in Hollywood, Clare switched to writing a play. In six weeks she completed a three-act melodrama entitled Child of the Morning.15 It was based on the true story of Maria Goretti, a young Italian village girl whose priest believed her to be a mystic. She had died in 1902 of fourteen stab wounds, while resisting a sexual predator. Subsequently, miracles had been attributed to Maria’s interventions, and in the Holy Year of 1950, she had been canonized a virgin, saint, and martyr, “who gave her innocent and most pure life in order to prevent a sinful act against the virtue of Christian purity.”16
Clare transferred the mise-en-scène of her play to Brooklyn, and reimagined her heroine as Cathy O’Connell, a guileless sixteen-year-old in a family of mostly lapsed Irish Catholics. The girl aspires to be a nun, but settles for charitable work. Her good intentions are cut short when a reefer addict breaks into her bedroom, bent on rape. As Cathy struggles to preserve her virginity, he shoots her multiple times, killing her.17
The actor Eddie Dowling, with whom Clare had appeared onstage in her brief Broadway career, offered to produce and direct Child of the Morning. He said he would first stage it in the provinces, with the hope of an eventual transfer to Broadway.
That summer, Charles Willoughby visited Clare at Sugar Hill. Now in his sixtieth year and recently retired from the army, he was weary and confessedly “deteriorating,” after more than four decades of active service. He wanted to discuss his grand plan to write an account of Douglas MacArthur’s long career in the Pacific, ending with the general’s recent dismissal by President Truman, due to a disagreement over Korean War tactics. Having not seen Charles for almost five years, Clare was disappointed to find him in a plain gray suit, lacking his former bemedaled military glamour. To Dorothy Farmer he was “handsome in a gross Germanic way, with a chip on his shoulder.”
Divining that he was still more obsessed with McArthur than with her, and that his biographical project was likely to be a tome, Clare recommended John Chamberlain as an ideal collaborator. He thanked her, and once again walked out of her life.18
Clare returned to Hollywood in mid-September to resume work on Pilate’s Wife. Notwithstanding her earlier skepticism about its prospects, she found Wald and Krasna touting the project as “one of the most ambitious” they had ever planned.19 Location filming in the Holy Land, they announced, would start in early 1952. Curtis Bernhardt, their current choice as director, was all set to scout sites. He intended to ask government and labor leaders in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem how much cooperation RKO could expect from them.20
Soon, however, news leaked from the producers’ casting service that Krasna and Wald “would have to wait” until Olivier and Leigh were available. The actors had current Broadway commitments to appear together in Antony and Cleopatra and Caesar and Cleopatra, which were due to begin in late December and would run well into the new year.21 This delay did not prevent the producers from promoting both Clare and her script at every opportunity. In an interview, she claimed to be working twenty-hour days, and had 120 pages done.22
Clare in Hollywood (illustration credit 29.1)
But she privately realized that becoming a Catholic had affected her creativity. That was the reason she had redirected much of her energy into articles, religious tracts, and speeches.23 As the weeks at RKO dragged on, her powers of invention continued to wane.
Carlos Chávez suspected that Clare had failed to come to Mexico because she did not want to share him with his family or her husband. Perhaps she was also punishing him for his non-appearance at Aspen. “Of course, you had other things to do,” he wrote, “but more than that, I know you wanted it that way.”24
Having been the victim several times of her flightiness over the last seventeen months, he had his secretary draw up terms for his symphony in memory of Ann. The fee was $3,000, with half to be paid on signing. He ceded to her the live and broadcast performance rights for three years, while keeping for himself publication and recording rights, as well as copyright ownership in perpetuity. Delivery of the complete score was promised for January 1, 1952, except for “causes of force majeur.”25 Clare always disliked being asked for money, and was in no hurry to reward him.
The third week of October saw the fruition of another enterprise in her daughter’s memory: the dedication of a chapel named for Saint Anne designed by the San Francisco architect Vincent Raney. It was situated not far from the crossroads in Palo Alto where the deadly accident had occurred. Funds for the construction of a box-shaped Modernist building of red brick, complemented by a white-faced rectangular tower, had been supplied mostly by Harry and Clare. They both attended the ceremony, timed so that Stanford students back from vacation could take part.26
An inscription on a plaque to the left of the entrance read:
+ + + + + THY BEAUTY, NOW,
IS ALL FOR THE KING’S DELIGHT:
HE IS THY LORD, + + + + + +
AND WORSHIP BELONGS TO HIM.
IN MEMORY OF MY DAUGHTER
ANN CLARE BROKAW
CLARE BOOTHE LUCE + OCTOBER 21, 1951
Determined to make the chapel a work of art, Clare had hired the New York sculptor Janet De Coux to carve a symbolic Tree of Life on the teak entry doors. For the facade above, she had placed a bronze statue by Frederick C. Shrady, depicting Saint Anne in a flowing gown, a gold halo encircling her head, reading to her child Mary from a tablet. Its inscription read, Ante Saecula Creata Sum (Before the Ages, I was created).
Moving away from traditional stained glass, she had commissioned André Girard to paint four twenty-five-feet-high windows along the right side of the nave, and suspended Stations of the Cross opposite. Louisa Jenkins, a mosaicist in Big Sur, made a baldachin to hang over the altar, consisting of a large oval frame of black lattice metal, with tiles worked into Picassoesque angels playing heraldic musical instruments. In addition, Jenkins had made a shrine in an alcove to the left of the chancel, using lapis lazuli, gold leaf, shells, and ceramics to embellish a statue of the Blessed Virgin.
Clare had recruited noted craftsmen even for smaller objects. A set of sterling silver candleholders were by Victor Ries, and a silver crucifix by Louis Feron. She said her aim in using Modernist artists was to demonstrate that “Christianity is a religion of Resurrection and Renaissance.”27
Interior of Saint Anne’s Chapel, with paintings
by André Girard (illustration credit 29.2)
Looking around her now, she felt a sense of accomplishment. Sunlight filtering through five small blocks of multicolored glass in the left wall softly illuminated the nave. The thirty-foot-high ceiling dropped to eight feet at the point where the Stations of the Cross formed a progression of overlapping oblique segments, each lighted by an exterior aperture. Girard’s four painted windows on the other side represented the teaching methods of Jesus, including his parables, Sermon on the Mount, and last instructions to his disciples.
Although Clare was tone-deaf, she could not fail to notice the sublime resonance of the organ, an effect brought about by the chapel’s great height, narrow length, and rounded apse, making the acoustics resemble the sonority of a Romanesque church.28
She boasted of her architectural achievement to Evelyn Waugh, who had grown fond of her since she converted. “It is a splendid thing to be a church builder,” he replied. “I do congratulate you. I wish you would rebuild the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.”29
Clare traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts, in mid-November for the first tryout of Child of the Morning. Near to curtain time in the Broadway Theatre, she appeared backstage, wearing a red coat and dark dress with a rose corsage. She instructed the gifted ingenue Margaret O’Brien, who was playing her heroine, on how to hold a missal correctly. Now almost fifteen, Margaret had costarred at age seven with Judy Garland in Vincente Minnelli’s movie Meet Me in St. Louis. She turned out to be an equally talented theater performer.
Out front, Clare mingled with the audience, and warned a mother with two young children that the last act was violent. During the intervals she eavesdropped on audience comments at the rear of the orchestra.30 She had reason to be nervous, because many influential people were backing her play. John D. MacArthur (Helen Hayes’s brother-in-law) had invested $22,800, Henry Luce and Bernard Baruch $5,000 each, Dorothy Farmer $3,000, Bishop Sheen $2,000, Mother Mary Judge $1,000, and Father Thibodeau, Al Morano, Maggie Case, and Tere Pascone $500 each. The production was capitalized at $60,000, and included $5,000 from Clare, who had never before put money into her own productions.31
After the final curtain, there were plentiful cries for the young lead, gratifyingly followed by eight resounding cries of, “Author! Author!”32 But reviews next day, and after the play transferred to Boston’s Shubert Theatre on November 19, were mixed. The Springfield News praised Clare’s talent for line and phrase, but said that in dramatizing mysticism and murder, she had “placed too large a subject on too small a canvas.”33 The Boston Post commented, “Some of its scenes have the high excitement of great drama; some others are just plain silly.” Other critics said that Margaret O’Brien’s performance was “inspired, but that the melodrama was clumsily crafted, repetitious, and long-winded, with poorly developed characters.”34 Ticket sales flagged, and after the last Boston performance on December 1, Eddie Dowling canceled a pending transfer to Philadelphia.35
A letter from Charles Willoughby, dated December 23, surprised Clare. He began by spelling her name with an i, which always irritated her. What followed was strangely curt and clumsy, a farewell of sorts.
Against the background of the holidays, I count on the benevolent understanding of an old and trusted friend.
I hope that you appreciate that my erratic silences are due to a curious psychological adjustment, which I had to solve or adjust personally.
Needless to say I remain appreciative of your friendship and understanding.
I married Mrs. M. Pratt in a civil ceremony, Nov. 20th, a friend from Tokyo and sister-in-law of the American Minister.
I expect to go abroad shortly for an indefinite stay in Spain.
I send warm holiday wishes.
Fondly Charles.36
Clare was in California again in late January 1952, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel for ten more weeks on Pilate’s Wife. RKO assigned the veteran screenwriter William Cameron Menzies to help her finish.37 This seemed to signal that the producers had lost confidence in her ability to fully implement her idea. She felt at first disillusioned, then bored.
On March 20, she appeared as a presenter at the annual Academy Awards ceremony at Hollywood’s RKO Pantages Theatre. It was small compensation for not having appeared as a winner two years before. Come to the Stable, despite seven nominations, had won no Oscar. Dressed in an oyster-white satin gown with a diamond pendant, Clare handed the screenwriting award to Paul Dehn and James Bernard for Seven Days to Noon, misstating the title as Seven Days to the Moon. According to the screenwriter Philip Dunne, she then seemed not to recognize famous names, pronouncing that of John Huston “with a short ‘u,’ as in ‘hut,’ and [my own] with a long one, as in ‘dune,’ both with a questioning note in her voice, and the look of one who has bitten into a sour apple.”38
Announcing that the first-draft screenplay of Pilate’s Wife was finished, Clare left on March 22 for New York and soon after accompanied Harry to Europe. He was to gather material for a special issue of Life on Spain. In Seville, she was intrigued to find an old villa called La Casa de Pilatus. It was a replica, built in A.D. 1200 by a Holy Land crusader, of Pontius Pilate’s seaside house in Judea—where Clare had set the early scenes of her screenplay. She described it to Dorothy Farmer as a “delicate Moorish building with a large patio in the middle, balconies, garrisons for troops on the ground floor etc. Not so different from what we imagined at Caesarea!”39
At the end of the month the Luces reached Paris, and Clare went to Rocquencourt to see General Eisenhower. Now head of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), he had recently informed President Truman that he was resigning his command, effective June 1, in order to run for the Republican presidential nomination. Clare wanted to let him know that she and Harry were supporting his candidacy.
Before showing her into the general’s office, an aide told her that Eisenhower had “a stinker of a problem” with reporters asking about his religion. He belonged to no church and felt faith was a personal matter. His handlers, however, feared that some paper might print that he did not believe in God.
Risking Ike’s ire, Clare raised the subject of religion, stressing how necessary it was for a presidential candidate to practice one. He assured her that he believed in the Almighty. His German immigrant grandparents had been Mennonites, but had found no house of worship for those of their persuasion when they settled in East Texas. His parents had therefore not been churchgoers. This had not stopped them from reading the Bible to him every morning and evening, and he knew its contents well. Claiming a denomination now, just to get votes, was not something he cared to do.
Clare said that nevertheless a Chief Executive must be seen as a symbol of the highest ideals. She asked if Mrs. Eisenhower was a practicing Christian. Ike said she was a Presbyterian.
“Then why not accompany Mamie to her place of worship in Paris on Sunday?”
The general took her advice, and for the time being silenced press speculation.40
Clare returned to New York on May 13, and ten days later found time for a reunion with Carlos Chávez. She had at last paid him half of his fee for Ann’s symphony. Despite his promise to deliver early that year, it was still far from finished. She put no pressure on him, and in a grateful letter tinged with regret, he said that he was unable to express all that he saw, and felt, and loved in her. I
I have been telling you these last two or three days that you have been a revelation to me … Yes, I do want to [put it] in words, but however objective I would like it, I know I can better say it in my own more subjective medium, in my music.
I miss you. It is incredible what your presence does … I hope to see you very soon, my love.41
30
BACK TO THE HUSTINGS
Each indecision brings its own delays
And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
At the Connecticut GOP convention in Hartford on May 26, Clare
again succumbed to her fascination with politics. She agreed to represent her old district, Fairfield County, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago that July. By the time she left the arena forty-eight hours later, all twenty-two delegates were committed to Eisenhower.
On June 9, they met with Ike at his Morningside Heights residence in New York. Clare asked him what he thought of General MacArthur warning against the election of a “military man” to the presidency. Ike said that he did not recall MacArthur objecting when he had been proposed for that position in 1948. Speaking to the press afterward, Clare praised Eisenhower as “a most astounding combination of humility and confidence,” who spoke with “equal authority on many subjects.” To her husband, however, she remarked on the general’s platitudinous oratory, comparing him to the cornpone poet Eddie Guest, of whom Dorothy Parker wrote, “I’d rather flunk my Wasserman [syphilis] Test / Than read the poetry of Edgar Guest.”1
Harry planned to throw the resources of his magazines behind Eisenhower’s candidacy. He met with Ike in Denver on June 19, and said it was imperative he make “at least one statesmanlike speech”—preferably on world affairs—before the Chicago convention. Time Inc. would send ninety-six staffers to cover the proceedings, and donate a substantial sum to the nominee.2
Mary Bancroft encountered Harry at a dinner party at Al Grover’s, and ridiculed his support of Eisenhower. She accused him of hoping to be a behind-the-scenes presidential adviser. Blood drained from his face, and he screamed, “You’ve been for every catastrophe of the twentieth century—from FDR on.”3
When Clare appeared at the Chicago convention on Monday, July 7, she found that Dwight Eisenhower and Senator Robert A. Taft, an Old Guard conservative, were close in delegate counts. They were trailed at a distance by Governor Earl Warren, former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota, and Douglas MacArthur, now conveniently retired from the army and hoping to secure the number two spot on a Taft ticket.4 But after a tedious, bitter keynote speech by “dugout Doug,” and an anti-Red harangue by Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin—also a Taft supporter—Ike’s momentum accelerated. Clare worked the floor on his behalf and, under pressure from some party members, floated Margaret Chase Smith’s name for the vice presidency.5 But the lady from Maine withdrew to preserve party harmony, and nobody proposed Clare Luce in her stead.