Fasten Your Seat Belts

by Lawrence J. Quirk

  Nagel also recalled that Sidney Fox pulled rank, knowing her clout in the front office, and, in his opinion, enjoyed making Davis look drab and unwanted. “Her hair was an ash-blonde then, and it photographed a mousy brown. She told me later that she and her mother left the San Bernardino preview before it was over, she felt that humiliated, absolutely hated herself on the screen; did for years in fact.” Even Variety’s kind reference to her (“Bette Davis holds much promise in her handling of Laura, sweet, simple, and the very essence of repression”) did little to console her. All she could talk about was that the Times had called her “lugubrious.” Only Karl Freund saw her potential: “She has lovely eyes,” he told Junior Laemmle. That comment reportedly saved her at Universal—for a while, anyway.

  John M. Stahl, a director regarded as one of the screen’s arch sentimentalists, was about to begin a film, Seed, based on a controversial novel about birth control by Charles G. Norris. Since the birth control theme was a little strong for the watchful Hays Office, the screenplay concocted by Gladys Lehman evolved into a banal, somewhat tedious story about a man, John Boles, who wants to become a writer and who is suffocated by the demands of family life, including five kids and a wife, Lois Wilson, who is too sweet and self-sacrificing for words. Eventually he deserts his family, becomes a famous novelist, takes on svelte, smooth Genevieve Tobin as a mistress—and then begins wondering about the folk he left behind, including his now grown children.

  Stahl had little trouble filling the roles of the four sons, but the daughter, Margaret, proved a stickler. She had to be wraithlike, vulnerable, sweet yet vital. After combing high schools, drama forums, theaters, restaurants, anywhere and everywhere but the Universal contract list, he finally spotted Davis in the Universal commissary and decided she had the right quality. The monumentally indifferent Laemmles, thoroughly unimpressed with her Bad Sister histrionics, acceded readily to the idea of Stahl or anyone else keeping Davis busy while she was still working out her contract option, and Davis landed in Seed, where she was hardly seen or heard by audiences. “If you blinked, you missed her, the role was that small,” Raymond Hackett, one of her “brothers,” later recalled to his wife, Blanche Sweet, who told me:

  “Raymond said she was the most pathetic thing he had ever seen—unsure of herself, thoroughly aware she was unappreciated, disregarded by everyone, especially Stahl.” The director, having pushed her into the background, proceeded to forget all about her, and Davis practically directed herself through the few scenes she had in Seed.

  She later recalled, with more than a little bitterness: “There was no makeup man for me, no attempt was made to light me properly, and I felt like a churchmouse next to the soignée Genevieve Tobin, who broke up our dull but happy home . . . but I did my thankless job and kept my mouth shut. . . . if I wasn’t dead in pictures already, this appearance was sure to do the trick.” She also recalled that up against the vital talents of Tobin, Lois Wilson, Hackett, and Richard Tucker, she felt like a “ghost.”

  Hackett told his wife, Blanche Sweet, that he was sure Davis had developed a woman-size crush on handsome John Boles, the star, then thirty-seven, fourteen years her senior. Mr. Boles had been in movies off and on for about seven years, alternating between singing leads and romantic foils for such as Gloria Swanson and Bebe Daniels. Gentlemanly and soft-spoken, with all the breeding of a southern aristocrat, Mr. Boles had lit a mighty fire in the heart of the young Norma Shearer, among others, and, onscreen later, was to prove the ultimate homme fatal of cinema opposite Irene Dunne, whom he relegated heartlessly to the Back Street, and Ann Harding, whose heart he broke in somewhat similar fashion in The Life of Vergie Winters. But alas for Davis, Boles was no philanderer or advantage-taker when it came to the susceptibilities of young co-workers.

  So little did Universal think of her when the picture was released in May 1931 that she wasn’t even mentioned in the advertising, and her name appeared far, far down on the list of credits. When I saw Seed in revival some years ago, I found Davis insipid, dull, ZaSu-Pitts-ish. (ZaSu was in the picture as a maid, in fact, and Davis at times seemed to be doing an imitation of the limp-wristed, fluttery comedienne.) The picture itself seemed to lack the courage of its convictions, having been boiled down from a novel that had had more bite and bark, and the plot meandered uneasily. “Lethargic and often dull,” said The New York Times.

  For the third time Davis found herself somebody’s sister. In Waterloo Bridge, a screen version of the Robert E. Sherwood play, reviewers disregarded her again as she wilted away in a badly written, ill-defined role as the hero’s sister who is gracious to the little showgirl with whom he falls in love before going to the World War I front from England. All ends sadly when the showgirl-turned-prostitute, feeling she has forfeited her decency along with the right to her lover’s respect and regard, dies on Waterloo Bridge.

  Such are the bare bones of this tragic story, which was made twice more, in a vastly superior MGM version of 1940 with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor, and as a forgettable 1956 effort with Leslie Caron and John Kerr, retitled, for no good reason, Gaby.

  Certainly the 1931 version was a slapdash, ramshackle affair, devoid of proper movie underscoring and handicapped by superficial performances from the leads, Mae Clarke (more famous for getting Cagney’s grapefruit jammed in her face in The Public Enemy) and Kent Douglass, who later, as Douglass Montgomery, was to sparkle briefly in films opposite the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Margaret Sullavan.

  Douglass took something of a shine to Davis during the shooting but she found him too fragile and somewhat effeminate for her taste—Margaret Sullavan later had similar reservations about him—and as his burgeoning interest did little for her ego, she promptly discouraged it.

  Davis remembered hanging around the set mouthing Mae Clarke’s lines and wishing fervently she had the chance to play the role as she felt it should be done. Eager, sad, frustrated, disappointed, she was as much a wraith about the set as she was before the camera, as co-workers were to remember, and again she was forgotten, both in the advertisements and in the reviews. “Janet was an insipid part,” she later scoffed. “I think I had about four lines in it, and I don’t think I had even a change of costume. I was supposed to be nice to Clarke, and in fact I cordially hated her inwardly because she was getting the showcasing I knew I could have done ample justice to!”

  It is true that Mae Clarke was an actress of distinct limitations, and indeed she wasn’t all that pretty. She wound up her career later as a feminine foil for Cagney and others, and eventually was reduced to playing bit parts. Many years later, when I interviewed her, she said, “Gosh, in 1931 I felt I was really on my way, and Bette seemed to be in permanent Loser-Limbo. I hardly remember her from the picture. She seemed anxious to elude everyone’s notice. It is hard to believe that this shy stick of a girl within a year or two was to burn up the screen in hot, sexy roles. Of course she wore her hair a brownish ash-blonde at the time and it wasn’t very attractive. Nor did she have a clothes sense—not that the studio helped her any. But it must have taken an iron will to get out of the rut she was in when I knew her—certainly she proved she had that, in spades.”

  There is a story that years later Davis tried to get down-and-out Mae a small part in one of her major 1940s Warner starrers. Davis commented, “I was a nothing also-ran in her picture, and maybe I can help her do just a little more in mine now.” But those who knew Davis well at the time felt that she was trying to reestablish a contrast—in petty reverse—with an actress whom she had bitterly envied, considering her frustrating 1931 situation at Universal. Certainly her motivations may have been mixed in this instance.

  Waterloo Bridge was received, for the most part, with cool, perfunctory dispatch by the critics. “There are moments when the story has a sympathetic tug,” Variety sniffed, damning with faint praise.

  Davis was, at first depressed when she learned she would be loaned out to RKO for Other People’s Business, later retitled Way Back Ho
me. It was to star Mr. and Mrs. Phillips Lord, who had achieved widespread popularity in a regular NBC radio show called Seth Parker. Mr. Lord, a folksy, do-gooder Maine minister, solved his people’s problems, comforted them in misfortune, and was a good and uplifting influence.

  Jane Murfin concocted a warm, homey, unaffected screenplay based on the radio characters. The plot, what there was of it, had to do with villainous Stanley Fields (one of the movies’ favorite heavies of the period), who seeks to pry hapless son Frankie Darro away from the Lords, with whom he has taken refuge. In the course of the story, Fields runs afoul not only of the Lords, but also of local boy Frank Albertson and his girl, Davis, who befriends Darro. Eventually Fields is killed by a train, and all ends happily.

  The film was budgeted at $400,000 (a lot for the period) and eventually ran a longer-than-usual 81 minutes. It was full of warm, informal, unassuming Maine touches, and the village life and people are captured without Hollywoodish elaborations and come through as real and human.

  Davis was not only pleasantly surprised at the courteous and kind reception she received at RKO from Producer Pandro Berman, who had been struck by her potential in her Universal pictures and had asked for her, but to her delight found, by looking at the rushes, that photographer J. Roy Hunt had shown her to maximum advantage, highlighting her fine eyes and expressive mouth. Director William Keighley, who excelled at light and sentimental romance, understood actresses (he married two of them, Laura La Plante and Marian Nixon) and took time and care with her scenes. While she was merely a supporting player as Frank Albertson’s girlfriend, she appeared in Way Back Home to far greater advantage than she had in any previous film.

  Soon she had attracted the notice of the screen’s leading magazine editor, James R. Quirk of Photoplay, who kept his Hollywood staff moving on Davis. One of his writers, Katherine Albert, recalled to me her visit to the RKO set in late 1931, where she found Davis relaxing contentedly with an orangeade in the company of Frank Albertson, who was obviously smitten with her. Now Davis was reading about herself in Photoplay.

  “She was a shy little thing—almost mousey—in those days,” Katherine told me in 1953. “It is amazing, in retrospect, why I didn’t sense the fire in her at that time. Maybe it was the part she was playing—a nice, small-town Maine girl—and she was living it on and off screen. She spoke of her love for her mother and sister, and her hopes for the future. I had heard she was very unhappy with the treatment she was getting at Universal, but she seemed hesitant to go into detail about it, at least on that occasion. I guess she didn’t want to seem to bite the hands that fed her—though actually they were starving her, both creatively and monetarily. A month or so later, after they let her go, she told me, ‘They said I had no sex appeal, and they couldn’t imagine any man giving me a tumble. I was regarded as attractive back in New York, and I had plenty of beaux; in fact, turned down several proposals of marriage. If they had paid more attention to me, if they had photographed and directed me differently, and had given me parts I could have shown my mettle in, they might have felt respect for me. But that is all water under the bridge now, thank goodness.’”

  Director William Seiter said of her in 1960: “I found her a cooperative and delightful actress, and the Lords were like parents to her, concerned and hospitable. Universal had handled her very stupidly, of course—they didn’t realize what they had in her, and it didn’t say much for their perspicacity. She claimed that Way Back Home was the first film in which she felt she had been properly showcased, and that it gave her hope for the future. Everyone liked her, and she worked hard with what slight material she was given. She was graphically agitated, I remember, in a scene where Stanley Fields, the drunken father of Darro, is menacing her, and her love scenes with Frank Albertson were tender. Frank was obviously in love with her, and she handled him very gently, onscreen and off.”

  Frank Albertson, who began as a prop boy in movies at thirteen in 1922, was twenty-two when he made Way Back Home. In 1960, he was in New york on vacation when Psycho, in which he had a small part, premiered, and reminisced about his career in general. He had played many leads and such outstanding character parts as Katharine Hepburn’s brother Walter in Alice Adams, in which he had really shone with critics and public. While his career in 1960 was on a decided downslide, he was mellow and philosophical while we talked.

  He said he had most enjoyed acting with Katharine Hepburn, among the many stars he had supported, but reserved some affectionate words for Bette Davis and Way Back Home.

  “It was a really warm and homey little picture. The Lords, whom I felt I already knew from their radio program, created a family atmosphere on the set, and yes, I did develop a crush on Bette. She was very warm and sweet. I know people think of her as a fussy, man-hating, dynamo and termagant but she wasn’t like that then, not at all. I really felt the love scenes but I could tell her romantic interests were elsewhere; I believe she married Harmon Nelson some months later. But we were always friendly when we met in later years.”

  Davis always defended Way Back Home as a warm, genuine film, but the January 1932 critical opinion was mixed. “Unbelievably bad,” sniffed Weekly Variety but The New York Times called it “real and mellow.”

  After Way Back Home finished filming, Universal kicked Davis over to yet another studio, Columbia, for The Menace. In later years Davis said of The Menace (the original title had been The Feathered Serpent), “It was a monstrosity; my part consisted of a great many falls out of closets. The picture was made in eight days. I knew I had obviously reached bottom.”

  The director, Roy William Neill, accorded the hapless Davis scant attention, and the love interest to whom she was assigned, Walter Byron, drank heavily, smoked incessantly, and though only thirty, was obviously on the downgrade, which accounted for his strangely aged and bloated appearance. He also had the foulest breath of any man she had ever met, and this made the love scenes with him a particular trial for Davis.

  After several heavy woo-pitching scenes, Davis couldn’t stand it anymore and asked Byron, “Do you ever brush your teeth or use mouthwash? You show a shocking lack of consideration for me when you forget about such things!” Roy William Neill told a Photoplay writer ten years later that “when she lit into Byron like that, I knew there was more—much more—to her. It’s no wonder to me that by now [1942] that little girl has battled her way to the top like a champ!”

  Natalie Moorhead, a well-groomed and handsome blonde actress also in the picture, was some years Davis’s senior and was obviously jealous and insecure in her scenes with the visitor from Universal and tried to upstage her. Her tactics—moving upstage away from the camera, forcing Davis to turn around and face her, and so on, prepared Davis for combat with another egotistical star, Miriam Hopkins, some years later. “Natalie was a cold egotist,” H. B. Warner, also in the cast, said. “She was very self-conscious and self-protective about her looks and general appearance and I am afraid she gave the little Davis girl a hard time.”

  The plot was some trivial nonsense about Byron’s fleeing England after being falsely accused of murdering his father. He is disfigured in the oil fields of the southwest United States, returns to England to learn who killed his father, and finally pins the murder on his stepmother, Moorhead, and her cohort. Disguised by the plastic surgery that his accident had necessitated, he pretends to be a prospective buyer for the ancestral estate, fooling both his stepmother and his former fiancée, Peggy, played by Davis. Davis and he are reunited at the unconvincing fadeout.

  Byron, who had made a glittering start as Gloria Swanson’s leading man in Queen Kelly in 1928, told an at first sympathetic but finally bored and irritated Davis during on-set tea sessions that he felt he was all through in America and perhaps should return to his native England. “You’re full of self-pity and that is destructive,” she told him. “Stop the drinking and smoking and watch your health and looks, and maybe things will get better.” She always expressed regret in later years that th
is very handsome man and good actor obviously hadn’t taken her advice. Byron took a small part in what turned out to be his last film in 1939, and then lived on in total obscurity until 1972.

  The Menace was a hopelessly bad film in all departments, from Roy William Neill’s perfunctory get-it-over-and-done-with style of direction to the careless photography, which did nothing for Davis, to the screenplay by Dorothy Howell and Charles Logue, which never got off the ground.

  Some of the photographs the still department dreamed up were the silliest and most inappropriate possible. One that is often reprinted shows Byron and Davis staring up at an obviously pâpier-maché “monster.” They were so poorly posed by the photographer that they don’t even look frightened—just bored. As well they might have been. The reviews of the time shrugged it off with “just routine melodrama without menace or perceptible suspense.” Weekly Variety, though, delighted a certain someone with, “Bette Davis has to take a decided second to Natalie Moorhead.” Another sniffed: “Filled with absurd situations.” When I saw it many years later, I felt the original reviewers had been too kind.

  Hell’s House, shot in 1931 and released in early 1932, was certainly the nadir of Davis’s early Hollywood career. “It took two weeks to shoot and looked like it had taken a day and a half,” the witty Irish-American actor Pat O’Brien later said of it. It was his first picture with Davis, and they became, in his words, “a mutual consolation society of two.” Later Davis and her mother became excellent friends with Pat and his wife.

  Davis once said of O’Brien, with whom she would work again, “He was very vital and sexy looking and acting and, I thought, a handsome man in his Irish-looking way, but playing around was not his thing. I don’t know if it was Catholic guilt or what, but Pat always went home to the little wife; no womanizer was he.” When kidded by his friends about his fidelity to his marriage vows, Pat always gave an unprintable rejoinder along the lines of Paul Newman’s remark decades later about the reason for his fidelity to wife Joanne Woodward: “Why should I go out looking for quick hamburgers when I have steak at home?” Frank McHugh later said, “Pat could talk dirty with the best of us, but the funny thing was he never put his cock where his mouth was”—meaning action never followed the words.