The First King of Hollywood

by Tracey Goessel

  But this was, in his mind, penny-ante stuff. In January 1918, he sponsored a rodeo for the Red Cross. It was an elaborate event, for which Fairbanks covered all expenses. A stagecoach loaded with cowboys paraded through downtown Los Angeles giving out handbills. Boxes were sold at a premium of $500. (Mary Pickford bought out a special section for 165 children from the Los Angeles orphanage.) Fairbanks’s motto was “$10,000 or bust!” Given that most tickets sold for fifty cents to two dollars, it was an ambitious expectation. They exceeded it, making $18,000. Twenty thousand spectators listened to military bands, watched William S. Hart hold up a stagecoach, bought favors and treats from movie stars, and saw Doug ride a bucking bronco and shoot glass balls. A tribe of Sioux Indians did war dances, Anheuser-Busch brought its Clydesdales, and trick rider Helen Gibson slid down the side of her racing pony and picked up a peanut from the ground with her teeth.

  It was such a success that Doug then paid to move the entire enterprise—two hundred cowboys, the Indians, and “a lot of Mexicans”—to San Francisco. Astride Smiles, he led a parade down Market Street. He met the mayor while “balancing on his hands on the hood of an automobile and kissing the stars on the American flag painted on it.” The mobs at Ewing Field could not all be accommodated; therefore, a second rodeo was agreed to the following day. Even with no advertising, it was a sellout. An additional $38,000 went to the coffers of the Red Cross.

  Fairbanks contemplated touring nationally with the rodeo, but a much greater cause intervened. The federal government needed money to conduct the war and raised it by issuing a series of bonds. Four groups of Liberty Bonds were sold during the conflict; a fifth, postwar bond issuance was deemed the “Victory Liberty Loan” in 1919. The first two Liberty Loans, in April and October 1917, received relatively tepid receptions. Many bonds were sold at a discount. Fairbanks participated in efforts to promote the second Liberty Loan, traveling across the country and speaking at a few meetings in New York City in October. He raised a million dollars, $100,000 of which was his personal subscription. He, along with Mary, William S. Hart, and female impersonator Julian Eltinge appeared in a half-reel film promoting bond sales, variably titled War Relief and The All Star Production of Patriotic Episodes for the Second Liberty Loan. It was one of only five bond films produced for the drive.

  By the time of the third loan issuance, scheduled to begin on the first anniversary of the US entry into the war, Treasury Secretary William McAdoo decided that a more aggressive marketing campaign was in order. He enlisted Fairbanks, Pickford, and Chaplin, as the three most popular movie stars in the nation, to participate in a national tour to promote bond sales. They readily agreed.

  The three, accompanied by Charlotte Pickford chaperoning her daughter Mary, departed from Los Angeles on April 1, 1918, taking a train designated the “Three Star Special” to Chicago. Bennie Zeidman preceded the group by a couple of days, arranging rallies and events at the major stops. But at every stop, no matter how short, one of the stars would address the assembled crowds from the back of the train. Chaplin, exhausted from staying up nights to finish editing A Dog’s Life, slept straight through the first two days. It was during intervals between speeches that he and Doug invented a game they titled “Three Minute Man.” One would pick a topic, and with no preparation or warning the other would be required to give a three-minute discourse on the theme. The subject would be chosen for either obscurity or banality—“window shades” being an example. They played it evenings at Pickfair for years.

  The trio arrived in Chicago on the fourth and were greeted with a large rally. “His million-dollar grin was piloted through the cheering throngs of Chicago’s admirers in a Haynes ‘Fourdore’ roadster,” noted one observer. The four doors were unnecessary. As they reached the Liberty Bond Station on LaSalle Street, Fairbanks leaped through the car’s open windows and onto the roof, exhorting the crowds through a megaphone, leading a rousing chorus of “Over There” and promising to sign the receipts of any and all who bought bonds in the next hour.

  They left for Washington that night, resuming their speeches from the observation platform of the train at every five-minute whistle-stop on their path. Night or day, it did not matter; they were there for the crowds at Fort Wayne, Altoona, Harrisburg, York, and every stop in between. Their arrival in Washington, DC, on the sixth was a major event. Pulled in horse-drawn carriages, they (along with star Marie Dressler) paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue—Mary in one carriage, Doug and Charlie in another. They sold bonds on the Capitol plaza, on the ellipse at the White House (where they briefly met President Wilson), and at a large football field, where Chaplin recalled that in his enthusiasm he fell off the speakers’ platform, dragged Dressler with him, and landed on top of the then little-known assistant secretary of the navy—Franklin Roosevelt. It was Roosevelt who bought the first bond that Fairbanks sold in Washington; their smiling exchange was captured in the rotogravure section of the Washington Post.

  Then it was Manhattan. Upon arrival each was served in a lawsuit: Pickford by a woman who wanted $103,000 commission for securing Mary’s contract with Artcraft (the sort of nuisance suit she and her handlers repeatedly dealt with); Chaplin in a suit from Essanay over his contract move to Mutual; and Fairbanks (along with Anita Loos and John Emerson) in a suit from Scribner’s publishing house. The assertion was that Fairbanks’s last film for Triangle, The Americano, was based not on Blaze Derringer but on a Richard Harding Davis novel, The White Mice. The claim is understandable. The film bears a far greater resemblance to the story line of the Davis novel than it does to the reputed source material.*3 Still, naming Fairbanks was a hollow gesture—he was an employee of Triangle, a de facto producer, not de jure.

  Of more lasting resonance in his life’s story was a decision he made as he arrived in New York City. Instead of going to the Algonquin, where Beth and Junior were waiting, he went to the Sherry Netherland. Beth’s suspicions of his infidelity had never quieted, and sometime in late 1917 she confronted her husband directly. A telegram dated October 9, 1917, speaks to this time in their lives: WIRED YOU AFFAIR WAS OFF BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT IT WAS ON YOU HAVE MISJUDGED ME TERRIBELY [sic] THERE NEVER WAS ANYTHING WRONG WILL FINISH PICTURE AND LEAVE FRIDAY FOR EAST CAN YOU MEET ME IN CHICAGO WANT TO SEE YOU ALONE AM WORRIED ABOUT YOUR CONDITION WIRE ME HOW YOU ARE LOVE DOUGLAS.

  This was disingenuous, especially considering that in the same period he was wiring Mary: RATHER BLUE SPLENDID MOON TONIGHT BUT NO ONE TO SHARE IT WITH and, a week later, AM SO HOMESICK FOR THE MOON FOR YOU FOR OUR DREAMS EVERYTHING. He was playing both ends against the middle, and it could not last much longer.

  Beth and Junior had moved to the Algonquin in New York in the fall of 1917, ostensibly so that the boy could go to school there. There was no official separation. Beth’s family, according to her son, assumed that the household would reunite when Fairbanks was finished filming in California. No one, not even Beth, expected him to be a no-show at the Algonquin.

  His first day in New York City was spent uptown. One spectator recalled years later:

  Mary Pickford sold one of her famous gold curls, then the symbol of all the sweetness and light that he-men wanted in their women, to the highest purchaser of bonds. She stood on the landing of the little stairway leading up from the back of Lord and Taylor’s and the store was so packed that doors had to be locked to keep the rest of the crowd outside. Afterwards she joined Fairbanks, who did his bit by turning back somersaults, walking on his hands and going through a lightning series of fantastic gymnastics, and Chaplin, who made a speech on a platform in front of the Library on Fifth Avenue. Crowds filled the avenue and 40th street, entirely blocking traffic, and the trio got more applause than the soldiers who paraded the preceding day.

  The second day they were in the financial district, where they stood in front of the Treasury Building. Wall Street was packed with faces as far as the eye—and cameras—could see. “I think the three of us all got stage fright down at the New York sub-treasury
that day,” Fairbanks recalled a month later.*4 “Chaplin and I were there together, and I held him up with one arm. Now, Charlie’s not hard to hold, because he’s light, and because he is a handy little acrobat and knows how to balance himself to perfection. But after our speech-making he said: ‘How do you do it, Doug? Do you realize you held me up there for almost three minutes?’ It was just sheer nervousness that enabled me to do it.”

  The New York Times published a photo of the moment: Doug, grinning broadly, holding a teetering and somewhat anxious Chaplin high over his shoulder. The photo is usually cropped, but if one sees the full still, one can recognize Junior, muffled in an overcoat and hat, smiling at the antics from the rear of the platform—a perfect, privileged bird’s-eye view for a little boy. His father had turned up at the Algonquin after all, and not merely to pick up Junior for the rally. It was for the purpose of confessing. He and Mary were in love, he told Beth. More, he continued, it was the one big love of their lives—nothing else mattered in comparison.

  History does not record Beth’s immediate response. But it does tell us her delayed reaction. As her husband left for his solo, midwestern portion of the national tour (Mary was to tour the Northeast, and Chaplin the South), she stewed. On Thursday, April 11, she acted. She met with a reporter, and she named names. She spoke of the “one big love,” adding, “Now I am big enough to stand aside until they have time to find out if it really is that big a love. For twelve years I have thought only of my husband’s happiness, and now I have decided that there is only one thing for me to do—to let him take it as it came to him, while I wend my separate way with my boy. There will be no divorce.”

  She continued, “I cannot defend any woman with whom my husband’s name has been linked. . . . I have made up my mind that I will no longer act as a shield for her. For the last eight months whenever gossip raised its ugly head I was the one who kept denying and defending and explaining. Now I am through. . . . The gossip has a foundation in fact.”

  The news caught Fairbanks unawares. He was in Flint, Michigan, having just given a speech at a rally, when reporters asked him for comment. It was, he insisted, the work of “German propagandists,” continuing, “Why, I have been reported shot three times since I started campaigning for the Liberty loan.” Most newspapers were not so brave as to publish Mary’s name directly in the article, but all sought a quote from her. She obliged, saying, “I have not the remotest idea that my name has been brought into any difference between any man and his wife.”

  This did not sit well with Beth. “I am sorry the woman who has caused all this unhappiness in our home is not willing to acknowledge to the world as she has acknowledged to her friends and her family, her love for Mr. Fairbanks.”

  Owen Moore now chose to chime in. “I deeply sympathize with Mrs. Fairbanks, who by years of devotion and service to her husband in matters connected with his profession, has done much to bring about his success, at the same time as a loyal wife and mother catering to his domestic happiness. It seems doubly unfortunate that in the present state of her health, Mrs. Fairbanks should be compelled to bear public humiliation in a situation where she cannot face the world with her husband at her side. As for myself,” he added darkly, “I can only say my attitude at this time has been prompted by motives that I do not wish to discuss at present.”

  Beth was asked about the “German propaganda” claim on Doug’s part. She replied drily: “It was like him to add this. . . . It is much to have a husband with a thoroughgoing sense of humor.”

  The denial was met with derision elsewhere. The Moving Picture World, normally an unabashed booster, published a still photograph of Fairbanks running to catch a train. Observing pettishly that the train was not in motion at the time of the photograph, the caption writer added, “Then, too, comes the lingering suspicion that Mr. Fairbanks, in thus hurriedly diving into the steps of a standing passenger-coach, is trying to escape the pro-German propaganda said to be so relentlessly pursuing him.” Variety observed that while Beth’s statement yielded admiration for her simple dignity, her husband’s denial “had the opposite effect.” Another columnist for the paper noted that Fairbanks’s image was hissed when a “coming attraction” slide featuring him was seen at a theater in Los Angeles.

  Meanwhile, back in the heartland, Doug wasn’t doing much laughing. He was, however, doing a lot of shouting. Accompanied by brother John, Bennie Zeidman, and his valet, Naoki, he was on a grueling whirlwind tour of the Midwest. Naoki recalled, “Of the country, I see nothing. Mr. Fairbanks, he change his clothes ten times a day, and all I have seen is the inside of taxicabs and hotels. I have I think much pride when I say I have carried twenty-one bags from coast to coast in the interest of the Liberty Loan; I have pressed 326 suits; I have shined 140 pairs of shoes, found the collar button 96 times, and have been taken for Sessue Hayakawa eighteen times.”

  On the day Beth announced the separation, Fairbanks was in Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw, Michigan, and Buffalo, New York. He did not reach Buffalo until 8:40 PM, yet still “he rushed about the city like mad for a couple of hours, urging audiences to buy bonds until it hurts.” Journalists were already noticing that near-constant speech making—it was an era before microphones—was making his voice husky. By the end of the day he could only whisper, but still he offered to climb to the roof of one of the theaters if someone would buy a $50,000 bond. By the next day he was in Ohio, where he was markedly hoarse but continued to deny any separation. Saturday he was in Indiana and was totally voiceless. “The only thing left for him to do in putting over his bond message was to convey his thoughts in actions rather than words. And this he did by occasionally punctuating a few sentences with a leap over a chair or some other Wild West maneuver,” wrote one observer. By noon of the same day, he was on his way to Louisville, Kentucky, where he spoke (or tried to) at fifteen-minute intervals at each movie house in the downtown region. But he went beyond this: “Mr. Fairbanks also talked at Macaulay’s Theater, and some that were not down on the published schedule, which included the Alamo, Strand, Majestic, Walnut, National and Mary Anderson,” wrote a reporter, adding—perhaps unnecessarily—“In fact Mr. Fairbanks was a glutton for work and covered as much territory as it was possible to do.”

  But the strain began to be evident. “He showed the result of his long trip and continuous campaigning for the Liberty Loan,” wrote the Louisville reporter. “However, the vim which characterizes his picture productions was also shown in his patriotic talks.” Vim alone couldn’t carry him, however. A Cleveland reporter noted, “When here he was on the verge of a breakdown. He was obliged to cancel many engagements and kept only those absolutely necessary.” By April 15, in Evansville, Indiana, he threw in the towel. The folks in towns such as Racine, La Crosse, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were to be disappointed. All visits were canceled, and Doug went to the French Lick Springs resort in Indiana to rest his voice and catch his breath. He returned to Los Angeles in early May “a nervous wreck.”

  From there he retreated to Montana, spending five days on a ranch surrounded by his favorite people—cowboys—and far from the eyes of the curious press. It may have been more than the loss of his voice. The emotional strain of having the marital break go public at last was taking its toll. He wanted to be liked, no, loved by everybody. A nasty divorce and scandal threatened a film career that was less than two years old. Further, Fairbanks never handled confrontations head-on. He was far more inclined to retreat. Things were getting dirty indeed: Owen Moore was now threatening to sue for a quarter of a million dollars. Paradoxically, this backfired on Moore. Columnists began to refer to him as “Mr. Pickford Moore.” Arthur Brisbane went further, writing, that Moore “hadn’t proved anything, and that in all probability his sensitive heart is mistaken.” If Moore was going to collect, he was going to have to do so sub rosa.

  Mary had toughed out the entire loan drive, hiding her fears like a consummate professional. Upon returning to Los Angeles, she found herself having to den
y reports that she intended to quit making movies. “If anyone thinks I am about to retire from motion pictures they should take a peek over the fence at the studios tomorrow morning. I’ll be there bright and early and ready to start on my next picture,” she said firmly. There was no doubting her pluck. A reporter then asked her for a statement on the Fairbanks separation. “Of that I have absolutely nothing to say. The less said about it by me, the better,” she replied.

  Fairbanks returned to work, laying low. In May, for example, every industry leader, including D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Lois Weber, Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, William S. Hart, Mack Sennett, Jesse Lasky, Maurice Tourneur, Billy Bitzer, and William Desmond Taylor attended a mass meeting at Clune’s Theatre to form the Motion Picture Relief Organization. This was just the sort of thing that was up Fairbanks’s alley. Although he was elected vice president of the group, it was in absentia. He telegrammed his regrets and pledged his support.

  When he did emerge, in June, it was strictly for war work, such as a fundraising carnival at the Lasky studio. He competed in a “drinking bout” at William S. Hart’s western bar, staggering away, reportedly, after his fifth ice cream soda. Undaunted, he boxed world champion Kid McCoy but fell into the swimming pool adjacent to the platform after two rounds. He supported the United States Balloon School in Arcadia, California, not only with money but also by funding a luncheon for all of its students. He promoted the “Smileage” campaign, which subsidized entertainment—including motion pictures—for soldiers in training camps and in the field.

  Motion pictures were a critical source of sanctioned recreation for the troops. One soldier wrote home to his mother:

  Our amusements here are limited. American movies are paramount (not a pun.) I was watching Doug Fairbanks in some of his latest stunts the other night, when the show was interrupted by the boom of guns and the clang of bells. . . . Of course the show was off, and right in the midst of the interesting part of it, too. I was disappointed. I can see an air raid on any star-lit night, but a movie, and a Fairbanks one at that, is an epoch here.