He worked to make it up to Geraghty, of whom he was genuinely fond. He took out a quarter-page ad in the trade papers, declaring:
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS
Biggest production and best picture of his career
“THE MOLLYCODDLE”
SCENARIO BY
TOM. J. GERAGHTY
Suggested by Harold MacGrath’s story
This feature is even better than
“WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY”
By Douglas Fairbanks
Scenario by
TOM. J. GERAGHTY
This was the first (and likely only) time that a scenarist’s name would be featured in a larger typeface than Fairbanks’s own. He also brought Geraghty out to New York for the opening of The Mollycoddle, and he had Bennie Zeidman plant squibs in all the trades informing the world of Geraghty’s trip, as author of the story.
The film was the tale of an American-born, English-raised fop who amuses a group of American tourists in Monte Carlo. They kidnap him as a joke, and he ultimately finds himself in Arizona, breaking up a diamond-smuggling ring being run by Wallace Beery. The film has charm and excitement to compete with When the Clouds Roll By, and the additional novelty of a short animated sequence, which explained graphically the villain’s diamond-smuggling plot. Victor Fleming again took the helm, building a replica Monte Carlo and taking the entire cast and crew on location to a Hopi reservation to film Doug dancing with the natives. An avalanche provided the natural catastrophe that the plot required.
Production on The Mollycoddle began in late February 1920 with yachting scenes taken in San Francisco Bay. Filming was delayed by an injury that Fairbanks incurred on the Arizona location during the first week of March. A horse upon which he was vaulting startled and ran, leaving him to crash into the ground on both outstretched hands. He ended up back in Los Angeles, nursing two sprained wrists and a broken index finger on his right hand. Thus it was that the most noteworthy stunt of the film—a leap from the edge of a cliff onto the villain, who is perched high on a tree—was performed by stuntman Richard Talmadge.
Talmadge (born Silvio Metzetti) acknowledged to biographer Booton Herndon that he performed the leap in Fairbanks’s place to keep the film on schedule. Fairbanks kept him on staff for his following three films: The Mark of Zorro, The Nut, and The Three Musketeers. That Talmadge trained Fairbanks in new techniques, everyone agrees. He would often perform a stunt repeatedly for his boss to study and perfect before Fairbanks would then execute it for the camera. But just how often he stood in for the star is up for debate.
Allan Dwan was adamant that in his films, at least, Fairbanks did all the stunts—with a caveat. “There just wasn’t anyone in the world who could do things with such grace. . . . But that doesn’t mean we were silly enough to risk tying up the completion of a picture, with all its expenses, by injuring the star. So there were plenty of times when it was just good sense to use a double or a stunt man. You don’t think he was actually riding the horse in the jousting scenes in Robin Hood, do you?”
Costar Mary Astor recalled the use of a double in one shot in Don Q, Son of Zorro:
He did almost all of his own stunts himself, except when the risk might mean an injury that would delay the picture.
Once during the filming of Don Q, Son of Zorro, while he was watching his double do a jump from a wall onto a running horse, he said, “It’s not good, he’s too soon, he ought to swing out more.” He stopped the camera and told his double, “Let me show you, Jim. Go on back to where the camera is. I’ll show you, you’ve got to lean away from the wall, like this.” And with everybody watching and no camera running, he did the whole stunt, and the crew and everybody laughed, and the double said, “Why don’t I just go home?”
For most shots, it is reasonably simple to determine that it is indeed Fairbanks performing the stunt. He had a slight kyphosis, or curvature, of the spine at the base of his neck, which caused his head to tip forward at an abrupt angle. From the side and back, this yielded a slightly hunched appearance that makes his profile distinct, at least to the clinical eye. The vast majority of the time it is Fairbanks you see; and when it is not, it isn’t because he was incapable of performing the stunt. It is because the director did not wish to risk the film’s staying on schedule.
The Mollycoddle may have been the film that caused producer Fairbanks to rethink how hard to push star Fairbanks. He was hurt twice during the course of filming. In late April, the avalanche special effect was triggered prematurely, resulting in further injuries that held him up for another two weeks. The production dragged on “an unconscionably long time until the entire company were . . . sick to death of it,” said featured ingénue Betty Bouton.
The injured hand and wrists caused aggravation not only to Fairbanks but also to his attorney, Cap O’Brien, who found himself doing battle with the IRS over the eighty-dollar deduction Fairbanks took on his tax return for the doctor’s bill. “If a horse which Mr. Fairbanks was riding while engaged in his work should stumble and injure itself, there can be no question that the cost of such veterinarian attention as was necessary to restore the horse to workable condition might properly be deducted by Mr. Fairbanks as a business expense,” he wrote in exasperation to the IRS, but to no avail.
Fairbanks had further aggravation in January: his estate suffered $20,000 worth of damage when a flaw in his chimney flue resulted in an early morning living room fire. The Beverly Hills volunteer fire squad arrived to find Fairbanks standing on a cabinet phonograph player, chopping at the ceiling with an axe, while Tom Geraghty and playwright Winchell Smith were busy with fire extinguishers. Several Remington paintings, as well as a piano, were damaged or destroyed. But Doug retained his sunny reputation: he sat the firemen down to an impromptu dinner in another part of the house after they had put out the flames. Perhaps he was cheerful because he knew he would soon be moving to his newest home—a former hunting lodge in Beverly Hills that he was in the process of revamping and expanding.*13 And he knew that he wouldn’t be there alone for long. While he was on Summit Drive, urging the workmen on, bringing in studio arc lights so they could work into the night, Mary was in Nevada.
* * *
*1. Companies such as Universal did not, in their minds, constitute reasonable competition: Carl Laemmle operated on a factory model, with no-name stars and modest production values. He did not yet have Erich von Stroheim and Lon Chaney to justify “super-productions.” Metro, Fox, and Goldwyn were not yet major concerns. Triangle, without Griffith, Fairbanks, and Hart, was in its death throes.
*2. Chaplin, who had been raised in London workhouses and grinding poverty, had the self-educated man’s pride in a hard-won vocabulary.
*3. † Evidently there were multiple agents employed to shadow and eavesdrop on the likes of Samuel Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor, and the First National board. According to Robinson, the accounts of both Operator 8 and Operator 5 “read like operetta.”
*4. Whether Schulberg truly was part of the creation of the concept of the company will never be definitively known. Schulberg sued Abrams for his share of the commissions in 1920, but the case was settled out of court for what Schulberg’s son declared to be a very modest sum in 1922. Cap O’Brien, who represented not only Pickford and Fairbanks but also Abrams in this matter, noted in private correspondence: “Schulberg has the tendency of writing, talking, and claiming too much.” He was ultimately to return to Adolph Zukor and to help discover and promote such luminaries as Clara Bow and Gary Cooper.
*5. † For example, he was to send Woodrow Wilson a film projector after the latter suffered a stroke. It was used in the East Room, thus creating the first White House movie theater.
*6. This is hard to confirm. Griffith’s attempts at an autobiography never got past 1915, and Fairbanks never lived to contemplate writing his. Pickford makes no mention of such reasoning, but her account of the formation of United Artists is very abbreviated.
*7. † The makeup man at the Chaplin studio w
as used to slapping whiteface on clowns, not foundation on leading men. Fairbanks looks as pale as any specter in these photographs, with a clear makeup line on his neck.
*8. ‡ Initially, each founder had a 20 percent share, with McAdoo owning the final fifth. He sold out his share within a year, however.
*9. Modern readers are unlikely to be familiar with the “Message to Garcia,” an allusion Fairbanks used not only in this film but also in recommending Joseph Henabery to the military higher-ups. It was a reference to an incident in the Spanish-American War, in which a heroic captain brought a message from President McKinley to a rebel leader. The story was published in booklet form and was generally known and wildly popular, with over forty million copies in circulation. The phrase, which is reportedly still in use in some military circles, came to mean the taking of initiative above and beyond the norm, a characteristic that Fairbanks associated, of course, with his young country.
*10. Curiously, George Barr McCutcheon, a novelist who specialized in “mythical kingdom” books, threatened a plagiarism suit. The author of Hawthorne, on the other hand, was never heard from.
*11. The revolving room innovation, where the set was an open cube that rotated much like a hamster wheel, created the illusion that Fairbanks was walking the walls and cutting capers on the ceiling. The effect has been famously reproduced twice since (without attribution)—in Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire and in certain shots in the modern thriller Inception.
*12. Possibly because his palm was appropriately greased. Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance notes that Fairbanks paid Weadock $500 to settle a claim of libel.
*13. Fairbanks bought the property on April 22, 1919, for $35,000. At the time of the purchase it was a six-room hunting lodge.
9
Love and Marriage
* * *
MARY HAD TRAVELED TO New York City in December 1919 to meet with Owen and her lawyers and negotiate for the divorce. Even this meeting, so necessary and hoped for, threw Fairbanks into fits of jealousy, as he wrote:
My own darling beautiful
Please dear when you close your eyes tonight know that you are my only love—my first and forever and ever—I will think constantly of you—and I am sure you will feel that I am yours alone. Oh Darling what wonderful happiness you have brought into my life. There has been a corresponding misery with it but that is necessary and I am sure when we work it out it will be a perfect union—my little wife—that seems so good to say—my own—just think to possess you—my angel. Why I am cold all over writing it—and if it were really so I think I should die—
Be a dear good girl while you are away—be careful about your sleep and food—don’t worry—love me—come back soon—Good night—God bless and keep you for me—I love you so—
I am so miserably jealous.
Good night—I worship you—Douglas
Owen had finally set his price—$100,000—and an indignant Charlotte Pickford dug into the vaults and produced it. She then accompanied her daughter to Nevada in mid-February 1920, where on March 2, Mary swore before a judge in Minden County, Nevada, that Owen had been cruel to her, and that yes, she planned to live in Nevada for at least six months. “Mother has been suffering from rheumatism,” she said, by way of explanation. The judge did not recognize Gladys M. Moore as anything but a “frail little matron who had just dried her eyes of the tears that flowed so copiously during her recital of her husband’s desertion.” He was reluctant to grant her a decree without alimony, which she steadfastly refused. “Do you think you will be able to earn your own living?” he asked incredulously, not realizing he was speaking to the highest paid woman in the world. She assured him she would. Immediately upon receiving her decree, she returned to Los Angeles.
The press swarmed about her. She was Catholic: wasn’t she worried that she would be excommunicated upon remarriage? “Then I shall never be excommunicated,” she replied. Did she not intend to marry that dashing Mr. Fairbanks? “That rumor is absurd,” she declared. “My divorce does not signify that. I just wanted to be free—free as I have wanted to be for years.”
Mr. Fairbanks, upon returning home with his broken finger, was asked about marrying Miss Pickford. He smiled. It was beautiful weather but bad for outdoor work, he replied. The question was repeated. The response: his hand hurt like blazes and he believed it was time for the doctor to put on a new dressing. A few more cycles of this and the reporter gave up.
But Mary was not to be free for long. Doug had been wheedling, begging, and threatening since the day of his divorce, and he wasn’t going to be stopped now, even though she insisted that she should wait a year. He would have none of it. On Friday, March 26, he hosted a dinner party. Among the guests were Mary; R. S. “Cupid” Sparks, the local marriage license clerk; and the Reverend Mr. J. Whitcomb Brougher, a Baptist minister. Fairbanks posed a question to Mr. Sparks, who was understandably suspicious of being asked to dine with movie stars: could he issue a license but keep it secret for a few weeks?
“I had a hunch I might be asked for something in the license line when I was invited to the dinner, so I took along the necessary documents,” he recalled later. “When they brought the subject up I said, ‘I knew I’d get you two sometime.’ And Fairbanks laughed. After I had made out the papers I said, ‘Well, that’s my masterpiece in marriage licenses. You can shoot me now. I never can stage anything better than this.’”
With the paperwork done, Doug, of course, wanted to be wed on the spot. But Mary vetoed this plan. It was a Friday; she wanted to be married on a Sunday. And she was dressed in black. Her first marriage had been conducted at a Jersey City clerk’s office, in street garb. She wanted to be married in a white dress. Doug had waited this long—an eternity for his impulsive nature. He would wait two more days.
The culmination of his romantic yearnings finally came on Sunday, March 28. He was seen that day, clad in old golf clothing, watching the automobile races at the Los Angeles Speedway. He looked, one reporter wrote in hindsight, “far from the way a man usually looks who is to be married in a few hours to one of the most widely known women in the world.” But at ten thirty that night, the wedding party met at 1331 West Fourth Street in Los Angeles, the home of the Reverend Brougher—who, for his pains, received $1,000 and the threat of having his name withdrawn from nomination at the election of officers at the Baptist Convention in Buffalo three months later.*1 Doug wore evening clothes. Mary wore a white tulle dress edged in apple green trim, with a single string of pearls. Both were reportedly nervous. Marjorie Daw, faithful friend and former costar to each, served as Mary’s witness; Robert stood up for his brother. It was a double-ring ceremony. The reverend was asked to read from Ella’s Bible and selected Ephesians 5:22–32. Charlotte was there, of course. Accounts vary as to the remainder of the guest list—some say Mary’s brother, Jack, was present; some say Edward Knoblock, others Bennie Zeidman.*2 Dr. Henry Miles Cook, assistant pastor, also was on-site, presumably as pinch hitter. Mrs. Brougher happened to have her mother and son at hand.
Upon returning to the house at 1143 Summit Drive, soon to be irrevocably tagged “Pickfair,” Douglas announced that the property was his wedding gift to his bride. The next day, Mary returned to work on the set of her current production, Suds, with cloth tape over her wedding ring. She fooled no one. The Sunday after the wedding, they held a reception at Pickfair to announce the happy news to friends. By April 1, word was out to the press: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were married. The couple jointly held their breath and waited to see if their careers would grind to a halt.
Certainly the attorney general of the State of Nevada had something to say about the matter, filing suit that the Pickford-Moore divorce should be invalidated. After all, he huffed to any reporter within earshot, Mary Pickford, under oath, swore she intended to become a resident of Nevada, but within hours of getting her divorce, she returned to California and, within days, married a California resident. Furthermore, Owen Moore had conveniently
been within a mile of the county seat, available to have papers served upon him. Something was rotten in Denmark—or at least in Minden County. Mary stoutly (albeit unconvincingly) denied all. There had been no collusion with Owen Moore to permit her to divorce! It was a coincidence that he was in Nevada! Certainly there had been no financial settlement between them!
Nevada had been the go-to site for fast, convenient divorces for years—director Allan Dwan and his wife had divorced by the same route, in the same county, in front of the same judge, shortly before. Everyone knew that the Nevada courts winked at the Californians’ claims that they had been, or were going to become, residents of the state for the required six months. Towns like Reno would, within a decade, make their bank on the divorce industry. This incident cemented the opinion of most of Hollywood. The attorney general, the town consensus ran, was simply grandstanding because he had a newsworthy celebrity upon whom to forge his reputation.
The governor of Nevada found his office deluged with telegrams supporting Pickford and demanding that he stop the investigation. Even Owen Moore chimed in: without his aid, the Nevada officials could prove nothing, he said. And he (figuratively patting his newly enriched pocket) “was not inclined to make trouble for his former wife.”*3 To put an exclamation point on the sentence, Mary then had a reported “nervous collapse,” leading to briefings and bulletins to the press in which sundry physicians and “nerve specialists” declared that she was resting comfortably, thank you very much. This, however, made her unavailable for interviews on the part of Nevada officials about the divorce investigation. “Her state of health forbids the slightest worry or annoyance,” Doug said darkly to reporters.
The First King of Hollywood Page 27
