The First King of Hollywood

by Tracey Goessel

  Undaunted by lack of access, the attorney general filed a complaint almost sixty pages long, including Fairbanks in the conspiracy charges. Mary, no fool, hired Gavin McNab, the famed trial lawyer best known by history for his defense a few years later of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle on manslaughter charges.

  There were a few holdouts. Joseph Henabery recalled the moment when Fairbanks told him of his impending marriage. “I can’t honestly say I was completely surprised, but the announcement shook me up, and I must have shown it. . . . I liked the existing Mrs. Fairbanks very much, and the whole situation made me unhappy,” he recalled. Deciding to retain his allegiance to Beth, who had a hand in getting him his first directing job, he quit the Fairbanks organization. He explained his reasons to Robert and John but not Douglas. “I don’t think what Doug would say to me would make any difference, anyhow,” he said over forty years later, “because this is the way I feel about it. . . . And he was quite disturbed about it when I quit because I had failed to live up to my agreement with him. And I felt that his brothers should have taken steps to thoroughly acquaint him with the fact that I had been in a—sort of over a barrel. I didn’t want to make his troubles greater.”

  There were also brief and early rumblings on the part of the clergy. The Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles issued what it termed a “White List” of motion picture actors—those sufficiently well behaved to merit the nickels and dimes of their congregation. Included in the list of the suitably virtuous were Wallace Reid (later to die of drug-abuse-related causes) and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who was less than seventeen months from a scandal that would threaten the entire industry. Conspicuously absent were Fairbanks, Pickford, and the recently divorced Chaplin. Variety wrote a long and indignant editorial, decrying those who “are claiming certain sections of the Protestant church as their cloak and shield in their advance on a more or less defenseless woman who has brought happiness and charm into the lives, not of thousands, but literally of millions.”

  The public seemed to agree. Thousands of telegrams of congratulation poured in. Photoplay pointed out that Beth had helped proceedings immensely by remarrying a mere eight days after her divorce decree had been granted. “They’re married now—let ’em alone!” the columnist wrote. “And we hope the matter will rest there and that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks may be permitted to have a real-life honeymoon that will last a long, long time.”

  Indeed, the couple planned their honeymoon to begin May 19, when they were finished with their current productions. Charlotte took ill, however, and Mary refused to leave her. Knowing better than to cross his new and redoubtable mother-in-law, Doug assented to the delay. Thus it was not until early June that they started their cross-country trek, stopping first at the remote reservation where Fairbanks had filmed the Hopi sequence for The Mollycoddle. As they arrived at the rail station in Holbrook, Arizona, one scribe set the scene:

  Except for a small coterie of thirty or forty friends, camera men, business managers and newspaper reporters from Los Angeles . . . the two honeymooners were practically unattended, as they got off the train. . . . Doug himself wore cream-colored riding breeches and high tanned riding boots, and a sort of blazer coat which combined the splendor of a Navajo rug and a California sunset. Mary wore a gray corduroy skirt, a white sweater and a small straw hat with a champagne-colored veil . . . Mrs. Pickford . . . might have been on her way to the Ritz.

  The next day the caravan, complete with a print of the film and a projector, drove one hundred miles across the desert to the reservation schoolhouse. The nighttime screening went across well with the Hopi, until a recently deceased member of the tribe appeared on the screen. “A positive bellow of savage and strident sound rose from the audience . . . some of the more excited Hopis leaped to their feet and threw out their arms in wide, menacing gestures, which seemed distinctly to include the white members of the audience,” wrote one nervous reporter.

  The happy couple emerged from this incident unscathed, however, and continued their progress east. In Chicago, where they were obliged to change trains, they pulled a gentle prank on the hundreds of people who were hoping to catch a glimpse of them:

  They have only been married a few weeks and there they came pushing a baby cab. What was more to the point, there was a baby inside the cab.

  But before the tense situation reached the bursting point, a mild little woman stepped out from behind the famous “king and queen” of the “movies” and smilingly took the cab in hand.

  Then the joke became apparent. Douglas and Mary simply had assisted baby’s mother in alighting from the train by taking temporary charge of her infant.

  “Somebody asked me if the baby was mine,” said Mary, “and it gave me a regular heartache when I had to say no.” But the wistful moment passed quickly. Doug had, by this time, donned a taxi-driver’s cap and was calling, “Keb, sir? Taxi-any-part-of-the-city?” to the delighted crowd.

  They advanced then to New York City, and the Ritz. There they held a press conference, complete with lemonade and ice cream for the reporters. He posed with Mary on the roof of the hotel, doing a handstand while she watched indulgently. They assured reporters that their marriage was the real thing. They had found absolute happiness. “It’s great, simply great to be the happiest man in the world,” said Mr. Fairbanks.

  “He’s been like that since I married him,” added Mrs. Fairbanks. “He plays with all the kiddies on the train, slides down banisters in the hotels and is so youthfully happy that I feel like a kiddie myself.” They smiled blissfully at each other, and the world smiled with them. They popped down to Washington for a day, to pay a call on the White House, and to have their passports issued. They were going abroad.

  On June 12, they boarded the SS Lapland bound for Southampton, England. Upon their arrival a tugboat brought a load of photographers: “Men with cameras seemed to appear in the ship from nowhere,” recalled Fairbanks. “They sprang out of the deck and down the masts.” Planes flew low over the deck—one dropped a parachute with a message of welcome; another dropped roses. Not a single flower hit the deck; Fairbanks leaped and caught each one, to the delight of all present. Throngs surrounded them as they disembarked—a sign of what was to come. The boat train arrived at Waterloo Station, and the mob, correctly guessing that the car with the drawn shades contained the couple, swarmed the carriage. One observer, a trifle sardonically, captured the essence of the experience:

  Door opens. Mary appears, registering fright. Women seize her. Mary disappears in swaying mass. Doug jumps out. Places arm around her. Police drive back crowd. Mary again separated from husband by surging mob. Doug does football rush to reach her. Crowd third time rushes between them. Doug leapfrogs over backs of six cockneys. Once more rescues Mary. Repeats rescues twenty times before reaching taxi stand.

  Humor aside, they encountered real danger from the loving mobs at a theatrical garden party on the Chelsea Hospital grounds. They were in an open car, and Mary made the mistake of extending her hand when someone in the crowd asked her to shake. “Immediately I felt it lock in an iron grasp,” she recalled. “Then someone else grabbed my other hand, and two or three people reached for the rest of me. I was quietly but surely sliding over the back of the moving car, when Douglas turned his head and quickly lunged out for my ankles.”

  He won the tug-of-war and retrieved his terrified wife, but was then obliged to perch Mary on his shoulder as they emerged from the car. All the British papers published the photo the following day: Doug looking as worried and determined as in any of his movies, with Mary disheveled and frankly terrified. He staggered through the mob, balancing her and barely dodging a low-hanging branch that threatened to unseat her, finally reaching a tent populated by two elderly matrons and many pots of jam stacked for display. The mob soon made short work of this. “In no time at all we were all walking around in a sticky goo that seemed inches deep,” Mary said. MARY HAD A LITTLE JAM, read one British headline.

  F
airbanks tried to be politic about the incident. “At first, when I saw the ‘entire British nation’ advancing, I wondered what was up,” he told a London paper a few weeks later. “It soon developed that the advance was friendly. All they wanted was to kiss Mary. I had to tell ’em that’s my job.”

  The garden party experience drove her back to the Ritz to rest her jangled nerves, but Fairbanks remained supercharged. He headed to Soho Square for a private screening of newsreel footage taken onboard the Lapland. But getting there turned out to be a challenge, according to the Daily Mail:

  As the motor-car turned out into Piccadilly a young, bright-faced girl jumped on to the side of the car and said, “Take me with you, Douglas.” He looked perturbed, but the motor-car was gaining way, and the girl got inside. She was panting with excitement and as she sat down beside him, she put her arm through his and explained that she was dying to act with him if he made any films in this country.

  Douglas was extremely diplomatic, but the girl was not to be so easily put off. “If you are so persistent all through your life,” said Douglas with a smile, “Gee, you’ll do great things.” The girl dogged his footsteps into the private theatre. There trace was lost of her, but Douglas said he was certain that could not be the last of her.

  The mobs were tremendous; from their hotel window they could see thousands. Words were inadequate to describe the phenomenon—this first demonstration of the worldwide fame that came with motion pictures. The British tried to find analogies. Why, these were greater crowds than ever seen for the Prince of Wales! It had never happened on this scale before, no, not with royalty, not even with Jenny Lind. No one had anticipated this; no one, perhaps could have. Movies were silent and intertitles were in the local language; everybody in the world felt that they knew, firsthand, DougandMary.

  And DougandMary they were to be—or, more properly, MaryandDoug, as her fame was of longer duration and quite arguably greater. The next fourteen years of their lives would find them inextricably linked in print and in the perception and the hearts of the public. They were the golden couple, or, to resort to the oft-quoted line from Alistair Cooke: “They were a living proof of America’s chronic belief in happy endings.”

  The crowds drove them to the Isle of Wight, where a certain Lord Northcliffe offered succor.*4 Mary awoke the first morning, looked out the window, and discovered “the ten foot brick wall surrounding the cottage was black with people,” all of whom had been sitting quietly since dawn. At the sight of Mary in her nightgown they applauded heartily, which woke Doug with a start. Fond though he was of the applause of thousands, it was disconcerting to hear it from his honeymoon bed.

  They connected with scenarist Frances Marion and her new husband and went to Amsterdam. Marion recalled: “A welcoming committee met us with plans a yard long for ‘Mr. and Mrs. Pickford.’ Doug laughed, but his laughter was hollow. Mary’s heart stood still; ghosts of her first unhappy marriage rose before her. Could another marriage survive if her career outshone her husband’s?”

  At the end of the day, that never turned out to be a problem. Fairbanks was the top male star internationally for most of the 1920s. It is rather like the second-wealthiest person in the world marrying the wealthiest. By the time one is in that stratosphere, differences are minor.†*5Or, cheerful and feverish collector of the rich, famous, and royal that he was—and this particular malady would not abate until his death—her marginally greater fame may have made her all the more desirable a prize. One can only speculate. This is not to say that jealousy was not an issue for him. It was a profound issue, and a significant character flaw. But it played out in other ways. In fact it would rear its ugly head at their next destination.

  After renting a yacht and sailing among fishing villages in Holland, the couple drove to Germany, on the theory that, their films not having been seen there throughout the Great War, they would be unrecognized. They were correct. Mary recalled:

  After a day of shopping and sight-seeing, during which we did not catch a single flash of recognition on anyone’s face, Douglas asked me: “Frankly, Mary, how do you feel about it? Do you like being left alone?”

  And I said, “I definitely do not, Douglas. Let’s go some place where we are known. I’ve had enough obscurity for a lifetime.”

  I’m afraid we were already becoming spoiled.

  They advanced to American-occupied Coblenz, where they were gratified by being recognized by one and all. They were quartered in a German home and invited to join the troops at a Fourth of July dance. Here is where the trouble began. Fairbanks, on their wedding night, had extracted a pledge from his bride: “I don’t expect any ‘twosing’ with anyone but me at dinner tables, in theaters, or on dance floors. Have I your word?”

  She gave it. Unfortunately, she also gave her hand that night to the commanding general for the first dance. Fairbanks seethed, his ungovernable jealousy refusing to permit speech. At the evening’s end, he walked her to the door of their borrowed lodgings, then turned on his heel and stalked off into the night. She was alone for only an hour, and he was apologetic upon his return, but it was a very long hour for a woman who had been so prominent in anti-German propaganda. She was terrified. She never made that mistake—if mistake it was—again. Princes and dukes might ask her to dance, but for the next decade she would dance with no one but Douglas. She adopted the party line with the press, saying, “Douglas doesn’t like it [dancing], and I think it is rather silly myself. . . . A lot of foolish flirtations start. I suppose Douglas is a bit jealous; most brunettes are. As for me,” she added, “I am a blonde.”

  Germany was followed by a rail trip to Switzerland. Here Fairbanks learned that their train did not offer private sleeping quarters:

  Our tickets for Basle had been purchased with the assurance that we would be provided with sleeping accommodations on the train. And we were, only the accommodations were what is known as “couchettes.” Three persons occupy each compartment and of course they sleep with their clothes on.

  If we had had the entire compartment it wouldn’t have been so bad, but we found a long-bearded Frenchman on one of the “couchettes” when we boarded the train, and forgetting that he might be able to understand English, Mary and I exchanged some heartfelt views on railroad management in France. When we concluded the Frenchman explained in excellent English that he understood our predicament and with true Gallic politeness offered to give up his place and stand in the corridor of the car. Naturally we would not hear of that and after we had apologized for our tactless remarks, we took our respective places on the “couchettes” for the night. But Mary didn’t sleep a wink and I dreamed of wagon loads of long whiskers.

  Upon arrival in Lucerne, they had no more than checked into their lodgings before he was off. He returned, according to Mary, “in a brand-new car, driven by a paragon of a chauffeur immaculately clothed in a perfect-fitting uniform. In one brief hour and a half, Douglas had purchased the car, secured all the accessories, engaged the chauffeur, had him measured for the uniform he wore . . . ‘Such a thing never happened before in Switzerland,’ gasped our landlord. ‘It is a record. Ach Gott! You move just like your pictures.’”

  They drove to Italy, where he was delighted to learn that he was known as “Lampo”—the Italian word for lightning. In fact, their guide made such a fuss over Fairbanks that he went out of his way to point out that Mary was not just equally but, in fact, more famous. “Si, si, but of course,” replied the guide. “The name of Maria Pinkerton is known all over Italy.” Delighted, Doug called her “Maria Pinkerton” for the rest of the honeymoon. In Venice they took a motorboat for an impromptu late-night visit to an American cruiser lying in the Adriatic, astonishing the starstruck sentry at the gangplank, who reportedly exclaimed, “’Ully gee! Douglas and Mary!” Their whirlwind tour continued in Florence and Rome, followed by the French Riviera, then Paris—reportedly a small shock to the essentially conservative Fairbanks. “Some of the things women wear abroad give you the feeling
of being lost on a forest of September morns,” he said. “Paris is no place for a married man to take his wife on a honeymoon. I was shocked the first day.”*6 A visit to a French open market resulted in another fan crush. Mary was obliged to be rescued by some helpful butchers, who scooped her up in their beefy arms and threw her into a nearby meat cage.

  They sailed for home on the Olympic. Their arrival on July 29 demonstrated that New Yorkers weren’t going to let London get the best of them. Competing bands struck up songs as a welcoming committee of luminaries found themselves overwhelmed by the thousands of ordinary citizens who surged through the police line and surrounded the couple. Mounted reinforcements were required to get them into a waiting car. A procession headed by six motorcycle police progressed to the Ritz. Mary’s personal maid at the time recalled the heady day:

  Those marvelous memories—when in 1920 the whole population of New York City went wild, on their return from their Honeymoon!

  Thousands and thousands of people, greeting them on the Dock, police unable to hold back the maddening crowd, cordoned off, and leaving a tiny lane to forge through the throng! I was hanging onto Mr. Fairbanks, who in turn piloted Mrs. Fairbanks a step ahead of him!

  My dress was toren [sic] and one of my earrings pulled off—a human, mad crowd, mad for joy to greet the greatest lovers the world has ever known!

  Driving up 5th Ave, to the Ritz, traffic was stopped—sirens shrilled—16 motorcycle cops escort*7—3 huge sightseeing busses crowded with bands playing—confetti strewn from all the 5th Ave windows—for it was a New York Holy Day,†*8for Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks.