The First King of Hollywood

by Tracey Goessel

  Normally a publicist would have managed this for them, but the week before, their publicist had resigned—upon request.*4 They had been displeased with a recent spate of articles suggesting trouble in paradise.

  This had happened in July, when the press got wind of Doug’s possible mischief in London. Doug and Mary were going to separate, the reports went. She would file for divorce by the end of the month. Both issued denials, but it was Cap O’Brien who established plausible deniability. “I have heard talk about this woman,” he told the press, “and I know personally that there is no truth to it. The woman referred to is Lady Mountbatten.” Lady Mountbatten, he went on to add, was a dear friend of both Doug and Mary. She had stayed at Pickfair often. She was in England the same time as Doug, certainly. Why shouldn’t he have visited her, and why should she not have returned his kind hospitality?

  It was an inspired strategy. The good lady was, as Caesar’s wife, above reproach. Reporters seemed to swallow the explanation whole, and no one thought to look for any ladies of the nobility who were ex-chorines. But if it was chorus girls that Fairbanks wanted, his next film, Reaching for the Moon, would provide plenty.

  It is significant to note that Fairbanks did not produce Reaching for the Moon. It was a Joseph Schenck film, and Fairbanks’s involvement, technically, was only as a performer, making this the first time he had starred in a film that he did not produce since 1916 and The Americano. Fairbanks was reluctant to invest in another talking film until Chaplin’s City Lights was released, suggesting he was seriously contemplating following his friend’s example: continuing to make silent films.

  It is tempting to wonder what might have happened had he done so. In one sense, it would be the first backward step he had ever taken. He had assumed the role of pioneer so often and so well—moving from stage to film; embracing production, then distribution; implementing new discoveries such as Technicolor; investing more; building higher; always at the forefront of the new and the better. How could he, he who had always represented the new, the fresh, cling to the old?

  Yet one can readily read the flip side of this particular coin. There are certain performers, his wife and Buster Keaton among them, who are brilliant in silence but ordinary—or worse—in sound. To watch Mary Pickford’s face in a film such as Sparrows, where she awakens to discover that the infant in her arms has died, is to feel a primal communion with a performer that transcends words. The moment is incandescent. To hear her speak in Coquette is, to put it kindly, the opposite experience. The small, pear-shaped tones of her mouselike voice distract from the visual performance, and we are irritated, dismayed. The very thing that makes watching her a supreme experience is destroyed by the addition of words.

  But Fairbanks and his genres, both comedic and heroic, were not truly in this category. His acting—such as it was—was not what elevated the experience of watching him; it was his body and the visual wit that he employed in moving it across multiple planes. In a few years, technicians and directors would master the art of sound, placing music under action scenes, for example, or managing the rhythms of screwball comedy, resulting in satisfactory swashbucklers such as Captain Blood or the staccato wit of modern comedies like The Thin Man. But this was 1930, and Fairbanks was correct: sound films were not yet what silent films had been. He was wise not to invest his money in Reaching for the Moon. What he failed to consider in yielding control was whether he also yielded his full say over the end product. Reaching for the Moon was possibly a good early musical, but we shall never know. It was stripped, transformed, and very likely ruined before its premiere.

  The film originated after the 1929 Wall Street crash, when Irving Berlin got an idea for a story about a wealthy stockbroker and a famous aviatrix who meet and fall in love. On their honeymoon the stock market crash occurs, and they learn of it only when it is too late to do anything to recover. Their love is tested, and happiness wins. Berlin proposed the plot, including several new songs, to his boyhood friend, Joseph Schenck. Schenck, in turn, thought it was ideal for Fairbanks. He had already tried Shakespeare; why not take another tackle at sound with a musical?

  Berlin put his heart and soul into the project. He dusted off one number from the files of his singing waiter days: “Love in a Cottage.” Then over the course of nine months he wrote twenty new songs, including “If You Believe,” “The Little Things in Life,” “Just a Little While,” “The Brokers’ Ensemble,” “What a Lucky Break for Me,” “It’s Yours,” “A Toast to Prohibition,” “Do You Believe Your Eyes or Do You Believe Your Baby?,” “Bootlegger’s Song,” “Wedding and Crash,” “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down,” and the eponymous “Reaching for the Moon.” He penned multiple iterations of the script, with the original version titled Love in a Cottage.*5 In it the couple honeymooned in a southern cottage and there was heavy employment of “colored servants,” Negro spirituals, and enough use of the term nigger to cause despair to even the most unenlightened.

  Douglas Fairbanks had many weaknesses, but bigotry was not one of them. He had eliminated that particular term and the associated demeaning of black people in the story line from the original script for Down to Earth more than a decade prior, and whether through his sway or that of others, the final version of Reaching for the Moon had no cottage—and no “coloreds” at all. Instead, the setting of the second half of the film was moved to a modern ocean liner.

  As to that sway, at this stage in his career he elected to exert his influence by way of his pocketbook. He struck a deal with Schenck: if he liked the script, he would back the film with his own money and not only assume the risk but also enjoy the producer’s profits. If he didn’t, Schenck would fund the film. Fairbanks would meet the requirement for product that UA required and enjoy his share of the distributor’s profits—to say nothing of his salary for performing ($300,000 for Moon). But he would not put his own money into a story he did not like. Mary was of similar mind at this point—or simply more conservative with her funds. Stinging from Forever Yours, she agreed to make Kiki for Schenck but not to fund it.

  But the fact that Fairbanks did not back the film financially did not mean that he approached it without enthusiasm. His choice to do the project was, like so many in those years, a snap decision. He read the script hurriedly, being sold on the idea, reportedly, by the choice of Edmund Goulding as director. Goulding had The Trespasser and The Devil’s Holiday to his credit, and Fairbanks was a willing student.

  “He actually takes direction for the first time in years,” wrote one visitor to the set, noting that while Fairbanks had always employed noted directors for his films, he had, until then, invariably directed himself. Here “he listens as though he learned. He shows up an hour before the other members of the cast arrive each day, and consults his director.”

  Goulding wasn’t the only one he consulted. Charlie Chaplin came to the set one late October day to watch the rehearsal of a scene where Doug drank a cocktail spiked by costar Edward Everett Horton. The farce needed a certain tempo, Chaplin declared. It wasn’t right.

  Goulding invited him to take charge, and he did. The set became crowded with actors, executives, property men, and grips as Charlie first acted out the scene and then directed Doug through the action. Fairbanks seemed to relish the experience. Gone was what one reporter described as his “lethargic indifference to anything pertaining to talkies. . . . In the time I was there,” the reporter went on to add, “he smoked only two cigarettes (in Fairbanks a sure sign of mental clarity and peace of mind).”

  Goulding also convinced Fairbanks to sing one of the songs. The original cut of the film included four songs, including “A Toast to Prohibition” and “Reaching for the Moon.” Fairbanks likely sang the title song, but today the film is best remembered for a promising youngster who sang a single chorus of “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down.”

  In the fall of 1930, twenty-seven-year-old Bing Crosby was not yet a star, much less the superstar he would become.*6 He was si
nging at the Cocoanut Grove with the Rhythm Boys and Gus Arnheim’s orchestra when someone—he recalled it as Fairbanks; his biographer states it was Goulding—asked him to sing in the film. He described shooting late at night, after his Grove set was finished, with no prerecording (as was typical of early musicals). “I was well paid,” he wrote, “which is probably the reason the song eluded the cutter’s shears.”

  It is the only number in the film that did. Schenck’s decision could have been based on preview screenings, or it could simply have been a symptom of an industry-wide phenomenon. Film historian Robert S. Bader writes in the documentary The Dawn of Sound: “By 1930, the novelty of sound had begun to wear thin. The public tired of static, stage-bound productions, and the market for musicals reached the saturation point. Studios pulled the plug on several major musicals that had already started filming. . . . Song and dance [were] no longer enough to guarantee box office success.”

  The result, to put it kindly, was a wreck. A musical film stripped of its songs left only the flimsy supporting structure. One has only to imagine an Astaire/Rogers film without the music to recognize that this was akin to throwing away the diamond while keeping the setting. Schenck hoped that what remained could qualify as one of the pre-1920 modern-dress comedies at which Fairbanks had excelled. But the not-yet-sophisticated use of sound recording, combined with the absence of Loosian wit in the script and Fairbanks’s advancing age (though in prime physical condition, he still, at forty-seven, could not pass for the young man his character was supposed to represent) resulted in a film that lacked the sparkle of his earlier works. Not even the stunning art deco sets of William Cameron Menzies or the charms of Bebe Daniels and Edward Everett Horton could rescue the effort. It is not even possible to make a clear determination of the virtues it might have had: the musical sequences are all lost, depriving us of an opportunity to decide if Fairbanks’s singing voice was as bad as he claimed when recalling Fantana, twenty-six years before. Current copies of the film run about sixty minutes, as opposed to the ninety-nine-minute premiere length, depriving modern audiences of much of the narrative and comedy.

  Berlin was furious. “If you wanted to see Irving Berlin go ballistic—even at the age of 100—all you had to do was say four words: Reaching for the Moon,” states Miles Krueger, of the Institute of the American Musical. Berlin never worked with UA again.

  Fairbanks missed the premiere, staying on the West Coast in preparation for his next adventure. He would leave Mary again—this time with a small film crew—and make a documentary about his trip around the world.

  * * *

  *1. His earliest recorded win was the Theatrical Managers Tournament in April 1915, and by 1916, Variety deemed him one of entertainment’s “link bugs.”

  *2. Other producers took note of the results—and the cost savings—and followed suit, leading to the studio-bound appearance of films during the 1930s and ’40s.

  *3. Jones attributed his general state of fitness over the winter to learning the game of “Doug” from Fairbanks the summer before.

  *4. This was not Bennie Zeidman, who had moved higher up the food chain by this time.

  *5. The typed scripts still exist at the Institute of the American Musical in Los Angeles, heavily marked with notes in Berlin’s handwriting.

  *6. The New York censor’s continuity script—the only resource available to determine the original cut of the premiere print—demonstrates this. “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down” has four choruses. Each is linked by the censor to the actor or character who sings it, except the second. The censor, not recognizing Crosby, writes simply, “Second chorus sung by a man.” It was likely the last time Bing Crosby would go unrecognized in his lifetime.

  17

  Around the World in Eighty Minutes

  * * *

  THE IDEA OF MAKING a film about travel—particularly as a twist on Around the World in Eighty Days—had been with Fairbanks long before he even entered film. In 1913, when Hawthorne of the U.S.A. was on its Chicago run, he announced plans to spend his summer vacation having his travel adventures filmed. “He has such little ideas of catching a boat by swimming to it, taking a 100-yard dash and a flying leap to make a train on time, and other little exciting incidents that the camera operator will be pleased to grab off to show that Doug Fairbanks spanned the globe in 40 days,” wrote one reporter. “Mr. Fairbanks,” he added, perhaps unnecessarily, “has been reading up on Jules Verne.”

  Nothing came of this at the time—Fairbanks was always seething with ideas, and not all of them could come to fruition at once without violating the laws of physics. But his passion for travel kept the idea foremost in his mind. In the early years at Triangle he had a similar scheme that involved Bessie Love: “Mr. Fairbanks had the idea of making films abroad, still with me as his lead (his wife and family would go along too),” she wrote. “He loved to go places and wanted to make a complete story in every country he visited.” In late 1918, after finishing Arizona, he announced plans to pack up his entire production unit and film in France. “It is quite possible,” wrote one trade journal, “that he will take his company on a complete tour of Europe for a special scenario which is now being written by Director Albert Parker.”

  Twelve years later he decided the time had come. In early January 1931 Mary saw him off on the Belgenland. She gifted him with a special sleeping bag outfitted with that newfangled contraption, the zipper. With him were trainer Chuck Lewis, director Victor Fleming, cameraman Henry Sharp, and his valet. He and Fleming posed in pith helmets, clutching game rifles, and announced to the press their plans to visit the emperor of Japan, the king of Siam, and “several Indian princes.”

  They departed on the fourth, and Mary left for New York City five days later, after arranging for two dozen singers in flowered kimonos to serenade her husband’s party upon arrival at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. She was in New York, she claimed, on “a rampage”: shopping, visiting theaters, and skating in Central Park.

  His first letter to her was a plea to keep working with him on the marriage: “My Goddess—. . . my beautiful girl—my baby—I love I worship you—the greatest thing by far in my life please Dear one love me and remember your promises. I am so proud of our love our future it will be perfect—it is all up to us to guard.”

  The team got some footage on the journey out—THREE HUNDRED FEET EXCELLENT STUFF, he wired Mary—mostly under-cranked shots of Doug running and climbing decks, leaping, swinging on poles, and ultimately climbing and jumping into a smokestack. But this exercise was undercut by what he termed MANY BLUE SPELLS. He was, he claimed LONESOME, HOMESICK, BLUE, MISERABLE. He sat in his cabin all day, he wrote, thinking of her and working jigsaw puzzles. Surviving footage suggests that he spent a lot more time on secluded sections of the deck, nude sunbathing.

  The entourage arrived in Honolulu, where in between Doug’s rounds of golf they filmed him surfing. (“I took so much exercise in Honolulu that I had darndest cramps in my muscles all night,” he wrote her.) From there they departed for Japan. Four days out of Hawaii, he and Mary set a new record for the longest radio-wire circuit in ship-to-shore conversation when he called her at her New York hotel. DARLING DARLING THRILLED BEYOND EXPRESSION, she wired him afterward. YOUR VOICE MARVELOUS I LOVE YOU DARLING. He replied, MUCH HAPPIER DEAR FELT YOU NEAR ME TODAY.

  He arrived in Japan on the twentieth, where he told Mary [I] FIND MYSELF MR. PICKFORD HERE. They filmed his arrival at Yokohama, standing between Sessue Hayakawa and Sôjin Kamiyama, who replaced Sadakichi Hartmann when the latter departed The Thief of Bagdad in an artistic huff. Hayakawa was also present at a dinner in Tokyo, where Fairbanks was presented with a suit of ancient Japanese armor.

  He still claimed to be homesick in his cables to Mary during the filming of the Japanese sequences for the film. These were intended to be comic scenes demonstrating Japanese life, but they do not wear well. Fleming was filmed peeking into the doorway of a Japanese home. Fairbanks, inexplicably wearin
g a ridiculous wool cap, joined him.*1 The following shots purport to be from their point of view: a young Japanese woman was shown getting into socks, then her kimono. “No underclothes are worn—[pause]—so I’m told,” Fairbanks said in the voiceover. Music and dancing lessons were depicted, and then, the narrative claimed, it was bath time . . .

  In an especially cringeworthy sequence, Vic and Doug were filmed as Peeping Toms as the young woman is about to bathe. Being caught, they scampered guiltily away, until the girl waylaid Doug. As he supplicated an apology, she asked for an autograph. Doug no longer seems to exemplify America to us so much as he does the Ugly American. In an interesting conclusion to the sequence, Fairbanks expostulates to Fleming that the young woman is wonderful, and Fleming replies, “I’ll tell Mary on you, young fellow!”

  Around the same time, he attended a geisha festival dance on the island of Miyajima, a sacred island on Japan’s inland sea. The festival was stopped cold when one of the samisen musicians, recognizing the star, stopped playing and cried out in excitement. All sixteen dancers and four musicians abandoned their posts to cluster around him.

  By early February they were in Peking. Mei Lanfang, China’s premier actor, placed his home at Fairbanks’s disposal on his arrival, in gratitude for the hospitality he and Mary had shown him when he visited the States. Doug, looking stern in a winter coat and bowler hat, was filmed at the Forbidden City as well as the Summer Palace.

  He continued the daily cables to Mary. He missed her. He loved her. It was tragic that she wasn’t there. Shanghai without her was just Pomona.*2 He wanted her suggestions for the film. She cabled back in the same vein. Beverly Hills, she wired, was Newark without Duber. Ever the filmmaker, she also sent her ideas: BE SURE PHOTOGRAPH BARGAINING OLD CHINA PIGEON ENGLISH INTERPRETING TO AUDIENCE IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SLANG CONTRASTING MODERN CHINESE YOUTH ALL LOVE.