Next was Manila. His arrival virtually paralyzed business along the waterfront as over eight thousand admirers crammed the pier and thousands more filled the streets outside the dock. As he reached the bottom of the gangplank, he was seized by the crowd and carried a quarter mile to his car, where he was planted on the roof for all to see. He was in the Philippines only long enough to visit the home of General Emilio Aguinaldo, the country’s first president. The film contains a shot of Fairbanks pulling the clearly uncomfortable general up to the camera.
Bangkok followed. More documentary footage was taken of temples, canals, sacred white elephants, hacky sack players, and a laboratory that produced snake antivenom. Fairbanks and Fleming were filmed, hot and uncomfortable in their morning suits, attending a tea party at the royal palace. They looked far more at ease later on the golf course, sinking putts with the king. The filmmakers were to supplement shots of Thai dancers in the film with footage of a dancing Mickey Mouse (his eyes briefly converted to cartoon Asian slits)—likely a nod to the fact that Walt Disney was soon to be using United Artists as his distributor.*3
Fairbanks loved it. Thailand, he wired Mary, was MARVELOUS COUNTRY MOST FASCINATING YET. He took a four-day flier to Penang, Malaysia, where he watched a ceremonial dance in Kedah. “They beat drums until they are in a frenzy,” he wrote her. “And then with skewers stuck all through their faces—walk in this sort of a spiritual dope—slowly through a long path of burning coals.” To his chagrin, the light was too weak to capture it on film. Still, he was BLUE HOMESICK WANT MY FRIN. She called him on his inconsistency and wired: BABY PLEASE DON’T BE HOMESICK ELSE NO MORE TRIPS.
Burma was next. “Beautiful—Round of golf and big banquet presided over by Lord Mayor,” he wrote Mary in his telegraphic style. “—Speeches—crowds like Russia—entertainment four tea parties—big mass meeting at night—dinner and Siamese dancers and musicians—interesting—sign nine million autographs.”
But he devoted little time to Mandalay, either in person or on film. India was next on the itinerary, and with it the prospect of big game. He was there by mid-March, but with his arrival came trouble. First, Victor Fleming was sick—very sick. “Vic has developed a very serious fever—temperature 103—we have to take him off ship tomorrow in an ambulance to a nursing home he may stay a week there—I am very worried—he has been sick off and on the whole trip,” he wrote. “I want Baby Fairbanks here.”
The mobs in Calcutta made things worse, and the unthinkable happened. “What an ordeal! Worse crowd yet—tore me to pieces—ran over a little boy about 12 years I took to the hospital they fear he can’t live—am terribly upset—awful feeling—want my Hipper.”
He was devastated. “Boy is still dying . . . poor family am doing everything I can they say not much hope—crowds here are terrible 1 million invitations—terrible feeling about the boy” he wrote. The child was “a splendid little fellow—a great fan of mine.”
Fortunately, both the child and Fleming improved, and with them, Doug’s view of India. “Boy took turn for the better he may live,” he wrote. “—I am so happy . . . went to hospital tonight—boy looked at me smiled and said this is worth it.” Doug golfed, gave speeches, and prepared for big game hunting, buying guns and reviewing the hunting grounds. He saw a veritable zoo: “Rhinoceros—Bear Boar—Pythons—Deer and 300 yards away a huge tiger came out of the jungle went to the river to bathe . . . a great day.” The tiger hunt itself caused him to wax almost poetic: “On my elephant deep in the jungle—shouts of the Mahonto—cries of animals—weird sound of . . . birds trumpeting of elephant when they see game—Dubar . . . waiting gun ready—trembly, wild boar—porcupine deer civet cats huge lizards 6 and 7 feet long all mushing on in front of pack.”
It was no minor affair to capture on film. “We have about 40 Elephants 6 or 8 that carry the cameras and Vic—Chuck and myself . . . the rest are used for what they call the ‘beat’—line up abreast—pass through jungle and drive all animals ahead.” He bagged his first leopard three days later. “He had killed a young buffalo and was sitting on his kill,” he wrote Mary. “We beat him out—I hit him the first shot wounded him and had to follow him back in the jungle to finish him. I am send[ing] it to Baby Fairbanks—he is 7 feet 8 inches long. This is great sport. I love my Baby.” The next day brought his second kill.
Modern audiences hiss at the scenes in the film depicting the big game hunting, and it is easy to see why. But one should look at this episode in the context of its time. It was just twenty years after Theodore Roosevelt’s African game hunt—a highly celebrated event in which Doug’s hero bagged literally hundreds of animals. And in 1931 the leopard was not yet endangered but in fact was a menace to the local population. Those who hunted it were considered heroic and daring. One of the leopards killed was found to have the toe ring and bracelet of a missing girl inside him.
Even with these caveats (apologies?) in mind, it is clear that very little of Around the World in Eighty Minutes stands the test of time. A studio sequence filmed later to pad the hunting scenes did little to help: a tiger attacks a native and drags him (very clearly a dummy) off into the woods. Fairbanks, in his tent, awakens and gives chase. Finding his gun is out of bullets, he hurls it down and wrestles mano a feline with the cat. Here the film cuts to Doug wrestling with a tiger-skin rug in his tent. When Vic Fleming wakens him, he cries: “Oh! I dreamt I was Trader Horn!”
The euphoria of killing leopards (and tigers and panthers) did not entirely keep his mind from home. Bad dreams caused him to fret about his finances, and he wired Mary to check into them. (“Always comes to the Baby—don’t know what I would do without her.”) He asked Robert to fill Pickfair with flowers for their wedding anniversary—their first apart.
He returned to Calcutta and the happy news that the injured boy was out of all danger. He was “as black as an Indian—much blacker” and ready to explore more of the country. Benares, Agra, and Delhi followed. The Taj Mahal was “the most gorgeous thing of any kind I have ever seen—great beyond powers of description.” He marveled at the wild peacock, monkeys, storks, and deer visible from the window of this train.
But it was time to head homeward, and they sailed in early April for Venice. Mary plaintively wired, WHEN ARE YOU SAILING FOR HOME DARLING. His reply could not have served to reassure: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT COMING OVER WOULD LIKE PLAY IN GOLF TOURNAMENTS EUROPE THIS SPRING LOVE YOU.
He had not seen her in almost four months but wanted to linger in England to play golf.
No wife could blame Mary for what happened next. During an interview with a Photoplay reporter, she began to muse. No one could say what the future would hold, she speculated. Ten years in the future? She and Doug might be separated. Who knew? The papers went to town on the quote, causing Mary to wire mid-April: UNPLEASANT ARTICLE PHOTOPLAY MISQUOTING ME ABOUT SEPARATION LONDON NEW YORK PAPERS MUCH EXCITED PAY NO ATTENTION JUST KNOW I LOVE YOU.
Doug’s reaction was swift: ADVISE STRENUOUS ACTION AGAINST LIBELOUS ARTICLE. Mary, knowing that she could hardly sue for what she actually had said, was soothing in her reply: FORGET PHOTOPLAY I HAVE ALL LOVE. Adept at managing publicity, she quickly issued a statement saying that she was referring in general to any marriage, not in particular to hers.
Doug remained in Rome, golfing, enjoying the sun, and pestering her to come over. She couldn’t come right away, since she had business with Cap O’Brien. Doug persisted in wiring her the names of ships and sailing dates. She replied that she was coming as quickly as she could but that she needed to conduct her business.
By the time he reached London he wired: TERRIBLY DISAPPOINTED DATE YOU ARE SAILING STOP PLEASE HURRY STOP IN TWO GOLF TOURNAMENTS HERE STOP BREMEN LATEST OR WILL COME AND GET YOU ALL LOVE.
She would have been wise to hurry. He had started looking at real estate, with a mind to buy. She must have intervened, for he wired: GOT MY ORDERS FROM YOU STOP NOT BUYING HOUSE STOP. She tried to soften things: NOT ORDERS ABOUT HOUSE DARLING BUT WISDOM. In m
id-May Mary, taking care to have the media present (“Divorce! Well, not so you could notice it!”) telephoned him from New York with her travel arrangements. After his long absence, she wanted to ensure that he would be at the dock when she arrived. She smiled gamely in the photographs, but she looked thin, wan.
On the Bremen, she received a wire: HEARTBROKEN ABOUT POSSIBILITY BEING UNABLE MEET YOU MAKING ALL ARRANGEMENTS FOR YOU TO COME TO ME ALL LOVE.
The ship docked at Southampton; he was not there. Instead, a new Rolls-Royce was waiting for her on the pier. She laughed bravely for the reporters and called the golf course. He could not take her call. He was in the middle of a match, playing in grim earnest. The largest gallery of the event dogged his steps—somersaulting boys, mothers cradling babies, and schoolgirls clutching autograph books. All hoped to see his famous smile. They were disappointed until the end, when, in the words of a sportswriter, he “marked himself a generous sportsman” by conceding his opponent’s final putt, although it was a good distance from the hole. He seemed, the observers thought, to have other things on his mind. He took the first train back to London.
Reunited, husband and wife posed for a joint picture: Doug in his golf togs, relaxing in an armchair, Mary perched on the arm. The wire services released it with the caption A DIVORCE!—DOES THIS LOOK LIKE IT? They were on their second honeymoon, they announced. They would visit all the same places they had in 1920. It would be an extensive tour abroad.
It lasted a week. Doug golfed every day. On midnight of the eighth day they booked tickets on the Empress of Britain a few hours before the vessel sailed. Five days later they were back in North America, along with twenty-one steamer trunks and nine other pieces of luggage, their honeymoon, evidently, over.
He returned to Pickfair, to a world that had changed even more since his last stint at home. Hollywood, it seemed to him, was losing its old glamour. Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, which opened for business with his Robin Hood in 1922, was now showing second-run films on an increasingly seedy Hollywood Boulevard. Even Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, where his and Mary’s foot- and handprints in the forecourt cement had begun a tradition, was no longer the site of spotlight premieres. Most of his contemporaries had stopped making films. For the first time since United Artists was formed, the announced list of releases for the 1931–1932 season had no contributions from Fairbanks, Pickford, or Chaplin. Reaching for the Moon, working its way to minor markets, was shaking out to be a disappointment.
Partially this was due to internal policies at United Artists. At this time United Artists and Schenck were in a war with the Fox West Coast theater chain over what Schenck perceived as monopolistic behavior and unfavorable terms. Schenck staged all his stars for a public “Declaration of Independence” from the chain, refusing to distribute UA films to them. They, in turn, banned UA films, meaning a significant portion of the country was not being covered by UA’s distribution network.
United Artists had a Theatre Circuit business, which developed plans to build theaters in twenty-four key West Coast cities. Ten of these theaters were already under construction before Fox and Schenck finally reached a truce. Fox took over the operation of the new theaters and agreed to show UA films.
But the war had taken its toll. Art Cinema, Schenck’s production unit, curtailed production in 1933 and liquidated. While Schenck bore the financial burden of the particular failure of Reaching for the Moon due to Fairbanks’s refusal to bankroll the project, Doug found little satisfaction in being right. It was an embarrassment—and not merely a financial one. He had always represented not only success but wholesome success. One editorial columnist wrote, “In . . . Reaching for the Moon, there is much that is worthless and salacious.” Another, under the disheartening headline of EXIT THE HERO, wrote: “The talking motion picture has claimed another victim.”
He tried to resume his old life. He filmed studio shots to knit the travel footage into a reasonable narrative. He hosted the Prince of Siam and served as master of ceremonies for the pre-Olympic festivities at the L.A. Coliseum. He added a new wing and guest quarters to Pickfair to accommodate the anticipated influx of guests for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. He played back-lot football at the studio almost daily with the likes of Johnny Weissmuller and Johnny Mack Brown. The season would last, he told a reporter wryly, until they all got hurt or “somebody is lucky enough to get a job.” He even found time to perform a rescue after witnessing an automobile collision on Holloway Drive, dropping through the shattered window of a flipped sedan to extract Mr. and Mrs. Melville Van Duerson of Hillside, New Jersey, presumably giving them a good tale to tell the folks back home.
He announced trips. He would go to Norway to fish. Or Scotland for grouse hunting. Then England for golf. No, no, he would go to the Amazon (as had his hero, Teddy Roosevelt) and search for gold. He would bring Victor Fleming along to film events. Scratch that—it would be Howard Hawks.
In the end, he went to New York City to premiere Around the World in Eighty Minutes at the Rivoli on November 19, 1931.
The big-city critics were not kind. The film was padded, they pointed out, and not all that interesting as a travelogue. Rural critics largely gave it positive reviews, but Variety’s prediction turned out to be accurate: it was the sort of film that “will slide instead of climb on word of mouth in full week stands.” The possibility that the Depression audience might not wish to watch the travels of a rich movie star had not occurred to Doug.
That he no longer had his finger on the public pulse was evident. On arriving in New York, he declared to reporters that the idea of the economic depression disgusted him. “Conditions are not worse than in 1929 when things were over-inflated,” he said. “Being gloomy just undermines things.” Mary, wearing a lovely suit with a fox collar, applauded him with what the reporter termed “a Pickfordian laugh.” She loyally agreed that “depression talkers” only helped the depression.
One editor, perhaps in possession of a strong sense of irony, placed this article directly next to an account of a young mother, desperate over her husband’s inability to find work, who killed her three small children, then herself.
Doug probably never read the story. He announced that he was off to the Orient to film another travelogue; he sailed in mid-November, 1931.
He got no farther than Europe, and skiing in the mountains of St. Moritz with Charlie Chaplin. Whether it was due to the political situation in China, the disappointing reports on Around the World, or his capricious nature is unclear, but he canceled his planned trip to the Far East by mid-December. A mad dash followed, and he was home at Pickfair in time for Christmas dinner.
* * *
*1. The narration later has Fairbanks saying: “I told Vic we needed more comedy in this picture. He replied ‘Just keep wearing that hat.’”
*2. Perhaps so, but Pomona was not so full of drug dens. By his later accounts, Fairbanks met a regional warlord who ran the local opium trade in Shanghai. He attended an opium party and reported that “it was an interesting experience and I did not suffer any ill effects.”
*3. Disney signed with UA in 1931, and the relationship was profitable for both. UA’s share of profits from Disney releases in the 1932–1933 season was $1 million.
18
Castaway
* * *
FAIRBANKS MADE IT HOME for Christmas, but he was not to stay for long. He wanted to travel, but the anemic returns of Around the World in Eighty Minutes made another travelogue out of the question.*1 Still, he was desperate to get away. Perhaps it was not merely his restlessness.
An example serves to illustrate: A columnist came to visit Pickfair on a night when Mary was dining at home alone, as Doug was expected to remain at the studio until ten. At six thirty, Mary left the house. Fairbanks, calling from the studio, was informed that Mary was out. No, the butler did not know where. He rushed home and the columnist watched the actor phone every friend and relative he could think of. Doug’s anxiety rose as he paced the floor an
d started imagining the worst. She had been in an accident! She had been kidnapped!
By the time Mary returned, her husband was on the verge of summoning the authorities. This scene, in the writer’s mind, was clear evidence that the rumors of trouble in the marriage were false. Look at that devotion! Was this not the behavior of a man in passionate love?
The scribe might better have considered whether this was the behavior of a man dealing with an alcoholic.
Mary had been drinking, drinking certainly since her mother’s death, possibly before. Jack, Lottie, and Charlotte had never scorned the bottle, but Mary, breadwinner for all, had been as abstemious as her husband. Or almost. Doug Jr. noted, “She was something of a secret drinker when she was married to my father, but it was nothing serious at all; a glass of sherry sneaked at dinner, something like that.” The more roguish element knew better. Eddie Sutherland, who was to direct Mr. Robinson Crusoe, recalled Jack Pickford bringing him to Mary’s bathroom when they had run out of alcohol while on a bender. “Gin or whiskey?” he recalled Jack asking. “The hydrogen peroxide bottle’s gin, the Listerine bottle’s scotch.”
Doug tried, ineffectually, to keep control over her drinking. May McAvoy recalled with astonishment an episode when the Pickfair butler refused to bring Mary and her guests drinks by the pool. “He said,” she recalled, “that Mr. Fairbanks gave express orders that no drinks were to be served. Mary was so embarrassed,” she added. “What right had that man to treat her so? Did he think she was a drunk?”
The First King of Hollywood Page 49
