The First King of Hollywood

by Tracey Goessel

  The Hearst press practically crowed. Louella Parsons trumpeted, “Mary Pickford’s decision to go through with her divorce suit is no surprise to those close to her. Mary never had any intention of returning to Douglas Fairbanks as his wife.”

  He kept up his front as best he could. He was photographed in St. Moritz, sleigh riding, skiing, and ice skating with Sylvia. His smile in the photographs fails to convince. He wired his son in London: I AM VERY HAPPY MORE THAN I HAVE BEEN IN YEARS.

  He wasn’t.

  In fairness, there was one thing he did have to be happy about: his improved relationship with his son. After “Jayar”—as he called him now, short for Junior (the son returning the favor by calling him “Pete,” a name Fairbanks himself suggested)—reached adulthood, the two men discovered each other. Further, they found, to their mutual surprise, that they enjoyed each other. They golfed and traveled together, and the father found himself taking his son into his confidence. “I feel like his papa. He seems much younger than I,” Jayar said at the time. “He is always coming to me for advice. He’s sort of Peter-Pan, you know, irresponsible. I try to make him do the sensible thing as often as possible.”

  His success was, admittedly, mixed. Doug and Sylvia became the 1935 precursors of jet-setters. From Switzerland to Rome, from Rome to London, from there to the Bahamas, from whence to St. Thomas to pick up a yacht—the 160 foot Caroline, with a crew of thirty-two. Then to Miami, where he nodded approval as Sylvia spent his money on beach togs and evening clothes. Along the way, he experienced a decaying relationship with the press. At one point he offered to “sock” reporters “in the nose” if they annoyed him. “For all I care,” wrote one, “Douglas Fairbanks can swing from British chandeliers for the remainder of his career.”

  They arrived in Nassau with the yacht’s windows closed and curtains drawn. His only comment to journalists: “The press has treated me rotten.” The feeling was mutual. The London Daily Express held an unpopularity contest. Doug was ninth on the list of ten. His sole consolation: he was three slots below Hitler.

  They went through the Panama Canal. In the party by this point were Fred Astaire and Benita Hume. All stayed below decks as the ship locked through. Doug, “severe in his denunciations of the Fourth Estate,” refused interviews but let it be known that they were aiming for the South Seas and Tahiti. From there? Who knew—Japan, India, the Suez Canal?

  They got as far as Fiji, when word came of a business crisis. Joseph Schenck, who was not only head of United Artists but also a provider of much-needed films for distribution, was leaving the company for Fox. With him went young producer Darryl Zanuck’s production unit, 20th Century Pictures. With the founders no longer making content, this created a critical shortage of product.

  Schenck had been chairman of the board of UA since 1924 and had been seminal in its success, shepherding his flock of quarrelsome and creative sheep through product deficits, technical innovations such as sound, and exhibitor wars. One of his brilliant strokes was in mid-1933, when he founded 20th Century Pictures, putting Zanuck in charge of production. Film executive Al Lichtman said of Zanuck at the time, “he personifies youth, brilliance, smartness and timeliness”—true words, indeed, and the sort that had been applied to Fairbanks twenty years before. To start, 20th Century signed a one-year distribution deal with United Artists, giving UA critical product in the 1933–1934 season, with nine out of the twelve films being solid hits. Still, at the end of the year, the owners declined to give Zanuck any stock in the company, which put Schenck on the spot. It took all his considerable charm and persuasion to convince Zanuck to give UA a second year’s distribution contract. During that time, he proposed a scheme that he thought would serve the best interests of all parties—the nonproducing partners (Fairbanks and Pickford and, partially, Chaplin) as well as the producing partners (Schenck, Goldwyn, and Zanuck). UA would issue two classes of stock: Preferred, with a 7 percent return and a par value of $2.4 million, and Common, with no par value. All six partners would get one-sixth shares of the Preferred shares. The nonproducing partners would each get one-sixth of 40 percent of the Common shares. The producing partners would get the same one-sixth share of the 40 percent, as well as splitting the remaining 60 percent of the Common stock. For its part, 20th Century would sign a ten-year distribution deal with UA, would guarantee dividends on both types of stock, and would purchase the Preferred stock from the founders on request, at $400,000 for each one-sixth share.

  It was an eminently fair proposal and would give each nonproducing member a slightly smaller share of what would be a far more successful company. Robert Fairbanks, on behalf of Doug, had enthusiastically agreed to the plan. Initially Sam Goldwyn also agreed, but neither Mary nor Charlie would go along. Then Goldwyn reversed his position.

  Schenck had had it. “It is clear to me that Sam Goldwyn, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin are determined to dominate and run the United Artists Distribution Corporation,” he wrote. “Why they should at this time decide to do so is inexplicable to me as the company has been run by me very successfully and very fairly. They never showed any desire to manage and run the company when the company was $1,200,000 in the red.” He took 20th Century over to Fox, the merger creating 20th Century-Fox. More important, at least as far as Fairbanks was concerned, Schenck sold his Art Cinema and UA stock back to the company and sold Sam Goldwyn the portion of 20th Century stock that owned the properties on the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios. Now only Goldwyn and Disney were still releasing through UA, and Goldwyn was the sole owner of the stages, the equipment, and all physical property of the studio. Doug and Mary owned only the land it stood upon.

  Mary wired Doug in Singapore to return for an emergency board meeting. He arrived in British Columbia in early July and, depositing Sylvia on Vancouver Island, made his way to Hollywood.

  Fairbanks and Pickford were brisk and efficient with each other publicly: a nod, a quick handshake. A prolonged ten-day stockholders’ meeting resulted in many changes. Al Lichtman was appointed president, with Mary as first vice president. The board of directors was reconstituted to include stockholders, and the bylaws were amended to weaken management and strengthen the board.

  Lichtman’s reign was to be short: three months. Except for signing David O. Selznick to an eight-picture contract, he had little time to do anything. Mary then took the reins, lasting long enough to lose the Disney contract to RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures. Given that Disney was in the midst of producing Snow White, the full-length feature that would become one of the decade’s sensations, this was an unfortunate loss.

  Mary was not alone in making bad financial decisions. During his brief stay in Hollywood, Doug was corralled by his brother-manager to look at the books. Upon seeing the cost of the March-to-July cruise—$100,000, by Robert’s recollection—Doug was staggered. “I spent a fortune on that damned trip and didn’t get a nickel’s worth of fun out of it,” he said.

  Robert remained a man of few words, replying, “You paid the piper, all right.”

  Doug’s response spoke to his frame of mind. “Apparently that’s all I’m good for,” he said. “And the worst of it is, I’ve got to keep on doing it.”

  And so he did. Soon he was flying to New York City, with a thousand pounds of luggage, to reconnect with Sylvia. They sailed on the Empress of Britain for England, there to get back on the tiresome merry-go-round that was to constitute the rest of his days. Photographers seemed never to tire of documenting his weary face at nightclub tables. Sylvia would be dancing or smoking or drinking, while in the words of one observer, Fairbanks “might have been a tired businessman from Milwaukee seeing the town under protest.” Another described him as “a world-weary man, his eyes strange, far away and almost filmy with ennui, his shoulders slumping.” Thief of Bagdad director Raoul Walsh was more succinct in his cruelty: “Finally, the jowls dropped, and he didn’t look good at all. And he died.”

  But not right away. And, perhaps, only internally. He had four
more years of a living death to go.

  They spent months abroad. Sylvia sported a platinum ring on the third finger of her left hand. When asked about it, she simply laughed. “How can I be engaged to a man who is already married? Would you want me to get him jailed for bigamy?” Her divorce had been finalized in the spring, but his would not be final until the following January.

  Doug made noises about producing films in England. He would remake The Thief of Bagdad, he said. Or The Black Pirate. This did not sit well with Mary from a business perspective. In December 1935 she wired him repeatedly on the subject:

  WORRIED YOU HAVE CHOSEN BAGDAD AND PIRATE FOR FIRST PRODUCTIONS NEED AMERICAN PICTURES ENGLISH FILMS DIFFICULT TO SELL EVERYWHERE BUT ENGLAND BELIEVE YOU WOULD HAVE MORE ENTHUSIASM FOR ENTIRELY NEW STORY LIKE CUSTER REDOING OLD SUCCESSES RARELY PROVES SUCCESSFUL AND SHOULD ONLY BE ATTEMPTED AFTER REESTABLISHING YOURSELF.

  In fact, she was dogged in her attempts to get him to abandon filmmaking in Great Britain:

  YOU MUST LEAVE THERE IMMEDIATELY AND REESTABLISH YOURSELF IN UNITED STATES WHAT FEELING IF ANY MAY EXIST WOULD BE MORE THAN OFFSET BY SUCCESSFUL PICTURE I KNOW YOU CAN MAKE BE COURAGEOUS TAKE YOUR FUTURE IN YOUR OWN HANDS DON’T LISTEN TO OTHERS WHICH ONLY RESULTS IN CONFUSION THE COMPANY NEEDS YOU THE INDUSTRY NEEDS YOU SO COME BACK IF HOLLYWOOD DISTASTEFUL MAKE YOUR HEADQUARTERS IN NEW YORK BUT I FEEL YOU NEED THE STIMULATION OF THE SPIRIT OF HOLLYWOOD TODAY HOWEVER ALL IS WITHIN YOU THEREFORE LEAN UPON YOUR OWN EXCELLENT INSTINCTS AND JUDGMENT.

  Perhaps her words had their intended effect. For he did return to the States—significantly, without Sylvia—in the first week of January 1936. As with Mary, he had a prearranged code with Robert for their telegraphic communication. Upon receipt of the coded signal from London, Robert would “build up a business pretext that would necessitate [his] sudden return to Hollywood.” Doug sent the coded message in late December, and Robert came through. Soon the press was announcing that Douglas Fairbanks had sent word ahead to refurbish his dressing room and to fill his private pool at the studio. He was going to begin preproduction, he announced, on a film about Marco Polo.

  Except to speak about it with reporters, there is no evidence that he did any work on the film. In fact, Robert’s recollection was that he had already convinced Douglas the November before to shelve the project. Still, it would serve as a handy stalking horse for the next several months. He was frequently announcing that he was on his way to the Orient, to get footage for his latest epic.

  In fact, he hoped against all reason to stop the divorce. During the five months he had been overseas, he continued to send feelers back to Mary. In an act of gall that spoke clearly to his desperation, he wired a two-hundred-word plea to his first wife, Beth, asking her to intercede. It was the highest—or should one say lowest?—example of that characteristic of his nature that would occasionally send a woman out to do what he could not. He had sent Beth to get him out of his contract with William Brady in 1907, and now, almost thirty years later, he asked her to plead his case to the woman who had broken up their marriage. She stoutly did her duty: Mary claimed that she said, “I know and the whole world knows that you are the great love of Douglas’ life. Douglas was more like a brother to me than a husband.”

  Who is to say? Those words may actually have passed her lips. And, if said, she might even have meant them. Still, it was a squalid thing to ask—probably his least heroic act.

  His direct plea to Mary, once he was back in California, was little more effective. “Let’s put ourselves on the shelf” was the (admittedly secondhand) version of the pitch. “We’re no longer important to the world and I don’t think anyone really cares about us anymore. . . . Why don’t we go away together and live in peace, perhaps in Switzerland, or if you like we can build on the ranch as we’ve always planned.”

  It was, in the dry words of Robert, the wrong approach. At any rate, it had no effect—at least according to Mary. Fairbanks Jr. had a different tale to tell, a last tragic twist to the story.

  Doug stayed in Hollywood, attempting to convince Mary, until business forced a brief trip to New York City. He asked his son to join him on the train trip east. Jayar recalled that at every stop, “Pete sent long, long telegrams to Mary, written in intensely romantic desperately poetic language.” When they reached Chicago, he stopped at the local UA office to see if Mary had left him a message. She hadn’t.

  He was glum, and he became glummer as they reached New York and he checked into the Waldorf Towers. An evening at a Bert Lahr musical cheered him briefly, but the next night he and Jayar saw Richard Barthelmess in The Postman Always Rings Twice. He was, in the words of his son, “terribly distraught, anxious and quite unreceptive to the public’s cheers and waves.” Dinner at the Persian Room was no better. He returned to the Waldorf, but not before scheduling a lunch the next day with his son and a number of his friends, including Tom Geraghty and Frank Case.

  When Jayar arrived at the hotel the next morning, his father was gone. He had departed during the night for Europe. The clerk did not know what ship but handed Jayar a telegram that had arrived before Fairbanks had checked out, but which had been overlooked in the flurry.

  Although it was addressed to his father, he opened it. It might have been important.

  It was. It was from Mary. “The exact wording of the message is lost, but I could never, ever forget its gist,” he wrote. “It was, in effect; ‘All is forgiven . . . I want us to be together again too . . . forever . . . come back . . .’”

  It took some mad scrambling to learn the details: ten minutes before the vessel sailed, between three and four in the morning, Fairbanks had boarded the Aquitania via the crew’s gangplank. He traveled under a pseudonym. Jayar placed a radio call to the ship with the news of the telegram. His father’s reaction was, paradoxically, anger. He accused his son of lying. Junior had never approved of Sylvia; he had always been on Mary’s side, not his. He hung up and accepted no further calls from New York. He wired Jayar from the ship: THIS DECISION MADE IN PERSIAN ROOM LAST NIGHT WHEN WE WERE TALKING.

  He did, however, take a call from Mary. She confirmed that, indeed, she had sent the telegram. Fairbanks paused long before replying. “It’s too late,” he reportedly said. “It’s just too late.” He had already proposed marriage to Sylvia.

  He arrived at Cherbourg on March 3. As soon as he was ashore, he called Sylvia in London. She rushed to meet him in France, leaving behind such necessities as her birth certificate and divorce papers. He spent the following days playing a part in a sort of comic opera, scuttling about between lawyer and government offices, trying to get the residence and marriage banns requirements waived. His fame, or persistence, finally did the trick: on the sixth the state’s attorney delivered papers suspending the French marriage laws. But now Sylvia’s missing papers became an issue. These were flown to Paris, translated and attested to, but by the time this was done, city hall had closed for the day.

  He became yet more frantic. He tried the American embassy, but the attachés had to tell him that no matter his fervor, or fame, they lacked the proper authority to marry him. It scarcely mattered: he also was without his divorce papers. He had to swear a special affidavit to one of the most famous facts of the past twenty years—that he had been married to, and divorced from, Mary Pickford.

  Finally, on the next day, under a ceiling of floating fleshy cupids in the offices of the 8th arrondissement, the deed was done. The bride’s roadster had hit a taxicab on the way to the ceremony—a bad omen, to the locals. She seemed unconcerned, appearing in a rose-colored coat with a large corsage of orchids pinned to her fur collar. The groom was in a black suit, tie, and hat, his wedding costume indistinguishable from mourning clothes.

  The news was buried in the back pages of the papers. Still, some saw it, prompting one wag to produce the following doggerel:

  Douglas Fairbanks, Junior’s pa,

  Looks for a new cine-ma

  Having canned his Lady Mary

&nbs
p; For that English Ashley fairy

  It did not take long for the first marital spat. As they walked down the steps from the mayor’s office, Sylvia chided Doug for not holding her arm. He bit back a retort and took her hand, with the reported words: “Now dearie, please!” Theirs was not the only local quarrel: Germany invaded the Rhineland the same day. Perhaps this knowledge soothed Douglas for the scant attention his final honeymoon received.

  Which was just as well, as it did not go swimmingly. They flew to Spain on a private plane. In Seville, their unattended car was looted; stolen were two of his precious overcoats, a camera, luggage, and the fur wraps he had bought Sylvia in Paris as a wedding gift. (“It cost me 10,000 francs,” Doug huffed indignantly to a world largely indifferent to the problems of the rich and formerly famous.)

  And so he settled into the life as, in the words of niece Letitia, “a has-been.” In early May, he brought his bride to America. As they arrived in the morning hours on the Washington in the Port of New York, they were still in their evening clothes. He shushed Sylvia repeatedly when she tried to speak while he was expounding to reporters. “Tell them you enjoyed the skyline,” he instructed her. Skylines, evidently, didn’t interest her. More important was the nation’s perception of her hair color. “I am not a dirty blonde,” she declared. She wished the press to refer to her hair color as “English mouse.”

  This critical issue put to bed, they moved into the Santa Monica beach house. He had elective surgery (likely a hernia repair necessitated by years of vigorous stunting) and settled uneasily into the uncharacteristic role of the man not in the arena: hitting the nightspots and charity circuits, occupying the first-class suites of transatlantic liners, making increasingly feeble claims of travel plans to China, and pledging—always pledging—to make another movie. But his actions belied his words. By October 1936 it was announced that Sam Goldwyn would coproduce Marco Polo. In the words of Goldwyn biographer A. Scott Berg: “Three meetings later, Fairbanks found Goldwyn taking over every aspect of the production.” He pleaded with old friend (and Goldwyn’s manager) David Rose “to get him out of the deal.” He did so. By April 1937, Fairbanks had sold the rights to the Marco Polo project outright to his fellow producer. Goldwyn, who had provided a young Gary Cooper with his first important opportunity ten years earlier, now hijacked the star from his Paramount contract to take the lead in the film. The casting announcement was tantamount to announcing Doug’s retirement from acting. “I’ll let the young fellows carry on my swashbuckling roles,” Fairbanks told a reporter. “There are twenty or twenty-five of ’em out there capable of carrying on.”