The Chief

by David Nasaw

  26. The Talkies and Marion

  “WHEN I HEARD THE VOICE of Al Jolson, I thought, No. This can’t be,” Marion remembered. “There can’t be talkies. I’m ruined. I’m wrecked.”

  On their return from Europe in October of 1928, W. R. and Marion had spent a few days in New York at the Ritz Tower. The biggest show in town that season was Al Jolson’s second talkie, The Singing Fool, which Marion went to see with Maury Paul.

  “When Jolson started singing, ‘When there are clear skies...’ I started to cry. The mascara ran all over my face.... When we went back to the Ritz Towers, I couldn’t stop crying.... When W. R. saw me he said, ‘What’s the matter?’ Maury said, ‘Sonny Boy got her down.’ I really thought I was finished.... No one thought I could talk, and I didn’t think I could either. I stuttered.”1

  Marion was so terrified of making her talkie screen test that she contemplated quitting film altogether, but W. R. would not let her. Determined to make her as big a star in talkies as he had in silent films, he did what every studio head and agent in town was doing and hired speech and elocution coaches from Broadway to teach her to talk. Adela Rogers St. Johns was a visitor at San Simeon during this period. “As long as I live, I will remember when she was trying to learn to talk! She would go up in the library and [Hearst] had Margaret Carrington [a speech coach], and God knows not who, and good stage directors from New York come out. And they’d all go up there all morning and work with Marion on her speech. You know she stuttered very badly. She did!...She stuttered and it was very funny and she was trying to learn. Well, she would come down, and some days she would come roaring in and say: ‘I’m not going to go any farther with this!’ And then she would give you that speech about Romeo in the tomb, when he came to, and found Tybalt’s bones. She’d say, ‘Well, none of that makes any sense, I’m not running around memorizing this kind [of] stuff, saying this stuff all the time.’”2

  In the end, Marion passed the talkie screen test Irving Thalberg gave all the MGM stars on contract. With a bit of sherry to fortify her, she threw away her script and ad-libbed brilliantly. Thalberg was delighted and offered to extend her contract. When W. R. saw the test, Marion remembered, he “started to cry. He said, ‘My God, it’s marvelous.’”3

  The transition to sound took place with lightning speed. In September of 1928, Nick Schenck announced that two-thirds of MGM films produced during the next year would have sound sequences. That same autumn, the Chief, anxious to secure the best possible “sound” property for Marion, began negotiations with Flo Ziegfeld for the music and talking rights for Rosalie, the Marilyn Miller hit, with music by George Gershwin and Sigmund Romberg and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and P. G. Wodehouse. Romberg and Gershwin had a better offer elsewhere, but Ziegfeld who was in debt to Hearst for the publicity given his last musical, Show Boat, promised to deliver the musical for $85,000.4

  Hearst and MGM bought Rosalie, even given the steep price. Unwilling to fall behind in the race to sound, Hearst and Thalberg decided in the meantime to rescript and reshoot Five O’Clock Girl, the film Marion was already working on, as a talkie. Frances Marion was called in to doctor the script, but resigned claiming that the adaptation which Hearst had personally selected was impossible to mend. Hearst and Thalberg proceeded nonetheless, then canned the talkie version after three weeks of shooting.

  It was rumored that the film had been canceled because of Marion’s speech defect, but Ilka Chase, who acted with Marion in her talkies, claimed that “she did not stutter when playing a scene.” Marion went on to make dozens of films, radio shows, and speeches without any noticeable stutter or stammer. It is more likely that Hearst canceled Five O'Clock Girl because he did not want Marion to make her talkie debut playing a common shop girl.5

  Still awaiting the Rosalie script, Hearst commissioned Laurence Stallings to do a musical-comedy version of Vidor’s The Big Parade, with Marion playing the role of Marianne, a French farm girl who falls in love with an American doughboy. The Chief previewed the picture at the ranch in the summer of 1929 and telegrammed Thalberg that the “work people on the hill laughed and cried and had a grand time. You certainly made a gorgeous picture out of unpromising material.” Marianne did reasonably well at the box office.6

  The success of Marianne convinced Hearst that he had been right to believe that, given appropriate projects, Marion would do very well in the talkies: “I think musical comedy is the best thing for the talkies and best thing for Marion ... In fact I would like to see her do nothing but musical comedy; but of course I am willing to have an occasional straight comedy if you think best.”7 Because there were still problems with the Rosalie script (it would in fact never be produced), Hearst let Marion make another King Vidor film, Not So Dumb. Though Vidor had succeeded twice with Marion, Hearst refused to let him—or Thalberg—alone on the project. When the shooting was completed, he was sent a rough cut to view at San Simeon. “Here comes Groucho,” he telegrammed Thalberg on October 14, after viewing the film and writing up the long list of changes he required. “Am entirely confident you are wrong,” Thalberg answered within hours. “Strongly recommend getting audience reaction before any further eliminations or any further retakes. Would appreciate your telephoning me on receipt of this wire. Regards.”

  Hearst gave in—this time. “All right old man. It’s your funeral. I am only a pall bearer.” In the end, it was Hearst, not Thalberg, who was right on this one. Vidor’s two earlier comedies with Marion, The Patsy and Show People, had earned profits of $155,000 and $176,000. Not So Dumb, which cost less to make than either of them, ended up with a loss of $39,000.8

  Marion’s next film was The Floradora Girl, a costume comedy which gave her ample opportunity to sing and dance. Hearst’s reputation for meddling in Marion’s films was by now so well established that director Harry Beaumont, according to Ilka Chase, who played Marion’s friend in the film, “devised a simple and ingenious trick for keeping the boss from underfoot. When the red light is on outside the door of a sound stage it means a scene is shooting, and God Himself can’t come in. Harry posted scouts at all the approaches to the stage, and as Mr. Hearst advanced upon it, he would promptly order the doors closed and would then rehearse his scene in peace while the mighty one cooled his heels. There was one sequence, however, where this ruse failed. The ‘Tell Me, Pretty Maiden’ scene was shot in glorious technicolor, and because of the blazing lights the stage got so hellhot the doors couldn’t be kept closed longer than five minutes at a time, and in would hop old Nosey Parker.”9

  Hearst was nosey, of course. Though he and Marion had been together for a decade, he was intensely jealous and, according to Marion’s biographer, had her watched when he was out of town.10 In the spring of 1929, returning from a brief business trip to New York and Washington, where with Millicent he had lunched with President Hoover at the White House, Hearst found a telegram waiting for him at his 9:55 stopover in La Junta, Colorado, on the way home: “How about telling that engineer to put on some more steam. Am getting impatient. Can hardly wait for Sunday. Love, M.”

  W. R. wrote his reply on the back of the telegram: “I told the engineer and he is laughing. He says girls are like that. They are great jollyers. He says if he put on too much steam and got there too soon it not be wise. He says things like that have occurred. Anyhow why didn’t you tell me something of this kind over the telephone during the last six weeks. I have been wanting to hear it. Out of sight out of mind. W. R.”11

  Before handing the telegram to Willicombe, Hearst crossed out the last three sentences, softening the meaning, but not entirely.

  In his late sixties and desperately in love with a movie star just turned thirty, Hearst could not help but be anxious. Still, it was apparent to everyone that while Marion still engaged in brief flirtations, she was very much in love with her “Pops.” As she confided to her good friend Eleanor Boardman, who was then married to King Vidor, “‘I started out a g-g-gold digger and I ended up in love.’”12

 
; “She was devoted to Mr. Hearst,” Colleen Moore who “knew Marion very well” remembered. Theirs was “one of the great love stories of the ages.... I recall once seeing them walking through the pergola [at San Simeon], hand in hand. They stopped and he kissed her, ever so tenderly.”13

  “It was a great romance,” Adela Rogers St. Johns agreed. “Marion adored W. R.” If earlier she might have hoped that W. R. would divorce Millicent and marry her, she knew now that this would not happen and not only accepted the fact, but, as time passed, took a sort of pleasure in the sacrifice she had made. “She told him, in my presence,” St. Johns remembered, “that he was not to divorce his wife, that she wouldn’t hear of it, and she said, ‘All right, you are a great man. You are a big man. You are one of the most important men in the world. Now it’s all right for you to have a blonde exFollies girl–movie star for your mistress. That’s all right. But you divorce the wife and mother of your five sons to marry a much younger blonde, and you’re an old fool and I wont have it! I wont have you.... We love each other, we live together, this is all right. But I’m not going to have you make a fool of yourself.’”14

  W. R. and Marion were now husband and wife in all but name. When Marion’s mother died in January of 1928, Hearst provided her with the emotional and financial support she needed to hold herself and her family together. Sister Rose, who had been drinking steadily for years, required the most attention. In 1924, her estranged husband, George Van Cleve, who worked for Hearst, had kidnapped their daughter, Pat. Father and daughter remained in hiding for the next five years. Hearst hired detectives to search for them. After several misses, Van Cleve was found and Pat returned to her mother at San Simeon, but only briefly. Van Cleve was able to win legal custody of his daughter because of Rose’s alcoholism.

  In later years, there were rumors that Pat was not Rose’s and Van Cleve’s child, but Marion’s and W. R.’s. But there has never been any evidence to support these rumors, aside from what some people regard as Pat’s physical resemblance to Hearst.15

  Although Hearst was infamous in Hollywood for nosing around the set, meddling in Marion’s films, and pushing his films over budget, when it came time to renew his contract with MGM, he was courted by every studio in town. “W. R. Hearst stands in an important spot today in the highlights of the film industry,” Variety explained on May 1,1929. “Hearst with his pictures, newspapers and influence, is said to be looked at by several film combinations as a most desirable prospect.... From the first look of Hearst in pictures as a wealthy man with a film hobby who didn’t care what it cost him, W. R. Hearst has grown to be a substantial part of the film industry.”

  The betting in Hollywood was that the Chief was going to sign with Warner Brothers. He had, in fact, secretly negotiated a contract with Jack Warner under which Marion would have been obligated to work forty-two weeks a year and make three pictures for a fee of $150,000 each. When Louis B. Mayer got wind of the proposal, he made a counteroffer that was even better. But the Chief, feeling that Mayer had not paid enough attention to him and Marion, was determined to make the move to Warner Brothers. The MGM proposals, he wrote Eddie Hatrick, who was negotiating for him, would “have been gladly accepted if they had been made at an earlier date. But ... we are forced to conclude they were made because of the proposals of the Warner Brothers, and would not have been made otherwise.... We think it would be better for us to go elsewhere than to be in the position of securing from the Metro Company by duress a proposal which they would not willingly have made of their own accord.... I would like you to see Mr. Mayer and tell him these things. I just cannot do it myself. I am too fond of him personally to be able to present the situation in a logical way.”16

  Though the Chief would have preferred to move his film operations to Warner Brothers, in part because Jack Warner was prepared to provide him with the funds he needed to launch a new “sound” newsreel, while Mayer was not, he left the final decision to Marion. She chose to turn down the Warner Brothers’ offer and remain at MGM.17

  One of the reasons the Chief wanted to leave MGM was that it was in the process of being taken over by William Fox who had bought a controlling interest in Loew’s, MGM’s parent company, from Marcus Loew’s widow. Fox, who had developed the first successful talking newsreels, was Hearst’s major competitor in that market. Like Adolph Zukor, he was a Hungarian Jew who had entered show business by buying a penny arcade which he later converted into a movie theater. Unlike Zukor, however, he made no pretense of gentility and was not considered a giant in the industry. His deal for Loew’s had come as a major shock to everyone in Hollywood, including Hearst. The only roadblock standing in the way of his merging his Fox Film Corporation with Loew’s to form the largest movie complex in the world was Mayer’s threat of an antitrust suit.

  While Hearst remained loyal to Mayer and Thalberg, and had, according to Variety, earlier tried to buy MGM to protect their positions in it, he had no choice but to come to some understanding with Fox, if only because he controlled the patents on the sound system that Hearst needed to convert his newsreels to sound. Aware that Fox was going to require his help to navigate through his antitrust problems in Washington, the Chief sent Ed Hatrick to negotiate with him. The negotiations were held in secret, as Hearst had pledged his support to Mayer and Thalberg in their fight to keep MGM out of Fox’s hands.

  “Had talk with Fox on newsreel situation,” Hatrick reported back in late June of 1929, “and he has an interesting proposition but it will take capital.... I would like to know if you expect to come east within the next three or four weeks as I believe it would be advisable for you to talk it over with Fox....He seems very gratified we stayed on the Metro lot and is anxious to further cement the relations.”

  Fox’s proposal, which Hearst accepted, was that the publisher buy “a substantial interest in the Fox Movietone Corporation.” Hearst and Fox would continue to make and market separate newsreels for MGM, with Fox sharing the Hearst organization’s news-gathering capacities and Hearst getting full use of Fox’s sound-recording patents. With enormous fanfare, the Hearst Metrotone News debuted in October of 1929. The first program was representative of the “news” that would be presented for the next twenty years. The addition of sound strengthened the newsreel’s capacity to influence public opinion and sway voters. The newsreel that talked—with an authoritative, one might say authoritarian, narrator’s voice framing the action—was a much more persuasive instrument than its silent predecessor had ever been.18

  Though the editorial opinions offered in his newsreels were more muted than those in his newspapers, they too ceaselessly promoted his politics and pet projects. In the first edition, there were moving pictures of the wedding of John Coolidge, the son of Hearst’s favorite president; of the British army evacuating the Rhineland, which the Chief had advocated for some time; of Charles Schwab, the head of Bethlehem Steel, advocating a “Big Navy” proposal which Hearst supported; and of Mussolini, Hearst’s Sunday columnist, reviewing the troops before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Rome. Of more immediate interest to viewers may have been the preview of the upcoming World Series between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Chicago Cubs.19

  To inaugurate his new venture, Hearst leased the Embassy Theater in New York City and converted it into an all-newsreel theater. “For the first time in history, the Newsreel is to have its own theater,” the Hearst papers proudly announced on October 28, 1929, the day before the stock market crash. “The vast volume of news pictures flowing into the laboratories of the Fox-Hearst Corporation demanded additional outlet. Spot news will be a daily addition to the regular program, which will be changed weekly or semi-weekly. Every important event in New York City will be shown on the screen within a few hours after it takes place. Similarly every big event in the world will be rushed to the Newsreel Theater with all possible speed.”20

  Hearst’s new contract with MGM only enhanced his stature in Hollywood. He was on excellent terms with every power broker in
town, including Harry and Jack Warner, whose contract offer he had spurned, Louis B. Mayer, who retained control of MGM after William Fox lost control of the company in the 1929 stock market crash, and Will Hays, the former postmaster general, whom the studio heads had hired in 1922 as head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. Though a large part of Hays’s responsibility was protecting the studios from scandal and cementing better ties with Washington, his contacts and access to political power paled beside those of Hearst.

  The Chief, never shy to use his influence on behalf of his friends, was called on regularly. In early 1929, he took up the movie colony’s crusade against the income tax by asking Arthur Brisbane to write an editorial about the unjust tax treatment for actors and actresses who “make a lot of money for a very brief period,” pay “enormous” taxes on it, and then are “fined for mistakes and assessed on back taxes and things of that kind until in many cases they are rendered practically destitute. Bill Hart paid 80 percent of his total possessions in back taxes. He is now off the screen and not making any money.... The situation is pretty bad, Artie, and a little vigor in the editorials might not be amiss.”21