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A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940

Page 15

by Victoria Wilson


  Fay was so devout in his own ways he was known as a professional Catholic, and Barbara had tried to please him by wearing the cross to show her conversion to Catholicism.

  • • •

  Barbara found out that her brother had contracted tuberculosis from proximity to his wife and wanted to do what she could, but Byron refused to take money from his sister. The sanitarium in the Bronx was large and impersonal. By and Elizabeth traveled cross-country to a sanitarium in a small town in northwestern Arizona in the Hualapai valley, between the Cerbat and the Hualapai mountain ranges near Kingman. The small city of Kingman, Arizona, had been put on the map the year before when Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart stopped over on the first forty-eight-hour airmail service run between New York and Los Angeles and dedicated Port Kingman airport.

  The dry air and altitude of Kingman, at more than three thousand feet, were conducive to a full recovery from tuberculosis. The small town, west of Flagstaff, south of Las Vegas, Nevada, reinforced the isolation of those suffering from tuberculosis. After a stay there, Byron was almost recovered, and he was sure Elizabeth was getting better. Once she was strong enough to travel, By planned to take her to the Grand Canyon, something she’d always wanted to see. But Elizabeth’s doctor told him that she was not going to get well; she was dying.

  • • •

  Just after Christmas, Barbara was approached by a Mr. Ginsberg, who wanted to know if she had a recent film test he might see and if she would be available for motion picture work in Hollywood. Mr. Ginsberg was making the inquiry on behalf of Al Lichtman, a vice president in New York of United Artists. Lichtman was following the directive of Samuel Goldwyn, whose pictures were distributed by United Artists and who had become interested in Barbara after hearing about her from Johnny Considine, a young producer at Metro who’d worked with Valentino on two pictures. Goldwyn had sent a wire to Lichtman giving him instructions about getting the test and finding out about Barbara’s availability.

  Barbara responded to Goldwyn’s interest by letting it be known that she would not work without her husband.

  Despite Barbara’s feelings about working in Hollywood, word was around that she was to be in a picture for Fox Studios called Mr. Broadway, opposite the writer and performer Joe Frisco of Ziegfeld’s Follies and currently Earl Carroll’s Vanities. Barbara’s name was mentioned in the same column with those of William Powell, “of the movies,” who was in New York for two weeks, and Robert Benchley, Donald Ogden Stewart, and Jock Whitney, who were in New York “taking in the fast places for laughs.”

  Elizabeth Stevens died of consumption. Byron was heartbroken and arranged to have his wife brought back from Arizona to Brooklyn to be buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, next to his mother, Catherine Stevens.

  Barbara wanted Byron back in her world. She felt that he had married up. He had traveled in a world in which she didn’t feel comfortable, and now that there was no one to stand between them, she wanted her brother to be with her. By loved his sister and was protective of her, but he wanted a life separate from hers.

  Barbara and By looked alike; their features were so similar that they were often called “the twins.” Unlike Barbara, By was at ease with himself and fit in many worlds. Barbara longed to be as free as he with people. Byron Stevens was seen as a gentleman who spoke impeccably, whose charming manner was rarely marred by anger, and whose sincerity was reflected in the direct gaze of his blue eyes. Barbara admired those qualities in her brother, almost envied him. She was wiry and shy and tense and only too aware of how quick to anger she could be.

  ELEVEN

  Invitation West

  Fay opened at Keith’s Palace in the beginning of February 1929. He came on with two male pianists and “broke up” his songs. “Let’s build a stairway to the stars,” Fay sang. The music stopped while he spoke to the audience: “Let’s build a stairway to the stars. This is of course the craziest, and the guy that’s singing it is the worst. Oh, when you stop to think, well, he has a girl no doubt. And probably the poor thing has a brand-new dress on, and she figures that later on maybe he’ll take her out to eat, drink, and be merry. But he says: ‘No, my dear. Let’s climb this stairway to the stars.’ Naturally, she gets, well, tired pretty quick and you know building and climbing. But he says, ‘Keep going, honey. Keep going, baby, we got to get to those stars.’ So the poor kid changes her gown for pants and he throws her a shovel and she throws him a kiss and bang they’re in business.”

  Fay’s speaking voice onstage was low and smooth and easy; its richness combined with a fullness and clarity that registered somewhere deep within his audiences. Fay’s voice was capable of the most subtle variations and control. He used its softness to caress and seduce, a warmth overtaking his listeners. He used its harshness and street gruffness to punctuate his stories and to catch his listeners up short.

  The first week that Frank and Barbara were at the Palace, Fay came on late in the mostly all-male bill and was onstage for thirty minutes or so (“and could have made it a weekend,” said Variety) before introducing his wife.

  Barbara had a choice, she said, “of merely walking to the footlights and uttering a silly, meaningless speech or of cooperating with my husband in an act that offered real entertainment.”

  She and Fay bantered back and forth with Fay getting most of the laughs. Barbara said, “[Fay] is essentially a comedian. I am not. Therefore, to provide entertainment, I played ‘straight man’ and he supplied the laughs. Audiences appeared to enjoy the act.”

  During their second week at the Palace, as part of Frank’s act, he and Barbara appeared on the bill in Vincent Lawrence’s short play, The Conflict, in which Ruth Chatterton had regularly starred in variety shows. Barbara’s clothes reflected the colors Fay preferred for her: early in the show, she wore a pair of black-and-white satin and velvet pajamas and then, as Fay’s “straight man,” a white crepe dress with pleated trimming and gold buttons.

  The New York Times called the “playlet” “of chief interest” on the bill and referred to Barbara as “the beauteous Miss Stanwyck.” The reviewer described Fay’s “easy style of performing” and commented that it “carried him over one or two rough places,” and went on to single out the “quality of tenderness, of femininity,” that Barbara’s acting “so definitely transmits.”

  • • •

  Burlesque was about to be made into a movie. Paramount Famous Lasky offered the role of Skid Johnson to Hal Skelly and the role of Bonny Lee to Barbara. She refused to leave Fay behind in New York.

  “Frank comes first with me and always will,” she said. Nancy Carroll, the niece of Barbara’s champion Billy LaHiff, was hired for the role of Bonny Lee.

  Barbara was in her dressing room one night when one of the actors who worked with her in a skit knocked on the door and introduced her to an old friend of his.

  Barbara looked at the friend and said, “You don’t remember me.” The gentleman couldn’t say that he did. She twisted one side of her hair into a pigtail.

  “Remember Millie Stevens?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Well, Uncle Buck, I’m Millie’s kid sister, Ruby.”

  Barbara hadn’t seen Buck Mack since the days when Millie was in Glorianna and Ruby was eleven. Buck had drifted away and become part of a dance team with Skins Miller. He’d lost track of Millie Stevens and Ruby as Miller and Mack “rattled all over the country” performing in vaudeville shows and then performed in Europe.

  The day after Buck saw Barbara in her dressing room, she invited him and Skins Miller to join up with them. “Things look good for your routine—how about it?” she said over the phone. Buck had always been kind to Barbara.

  Mack was thrilled at the chance to work at the Palace and with Millie Stevens’s little sister, who was now “a smart looking, young lady with plenty of style.”

  Barbara and Frank’s run at the Palace was followed by a new floor show at the Club Richman featuring the Fays. The Richman was on
e of the most exclusive—and expensive—clubs in the country. Harry Richman, the nightclub king, had the room designed to look like a patio with fake windows that opened out onto painted scenery. The club’s ceiling was painted to give the impression of a sky with stars that lit up when the sun—a spotlight—was on the performers.

  Oilmen and Texas cattlemen showed up at the Club Richman, as did Vanderbilts, Whitneys, and Morgans. Performers like Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson went as well. As did gangsters, Al Capone among them, and financiers, “Sailing” Baruch, and great ladies of the American stage like Ethel Barrymore. Damon Runyon met his future wife there; Willie K. Vanderbilt, one of the Warburton girls. And Marion Davies made drinks for “the Chief” (William Randolph Hearst) from every variety of liquor that she had Richman stash for her in the ladies’ room.

  The Fays’ show opened February 20 to large audiences. The Club Richman, when packed, seated 240, and it was packed every night with people wanting to see Frank Fay and his wife.

  Fay’s humor was broad, original, funny. Bob Hope thought Fay was “the most economical comedian” he had ever seen. “Fay could get more out of an attitude than anybody.” Hope marveled at his “complete audience control.”

  Hope saw Fay one time alone on a “darkened stage with the spotlight on him. For the longest time Fay just stood there. He said absolutely nothing, and he did absolutely nothing. Then he said, ‘I think I’ll go play the piano.’ He walked slowly across the stage to the other side. As he got there, the spot, which had followed him, showed a piano with a stool and a fellow sitting on it. Frank just looked at it and then, just as slowly, walked back to exactly where he had been standing. ‘There’s somebody there.’ That was the whole thing,” said Hope, “but it was one of the funniest acts I ever saw.”

  Fay thought it was unnecessary to struggle to be funny. “All anyone has to do is stand in the subway station and watch people.” Onstage, Fay talked about things people did that were recognizable. He would talk about his uncle, the string saver who was working his way up to rope, or his aunt Agatha, a paper bag putter-awayer.

  “Everyone knows string savers, and paper bag puttersaway,” Fay would remark. “That’s why those people are funny to the rest of us. Talk about those people and everyone laughs. Take the mustache fixer. You have seen him twist his mustache for half an hour or so and at the end of that time, it looks worse than ever. But because you have seen mustache fixers, you laugh when I talk about it. That’s all there is to being funny.”

  People noticed that Fay was different onstage now, and much of the change was attributed to his marriage to Barbara. One critic noted that he had “changed muchly from the old days; for the betterment of his impression. And the draw of the Fay-Stanwyck combination cannot be gainsaid.” Fay did a dramatic skit in the act with Barbara, who also sang and danced.

  Variety’s critic called Barbara’s “dramatic moment with her husband, superb,” and said, “Miss Stanwyck so splendidly faded it in and out that the merit of the bit could not be overlooked.” Barbara was described by the critic as “very nifty, in looks, figure, dress and work.” It was noted how much the audience liked her, and the critic advised Fay to “divide the entire routine with his wife on the floor.”

  Barbara and Fay were held over an additional three weeks at the Club Richman. Fay was billed as the International Laugh Provoker; in addition to Barbara, the show featured Joey Ray and Adia Kuznetzoff.

  The Fays’ run followed that of Libby Holman and Irene Bordoni. Ruth Etting was to appear at the club following the Fays at a salary of $1,000 a week. Barbara and Frank’s new manager, Lou Irwin, arranged for them to receive a weekly minimum of three and a half times Etting’s salary; in order for the club to break even, it had to bring in $9,000 worth of business each week. The Richman was paying Fay $3,500 a week; Barbara, $2,500. Frank was also appearing at the Fox Academy and Audubon being paid $2,500 per week. His radio commercials for The Palmolive Hour paid $1,000 a commercial. Fay and Barbara were earning $9,500 a week.

  Fay had written a new act with Nick Copeland and Buck Mack and was trying it out in a theater in New Jersey. The plan was to spend a month perfecting it and then bring it into New York in mid-April.

  • • •

  In March, Joseph Schenck, the head of United Artists, went to see Barbara and Fay at the Club Richman. After the show, he went back to talk with the Fays to suggest they consider going to the West Coast to work in talking pictures as Schenck had twelve years before, when he left New York to produce pictures in Hollywood. The new technology was coming into its own, even though, of the twenty thousand movie theaters in the United States, only slightly more than six thousand were equipped to show pictures with sound.

  Schenck, before becoming president of United Artists, had been a successful independent producer in New York, making pictures for his wife, Norma Talmadge, and her sister Constance in an old warehouse on East Forty-Eighth Street. Schenck, Russian-born, had grown up in a New York ghetto in the 1890s. He’d earned his first dimes with his good friend Irving Berlin as an unsuspecting delivery boy for a shady neighborhood drugstore, dropping off packages containing dope and rising to become a messenger for the underworld. He and his younger brother, Nicholas, built up a small chain of New York drugstores and then developed an amusement park across the river from New York City in New Jersey. Within a few years Palisades Amusement Park had made both men rich.

  The Schenck brothers became partners with Marcus Loew in Consolidated Enterprises, whose movie house and theater chain had been built from nickelodeons. Joe Schenck booked Loew’s films, met the three Talmadge sisters, decided to leave the Loew company to promote Norma’s career, married his star, and went to work making pictures. In 1917, Schenck left for California with his wife; his sister-in-law; his screenwriter, Anita Loos; and his director, Loos’s husband, John Emerson. Schenck’s pictures that starred his wife were released through First National Exhibitors Circuit. He produced pictures as well for D. W. Griffith, Fatty Arbuckle, and his brother-in-law Buster Keaton, husband of Natalie, the third Talmadge sister.

  Schenck had seen Barbara in The Noose and Burlesque and was interested in offering her a contract to star in a remake of a picture he’d originally produced in 1921 for Norma. A few years later in 1924, Schenck became a partner with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith in the cooperative company United Artists. As chairman of the board, Schenck set about reorganizing it, creating a finance company, and creating Feature Productions Inc., whose films were to be released through United Artists.

  Schenck understood from Samuel Goldwyn, whose films United Artists distributed, that Barbara would not go to Hollywood without Fay.

  (The other Schenck brother, Nicholas, stayed with Loew, who was still buying up theaters. Soon Loew’s profits were large enough to enable him to buy an independent producing and distributing company called Metro; his intent: to make the pictures himself that were exhibited at his theaters and improve their quality. Loew then bought Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and soon after an independent producing unit run by Louis B. Mayer. In 1924 the companies were merged; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios became a subsidiary of Loew’s Inc.

  When Marcus Loew died in the summer of 1927, leaving an estate of $10 million, Nicholas Schenck became the president of Loew’s Inc.

  Barbara wasn’t interested in going to Hollywood to make pictures with or without Fay; it all seemed crazy to her. She knew the stage and New York, and she was up for the lead in a play inspired by the life of the convicted murderer Ruth Snyder, called Machinal, that Arthur Hopkins was producing and directing.

  But Fay was intrigued by Hollywood. Talking pictures interested him; he wanted to try them out, and was eager for Barbara to go to Hollywood with him. Even though she didn’t want to leave New York, Fay had consented to go west, and she was going with him. Barbara agreed to make one picture for Schenck, a remake of his film based on Channing Pollock’s successful play, The Sign on the Door, which
had been produced on Broadway nine years earlier.

  During the Fays’ extended run at the Club Richman, Barbara was asked to approach the table of one of the guests.

  “My name is Irving Thalberg,” a young man said. “I am from Hollywood. Your work interests me and I wonder if you have ever thought of doing something in pictures.”

  Barbara cut him short. “Thank you, Mr. Walberg. My husband, Frank Fay, and I have just signed contracts to make pictures for Joseph Schenck and Warner Bros.”

  “Ah, when you come to Hollywood, drop in to see me.”

  Barbara nodded and walked away.

  • • •

  The Fays packed their trunks and boarded the 20th Century for an overnight journey that took them from Grand Central Station to Dearborn Station, Chicago. There the Chief left for Los Angeles in the twilight of the afternoon.

  On the train, Barbara recognized the man from the Club Richman who had called her over to his table and asked her if she had any interest in going to Hollywood.

  For the next two days and three nights, the Chief (“Extra Fast—Extra Fine—Extra Fare”) crossed the prairies, the Rocky Mountains, and the Mojave Desert, making its way through the mountain ranges of San Gabriel and San Bernardino, passing groves of oranges, and finally steaming into Pasadena. Amid the luxury of the transcontinental train, Fay and Barbara were surrounded by polished mahogany, mirrors, brass, and crystal. The Chief was carrying them from the East, away from the solid, familial life Barbara had worked so hard to make on the stage, to a place she didn’t know and didn’t care to be, farther west than she’d ever traveled before.

 

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