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

Page 64

by Victoria Wilson


  “I felt so old,” Bob told Sheilah Graham of his visit back home. “Everyone I knew was married and had children. It was all very depressing.”

  It was clear to Bob how much his life had changed. At twenty-five, he was under contract to the most glamorous movie studio in Hollywood with a new seven-year, million-dollar contract guaranteeing him more than $3,500 a week, with increases up to $5,000 a week. He was on a quick getaway from a picture in which he was starring opposite Greta Garbo. He had a house in Beverly Hills, a duck-hunting camp in the Sierras that he owned with Clark Gable, Sam Wood, Eddie Mannix, and Jack Conway; two secretaries and a valet tended to his needs. He drove a Ford to work and a Packard for pleasure. He’d placed first in a nationwide poll of women ages sixteen to twenty of most desirable men; thirty-six thousand fans were writing to him each month. He was in love with one of the most extraordinary and popular actresses around, four years older than he and a great deal wiser, who’d been in Hollywood since the end of the silents and had made more than twenty-five pictures in seven years, and who was helping him with his acting, advising him about his career, teaching him so many things, and who admired his levelheadedness in the face of the tremendous fan worship he inspired.

  The Beatrice, Nebraska, paper had run a front-page editorial titled “Is Bob Taylor the Same Boy He Used to Be?”; the paper decided he was. Beatrice, Nebraska, was pretty much as Bob had left it, and though the lives of his boyhood friends had changed by marriage and the presence of children, what was happening to Taylor—a career he’d barely dreamed of—was carrying him along so fast he could just about maintain his bearings.

  SEVENTEEN

  Sea of Grass

  On the eve of the presidential election, on the last day in October 1936, Franklin Roosevelt spoke at a rally in Madison Square Garden and defended the Social Security Act from the attacks being made against it by the Republicans, saying that most Republicans had voted for the legislation. “Never before in history,” said the president, “have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”

  Roosevelt’s campaign manager, James Farley, predicted from preelection reports that the president would carry every state but Maine and Vermont. Farley’s assessment was correct. Roosevelt was reelected by the largest electoral margin of any candidate since James Monroe—523 electoral votes for FDR; 8 for Landon. Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut voted Democratic for the first time in eighty years, since James Buchanan’s victory in 1856. The president won the popular election by a margin of eleven million votes. He told the press, “I knew I should have gone to Maine and Vermont.”

  • • •

  When Camille finished shooting, Bob was given a few weeks of holiday. He decided to go to Honolulu by boat; Barbara planned to race him there. Douglas Fairbanks gave her his reservation on the China Clipper since he’d been forbidden by his physician to make the trip. Barbara said that even though Bob was traveling by boat, he’d have the advantage since he’d be sailing days before she took off.

  Barbara and Bob fought for the three days before he left; he went off to the Brown Derby to sulk, a heavy growth of beard on his face.

  In matters of being in love, Barbara steeled herself. She had “no expectations,” she said. To avoid hurt and disappointment, she believed women should have their own lives, “to build a wall of interests around their hearts that while love may find a chink in the wall it can’t completely capture the fort. Love only happens once in the sense that it tears the heart right out of you, knocks you down on your knees, makes a slave out of you, abject and crying ‘Surrender.’ Love may come again, more than once. It may be just as sweet and fine and strong. But never the same.”

  Bob sailed to Hawaii alone and arrived in Honolulu to throngs at the pier, there to see America’s most popular male star of the year. Bob was without studio protection; he disembarked and started to make his way through the crowd only to be pushed and jostled by adoring fans tearing at his hair and clothes. The police tried to get through the mob but couldn’t control it. Women fainted. Bob pleaded for breathing space. He tried to calm the crowd by promising to sign autographs and pose for pictures but couldn’t be heard over the noise and chaos.

  He spent the night in Hawaii and realized his holiday would be a repeat of the nightmare of his arrival. The following day he got back on the boat that had brought him to Hawaii and sailed for home.

  • • •

  Zeppo and Marion Marx owned real estate in Beverly Hills. Zeppo was planning on building a house on one of the lots; the architect’s plans for the Marx house had already been drawn. Barbara was thinking of buying some land as well. She was having dinner with the Marxes one night when Marion balked at the notion of a house in town. She’d always wanted to raise Thoroughbreds and be in the business of breeding racehorses. She felt now was the time. The Marxes also had property in the San Fernando Valley, above Encino, in Northridge.

  “It’s kind of silly to have all that property out there if we’re going to live in town,” said Zeppo.

  Marion was an expert horsewoman. She’d ridden horses as a child and had broken her back in a riding accident. Marion thought horses were the dumbest animals that ever lived but the most beautiful.

  “Don’t people lose their shirts, going in for racehorses?” asked Barbara. “Maybe we could go into the breeding end and have a sideline for ourselves if I bought some land next to yours out in the valley.”

  The idea of a breeding and stud operation seemed like a wonderful adventure to Marion. She and Barbara decided to investigate.

  Barbara talked to Joel McCrea about his ranch in Camarillo. He’d bought it in 1930, when he was twenty-five and had just finished making The Silver Horde. McCrea was unknown then, making $150 a week with $2,500 to his name. The Silver Horde hadn’t even been cut, and he’d been asked to play the juvenile lead in Lightnin’ with Will Rogers. Beyond that, McCrea’s future was uncertain.

  Will Rogers had advised McCrea to buy land. “They can always make more people,” said Rogers, “but they can’t make any more land . . . it can’t go anywhere but up.” McCrea was impressed with the advice. He wanted open land to ride across and found the perfect piece—more than nine hundred acres—which he was able to buy for $12,500 with a loan, without collateral, from Will Rogers’s banker. McCrea told everyone he owned a thousand acres; he thought it sounded more impressive.

  Zeppo consulted with Harry Hart, the accomplished trainer from the Swingalong Farms in Kentucky, and asked him what he thought of the valley property for horse breeding. Hart thought the area was perfect for it.

  Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley, called itself the Horse Capital of the West with dozens of working ranches. From 1919 to 1926 the entire swath of land between the block below Devonshire (called Lassen) and the block above it was owned by the B. F. Porter Estate. In 1919 the land was worth $63,000; by 1926, $129,500; a decade later, $160,000. William Mulholland had land nearby. It, and the entire valley, had grown rich and fertile from the water Mulholland had brought to the city of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley by way of his historic aqueduct system, which he designed and oversaw as first superintendent and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply. Mulholland’s aqueduct began at the Owens River in Mesa, California, and extended south more than two hundred miles to Los Angeles, ending at the northern tip of the San Fernando Valley, bringing water from the streams and lakes fed by the snows of the Eastern Sierras.

  Barbara was hesitant about moving thirty miles outside town, even though it was less than an hour’s drive from Hollywood Park. Zeppo felt the move would be good for Dion.

  Barbara had worked all her life. She didn’t know how to play
. To help get over the breakup of her marriage, she made five pictures in a row without a week off. The roles had become “an obsession” for her. She hadn’t thought of anything else, didn’t want to think of anything else. It was clear to her that if she didn’t buy the ranch and relax, her health would begin to crack. It already was.

  The purchase of the land and the idea of the ranch came out of the blue. “Just like that,” she said.

  Barbara decided she would live at the ranch most of the time. “It’s peaceful and quiet,” she said. She could have gardens, and she agreed with Zeppo that it would be wonderful for Dion. She allowed herself to have visions of her son, tall, bronzed, and strong, handling spirited horses, riding over her acres of California land.

  Barbara and the Marxes paid $200,000 for Marwyck Ranch. The land, roughly 130 acres—mostly weed patches and bean vines, set against the Sierra Madre—part of Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando, “the choicest lands of the San Fernando Valley,” bordered Lassen Street on the south, Devonshire on the north, Reseda on the east, and Tampa on the west.

  To get to 10127 Reseda Boulevard, Barbara had to drive through Tarzana, past the post office of Triunfo, and on through the citrus groves and alfalfa fields at the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains. Some of the roads were paved; some were just dirt. To ride on horseback to Van Nuys and back from Reseda Boulevard took most of a day.

  The plan for Marwyck was to build the stables and paddocks first. After that, the respective houses were to be built atop two hillcrests facing each other, overlooking the entire valley.

  Marwyck was to duplicate the finest horse-breeding facilities of Kentucky with a three-quarter-mile training track. Harry Hart was hired to design and oversee the operation; his wife, Bertie, was to be the operation’s secretary. Dick Arlen was hired to be the farrier. Arlen worked out of a streamlined trailer and did the shoeing on most of the horses in the valley.

  Fifty Thoroughbreds were brought up from Kentucky and were boarded in Pomona while the stables were under construction. Barbara and Marion got up at 4:30 in the morning to get to Pomona by 6:30 for the Marwyck horses’ workout. Barbara liked to stand on top of the stable roof and watch the horses be walked along the track, then saddled and raced. Afterward, she and Marion helped walk out the horses until they were cooled down. Sometimes Bob went along with them, as did Clark Gable, who also helped to walk out the horses.

  About acting and being a part owner in a horse farm, Barbara said, “I think back to those one-night stands, and ask myself, ‘How did I ever get out here with all this grass?’ About the only grass I ever got close to before was on the backdrop of a show.”

  • • •

  Thanksgiving was held on a hilltop in the fields of Marwyck overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Barbara and Bob and Zeppo and Marion invited the ranch’s manager and his wife, Harry and Bertie Hart, as well as Carole Lombard and Clark Gable.

  Carole Lombard and Clark Gable at their farm in Northridge, California, with Bon Pepper and colt, May 1938. (CORBIS)

  Gable always liked “the dishy dame,” said Joan Blondell, and Lombard, a former Mack Sennett beauty who repeatedly got it in the face with a pie, was beautiful, glamorous, feminine, and dishy in every way. Before Carole and Gable were a couple, Marion had had a brief affair with him. “He certainly has got a small one,” she said about the actor.

  Carole Lombard was one of the highest-paid actresses in the business without ever having had a top ten box-office hit. It was clear she was in love with Clark from the way she spoke about him and about his being married, which, she said, was going to be handled properly in every way.

  Marwyck had no ovens with which to cook a turkey, so Carole sent over a crew to build a barbecue pit in one of the fields. When Lombard focused on something, it happened. Carole had enormous energy; she played tennis too hard, chain-smoked, and drank Coca-Colas nonstop. For the holiday feast at Marwyck, steaks and potatoes were cooked and eaten, and the party dozed off in the afternoon sun. “First time I ever ate Thanksgiving dinner lying on my stomach,” said Barbara, “but it turns out to be the ideal way to cope with a barbecued steak.”

  Thanksgiving day, Marwyck, 1936. Left to right: Bertie Hart, wife of Harry, Marwyck’s manager; Bob, Barbara, Zeppo and Marion Marx, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard. (COURTESY TIM MARX)

  • • •

  Banjo on My Knee was released two weeks later; Camille was to have its premiere the following day. Cukor was reshooting the picture’s final love scene two days before the premiere, changing the death scene from one in which Garbo gives a long speech to one in which she hardly speaks.

  “The screen is just too realistic for a long aria when someone’s dying,” said Cukor. “It seemed unreal for a dying woman to talk so much.”

  When the final scene was shot and the director waved his satisfaction, Bob turned eagerly to Garbo, but she was already walking away. “I called to her but she took no notice,” said Bob. “As Armand I was a dead weight in front of the camera and Garbo figured that I could use some real-life stimulation. Once the picture was finished, so was I.”

  Despite the modest claims 20th Century–Fox made for Banjo on My Knee, the critics discovered the charm of the picture and called it “great entertainment,” “outstanding . . . hilarious . . . eloquent . . . it will spellbind average folk and delight cultivated audiences,” said Daily Variety.

  As Barbara and McCrea predicted, Walter Brennan was called the “hit of the picture,” in “one of the best pieces of acting seen on the screen in some time.” Daily Variety said Brennan’s work was “a standout in a distinguished, hilarious delivery”; the picture “makes him a top ranker among character comedians.”

  Louella Parsons said Barbara Stanwyck was “as full of surprises as a Christmas pudding. She sings—she dances—and how she acts . . . with all the glamour of a musical comedy queen plus genuine talent as an actress.” A “sterling artist at the top of her screen career,” said The Hollywood Reporter, whose “performance is more fluent than any she has ever enacted.”

  Moviegoers and newspapers throughout the country—and the world—were mesmerized by the unexpected twist of another love story: that of Edward VIII and Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson. As the Prince of Wales, he was seen as progressive and open to new ideas. As the king of England, he was called a modernist. “All I try to do is to move with the times,” he said.

  The uncrowned king of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the other British Dominions and emperor of India had asked to be legally married to Mrs. Simpson, then awaiting her formal decree of divorce from her second husband.

  Emergency sessions were called with the prime minister and the cabinet. A request was put forth before the Commonwealth’s prime ministers that the king be allowed to marry Mrs. Simpson morganatically (“I’ll try anything in the spot I’m in now,” said Edward VIII). All except for Eamon de Valera denied the request. “This is a nice kettle of fish, isn’t it?” said Queen Mary, who had always put country first and was made miserable when she learned of her son’s intended marriage and abdication. During the eight days of the crisis, the king slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow; his desperation and outbursts prompted those around him to question his sanity.

  His letter of formal abdication, heard over the radio—“Further delay cannot but be injurious to the people whom I have tried to serve”—ended his 325-day reign as king of England. When it was over, the former king stood up and said to his aide, “Walter, it is a far better thing I go to.”

  The front-page headlines of the Los Angeles Times told the story as it unfolded: “King’s Plan to Abdicate Rumored About London”; “Mrs. Simpson and Queen Dine”; “King May Abdicate Today and Flee with Mrs. Simpson”; “Wide Choice of Titles Open in Abdication.”

  • • •

  Bob and Barbara flew to Palm Springs for the world premiere of Camille at the new Plaza Theatre. The theater held eight hundred seats and was sold out for the occasion.

  Cukor was “staggered by
[Garbo’s] lightness of touch—the wantonness, the perversity of the way she played Marguerite. Garbo had this rapport with an audience,” said Cukor. “She could let them know she was thinking things and thinking them uncensored . . . She was rather cool, but seething underneath. You know that she’s reckless and nothing will stop her.”

  (KOBAL COLLECTION)

  Bette Davis said of Garbo’s performance, “Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, [is] pure witchcraft. I cannot analyze this woman’s acting. I only know that no one else so effectively work[s] in front of a camera.”

  Cukor thought that Bob “rose to Garbo in those scenes when he denounced her, threw things at her.”

  Norma Shearer had said of George Cukor, “He could be wonderful for you or he could be the kiss of death.” Cukor understood how to help Bob and thought that as Armand, Bob was able to convey the right sort of innocence and naïveté.

  The critics were awed by Garbo’s work (“the most interesting [Marguerite] from Bernhardt and Duse to Jane Cowl and Eva Le Gallienne”; “Miss Garbo has never done anything better”; “in the finest tradition: eloquent, tragic and restrained”) and they were equally taken aback by Bob (“His Armand will surprise you . . . the best thing he has done . . . possessing surprising authority and charm for one of little experience”; “[he] plays with surprising assurance and ease . . . [and] holds up his end of the story with distinction”).

  Billboards proclaimed, “Garbo loves Taylor.” Garbo’s response: “Why don’t they say ‘Taylor Loves Garbo.’ ”

  • • •

  Sam Goldwyn had plans to remake his 1925 sensation from an Olive Higgins Prouty novel. The producer was in an all-out search, testing actresses, mostly unknown, for the perfect strange creature who would be his next Stella Dallas. Barbara wanted the part of the seemingly vain, careless mother who selflessly loves her devoted, loyal daughter.

 

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