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

by Victoria Wilson

  “Bob has taken some of the burden off my shoulders,” said Gable.

  Bob was in awe of Gable, who in turn was “mighty proud” of Bob. “He has come along like no other actor in the business,” said Gable, who saw himself as a “home grown, garden variety, actor.” Gable came out of the back hills of Ohio, as “green as they come,” and went to Akron, where he trained in theatrical stock companies. “There’s no other place where an actor can get such valuable training,” said Gable. He saw Bob’s training, from college and the dramatic society to studio dramatic class, as “valuable.” Taylor said of Gable, “Clark is so big that all I can do is look up to him. Gable is in a class by himself,” said Bob. “He isn’t like any other actor.”

  • • •

  After the skirmish at the Stella Dallas preview, Barbara realized it was part of her job to dress more dramatically for public appearances and talked with Edith Head—they’d first worked together on Internes Can’t Take Money, got along instantly, and become friends—about designing a wardrobe for her. Barbara felt her clothes were neat and of good material. Edith thought they were “too stern; too grim,” she said. “Your clothes can be simple and tailored, but they can be feminine too.”

  Edith set about designing suits for Barbara without their having a suggestion of menswear. She designed dresses for evening that were dramatic and daring, and Barbara was delighted to wear them. Head kept in mind for whom she was designing: her clothes for Barbara were neat, tidy, and plain.

  She finished Breakfast for Two on a Monday in mid-August. Two days later Bob’s new picture, Broadway Melody of 1938, opened at Grauman’s Chinese and Loew’s State. In Melody, directed by Roy Del Ruth, Bob plays a producer/composer of popular songs down on his luck trying to put on a new Broadway show. The specialty numbers are performed by Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Sophie Tucker, Buddy Ebsen, and thirteen-year-old Judy Garland, who steals the picture with “Everybody Sing” and her fan letter “Dear Mr. Gable.” The critics felt the twenty-six-year-old Robert Taylor was lost against the fast-moving musical talent. Bob was not surprised. Eleanor Powell, at twenty-four, was a big star at Metro and was taken with Bob. She’d worked with him in Broadway Melody of 1936 and thought him very handsome. At the time, Eleanor had just come to Hollywood and was overwhelmed by it all. Now, two years later, she felt Bob was interested in her, and she wrote to her mother that there might be a romance. Ellie Powell was naive and a virgin. Her whole reason for being was to dance.

  The cast of Broadway Melody of 1938 appearing on Hollywood Hotel, July 16, 1937. Left to right: Billy Gilbert, George Murphy, Judy Garland, Charles Igor Gorin, Sophie Tucker, Eleanor Powell, Bob, Vilma and Buddy Ebsen, and (between them) Frances Langford.

  A Yank at Oxford was one of the few pictures Bob balked at having to make. He left for New York and arrived there four days later—flying first to Oklahoma City and then to Kansas City, where crowds of fans swarmed the airport. After two days in New York, Bob boarded the Berengaria bound for Southampton. Hundreds of women charged through the police lines in a mass frenzy. The liner’s officers and staff and the police were needed to clear the ship’s deck.

  New York reporters kidded Bob and asked him if he thought he was “a beautiful boy,” if he had hair on his chest, and if it was real.

  The question came from a newspaper story about Ernest Hemingway that had run the previous week. Hemingway had been in New York to sail to war-torn Spain. He’d dropped in unannounced on his publisher, Charles Scribner’s Sons, to see his editor, Maxwell Perkins, and ended up in a fight with another Scribner’s writer, Max Eastman, who was there discussing a new edition of his book Enjoyment of Poetry with Perkins, also his editor.

  The trouble started with a four-year grudge over a review Eastman had written of Hemingway’s book on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon. Eastman’s review, titled “Bull in the Afternoon,” which ran in June 1933 in The New Republic, took Hemingway to task for the “unconscionable quantity of bull,” wrote Eastman, that Hemingway “poured and plastered all over what he writes about bullfights. By bull,” Eastman wrote, “I mean juvenile romantic gushing and sentimentalizing of simple facts. A bull fight . . . is men tormenting and killing a bull.” Eastman went on to say that Hemingway’s “red-blooded masculinity [is] made obvious in the swing of the big shoulders and the clothes he puts on . . . and in the stride of his prose style . . . Our full-sized man,” wrote Eastman, “lacks the serene confidence that he is a full-sized man.”

  Eastman wrote about how “this trait of character has been strong enough to form the nucleus of a new flavor of English literature, and it has moreover begotten a veritable school of fiction writers—a literary style of wearing false hair on the chest.”

  Hemingway wrote to The New Republic challenging the magazine to “have Mr. Max Eastman elaborate his nostalgic speculations on my sexual incapacity.” Eastman apologized in what Hemingway called a “kissass letter.”

  Four years later, in the sweltering heat of a mid-August day, when Hemingway walked into Charles Scribner’s Sons and found Perkins in a meeting with Eastman, Hemingway was friendly enough, shook Eastman’s hand, and ripped open his shirt to show Eastman the plentiful real hair on his chest. Then he opened Eastman’s shirt; his chest was smooth and hairless. It was all in fun until Hemingway said, “What do you mean by accusing me of impotence?” Eastman denied that he’d written that in the review. Scribner’s had published Eastman’s essays and a copy of the collection happened to be on Perkins’s desk. Eastman showed the piece to Hemingway to prove his denial.

  Hemingway started to read the review and became enraged all over again. He took the open book and hit Eastman with it. Eastman lunged at Hemingway. Perkins got up to stop Hemingway from hurting Eastman. Books and papers spilled onto the floor. Perkins shouted at Hemingway to stop and grabbed him to pull him off Eastman, but to Perkins’s surprise it wasn’t Hemingway who was hurting Eastman. Perkins was pulling Eastman off Hemingway.

  The press got wind of the story—through Eastman, who read aloud his account of what had happened at a dinner party attended by a number of newspaper people. The story made the evening papers. The next day, Hemingway was sailing for Spain and was questioned by reporters about the fight. He described it as ending with his bashing Eastman with a lightweight book and went on to warn, “When I come back I’ll take his pants down and spank him.”

  A week later Bob Taylor, in New York and sailing for England, got the tail end of the chest hair joke. Bob was unaware of the Hemingway-Eastman fracas and was angry about the question. The press went on to ask him if he would rather have beauty or brains.

  Bob, to show how manly and rugged he was, told reporters that he didn’t read because he didn’t like to be indoors and that he hoped one day to retire from pictures to his new ranch and raise cattle. Taylor talked about getting a ranch in Northern California or Wyoming. “I like the seasons,” he said. “You know—winter, spring, fall—the sort of thing you don’t get [in Los Angeles].”

  “Aren’t you interested in anything but Barbara Stanwyck, your job and your ranch?” he was asked.

  Bob smiled and said, “That’s enough for anyone.”

  • • •

  Two days out at sea aboard the Berengaria, Bob shouted into the radio telephone to Barbara, “Do you love me?”

  “Yes, I love you,” she shouted back. She had rushed home from the Ray Millands’ to get Bob’s call.

  “Dear, I’m counting the moments until I can get back to you—and my new ranch home.”

  “I’ll watch out for your new home until you get back.”

  Barbara was planning on leaving town as soon as she could. She finished work on Breakfast for Two, and Stella Dallas opened in Los Angeles the following Monday. That Wednesday she and Holly Barnes flew to Sun Valley for a long weekend.

  Stella Dallas had the biggest opening on record, beating A Star Is Born. The picture was held over for a second week. Howard Barnes saw both pictures in terms of a
“society at a critical point in a period transition where what was needed was fundamental aspects of human relationships.”

  A Star Is Born worked not because of the inside view of Hollywood but because of its sentiment, and, wrote Barnes, “Stella Dallas is the very apogee of screen sentiment.”

  EIGHT

  Rearing Up

  1937

  For Robert Taylor I whistle and stamp:

  That’s why the lady is a tramp!

  —Lorenz Hart, “The Lady Is a Tramp”

  Three days after Bob sailed for England with the director Jack Conway and his co-stars in A Yank at Oxford, Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O’Sullivan, Barbara and Holly Barnes, resting in Sun Valley, Idaho, decided to travel to the Pacific Northwest and make their way east. Barbara needed a break from the endless speculation about whether she and Bob were getting married.

  A week before they were to leave for Canada, Barbara went to a preview of Selznick International’s fourth picture, The Prisoner of Zenda.

  She was leaning out of her car, after the picture, signing autographs, when the door shut and caught two of her fingers. She postponed her holiday for a few days to make sure no infection set in, and then she and Holly left for the Château Frontenac in Quebec and went into seclusion. A few days later, they furtively left for Montreal. Barbara was besieged by the press about whether or not she was sailing to England to marry Bob (she wasn’t). She and Holly left Montreal sooner than planned and went to New York to see her sister and brother-in-law Maud and Bert Merkent.

  • • •

  Bob arrived in Southampton to hundreds of women waiting for him thanks to MGM’s publicity department. He boarded the boat train from Southampton and arrived at Waterloo to be greeted by cheers of three thousand women.

  The stationmaster came solemnly toward Bob in frock coat and striped trousers. “I thought he must be at least the Duke of Westminster,” said Bob.

  Extra police were called to control the crowd. Bob left the platform flanked by six policemen, three in front of him and three behind.

  As the station manager maneuvered Bob, the crowd massed behind the barrier and pushed him into a milk lift, and said, “Sorry if it’s a bit stuffy here, and hope you don’t mind,” said the station manager. “Mind?” said Bob. “I’m only too thankful to be delivered with the milk.” He was then driven to the hotel with crowds of women still at the station cheering each car that left.

  At Claridge’s, he was met by crowds in the street in front of the hotel going wild. To appease the mob that was blocking traffic, he had to appear at the balcony like royalty. He had missed the fanfare of the coronation of George VI by three months, but the attention aimed at him was too much. The crowd below his window was still hollering for him late into the night. After being cooped up in the hotel for hours, Bob was desperate to get out for some fresh air.

  At midnight, he and Howard Strickling, MGM’s publicity chief, who’d come over ahead of Bob, sneaked down Claridge’s back stairs and got into a cab. A man on a bicycle was trailing them. They tried unsuccessfully to shake him off in Hyde Park, and finally the cab pulled over. The pursuer leaped off his bike and pulled out a pencil and paper. He was a journalist who asked a few questions and politely went on his way. Bob walked around the park for an hour or so and then returned to the hotel.

  • • •

  Alexander Korda’s discovery Vivien Leigh, of Fire over England, Dark Journey, and Storm in a Teacup, was to play the English girl opposite Bob. Vivien Leigh, at twenty-three, had enough fire, darkness, and turbulence to have made her mark along with Korda’s other discovery, Merle Oberon.

  Metro rented a twelve-bedroom fifteenth-century house for Bob at High Wycombe near Denham, along with a Rolls-Bentley. Bob was in training—sprinting and running a quarter mile and learning to scull on the Thames with a rowing club.

  L. B. Mayer arrived in London soon after to officially inaugurate Metro’s plans to make pictures in England with a luncheon at the Savoy hotel that included Bob, Maureen O’Sullivan, Sir Hugh Walpole, Lord Sempill, Lord Lee of Fareham, Alexander Korda, and Ivor Novello.

  A Yank at Oxford didn’t begin filming until late September, when Mayer returned from Paris, where he was elected an officer of the Legion of Honor for his work in pictures.

  Bob in the Thames while shooting A Yank at Oxford, fall 1937.

  • • •

  Barbara wasn’t about to get married again. She knew what could happen. She saw what was happening with Joan Crawford’s marriage to Franchot Tone, how they’d been married for two years, and though Joan had been changed by Franchot (Joan had hoped their marriage would be like that of the Lunts, joined onstage and off—longtime, loving friends and actors), she was already wearying of him and their endless arguments, in which Tone occasionally, in a drunken rage, beat her, and she would go to work wearing dark glasses to hide the bruises on her face.

  Joan and Franchot had finished making The Bride Wore Red, and Joan was working on a picture with Spencer Tracy. Barbara knew that Joan was mixed up with Tracy. Barbara had tremendous admiration for Spencer Tracy as an actor; he could do no wrong. She admired the way he subordinated the technical perfection of his tricks to naturalness. What Joan was doing with her marriage infuriated Barbara. It was only a flurry with Tracy, but Joan would come home after being with him and call people at two or three in the morning asking if Franchot was there. “Well, I don’t know where he is. He’s out . . . and I can’t find him. And I’m desperate.”

  Franchot was out drinking and, said Barbara, “wearing his heart on his sleeve and staying in some lousy bar” because he’d found out “about Joan and Tracy.” Barbara knew what a superb actress Joan was, on-screen and off. “She would look you in the eye,” said Barbara, “and make you absolutely believe whatever she was saying,” but “not me, she won’t.”

  • • •

  Barbara hadn’t been to New York in two years, since her days with Fay on the circuit for Tattle Tales. Now, back in the city, she went to some of the second-rate nightclubs she’d spent so much time in before her success in The Noose and Burlesque.

  She saw Rodgers and Hart’s new show, Babes in Arms, at the Shubert. During the performance, she noticed the violinist conducting the orchestra. She stared at the back of his neck and looked at the program to see his name. It was Gene Salzer, her sister Millie’s fiancé from when they’d worked together years before—Salzer conducting the orchestra and Millie performing onstage. Barbara’s earliest awareness of the theater began with Gene and Millie.

  On weekends Millie and Gene had brought Barbara from Brooklyn to the city, where they’d let her stand in the wings of the theater and watch the performances. “Everyone looked so happy out there,” said Barbara, “dancing and singing for the audience. When the applause broke out it thrilled me. The music and lights . . .” Barbara was seven, but she “remembered every second of it.”

  Millie’s memory was sacred to Barbara. Millie was the most beautiful woman Barbara had ever seen, “with all of the real talent, the beauty, and the emotion an actress should have,” she said. “She was very good to me,” said Barbara. “Millie and Gene bought me clothes and little luxuries I had never known existed. Whatever unhappiness I may have suffered, it was all made up to me when they called for me and took me back to the city.”

  Barbara hadn’t seen Gene in more than twenty years. He was graying now; she was thirty. Barbara had wanted for so long to find him to thank him for everything he’d done for her.

  During the show she tried to catch Gene’s eye; when he saw her and recognized her, he went white. Barbara began to cry. The curtain came down on the first act. Barbara walked to the orchestra pit. She put her arms around Gene and wept on his shoulder. He promised to go to Barbara’s hotel. “There was so much to say; so many years to cover.”

  Barbara remembered how when she was little, after the theater, Gene would take her to get something to eat. He always ordered cream puffs and coffee. Barbara had Hol
ly call bakers and restaurants at that late hour in search of the long-remembered cream puffs.

  Barbara’s English-style manor house, Marwyck, designed by Paul Williams, with French Normandy and Tudor Revival details. The 6,500-square-foot house had eight bedrooms, four fireplaces, a three-car garage, and eventually a swimming pool (out of camera range, right) and tennis court. (CULVER PICTURES)

  Gene and Barbara talked through the night, he telling her things about Millie she hadn’t known and about her own early childhood she’d forgotten.

  Their evening together “was one of those things that happen once in a lifetime,” said Barbara, “filled with heartbreaking memories and the joy of having found the one connecting link” between her sister and their past.

  • • •

  Barbara and Holly sailed home on the Virginia by way of the Panama Canal. Seven days later, in Los Angeles, Barbara received an urgent letter from Frank Fay that she refused. She knew it was about Dion. Fay had been trying to see the boy, and Barbara wouldn’t allow it.

  Barbara, Dion, Uncle Buck, and Nellie had moved from Los Angeles to Northridge, a town made up of a post office and a laundry. At Marwyck, Barbara had a new house, the first she’d owned by herself. Long and rambling but “a small house at that,” she said. “We don’t need a lot of room.”

  The Paul Williams design was an ornate manor house of brownish-gray stone with tones of yellow and with high English gables. The porch with its flagstone floor was as long as the house, with comfortable chairs in rust color and driftwood. The living room was in chintzes of brown, yellow, and green against a canary-yellow carpet and gamboge tapestries. The fireplace was a brown marble. Bob had put in a tennis court in April as an early birthday present to Barbara.

  The playroom had redwood beams; the carpet was a hand-braided gray, the furniture chromium and scarlet leather.