The Late John Marquand

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Meanwhile, Sincerely, Willis Wayde, the businessman-hero novel that John had been writing at the time of the heart attack, continued to move along, but slowly. John told Stanley Salmen that although he had written about 325 pages, his hero was still only in the Harvard Business School. This meant that quite a lot of cutting would have to be done. John had, however, already received another big advance from Ladies’ Home Journal, on terms much the same as had been offered for Melville Goodwin, U.S.A., so there was no need to apply undue pressure on the manuscript. He had started the book in the summer of 1952, and it was not until November of 1954 that the Journal was able to publish the first installment of the serial. It was quickly apparent that John Marquand was once again concerning himself with “differences of caste and class,” the unbridgeable social gap between “sincere”—and doggedly ambitious—Willis Wayde, son of a machinist, and the aristocratic Harcourts, leading citizens of Clyde and possessors of ancient wealth whom Willis Wayde aspires to be like; in particular, the difference that separates Willis from old Henry Harcourt’s spoiled and beautiful granddaughter, Bess.

  Some reviewers had complained that John Marquand never seemed to like his heroes very much—bumbling, hoodwinked, cuckolded Harry Pulham; pompous, provincial George Apley; down-the-line-military, hard-nosed Melville Goodwin. This critical point is acceptable if, to be acceptable, heroes in fiction must also be likable and, if this is the case, Sincerely, Willis Wayde must be considered an unsuccessful book. Without doubt, Willis Wayde was John’s most dislikable hero yet.

  Young Willis Wayde has no taste for sports, for girls, for social life; his push is only for business success, and he goes after this with a single-minded disregard for other people and other things. His father warns him, “You keep on trying to be something you aren’t, and you’ll end up a son of a bitch. You can’t help being, if you live off other people.” Keep in your own place, in other words, and stick to your own kind. “People are divided into two parts,” his father says, “people who do things and the rest, who live off those who do things. Now I may not amount to much, but … I can do anything in that damn mill that anyone else can do, and they all know it, boy. Well, maybe you’ll spend your like living off other people’s doings, but if you have to, don’t fool yourself. Maybe you’ll end up like Harcourt. I don’t know. But you’ll never be like Harcourt.” Willis Wayde has a carefully cultivated veneer of niceness, and a surface charm. But under the polish that he has acquired solely to help him get ahead, it is difficult to see what sort of a person Willis Wayde is. He is not only a repugnant but a hollow character. When Willis and his wife run into Bess Harcourt and her husband at the same restaurant and Willis extends his hand in cheerful greeting, Bess Harcourt orders him out of her way, and when Willis protests Bess says, “Get out, Uriah Heep.”

  Another trouble with Sincerely, Willis Wayde was that it was impossible not to compare it with the earlier Point of No Return. Point of No Return, when it appeared in 1949, not only seemed a highly original work but it also had a strong point of departure—a whole generation of bright young men whose lives had been deeply scarred by war and who had returned full of questions and uncertainties and anxieties about the values which, before the war, had seemed so settled and sure. Was success in business worth the candle? The novel’s haunting questions and uncertain answers captured the imaginations of young men—and their wives—all over America, giving the book great pertinence and meaning. But now, half a dozen years later, these questions not only seemed not so fresh but not so pressing. Willis Wayde’s problems seemed less interesting than had Charles Gray’s.

  And there was still another problem. Point of No Return had, in a very real sense, created a fictional genre, and there had since been a number of imitators. In 1952, Cameron Hawley’s Executive Suite had appeared, and he had followed this with another businessman novel, Cash McCall. Although Executive Suite was much less expertly written than Sincerely, Willis Wayde, it told a considerably more exciting story, causing Marquand’s novel again to suffer by comparison. Hawley’s hero’s struggles through the jungles of big-company management are accompanied by corporate intrigue, strife, and setbacks, whereas Willis Wayde’s journey to the top appears to carry him serenely through an uninterrupted string of successes.

  The beautiful and haughty Bess Harcourt, whom Willis loves and loses, seems more a plot device than a character. Willis, according to the Marquand code, must lose Bess because of the unalterable difference in their backgrounds, but for the first time in a Marquand novel this necessity rang somewhat false, and it seemed to some readers as though Willis might have won Bess if he had unbent a little, let his hair down just a bit, been a trifle less stiff and humorless. Or was it possible that the social dividing lines John had stressed so often in his novels over the years were beginning to disappear in America, and that that was what made the inevitability of Willis’s losing Bess a bit difficult to credit? In any case, the character of Sylvia, Willis’s wife, is much better drawn. And it is she who by the end of the book—as so many previous Marquand characters had done—realizes that her husband is what he is and she had better accept it. It is she who makes the Marquandian compromise.

  As the novel progresses—through, to be sure, some interesting and well-detailed episodes of corporate life—the cold genius of Willis Wayde grows even colder. It is almost as though, in developing his story, John Marquand grew to like Willis less and less. Edward Weeks, whose critical opinions John did not always care for, mentioned this fact to John after the book’s hard-cover release in 1955, saying that Willis Wayde “had started out as a rather appealing young man, and wound up as a truly disgusting individual.” John’s first reaction was surprise, and then, after thinking about it for a moment, he said, “You know, you’re right. He turned out to be a real stinker, didn’t he?” The book did not achieve a movie sale, though it did become the basis of a television play, several years later.

  Meanwhile, negotiations had been going on since 1950 between the Brandt office in New York and Famous Artists, who represented the Brandts in Hollywood, to obtain a motion picture sale on Melville Goodwin, U.S.A. John Marquand’s career reached its peak not only during the last of the glorious days when mass magazines were paying out huge sums of money for serialized novels but also during the even more glorious days when movie companies were paying even bigger figures for novels to be made into films. Again, the furious movie spending on fiction properties during the postwar decade—also intended to combat television—may have helped motion picture companies into the doleful state they found themselves in by the late 1960s. But in the meantime nearly every one of John’s big books—plus the Mr. Moto stories that had become a whole series of movies—had been bought and made into motion pictures, much to the enlargement of John’s already large bank account.

  Because of the sums he had received for Apley, Pulham, and B. F.’s Daughter, John had at first set a price on Melville Goodwin that both Carl and Ray Stark, at Famous Artists, considered too high. He wanted $200,000. Also, he hadn’t wanted any studio to see the book until it appeared in hard cover, on the theory that the studio should judge the book by its full and final version, not by the cut version that was to be serialized by Ladies’ Home Journal. But Carl pointed out that as soon as the Journal installments began the studios would prepare their own synopses of the book, and that it would be far better if John could have his own synopsis prepared and shipped out to Hollywood as soon as possible. John agreed, and Carl prepared a three-page synopsis—something he was good at—and sent it to Stark.

  Stark, who was delighted with the synopsis, then proposed, as he put it, “to cook up a little intrigue with this situation, and have Marquand send a little note saying that under no conditions must any studio see the synopsis, but if Darryl Zanuck saw it personally, but was not given a copy to keep, that John didn’t mind Mr. Zanuck reading it in the presence of you or me. I really think this could be an important hunk of strategy, Carl.” Stark also suggested that
the same bit of strategy—dangling the bait in front of the big producer’s nose, yet not letting him keep it for copying and circulation around the studio—could be worked with Stanley Kramer.

  But, a few weeks later, it was necessary for Ray Stark to report back to Carl that neither Zanuck nor Kramer had nibbled. There was another problem. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had just bought a story titled “The Day the General Returns” (“or something to that effect,” as Stark explained to Carl), and it suddenly seemed as though Hollywood had become awash with Army general stories. And so the Melville Goodwin synopsis began its long, slow round from studio to studio, with brief flashes of interest here and there—sparks that glimmered for a day or so, then died—and the months turned into years, with still no sale. John became discouraged, then resigned to the fact that this novel would never be a film.

  Then all at once, in March of 1955, the man who had produced Point of No Return on Broadway wrote to Carl to ask, “Did you ever sell the motion picture rights to MELVILLE GOODWIN, U.S.A.? If not I should very much like to talk to you about it.” Carl wired back that the rights were indeed available and that all parties were open for discussion. John, in the intervening four years, had lowered his sights considerably and reported that he would accept any “reasonable” offer, and presently—by June of that year—an agreement had been struck for $46,500. It was not imposing movie money but a fair price for a property that had gone begging this long, and Carl explained as carefully as he could to John that in the Hollywood market place the price for novels seemed to be declining and that “the six-figure deals” of the late 1940s seemed to be getting harder and harder to come by. The movie production, initially, was to be an elaborate one, co-starring the husband and wife team of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. But, in the process, the producer’s sights also became lowered somewhat, and the result was an indifferent picture called Top Secret Affair, with Kirk Douglas playing Melville Goodwin.

  It is hard to see why John, now a rich man, married to a richer wife (Adelaide had inherited over $3,000,000 worth of Hooker Electrochemical stock) should have been haunted by the fear of poverty. But he was, and as he told Carol he continued to worry “that I’ll have to take my dark glasses, my tin cup and cane, and sit in anterooms for work.”

  It was not as though he was an extravagant spender. Quite the opposite; when he traveled it was often on an expense account provided by one or another of the big magazines, and in New York he had acquired a certain reputation as a man who often displayed a decided slowness when it came to reaching for a check at one of his clubs, the Harvard, the Century, or the Knickerbocker. Only infrequently, and with great care as to who were the recipients, did he give away copies of his books. He did not even give away photographs of himself, when asked for them by readers. He once received a polite letter from the inmates of a reformatory in New South Wales, telling him that his books were great favorites with the prisoners. Would he be so good as to send a picture of himself to be hung in the prison library? He turned the request over to his publisher.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ever since its publication in 1939 there had been strong movie interest in Wickford Point, and a number of producers had sent out feelers through Famous Artists and the Brandt office. But John had become lawsuit-shy about Wickford Point, and, since the day he had lost the court battle, he had developed a whole new set of feelings about his cousins and former friends, the Hales. He now claimed that the Hales had brought the whole Curzon’s Mill business to court in order to “claim notoriety,” by reading themselves into the book as characters. He said they had done this simply to make him look ridiculous, and that there was no—and never had been any—connection or even similarity between the Hales and the Brills. On the other hand, the Hales had publicized their identity as Brills so thoroughly that John was afraid that if a movie about the fictional family was produced, the Hales would sue for libel or invasion of privacy. This possibility did not seem to worry the movie producers (who are always being sued for this or that), who would be the ones the Hales would sue, if they sued. But it worried John. The last thing he wanted was another lawsuit. His life had already had, as it were, its big trial scene.

  In 1951, however, a producer named Julian Blaustein had expressed an interest in making a film of Wickford Point, and John, with Carl Brandt’s persuasion, was quite tempted to pursue the possibility. But there were a few things he insisted on. The price, for one, would have to be high enough to make any further alienation of his family worth his while; he proposed a $15,000 to $20,000 option price against a final price of $150,000 to $200,000. The Hales, furthermore, would have to be “bought off,” he said, and that, he estimated, would cost an additional $15,000 or $20,000. Also, he could not approach the Hales personally, nor should it appear that he was paying off the Hales himself even indirectly. After all, if he paid them, it would be tantamount to an admission that he had used them in the book. Carl offered to approach the Hales for him. He also suggested that Blaustein’s lawyers could approach the Hales through their lawyers and get them to sign quitclaims, or agreements promising not to sue. But the price John asked was too high for Blaustein, and the deal fell through. In 1955 it revived, briefly, this time with the producer Sol Siegel. But John demanded the same terms: $150,000 for himself with “payments spread out over five years,” as Carl outlined it to the Hollywood office, “and it would have to be worked in some way that he would be satisfied that the money was put in such a spot that he’d get it no matter what happened to the film in question.” The Hales would also have to sign their quitclaims, and John was certain they would want money for this. Once again, the price he set was too high for the market, and so one of John’s finest novels, which, if sensitively done, could have been made into an engrossing film, was never sold.

  Today, the Hales laugh at the suggestion that they would have sued over a movie version of Wickford Point. “John simply would not understand that we were really very quiet and gentle people,” Robert B. Hale said not long ago. “The only reason why we fought John the way we did in 1949 was that it seemed to us he was trying to take away our summer home—and he was. It is typical of his lack of sensitivity, too, that he would assume we would have to be ‘bought off.’ John, of course, had some very strange theories about money. He thought that the only way to get what you want was with money, and that people never did anything for other people unless there was money in it for them. We Hales were not like that. I suppose that is why we baffled him.”

  In the meantime, the Saturday Evening Post was in a much more expansive financial mood than the motion picture companies. No sooner had the film sale of Wickford Point fallen through than the Post came up with an enticing offer. Everyone knew that John and Adelaide had been having their difficulties, that John had been begging for a divorce against her stubborn refusal, and Stuart Rose at the Post had recalled how, when John had been having similar troubles with Christina, the Post had sent Marquand on a trip to the Far East to gather new Mr. Moto material—with profitable results. Rose’s idea was: Why not another Mr. Moto serial? The sibilant-tongued little agent had become a part of the American vernacular, and a new serial about him would surely sell magazines. Why not another Far East trip for its author? Rose offered Marquand $75,000, sight unseen, for the book, plus $5,000 cash expenses for an Orient trip in advance. Little, Brown would publish the result in hard cover after the Post’s serialization. It was to be written with an eye to a movie sale. Marquand was delighted, and presently—in June, 1955—he and his oldest son, Johnny, were off from Boston to San Francisco, Honolulu, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, with a two-day side trip to Angkor Wat, then to Colombo, Beirut, and Cairo—first class all the way. From Cairo, John would fly on alone to Milan, where he would meet Carol at Marcia Davenport’s villa on Lake Como. From there the two would go to Paris and to Versailles, where they had first met. There they would be joined by Carol’s son, Carl, Jr., and there John would begin dictating to Carol the Mr. Moto yarn,
working much the way they had worked years ago, under the mulberry tree at Maule. They would go on—for more work, more dictating—to London. It was going to be a glorious and busy summer, with a chance for John to get reacquainted with his son, who was already a promising author and who had written a novel of his own, which Harper had published, The Second Happiest Day.

  By the time father and son had circled nearly the entire circumference of the globe—they left Boston on June 25 and arrived in Cairo at the end of July—there had been at least one mishap, or misunderstanding, and when John joined Carol at Lake Como he was still bristling about it. The argument was over an Oriental rickshaw boy to whom John had given an order; when the boy had not obeyed speedily enough, John had shouted at him harshly. His son had taken the attitude that this was not the way to speak to another human being, to which John had answered, “Who knows the Far East better—you or I?” He explained that rickshaw boys expected to be shouted at, that this was the only way to get them to do what they were supposed to do. One of the stories John loved to tell was of how, on another trip to the Orient with his friend Walter Bosshard, their car had become stuck in the mud in Mongolia, and Bosshard—who knew the Orient even better than Marquand—had ordered some Chinese peasants to push the car out of the mud. When the peasants had balked, Bosshard had said to John, “Hit them!” And John, after at first demurring, found himself whacking peasants in the stomach to get them to do as they were told, and they eventually did. He had even made the anecdote a part of one of his Tuesday Night Club papers in Newburyport. But John, Jr., was still unconvinced of the propriety of such treatment of peasants and menials and said so, and the argument became heated and bitter. Son accused father of being autocratic and arrogant, and father accused son of being romantic and naïve. John—as he always did when he was certain that he was in the right—kept going back to it again and again, and it was still with him when he got to Europe. For days he could talk of almost nothing else.