The Golden Age

by Gore Vidal

  “Can you print Grew’s letter?”

  Hearst’s sigh was closer to a groan. “I am kept on a short chain by the regency, as I call the lawyers that are running my affairs. But news will …”

  For a moment, they sat in silence. Hearst played with the white jade dragon. Then: “Will you marry Hopkins?”

  “No, thanks. Besides, he has a charming lady friend who will probably make a good wife and a good stepmother to his youngest child. Something outside my narrow human range.”

  “Ah, you can do anything.” Caroline was deeply flattered by the offhand tone, which meant that the Chief was serious. “I’d like to do something in the war that’s coming. But … what?” She had lost his attention. “Marion’s off the sauce,” he announced as butler and two footmen arranged their lunch on a table in front of the fireplace.

  Caroline had always liked Hearst’s longtime mistress, Marion Davies, a blond actress with a stammer and a serious drinking problem, of which the most serious aspect was how to hide her bottles from the alert eye of the Chief, whose uncanny gift of discernment was so highly developed that no suit of Elizabethan armor on the most sweeping staircase could hide, for long, her gin in its boot. But she always managed to hide enough to keep dull sobriety at bay and so increase the pleasure of her court, as fun- and gin-loving as she. A star of silent pictures, she was feared to be ruled out of talking pictures by her stammer. Specialists had been called in. For a time, she had acted with a pebble in her mouth; then during a passionate love scene she swallowed it. Later she developed a curiously effective style of speaking that required deep breathing in the middle of words. Overnight she was acclaimed as a distinguished actress with an inimitable style. Caroline had always liked her and was pleasantly surprised that she had loyally stayed with Hearst throughout his prodigious bankruptcies.

  “She loaned me a million dollars of her own money.” Hearst spoke with his mouth full; his appetite was hearty. “I’ve got to get her another production company. Before she’s too old.” This was gallant, thought Caroline; herself too old for the screen, she did not in the least mind other actresses taking their allotted places in the unphotographable limbo of age.

  Hearst tasted the wine but did not drink it. “We had President Coolidge at San Simeon. Forget why. He said, ‘I don’t drink.’ I gave him some wine. ‘Is this alcoholic?’ he asks. I said, not so you’d notice. Drank half a bottle and said, ‘I got to remember the name of this beverage.’ ” The word “beverage” made Caroline laugh.

  “You know I’m serious.” The pale eyes were turned upon her like a searchlight.

  “About what?”

  “That monastery. You’re one of the few people with money who would appreciate it.”

  “But I’m living at the Wardman Park Hotel. I don’t think they’d let me put it up on their grounds.”

  “No. No. I mean it. Blaise will let you have an acre from Laurel House, on the Chain Bridge side. I’ve talked to him already.…”

  Somehow Caroline got through lunch without becoming the chatelaine of a Spanish monastery set high above the Potomac River, its luminous cloister all wreathed in poison ivy.

  Not far from the MGM studio commissary there was a particularly pleasant—that is, seldom used—screening room where Tim had prepared United We Stand; had shown it to the studio executives and, most important, to the studio’s New York exhibitors, Loews Incorporated. L. B. Mayer preferred to watch the film in his own screening room with his invaluable secretary, who did not so much read scripts to him as act them out, scene by scene; it was rumored that her performances were better than those of the stars themselves.

  On October 1, 1940, United We Stand had opened across the country just as the presidential election entered its final phase. The President, who had said that he would not campaign, had now taken to the stump while Willkie was openly attacking Roosevelt as a warmonger and a socialist. Nevertheless, there was still no difference between the two on the necessity of aid to England as well as the defeat, somehow never clearly spelled out by either, of Hitler, whose aerial bombardment of England was at its peak, preparatory to an invasion of the British Isles. Meanwhile, Republican leaders were urging Willkie to abandon his bipartisan foreign policy and warn the nation that if FDR was reelected, there would be war in a matter of months. All of this, though hardly good for the nation, provided an ideal audience for Tim’s film. As the political debate got more and more out of control, even the President’s mellifluous voice acquired a shrill edge; it was also apparent to every filmgoer that the title was wonderfully satiric and apt. If ever there was a country seriously divided it was the United States that October; and Timothy X. Farrell was suddenly hailed as the Preston Sturges of political documentaries. “Great McGinty versus Great McGinty” was Variety’s heading of its favorable review. All were amazed that two candidates who were basically as one on the matter of war or peace could still find so much to fulminate about.

  When L. B. Mayer had said that he was satisfied with the film, Tim realized that he must somehow have failed. Essentially, he had been anti-Hitler and anti-war. Now the film was being used by both sides of the great—not debate so much as shouting match. But Tim had done his best to dramatize an election in which neither candidate dared to say what he meant to an uneasy people who realized that something was seriously wrong with their political system. Commentators were now wondering if anyone would bother to vote on November 5.

  The screening room was brightly lit. Tim greeted the projectionist, an old friend. “We’ll start with the latest newsreels. Then the London Blitz footage. Then the stuff Mr. Mayer wants me to see.”

  “Good weekend figures,” said the projectionist. Everyone at the studio kept careful track of everyone else’s grosses, including John Balderston, who pushed open the heavy soundproofed door as diffidently as one could perform such an operation.

  “Tim! Congratulations.” They shook hands. The projectionist withdrew to his booth. “L.B.’s office said I could watch the Blitz stuff, if you didn’t mind.”

  “Are we being married?” There were rumors that Mayer wanted Tim to make another documentary about the war. So far there was no deal but the appearance of Balderston meant Gallant Little England would be the subject.

  “I think this is a sort of blind date.” Balderston was low-key, as always.

  Since neither Tim nor Balderston was under contract to Metro, the studio could not order them to go to work; so the next best thing was to put them together for a time and then see if they would want to do whatever it was the studio had in mind, plainly something big, since the first weekend grosses had inspired agents to rub Tim’s back or shoulder as they passed him in the commissary, on the deeply primitive ground that good fortune is transferable by touch. Tim was hot again.

  Tim and Balderston sat at the back of the screening room, the console with its telephone to the projectionist between them.

  “I never guessed when I saw you at Blaise Sanford’s that you could make such an extraordinary film out of …” Balderston loaded a pipe. “Well, those people there.”

  “I’d like to say it was easy but it wasn’t. An American politician is the most practiced bore on earth …”

  “But it works, the way you string all their clichés together. I also think you’re going to get quite a few votes for Roosevelt.”

  Tim was surprised. “I thought the Willkie footage was a lot more exciting …”

  “Not when you intercut him with the old master. Have you heard from the White House?”

  Tim shook his head. Actually, Caroline had rung him to say that Hopkins had seen the film with the President and both were pleased.

  “What does the front office want?”

  Tim was blunt. “If it’s you, that means they want a theatrical film, like The Prisoner of Zenda …”

  “No. Not this time. I think it’s me leading you around England during the Blitz. You know, I was there all through the Great War, working for George Creel’s Committee o
n Public Information.”

  Tim recalled the energetic Creel: President Wilson’s ambassador to Hollywood and chief of propaganda. “Then you stayed on and on as a foreign correspondent for … what?”

  “Eight years for the New York World. Then Hollywood.”

  “Where you turned every red-blooded American boy into a British Bengal Lancer.”

  Balderston laughed. “I did make The Mummy.”

  “Boris Karloff was British. Worse and worse!”

  Tim told the projectionist to begin. Lights dimmed. Onto the screen there appeared the Pathé News logo. A voice-over explained that President Roosevelt was in Boston; and that the Gallup Poll showed Willkie was gaining on him. There was a close shot of Willkie, voice croaking, disheveled suit between a total absence of decent felt, fine leather. He accused Roosevelt for America’s inability to defend itself in case of attack.

  “We do not want to send our boys over there again. If you elect me president, we will not. If you elect the third-term candidate, they will be sent.”

  “Low blow,” said Balderston.

  Then the screen was filled by the large gray ovoid face of the President. Solemnly, unblinkingly, he intoned, “And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

  “Except,” quoted Balderston, “in case of attack.”

  Tim felt a sudden chill: the President had not made his usual qualification. Tim stopped the film; replayed it to see if the line had been edited out. But the second or two of applause on the soundtrack clearly marked the end of the statement. “So what does that mean?”

  Balderston looked uneasy. “Well, he’s always said that if we’re attacked first, it’s no longer a foreign war.”

  “You sound like a Jesuit. I wish I had had this in the film.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well you didn’t.”

  “You want us in the war? To save the Prisoner of Zenda?”

  “Well, not the mummy, certainly. But I can’t think what the world would be like—what this country would be like—if Hitler wins.”

  “He won’t, whether we go in or not.”

  “In the long run, the Russians will probably stop him. But are we better off with them?”

  Tim shrugged. “We may find out soon enough.” Balderston turned around to face Tim, an odd expression on his face like … Although Tim was a professional collector of expressions it took him an instant to analyze what he saw: they were like two Masons meeting and one has just given the sign, whatever it is, and the other has not responded.

  “You know, I began the film to help the isolationists. I’m not at all sentimental about England and don’t mention the word ‘Irish’ because I can’t stand the Irish either, particularly my own family and the ones I grew up with in South Boston. No, I was all set to slant the film in Willkie’s direction. I was—I am—afraid that FDR has caught the dictator flu that’s going around. He’s very vain. Every other major country has its homegrown dictator, so why not us? He’s hugely tempted. I can tell. I study him on film. I study him in life. He wants us all to be his property. But he’s crafty. If we were all Dutch, or all English or German, he would have declared martial law by now. But he’s got too many different groups to outwit. One wrong move, and he’s faced with a whole new set of enemies, new deals you might say. So he waits for the attack that he’s sure is coming, the way Wilson did while, privately, delicately, doing his best to provoke it.”

  “He’s not been so delicate with Germany. Lend-lease. Destroyers for England. That’s an act of war. Thank God, if you’ll permit me.”

  “I defer to the Anglophile author of Smilin’ Through. How’s it going?”

  “A mess, you’ll be happy to know. Due for release in ’41. What changed you from America First?”

  “A Marine Corps general. I have him on film but I don’t dare use him yet. He’s been approached twice by Wall Street types. They want to get rid of Roosevelt. By force. By military force.”

  Balderston dropped his pipe. “You’re joking.”

  “I told you this bug is going around. They think Roosevelt’s a communist. They prefer Hitler because they think that he’ll stop the Russians. That he’ll do our fighting for us.”

  “You know, I have my own sources …”

  “You’re British secret service. Everyone knows that.”

  “Does it show?”

  “The pipe is the giveaway. I think you’ve set the carpet on fire.”

  Balderston retrieved his pipe. “Why haven’t we heard about this?”

  “Because the general has been asked not to go public just yet. He’s a patriot. A patriot who actually doesn’t like Wall Street. A patriot whose whole career was acting as what he calls an ‘enforcer’ for the New York banks, for Standard Oil. He’s done their work in Mexico, Shanghai, the Dominican Republic. He says Al Capone had only three districts while he had three continents. His would-be employers are now working to elect Willkie.”

  “Does Willkie know?”

  “I doubt it. But the President knows.”

  “Then why doesn’t he … Well, my God. What’s happened to the treason laws?”

  “The President waits for his opportunity, as always. One of the reasons he insisted on having Wallace for vice president is that Wallace knows quite a bit about the plot and is very much on his guard.”

  “The United States as Zenda.”

  “But still smilin’ through.”

  Tim decided he could work with Balderston; but he must keep him on the defensive. “When Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union, the conspirators became active. Happily, they are stupid, and they went to the wrong general.”

  “There are right ones?”

  “For a coup? Oh yes. Particularly in the Army Air Corps, of all places. Wallace knows some of their names. Anyway, you wanted to know why I shifted from Willkie to Roosevelt even though Roosevelt will get us into the war first. Because the old pro can control these rich lunatics. He’s smarter than they are. After all, he’s one of them. But he does a single, as they say in vaudeville. Willkie’s too slow-witted, too trusting.”

  “So you support Roosevelt in order to prevent a coup.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you think he himself is dictator material?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will he make himself one?”

  “The war will do that for him automatically. But then … Well, we must wait and see what comes next. The lady. Or the tiger.” Then Tim signaled the projectionist. On-screen, a siren sounded; then an explosion; followed by the black-and-white frames of London burning and then, perfectly flood-lit from below, the great dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was, Tim thought, very much the time of the tiger.

  At the end of the bar at Romanoff’s Rodeo Drive restaurant, Emma Sanford sat next to a large bearded actor named Monty Woolley who, as he glumly read a book, drank martinis and ate a chicken sandwich. Parallel to the bar, the stars held court in booths while, at the end of the bar, there was a velvet rope to keep within the restaurant proper the wide-eyed tourists, lunching in what was locally known as “Siberia,” along with those whose names on the screen were idly stacked so far beneath the title as to be in a different continuum from the booth people.

  Tim was amused by Emma’s highly vocal contempt for tawdry subversive Hollywood being suddenly undone by her bobby-soxer fascination as Bette Davis claimed her booth, third from the main entrance. Davis nodded regally to the occupants of the other booths. As usual, she was accompanied by friends “from the East,” a local expression for non-Hollywood types. Tim always marveled at how small Davis was except for the enormous breasts that had, jointly, been the despair of so many costume designers, including the one who had said, “If only Jack Warner would give me a crowbar so that I could smash that bosom of hers to smithereens, and dress her properly.”

  Tim found Emm
a an attractive if coarser version of her mother. The affair—if that was what it could be called—had begun in Washington not long after their reunion, if that was what that could be called, at Laurel House. Once Emma stopped making political speeches (a pillow over her face often worked miracles) he found her a surprisingly good fit, as he had come to think of women in bed, if not in love, while her enthusiasm for him was inspired by the fact that at the time he was still making United We Stand, a film that she wanted to reflect her stern Fortress America views. Nevertheless, on the few occasions that they had met over the last year, he had been delighted to be with her.

  Several years before, Tim had divorced his first and only wife, thus far. Although each was Catholic, they had been married in a civil ceremony on the sensible ground that should there be no children, each could go his own way. Miraculously, Caroline, in deepest France, had never known of the marriage; but then Tim was not sure that she would have been very interested. Now Mrs. Farrell was profitably employed by Travis Banton, a costume designer: she had gone her own way as had Tim. Meanwhile, Emma had developed an unexpectedly avid interest in such fan magazines as Silver Screen. She certainly knew far more about Hollywood marriages, divorces, reported affairs, than Tim. She was also delighted to know something about Tim that her mother did not—even more delighted, as she tactfully put it, to take “you away from her.” He did not bother to tell her that no one had ever actually had enough of him worth anyone’s while to take away. Curiosity and opportunity had led him from mother to daughter. As they settled into the booth next to Bette Davis, he thought what a perfect role Caroline’s life would be for Davis. Although Davis was hardly a beauty, she could, if required by a script, become beautiful with magical ease.