The Jews in America Trilogy

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  There were many prenuptial showers for the bogus countess, all paid for by Goldwyn, and he had hired the pastor to perform the rites and had selected the Church of the Good Shepherd, the most fashionable Catholic church in Los Angeles. He paid for a fifty-voice choir to sing at the church, selected and paid for the bride’s wedding gown, and offered her a veil borrowed from his studio’s wardrobe department (Miss Banky had worn it in The Dark Angel). Goldwyn had chosen the bridesmaids for their newsworthiness, and they included Mildred Lloyd, Norma and Constance Talmadge, Norma Shearer, Marion Davies, and Dolores Del Rio. Louella Parsons, Hollywood’s most powerful press figure, was matron of honor. Tom Mix arrived at the wedding wearing a purple cowboy costume and purple ten-gallon hat, driven in a purple coach-and-four with footmen in purple livery, and nearly stole the show. When everyone had settled in the church, and the Wedding March was struck up, there was no bride. She finally appeared, fifteen minutes late, as Goldwyn had instructed her to be, for added suspense and drama.

  Following the ceremony, Goldwyn put on a huge wedding breakfast and reception, and, throughout it, kept nervously asking everyone in sight, “Is Sunday a legal day? Is Sunday a legal day?” No one knew what he was talking about, but Goldwyn did have some reason for concern, though it had nothing to do with the legality of Miss Banky’s marriage to La Rocque. It seemed that La Rocque was involved in an ugly lawsuit over his contract with DeMille, though Goldwyn had chosen DeMille to be La Rocque’s best man. It had occurred to Goldwyn that this somewhat unusual arrangement might have been seen, by lawyers, as some sort of collusion between the two parties to the lawsuit. He need not have worried because, as it turned out, Sunday was not a legal day.

  Much champagne was consumed at the reception, and only when the guests felt it was time to turn to the food—huge hams, turkeys, and standing rib roasts of beef had been spread out on a long table—did they discover that all the viands were plaster of pans imitations, borrowed from the Goldwyn prop department. Not a morsel of the nuptial repast was edible. When it was time for the bride and groom to depart, and the new Mrs. La Rocque tossed her bridal bouquet, it was caught, by prearrangement, by Norma Shearer. This was because she was to be married later that year in another wedding that would be much publicized—to Irving Thalberg, production head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

  During its early years, Goldwyn’s company had prospered from a number of now almost forgotten hit films. Goldwyn had hired the beautiful opera star Geraldine Farrar to make The Turn of the Wheel, and she had gone on to make a series of lightweight romances for him. From Oklahoma, Goldwyn had brought an offbeat, crooked-grinned comedian named Will Rogers, and introduced him in a movie called Laughing Bill Hyde. When the pretty daughter of an Alabama congressman won a beauty contest, Goldwyn put her under contract and starred her in something called Thirty a Week. Her uncommon name was Tallulah Bankhead. For writers, Goldwyn hired such big names of the day as Mary Roberts Rinehart, Rex Beach, Gertrude Atherton, and Rupert Hughes.

  In the beginning, financing his films had been a problem, as it was with other Jewish producers, and each new film was paid for out of the earnings of the last, which meant that each film was another roll of the dice. The big commercial banks in the East had little interest in the fledgling motion picture business. It was considered much too risk-ridden and, too, there was an element of snobbishness and anti-Semitism here. Nearly all the eastern banks were controlled by wealthy Protestants, bound together into a fraternity with old-school Ivy League college ties. By unspoken gentlemanly agreement, they refrained from involving themselves with Jewish enterprises. In California, however, Sam Goldwyn had found an exception in the person of an Italian Catholic banker named Amadeo Peter Giannini. Mr. Giannini had formed his Bank of Italy—later the Bank of America—in 1904 with the express purpose of offering loans to small farmers and businessmen, particularly Italian immigrants, who had similar difficulty borrowing money from such older established California banks as the Crocker, Anglo, and Wells Fargo. Giannini had flown in the face of banking tradition and orthodoxy by actively soliciting loan customers, instead of the other way around, and his bank had become the popular bank “of the little man.” With A. P. Giannini, Sam Goldwyn found a sympathetic reception, and soon Goldwyn’s pictures were being produced in financial partnership with Giannini’s bank.

  Shortly after the war, however, the film industry went into what would be one of its periodic slumps, and Goldwyn’s company got into serious trouble. He had temporarily exhausted his borrowing power at the Bank of Italy, and a new source of working capital had to be found. This was why, when Goldwyn’s friends Lee and J. J. Shubert, the Broadway theater owners, told him of a man the Shuberts claimed had an uncanny knack for making money, Sam was immediately interested, and asked that the fellow be brought around. The name of this alleged financial genius was Frank Joseph Godsol, and upon meeting him, Goldwyn immediately brought Godsol in as a partner. Uncharacteristically—so pressing was his need for ready cash—Goldwyn made no attempt to investigate Mr. Godsol’s background. In view of what was to happen, one cannot help wondering if Sam had been taken in by a Shubert brothers scheme to ruin him, even though he considered the brothers his friends. The Shuberts were not his competitors, exactly, but at the same time the popularity of movies was having its effect on the box-office receipts at legitimate Broadway theaters, on which the Shuberts had a virtual monopoly. What interest could the Shuberts possibly have had in helping out a financially troubled movie producer? And if Frank Joseph Godsol was such a financial wizard, why hadn’t the wily Shuberts snapped him up for their own organization? Beyond the vague claim that Godsol had a talent for making money grow on trees, the Shuberts appeared not to have looked into Godsol’s credentials, either.

  Joe Godsol was tall, dark-haired, suavely handsome, and athletic. He had a courtly continental manner and style of speech acquired, he claimed, from having swum in the perfumed waters of the highest society in Europe. He casually dropped the names of dukes and countesses of his acquaintance. He appeared to be, in other words, exactly the kind of grand seigneur that Goldwyn himself aspired to be. In fact, he seemed almost too good to be true, but Hollywood and Goldwyn quickly clasped Joe Godsol to their respective bosoms.

  Actually, if Goldwyn had checked into Mr. Godsol’s past a bit, he would have uncovered a somewhat different story. Godsol was not a European at all, but had been born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a tailor. He had made his way to Europe, where he had enjoyed a career as an elegant swindler and con man. His first major brush with the law had occurred in 1905, when he had been brought up before the Paris Commercial Tribunal for selling cheap imitation pearls as the real thing. At the time, the press had labeled Godsol “the most colossal fake in the history of jewelry.” From then on, he was in and out of trouble and in and out of jail. During the war, as a French army officer, he was arrested for embezzling funds from the French government by tinkering with military payroll records. He had been discharged, and ordered to leave France. Still, shortly after the war, Joe Godsol found himself vice-president of the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.

  It was perhaps not surprising, then, that the money Godsol had promised to bring into the company did not immediately materialize. Godsol, however, had connections from his colorful international days who were not aware of his shady past, and among these were members of Wilmington’s wealthy du Pont clan. With Godsol providing the entrée, Sam Goldwyn was introduced to two of the multitudinous du Pont cousins, Henry F. and Eugene E. du Pont. Together, Goldwyn and Godsol were able to convince the du Ponts that movies were making everyone connected with them rich, that to invest in a motion picture company meant the possibility of hobnobbing with beautiful actresses and famous writers and artists, and that filmmaking was more glamorous than munitions-making. The result was an infusion of three million dollars of du Pont money into the Goldwyn company. With their investment, both du Ponts, along with Mr. E. V. R. Thayer of the Chase National Bank, moved onto Sam Gold
wyn’s board of directors. Soon they were joined by yet another member of the Delaware family, T. Coleman du Pont. All seemed well. It seemed, furthermore, that the film industry was at last moving up in the world. No longer associated with immigrant furriers and glove salesmen, it had apparently been given the imprimatur of the eastern business establishment.

  Within months, however, disaster again loomed on the horizon. The industry itself remained depressed, and Goldwyn pictures were doing particularly poor business at the box office. The du Ponts were now having a taste of the less glamorous side of the movie business, and were nervously wondering what had become of their three-million-dollar investment, on which no return seemed to be forthcoming. Meetings were called in New York and Wilmington, and there were demands for a financial reorganization and overhaul of the company. Testily, Sam Goldwyn resisted this, and when the du Ponts continued to apply pressure, Sam presented the board with another of his angry resignations. It was accepted.

  Now, for a while, Coleman du Pont, with no movie experience whatever, served as president of Goldwyn Pictures, but when things failed to get better without the founder at the helm and, indeed, got worse, a repentant board of directors went with hat in hand and asked Sam Goldwyn to return. Graciously, he accepted the invitation. Eighteen more months now passed, but without improvement.

  As Goldwyn saw it, the trouble was that, during his brief absence from the company, Joe Godsol had been working to strengthen his position with the du Ponts. Godsol may have seen a more secure future for himself in an alliance with one of the largest private fortunes in America than with the seesawing fate of a young California motion picture company. In any case, in a series of even stormier quarrels within the board, Godsol increasingly sided with the du Ponts against Goldwyn. Clearly, another Goldwyn resignation scene—which Goldwyn seemed to enjoy more and more as each new chance for one appeared—was building, and in March, 1922, it occurred. Goldwyn stood up in front of his board and announced that he was quitting, “And this time for good!” Then he added, for good measure, “And don’t try coming back to me on bended elbows.”

  With him he took his block of Goldwyn Pictures stock, and this meant that the quarreling between Sam Goldwyn and Goldwyn Pictures was far from over. Though Sam owned the stock, he no longer owned the corporate name. As an independent producer, Sam Goldwyn saw no reason why he could not present movies under the banner SAMUEL GOLDWYN PRESENTS. Goldwyn Pictures, however, objected that this interfered with their right to produce under GOLDWYN PICTURES PRESENTS. Both names now had a certain appeal at the box office, and audiences would inevitably confuse one product with the other. In the court battle that followed, it was ruled that in all Samuel Goldwyn productions, wherever his name appeared on the screen, it had to be followed by the disclaimer NOT NOW CONNECTED WITH GOLDWYN PICTURES. Furthermore, these words had to appear in the same size type as the rest of the legend. This was galling to Sam Goldwyn. It seemed like providing free advertising for his former company on his own pictures. It was a situation, however, that he would not have to endure for long.

  At Goldwyn Pictures, meanwhile, the irony of it all was that Joe Godsol, who had started all the trouble to begin with, had moved into a commanding position.

  In 1924, rumors were circulating through the show-business worlds of both New York and Hollywood that a giant motion picture merger—the first of its size and importance—was about to take place. Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures Corporation had absorbed the six-year-old Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. Now Loew was eager to acquire Goldwyn Pictures. Secret meetings were being held between Godsol, Mayer, Loew and his other partners, Joseph and Nicholas Schenck and Robert Rubin, and, on April 17, 1924, a merger was announced, resulting in a new company to be called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Needless to say, the only Goldwyn stockholder who voted against the merger was the irascible Sam Goldwyn himself. He distrusted Loew and the Schencks, and had had run-ins with Mayer, whom he considered his archrival. But his voting shares were not enough to block the merger. For the new company to be formed, Sam Goldwyn had to be bought out for cash. Thus it was that when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed, Sam Goldwyn did not own a single share in the big company that bore his name.

  Which suited him just fine. Sam Goldwyn had already demonstrated himself to be a man who was not emotionally cut out for partnerships. The long list of his shattered relationships with partners—Lasky, DeMille, Loew, Zukor, the Selwyns, Godsol, the du Ponts—attested to that. From now on, independence would mark his style, and at the time he outlined his producing philosophy. “A producer,” he declared, “should not be hampered by the opinions and rulings of a board of directors.” And he added, “This business is dog eat dog and nobody’s gonna eat me.”

  What was not announced when the formation of MGM was made public was that an unusual agreement had been secretly drawn under which three men at the top of the company were given the privilege of dividing one-fifth of the company’s annual profits among themselves, before any other profits were passed along to other stockholders. This juicy piece off the top of the profit pie was to be sliced as follows: fifty-three percent to Louis B. Mayer, a clear indication of his production dominance; twenty percent to Irving Thalberg, Mayer’s youthful protégé and creative right-hand man; and twenty-seven percent to Robert Rubin, who was considered the company’s financial brain. And where, one might wonder, had Joe Godsol come out in this fast shuffle? Asked what Godsol’s title would be in the new company, Louis B. Mayer merely smiled and said, “Mr. Godsol is no longer with us.” Just as mysteriously as he had materialized, Godsol had disappeared.

  That same year, another formidable competitor to both MGM and Sam Goldwyn would appear on the Hollywood scene in the person of thirty-three-year-old Harry Cohn. Just six years earlier, Cohn had joined Carl Laemmle’s Universal Pictures as Laemmle’s secretary. Now Cohn announced the formation of his own Columbia Pictures Corporation.

  With the founding of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, of course, Sam Goldwyn was no longer required to add the irksome NOT NOW CONNECTED WITH … line to the credits on his pictures. And privately he was pleased and flattered that the new corporation had decided to include his copyrighted name on its masthead. Even though he had nothing to do with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, most people just naturally assumed that he did. Now every MGM production was advertising him. He particularly liked the fact that his name got higher billing on the letterhead than that of his rival L. B. Mayer, and could even rationalize that his was the top name of all, “because Metro isn’t anybody’s real name.” He was delighted that the company would keep his roaring “Leo the Lion” as its corporate logo and trademark. He saw this as another nod in the direction of his greatness, his immortality. Goldwyn, whose birthday was August 27, liked to point out, “After all, Leo is my birth sign.”*

  By 1925, Goldwyn and the former Blanche Lasky had been divorced for ten years, and no one in the Lasky family was on speaking terms with Sam. As bitter as the divorce had been—with the tug-of-war over the couple’s small daughter, Ruth, whose mother had finally been granted custody; with the prolonged fight over money; and with accusations of infidelity and other malfeasance flying back and forth between the divorcing couple—Sam Goldwyn still professed to be in love with Blanche. Long after Blanche had moved back to New Jersey and resumed her maiden name (she was raising their daughter as Ruth Lasky, with the rest of the family forbidden to tell Ruth who her father was), Sam was still referring to Blanche as “my fairy princess.” After the divorce, Sam had been dating the actress Mabel Normand. But then, early in 1925, he met a twenty-one-year-old blond actress named Frances Howard.

  Frances Howard had been born in Omaha in 1903, and shortly after that her father had moved the family to southern California, where Frances grew up in a tiny bungalow outside San Diego. The Howards were English-descended, and Roman Catholics, and Frances Howard’s upbringing had been strict, Spartan, and mass-going. As a teenager, however, she had become stages truck, and had been allowed to go to New Y
ork to try her luck in the theater. She had managed to obtain parts in two mildly successful Broadway plays, The Swan, and Too Many Kisses with Richard Dix. Among the various interesting men the pretty young ingenue had managed to meet had been Coudert Nast, the son of Condé Nast. One evening she was invited to dinner at Condé Nast’s Manhattan apartment, which by then had become something of a salon where everybody in New York who was young and talented and doing things gathered to meet people from out of town who were young and talented and doing things. For the occasion, she bought a $310 dress that she could ill afford. At the party, she was introduced to Samuel Goldwyn, who had just come in from Hollywood and who had arrived at the Nasts’ with a beautiful woman on his arm.

  Their opening words were not auspicious. Goldwyn, who had seen Frances in The Swan, approached her and said, “You’re an awful actress.” Frances replied coolly, “I’m sorry you think so,” and was about to turn away to seek more congenial company when Goldwyn touched her arm and asked her if she would like to join him at an after-dinner party that was being given for Gloria Swanson and her new husband, the Marquis de la Falaise. Miss Howard was about to say no when her host, Mr. Nast, said, “I’ll take you there, so you’ll be escorted.” At the Swanson party, Sam Goldwyn said to Frances, “I’d like to see you again.” This time she thanked him and said no very firmly. Later, she commented to her friend Anita Loos, “Guess who wants to take me out. That awful Sam Goldwyn!”