Goldwyn
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Goldwyn was no more successful when he called on H. G. Wells, who also had him to tea. He suggested that Wells visit California and write some stories for his company. “Oh,” the writer said, “I should like to come, for I know I should enjoy the California sunshine and meeting Charlie Chaplin. The only trouble with me is that I never could write on order. I haven’t been able to do it for magazines or publishers and I should certainly fail abjectly when it came to doing it for the screen.” Goldwyn left on the table an offer of a trip to California as his guest, with no obligation other than to “look over the situation.” Wells never took him up on it. As Goldwyn left Wells’s house that afternoon for his room at the Savoy Hotel, he was momentarily struck by the fact that only twenty-five years earlier, as an illiterate Polish immigrant, he had scavenged these same streets of London, hungry and penniless.
Goldwyn was more successful on the mainland. He drummed up business for Goldwyn Pictures—especially his newest film, The Penalty, a tour de force for actor Lon Chaney, from a story by Gouveneur Morris. In Germany, he saw an intriguing German picture directed by Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and became its American distributor.
The film struck many discerning viewers as the first demonstration since The Birth of a Nation of the expanding potential of the motion picture camera. It provided a new look at how motion pictures could photograph life and tell stories. All aspects of the film were stylized. Sets were painted, for example, without straight horizontal and vertical lines; mechanical movements by the principal actors and contrasts of light and shadow added to the film’s terror. It was the talk of the Continent, the rage among intellectuals. No one was more amazed than Erich Pommer—the head of UFA, the German film trust—that this cheaply made film proved a masterpiece, not to mention a big box-office attraction in Germany. Goldwyn figured the film would perform similarly at home.
Goldwyn was due to arrive in New York on Sunday, May 16, 1920, at which time he intended to conclude his negotiating for the Capitol Theater. Aboard ship, he picked up a newspaper and read that the deal had been closed. When he reached the office, he asked how the company was going to finance the deal and was told “that everything had been taken care of.” When he pressed for further information, Joe Godsol explained that in Goldwyn’s absence, the B. F. Keith theater interests had driven hard to buy the house for themselves; so Godsol seized it. The result was less an outright purchase than a merger: For $1.9 million, the Goldwyn Corporation bought a half interest in the Capitol Theater, which in turn received exclusive exhibition of Goldwyn films in first run. A substantial portion of the purchase was to be made in company stock, thus doubling the number of directors under Godsol’s chairmanship.
Goldwyn had never had any trouble with Edgar Selwyn, and he had even accepted dealing with Lee Shubert and Joe Godsol and Eugene du Pont, and all their associates. Now there was Capitol Theater builder Messmore Kendall and his faction to contend with—General T. Coleman du Pont, mining magnate Colonel William Braden, Major Edward Bowes (the theater’s general manager), even the president of the United Cigar Stores Company. One middle-management employee warned company newcomer Harry Alexander, “If you want to keep your job around here, you’ll have to run between the raindrops.”
Across the hall from Goldwyn’s austerely furnished office, Joe Godsol moved in, laying down elegant Oriental rugs and hanging up European paintings. Periodically, he slipped the building’s elevator starter a crisp five-dollar bill, so that the lift would be at his beck and call. “I have been unusually busy, busier than I have ever been before, in fact, too much so, as I find I am unusually nervous and unable to sleep nights,” Goldwyn wrote Abe Lehr, the only person in the world to whom he could confide about personal matters. “Never in my life have I given as much to an enterprise as I have to this one. It is a matter of pride with me to see this thing a very big success. You will appreciate it is not the easiest thing in the world to have a lot of new associates and keep everyone happy.” Goldwyn cleared his desk every night, locking his papers in his wall safe.
Godsol tried to unnerve Goldwyn at every turn. He often threw statistics in his face that showed how poorly Goldwyn pictures were performing. At the March 19 board of directors meeting, Goldwyn was told that the company was spending too much money on production. “We are cutting down in our home office in every direction and of course it is up to you that this is done at the studio without affecting the quality of our pictures,” he notified Lehr as soon as the meeting ended. Meantime, the Goldwyn Corporation built itself up as a motion picture conglomerate—buying into the Ascher Theater chain in the Midwest, Bishop Cass Theaters in the Rockies, and the Miller Amusement Company’s theaters in Los Angeles—all of which, Goldwyn thought, would rescue his company.
The president and the chairman of the board crossed swords over every matter. When they were in the same city, Godsol thought nothing of storming unannounced into Goldwyn’s office with his complaints; when Goldwyn was on a business trip—three to the West Coast and one abroad in 1920 alone—Godsol had his say in telegrams, running on for pages about press releases, production, distribution, exhibition, mergers, actors, bankers, and more—all within weeks of his joining the company.
After a month, Godsol got vicious. He scheduled important board meetings when Goldwyn was out of town, and he continued to make decisions unilaterally, in the name of exigency. Then he sicked Goldwyn’s allies against each other on budgetary matters. Most difficult for Goldwyn was “to sit at executive meetings and listen to the criticism of those who have not the slightest idea of the motion picture business.”
On Thursday, September 2, 1920—less than a year after Godsol’s arrival—Samuel Goldwyn was backed into a vote of confidence; he “tendered his resignation as President of the corporation, as a member of the executive committee of the board, as voting trustee under the voting trust agreement dated October 10, 1919, and as president or other officer and director of all subsidiary corporations.” The resignation was accepted. Messmore Kendall, the most level head in the boardroom, was put in charge of the corporation until a committee of five had elected Goldwyn’s successor. The meeting was adjourned until the following week.
When the September 8 meeting was postponed until September 28, Goldwyn decided to await the verdict in White Sulphur Springs, a hundred miles northwest of New York City. “I should like to hear from you at least once a week,” Goldwyn wrote Lehr, “as I am naturally keenly interested in the progress the studio is making, as well as the progress you are making with the new management.” His emotions rendered raw from his months as the company punching bag—“I had to stop making pictures and spend all my time explaining things,” he later recalled of the period—he admitted to Lehr, “This whole affair has been the most severe blow I have ever had but I hope to profit by the experience. The only consolation I have is that I am getting all these knocks while I am still young enough to stand them.”
Messmore Kendall found the board of directors at odds on every proposition, not just those regarding Samuel Goldwyn. “The meetings were most unfriendly,” he remembered, “and any proposition advanced by one Director was immediately taboo to the other faction.” The September 28 meeting accomplished little more than to move to adjourn until October 5. The committee of five needed more time to compose a financial plan for the rescue of the corporation. Because of Goldwyn’s “familiarity with the affairs of the company,” Kendall asked him to draft a proposal.He labored faithfully and brought out an elaborate plan which he had prepared [Kendall recalled]. He was still a member of the Board of Directors although no longer President. He started to read his recommendation when he was interrupted by a Director who had a very substantial investment in the Goldwyn Company.
“Before you read that, Sam, I want to tell you now I am against it.”
“But you have not heard what I have to recommend,” protested Goldwyn.
“I don’t care what you recommend, without hearing it I am against it.”
On October 22, 1920, the board obliged, renaming Samuel Goldwyn president for two years. But, it ruled: ... Mr. Godsol shall accept the office of chairman of the board and the by-laws of the corporation shall be amended so that the chairman of the board shall have all the powers now vested in the president of this corporation.
... Mr. Goldwyn ... shall perform such duties only as shall be assigned to him by the board under the direction of the chairman of the board.
... Mr. Goldwyn shall immediately enter into an agreement modifying the voting trust agreement of October 10, 1919 that the voting trustees may vote for the consolidation or merger of the corporation without his consent ...
Regarding the business at large, nothing had changed: His salary was the same and he was back in his office. But Goldwyn knew he had been busted to employee. He was a lame-duck president who had to pass every decision before his board—even which stories could be filmed and which stars should be hired.
Godsol immediately took hold of the production slate by submitting scripts to the marketing department of the company. “I have always contended that the Sales Organization should pass on stories—at least whenever possible—and I still feel strongly that this should be done,” Godsol informed Goldwyn. “They should be given the opportunity to tell us whether or not stories we contemplate making are of the type demanded by exhibitors.”
“Goldwyn became too arty for the rest of them,” said Arthur Mayer. When the company president expressed interest in bringing to America some of the brilliant young German directors, notably Ernst Lubitsch, an adviser on the operating staff squashed the idea. Because Abe Lehr was not empowered to authorize even ten-dollar salary raises, the nuts-and-bolts members of the Culver City crew were walking out. By the end of 1921, the core of the Goldwyn editorial department, including Elmer Rice, had moved to the Lasky Studio.
The board of directors had even more ammunition against Goldwyn when The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari opened. Audiences at the Capitol Theater in April 1921 booed and demanded their money back. No less a figure than Carl Sandburg championed the film when it opened in the Midwest, writing in the May 12 edition of the Chicago Daily News: “It is a healthy thing for Hollywood, Culver City, Universal City, and all other places where movie film is being produced, that this photoplay has come along at this time. It is sure to have healthy hunches and show new possibilities in style and method to our American Producers.” Its quality was lost on Godsol. “We want pictures to make good, not be good!” became his new refrain.
Monday morning, May 9, Goldwyn could not get himself out of bed. An ambulance took him to the hospital, but the doctors promptly sent him home, saying he was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Goldwyn had a maid and a butler to look after him but nobody to care for him. He summoned his secretary, Rae Lipnick—five feet tall and all business—to his bedside at 44 West Seventy-seventh Street. He wanted this medical business hushed up, except for one telegram—to Mabel Normand. “SAW MISTER GOLDWYN AT HIS HOME YESTERDAY,” Miss Lipnick wired. “HE SUGGESTED I WIRE YOU THAT IT WOULD BE USELESS TO TELEPHONE AS HE CANNOT SPEAK ON TELEPHONE HE IS OUT OF HOSPITAL AND GOING THROUGH TWO WEEK REST CURE TO RESTORE HIS HEALTH HE HAS SUFFERED NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. ...” It was not as desperate as all that, as the wire further indicated: “WILL BE WELL AGAIN IN TWO WEEKS HE EXPECTS TO BE IN CALIFORNIA EARLY IN JUNE.” Goldwyn simply needed to lie low and think.
Miss Lipnick’s wire to Abe Lehr the next day reported the situation more accurately. Mabel sent a bouquet of flowers, and Lehr sent assurances from Culver City that “THERE IS NO OCCASION FOR HIM TO WORRY ABOUT THE SITUATION HERE AS EVERYTHING POSSIBLE IS BEING DONE THAT IS FOR THE INTEREST OF THE COMPANY.” Those small doses of attention worked wonders. On Friday, Goldwyn himself wired Lehr: “AM FEELING MUCH IMPROVED THINK BY BEING IN BED ANOTHER WEEK I WILL BE IN EXCELLENT SHAPE.”
A good crisis was still the best elixir for Goldwyn, and the next one jolted him back to his desk, where he worked hand in hand with Joe Godsol. A tide of recession washed across the motion picture industry in late May 1921, threatening to pull the Goldwyn Company under altogether. Company disbursements were approximately $170,000 per week, almost twice its receipts. The Ascher Theaters, their chain in the Rockies, lost $17,000 in one week; the next week, it lost $20,000.
The meter ticked away. Every Thursday at noon, the man who delivered the Kodak film stock arrived. If he did not get paid, he did not leave the next week’s supply. Employees’ checks were to be handed out on Saturdays. During one payroll crunch, Goldwyn ordered his export manager to make deals on the early Fort Lee pictures at whatever price. Rumors of mergers with Zukor or Laemmle, even with Lewis Selznick, flared up regularly.
The Goldwyn Company cut its costs across the board by 22 percent. From Culver City, Goldwyn reported to his board that practically all the large-salaried contracts had been canceled or permitted to expire, “and the organization which we have left is so small it is very difficult to find any place where substantial cuts can be made.” Their once lustrous chart of stars had been reduced to newcomers taking home two-hundred-dollar paychecks. Business worsened.
In February 1922, Godsol was in Los Angeles when news arrived that the French Council of War had dismissed all charges brought against him in the matter of animal-selling and that he had been completely vindicated. Goldwyn sent a gracious day letter to Godsol at the Hotel Ambassador, saying “I NEVER HAD ANY DOUBT AS TO THE OUTCOME.”
Everyone smiled through gritted teeth. From the moment Godsol returned to New York, Goldwyn encountered behavior as hostile as any he had experienced. “When he comes into the room he stands with his hand on the knob of the door ready to leave,” Goldwyn confided to Lehr in a long, whining memorandum; “he avoids me more than ever. When he first returned I told him I would like to have a talk with him and he asked me to postpone it for a week or two.” Sam Goldwyn realized he had been taken by the consummate con man, one of the few men in the business who could make him look like a piker.
When the board of directors convened on Friday, March 10, 1922—with a loss of $686,827.50 posted for the preceding year, and an even bigger one rolling up for the present year—Goldwyn was all but under house arrest. He had no allies present. A kangaroo court was called to order.
That night, Arthur Mayer was killing time at the office, until his girlfriend finished performing in a Broadway play. In the hallway he bumped into Joe Godsol, who, impressed with the young employee’s working overtime, escorted him to Goldwyn’s oak-paneled office. A workman was scraping the glass pane on the door, scratching away the gold letters of Mr. Goldwyn’s name. Godsol reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigar “as thick as three thumbs,” stuffed it into Mayer’s mouth, and said, “Goldwyn and Goldwyn Pictures are no longer synonymous!”
8 Elba
THERE WAS a sickness in Hollywood, but it was a sickness that infected the whole postwar world,“ stated Cecil B. DeMille, one of the city’s great moralists. He believed the ”crumbling of standards“ was aggravated in America by Prohibition. Others felt it was the release of nervous energy after the war, that Americans especially were atingle over their victory. The restlessness seemed especially manifest in the movie capital, that haven for the nation’s most beautiful flaming youths.
Hollywood’s quintessential observer of all this lust was the flamboyant English author Elinor Glyn. As more of her romantic stories were being adapted to the screen, she spent more time at the studios. One day, Wallace Reid was walking off a set when Miss Glyn hailed him. “My dear boy,” she said, “you’re really very wonderful to look at. And, besides, you know you have—It.” The golden lad, still in his twenties, was confused. “Oh, that is my word,” she explained. “It!” she repeated in her mellifluous contralto. “Don’t you see, that one syllable expresses everything—all the difference there is between people. You eithe
r have It or you haven’t.” As the title of one of her novellas, “It” became a popular idiom, a demure way of saying what seemed to be on everybody’s mind and lips in those days, “sex appeal.”
King Vidor, not long in Hollywood and eager to become a director, thought the sexuality of this torrid zone was more than skin-deep.
The mysteries inherent in this new art created a feeling of isolation on the part of its performers. They spoke a silent language, a different language from the orange growers who surrounded them, but they felt a camaraderie with all the other members of their clan. This bond gave them the assurance that they could create their own laws, devise their own moralistic codes, establish their own habits and behavior. This isolation made them feel temporary, reckless. No doubt that subconsciously they feared the magical bubble would soon burst and they would run scurrying back to their Brooklyns, their carnival shows and their villages to continue an existence more closely allied to life as it was—rather than as it was imagined.
These special people could also defy laws of time and space, for their souls were presented around the world and would be preserved through the ages. People asked even barely recognizable motion picture actors for their autographs. Stars of greater popularity were treated like royalty. When Madge Kennedy traveled to the Orient, she was received by the emperor of Japan. After Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks married, they toured Europe, where they were mobbed in every city. In Moscow, a crowd of 300,000 met them at the train station.