Goldwyn

by A. Scott Berg

  Saturdays, the boy was Sam’s. It was their day together and it was, as Sammy remembered, “the closest I ever was to my father.” It usually meant ice cream and a movie at Grauman’s Chinese. But after a while the boy realized that he was merely a “decoy.” The two Samuel Goldwyns would walk down Hollywood Boulevard “and then he’d park me in a theater and disappear for a ‘conference’”—the heaviest poker game in town. The regulars from the Sunday games at Goldwyn’s and the Thursday games at Thalberg’s played anything they could bet on. Besides the thrill of gambling, cards were a great source of relaxation for these semiliterate men, an easy way for nonverbal people to socialize.

  Frances could only guess how much her husband was losing, extrapolating from the cost of the jewelry he would lay on her for no particular reason. Thinking ahead to her widowhood, she saw Sam squandering her pension fund. She would fly into a rage, then tuck away her jewelry—usually a five-to-ten-thousand-dollar piece from Cartier—her hedge against destitution.

  Sam chased after starlets, enough for Frances to mention it to George Cukor. “She never complained, and she’d never discuss the situation,” he said; “she’d just bring it up and drop it like a martyr.” Sammy watched his mother’s “hairshirt attitude” pull her through; in recalling that time, he said, “I could see my mother getting stronger.” She began putting her foot down, and insisted that if she ever heard about his dallying with another woman or that he had gambled away any more money, she would walk out.

  The threat worked. Sam agreed never to see any other women, but that did not stop him from looking. (In fact, most women felt safe around him, and allowed themselves to be charmed by his gallantry.) And what the Goldwyns lacked in passion for each other they made up for in respect. They almost never raised their voices to each other. When Frances saw one of Sam’s tirades boiling up inside him, she could silence him with two words of Yiddish: “Schmuel,” she would say, using his boyhood name, “shveig” (“Shut up!”). More and more he took to calling her “Mother.”

  Frances spent increasing amounts of time at the studio, working her way into all aspects of her husband’s productions. The other wives in town respectfully noticed.

  In late November 1934, Frances Goldwyn’s dream house was completed, all to her own taste. She worked “like a beaver” for the next few weeks, applying the finishing touches. Sam had not seen the place since the earliest days of construction. One night in mid-December, they left the studio together, and she instructed the driver to take them home to Beverly Hills. At the top of their knoll off Coldwater Canyon awaited the gleaming white house with black trim, its two wings forming a welcoming obtuse angle. Inside, a generous foyer gave way to the public rooms, decorated in grays and mauves, pale green, and profusions of pink. Ahead lay a deep rose—colored dining room with a table that could seat twenty.

  To the right of the foyer was the living room with its heavy green drapery and big pieces of upholstered furniture. At the far end was a small room just big enough for a card table and chairs. A small hallway in the foyer led past a bar into another large room, a paneled library that doubled as a screening room. Beyond that lay a guest suite that did not encourage long visits.

  The library’s outer doors opened onto an expansive patio. A lawn rolled to a large swimming pool and poolhouse, not visible from the main house. Below that, paths wove past a freshly planted cypress alley to a tennis court. Alone in the back stood a huge eucalyptus tree, with which Frances felt some kinship. Whenever her husband trampled on her feelings, she found comfort just in staring at the noble tree; “my proud lion,” she called it.

  Upon entering the house for the first time, Sam headed directly up the spiral staircase. To the left lay Sammy’s room and, farther down the hall, service rooms and servants’ quarters. To the right lay another long corridor. At one end was Frances’s large bedroom suite; its narrow single bed, remembered Irene Selznick, “advertised, ‘I don’t sleep with my husband.’” At the other end was Sam’s. Frances already had every article of clothing in its proper closet and drawer. Sam unblinkingly marched into his bathroom, complete with vanity mirror. A moment later he leaned over the banister and shouted to his wife downstairs, “Frances, there’s no soap in my soap dish.”

  The house at 1200 Laurel Lane became not only where Frances resided but where she presided. She became one of the town’s most celebrated hostesses, famous for the quality of her food, the efficiency of her servants, the sparkle of her guests. Her own wholesome American looks and unexpected wit made her a most desirable dinner companion.

  The Goldwyns entertained regularly, sometimes as often as four times a week. There might be a half-dozen friends for dinner and a movie. An actor Sam was trying to hire might be invited for a private dinner, just the two men and their wives. The arrivals in Los Angeles of special friends—such as the Irving Berlins on their annual visit or the Goldwyns’ latest social conquests, the Averell Harrimans—would warrant a dinner party for forty. New Year’s Eve of 1935 brought Cole Porter, Lady Mendl, and the Gary Coopers together under the Goldwyns’ new roof for a dinner of saddle of lamb, spinach salad, and vanilla éclairs with chocolate sauce. Harold Arlen, Jack Benny, Charles Boyer, Frank Capra, Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, the Gianninis, the Howard Hawkses, James Hilton, Sidney Howard, the Jesse Laskys, Myrna Loy, Ginger Rogers, the David Selznicks, the Walter Wangers, Jock Whitney, Loretta Young, and fifty others joined them for a champagne supper served at midnight. Frances specialized in throwing dinners for twelve, what George Cukor called “the hardest ticket in town.” She and her husband sat opposite each other at the middle of the table, surrounded by only the most famous names in Hollywood. “You always knew where your career stood,” remarked Katharine Hepburn (who shunned such dinner parties), “by where you sat at the Goldwyn table.”

  “Frances was charming and lovely to look at—very bright, cold, and tough as nails,” recalled Dorothy Hirshon, the first wife of William S. Paley. “But you never saw that tough side in a social sense. Both she and Sam always made an effort to get on with people if they thought it would be helpful.... I always thought Sam was calculating, but I didn’t care. He was gracious and not without charm.” Paley concurred. (He had met the Goldwyns aboard ship in 1928. At that time he saw almost nothing of Sam, who remained planted in the casino throughout the Atlantic crossing. Paley had found himself enormously attracted to the pretty young card widow and waltzed her from her position as “a decorative but inactive onlooker” onto the ballroom dance floor whenever possible. For years, each of them kept secret that the attractive Paley had tried to talk Frances into leaving Sam and marrying him.)

  One summer day, Goldwyn was walking along the beach with the Paleys. Suddenly the radio tycoon pointed to some birds overhead and said, “Look at the gulls.” Sam peered skyward and asked with some astonishment, “How do you know they’re not boys?”

  “Not a half dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Last Tycoon. “And perhaps the closest a woman can come to the set-up is to try and understand one of those men.” That seemed to be Frances Goldwyn’s philosophy. But Mrs. Paley noted, “instead of just standing in his shadow, she turned her position into something. They had a real partnership ... one in which I never felt little Sammy was included.”

  With so much financial tension in the air during the Anna Sten years, Goldwyn traveled more than ever. In his absence—and even when he was in town—Sammy was sent on Sunday mornings to Abe Lehr’s house. There he got his first real taste of family life, as the parents and three children gathered for a huge sausage-and-waffle lunch. “It is,” Sam junior later admitted, “one of the great memories of my childhood.” The Lehr children felt sympathy for him, especially at everyone’s calling him “Little Sammy Goldwyn, Jr.”

  “I grew up at a very young age,” admitted Sam Goldwyn, Jr. He believed he was “underpampered,” never having his own pony or elaborate birthday galas with
all of Hollywood in attendance. He was allowed to go to the parties, but whenever he asked for something other Hollywood parents had lavished on their kids, his mother would admonish, “They have it this year, but let’s see what they have next year.”

  Frances was forever instilling her values into her son. One day, while he was reading Penrod and Sam, Sammy shrieked with laughter at a scene with a scared “pickaninny” clambering up a tree. Frances scolded him for finding humor in that. “How would you like to be called a ‘kike’?” she asked.

  She was also allergic to people without a work ethic. In trying to immunize her son to the lot of rich playboys who swarmed around the town, Frances constantly made work for Sammy around the house. Even though there was a team of gardeners to tend to the grounds, Sammy was given money for weeding. The chauffeur would pick him up after school and drive him on his newspaper route, while he tossed copies of the Herald-Express out the window. In time, Sammy was allowed to deliver his papers by himself. On his bicycle, he would ride down from Laurel Lane into the southern flats of Beverly Hills. “I had been so overprotected,” he said, “it was freedom for me.”

  Sammy’s most enduring friendship to emerge from his childhood was with Irving and Ellin Berlin’s daughter Mary Ellin. They shared their summers with swimming lessons, tennis lessons, riding lessons, and French lessons. In retrospect, she admitted, “We really were two little rich brats.” One afternoon, Mary Ellin, an avid reader of movie magazines, challenged Sammy to a contest, to see who could compile the longest list of famous people they had met. Mary Ellin easily came up with the most names. “But, my God,” she said, “you should have seen the people on Sammy’s list. They were the most famous people in the world, and even as a child he really knew them.”

  TOPPING his list those days was Eddie Cantor, as every third picture his father produced between 1931 and 1935 was a vehicle for the lovable “kid.” Musicals had bounced back in favor in the mid-thirties, each studio providing its own brand to lift audiences from the depths of the Depression. Warner Brothers scored with their pavement-pounding backstage musicals full of Broadway ballyhoo and such Harry Warren songs as “Forty-second Street,” and “We’re in the Money.” MGM specialized in lush, romantic operettas—Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy singing their hearts out. Other MGM musicals were already working up to the high gloss for which they would be known for decades to come. At Fox, Shirley Temple smiled through the tough times with such numbers as “Animal Crackers in My Soup” and “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” RKO glided to new levels of sophistication by pairing Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers in a series of musicals that featured top-drawer numbers from Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and the Gershwins. Walt Disney, releasing his cartoons through United Artists, cheered the nation in 1933 when his Three Little Pigs seemed to be laughing in the face of the Depression as they sang “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” And Goldwyn stuck to retailoring the same musical formula for Eddie Cantor, though it was becoming threadbare.

  Goldwyn had recently chased the film rights to Androcles and the Lion. When Shaw refused him yet again, Goldwyn tried to interest Robert Sherwood—who had written about Hannibal in his play The Road to Rome—and George S. Kaufman in writing an original story set in ancient Rome. Between 1930 and 1932, Kaufman had written six plays for Broadway, and every time Goldwyn saw him, he came closer to seducing him into a Hollywood contract. “I know, the minute I escape from your spell,” Kaufman had said in a January 1932 letter, “that I don’t really want to go into pictures. There is no one in the business with whom I would rather be associated, and I shall never take the plunge without coming first to you and asking if you want me.” One of the most appealing aspects of Goldwyn’s latest offer was that Kaufman and Sherwood would not have to work in Hollywood.

  In March 1933, the team signed agreements for an original story and screenplay, each to receive $23,000—$2,500 upon execution of the agreement, $10,000 upon Goldwyn’s receipt of “a full treatment script,” and $12,500 for a draft complete with dialogue. Kaufman had had his share of experience with star comedians, so on this contract for his first original motion picture (after eighteen of his plays had been adapted for the screen) he insisted on a special clause, that he would never have to meet Eddie Cantor or listen to his views of the story.

  After Sherwood and Kaufman completed their draft of Roman Scandals, Cantor learned that a story conference was to be held. He begged to attend. Goldwyn granted permission, provided that Cantor simply sit and listen. At the meeting the next day, Kaufman read the script aloud. When he concluded, Cantor asked if he might offer a suggestion. Goldwyn allowed the point of personal privilege; and as the producer himself related thirty years thence, “Three hours later, Cantor finished, having talked his way into an entirely new story.” Kaufman walked out of the conference without uttering a word. A few hours after that, Goldwyn received a letter from Kaufman announcing that he and Sherwood were finished with the job. They returned to playwriting and awaited their final payment on Roman Scandals.

  “I have no intention of paying any further money,” Goldwyn wrote his attorneys, “and I am burning up over what they have done to me.” He did not consider the script before him a complete draft. That did not stop Goldwyn from sending Kaufman an opening-night telegram months later, wishing him success with his new play. Kaufman wrote back that he was “puzzled about our exact personal relationship, as I am sure you must be. We are at disagreement as to a business point, and I feel so genuinely in the right in the matter that I cannot permit even our friendship to stand in the way of any future steps.” Goldwyn assured him “that irrespective of how our business relations may eventuate, I shall never permit that to interfere with my deep affection for you.” He still refused to write the checks.

  Goldwyn probably would have taken offensive action of his own had the two writers not built a chassis of a story sturdy enough to send down his assembly line of writers. The result was an amusing variation on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in which a mousy museum attendant is transported back to the Roman Empire.

  As before, this Cantor picture found excuses for the self-deprecating character named Eddie (“I’m a failure; I can’t even keep a job as a slave”) to appear in blackface, frequently burst into song, undo the villain, and unite a pair of young lovers after a wild chariot race. He also got to sell the film’s big number at the opening and the finale, rallying his Depression-weary neighbors in joyous song, “Build a Little Home.” Goldwyn pulled out all his usual stops, surrounding Cantor with Richard Day’s sets, Gregg Toland’s photography, Alfred Newman’s orchestrations, and his most gorgeous selection of Goldwyn Girls performing Busby Berkeley’s choreography.

  In his talent search for Roman Scandals, Goldwyn had asked Louella Parsons to write in her column that he was holding open auditions for “every girl from 16 to 25 who thinks she looks like a Roman beauty. They wouldn’t have to make appointments,” he told her. “They won’t have to wait or to argue with the office boy. All that they do is to walk right in.” Nine thousand hopeful girls walked before Goldwyn and his scouts. Seventy-five beauties were selected to appear in Roman Scandals; a dozen of them were designated Goldwyn Girls. A few days before rehearsals were to begin in Hollywood, the mother of one of those chosen in New York suddenly decided against her daughter’s going into motion pictures, thus leaving a gap in the line.

  It was one of those “hotter than hell” July Wednesdays when Lucille Ball, then a platinum-blond Hattie Carnegie model, was on her way to a lingerie shop to buy some underwear. She passed an agent friend on Seventh Avenue, and he said he had just heard that Sam Goldwyn was looking for one more “poster girl” for his new Eddie Cantor picture. The model—raised in Jamestown, New York, by her mother and grandfather—was trying to make it in the big city. She had already posed for a Chesterfield cigarette advertisement, and she bore a strong resemblance to Constance Bennett. She thought it would be hopeless even to pursue the job, as she had not e
ven heard about the Goldwyn cattle call in the first place. The agent simply said, “Look, they need girls.” Moments later, she was standing before James Mulvey, who asked if she could leave on Saturday for six weeks. The job lasted for six months and led to a middling career in motion pictures for the next seventeen years.

  Upon reporting to the studio for her first day of work, Miss Ball realized that she was “the ugly duckling of the lot.” Feeling inadequate, “embarrassed not to look like the other kids,” she thought of Fanny Brice, who had gotten Ziegfeld audiences to look at her instead of the beauties. Tired of standing in the back row of the harem, she resorted to any stunt to stand out, anything for a laugh. When the Goldwyn Girls were supposed to strut before the cameras in precise step, Miss Ball limped across; she would cross her eyes when the camera passed before her; she overstuffed her brassiere with tissue. Somehow this twenty-two-year-old got it in her head that “it was all useful. They’d realize there’s a girl out there not afraid to do anything.” When Eddie Cantor suddenly decided one of the chorus girls—who wore little more than G-strings and long hemplike wigs—was needed to fall into some mud, the one self-described “skinny marink” stepped forward.

  “Mr. Goldwyn was aware of what every one of us was doing,” Lucille Ball recalled of her first days as a show girl; “and years later he always took pride in my having been a Goldwyn Girl.” Of course, the chorine was never invited to the Goldwyns’ house. She did not sit at the Goldwyn table until 1938, when she landed the female lead opposite the Marx Brothers in Room Service. “I ate my first artichoke at his place,” she recalled. “I just stared at it and was about to attack it with my knife and fork when Harpo leaned over and whispered how to pull it apart.” Through the years she and the Goldwyns became “more friendly.” When Lucille Ball suddenly ascended to stardom in television, “Mr. Goldwyn was there recommending people and banks and other helpful things” to aid in the building of her entertainment empire.