Goldwyn

by A. Scott Berg

  Just then, Goldwyn called the head of Paramount’s story department, William Dozier. “Y‘know, Bill,” he said, “I’m thinking it’s time you and I started doing each other favors.” That sounded good to the bright thirty-two-year-old. “Let’s start,” Goldwyn added, “by you doing me one.... I’d like to borrow Brackett and Wilder.”

  Dozier said that was impossible. Then the powers at Paramount realized they might use the writers to ransom Gary Cooper for their upcoming production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Goldwyn also got them to throw in some cash, plus the future services of Bob Hope, who had recently made a big hit opposite Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Singapore, the first in a successful series of silly, often improvised comedies.

  Brackett and Wilder waded through the piles of scripts and treatments Goldwyn had been considering for Gary Cooper. Their assignment of finding something seemed futile until Wilder remembered a story sitting in his own European trunk, called “From A to Z.” It was an adult variation on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” in which a stripteaser falls in with some scholarly professors writing a new encyclopedia. Upon reaching the “S” volume, Professor Bertram Potts gets stuck with the entry “Slang.” The pussycat agrees to move into the owls’ aerie and educate him, unwittingly implicating them all in her imminent marriage to a gangster. Brackett liked the story enough for Wilder to submit it to Goldwyn. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Goldwyn told Wilder, upon receiving the pages.

  It might have been a stretch to imagine Gary Cooper as an aging professor specializing in linguistics, but as Goldwyn understood it, the part called for a shy, romantic lead. The next day, he called Wilder to say, “Frances read the story. She likes it. How much?” Wilder said ten thousand dollars. Goldwyn thought that was too high but said, “I’ll tell you what. I give you seventy-five hundred now. If we ever get it made, I give you another twenty-five hundred.” Wilder agreed, so long as he could stand on the set to observe every shot of the film, his final phase of training before becoming a director himself.

  Wilder’s tutor would be the master of rapid-fire romantic comedies, Howard Hawks. Goldwyn felt uneasy about working with Hawks a third time, less because of his experiences with him on Barbary Coast and Come and Get It than because of a basic flaw in the man. Goldwyn thought Hawks had “no character.” He threw money away, was obsessed with betting on the horses, and was always involved in real estate schemes; worst of all, he did not always make good on his gambling IOUs. Movies seemed a means to support his bad habits; but with Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, and Sergeant York as the most recent notches on Hawks’s belt, Goldwyn had to admit there was no director better suited for drawing the best out of Gary Cooper or from Brackett and Wilder’s charming script.

  Ball of Fire crackled with what Time called “some of the juiciest, wackiest, solid American slang ever recorded on celluloid.” It also contained such enchanting scenes as Sugarpuss O‘Shea giving her bachelor hosts conga lessons. The climax of the film hinged, literally, on a loose screw, when Potts enters the wrong room at an inn because the number 9 on the door has slipped around to a 6. “It was a silly movie,” Billy Wilder admitted forty years later. “The writer was still young and innocent ... but I guess so were the audiences then.”

  Goldwyn’s first choice for the female lead was Ginger Rogers—brassy and blond, she could sing and dance. But she had just got herself out of Fred Astaire’s shadow by playing Kitty Foyle, for which she won an Oscar; she was looking for a less frivolous role. Goldwyn sent the script to Jean Arthur; she liked the part but was under contract to Columbia, which would not loan her out. Goldwyn turned to Carole Lombard. She wished him much success in the venture, but wrote back that she was “not interested in the character or the plot ... after all everyone has their own prerogative of his likes and dislikes.” Goldwyn had not been so hard up for a female lead since casting Stella Dallas. Again, his last resort, Barbara Stanwyck, carried the day, delivering another Academy Award-nominated performance.

  She and Cooper created enough sparks to ignite everyone around them. Hawks proved to be unusually efficient, his direction clean and sharp. Goldwyn gave Dana Andrews his first big break in one of his films, the tough-guy role of Joe Lilac. “PREVIEWED BALL OF FIRE LAST NIGHT,” Goldwyn wired Gary Cooper in Sun Valley on October 29, 1941. “IT WENT OVER LIKE A BALL OF FIRE.”

  After the film’s success, Billy Wilder telephoned the producer and said, “Mr. Goldwyn, I see the picture is a hit.” Goldwyn jubilantly concurred. “Well, Mr. Goldwyn,” Wilder added, “where’s the money you promised?” Goldwyn, appearing to have no recollection of the $2,500 bonus he had offered when he bought the story for $7,500, said, “If I promise, I promise on paper.” Wilder angrily hung up on him. Ten minutes later, Wilder’s phone rang. It was Goldwyn. “Billy,” he said, “I just talked to Frances. She don’t remember it either.” Wilder was so furious he told Goldwyn that from that moment forward they should just pretend they did not even know each other—that if “you don’t remember the deal and Frances doesn’t remember the deal, the hell with both of you.” Wilder slammed the phone down. Ten minutes later, it rang again. It was Goldwyn, with a contrite tone in his voice. “Look, Billy,” he said, “I don’t want people going around Hollywood saying I’m not honest. Come on over, right now ... and pick up the fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “He was a titan with an empty skull,” Wilder said of Goldwyn in retrospect, “—not confused by anything he read, which he didn’t.” But his “instinct for the better things” made Goldwyn, in Wilder’s eyes, “an absolutely, totally dedicated man—like a passionate collector.” Wilder liked him and they became friendlier over the years. But he never saw the last thousand dollars.

  After watching the rushes on Ball of Fire one day, Goldwyn had announced to Wilder that he was looking for a big picture and that he wished the writer would come to him with some big ideas. Realizing Goldwyn was not about to hire him to direct a film, as he hoped, Wilder made an appointment with the producer just to tweak his nose. “Mr. Goldwyn,” he said at the meeting, “why not do a picture about Nijinsky?” Goldwyn looked puzzled. Wilder explained that Nijinsky was the single most famous ballet dancer in the world, a Russian with a “marvelous, touching story.” Wilder proceeded to talk about this peasant with a passion to dance who met Diaghilev, the impresario of the Bolshoi, and of their becoming homosexual lovers. “Homosexuals! Are you crazy?” Goldwyn interrupted. But Wilder proceeded, insisting the story got better. He told of Nijinsky’s going insane, and that every day, while exercising in a Swiss asylum, he believed he was a horse. “A homosexual! A horse!” Goldwyn interrupted again, rapidly losing interest. But Wilder plowed through to the end of the story, detailing Nijinsky’s marriage to a woman, Diaghilev’s revenge, and Nijinsky’s neighing for the rest of his life. Goldwyn shooed Wilder from the office, shouting at him for wasting his time on such a miserable story. On his way out the door, Wilder poked his head in with an afterthought. “Mr. Goldwyn,” he said, “you want a happy ending? Not only does Nijinsky think he’s a horse. But in the end ... he wins the Kentucky Derby.”

  THE first week of December 1941, Sam Goldwyn was on a train leaving New York, where he had arranged for the opening of Ball of Fire at Radio City Music Hall. On Sunday the seventh, while the Super Chief clacked its way out of Chicago, a nation huddled around its radios and thumbed through atlases, trying to locate Pearl Harbor. It was a crisp morning in Los Angeles, where The Great Dictator, Sergeant York, and Citizen Kane were playing in downtown theaters. Louis B. Mayer had recently reprimanded Willy Wyler, in the middle of directing Mrs. Miniver on loanout to MGM, for the extreme nastiness with which he had told Helmut Dantine to play a young Nazi flier shot down over the English countryside. He had reminded the director that Loew’s had theaters all over the world, including Berlin. “We don’t make hate pictures,” he told Wyler. “We don’t hate anybody. We’re not at war.”

  On December 8, 1941, Congre
ss declared war on Japan. Days later, the United States was committed to smiting the other Axis powers as well. “Since yesterday afternoon we live in another world,” read a letter from Albert Lasker waiting on Goldwyn’s desk. “What it will bring forth no man knows. It makes one feel deeply that this homeland of ours must be preserved, though it takes not merely our fortunes but our lives.” Louis B. Mayer asked Wyler back into his office and told him to film Mrs. Miniver as he wished, portraying the young German “as a typical Nazi son of a bitch.”

  Hollywood rallied, and Goldwyn marched to the fore. In the previous two years alone, he and the other big-money powers had been besieged with dozens of requests for financial aid—such causes as Bundles for Britain, the Greek War Relief Association, Russian War Relief, United China Relief, Fight for Freedom, and the Red Cross War Emergency Drive. Goldwyn gave generously—anywhere from $500 to $5,000 to each of them—but he also contributed an idea that would augment Hollywood’s impact on the philanthropies of the nation. He proposed forming the Permanent Charities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry, in which all war charities would be pooled into one Hollywood fund. Goldwyn thought the plan would result in heavier donations and lighter paperwork; and, as he announced at the founders’ meeting on June 28, 1940, “We as an industry want to show what we can do as a united body. Therefore, the industry must get credit for it.” Goldwyn was named chairman of the organization, which would expand throughout the war years and beyond, raising millions of dollars.

  With America and the Jews sharing a common enemy for the first time, Hollywood began to find its true religion. One by one, Jewish moguls came out of the closet. More than the age-old charitable tradition of tzedaka drove them; it was the feeling of guilt that, as Ben Hecht said, “blooms in the soul of the immigrant Jew who turns into an American nabob.”

  In early 1942, Hecht became co-chairman of the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews. He called on David Selznick to lend his name to the cause. Selznick refused, saying, “I’m an American and not a Jew.” Hecht asked if Selznick would become a sponsor if he could prove that he was a Jew; his litmus test was to call three friends of Selznick’s choice and ask them one question: “What would you call David O. Selznick, an American or a Jew?” If any one of them said “American,” Hecht agreed to back off. Selznick accepted the challenge. Martin Quigley, publisher of the Motion Picture Exhibitors’ Herald, said Selznick was a Jew; writer Nunnally Johnson said the same. Casting the decisive vote, Leland Hayward replied, “For God’s sake, what’s the matter with David? He’s a Jew and he knows it.” Selznick got converted.

  Sam Goldwyn was no different. After quietly contributing to Jewish charities over the years, he agreed to listing his name in the United Jewish Welfare Fund’s yearbook along with the twenty thousand other supporters. In 1943, he contributed $5,000, a figure topped by only a handful of wealthier Angelenos—such as Jack Warner, Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, and Joe Schenck. The last had less ability just then to donate $10,000, but much more reason.

  By 1941, a trade union protected practically every studio employee, from screen actors to janitors. The Screen Writers Guild tended to be the most vocal, its members having the most direct access to the American consciousness. But only one segment of the Hollywood work force had muscle nationwide, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, known as “Yatsy.” Al Capone’s mob eventually took over IATSE (which included every motion picture projectionist in America); and an underling named Willie Bioff became its man in Hollywood. He induced the studio heads to corral the ten thousand still unorganized studio workers into IATSE; then he demanded that the studios pay protection to him to keep the machinery greased. Joseph Schenck, as president of Twentieth Century—Fox, became the conduit through which Bioff was bought off.

  There is no evidence of Sam Goldwyn’s having paid the $25,000 required of small studio heads (half the dues the majors had to pay), but it is safe to assume he was tithed like everybody else in town. Within a few years, the Screen Actors Guild exposed IATSE. A tough New York district attorney, Thomas Dewey, created his reputation by investigating industrial rackets and busting the mob; Bioff was convicted of extorting a million dollars from the film industry. Joe Schenck, the only Hollywood mogul without children, volunteered to take the rap for the rest of the industry. He was sentenced to a year and a day in Danbury prison on a charge of income tax evasion.

  Goldwyn dined with Schenck on the eve of his entering prison, in May 1942, and wrote him regularly while he was behind bars. His letters were full of local news and constant reminders of “how proud I am of your friendship and what it means to me.” When Schenck came up for parole, Goldwyn wrote an impassioned letter to the Department of Justice, emphasizing Schenck’s active involvement in charities and affirming “with the utmost sincerity that I have never known a finer man than Mr. Schenck.” Goldwyn’s friend of thirty-one years was released in September and was the guest of honor at a small dinner at Laurel Lane marking his return to Hollywood.

  During Schenck’s brief absence, Hollywood went to war. Clark Gable later won the Air Medal for bombing missions over German-held territory; Jackie “The Kid” Coogan flew a glider behind Japanese lines in Burma; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., won the Silver Star for service at Salerno. Tyrone Power enlisted in the Marines, Henry Fonda in the Navy. James Stewart became a colonel in the Air Force, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  Those who could not fight could still serve. The United Service Organization had begun producing camp shows even before Pearl Harbor. That idea of taking live shows to the boys abroad quickly spread around the world. Ingrid Bergman sang Swedish folk songs to hospitalized men in Alaska; Al Jolson crooned outside Palermo; Kay Francis and Martha Raye toured North Africa; Paulette Goddard played the China-Burma-India theater; singer Martha Tilton, harmonica player Larry Adler, and Jack Benny entertained in the Southwest Pacific. As in the First World War, movie stars proved to be the most persuasive promoters of war bonds. Had Carole Lombard accepted Sam Goldwyn’s offer to appear in Ball of Fire, she very likely would have been at the Radio City opening of the film on January 16, 1942, instead of taking off on a bond-selling tour. Her plane crashed into Table Rock Mountain, just outside Las Vegas; there were no survivors.

  Within days of America’s entry into the war, studios volunteered all their services and facilities for producing training films. A number of moviemakers joined the Signal Corps. Frank Capra was assigned to Washington, where he created a series of propagandistic “orientation” films called “Why We Fight.” Later, he saw action on several fronts, which he captured in documentary films. Directors George Stevens, Anatole Litvak, and John Huston signed up for similar duty. Walt Disney produced everything from health education films to morale builders. In The New Spirit, Donald Duck helped the public understand the government’s demand for higher taxes.

  The editors of Look magazine found grass-roots Hollywood was “just another town at war,” sacrificing just like the rest of the country. Within twenty-four hours of Pearl Harbor, studio trucks were transporting army troops and equipment. Air-raid shelters were built on studio lots. Sets were built that could be modified and reused in other pictures; hairpins were inventoried, sterilized, and reused. Gas-guzzling car-chase scenes were virtually eliminated.

  Hollywood’s greatest contribution to the war effort was in maintaining the steady flow of its standard product, adapting American movies to the times. “A few producers saw that they could render a priceless service by making a certain number of pictures that were not only entertaining, but which could interpret the war for our own people and other people of the world,” noted Lowell Mellett, chief of the Bureau of Motion Pictures of the Office of War Information, looking back on those last weeks of 1941.

  The OWI took great pains not to interfere with the motion picture industry. The government was so mindful of the evils of censorship that Mellett told the MPPDA bluntly that “you are free to make pictures your gove
rnment does not like.” But he also recognized that Hollywood was run almost completely by first-generation Americans, patriots all, and “that since you are as zealous as our government in our desire to win the war you do not want to do anything to harm the war effort.” He asked film producers to submit treatments, scripts, and films to the Bureau of Motion Pictures for “information and objective opinion ... that makes no comments on the theatrical aspects of a film” but points out anything that might be harmful in world relations. In the early months of 1942, for example, Goldwyn’s The Real Glory—in which the Moros were portrayed as villains—was still in distribution around the world. Yesterday’s enemies had become today’s allies, and further screenings of that film could only foster ill will. Once Mellett’s office pointed this out to Goldwyn, he took another look at the picture, then yanked it from further distribution.

  While the OWI discouraged certain types of films, it encouraged others. At a gathering of producers at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Mellett explained the government’s targets:

  “We would like to see pictures that dramatize the underlying causes of the war and the reason why we fight,” he said. “Unless the public understands these, the war may be meaningless.” RKO responded with This Land Is Mine, directed by Jean Renoir, in which a Nazi-occupied village fights for freedom; Warner Brothers made Mission to Moscow, the story of U.S. Ambassador Joseph E. Davies; Alexander Knox played the title role in Wilson for Twentieth Century—Fox, a film that so stirred Goldwyn he bought full-page ads for it. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck put a dozen war-theme pictures into the works—from Secret Agent of Japan to Berlin Correspondent —before enlisting.