By Myself and Then Some (33 page)

On our second married Christmas I gave Bogie his second birthday party – no surprises this time. In our new cozy house, with our many more friends, including Hellinger, Huston, the Nunnally Johnsons, the Gershwins, Marees, Jaffes, Tony Veiller (writer) and his wife, Grace – plus the first group – it was a smashing success. Bogie had given me a large box and insisted I open it. I couldn’t imagine what was in it, so I tore it open with the imbibing friends gathered round – I gasped –it was a mink coat. He’d ordered it from Bergdorf Goodman, and embroidered next to my initials on the lining was a very small mink. The coat was a beauty. I put it on. Mark said, ‘Have you ever walked barefoot on a mink?’ God, no, this was as close as I’d ever been to one. So I threw it on the floor, took off my shoes, and walked on it. Harvey stepped on it too. Bogie was livid – he grabbed it from the floor – was this all it meant to me, after all his planning, how dare I throw it on the floor! He’d had a few, which explains his distorted thinking. Mark said we were kidding, it was all his fault. I said of course I loved it. I threw my arms around him – but he’d have none of it. It was touch and go for a while there.

By this time in my young life, I’d discovered aquavit. I liked the taste of it, and with ice it would last awhile. Bogie said it was too strong – schnapps, meant to be drunk straight with food as an apéritif. But I drank it before dinner and after, which was okay for a while until it made me sick and then I stopped. Christmas Day we always had milk punches made with bourbon, which I liked because I couldn’t taste the bourbon and Bogie liked because they helped his hangovers.

Life was very, very full and very, very good. I was suspended several times, as Jack Warner wanted me in certain films whose scripts I hated. I tried to see him at the studio – explain to him that I wanted to work, but didn’t feel the parts he’d chosen were right for me. Jack was always
ill at ease, especially with actors. Once when he was having Errol Flynn problems, he was in the private dining room with some producers among whom was a new handsome man by the name of Robert Buckner. Jack said, ‘Goddamn actors always want more money – I can make anyone a star. Just give me blank film. Look at him –’ pointing to Buckner – ‘I could make
him
a star – easy – but then he’d start asking for more money. Goddamn actors!’ Then he got sore at poor Buckner. It was said Jack used to talk back to the rushes – when he’d watch Bette Davis crying, he’d say, ‘That’s it, Bette – pour it on – money in the box office,’ and when he’d watch Bogie, he’d get tough: ‘Go get ’em, Bogart – let him have it!’ When I’d try to reason with him, Jack would lead me to his office window, point to the sound stages below, and say, ‘Would I have all this if I didn’t know what I was doing?’ Then the formal telegrams would start coming – first one from Jack asking me to play ball and cooperate, the second from Roy Obringer, the Warner lawyer, quoting from paragraph whatever telling me in legal terms to report to work for whatever film. Followed by notice that in accordance with clause such-and-such, I was hereby suspended for refusal to work. That meant no pay. Once the film was recast and started shooting, I could send a wire saying I was ready, willing, and able to go to work and they’d have to put me back on salary. It was a game, but there was no way to avoid it. Once Warner had made up his mind an actor was to be in a certain film – good or bad – that was it. The actor was under contract and there was no way Warner would pay the s.o.b. if he didn’t work. If the part was lousy, no matter. With each rotten script I thought of Cagney’s words to me when I started.

If we weren’t in New York at World Series time when one of my home teams had won, we’d be listening on the boat or have baseball lovers to the house. I’d always loved the game and it was such fun going to the games in New York. Quent Reynolds and Ginny began to figure strongly in our lives – Quent was always ready to go to the ballgame (he was a Toots Shor–Joe DiMaggio pal). Not many women went, but I always did. It made me feel I was still a New Yorker. Although we tried to get to New York twice a year, our time there was always frantic – going to the theatre almost nightly, dates for lunch, drinks before theatre, after – it was the only way to see everyone, and it was exhausting.

As I was learning more about wifery – enjoying friends, having dinners at home, gardens – I was learning more about the man I
married. He hated calendar occasions – Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, even Christmas. He resented being told by florists and candy makers that he had to buy a present, that it was expected. Much more fun and meaningful to buy a gift for no reason at all. When he’d had a long lunch at Romanoff’s and ended up drinking too much and getting home late for dinner, he might buy me some expensive bauble – a clip that was a cuckoo clock, all sorts of gold gadgets. He always said there’s no excuse for being late – drinking notwithstanding, of course – it takes two minutes to make a phone call. He took the two minutes.

And he educated me about Hollywood – about the press and the truth. If you tell the press – or anyone in Hollywood – the truth, it throws them, they don’t know how to deal with it. He was dead right about that. Also that all through one’s life one meets – and, in our business especially, is exposed to – attractive people. The circumstance of seeing them every day, playing love scenes, going on location can make a love affair very tempting. But you must always weigh a quick romance against what your life is – think whether it’s worth the risk. It almost never is. And he would chide me: ‘Long after I’m gone you’ll remember this and see that I’m right.’ And long after he’s gone I have remembered all of it and he was always right. It could be infuriating at the time, but he had experienced and observed enough to
know
. It’s incredible to me as I think back now – at about the same age he was when he told me all those things – to realize how much wiser he was then than I am now. Much of my knowledge of people comes from seeds planted those many years ago and grown strong, though not always straight, in the years since. He would say, ‘Never damage your own character. To have a love affair breaks a bond between husband and wife – and even if your partner doesn’t know about it, the relationship must be less open, so something very important will never be the same. And you’ve cut into yourself more than into him.’ He was preparing me for temptation because of my youth and my lack of exposure – at the same time, I suppose, there were apprehensions in his subconscious. Small clues as to his vulnerability were left for me all through our life together and even after.

B
ogie had decided to enter
the
Santana
in the Honolulu race, the first since the war. He’d lined up his crew, all guys who had sailed with him
before. The plan was that I, with the other wives, would fly to Honolulu to greet the boats as they rounded Diamond Head. Bogie had his heart set on it and I couldn’t wait to go to Honolulu. But first we were going to Mexico for
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
. It was to be shot, in the true Huston tradition, in locations not easily accessible.
Treasure
was a marvelous book by B. Traven and John had written a very good script – and had cast, in addition to Bogie, his father, Walter Huston, a devastatingly attractive and witty man and beautiful actor. Plus Tim Holt and Alfonso Bedoya, a great Mexican actor. Everything augured well. Bogie was to wear a wig, although his hair was growing back slowly but surely, and John had promised Bogie he would absolutely be finished by the last week in June to be ready for the Honolulu race. No question about it. Bogie had hired a cook for the race, lined up his crew, ordered some very expensive sails from Kenny Watts, and was looking forward to it like a kid meeting Santa Claus for the first time.

Our headquarters were in a lovely watering spa called San José de Purua, a few hours out of Mexico City. The Mexican crew were friendly – they sang nightly on their way home from work. We learned to drink tequila and went bowling almost nightly with Walter, John, John’s new wife, Evelyn Keyes, Tim, and some of the crew. Only the food was a disaster – a whole fish with bulging eyes that looked raw would be served, or a rubber turkey. Finally, after talking it over with John, I decided to order some canned soups, hams, baked beans, and the like, to provide something edible and reliable. My first night in the kitchen with the ham was a joke – I’d told two Mexican helpers to cut the skin off the ham, and while I was organizing the beans and stewed tomatoes they proceeded to cut all the fat off it too. With toothpicks I put it all back on, as well as cloves. The ham worked out and I was the location heroine. It was mostly good fun except for the moments John displayed his disdain for women – his wife in particular. Poor Evelyn would say something and John would say, ‘What? What was that, Evelyn? Now, wait a minute – I want everyone to hear this’ and Evelyn was on the block. Any casual, innocent, occasionally thoughtless remark was magnified and she was made to look like a fool. It was humiliating. He’d say, ‘Here’s Betty seeing to our dinners, in the kitchen with the cooks, and all you can do is complain.’ I didn’t envy her, married to John. He was brilliant, he was fascinating, he was fun
– but stay a friend. Better still, a friend’s wife. I loved Bogie, I was a good wife, so in John’s eyes I could do no wrong. Evelyn managed for a while. She must have learned a good deal and emerged stronger and wiser.

As the shooting went on and the crew sang more and worked more slowly, Bogie worried more and more about finishing in time for the big race. He prodded John, kept reminding him of his promise: ‘God damn it, John, I’ve planned this for months – move faster.’ John tried, but his first concern was the picture, and he liked Mexico and was in no hurry to leave. (Needless to say, the Honolulu race had to be canceled.) One of the reasons they worked as well as they did together was that John needed Bogie to keep him paying attention. He tended to lose interest as a picture was coming to a close. And Bogie always said that if an actor normally went just so high, John would always make him go higher, find things in himself he never suspected were there.

The great matter of riveting interest to me was Walter and John together. They’d evidently gone through some years of little or no communication. John had been a very good boxer, then a writer – had led a rather disorganized life, and Walter had thought he might never work at anything long enough to amount to much! But by the time of
Treasure
, Walter was deeply proud of his son. And John idolized his father. What’s more, in
Treasure
he gave him the acting role of his life. They were like a couple of kids together – they made each other laugh, they enjoyed and understood each other’s wickedness. They were alike in many ways. I was still learning about John, and it was a revelation to see that he was capable of feeling strongly about another human being. Walter Huston was a hard man not to love. Bogie and he worked wonderfully well together – Bogie was always happier working with first-class actors. He thought acting was a noble profession and was proud of being a member. Peter Lorre used to call much movie acting ‘face-making,’ and Bogie’s feeling was that many film actors, young stars, were face-makers. The ones who weren’t, like Spencer Tracy – those he admired.

After Mexico the location moved to Bakersfield, California, for two weeks – hot and dry. Murder in June and July. It was there that John told Bogie late one night, ‘The trouble with me is that I am forever and eternally bored.’ They’d been talking about life – John envied Bogie
his. I always thought it was a sad and revealing remark, diagramming the internal war raging within him.

I
n the fall of 1947
, investigations started in Washington led by Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, head of the House Un-American Activities Committee. His target was Hollywood, but his goal was headlines for himself. A Congressman named Richard Nixon was a member of the Committee.

We became aware of it gradually. Members of the Committee held hearings in California to which were called well-known people of various political persuasions, including Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, Elia Kazan. The Committee grabbed space on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country and the world. Those people saw Communists under every bed. They were convinced that they were the only true Americans – the rest of us were infiltrating films with un-American thoughts, the beliefs of foreign governments. There was now a blacklist alive in Hollywood – some of the most talented and creative writers, directors, and a few actors were deprived of the right to work, though they were guilty of nothing. Studios were terrified. It suddenly became risky, even dangerous, to be a Democrat. Fear was rampant – the ruling emotion. Some writers had been subpoenaed to testify, among them Albert Maltz, Dalton Trumbo, Alvah Bessie, and refused to cooperate. Along with others including Adrian Scott, producer, and Eddie Dmytryk, director, they were called the ‘Unfriendly Ten.’

Some of us Democrats began talking about it among ourselves. There was a large meeting one night at the Gershwins’ which found most of the biggest stars, directors, writers in the business present – Judy Garland, Eddie Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Willie Wyler, Billy Wilder, John Huston, Philip Dunne, Harry Kurnitz, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, Bogie and me, and many, many more. It was the birth of the Committee for the First Amendment. After various people rose to speak, it was agreed that a formal petition must be drawn up and sent to Washington. Parnell Thomas was getting carried away with the publicity – more and more people in the industry, and the industry itself, were suffering, to say nothing of the Bill of Rights. The petition said,