By Myself and Then Some (43 page)

I returned home to prepare for my role of Schatze in
How to Marry a Millionaire
. Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable were to be in it as well – it was about three girls looking for millionaire husbands, and it was funny, witty, even touching. I hadn’t really known either of my co-stars before and hoped the association would be a good one. It was strange, Bogie not being there. I was selfish – pressing on with what I wanted to do and very brave as long as he was around to back me up, but in truth I was not all that brave. I enjoyed being able to do as I pleased for a while – it was good to go to sleep when I wanted to, study my lines for the next day without having to worry about dinner for Bogie. It was especially good because it was temporary.

As Cinemascope was a new experiment for everyone, it was difficult. One had to keep the actors moving and not too close together, as the screen was long and narrow. You shot longer scenes in Cinemascope, five or six pages without a stop, and I liked that – it felt closer to the stage and better for me. Betty Grable was a funny, outgoing woman, totally professional and easy. Marilyn was frightened, insecure – trusted only her coach and was always late. During our scenes she’d look at my forehead instead of my eyes; at the end of a take, look to her coach, standing behind Jean Negulesco, for approval. If the headshake was no, she’d insist on another take. A scene often went to fifteen or more takes, which meant I’d have to be good in all of them as no one knew which one would be used. Not easy – often irritating. And yet I couldn’t dislike Marilyn. She had no meanness in her – no bitchery. She just had to concentrate on herself and the people who were there only for her. I had met her a few times before, and liked her. Grable and I decided
we’d try to make it easier for her, make her feel she could trust us. I think she finally did. I had only a few conversations with her. She came into my dressing room one day and said that what she really wanted was to be in San Francisco with Joe DiMaggio in some spaghetti joint. They were not married then. She wanted to know about my children, my home life – was I happy? She seemed envious of that aspect of my life – wistful – hoping to have it herself one day. One day Steve came on the set and was doing somersaults on a mattress. She sat on a stool watching him and said, ‘How old are you?’ He said, ‘I’m four.’ She: ‘But you’re so
big
for four. I would have thought you were two or three.’ He wasn’t, and was confused (so was I, so was she), but kept turning his somersaults. There was something sad about her – wanting to reach out – afraid to trust – uncomfortable. She made no effort for others and yet she was nice. I think she did trust me and like me as well as she could anyone whose life must have seemed to her so secure, so
solved
.

T
he Stevenson dinner was in
February. He and Bill Blair were to go to Palm Springs afterward for a few days of sun and rest. I had a couple of days off at that time and decided to go down there too, staying with Buddy and Carolyn. Stevenson, on the dais with Dore Schary and others, caught my eye – or I caught his – or we caught each other’s. I went up to the dais before the speeches to say hello to Dore, but actually to speak to the man sitting next to him. We were photographed together and exchanged some chat later in the evening – at those dinners you have to settle for that. I told him I’d be in the desert, which seemed to please him no end, and he said we’d have lunch and dinner together. I left feeling very high, with my imagination going at full tilt, and headed toward Palm Springs that weekend.

It was a perfect time of year for the desert. My first night down, there were about eight of us at dinner. Adlai was in high spirits, and after dinner we all went to a small club. The music was dreamy – everything I needed, with my hokey love of ballads and my head full of romance and fantasy. I recall turning to Adlai, who was next to me, and asking him his favorite song. He replied, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’ There was always laughter with him. And there were always people around. He was going to have to see some Chicago politicians for Sunday lunch and he did not look forward to that. They were
typical ward politicians of a kind he did not favor, and he told me I had to come to that lunch to ease the pain. I was included in all his activities, which only fed my fantasy. But he and I really did get along very well. I learned that he seldom read books – novels almost never – and I wondered how he had such a command of language and how he knew so much without reading. He talked to me as though I knew and understood as much as he did – as he had when we were all on the campaign train and once, passing in the corridor, he turned to Bogie and asked, ‘Was it Christ who said, “Be ye perfect”?’ He endowed us with gifts we did not have. We played tennis – each time I missed a shot, I cursed, and he would say, ‘Always the lady.’ He asked me about my life. I savored every second. The truth is that I had fun with him – and it was a new kind of fun. I was certain he needed continued encouragement – not just from professional politicians, but from the rest of us. He had to realize how important he was. I was as selfish as many others in that I didn’t want him lost. I wanted – for my own sake – to have my hero governing this country. He was my first emotional hero since Roosevelt, but Adlai wasn’t a father figure as Roosevelt had been for me. He was someone I could look up to – his mind excited me – and his flirtatiousness encouraged me. And some of his friends and the people around him also encouraged me – they said it was good for him to have me around, he enjoyed my company, felt easy and relaxed with me, I took his mind off his heavy responsibilities. Almost anything that was good for Stevenson I was all for. So, short of leaving husband and home – which I had no desire or intention of doing – I would see him when I could and keep the thread of my presence alive in his consciousness. I left Palm Springs reluctantly. If the weekend accomplished nothing else, it had proved to me that my choice had been right – that Adlai Stevenson was someone worth putting myself on the line for, worth fighting for.

The next couple of months were occupied with work and planning to join Bogie in Ravello. He had written me long letters – the first since our courting days – describing the beauty of that part of Italy and the film’s progress. A writer named Truman Capote had been hired to work on the script. Bogie’s observation about him was, ‘At first you can’t believe him, he’s so odd, and then you want to carry him around with you always.’ He was the hardest worker Bogie had seen in ages and he loved that. There were Huston script problems, compounded
by assorted others – one being that Bogie and George Sanders, driving to a location, had hit a stone wall. Bogie had bitten into his tongue and had to have several stitches. I was upset and worried – I never thought of Bogie having anything wrong with him – but he called me and through a lousy connection assured me that all was well.

Leslie was now eight months old and growing prettier every day. She had not been a beautiful baby, just very pixie-looking, but things were changing before my eyes. She was so different from Steve – Women’s Lib notwithstanding, girl babies are very different from boy babies. She adored her brother, who was almost totally uninterested in her except for being curious when she tried to stand up or speak, and who only wanted to know when she’d become a playmate. I had them photographed together and rushed the pictures off to Bogie so he could see the changes in his offspring.

How to Marry a Millionaire
was finally completed – everyone was pleased with it – and I was off to meet Bogie. Unhappily, due to our delays, I would have to meet him in London and miss Italy altogether. My loss. I was excited at the prospect of Bogie after three months and curious as to what it would be like when we first met each other – a shame it would have to be in public.

In those days one slept in a berth on a plane, the flight to London taking nine or ten hours. About an hour before London we ran into some bad weather and we arrived late. By the time we landed, there was no time to go to the hotel before lunch. I was met by someone on the
Beat the Devil
staff and whisked to the Savoy Hotel and into the lunch room, where Bogie was seated on the dais. Someone was making a speech of some sort. I was put into my seat, also on the dais – not even allowed to kiss my husband hello. There were a couple of people between us. Bogie looked at me with the funny chewing motion he always made with his mouth at emotionally high moments. I smiled at him and was fascinated at how nervous I was – shaking almost as much as I had on that bench outside Howard Hawks’ bungalow. The thrill was far from gone. After eight years of marriage the excitement was as strong as ever.

B
ogie had been offered the
part of Captain Queeg in
The Caine Mutiny
, which was to be produced by Stanley Kramer with Eddie
Dmytryk directing. He wanted to play that part and through his keen awareness of emotional upsets he had an insight that few actors could equal. Columbia wanted him badly, but didn’t want to pay him his top salary. Bogie was so angry at this – he said, ‘This never happens to Cooper or Grant or Gable, but always to me. Why does it happen to me? Damn it, Harry [Cohn] knows I want to play it and will come down in my price rather than see them give it to somebody else.’ Strangely, Bogie always had to struggle, even though he was one of the biggest stars the motion picture industry had ever produced. None of it came easily. He was never in a position to ask for a lot of money on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, because he wanted to do good things and couldn’t walk away from excellence. There was to be a three-week location in Honolulu, where we’d never been, and we could take Steve. The cast was good – Fred MacMurray, Van Johnson, Jose Ferrer. But most important, Bogie really wanted to be Queeg. So he gave in. The theory always was you should never let a producer know you want to play a part because that gives the producer the upper hand; he knows he can get you for less money and that’s all that interests him. A hopeless position for a caring actor. I’ve had the same problem in my own career – I’ve always lowered my price when I really wanted a part. It’s a foolish thing to do – if they want you, they want you and they’ll pay – but most of us have such frail egos we think we can always be replaced, so we capitulate. Insecurity plays a strong role in an actor’s life. With all of Bogie’s self-assurance as a man, he worried as much as Spence, or most of the other fine actors and stars I knew, about being replaced. And actually this vulnerability was one of his most attractive qualities.

So back to California and the children. Bogie worshipped his little daughter, she seemed so delicate to him. He showed what an old-fashioned man he was – he treated her like porcelain, and always told Stephen he must do the same. That was often not Steve’s inclination. Oh, I loved having two children. We were a family – more so with two than with one. That was my storybook idea of families, besides which I had long ago decided I was not going to subject my son to being an only child as I had been.

1953
was a very good
year for us. Bogie worked continually and in good films, I went back to work after three years in a movie that
became a big success, and we traveled a good deal, seeing old friends, making some new, solidifying some in between. We were in England for my contemporary, Queen Elizabeth’s, coronation – witnessing the British at their best and most endearing in the rain, a mad, exciting, totally unforgettable week. I still marvel at her capacity to perform that lengthy, electrifying, magical ceremony. We had our health – our union – and family life was thriving. I had been asked by Fleur Cowles, who was then married to Mike Cowles of
Look
, to write a piece for the magazine. My theme and title was ‘I Hate Young Men.’ I was paid a token sum and wrote it totally myself – my first commercial writing venture, and very important to me that it be done well. I listed the qualities that I admired and found attractive in men, and named six men who, despite the pressures and frantic pace of the times, had managed to keep their wits, personalities, and humor about them and retain their sanity. The men were Adlai, Robert E. Sherwood, Nunnally Johnson, Alistair Cooke, Louis Bromfield, and John Huston. Their reactions to the piece were funny. Sherwood wrote that since the article came out he had been the most hated and scared man on the boulevards; it was obvious, he said, why I picked the other five – ‘Stevenson because he is literate – Johnson because he is witty and wise, Cooke because he is debonair, Huston because he wears funny caps and Bromfield because he is a Republican (just to show how bipartisan you can get) but there could be only one conceivable reason for your choice of me – my malicious animal magnetism. That thought inflames the fellows around this town and terrifies the dames.’ Adlai wrote that he was not sure how becoming the state of lowered lids and self-conscious confusion is for a man both humble and sophisticated, charming and simple, wise and humorous: ‘What can I do? My clay feet are showing, what a task you have given me, and what a task you have given yourself, for now you will be consigned like sufferers before you to write and write.’ (He wasn’t quite correct on that score.) Bromfield wired ‘Thanks kind remarks –
Look
article excellent and professional except Bromfield under-estimated.’ Alistair: ‘Humble, dignified and humorous thanks from the junior member of the Bacall club but where do you get that turn of the century stuff?’ I have no record of any word from Huston. He was in Europe. The last few sentences I wrote about him were, ‘Figuratively speaking, of course, he has left his friends’ bodies strewn all over the world. Wherever you
might be for the moment, you have his undivided attention and all his thoughts: that is, you have them until he feels the need to move on. So there you are with egg on your face – and lucky to be, I say.’

How to Marry a Millionaire
was released in November and I was to go to New York for the opening. Never one to refuse a trip to New York, I accepted – it was for less than a week and Bogie was working, so it was fine with him. That opening was fun. I was led across Broadway from one theatre it was playing at to another by New York police – many searchlights, big crowds. Mother and Lee were there, and I enjoyed being the focus of attention. I knew the film was good, and success does give one a lift. Dutch and Ellen Smith had invited me to their home in Lake Forest, Illinois, for a weekend on my way home. Adlai would be there and would come to dinner with some other friends. I accepted eagerly, sure that Bogie would be pleased. We talked almost daily and I told him about the invitation. He was furious, said, ‘Absolutely not’ – he wanted me to come home. I said it was perfectly harmless, it meant only two days more, and I had already accepted. He was in a rage and slammed down the phone. Somewhere in him was anxiety about my feeling for Adlai. It had come out before and would again. He had held himself in check most of the time, but when it got to be too much he let loose. I went. It was a lovely dinner and I was glad to see Adlai again. All very proper, though it was clear I adored him. I told him how I happened to be there; he asked after Bogie, as he always did. It was a different world, that world – the people were very friendly, but I was an outsider. The next day there was a luncheon for Adlai to which I was also invited. Buffie Ives was, as usual, less than glad to see me. She asked me how my husband was, and my children – very pointedly. I was flattered that she might consider me a threat. She came over and tried to drag Adlai away – he said he’d be right over, that he was talking to me. He was somewhat intimidated by her, and I think he used her to get him out of places he didn’t want to be. She may have been an annoyance at times, but he needed her and they were close. In any case, that afternoon was clearly not a situation he wanted to be rescued from.