Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (46 page)

When he was supposedly in New Orleans, Hawks was, in fact, still in
Los Angeles and once again submerging himself in Screen Directors Guild activities. At an April 12 meeting with Association of Motion Picture Producers President Joseph Schenck, Hawks and Capra reiterated the guild’s basic platform and requested that the producers return to the bargaining table. On May 15, Hawks was elected second vice president of the guild, replacing Frank Tuttle, and was also
returned to the twelve-man board of directors. At the same time, Capra was elected president of the 150-member organization, succeeding King Vidor, while Woody Van Dyke supplanted Lewis Milestone as first vice president.

When the SDG formally filed with the National Labor Relations Board on August 2, claiming that the major Hollywood studios were violating the Wagner Act and employing unfair
labor practices in refusing to negotiate with the guild, the stage was set for the final phase of the directors’ battle for full recognition by the producers. In mid-August, with Schenck and Zanuck finally back from an extended European trip, Capra called on Hawks and Van Dyke to rejoin him on the committee to negotiate with Zanuck, who spoke on behalf of the producers. After an initial meeting between
the two sides on August 21, Zanuck announced that, with
Hollywood’s international reputation at stake, “the civil war in the film industry must be ended.” Responding to Zanuck’s promising suggestions that an agreement was at hand, Capra, Hawks, and Van Dyke gave upbeat reports to membership at a meeting the following evening and proposed a postponement of the NLRB hearings.

The producers, however,
quickly backtracked, reiterating their specious argument that directors were actually part of management and insisting on negotiating with full-fledged directors separately from assistant directors and unit managers. It took until February, and the threat of an implied directors’ strike and boycott of the imminent Academy Awards, but the producers finally agreed to recognize the guild and enter
into collective bargaining with directors. Ratification of the basic agreement, which finally did exclude unit managers but embraced certain creative rights for directors, such as two weeks’ preparation time and “consultation” on casting, editing, and second-unit work, came on May 1, 1939.

For Hawks, this formative period marked the peak of his active involvement in guild affairs. From here on,
he attended few meetings and was often in arrears with dues payments. The tedium of organizational politics, as well as the liberal labor-movement orientation of Hollywood unions in general, was not for him. Selfishly, he had got what he wanted out of the guild’s formation—a bit more power over his own work, something he had been accruing on his own in any event.

On June 10, the Los Angeles area’s
latest racetrack, Hollywood Park, or “Warner Park,” as it was dubbed within the industry, debuted in Ingle-wood. The grand opening,
Variety
observed, “was distinctly a Warner Bros. production, with the Warners doing everything but ride a horse.” Responding to Hollywood’s craze for the ponies, a passion they shared, the brothers Warner built the attractive and luxurious facility as a rival to Hal
Roach’s Santa Anita track east of the city. Its first season ran through July 23, and Hollywood Park instantly became a magnet for showbiz socialites, high rollers, and self-styled horse owners and experts, including Hawks.

In late June, Bill Hawks married Virginia Walker, whom Howard had prominently featured as Cary Grant’s sniffy fiancée in
Bringing Up Baby
. For Howard Hawks, it was largely
a recreational summer of going to the track, outings with Peter and David, making the rounds of nightspots with his eye constantly out for aspiring young starlets, and working out ideas for his upcoming film project. By summer’s end, things would come together for him in very big ways on two major fronts.

On August 30, Hawks spent the evening gambling at the Clover Club, an exclusive enclave
for the film-business elite on the Sunset Strip. Heading out of the private gambling salon, he noticed his acquaintance Albert (Cubby) Broccoli dancing with a very attractive young woman he’d never seen before. Afterward he took Cubby aside and, in his drawling, completely casual manner, asked, “Who’s the girl you’re with? I’d like to meet her.” And so it was that Howard Hawks met Nancy Raye Gross,
who, at a glance, was just Howard’s cup of tea: a strikingly beautiful twenty-one-year-old, she had flashing eyes, a ready smile, and, at five feet, eight-and-a-half inches, a model’s physique. She also possessed notable composure and a stylish, well-bred manner that was immediately apparent, as well as a sharp, no-nonsense wit that belied her age and proved instantly appealing to the sophisticated
Hawks.

After a couple of dances, Hawks pulled out his usual line—“Do you want to be in movies?”—and was startled when his companion replied in the negative; it wasn’t often that such a dazzling young woman making the rounds in Hollywood had no interest in becoming an actress. Regrouping quickly, however, Hawks, instead of asking her for a real date, invited her for a swim at his house the next
day.

Aware of Hawks’s industry reputation and struck by his imposing looks and sartorial elegance, young Miss Gross accepted. She was even more impressed when she arrived at 1230 Benedict Canyon; unlike most of the ostentatious and phony-looking Hollywood homes she had seen, this “was a beautiful, proper house … a lovely fieldstone building. The interior was English country house at its best,
with tasteful chintz fabrics, real furniture, an excellent staff, and good food.” After their swim, Hawks intently questioned his guest about her background, her interests, and why she had come to Los Angeles.

What he found out was that “Slim,” as she was already known, had been born in Salinas, California—Steinbeck country—and had been raised, along with her beautiful blond sister, Theodora
(Teddie), who was five years older, and her brother, Buddy, who was three years younger, in Pacific Grove, a small, sleepy beach resort town on the northern end of the Monterey Peninsula. Her father, Edward, was a prosperous businessman who owned much of what Steinbeck made famous in
Cannery Row
, and she grew up as a spirited, adventurous child. Although she was well brought up by her mother,
née Raye Nell Boyer, and Raye’s own mother, “Auntie Rydie,” who also lived at the house, the family was not a happy one because of her father’s severe, intolerant, unloving character. Although he himself
was born Catholic, he had dropped the religion, and he hated Catholics, including the many Italians who worked for him, as well as Jews. Racially prejudiced and politically right-wing, the willful
and hardworking Edward Gross was almost a caricature of a smug, close-minded Germanic tyrant in the style of the Kaiser—big-bellied, double-chinned, and, from a kid’s point of view, no fun. He detested Christmas, never acknowledged birthdays, and would never allow his children to have friends over to play.

Family life was largely joyless and grim whenever Father was around, but the atmosphere
turned truly tragic in the winter of 1928. In a dreadful accident, eight-year-old Buddy’s long nightshirt was ignited by embers from the fireplace; the screaming child was chased around the living room by his mother and siblings, and much of his body was burned by the time Raye managed to wrap him in a carpet. Called home, Edward gave blood for a transfusion in an attempt to save his son’s life,
but to no avail.

Buddy’s horrible death irrevocably tore the family apart. From that day on, Edward took Buddy’s death out on his wife, blaming her for not saving him and even designing a family mausoleum with only four spaces, for him and his three children—Raye was to be excluded. Within a year, Teddie and Nancy were sent to convent school, where they became estranged from each other. Edward
moved out of the house, leaving Raye alone there with her mother. Shortly after Teddie’s graduation she, too, abruptly left the house and never spoke to her mother or sister again, turning instead to her father, who made her his business partner and heir apparent. Naturally, this brought Nancy closer to her mother, who in her divorce from Edward won a sufficient settlement to live comfortably in
a Carmel hotel and allow Nancy to grow up with a measure of stylish luxuries, which included personal lessons in horseback riding, tennis, and swimming, as well as entrée into the area’s monied social set.

At seventeen, Nancy met a wealthy, twenty-one-year-old socialite and brooding intellectual with whom she fell in love, and midway through her final year at her Dominican convent school she
dropped out. The skinny teenager’s excuse was ill health, and in search of a warm climate, her mother financed a winter-long stay in the restorative warmth of Death Valley. Staying at the comfortable but staid Furnace Creek Inn, which attracted some show-business clientele, the vivacious youngster attracted a good deal of attention. In time, she was taken under the wing of film stars Warner Baxter
and William Powell. (Coincidentally, Baxter was about to start work for Hawks in
The Road to Glory
, while Powell, who had worked for the director in
Paid to Love
, would shortly become engaged to Hawks’s momentary
flame Jean Harlow.) Powell, in particular, took a proprietary, fatherly interest in the budding beauty, and it was he who dubbed her “Slim Princess,” of which the “Slim” part stuck. An
initial visit to Los Angeles, during which Bill Powell invited Slim and her mother to lunch, whetted the young woman’s appetite for a more glamorous, exciting life. Her circumstances allowed her to travel to Los Angeles for a few days each month and to stay at the elegant Beverly Wilshire Hotel; before long she became a regular guest of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies at San Simeon, even
traveling with them privately to Mexico as well as their northern California ranch, Wyntoon. In the process, she also became friends with numerous film personalities, notably Cary Grant and David Niven.

By early 1938, her grandmother had died. Feeling the irrevocable pull of Hollywood, its social scene and its eligible bachelors, Slim persuaded her mother to move with her to Los Angeles. They
moved into a house on Sunset Boulevard near UCLA, and Slim was just getting the lay of the land socially when, after attending a prizefight with Broccoli and
King Kong
star Bruce Cabot, she met Howard Hawks. Even the most amateur psychologist wouldn’t have a hard time figuring out what would have attracted Slim to Hawks: she had always been in need of a strong, positive father figure, and Hawks—gray-haired,
commanding, gentlemanly in an Old World sort of way, conservative, Germanic in his unbending reserve, and, at forty-two, literally old enough to be her father—filled the bill in virtually every possible way. She was especially struck by Hawks’s “candid” blue eyes (others more often compared them to ice), which reminded her of her father’s, which were “the most piercing light blue eyes
I’ve ever seen. It was as if a pale fire burned in them.”

At the same time, Nancy Gross clearly had her eye out for the big catch. Trained in the social graces and like catnip to men, she never in her life seriously entertained the notion of work, and each of her three marriages represented a step up on the social and financial ladder. Superficially educated in literature, quite knowledgeable
about classical music, already fashion conscious, and extremely at home at outdoorsy activities from riding to fishing, she easily outclassed most of the women her age in Hollywood; and, since she had no professional aspirations, she lacked the often off-putting edge of aggressiveness and desperation of young hopefuls on the make.

None of this was lost on Hawks. In all these important respects,
Slim represented a welcome contrast to most of the women he knew. More than that, she was a breath of extremely fresh air after the years with the unstable, retiring, enervating Athole. Although he was never pushy, Hawks could
barely contain himself, and after their swim date, he invited Slim back another day for lunch. On this occasion, he trotted out his three kids and announced that he was
married. Slim was shocked at this revelation, and when Hawks explained that his wife was mentally disturbed and currently incapacitated in a home, Slim momentarily considered bolting. But she was already hooked, enchanted perhaps not as much by the man she had known only for a few days but by what she called “the package,” which included the “career, the house, the four cars, the yacht—this was the
life for me.” Over the years, some would privately call her a well-bred, high-class gold digger interested in social climbing above all, but Hawks didn’t see it that way. For him, she would be the perfect trophy wife, the ultimate “girl” who would join him in the things he liked to do and always be beautiful and sporty and his. The things she couldn’t already do, such as shoot and read scripts,
he would teach her. And all his friends would be impressed and jealous.

For their third date, Slim had to get permission from her mother to stay out all night with Hawks in order to accompany him to the Bendix Air Races, a speed race from California to New York that started at 4
A.M.
at the Burbank airport. As Slim remembered the exciting night, “I was sitting on top of a station wagon in order
to have a better view of the departing planes. I said something that made Howard laugh. He was standing below me, holding on to the luggage rack. He looked up at me and said, ‘You’re the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen. You’re going to marry me.’ ‘Well, we’ll see,’ I said. ‘But thanks anyway.’”

With that, Hawks and Slim began their romance in earnest, although it would be three years before
his divorce from Athole would come through. At the time, it was a very difficult matter to divorce someone who had been judged mentally incompetent. However, even though she had been institutionalized, Athole had not been declared legally insane, which ultimately provided Hawks with just the loophole he needed to push the divorce through. During this time, although Slim continued to officially
live with her mother, she and Hawks established a very open and public relationship, going everywhere together, entertaining, traveling to Mexico and Palm Springs, hiding nothing. Slim also quickly established a strong bond with the Hawks kids, especially the boys Peter, then fourteen, and David, soon to be nine, who adored her youthful energy and almost tomboy spirit of sport and fun.