The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood

6 Hollywood Parties

Chapter 6 HOLLYWOOD PARTIES NOT KNOWING WHAT BEING A SCREENWRITER in films was going to be like, I had high aspirations and expectations. for weeks after I turned in my script on Dance Madness, I was deluged with stories , plays, and scripts and asked to read them. Most were garbage, plain garbage, and I said so. One or two had possibilities, but I never heard any more about them after they reached Mr. Rapt's desk. Meanwhile , I waited with bated breath for my next assignment. The big talk about MGM was something called The Big Parade, in production with John Gilbert and Renee Adoree, directed by King Vidor. Light, fluffy Dance Madness was not the kind of story I wanted to do again. The Big Parade was, and I was overjoyed to be connected with the studio making it. At last, a talented young director, King Vidor, who dreamed, too, of making better fare, had persuaded an equally young producer named Irving Thalberg that art and box office could mix profitably. They would make a picture depicting war as it really was. The daily rushes of The Big Parade drew ecstatic praise from all quarters. I sneaked in and was overwhelmed by what I saw. Soldiers with dirty, haunted faces. Strong stuff, my kind of stuff-realism. How I ached to work on a great story with a meaningful theme warranting the production that The Big Parade was getting. Later, when Vidor and I met and discovered that we shared the same dreams, he outlined an original story he had written and wanted me to work on. But my Pinocchio-nosed producer would not release me. Seven years later, 68 Hollywood Parties 69 King Vidor made that story. It was called Our Daily Bread and was a critical depiction of the living conditions of working-class people. Iwas finally happily assigned to the newlyformed NormaShearer unit, to be supervised by Carey Wilson, who, in turn, would work under the supervision of father Rapf. Norma was a budding actress, deemed worthy of stardom after a succession of light, low-budget films had proven to be moneymakers. Norma was a plain-looking gal, really, with a cast in one eye that was the bane of cameramen. Plain though she was in person, she had a magic quality under the klieg lights. She was absolutely transformed by camera magic. Not a brainy girL she had good common sense and a fine family background. Her widowed mother had come from Canada and entered her two daughters as extras to work under D.W. Griffith at Mamaroneck in the East. Norma's sister dropped out of pictures, but Norma had that something extra and kept on working. There was a brother, too-Douglas, who later became head of the MGM sound department. Norma and I, and other writers, stars, and studio personnel, had a special table in the MGM commissary adjacent to the private dining room of Louis B. Mayer. He often shared his favorite homemade chicken soup and potato latkas with us. At that table, also, were the private secretaries of the executive producers: Madeleine Ruthvin, secretary to Mr. Rapf, and Margaret Bennett, secretary to Louis B. Mayer. I single out these two women now because they were a vital part of MGM and yet, in another sense, not a part of it at all. While they knew about everything that was going on, they were aloof from their tinsel surroundings-this petty, competitive business. Both could have become independently wealthy if they had listened to their bosses and purchased the stock and real estate recommended as surefire investments . They had the inner ear, and through them, so did I. "We" were told to invest in Beverly Hills real estate-back then just a cow pasture. They were urged to invest in Palm Springs real estate-then unpopulated desert but later the winter playground of the wealthy. Speculation was not in their genes or mine. We were too critical of our so-called betters, did not respect them, and therefore did not emulate them. The studio waste, dirty politics, devious schemes, head-chopping , ruthless ambition, greed, power out of control, debauchery so prevalent in this girlie business-in our young political eyes these were all manifest consequences of unleashed capitalism. Here were three 70 The Shocking Miss Pilgrim socialists. longing for a better. fairer. more disciplined world than the one in...