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20 Losing Koran 1934–1940 With Koran in tow, Mae fled to New York in hopes of reviving her faltering career. While skidding out of control in her personal and professional life, the ex-princess clung to those she had always felt she owed a debt: her adoring public. “They’re part of me and I’m part of them,” she never tired of saying. Mae had no concept of the passing parade, or that her adoring public had moved on to other idols. Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, mere extras in The Merry Widow almost ten years before, were now top movie stars. Ann Pennington and Fanny Brice had faded into the background. Valentino was dead, and Pola Negri had gone to Germany. Vilma Banky had retired from the screen and was content as Mrs. Rod La Rocque, with her husband now enjoying sporadic supporting roles in films. Mae had little understanding that her time, as grand and glorious as it was, was no more. With no one to guide her toward reality, Mae bowed in the direction of anyone willing to give her acclaim. In September 1935, for example, Mae announced she was leaving for China, where she claimed a theater was being named in her honor. Her films, popular a decade or so before in the United States, were just reaching China. Her star was just ascending in the faraway East. Mae never made the trip. Columnist James B. Reston watched what he termed Mae’s struggle “against the inevitable end of her astonishing theatrical career.” His sobering message to Mae ran in papers around the country. “It is not surprising that Mae Murray, who has been singing and dancing in this town since she was twelve years of age, should find it difficult to live without the applause of the crowd. She does everything she can now to perpetuate the old glory. 252 Mae Murray She dresses for the street just as she did for many of the parts in her films, with a few concessions here and there to the style of the day.” Reston urged Mae to gracefully walk away from the spotlight before it left her completely on a dark and empty stage. “You only need to remember that she played in the 1915 Ziegfeld Follies with Leon Errol to appreciate how long she has been in the game. Perhaps Miss Murray should consider the fate of other silent picture stars who are living here now. They have given up their pretensions, put away their desire for the money and glamour of Hollywood, and settled down to the necessary task of earning a living. It would be less than kind to point them out, working behind counters in our department stores, pushing furniture around back stage at the rehearsals, grubbing a living out of their savings in small houses along the sound.”1 When Mae returned to New York in early 1934, she and Koran moved into a hotel. At age eight, Koran rarely ventured out. “My mother was very protective of me,” he said in 2010. “In her own way, she was caring; she certainly wasn’t unkind. I think she was under a tremendous amount of pressure. My father had bilked her out of everything she had. She had to make a living.”2 When they were settled, Mae enrolled her son in Mount Saint Michael Academy in the Bronx. Then, using what little money she had, Mae slipped over to England in February, where she discussed possible stage and film work with prospective producers. Nothing came of the negotiations. She sailed back to New York on the S.S. Berengaria in mid-March. Unusually choppy waters in the North Atlantic roughed up passengers and delayed the arrival of the ship in New York Harbor. Mae, one of thirty-six passengers who were slightly injured on the voyage, proudly showed reporters her bandaged hand and said the bumpy ride atop forty-foot waves had been “thrilling.”3 In May 1934, her $300,000 suit against Tiffany was heard in the Manhattan supreme court. Mae testified that in 1920 she contracted to make eight pictures in return for 25 percent of the earnings. In 1924, after the films were complete, the company gave her $12,500. It was not until 1930 that she learned the pictures had netted $2 million, she said. After hearing testimony from both sides, Judge Aaron Steuer dismissed the case, saying Mae had failed to prove the motion...

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