Living With Miss G (5 page)

I was pleased when her mischievous sense of humor returned and she
surprised me with a statement that I thought meant she had got another lover.
“God Almighty, Rene, do you know what that old man is trying to do to
me?”
“What old man’s doing what to you?” I asked.
“Charles Laughton!”
I remembered that great British film where Laughton, as Henry VIII, was
guzzling greasy chicken legs and throwing the bones over his shoulders to the
dogs, then leering sexily at the cleavages of his sequence of wives before
chopping their heads off. Generally, he was behaving like a dirty old King. I
shuddered to think what he was proposing to do with Miss G.
I said, “You mean he’s……?” I couldn’t imagine what he could be doing. I
should have known from that innocent gleam in Miss G’s eyeballs.
“Every time we get an hour or so break, he takes me aside.”
“And…?” I urged an answer.
“He reads me passages from the Bible,” Miss G explained.
Well, I’d heard all about these sexy clergymen! “You mean he’s a religious
nut, and that he… ?” I sputtered.
By now Miss G was making a choking noise in her throat like a crow
cawing, and I knew I’d been had.
“No! Rene, sweetie, Charles Laughton is a famous and brilliant
Shakespearean actor, and he insists that I have talent. He insists on improving
my diction so I can hit the boards from Broadway to London. Isn’t he a dear? He
really means it. He reads me passages from the Bible and from Shakespeare and
I have to read them back under his instruction.”
If she lost out on her romance with Robert Taylor, she certainly made up
for it with her great friendship with the wonderful Charles Laughton.
When she started her next star-studded MGM production,
The Great
Sinner
, she played the aristocratic beauty, Countess Pauline Ostrovski, and she
said, “There you are, Rene! Charles Laughton will be proud of me!”
The other stars were Gregory Peck, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Ethel
Barrymore, Frank Morgan and Agnes Moorehead.
In
The Great Sinner
, it was Gregory Peck who gained Miss G’s eternal
devotion. She would come back to the dressing room whispering her admiration.
“Do you know what he does, Rene? I sneaked a look at his script and margin of
each page are tiny notes about his part – voice changes, emphasis, mannerisms –
little touches about every scene he plays. I’ve never see anyone so thorough in
my life.”
Miss G, as I have already mentioned, had gone to bed with two out of three
of her last leading men, but Gregory Peck who, as he admitted, certainly noticed
this luminous creature who was playing opposite him, had no intention of
joining the sequence.
He had played against dozens of lovely ladies before, and Hollywood was
awash with them. Miss G and Peck hit it off from the moment they met and
became best of friends. Their friendship was renewed years later when he and
his lovely wife Veronique were on location in Australia making
On the Beach
.
With his observant eyes, Gregory Peck also noticed how Miss G’s stunning
beauty could affect any movie set. The rest of the cast, highly professional and
internationally famous, would be acting their heads off while Miss G was
standing around without a line of dialogue, but it was apparent that every eye
would be focused on her. The same interest occurred when the film reached its
cinema audiences.
Like Charles Laughton, Gregory Peck also recognized Miss G’s immense
potential and tried to encourage her to believe in her talent and work at it. She
never did. She lacked that ambition and lacked that confidence. She made her
mark because she was always playing herself, her natural self.
At the start of
The Great Sinner
, everything seemed set for a very good
movie, maybe a great movie. L.B. Mayer might have written the publicity blurb
himself, starting with “MGM sets new standards with this magnificent historical
drama.”
Based upon Dostoevsky’s classic novel,
The Gambler
, and with a
wonderful cast, Christopher Isherwood as one of the screenwriters, and with
director Robert Siodmak, who had been so successful in the film-noir treatment
of
The Killers
, it should have been memorable.
What happened? Like so many movies based upon historical fact or fancy,
it never came alive. It was turgid. Despite the talented cast, it did not grip the
imagination. You did not believe in it. Despite the costly sets, Sydney
Guileroff’s wonderful hairstyles and the magnificent costumes, there was only
one word for it – boring! As far as I was concerned, the only line in the film I
really enjoyed was when Miss G, on her knees beside Gregory Peck, stared up at
him with dewy eyes, and whispered in a tremulous voice, “You’ve won me at
roulette. Now what are you going to do with me?”
You need strength of character to answer that.
My own small moment of drama was not quite of the same stature. Miss G
and a rather noisy selection of our friends from cast and crew were crowded into
our apartment for a small party. All had a lot to drink. It got very late and I got
very tired, so – as was my usual habit – I slid away to bed.
Who was in my bed, grinning at me and beckoning that I should join him?
Director Robert Siodmak! I screamed. He held up his hand to quiet me, putting
his finger to his lips so I would quiet down and recognize the importance of his
desires.
I screamed louder. Next door, they were making a lot of noise, so maybe
nobody heard me. I yelled, “Out! Out!” and opened my mouth for the third
piercing shriek. That convinced him. He threw back the covers, grabbed his
shoes and bolted through the door. I suppose Siodmak could have passed it off
as one of those casting couch incidents, “Just checking if she was right for the
part.”
To this day, I’m not sure if anyone had noticed what he was up to. As I’ve
said, it was a pretty noisy party. I only told Miss G. She screamed with laughter,
and said, “You should have kicked him in the ass on his way out!”
Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe someone knew more about
Robert Taylor’s romance with Miss G than Taylor thought possible. It did seem
a bit odd that Mrs. Robert Taylor – Barbara Stanwyck – should be playing the
lead in Miss G’s next picture,
East Side, West Side
. Miss Stanwyck played the
beautiful East Side hostess married to James Mason, and Miss G played the
West Side floozy who was the light of his life.
Barbara Stanwyck was a beautiful woman and a talented actress with a
string of successful movies behind her. The fact was that her marriage to Robert
Taylor, if not on the rocks, was certainly bouncing around in rough seas. As the
older and senior actress, outside her dialogue in the film, Miss Stanwyck
scarcely spoke a word to Miss G and treated her with the disdain she used in her
film characterization. Maybe some friend of hers had whispered something in
her ear. Hollywood gossip spread around like flu germs.
Certainly in the very first opening shot of the film, the camera identified
Miss G in the sexiest pose of her entire film career. She was standing silhouetted
in a film booth against a lit background. She was wearing a dress that was skintight, and molded to every contour of her body. The camera started at the top of
her head, and slowly, very slowly, moved downwards to her feet. We could see
at once why James Mason’s character had forgotten that he sat at an office desk
and had a decent golf handicap, and why Miss Stanwyck’s character was cross
with him.
The scene made Miss G the definitive symbol of sexual desire. She used to
say demurely, “I think my audiences have always confused my film characters
with my private life.”
I could have added “Hurrah!” It certainly got us places and made us many
friends. If Miss Stanwyck had anything to do with it, she certainly did us a good
turn.

No big surprise, but the ubiquitous Howard Hughes popped backed into
our lives around that time for another go at Miss G. From the day I met Miss G,
she was always mixed up with Howard Hughes. He was one of the richest and
most powerful men in the United States, and he was a serious factor in both
Miss G’s life and mine for the seventeen years we knew him.

To begin with, his wealth was inherited. His father, in the early years of oil
exploration, had invented a new oil drill bit, the cutting edge at the end of the
pipe that bores downwards through the earth. It revolutionized the industry.

Howard, however, was more interested in aviation than oil. He was an
exceptional aeronautical designer and a superb pilot. His pioneering non-stop
flight around the globe, not long before the Second World War started, in his
own plane, with his own crew, gave him world fame. His wheeling and dealing
in a variety of enterprises gave him vast government contracts.

One of the major reasons for his success was his determination never to
take no for an answer. Failure to achieve an objective could not be tolerated in
the Howard Hughes philosophy; and when that determination was backed by
billions of dollars, he rarely failed at all. He also followed this principle in his
pursuit and conquest of beautiful women – certainly with Katharine Hepburn
and later Ava Gardner.

Miss G had been acquainted with him off and on for a bit and she liked
him well enough, but I have to say that my first contact with this wealthy super
power was not a happy one. Miss G had appointed me as the lady who answers
the telephone. I screened the calls, repeating the caller’s name loudly enough to
give Miss G time to smile and reach for the receiver or look anguished and
shake her head.

That particular morning, a sharp voice demanded, “Ava Gardner there?” In
my best modulated accent I said, “Who’s calling please?” In a loud and irritated
accent the voice said, “Why?”

Still maintaining my ladylike accent, I said, “Because if you don’t give
your name, you ain’t gonna know if Miss G is here or not.” The phone banged
down in my ear. Over the next two or three days, the phone was regularly
slammed down in my ear. The caller obviously thought he might catch Miss G
herself answering the phone. Eventually, Hughes, who was reputed to hate Jews
and blacks, decided to come to terms with reality and grudgingly conceded my
existence with a laconic, “Rene, this is Howard Hughes.”

Sometimes Miss G was in and sometimes she was out. I remember the time
when she came back to the apartment looking very thoughtful. She had been out
to dinner with Hughes. His car had been parked outside, with Miss G in it for
quite a while. I could imagine what had happened. She laid her handbag on the
table, kicked off her shoes and accepted the martini.

She said, “Howard’s asked me to marry him again.”
“So?” I said, “What did you say this time?”
It was what Hughes said that mattered: “Ava, I know you don’t love me,

but maybe in time you could learn to do that.”
“He sounded so sad and resigned,” Miss G said. “I felt real sorry for him.
But there’s no way….”
We both sipped our martinis reflectively, and Miss G went on. “I said,
‘Howard, maybe I will learn to love you, but I can’t give you any guarantee. For
the time being can’t we just keep on being good friends?’”
I said, “Miss G, that is the oldest Hollywood script writer’s line of all
time.”
Miss G sighed and said, “As if I don’t know it, but how do you say ‘no’
politely? Rene, you know as well as I do it’s great to have a guy like Howard
around to smooth out life’s little difficulties. You want to go somewhere in a
hurry, you want to get a car to the airport, you want to talk to someone in the
know, Howard arranges it. You want a plane ride to romantic places; Howard
has half of TWA waiting, but getting married to him….” Miss G pulled a face
and left the sentence unfinished.
I said, “If you’d listened to Bappie and she’d had any influence on you,
you would have been to the altar with him long ago.”
“My eldest sister just can’t understand how anyone in their right mind can
turn down the richest man in the world,” said Miss G with her usual eloquent
simplicity.
“Dead right,” I said, and as Miss G looked at me suspiciously, I hurried on,
“and ninety percent of the women in the world would think so too.”
Miss G said, “That weekend he took me up to San Francisco and I refused
his treasure trove of jewels, burned scars on Bappie’s heart. She’s also never
forgiven me for nearly knocking his head off when I threw the bronze bell at
him in Palm Springs.” Miss G often recalled those times when we were in need
of a laugh. The San Francisco saga had occurred in the early days of Miss G and
Howard Hughes’ relationship. Hughes had decided to pull the “rich man and
pretty little actress” ploy—deluge her with presents and her heart’s desires, and
then she would fall into bed with him.
Usually he didn’t have to try so hard with women. The mere idea of
Howard Hughes’ patronage was enough to make most girls quake at the knees.
Let’s face it. Miss G was a bit dumb and trusting at the time. “How about going
up to San Francisco for a glorious weekend of fun and games?” he had said.
Since, so far in their relationship, Hughes had behaved like the perfect Texan
gentleman, Miss G had agreed.
They went by train, first class on the Super Chef, chilled champagne and
all the goodies. The best hotel in San Francisco on the top of Nob Hill, with a
suite, lounge, and bedroom, and Mr. Hughes in a small bedroom, not necessarily
to be used, next door. More chilled champagne waiting in the ice bucket in the
suite. There was a super dinner with wine, and Hughes presented her with a
glorious gold ring set with diamonds, and there was a visit to the best store in
town, where Hughes left her to purchase anything she desired. But Miss G did
not buy anything. There was dancing at a ritzy nightclub into the small hours,
and then back to the hotel in a haze of champagne and giggles with the stage set
for the moment supreme. Hughes had more surprises for her stored in a
cardboard box in that small bedroom.
Miss G had surprises of a different sort. Beside the elevator door, she
spotted the piles of Sunday newspapers ready for delivery and flicked out one of
the comic sections. In the elevator, she began to read and continue to giggle. She
was still giggling when they reached the suite, and Miss G settled in an armchair
to go on reading. The pop of another bottle of iced Dom Perignon did not disturb
her, and when Howard came across to give her a glass, she waved him away,
saying that she had had enough.
Miss G was always convulsed with laughter when she recalled the episode.
“God Almighty, Rene, can you imagine what a dumb little broad I was? Here’s
Howard, he’s given this little moron the time of her life—luxury, jewels,
champagne, dancing, a night on the town—and now he expects his little chick to
fly into his arms. And what’s she doing—reading the comics! What does
Howard do? He blows his top. He brings his hand down and smashes the paper
out of my hands. What do I do? I’m shocked and outraged. I bolt into the
bedroom, lock the door, and shove a heavy chair under the door handle. I’m not
talking to that brute again, ever! Now I’m stuck in this bedroom. Fortunately,
the place is so full of bottles of chilled champagne that there’s half a bottle still
left on the dressing table. I drink that, leap into bed, pull the covers over my
head and sleep.
“I’m awakened at dawn. Dawn! Can you imagine? And there’s a voice at
the door saying, ‘It’s Bappie; open up!’ Where the hell has she come from? How
did she get here? Howard has rung her in L.A., laid on a car to take her to the
airport, laid on a special plane, and another car at San Francisco airport to speed
her to the hotel. She must intervene on his behalf. He’s sorry. He’s full of
apologies. He has all this jewelry he was going to give me as tokens of his true
love. Bappie’s even carrying a piece of the bloody stuff, some diamond and
emerald encrusted necklace. There was a lot more like this back in Howard’s
bedroom. Bappie can’t believe that I’m not interested. I think she would have
given her left and right arms for the stuff. I send her back telling her to tell him
he can stick it all where the monkey stuffs his nuts, and as he’d brought Bappie
up on a private plane, he could bloody well make another one available to take
me back to L.A. now!”
I often wondered about Howard Hughes. How could a man of such
intelligence and courage and inventiveness, a man so worldly, put up with Miss
G? The answer was simple – he was besotted with her. Maybe the fact that
unlike all the other women in his life who after due courting and pursuit had
surrendered, this little Tar Heel from North Carolina refused all his enticements,
all his offers.
He had said, “Ava, you have the perfect body and the perfect beauty. You
are flawless, and therefore you must have perfect things to complete that
flawlessness.” One offer was a huge new yacht. He had already owned one
huge, sleek, shining vessel named the
Southern Cross
, where he had courted and
captured Katharine Hepburn. He would purchase another, and he and Miss G
would sail the world together. She could choose her own films, her own leading
men and directors and scriptwriters. He would heap upon her furs, jewels, and
wonderful places to live. Not even Robin Hood or the Sultan of Brunei could
have offered more.
Miss G was not appreciative. She was inclined to add, “Rene, I don’t think
he cared if I had perfect brains or a scrap of intelligence, or the ability to argue
with him. Who wants to be flawless? A plaster saint? Hell, you miss all the fun.”
There were other things about Howard Hughes that Miss G found hard to
tolerate, including his proprietary claims. Once Hughes had paid the price, he
was inclined to think he had dominant rights. After Mickey Rooney and Miss G
got divorced after just over a year of fulminating marriage, there was a short
cooling period, and then they renewed their friendship. They were both sexy
youngsters full of springtime urges, and on several occasions an invitation to
dinner culminated in a night in bed. Miss G found this great fun and who did it
offend? They had been married, hadn’t they?
It sure offended Howard Hughes, however. He had spies who reported to
him. They related their suspicions. After all, Miss G was, well almost, his
fiancée, and he had his rights.
Between pictures, Miss G had been taking a short holiday with Bappie and
her boyfriend, Charlie Guest, an employee of Howard Hughes, in a rented house
in Palm Springs. Hughes relayed a message to Charlie from his high-level
meeting with Air Force brass in Washington, saying he was arriving in Palm
Springs by aircraft that night and he would like Miss G to meet him at the
airport.
Miss G was never keen on that sort of arrangement. She said no and went
to bed early. She was awakened as Hughes strode into her bedroom. She said,
“As soon as I woke and saw him there with that cross look on his face, I knew,
and he knew, that he had made a fool of himself. He had expected to find his
flawless babe in bed with her ex-husband! I couldn’t help smiling, and that made
him even more furious. I hate being spied on like that, so I said ever so sweetly.
'Why, Howard, fancy seeing you. If you just wait downstairs, I’ll slip into a robe
and come down.”
Miss G could be a real nasty female when she wanted to. She thought she
had seen the last of him after the San Francisco fiasco, and now he was playing
this sort of game with her. Of course, one of the things you don’t do is make a
laughing stock out of Howard Hughes. He was waiting for her in the bar, angry
because she hadn’t been considerate enough to come out to the airfield. It was
only a field in Palm Springs in those days, and at night cars would line up in the
grass and turn on their headlights to light it up for him to land. Miss G shrugged,
and the quarrel started. He hit her hard across the face, giving her a black eye.
Bappie made her opinion quite clear to me and anybody else who cared to
listen. Why didn’t that “stupid kid sister of mine,” a favorite line of hers, grab
Howard Hughes with both hands and start spending his money? Bappie was
always a realist. If only that stupid kid sister realized what Hughes could do for
her film career to start with. Didn’t she know that he owned RKO, that as a
powerful producer, he had already made two smash hits,
Hell’s Angels
, the
movie about the fighter pilots of the First World War? What about the western,
The Outlaw
, starring Jane Russell? She’s heard he’d even designed the bra that
contained Jane’s beautiful frontage. Why couldn’t that silly young sister of hers
wake up?
Anyone wishing to know more about Howard Hughes’ specific
peculiarities should read Katharine Hepburn’s entrancing autobiography,
Me
,
which to me was an eye-opener. Both Miss G and I were aware that Howard
Hughes had known Hepburn long before our time, in the thirties, but we had no
idea of the extent of her involvement with Hughes. In particular, we certainly
had not known about one aspect of his personality—his morphine addiction—
although we were very close when that aspect became part of his life.
Katharine Hepburn arrived in Hollywood in 1932. Miss G was ten years
old at the time, so their respective romances with Hughes were far apart.
Katharine first met Hughes on a golf course. He landed his plane not much more
than a short nine iron shot from where she was playing. She was not impressed.
She was playing with Cary Grant at the time, and Grant was a close friend of
Hughes. An exception was made, and he was invited to dinner. Katharine
disliked this tall, handsome and gangly Texan. She refused to meet his gaze.
Hughes was stricken. He couldn’t take his eyes off Hepburn, and pursuit was
immediate.
At that time, Hepburn was a new young star rising to fame in American
theater. She went on tours across the nation. She played in Boston. Surprise.
Hughes happened to be in Boston, and why didn’t they have dinner together?
Hepburn continued her tours – Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago—and in every city
Hughes was ensconced in a suite on the same floor as hers.
Hepburn was at first only amused, then intrigued, and finally fascinated by
this extremely original and talented male. She began to like him. There were
more dinners and flowers. He taught her to fly. They played very good golf
together. They landed his seaplane on sunlit seas and swam off the wings. They
had fun and champagne and laughter on his super white yacht,
The Southern
Cross
. They were in love!
Although they became lovers, they did not choose to marry. That did not
seem necessary to endorse their mutual happiness. They did share Hughes’
California house which backed onto the acres of the Wilshire Country Club, so
whenever they felt the urge they could slip through the hedge and hit balls.
Hepburn explained that through those years they both fell madly in love but
couldn’t really understand why. And why she decided to go back east to
continue her career while Hughes stayed in the west, they couldn’t really
understand that either. It happened, and they drifted apart.
In the thirties, Hughes had founded TWA and Hughes Aircraft Company,
and his exploits as a pilot were well known and considered at times bizarre.
Miss G knew that in the past he had survived two serious crashes. In wartime
Hughes Aircraft played an important role, and Miss G, from Howard’s
conversations, learned he would personally test fly his specialist fighter planes.
I was bemused by this information. “He test flies his own planes?”
“Sure does,” Miss G said.
“With all that dough, he can’t afford a fleet of test pilots?”
“Rene,” said Miss G reprovingly, “you’ve got to understand Howard
Hughes. He designs and builds the plane. It’s his baby. He is not trusting his
baby to anyone else. First time it climbs into the skies, Howard is at the
controls.”
Then one day that chilling phone call arrived. Howard Hughes had crashed
and was not expected to live. Glen Odekirk, Howard’s private pilot, whom we
both knew well, spelled it out for us. At first the doctors gave him little chance.
Then they raised the odds to fifty-fifty, but it was going to be a close call. It was
days before Miss G was allowed in to see him. She reported back at martini
time.
“He’s still half dead, but the half of him that’s still alive is being regularly
injected with morphine, and that makes him bright, and if not logical, cheerful.
Miss G explained the crash: “The way he tells it, he got the plane off the ground
like a swallow rising, and was soon doing four hundred miles an hour.
Everything was okay, except that apparently Howard could only steer the plane
to the right. Now Rene, if you want to land an aircraft, you’ve either got to be
able to go straight or turn to the left!”
I could see that Miss G was about as good an aeronautical engineer as I
was. “Sure thing,” I said, “And I guess Mr. Hughes didn’t have a lot of time to
experiment?”