Jerusalem Commands Page 8

  By now I also had the company of some of those ‘jazz-babies’ I watched on the screen. Joan Crawford, Clara Bow and Alberta Vaughan were all ladies who found me attractive enough to spend a little time with and through them, of course, I could obtain good-quality cocaine. The excellent cocaine helped me get a better grip on the truth of my situation. The remaining money in my bank account, together with the assets I had brought with me, would keep me for little more than a month (especially with regular visits to Madame France’s) and I had no wish to borrow money from Mrs Cornelius. She had of course made her generous purse available to me. I was anxious to avoid association with Hearst for a while. I recalled my meeting with Mucker Hever’s erstwhile partner, Goldfish. He had suggested I send him my synopsis of White Knight and Red Queen. As always, rather than mourn a ruined opportunity, I concentrated on reviewing my immediate resources. I had no intention of becoming a full-time script-writer, but I had to earn some money quickly and this was the only way in which I might do that. I would, of course, continue to seek for my inventions a backer with more vision than Hever, an ‘angel’ whose interest in my work was moved by something more substantial than an ‘inflatable conscience’. Equally, I was determined not to take advantage of Mrs Cornelius’s offers to have her boyfriend employ me: I had learned my lesson in that area, at least for the moment!

  Thus, from the plethora of pretty, talented and sexually experienced young girls who in those days flooded the market, I found a competent typist and had her write out the plot of the play Mrs Cornelius and I had given up and down the State. In essence I performed the whole thing for her, scene by scene, while she took notes. She was able to help a little with my English spelling, which was not perfect in those days, and before long we had produced some dozen pages ready to send to the famous maverick producer, hero and victim of two great film companies, who by this time had changed his name to Goldwyn and was again starting up as a patron of quality films. ‘Rubbish,’ he often argued, ‘has no long-term shelflife. With your quality you have an investment, a high profit margin which will last you for years.’ It was this belief in quality as a matter of commercial good sense which was to win me to him and offer us both a somewhat radically different place in cinema history. My one regret is that Mrs Cornelius and I were cut from von Stroheim’s Greed. The pirate Meyer took it over and cut forty-two reels to ten! It was a travesty of what all who saw the first version agreed was the greatest movie ever made. It was a masterpiece of epic realism. I would even be prepared to say it eclipsed Birth of a Nation, but von Stroheim was never the professional Griffith was.

  Madge Puddephet, my secretary, a pretty girl from Missouri, was impressed by my casual familiarity with the personalities of the screen world. She herself was a great admirer of Mrs Cornelius and, soft-hearted as I was, I promised to get her my friend’s autograph. (Madge later became famous as Vivienne Prentiss, with a particularly large following in France. Drink ruined her but when I knew her she was a smart little jazz-baby who was amazed I should even have heard of Hannibal, let alone spent time there. I did not see any point in explaining the circumstances.) She came to my hotel twice a day and of course it was not long before our natural attraction took us, almost without realising it, to bed. Those were the years before Hollywood succumbed completely to the bourgeois ideal, the notion of the ‘normal’, and Madge provided the consolation I needed. She had been trained, like so many of these girls, by her father.

  Poor, martyred Arbuckle, whom I came to know quite well, and Hays between them sent the American movie down a road which ultimately put middle-class slacks on Mickey Mouse and replaced Pearl White and Theda Bara with Blondie and Kiss Me, Hardy. When this happened, they said America had ‘grown up’. But we had a code and a wisdom of our own and might have looked after our own had not Big Business and International Zion conspired to attack that love of liberty and tolerance which made the film community what it was in those early, innocent years when sexual liberation was something less reverent and more pleasurable than it seems nowadays. The final victory over Art came when we at last had a chance to speak, to give our own interpretations to our rôles—whereupon every artist of integrity and individuality was systematically replaced by the Nice American Guy and the All-American Girl. Clara Bow, with whom I last corresponded in 1953, knew all about the conspiracy, as did Mrs Cornelius and Norma Talmadge. Louise Brooks wrote about it. John Gilbert was destroyed by it, as was John Barrymore. Clara married. She tried to be a good girl. But it drove her mad. Her nature was free as mine. Freedom is a threat to easy profits. It is the first thing the Corporations eradicate. They substitute a range of choices and call that Freedom. But we knew what real freedom was in 1924.

  Madge herself took my manuscript to Goldfish’s office but she was only able to hand it in to a flunkey, so we were both thoroughly surprised when a telephone call the next day ordered me to visit Goldfish at four o’clock that afternoon. These were the days when he had already severed his partnership with Metropolitan and with Meyer (whose fortune, ironically, was founded on Ham). He was again an approachable eccentric aristocrat rather than one of the Hollywood kings. Samuel Goldwyn Productions had already made some highly successful and critically acclaimed films like Tarnish, In Hollywood With Potash and Perlmutter and many others. He was a typically flamboyant Warsaw Jew. Out of politeness I addressed him in Yiddish, but he insisted on English until he grew more relaxed, and returned to Yiddish in which he was more fluent. He was impressed by my story. He had been looking for something like it.

  ‘We need,’ he said gravely, ‘to show people how it is over there.’ He liked my basic plot and he thought he had just the man to direct it. ‘He’s Swedish as a matter of fact, but who’s counting?’ He chuckled at me and winked. ‘What does anybody know anyway?’ I found him a warming and engaging type, not unlike some of those who had inhabited Esau the Hairy’s, my old Odessa friends of the Slobodka. We were both nostalgic for pre-war Russia.

  Goldfish said my story had that ring of authority, had clearly come from personal experience. He asked a little about my part in the Civil War. I told him how I had actually ridden with the White Cossack Host, how I had been captured by Anarchists, how I had escaped to Istanbul. He seemed sympathetic but not greatly impressed. ‘With a lie like that you should be Roman Novaccio,’ he said. Doubtless he had heard many tall tales from newly discovered relatives and countrymen who wanted a job. I was determined not to trade on my military career, although naturally I was anxious to demonstrate to him my thorough lack of anti-Semitism. This, too, he accepted naturally, as if there were no other civilised position. Indeed he seemed a trifle discomfited by my references to Benya the Accountant and all my other Hebrew pals in Odessa. No embarrassment resulted, however, for soon we gave our whole attention to the realisation of my tale which, though changing in detail as Goldfish suggested ways in which it might be better presented on the screen, remained essentially true to my original conception. More than once he remarked how my story gripped him to his soul. He asked me how I would visualise the scene where the commander of the Women’s Battalion of Death, Tatania (a Countess before the Revolution), sentences Prince Dimitri, the White leader, to the firing squad.

  I explained that I was by training a civil engineer and that it might be better if I drew the scene for him. He handed me a block of paper and I quickly sketched out the scene—the accusation, the verdict, the sentence. Goldfish was approving. ‘Not many of us have the right talent for pictures.’ Then, abruptly, the interview was terminated. A secretary who introduced herself as Sadie escorted me to the front gates. Goldfish would let me know if the studio could use the story. Meanwhile Sadie had an envelope for me which I should sign a receipt for. I walked a block or two until I was sure of not being seen by anyone from his office, and opened the envelope. It contained a cheque for $250.00 and a letter from Goldfish himself telling me that I was now officially retained by Samuel Goldwyn Productions to write a script based on my story. He would contac
t me as soon as he returned from Berlin.

  To celebrate this further upturn in my fortunes, I took Madge to Christmas dinner at the Café Alphonse and from there we went on to a nightclub for cocktails. It was not possible to get her into the Hollywood Hotel without inviting disapproving attention so instead we booked a room for the night at Madame France’s, where we spent a memorable Yule. Everywhere soon began to go to seed, however. Even in those days, downtown Los Angeles showed evidence of social decline and the hotels were almost all what we used to call ‘commercials’. Every one of them is that now, of course. Possibly inspired by her surroundings, Madge proved to be a woman of imagination and spirit. I had, I discovered, only sampled a soupçon of her outstanding sexual menu. It was impossible to believe that she had developed certain of her appetites and proclivities in rural Missouri. I concluded, discreetly, that she was no stranger to the cheap hotel and a nom-de-guerre in the register and possibly had worked at establishments like Madame France’s; yet I came to feel a strong attachment for her and soon decided to employ her regularly as my secretary as soon as I was in work again. Even after a night’s extravagance I was still in pocket to the tune of some $150 and might reasonably expect considerably more if Goldfish were as good as his word. The money in hand would take care of my bills for a month and give me time to find employment more suitable to my talents. I had already considered approaching William Randolph Hearst in his capacity as chief of a great engineering concern rather than a studio boss, and drafted letters to various other eminent tycoons, including Hughes and Dupont, offering them the opportunity to develop some of the inventions I had begun to see realised in Russia, Turkey and France before circumstances brought me to America. Madge would type them for me as soon as she had time.

  I took her with me to enjoy the rest of the season with Mrs Cornelius, her beau and their friends, who were mostly established movie people. Mrs Cornelius displayed considerably less jealousy towards Madge than she did towards Esmé. She confided to me that she thought Madge a ‘decent sort’ and advised me to stick with her. I pointed out that I remained betrothed to another. I was in no position to give Madge more than a temporary commitment. Moreover there were other young ladies available. I am, I hope, a gentleman, and would not take advantage of a young girl from Missouri. Although, as I pointed out, she was no shrinking virgin when we met.

  ‘An’ she’s not th’ only one!’ Mrs C. was emphatic, but whether in reference to herself or someone else was not clear.

  Since we were alone together in the drawing-room I used the chance to ask if she had managed to discover anything more about Esmé. All she knew was that Meulemkaumpf, a notorious avoider of publicity, was at present unusually assiduous in pursuing privacy. ‘That could ‘ave somefink ter do wiv ‘is wife, I shouldn’t wonder, Ivan.’

  I took her meaning. The Press would be bound to read the worst into Meulemkaumpf’s offer of protection to my darling. Now, knowing more about the man, I no longer suspected him of bearing her away to have his will with her at some lonely ranch. I realised that Esmé, believing herself deserted, had appealed instinctively to a native American gentleman. I longed for the chance, I told Mrs Cornelius, to explain what had happened. She offered the opinion that it was possible we both had some explaining to do, but before she could elaborate we were joined by Buck Buchmeister and a couple of his louder technician friends who were discussing a set they had just constructed for J.M. Schenk’s Graustark.

  Buchmeister had had some hand in directing the picture, I gathered, under a pseudonym. It was not particularly uncommon in those days for people to ‘moonlight’ for rival studios sometimes for the extra money, sometimes to help out a friend, or to fly, as it were, under flags of convenience. It is safe to say that in Hollywood not more than one person in three retained anything like their original name. This fashion was started by the Jews who, of course, had every possible motive for encouraging the habit, since it helped so many of them to assimilate into American society. Not that these particular Jews were illiterate or uneducated. I have nothing against the better type of Jew. They contribute a good deal to our society and are frequently very charitable. My only reservation is the common one, that it is not healthy or sane to have one minority race, with all its inherited traditions, many of which are at odds with our own, dominating our culture. It is not surprising that certain alien ideas crept into the cinema in those years. I need only mention The Enemy, Name the Man, He Who Gets Slapped, The Case of Lena Smith, or Man, Woman and Sin, most of which were set abroad and dealt with subjects in ways that scarcely married with the ideals of the American people. Not that I had anything against Jeanne Eagels, whom I admired in all her films, but it was no surprise to me when I learned of her tragic death. There is a certain strain accompanying the kind of rôle she had to play in, say, Jealousy and The Letter. And, inevitably, Communism had eaten into Hollywood’s great heart by the 40s when it became necessary to cauterise the wound by methods some found crude and brutal, even cruel, but which many of us knew to be all too kind. The proof of this was that the communists did go to other countries to continue to propagate their messages while others, as in the case of the infamous ‘Kubrick’, simply changed their names and did not stop for a second! And we now see the results, day after day, on BBC and ITV which are nothing but a catalogue of every disease ever carried by word of mouth. Tolerant and easy-going as I am, sometimes I think my ‘live and let live’ attitude was inappropriate, especially during my Hollywood glory days.

  For all that my thoughts were constantly turning to Esmé and speculation as to how she was spending her first holiday in America, that Christmas at Buchmeister’s was happy enough. I got to talk to several of the set-technicians and to discuss solutions to their problems. It seemed they thought I had a natural talent for their discipline and one of them, Van Nest Poldark (a Cornish buccaneer, as he styled himself, descended from a long line of novelists, smugglers and wreckers), told me I should be working in the technical department of a major studio. I laughed and pointed out that I was an engineer by profession and vocation. He argued that this was all the more reason I should try my hand at film designing. ‘It requires the knowledge of an Isaac Newton coupled with the aesthetic eye of a Michelangelo,’ he said. I thought he, in the manner of so many members of the kinema fraternity, was exaggerating somewhat, but then he gave me his card and suggested I come to see him at Paramount, which he had just himself joined. I did not throw the card away. As I told Madge later, if I could not see my inventions come to life in the real world, at least I might have the pleasure of seeing them realised on the movie screen. Thus, too, I might acclimatise the public to, as it were, my cerebral vision. I have never disdained nor, I hope, abandoned the popular arts. Fired by this vision of how I might popularise some of my ideas, I began to consider Poldark’s offer.

  My enthusiasm for this was quickly replaced, however, by an altogether different diversion. Madge and I, availing ourselves of the festive confusion, were actually able to slip back into my bedroom where, to help her sustain her pleasure, I introduced her to the benefits of that much-maligned substance its original discoverers called el nevada and which has proved such a peculiarly apt servant to twentieth-century Man. By the following afternoon we were both exhausted, having attempted almost every sexual variation possible for two athletic young people to enjoy in the confines of a small hotel room on a bed four feet by six. I loved the musty stink of a creamy dark skin which suggested that long ago there had been a lick of the tar brush in Madge’s family. It has been my experience that women of the octoroon or mulatto persuasion make the most passionate lovers, particularly if there is also Jewish blood in the mixture. One need hardly speculate as to why Moorish women are still very highly prized in the harems of North Africa and the Middle East, but I will come to that later. (It was Madge, needless to say, who first raised the notion of extending our number to three.)

  I told Madge to report for work the next day. I would rest and prepare further
notes for the proposed script. She said that she would have to come in the late morning rather than the afternoon as she had an appointment at four, an audition for a movie at last. I wished her luck but warned her not to get too involved with the idea. For every hundred girls in Hollywood perhaps one or two ever got legitimate movie work.

  Informing me that she, better than anyone, knew how to keep her head screwed on, my spirited little floozy kissed me on the nose and left. Half-an-hour later the telephone rang. The concierge told me a young lady had arrived and was asking for me. Conscious of the exaggerated morality of the place, I told him I would come down to the lobby. Doubtless Madge had forgotten to clarify something and since she had no easy access to a telephone she had simply turned in her tracks and come back. I dressed quickly, aware that while I did not look at my best, neither did Madge, and descended yielding Turkey and red plush to the lobby where, all in white, like the angel I knew her to be, her hair in a fashionable bob so that anyone might easily have mistaken her for Ruth Taylor, my darling had come to me at last! With joy I advanced towards her and then, conscious of my lack of sleep, I paused. ‘Esmé?’