Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (6 page)
"No," she sighed, "I rehearsed it in New York last week."
During the thirty-five days of filming on
Grand Hotel,
as Garbo remained silent and aloof, Joan Crawford appeared more vitriolic. "She would arrive late on the set each day, rolling up in her portable dressing room, to the tune of 'I Surrender, Dear,' played as loudly as the machine could play it."
The intensity of the feud was enhanced, said the reporter, "by the fact [that] whereas Crawford's personality is acquired, that of Garbo is innate, effortless and unconscious. Crawford resents, admires and envies Garbo."
Of the 275,000 feet of film photographed for
Grand Hotel,
only ten thousand would make the final cut, and according to the Los Angeles
Herald Tribune,
five hundred feet of that, belonging to Joan Crawford, was eliminated at Garbo's request. "Fearful she might be overshadowed by the dramatics of M-G-M's vivacious dancing daughter, Garbo demanded that some of Joan's best work be cut" said the newspaper. Producer Irving Thalberg denied the report: "Not a line or an inch of Joan's work was cut."
On March 17 Thalberg, his assistant Paul Bern, and director Edmund Goulding carried six reels of film in three suitcases and boarded a plane for Monterey, California. That evening
Grand Hotel
was sneak-previewed before a regular paying audience. Filling out cards after the preview, 60 percent of the viewers wrote "wonderful," while 40 percent suggested minor changes, such as making Crawford's role bigger and Garbo less somber and remote. Thalberg agreed with the latter opinion. "There were altogether too many 'mugging close-ups,' too many 'Garbos and Barrymores,' and not enough acting. He ordered that Garbo be recalled for retakes," said
Variety.
On April 5 the trade paper reported, "Two versions of
Grand Hotel
were now in the can. The re-shot version favored Garbo; the other favored Joan Crawford." The decision as to which version of the film would be released depended on Garbo. The star's contract with M-G-M had lapsed, and "the story persists that unless Garbo re-signs, it is M-G-M's intention to let Crawford steal the picture." This would greatly injure Garbo's prestige throughout the country, the trade paper added, "and greatly increase Miss Crawford's."
Grand Hotel
—The Premiere
On a warm foggy evening in late April, the gala opening of
Grand Hotel
was held at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. To celebrate the event, black-tie suppers and dinner parties were held at various homes and restaurants throughout Los Angeles, with guests transported by special limousines to the five-dollar-top-ticket event at the theater. "As huge searchlights scraped the low hung heavens, pots of incense perfumed the air," reported the Los Angeles
Times.
On hand were five hundred policemen to protect the two thousand invited guests from the twenty thousand fans lining the streets and sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard.
The first to arrive were M-G-M's top executives—Louis B. Mayer, Nick Schenck, Eddie Mannix, Harry Rapf, and their spouses—followed by the brass from rival studio Warner Bros., including producers Hal Wallis, Darryl Zanuck, and Jack Warner, with their wives. "Seldom have I seen so many men and women with their own spouses," said Louella Parsons.
Then the stars appeared—Norma Shearer with Irving Thalberg, Marlene Dietrich with husband Rudolph Sieber, Mr. and Mrs. Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow with Paul Bern. Escorted by special bellhops to a desk in the lobby, each guest was asked to sign in at the
Grand Hotel
register. "Do we need luggage?" the cheeky Miss Harlow asked, as a stampede erupted on the street outside, signaling the arrival of one of the stars of the picture—Joan Crawford. "Sunburned as a berry, dressed in an electric blue dress, with her hair in the new 'bangs style,' Joan's eyes sparkled and her voice choked with emotion when anyone spoke to her." Escorted by her Prince, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the star waved to the fans, smiled demurely at the handsome policemen, then signed her name on the shirtfronts and hatbands of some of the men who mobbed her in the lobby. Greta Garbo was not expected to show, said director Edmund Goulding. "She has a fear of crowds, a psychosis that is increasing instead of lessening," he observed.
Scheduled to begin at eight-thirty, the movie was not shown until 11:00
P.M.
, "due to the late arrival of limousines, lined up for a mile on the boulevard, choked black with people." The stalled passengers and celebrities were not bored in traffic, it was noted, for many of the limousines were equipped with the latest in American luxury—car radios. Throughout the delay they were able to listen to the stage show being broadcast live from Grauman's.
MC of the show was Will Rogers, who, between introductions of the acrobats, dancers, jugglers, dogs, and crooners, asked the stars in the audience to take a bow. "Joan Crawford stood in the aisle, waving and hugging an unidentified Ginger Rogers," said a reporter for
The Hollywood Tatler,
"then ran to the other side of the aisle where she embraced Louis B. Mayer." After the movie was shown, Will Rogers asked the audience to remain in their seats for a special surprise. "I am going to introduce a lady who is seldom seen," he said. "She is going away soon to her own country, but has consented to make this one personal appearance." As excited whispers of "Garbo ... it's Garbo" swept the theater, Rogers pointed to stage left. "Miss Greta Garbo!" he said. "There in the spotlight," said
Variety,
"was a woman in a rather dishevelled gown, with long unkempt blond hair. Wearing high-heels she wobbled her way towards center-stage. When she spoke the audience gasped, then giggled. It was Wallace Beery in drag. 'I t'ank I go home now,' said Beery, which prompted the weary audience to exit the theater."
Two days later
Grand Hotel
opened as a special road-show attraction at the Astor in New York. The following day tickets were sold out for two months. "The most jubilant popular success of talking pictures," said the New York
World Telegram,
while elsewhere in the country a heated controversy broke out over which actress, Greta Garbo or Joan Crawford, gave the best and worst performances in the picture.
"Joan Crawford, as the little upstart, contributes the most telling portrait in the whole cast," said the Detroit
Times.
'As the conniving stenographer, willing to take any man's dictation, she puts the most subtle irony into an everyday gold digger's existence," said the San Francisco
Evening News.
"She represents pretentious blankness," said Herman Shumlin, producer of the New York play.
Garbo in her tutu drew her share of cheers and boos from the critics. "Sincere and affecting," said Herman Shumlin; "Sublime! Accomplished!" said the play's author, Vicki Baum. But, "as usual Miss Garbo wears that perpetual headache, which once seemed so intriguing in deaf and dumb pictures," John S. Coles wrote in the Boston
Sun.
"As a dancer she never shows her legs (although Crawford does) and even when she must give a few hops, skips and jumps, to register friskiness, she is not convincing, and of course was never graceful." "She dances around the room," said another, "and with every gallumping twirl seems in danger of breaking a leg or all of M-G-M's expensive modern furniture." When New Orleans reviewer Mel Washburn suggested that Garbo "was not the actress the world likes to believe she is," the telegrams, letters, and postcards began to pile up on his desk. "To even suggest that Miss Garbo is not a Goddess, is a crime worthy of capital punishment, I have been told," he said.
The previous adulation given to Garbo "was wormwood in the mouth of Joan Crawford," Washburn surmised, but her performance in the picture, and the controversy, could establish her as a major popular and dramatic actress. "Joan is an ambitious woman," he said. "She is driven by a deep and compelling need, which will brook no interference, recognize no obstacles."
"Grand Hotel
was my first big chance," Crawford told a film audience years later. "They told me I wouldn't be able to hold my own with the big boys, against Garbo and the Barrymores. But I proved otherwise."
4
The New Bette
"Hollywood in the early days
was a tiny place. When a good
part came along, there was
active scrambling among the
women for it. If Bette Davis felt
that Joan Crawford got to play,
let's say, Sadie Thompson, that
would immediately piss off
Davis-and vice versa."
—JOE MANKIEWICZ
I
n October 1932, after five consecutive pictures at Warner Bros. and remarkably good notices for her role as the sexually aggressive Southern-plantation daughter in
Cabin in the Cotton
—"Ah'd love t'kiss yew, but ah jes washed mah hair"—Bette Davis was demoted to playing a bit part in
Three on a Match,
with Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak in the lead roles. "That's the way Warner's worked in those days," said Blondell. "You made one good movie, followed by two or three stinkers. That enabled Jack Warner to keep you humble."
While her mother, Ruthie, kept dreaming "that someday Warners would give me the glorious productions that M-G-M gave its players," Bette was told by a good friend that she was "the victim of a colorless personality." She would be forever cast in dowdy parts unless she learned to project
joie de vivre,
some pizzazz, on and off the silver screen. It was at this juncture that columnist Louella Parsons noted that "Bette Davis became just another Hollywood blonde." Or, as the more astute and wicked Hedda Hopper remarked, "Bette Davis, a serious Broadway actress ... transformed herself into one of the town's leading ga-ga girls, picking up the personality Joan Crawford discarded when she became a lady."
Bette bobbed and dyed her hair platinum ("Which embarrasses me when I go home to Boston, because people in Boston don't wear hair that color"), and bought some slinky clothes. She showed up at premieres and nightclubs, sometimes with eight escorts. Stopped twice for speeding, she narrowly escaped death when the engine of her car caught fire and she was trapped behind the wheel. She also learned how to smoke and talk dirty. "I felt so out of it, at nightclubs and things, I thought maybe if I started smoking I'd look sophisticated. So I started smoking. And then I decided I'd like to swear a little. So I became quite a bad swearer." "She had to unlearn everything that she had been taught was proper," said writer Franc Dillon. "She had to appear physically flamboyant in order to make her employees suspect she would have glamour on the screen."
Warner's, a studio known predominantly for its male-oriented gangster and crime pictures, went along with the new Bette. "They didn't know what to do with strong women," said Joan Blondell. "We were used to being cast as the arm piece—the girlfriend, the showgirl, the moll—always as background interest for guys like Jimmy Cagney or Eddie Robinson. Then Bette came along and started yelling for equal time. She was the first one to take on Jack Warner. She had no fear." Warner, still smarting over the loss of Jean Harlow, who made
Public Enemy
for his studio and then skipped over to M-G-M to become a star, gave the executive order that Bette Davis was to receive the full blond-bombshell treatment, Burbank economy style. She posed for studio stills wearing backless gowns, skimpy playsuits, and in the obligatory swimsuit shots. Later, as first lady of the studio, she would deny she had ever posed for cheesecake pictures, but Joan Blondell said, "Baloney! She did them. We all did them, and were damn glad to be asked. It wasn't as if we ever showed anything; heck, we wore more in those so-called sexy beach photos than they do on Fifth Avenue today."
With the publicity photos came the press releases, equally synthetic. "Bette Davis' weight has been insured with Lloyd's of London," said one bulletin. "Presently at 107 Ibs., if she goes to 120 the insurance company will pay Warner Brothers $30,000!"
A press book issued during this time gave the following "Portrait of Bette Davis":
- She said she would never bleach her hair but she did.
- She can tell a woman's age by her elbows.
- She is not interested in Mahatma Gandhi's health.
- She loathes scented stationery and has never been to a pawn shop.
- She crawls over rather than under a fence, and completely bald men do not fascinate her.
- She follows famous murder cases closely and wouldn't spank a baby if she had one.
The new, tempestuous Bette was shown on the screen in
20,000 Years in Sing Sing,
with Spencer Tracy; he was a gangster and she was his moll. "I was good as the moll," she said. In her memoirs, taking a second slight swipe at Joan Crawford, Bette described her next film—"A little gem called
Parachute Jumper,
opposite young Douglas Fairbanks, the Crown Prince of Hollywood, scion of Pickfair, and consort to M-G-M's Princess Royal, Joan Crawford."
In
Parachute Jumper,
Bette had to learn how to type, chew gum, and "toss slang," for the role of a nervy, gum-chewing secretary. "It is very difficult to talk while chewing gum," she said, but, according to a publicity release, "Succeed she did, and today she can hold her own with so seasoned an expert as Joan Blondell."
Fairbanks, Jr., who had scored at Warner Bros. two years before in
Little Caesar,
had an unusual nonexclusive contract with the studio. His salary for
Parachute Jumper
was four thousand dollars a week (compared with Bette's $ 750), and he was to receive top billing above the title, with Davis below, in third place. 'After the planes," she said.
She was looking forward to working with Fairbanks, however, if only "to razz him up a little" about his choice in wives and his phony British accent. "He was still to become Great Britain's last Earl," she said, "but he was already saying 'profeel,' for one's side view." Before she could dissect his dialect or his lovely wife, Joan, Bette was stricken with appendicitis. The studio doctor decreed she could finish the picture, so her scenes were rushed ahead, with the doctor, a nurse, and a publicist standing by. When the final sequence was shot, an ambulance was waiting to take her to the hospital, "where the operation was performed successfully."
Parachute Jumper,
released in January of 1933, was prominently reviewed by the respected critic Cecilia Ager, although the tone of the notice devoted to the leading lady was somewhat discordant. "Bette Davis seems convinced she's become quite a charmer," said Ager. "Slowly she raises her eyebrows to sear the hero with her devastating glances, then satisfied, she smiles a crooked little Mona Lisa smile. Unfortunately this procedure takes place while Miss Davis is wearing a curious pill-box hat that perches on her head at an angle slightly comic. The hat, and her own self-satisfaction, interfere with the effect."
At Warner's, in the interim, some good news had come for Bette. At the suggestion of soon-to-depart-executive Darryl Zanuck, the actress was told that at last she would be given the station she craved. She would star alone, above the title, in her next picture,
Ex-Lady.
"Daring ... provocative ... a modern love story so frank, so outspoken—it tells of a new generation that laughs at wedding bells and yawns at bassinets," said the film's ad logos.
Ex-Lady,
co-authored by Robert Riskin, who would later write the scripts of
It Happened One Night
and
Meet John Doe,
explored a seemingly provocative topic for its day. It told of a woman, a beautiful, emancipated artist, who flouted convention by practicing an "open marriage." "She wanted to wear a wedding ring ... on certain nights." Certain to cause a sensation, this film could do for Bette Davis what
Our Dancing Daughters
and
Red Headed Woman
did for Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow. She would be dressed by Orry-Kelly and photographed by Tony Gaudio, and her leading man would be Gene Raymond, who had recently appeared in
Red Dust
at Metro.
Completed in twenty-seven days, a generous schedule for a Warner picture,
Ex-Lady
was edited while Davis was being photographed and interviewed for advance publicity. Adjusting to the theme of the film, the recently married Bette told interviewers that she didn't wear a marriage ring and that freedom for both spouses was most important. "Married couples ought not see each other in the morning until after breakfast," she said. 'And it is absolutely essential that both husband and wife have close friends of the opposite sex."
In late April of 1933 the posters and ad logos for
Ex-Lady
were shipped to theaters. "
A NEW TYPE! A NEW STAR! A NEW HIT!
" the posters proclaimed. 'As bewitching as Garbo—and as hard to explain," said one logo, while another gasped in bold print,
"Lots of girls could love like she does—but how many would
DARE!
"
In New York, the day before
Ex-Lady
was to open at the Strand theater, the management respectfully advised that "those of our patrons who are over 60
NOT
attend this picture of Today's Youth." For extra hoopla, some elderly citizens were bussed in from the suburbs to picket the theater. Bette Davis, safe in her Manhattan hotel suite, braced herself for the storm of controversy, and stardom, that would inevitably follow. But on the scheduled day, on the morn of the reviews and the hoped-for lurid coverage, when she gathered up all of the newspapers from her door, she found that each headline and photograph and entertainment section was devoted not to her but to
Joan Crawford
and the breakup of her marriage to her Prince, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
JOAN DIVORCES
DOUG
—
Story Page
3,4,
7,20.
SPECIAL PHOTO INSERT
On page 27 of the New York
Times
a very brief review of Bette Davis in
Ex-Lady
appeared. "Downright foolish," said the reviewer. 'A minor battle of the sexes," said the Scripps News Service, which pulled a syndicated Sunday news story on Bette, replacing it with one on Joan Crawford and the tragedy of her marital breakup. "It was bad timing for Bette," said Adela Rogers St. Johns, who wrote a series of articles on Joan's popular divorce. "World War Two could have broken out, yet everyone wanted to hear about Joan and Doug."
"There was an inordinate amount of publicity," said Doug Jr., agreeing that the brouhaha in retrospect was comparable to the breakup of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in later years.
"I'm
sick
of it," said Davis, when she ran into St. Johns on Wilshire Boulevard a week later. "Day in, day out, that's all we're allowed to read about."
"Then, in a low voice," said the reporter, "Bette whispered, Adela, tell me.
Who
is Joan really sleeping with?'"
The True Story of the Divorce of Doug and Joan
"Irreconcilable differences" were of course the grounds given for the breakup of the storybook marriage of Joan and Doug. "It is impossible to put your finger on anyone set of circumstances. They had simply gotten on each other's nerves," said Crawford's best friend, fan-magazine reporter Katharine Albert. Certainly it was not because Joan was anything but the perfect wife. During the first year of their marriage she was a veritable hausfrau. "I cooked, cleaned, polished. I was the little wife who was always home washing and ironing his shirts," she said. "In her spare time, when there is such a time," said Doug in
Vanity Fair
in 1930, "Joan Fairbanks (is my bosom swelling) covers herself in yarn, threads and needles and proceeds to sew curtains and make various types of rugs.
Entre Nous,
they are quite good."
As their careers escalated, Doug persuaded Joan that they could afford a staff to cater to their household needs. This allowed the pair to partake of the social joys that came with being Hollywood's Golden Couple. They learned French, posed for the famous Russian sculptor Troubetzkody, and were photographed by Steichen in rapt worship of each other on the beach at Malibu. Their dinner parties at home became the talk of many, including Doug's
Little Caesar
costar, Edward G. Robinson. "I've never been at Buckingham Palace," said Robinson, "but I think the young Fairbankses had more service plates, rare wines, and rare lamb than their majesties." Edward G. adored Joan (and barely tolerated his Warner colleague Bette Davis), but questioned her practice of ending her lavish dinner parties promptly at 9:00
P.M.
so that everyone could go home and be fresh for work the next morning. The host, Doug Jr., at age twenty-one still robust and alert at that early hour, usually acceded to his wife's demands. "I would call the Hollywood athletic club and ask for Miron to come and massage us to sleep by nine-thirty
P.M.
," he said.
Along with being a good wife and a gracious hostess, Joan could also be called the perfect lady. Despite her previous expertise with rough language, as Mrs. Fairbanks the second she embraced a glossary of polite euphemisms. When she spoke of a couple sharing a bed, she no longer said they were "fucking," or "making love." "She would instead invariably say, 'They went to heaven,''' said Doug Jr. "And women's breasts were her 'ninny pies.'"