Hollywood Madonna (14 page)

Once they became lovers, Loretta and Gable knew they had to be discreet, even though their off screen behavior during the shoot reflected more than two actors rehearsing their scenes or discussing their roles.
Studio contracts contained a morals clause
, typified by the one MGM’s Irving Thalberg drew up for Clark Gable in 1931:

The artist agrees to conduct himself with due regard to public conventions and morals, and agrees that he will not do or commit any act that will degrade him in society, or bring him into public hatred, contempt, scorn, ridicule—or [any act] that will shock, insult, offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency, or prejudice the Motion Picture industry in general.

Golden Age Hollywood was a closed community, where powerful studio heads and their publicists operated under the radar to keep indiscretions from exploding into national headlines.
George Cukor’s homosexuality
was common knowledge—but not to the general public. MGM’s Howard Strickling kept Cukor’s indiscretions out of the press, which considered him to be a “woman’s director” and nothing more. When producer Anderson Lawler mistook an undercover cop for a male prostitute to whom he offered cocaine, Zanuck intervened, and the charges were dropped. Sometimes, when either a murder or a bizarre death was involved, even Zanuck was powerless. Nineteen twenty-two was not Hollywood’s glorious year. The still unsolved William Desmond Taylor murder case adversely affected the career of Mabel Normand, supposedly the last to see him alive. Fatty Arbuckle’s wild San Francisco weekend that resulted in the gruesome death of starlet Virginia Rappe turned the beloved comic into a pariah. Hollywood would behave similarly if the unmarried Loretta gave birth to Gable’s child. No one in Wilkes-Barre or Oshkosh cared about Cukor’s gay escapades. Only movie buffs would even know who he was. But Loretta was a household name. As Hollywood’s preeminent Catholic, she would have been excoriated by the religious right and the National Legion of Decency. Her mortal sin would have occasioned “wages of sin” sermons. She would have become as unemployable as the
blacklistees of the late 1940s and 1950s. Perhaps she could have found work at a Poverty Row studio like Monogram, Republic, or later, PRC. She could have worked in theatre, except that she knew she could never excel on the stage. Her media were film, radio, and finally, television.

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus saved an adulteress from death by stoning when he revealed the sins of her persecutors through symbols that he sketched on the ground which, in some way, they understood. He then challenged them: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). To rid herself of guilt, Loretta might have recalled Jesus’s final words to the woman: “Has no one condemned you?” he asked. “No one, sir,” she replied. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” But Loretta’s guilt had become so all-consuming that even Jesus’s words, cited chapter and verse, would have had no effect. First century Jerusalem was another time, another place. In 1935, it was not a question of absolution, but of survival. No one could rescue her except her mother, her doctor, and particularly Zanuck—but only if they worked out a credible scenario. Abortion was anathema, leaving her no choice but to bear the child others would have called a mistake, but which she termed a mortal sin. As a Catholic, she knew about the sacrament of penance and no doubt confessed what she had done. But whatever penance she was given was not enough. Loretta imposed her own penance, which lasted until the end of her life.

Loretta was an actress in an industry where image was all, and hers could be irreparably sullied. Since neither murder nor drugs—unpardonable sins in neo-right wing Hollywood (even though the latter never vanished from the movie scene)—were involved, all Loretta needed was the celluloid wall of silence, buttressed by the Church. Rumors and conjectures were inevitable, but the public had to remain ignorant of the facts, notably that the child had been placed in an orphanage and later adopted by Loretta, portrayed in the press as a woman eager to embrace motherhood, however vicariously. Would it work? Loretta was an excellent actress. She would make it work.

In March 1935, Loretta’s immediate problem was fulfilling her next assignment. She had been loaned out to Paramount to star in Cecil B. DeMille’s
The Crusades
(1936). Such was the price of being the costume queen. She was scheduled to report to the studio on 30 January. By 8 February, she still had not arrived. DeMille grew impatient; to him, she was replaceable. He considered Sylvia Sidney, whose screen test convinced him she was not medieval enough. Next, he turned to Elissa Landi, one of the stars of his hugely successful
Sign of the Cross
(1932). Landi
was unavailable. DeMille had no choice but to go with Loretta, shooting around her until she was able to join the production. Doing so was not that difficult, since Henry Wilcoxon as Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) had the bigger part, but not the billing. Loretta suspected she was pregnant in late January 1935; by February, she knew she was. When Gable was informed, he was sympathetic but bewildered: “
I thought she knew
how to take care of herself. After all, she had been a married woman,” he confided to Gladys. Married, yes. A consummated marriage? Loretta was probably not ready for sex when she eloped with Grant Withers. Once she learned a week after their wedding that Withers’s ex-wife was suing him for alimony, she must have been even more inhibited, frightened at the idea of any intimacy that could result in conception. Elopement was bad enough, but with a divorced man? Loretta’s first sexual encounter must have been with Gable. Everything else was amateur night.

Sometime in March, Loretta made her first appearance on the set of
The Crusades.
Supposedly, she was the main character. She was billed first, but under the title—she had been upstaged by the producer-director, who was giving moviegoers another Cecil B. DeMille production. By the mid 1930s, DeMille was known for his ability to integrate sex, religion, and history into a pseudo-spectacle that looked like Joseph’s multicolored coat. Occasionally (e.g.,
Cleopatra
,
The Sign of the Cross
), he at least worked within a historical canvas on which he lavished his own color. “Directed by Cecil B. DeMille” was his calling card, inviting audiences, particularly those with a limited knowledge of history, to learn a paucity of facts and experience a wealth of invention.

Loretta may have thought she was the star of DeMille’s homage to the Third Crusade, but she was overshadowed by Wilcoxon, who gave the same kind of high testosterone performance he gave when he played Antony to Claudette Colbert’s Cleopatra. At least in
Cleopatra
, Colbert was the main attraction; in
The Crusades
, Loretta was not. Dressed in costumes that trailed down her body and would have concealed the slightest bulge—if there were any (not yet, fortunately)—Loretta was Berengaria, the Navarrese princess whom Richard reluctantly weds but, in a typical movie turnaround, eventually grows to love. Historically, theirs was a marriage of expediency. The DeMille version, scripted by Dudley Nichols and others, has Richard join the crusade—not because Jerusalem has fallen to the Muslims, who toppled crosses, burned bibles, and enslaved Christian women (as vividly depicted at the beginning of the film)—but to avoid an arranged marriage with the French princess Alice, the mistress of his father, Henry II, a fact that was not commonly known.
Richard deserved his sobriquet, “Lionheart.” He was a pragmatist who marries Bergenaria because his men are starving, and the king of Navarre can provide them with grain and beef.

The most problematic historical figure in
The Crusades
is Saladin (Ian Keith), the Muslim leader and Sultan of Egypt, whom Dante (
Inferno
, Canto 4), believing that Saladin’s sense of justice and forgiveness has exempted him from eternal punishment, places in limbo. DeMille’s Saladin is an amalgam of fact and myth. He is correctly portrayed as a benign ruler, ruthless when necessary but generous to his captives. As an example of his magnanimity, the writers devised a subplot in which Berengaria is captured by Saladin’s soldiers. Earlier in the film, Berengaria flirted innocently with Saladin. Since Loretta specialized in playing the coy maiden, the scene works splendidly, with Loretta and Keith letting their eyes do the courting. Saladin falls in love with Berengaria, who agrees to become his wife if he will spare Richard. Her selfless offer is pure invention: Berengaria was never captured, and Richard achieved a significant victory at Acre, portrayed in the most impressively photographed sequence in the film, with exploding fireballs, bodies tumbling into the moat, and boiling oil poured from the ramparts.

Although it is true that Richard failed to take Jerusalem, he succeeded in negotiating a treaty with Saladin that gave pilgrims access to the holy city. In the film, Saladin, realizing that Berengaria loves Richard, frees the Christian captives, one of whom is she. There is no treaty; instead, Saladin forbids Richard to enter Jerusalem. In a moment of superhuman strength, Richard breaks his sword in half, giving the cruciform hilt to Berengaria to place on
the tomb
of Christ, which seems to be in a cathedral. Again, the writers have taken extravagant liberties. In Mark 15:42, the tomb is described as hewn out of rock, its entrance closed by a large stone. Also, the four evangelists agree that the tomb was empty when two (Matthew), three (Mark), or several (Luke) women, or one (John) arrive on the climactic third day and discover that the stone had been rolled back. Biblical scholars might care, but what mattered was the exquisitely photographed scene at the tomb, wherever it was. Loretta strikes a beatific pose, looking as if she were about to take the veil. Richard, too, becomes a believer. “Oh, merciful God,” he exclaims, as he watches the Christians wend their way toward Jerusalem. From their enraptured faces, one almost expected the couple to embrace the contemplative life—Berengaria in a convent, and Richard in a monastery.

Of all of DeMille’s re-creations of the past,
The Crusades
was the least successful, finding favor with neither the public nor the critics. But to
DeMille, the film was a labor of love that eventually cost $11.9 million.
He set a cap
of $100,000 for costumes, and, to save money, had the scimitars and helmets made in the machine shop. A specialist was hired from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to authenticate the crossbows and armor. DeMille insisted that Richard’s and Saladin’s horses look majestic, yet different in appearance. Trifles upset him: The crosses on the knights’ coats of mail were too small; perspiration seeped through Wilcoxon’s costumes.

When filming ended in May, Loretta’s pregnancy was still not noticeable. But she could not undertake another film that year. By the time
The Crusades
premiered on 25 October, she was less than two weeks away from having Clark Gable’s child. Earlier, in June, Gladys decided that Loretta should take a sabbatical from Hollywood. They would travel to Europe for a much needed vacation. She would inform the press that her daughter’s dizzying schedule had caused a host of health problems, exhaustion being one. Rest, relaxation, and a change of pace were the answer. It was impossible for someone of Loretta’s reputation to travel unnoticed. She arrived in London in early July, when tennis star Fred Perry was Wimbledon’s main attraction. Soon rumors began circulating that she and Perry were romantically involved. In loose-fitting but appealingly feminine dresses, Loretta had not lost her ability to attract men; nor men, their fascination with women who can be provocative without being a tease. Loretta denied the rumors with her usual finesse, no doubt disappointing reporters looking for a story.

The real story, however, was that Loretta was beginning to show. She could not give birth in London or anywhere but California. Gladys decided it was time to return home and weave the final strands in the web of deception. Mother and daughter arrived in Los Angeles on 21 August, with Gladys acting as spokesperson: “
Loretta has been in ill health
for some time and lost considerable weight recently.” The truth was just the opposite, but Gladys knew not only how to decorate a house, but also how to conceal a pregnancy approaching the end of the second trimester. Just a few more months to go—two and a half, to be exact.

CHAPTER TEN
The Great Lie

Loretta was a regular on
Lux Radio Theatre
, which aired on Monday evenings from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and featured radio versions of recent and, sometimes, older films, often with their original casts.
The radio dramatization
scheduled for 2 March 1942 was
The Great Lie
(1941), with Loretta as Maggie in the part created by Bette Davis. Her costars, George Brent and Mary Astor, reprised their original roles. Although it is seems hard to imagine Loretta in a Davis vehicle, she did remarkably well, modeling her interpretation on Davis’s. Davis gave a subdued performance, devoid of the mannerisms and histrionics that became her trademark and here would have been out of character. Maggie, who lives on a Maryland plantation, is too genteel to play the diva; her fate is to suffer in silence without loss of dignity. Loretta gave a similar reading, using a voice that was subtly Southern and bore little resemblance to her own. Maggie is the fiancée of a reckless flyer (Brent) who goes off and marries her friend, Sandra, a concert pianist (flamboyantly played by Astor), not realizing that Sandra’s divorce is not final and that the marriage is invalid. The flyer then returns to Maggie, who agrees to marry him. But in a woman’s film, nothing ever ends, until THE END appears on the screen. Meanwhile, the women undergo a series of trials until the writers declare a moratorium. Sandra discovers she is pregnant, the flyer is reported missing somewhere in Brazil, and Maggie programs herself into sacrificial mode, offering to adopt the child. The women retreat to the Arizona desert, where the baby is born.