Hollywood Madonna (21 page)

Unlike a typical blacklistee, Loretta had no gaps in her filmography. Both 1939 and 1940 were accounted for: three films in 1939, two in 1940. Walter Wanger’s production,
Eternally Yours
—released in November 1939, seven months after
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
—marked the beginning of Loretta’s post-Fox period. Although she would return to the studio for two films in 1949 and one in 1951, she was now a freelancer.
Eternally Yours
was a bauble, not a fresh water pearl. In that
annus mirabilis
, 1939, Garbo had
Ninotchka
; Rosalind Russell,
The Women
; Bette Davis,
Dark Victory;
Marlene Dietrich,
Destry Rides Again
; Judy Garland,
The Wizard of Oz
; Merle Oberon,
Wuthering Heights
; and Vivien Leigh,
Gone with the Wind
. And what did Loretta have? A film in which she played a bishop’s granddaughter, who falls for a magician. But at least she was in a film produced by one of the industry’s premier independent producers.

Dartmouth-educated Walter Wanger was not so much an independent, as a
semi-independent producer
, who could supply a studio with product that was distinctive but still had audience appeal. Wanger would provide most of the financial backing, minimizing the studio’s contribution, which was at times non-existent. He sought real autonomy, not the relative kind that that came from being dependent on a studio’s largesse. Unlike Hal Wallis, who, after leaving Warner Bros. encamped at Paramount for thirteen years before heading for Universal where he ended his filmmaking career, Wanger preferred to studio hop, cutting deals that worked to his advantage. At Columbia, Wanger produced, among other films, Frank Capra’s
The Bitter Tea of General Yen
(1933) and at MGM, Gregory LaCava’s
Gabriel over the White House
(1933), in which the Deity allows a president to survive a supposedly fatal car accident by assuming the persona of a dictator, who cures the ills of the Great Depression. More impressive was Wanger’s sumptuous MGM production of Rouben Mamoulian’s
Queen Christina
(1934), with Garbo at her peak. His first Paramount production was William Wellman’s phantasmagoric
The President Vanishes
(1935), a strangely allegorical film in which an isolationist president, fearing he has lost popular support for refusing to embroil his country in a European war, allows himself to be kidnapped by right-wing extremists. After he is rescued, the president returns to office, where he continues to advocate non-intervention, espousing George Washington’s admonition in his Farewell Address to “steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.” Wanger did not shrink from controversy, although he knew he had to sweeten the brew: The
president proposes to force the nations of Europe to sign a disarmament treaty and to establish an oxymoronic “dictatorial democracy” that will eliminate unemployment and crime.
The President Vanishes
neither embraced fascism nor advocated the suspension of civil liberties, but instead argued for a program that combined both—for the good of the American people, of course.

In 1937, United Artists gave Wanger a five-year contract at $2,000 a week and “
complete control of all production matters
.” It was there that Wanger produced his most famous films: Frank Borzage’s
History Is Made at Night
(1937); William Dieterle’s
Blockade
(1938); John Ford’s
Stagecoach
(1939) and
The Long Voyage Home
(1940); Hitchcock’s
Foreign Correspondent
(1940); and Henry Hathaway’s
Sundown
(1941).
Eternally Yours
was not in their league; it was Wanger in down time. Wanger’s dream was a repertory company on the order of the one John Ford was assembling. He started recruiting talent like Sylvia Sidney, Madeleine Carroll, Charles Boyer, and Joan Bennett, none of whom wanted to be bound by the standard seven-year studio contract. When a studio beckoned, they might sign on for a film or two, but generally they preferred a multi-picture arrangement. Wanger’s stock company eventually consisted of two stalwarts, Susan Hayward and Joan Bennett, each of whom starred in five of his productions. Of the two, Hayward fared better, gaining an Oscar nomination for
Smash-Up—The Story of a Woman
(1947) and the coveted statuette for
I Want to Live!
(1958). Bennett was actually more than one of Wanger’s stars; she married him in 1940, continuing as his wife in name only after he shot her lover—
wounding, but not killing, him
in 1951. At first, Bennett stood by Wanger, as he made his way through the Hollywood labyrinth, stopping off at one studio, then another, creating production companies under various names, and adding to his legacy a parcel of films that are now taken seriously. By 1965, Wanger’s producing days were over; Bennett, tired of his infidelities, demanded a divorce. Wanger enjoyed three more years of life, dying of heart failure in 1968.

Back in 1939, Wanger never thought of Loretta as one of his company, knowing that she would not be making long-term commitments. But he also was aware of her less-than-amicable departure from Fox. That did not faze Wanger, nor did Zanuck’s blacklist—if it ever existed. Wanger knew there was no place for him at Fox, where one testosterone-driven producer was enough.

Loretta was useful to Wanger; she had appeared in his production of
Shanghai
and still had the gossamer femininity that he needed in
Eternally Yours
, in which she literally fell under the spell of a magician-mesmerist
(David Niven). Exactly how that happens is left to the imagination. Anita (Loretta) attends a performance by the Great Arturo (Niven), who during a Q-and-A session makes ocular contact with her. What follows is a scene without any dialogue, in which Arturo/Tony is shown conversing with Anita, citing incidents from her past that only she would have known. He is so successful that she becomes his assistant and eventually his wife. When “the other woman” (Virginia Field) threatens their marriage, Anita sues for divorce, and Arturo/Tony resorts to mesmerism to win her back. Loretta worked well with Niven; she could turn coy and kittenish when he behaved like a proper Brit. When he relaxed, shedding stuffiness for urbanity and sexual indifference for sexual attraction, Loretta was transported into the realm of Eros, Hollywood style, radiating the glow that comes from fantasy recollected in tranquility.

Loretta would make one more film for Wanger, but meanwhile it was off to Columbia, where Harry Cohn offered her a multi-picture deal but not at the salary that her agent had requested: $75,000 a picture. Cohn
drew the line at $50,000
. Loretta agreed, and stayed on to do five pictures for him between 1940 and 1943, then one more in 1952, the year before she quit the big screen. Cohn respected Loretta, who had appeared in two of Columbia’s best films of the 1930s,
Platinum Blonde
and
Man’s Castle
. He was an unusual studio boss, serving as both Columbia’s president and production head (under ordinary circumstances, an atypical combination, but understandable in the egomaniacal and insecure). He was notorious for his
gleaming white office
, with a desk on a riser that made him seem taller. Behind the desk were shelves stocked with expensive perfumes and nylon stockings for services rendered. There was also a white couch, smaller than a love seat but able to accommodate Cohn’s needs—which, if short term, were often satisfied with fellatio. Otherwise, it was a courtship, aggressive but amorous, the kind he resorted to when he wooed—or rather, pursued—Joan Perry, a Columbia contract player. He knew Perry could never be a star, but she could be his wife. Joan Perry became the second Mrs. Harry Cohn in 1941 and provided him with two male heirs.

Cohn knew all about Loretta, the devout Catholic, who suffered a moral relapse at which Hollywood winked—as if to say, “Yes, we know, but why should the public?” And the public didn’t. Cohn also distinguished between ladies and broads; Loretta belonged to the former category. He treated her with respect, as he did her close friend and fellow Catholic, Rosalind Russell. Both were indebted to him—Russell, for giving her some excellent comedic roles in the 1940s, especially her Oscar-nominated
My Sister Eileen
(1942); and Loretta, for providing her with a temporary haven as she learned to negotiate the slippery slope of free lancing.

Loretta was in better pictures than Columbia’s
The Doctor Takes a Wife
(1940), a romantic comedy with a dash of screwball, but not enough of either genre to make it distinctive. Director Alexander Hall was the perfect match for Rosalind Russell during her decade at Columbia, eliciting performances from her in
This Thing Called Love
(1941),
My Sister Eileen
(1942), and
She Wouldn’t Say Yes
(1945) that confirmed her extraordinary gift for comedy. He could not do the same for Loretta.
The Doctor Takes a Wife
had potential: A feminist writer (Loretta), whose espousal of the single life has made her the idol of spinsters, cadges a ride to New York with a neurology instructor (Ray Milland). A simple trip becomes a cause célèbre when the press assumes they are married. Complications abound, affecting each party. With Loretta behind the wheel of a souped-up plot, only the happiest of endings is possible: Loretta sabotages Milland’s engagement to a ditzy socialite (Gail Patrick, out of her sophisticated element), but also gets him promoted. Academics, take note. Once the couple makes it legal, the dean, who only doles out full professorships to married faculty, promotes Milland from instructor to full professor without his even going through the assistant and associate professor ranks—not to mention peer review. In 1940 few moviegoers would question such largesse; if any academics caught the film, they would attribute the premature promotion to Hollywood’s ignorance of higher education—unless perhaps they were unmarried and wondered if there were colleges where the sole qualification for a full professorship was a wedding band.

Although
The Doctor Takes a Wife
is far from vintage Loretta, it illustrates the difficulty studios had pairing her with a compatible costar. In
Easy Living
(1937), Milland enjoyed a genuine rapport with Jean Arthur, looking as if he were amused by her wackiness. But it was not the same with Loretta. Once it is time to press the love button, Loretta’s eyes turned limpid, as if they were the windows not so much of the soul as of the psyche. She began moving sinuously, provocatively with an erotic rhythm that was always genteel, but also sexy—as if she were having one of her fantasies, in which the only sighs were her own. You could not imagine Milland making any sound, except perhaps a groan because he was stuck with a script that gave him no control of the narrative. When Milland was in control, he was superb—but rarely in comedy. His best work was in drama: Mitch Leisen’s
Arise, My Love
(1940), Fritz Lang’s
Ministry of Fear
(1944), and especially Wilder’s
The Lost Weekend
, (1945), for which he won an Oscar playing an alcoholic writer. Milland may have looked as if he were meant for the drawing room, but he could also stagger, unshaven, up Third Avenue in search of a liquor store and experience the DTs in a dingy apartment.

Loretta had a slightly better vehicle in Columbia’s
He Stayed for Breakfast
(1940), a Lubitsch-like film without the Lubitsch touch.
He Stayed for Breakfast
was Columbia’s response to MGM’s
Ninotchka
(1939), in which Melvyn Douglas converted Greta Garbo as an extraordinary Soviet envoy, to the joys of capitalism, inducing her to shed regulation attire for evening gowns and negligees. In
He Stayed for Breakfast
, the roles are reversed. Douglas is the Communist spouting the party line to Loretta, an ardent capitalist (who looks it). Communism comes in for a good deal of ribbing, which is understandable in an industry where capitalism reigned unchallenged, and communism was regarded with a combination of fear and loathing. There were also lingering memories of the 1919 Palmer Raids and the infamous and soon-to-be ignored nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, signed on 23 August 1940, one week before
The Doctor Takes a Wife o
pened at New York’s Roxy. Under the circumstances, there was no doubt who would win this ideological battle.
The Doctor Takes a Wife
did not require a suspension of disbelief; it inspired disbelief that was too pervasive to be suspended.

He Stayed for Breakfast
is so deliciously improbable that one accepts it on the level of
Märchen
or fairy tale, a pleasant diversion that cannot subvert verisimilitude because there isn’t any. The Paris depicted in
Ninotchka
did not seem like a soundstage creation, although it obviously was. The sets looked too authentic to be questioned in
He Stayed for Breakfast
, in which much of the action takes place in Marianna and Maurice Duval’s (Loretta and Eugene Pallette) opulent apartment; a sense of place is totally lacking. But since
Ninotchka
was set in Paris, so must
He Stayed for Breakfast.
Melvyn Douglas looked and sounded no more like a French Stalinist than Eugene Pallette seemed a French banker. Both were French in name only. But perhaps the greatest test of credibility is the marriage between Loretta and Pallette, who specialized in playing blustery and blubbery characters. Pallette was a Dickensian figure, with a waistline reminiscent of Mr. Pickwick’s in Dickens’s
The Pickwick Papers
, where it is described as the product of “
time and feeding
[which] had expanded that once romantic form.”

What could have attracted Marianna to Maurice except his wealth? At the beginning of the film she is preparing to divorce him because of the
unbearable loneliness that she has felt since the first day of their marriage. Paul Boliet (Douglas) is so revolted by the effete (read “capitalist”) way Duval holds his coffee cup that he shoots the cup out of Duval’s hand, nicking him in the finger. Boilet is now the proverbial man on the run. Disguised as a policeman, he takes refuge in the Duvals’ apartment, much to the delight of Marianna, who considers being his prisoner a divertissement. It is also an opportunity for Loretta to model some classy outfits, such as billowy negligees with diaphanous sleeves, and an art deco lamé gown with a metallic sheen. This was clearly Loretta’s film; it is Marianna who guides the trajectory of the plot, convincing Boliet that there are only two classes of people: not capitalists and communists, but men and women. And when she succeeds, her face registers the resplendent look of victory.