High Society Page 9

  MEANWHILE, EXECUTIVES at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were arguing over the casting of a film they wanted to rush before the cameras that autumn—in Africa. King Solomon’s Mines (1950), produced by Sam Zimbalist, had been successful for Metro, as The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) had been for Fox; both pictures were among the kinds of colorful adventure stories that were being created to lure people away from their television sets.

  Zimbalist had approached Dore Schary, who had recently replaced Louis B. Mayer as head of Metro, with the idea of remaking a film the studio had made in 1932 called Red Dust, which had starred Clark Gable. Although set in Southeast Asia, it had been made entirely at the studio in Culver City. At first Schary waved off Zimbalist’s suggestion. But fifty-one-year-old Gable, after a number of indifferent movies indifferently received, was nevertheless still vigorous, still popular—and available. So was Ava Gardner, one of Metro’s bankable leading ladies who (apart from her dark sultriness) had the kind of image once projected by Jean Harlow, the blond star of Red Dust. Zimbalist pushed his case: for a remake of the original, the studio needed only a third actress—one with evident elegance and covert passion, like Mary Astor in the original. To clinch his argument, the producer told Schary that the director John Ford was interested: he already had three Oscars and was soon to win a fourth.

  They sought among their contract players for the right actress to play opposite Gable. Deborah Kerr had been appealing in King Solomon’s Mines, but Ford growled his displeasure at that idea. Zimbalist judged that Metro’s Greer Garson was too affected—and so the ideas rose and sank. Ben Thau, a vice president at Metro, then suggested that they look for someone new. They sat for days looking at tests made by aspiring actresses and at reels submitted by agents’ models. No one impressed them.

  In 1952 it was common for studios to exchange screen tests made by actors they subsequently rejected. At Metro they sifted through tests sent over by Columbia, RKO and Warner Bros. Then, one day in October, they saw a test made for a Fox film called Taxi, with an unknown girl who had an ordinary appearance and an unconvincing Irish accent. Sighs of disappointment came from the Metro executives as they prepared to order up the next test from the archives—until John Ford interrupted. “This dame has breeding, quality and class,” he said. “I want to make a color test of her—I’ll bet she’ll knock us on our ass!”

  Next day, Jay Kanter rang Grace in New York with the news that Metro wanted to test her for a major role. She was lukewarm to the idea until she heard two words: “Africa” and “Gable.” Departing early the following morning, she was, by nightfall, enjoying a moonlight swim in the pool at the Bel-Air Hotel, Los Angeles.

  1* Further details about Alexander seem to have vanished into oblivion.

  2* On June 5, 1951, Grace also appeared in “Lover’s Leap,” a half-hour drama broadcast on Armstrong Circle Theatre.

  3* Kramer always maintained that he alone interviewed Grace in Manhattan, “backstage, after her appearance in an Off-Broadway show, where I signed her up on the spot.” But she never appeared in an Off-Broadway show; furthermore, his account is contradicted by the written production history and by my interviews with Grace and Zinnemann. Kramer’s memory of production histories was always interesting, but his facts could be wildly inaccurate.

  4* In a rehearsal for the scene following the marriage of Amy and Will, Zinnemann asked Grace to sit on Cooper’s lap; both were out of costume and wearing their own casual clothes. They all agreed that this gesture was inappropriate for the shot, and the scene was filmed otherwise. But a stills photographer captured the moment, and soon some news editors decided that the two stars were more than colleagues.

  5* Issues of conscience often dictated Zinnemann’s choice of subject matter, perhaps most memorably in his films of The Nun’s Story, A Man for All Seasons and Julia.

  6* In addition to the four programs for which commentary is provided here, Grace was seen on TV during 1952 as Dulcinea to Boris Karloff’s Don Quixote. She was also in “Prelude to Death,” with Carmen Mathews; in “Life, Liberty and Orrin Dudley,” with Jackie Cooper; in “The Borgia Lamp,” with Hugh Griffith and Robert Sterling; in “Candles for Theresa,” “The Small House,” and “The Cricket on the Hearth.” She assumed the role of a dance-hall girl threatened by a serial killer in “Fifty Beautiful Girls,” and was seen with Shepperd Strudwick in “City Editor.” Grace was also in a new production of “Leaf Out of a Book,” originally presented on the Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1950, and she appeared in “A Message for Janice,” again with Jackie Cooper.

  FOUR

  L ’Affaire Gable

  When I was younger, I was always falling in love.

  —GRACE KELLY GRIMALDI

  DURING THE EARLY DAYS OF THE MOVIE INDUSTRY—FOR about twenty years, beginning in the early 1890s—very few actors were identified in the films that unspooled in penny arcades, nickelodeons and music halls. People worked anonymously in these “flicker” movies, which were considered a form of entertainment for the lower classes, on a par with carnival sideshows. Performers with stage experience feared they would lose future theatrical employment if it became known that they were in these mere fake pantomimes. In addition, the first film theatre owners were hesitant to promote the names of their employees, worried that they would demand higher salaries.

  But things changed. The first name credited in a movie was that of Florence Lawrence, a stage actress since childhood who worked for Thomas Edison’s company from 1907 and later appeared in films under the direction of D. W. Griffith. Sarah Bernhardt and Geraldine Farrar were among many renowned actors and singers who were immortalized in silent films, and by the time of the World War, movies became more respectable fare. Audiences gradually recognized their favorite performers from picture to picture and wanted to know more about them; soon producers began to see financial advantages in creating and promoting certain players, called “stars”—perhaps because they illuminated the darkness of movie theatres.

  The era of the great studios coincided with the fame, fortune and power of these movie actors, who became essential in promoting the products. Directors, on the other hand, were mostly ignored, and for a long time, few of them had any real clout and all were regarded as secondary to a movie’s success. The conventional wisdom was that only the stars and producers turned films into hits, and so studio executives selected young hopefuls they liked and essentially created identities for them, even to the point of changing their names and insisting on certain patterns of conduct even in their private lives. Archibald Leach, an acrobat from England, became Cary Grant. A flapper-era dancer named Lucille Le Sueur became Joan Crawford. Spangler Brough was renamed Robert Taylor, and Roy Scherer was rechristened Rock Hudson. Thousands received new identities, and backgrounds were created for them that sounded more interesting, more exotic or more acceptable than the truth.

  Thanks to powerful studio publicists and “talent handlers,” the public never knew that so-and-so might be socially objectionable according to the standards of the day. Under threat of dismissal or permanent demotion to minor, stereotyped roles, for example, lesbian and gay actors were usually forced to marry for the sake of their careers. Non-Caucasian actors were rarely cast as anything but servants, criminals or people of doubtful morality. Even on their own time, women could not appear in public without makeup and a fashionable outfit. Men had to be seen as unimpeachable gentlemen, and any studio player could be dismissed for failing to adhere to certain moral standards, often defined in their contracts and even sometimes invented in a moment of whimsy by a movie mogul. Public appearances and provocative romantic rendezvous were arranged for the sake of image, and the press was duly alerted in advance; in this regard, the situation remains largely unchanged in the twenty-first century.

  If a movie star was alcoholic, a drug abuser, unfaithful to a spouse or even found guilty of a crime—well, the studios could take care of that. They routinely paid for media silence, bribed the police and negotiated with n
ewspapers and gossip columnists. In the so-called glory days of Hollywood, the studios thus essentially directed the lives of countless thousands. All this control was taken for granted as a part of American big business.

  The year 1924 was perhaps a watershed in which merely profitable entertainment became a huge corporate industry. New York theatre owner Marcus Loew, who had already bought Metro Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures, added Mayer Pictures to his list—with the aim of placing Louis B. Mayer as head of Los Angeles studio operations and Irving Thalberg as production chief. For decades afterward, the legal name of the holding company was Loews, Inc., while corporate power, as with all the Hollywood studios, was wielded by New York executives, with their proximity to Wall Street financiers. In the fullness of time, Mayer added his name to the studio’s—and so was born Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

  Thanks to Mayer’s creation of what his publicists called “more stars than there are in the heavens,” the studio boasted an impressive roster of popular players—among them Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Jeanette MacDonald, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Greta Garbo. Later, Metro placed under contract Gene Kelly, Jane Powell, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Ann Miller, Esther Williams, June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor. More than any other Hollywood studio, Metro was deeply involved in the personal lives of its contract players; for Mayer and his colleagues, that was simply a matter of protecting their investments.

  From the late 1920s to the mid-1940s, Metro was the most successful studio in Hollywood: it never lost money during the Depression and released a feature film every week—along with animated cartoons and short subjects. Then the United States Supreme Court, ruling against corporate monopolies, ordered the studios to divest themselves of theatre chains, and Loews, Inc., had to yield control of Metro; thus began the studio’s decline, for they could not survive without guaranteed showcases.

  In the early 1950s, with Dore Schary as Louis B. Mayer’s replacement, the studio continued to dominate the musical genre. This brought a new generation of talent, many of them young singers and dancers like Howard Keel, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse and Leslie Caron. From 1939 to 1955 the studio released six or seven musicals a year,* and in 1951, the Oscar for best picture went to the musical An American in Paris. But by then Metro could not depend on its musicals alone to woo the shrinking audience away from television. Despite the need to remedy the situation, Schary (like Mayer) had no great regard for strong directors, and only once did a Metro contract director receive an Oscar for directing a Metro picture (Vincente Minnelli, for Gigi, in 1958).†

  BY THE AUTUMN of 1952, when Grace was invited to test for a movie the studio hoped would be a blockbuster, the Culver City complex had grown from 40 to 187 acres. On them were six back lots, more than fifteen huge stages, a lake with a harbor, a jungle, a railway station and parks, squares and streets from different eras and in a variety of styles. However, this turned out to be intemperate expansion, because Metro’s glory days, as the most successful studio of the 1930s, were numbered. They had a shortage of great directors, and their glossy star vehicles were becoming old-fashioned and predictable—in 1953, for example, Knights of the Round Table followed Ivanhoe. “It was a lush and gaudy period,” as Dore Schary said. The studio was reluctant to use color for anything but musicals, costume dramas or period spectacles, and the number of productions was dropping each year: Metro was making less than a sixth of Hollywood’s output. “We had trouble finding roles for all of our contract players,” added Schary. In light of all this, but reluctantly joining the effort to do anything to attract audiences, Metro decided that, after the success of King Solomon’s Mines, they should produce another epic—the remake of Red Dust, updated to be called Mogambo.

  JOHN FORD directed Grace’s color test, which pleased him, Schary and the executive board. A seven-year contract was drawn up for her and sent to Jay Kanter at MCA, where he and his superior, the formidable Lew Wasserman, tinkered with a few clauses. By late October it was ready for Grace’s signature. But when she read it, she hesitated and asked for some important alterations, which astonished everyone, for this was considered willful and autonomous behavior. Metro’s offer gave them the right to her services on three pictures a year for seven years, during which time they could dismiss her after every six months and loan her out to other studios at their pleasure. Her salary was to begin at $750 a week, with escalation clauses to be negotiated in good faith depending on her success, and a $20,000 bonus if she completed three pictures in any year. She may have smiled at the salary, for she had made far more money as a model.

  Grace wanted every other year off from movie work, so that she could return to the theatre, and she insisted on the right to retain her primary residence in New York. These concessions Metro granted—again, to Hollywood’s astonishment. It was immediately clear that Grace Kelly was not to be controlled easily.

  “I signed with MGM,” she recalled in 1975, “because Mogambo offered the opportunity to work with John Ford and Clark Gable, and to make the picture in Africa. If the production had been scheduled in Arizona, I wouldn’t have signed the contract. But I did—at the departure desk of the airport, on my way out of the country.”

  Filming took from autumn 1952 through late winter 1953, first in Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya, and then in London. On November 2, Grace arrived at the New Stanley Hotel, Nairobi. That evening at dinner, she met Gable and the British actor Donald Sinden, who was cast as her husband. “Grace proceeded to astonish Clark and me by ordering the entire meal for the three of us—in Swahili,” Sinden recalled. From the moment in Hollywood when she had learned the precise African location, Grace had taught herself the rudiments of the local dialect. “Lete ndizi, tafadhali,” she told an astounded native waiter at the end of the meal—“Please bring me a banana.”

  In his fifties, Clark Gable—the self-styled “King of Hollywood”—had lost little of his renowned virile charm tempered by a kind of protective, paternal warmth. Far from the familiar comforts of home and friends, Grace formed an intense affection for Gable that lasted throughout their time in Africa. But it is impossible to say unequivocally if theirs was a fully realized affair. A strong attraction is not invariably expressed sexually, no matter how randy the principals. At various times Gable and Grace were asked directly about rumors. Perhaps it was not surprising that each of them smiled and dismissed the topic, but nobody connected to the production ever asserted that there was a clandestine romance, and no one claimed to have held the lamp.

  There was definitely a passionate friendship, however. Grace undertook to knit Clark a pair of socks for Christmas (which she never finished), and they spent much of their free time together. “Clark’s eyes were quite definitely on Gracie,” said Ava Gardner, “and hers, for that matter, were on him. They were both single at the time, and it’s very normal for any woman to be in love with Clark.” There was Grace, Ava added, “in Africa, with exotic flora and fauna all over the place—and Clark, strong and smiling and completely at home, made her love him more.”

  Both Grace and Gable were long deceased when Ava made this statement, which is highly ambiguous: “in love” may (but does not necessarily) mean “in bed.” Ava was always bluntly straightforward about herself and others, and if there had indeed been an affair, one would have expected her to say so plainly.

  “When I was younger, I was always falling in love with someone who gave more to me than I gave back,” Grace said years later. “I knew I was immature and incomplete as a person, that I was really taking and absorbing more than I was giving. I think that’s true of all young people. In the selfishness of youth, we need to feed our psyches and our souls by taking from others.”

  But her relationship with Gable was not only about taking, for she had a great deal to offer him. In his way, Gable was as lonely as Grace, and more than a little fretful. His career had been stymied in recent years by various
ailments and the inevitable shifts in movie styles and movie-star popularity. He found the physical demands of Mogambo extremely challenging, and he was in the process of a divorce from his fourth wife (Lady Sylvia Ashley, the English model and socialite who had once been Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks). Romantic though Grace was, and smitten with her legendary costar, she was also sympathetic to his anxieties, and she made every effort to bolster his spirits during this difficult time in his life. As she wrote to her friend Prudy Wise, Grace and Clark dined together every night while working in Africa, which was not unusual for two single costars. In addition, Clark was of course enormously flattered to have the attention of a beautiful, playful and proficient young woman who clearly adored him.

  On November 8 the company welcomed the fourth major player in the movie when Ava Gardner breezed in lustily with her husband, Frank Sinatra. As usual throughout their marriage, this couple argued constantly when they were not making loud intimate merriment; alternately, they drank excessively, shouted and threw things at each other whenever they had a few spare moments—until Frank left Africa to take a role in Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity, which jump-started his stalled movie career.

  On November 12, the cast and director drank champagne and toasted Grace’s twenty-third birthday, repeating the festivities on Ava’s birthday, Christmas Eve. “After that,” Ava recalled, “no matter where in the world I was, every year a birthday present arrived from Grace. She never forgot, and she sent a handwritten card—it wasn’t left for a secretary to do. She was a great lady, and also great fun.” But unlike others in the cast, Grace did not drink much. “Her little nose would get pink, she’d get sick, and we’d have to rescue her.” Different though they were, the two American actresses became fast and lifelong friends. Ava attended Grace’s wedding, and she often visited the palace in Monaco. She admired Grace’s relaxed elegance, and Grace appreciated Ava’s lack of inhibitions and the candid displays of emotions that Grace usually kept in check.