Kitabı oku: «Life and Lillian Gish», sayfa 16

XI
THE SHADOW SPEAKS

Lillian left her mother in the sanatorium, where apparently she was improving, and with Josephine, her maid,—booked as a “fellow artist” (she was really that, for she would serve as model for Austrian peasant girls in the picture),—Lillian sailed on the Île de France, for New York. Reinhardt presently followed, with the play itself, which von Hofmannsthal had completed. Young von Hofmannsthal came as Reinhardt’s assistant. These two, with Lillian, and Josephine the “fellow artist,” descended upon Hollywood.

Alas, for the beautiful, silent picture play of “The Miracle Girl of Konnersreuth.” They were just a year too late!

For now it was that the long-unexpected-inevitable had happened: All in a brief summer and autumn—in a night, really—a change had come over the flicker of the photographic dream … it SPOKE!

The film with a voice—a possibility for twenty years or more—hardly taken seriously except by the inventors—now, all at once, had arrived. Rather doubtfully at first—a crude thing, but of instant popularity. The writer of these pages remembers a fierce summer day in ’28, when he slipped into a jammed and darkened house on Broadway, and sat on the floor in a remote corner, fascinated, watching the moving phantoms, silent heretofore, as they shouted wildly at each other in the mise en scène of a haunted house. After that, when he heard friends say: “It is just a novelty—it will not last,” he was not convinced. If he knew anything at all, he knew better than that. If they could do so much, they would presently do more. They did. The Warners put out Al Jolson in “The Singing Fool,” and the doom of the silent film was not only written, but sounded very loud. The play itself was hardly a classic—it didn’t need to be. Jolson’s speaking and singing voice was up to microphone requirements—sound and vision were synchronized. The record was miles beyond anything attempted before. The “Talkie” had come!

A huge shudder ran through the ranks of movie actors. Many of them did not even speak English. Many of them did it very badly—provincially, nasally, flatly, indistinctly, or with an impossible accent. Of those who spoke it well enough, not all had voices suited to the microphone—(“Mike,” as they irreverently named it)—they recorded poorly. Their voices had to be “placed.” Voice culture became a new Hollywood industry. Some, even, began learning to sing.

It was just at this point, late in 1928, that Lillian and Reinhardt reached Hollywood. The press heralded their coming, recounted the story of Reinhardt’s life, and distinguished work; how now with a new and marvelous story, written by von Hofmannsthal in the great castle of Leopoldskron, for the “first lady of the screen,” he was ready to enter and electrify the picture world.

Good publicity, but it fell on deaf ears. Jolson HAD MADE the “Jazz Singer”! Chaos ruled in the studios. A dozen producers who didn’t know whether they stood on their heads or their heels, shouted that it was all just a passing fad, but meantime were knocking together “sound stages” and engaging people who could talk prettily to “Mike,” or sing, or do anything that would make a convincing noise.

Of course, everyone still believed in the old silent pictures, but nobody wanted to start one. Those already begun were dropped. Gloria Swanson, at great loss, stopped a half-completed film.

Reinhardt and Lillian were dazed. Joe Schenck, who in Salzburg had bid them hurry home to make their picture, now repudiated it—told them to make a talkie of it. Reinhardt protested, then went into the desert—not to fast and pray, but to do what Schenck demanded.

No use. He had been working for a year on a silent picture. Now to make the shadows speak … impossible. Even the desert … even fasting and prayer … even “The Miracle Girl,” could not accomplish it. He lingered through the winter, hoping that those who said the talkie was just a fad were right. Then....

Lillian sighed as she remembered these sorrowful things:

“Hollywood, always more or less mad, was really an asylum. Even Mary was doing a talkie, ‘Coquette’⁴; Chester Morris was doing another ‘Alibi.’ Nobody was doing our beautiful old silent pictures, any more. Everywhere you heard the hammering of workmen building sound stages. Then—with Spring—Reinhardt returned to his neglected theatres, to his castle at Salzburg. It had been a great loss to him. I was not responsible, for he had signed his contract with United Artists before I had, but I felt terrible over it. He never blamed me, or was anything but fine about it. I did not see him again until last Summer (1930), when I was in Paris. We spoke of the pity of it all—his coming at the wrong time, when it was too late—too late and too early. Another year, and he might have been in the mood for a talkie. He had really come on a sincere errand. Most of those who come, come just for the money in it. He had come for a finer purpose.”

XII
ON THE FLYING CARPET

Lillian looked out of the window of the den, on the boats passing up and down, perhaps reflecting a little on the uncertainty of human undertakings.

“I have one bright memory of that gloomy Spring,” she said presently. “One morning in March, while Reinhardt was in the desert, Douglas Fairbanks called me up, and asked:

“‘Are you game to do something?’

“‘What is it?’ I said.

“‘Never mind; are you game to do it?’

“‘Are you and Mary going to do it?’

“‘We are.’

“‘Well, then I will.’

“‘All right. We’re going on a plane to have a look at the war in Mexico. Will you go?’

“‘I should think so. When do we start?’

“‘Right away, as soon as we can get ready.’

“I went up to Pickfair, to see Mary as to what we were to take. We met at the studio about eleven o’clock, drove to the Glendale Flying Field, and got into what seemed a very big, powerful plane. There were ten of us altogether: Doug and Mary; Doug’s brother, Robert, and his wife, Lurie; Mary’s niece (‘Little Mary’); two cousins, Verna and Sonny; myself, and the pilot and captain. There was plenty of room and we got off without any trouble.

“But it turned out that our motors were not powerful enough. We meant to cross the mountains by the San Bernardino Pass, but when we were over the low first range, we ran into a storm of wind and snow, and our engines would not lift the plane over the Pass. The snow got so thick that we could not see a thing in any direction—just a white, whirling mass. We were likely to run into the mountain-side, any moment. We rolled and billowed around, three times turning back, and trying it again. Then the captain, very white, came and shouted into Doug’s ear that it was madness to go on, that we had better turn back and follow down the Coast to Mexico. It was impossible, the captain said, to find the Pass.

“We turned back, and all were relieved. There had been no question as to the danger. Less than a year later, a big plane with a party was lost up there, dashed against the mountain-side.

“The weather was better as soon as we got away from the mountains, and along the Coast was fine. At Agua Caliente, Mexico, we ate dinner and spent the night.

“We telephoned for a larger plane, and a big Wasp came down. All got into it except Robert Fairbanks, who said he knew when he had had enough, and that the day before had satisfied him. We left about eleven o’clock. For some reason, we did not take much along in the way of food, and about three P. M. our crowd began to look rather poorly—hungry and seasick. Even Douglas shushed Mary when she started to tell her troubles. He had a greenish look, and not at all his usual high-hearted manner.

“We got to Phoenix, Arizona, about five, starved, and went to the beautiful hotel. They lodged us all in one bungalow, and immediately we called loudly for tea and sandwiches. We spent the night there, left around nine, next morning. We flew to Grand Canyon—not really to the Canyon, but to the nearest flying field, and drove to the Canyon by motor. There we took a long walk along the rim, and looked down on the Canyon in the evening light, one of the strangest and loveliest and most impressive sights in the world—really sublime.

“Next morning, we motored back to the plane and headed Westward. We got hungry, but there seemed no good place to stop for luncheon. All we could see were poor little Mexican or Indian villages, in the desert. Finally, we got to Las Vegas, and after luncheon flew homeward, over the mountains we had been unable to cross when we started, dropping down into the San Fernando Valley at sunset, as on a magical flying carpet. We had had four beautiful days. We did not see much of the war, though at one place in Mexico we saw smoke, and thought we heard the sound of distant firing. Douglas had believed it unwise to go any nearer. We might be taken for spies, and pursued—even brought down. After all, war was not what we really cared to see.”

XIII
“ONE ROMANTIC NIGHT”

It is difficult to realize the size of the catastrophe resulting from the sudden production of talking pictures, even of pictures with “sound effects,” as many of them were, at first. Some of them really talked—better, or worse, than others. No matter; every picture theatre in New York, and most of them on the road, were presently being “wired for sound.” All the millions (possibly billions) of dollars’ worth of silent pictures, shrunk in value at a ghastly rate. The Eastern Hemisphere, the only market for them presently, was comparatively unimportant. Hundreds of pictures were useless; picture players found themselves “out of a job.” Stars began to pale and disappear.

On the other hand, ill as was the wind, it dispensed benefits. Stage players out of employment found market for their trained speech. Their feet warmed the way to Hollywood. A good many were already there. As the months passed, the screen showed more of the old familiar faces. Broadway to the rescue. Even the great succumbed. George Arliss, master of diction, joined the procession, Ruth Chatterton—eventually, Lillian.

Not willingly. She still believed in the silent film. She had objected even to the lip movement, the simulated speech insisted upon by the directors. To her, the perfect picture must be pure pantomime—with music—appropriate music, as in “Broken Blossoms.” It would never be that, now. Beautiful Evelyn Hope was dead. There is no help for such things. Tears, idle tears. Since the beginning of time, grief has never repaired a single loss. One might as profitably wail over the sunken Atlantis.

She still had her contract with the United Artists, and by its terms must make at least one picture before she could cancel it. She had hoped to get out of it altogether; but while it did not mention talking pictures, she was advised to abide by the terms.

“It would involve me in a suit with the United Artists, and I had had suits enough. As it was, I barely avoided another: The company had agreed to let me do Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Strange Interlude,’ if I could get it for a reasonable sum—I could have it to take the place of the Reinhardt picture. I came East in April (1929), to see Mr. Madden, O’Neill’s agent. I could have it for $75,000. This suited Mr. Joe Schenck. It suited Mr. O’Neill. We had the papers drawn up. I was to sign them that morning, and it was only because I was protected by an angel that I didn’t do it. On that very day, a woman brought suit against O’Neill, for plagiarism. Had I signed that contract, I should have been involved in the suit. She was beaten, and had to pay costs, but the damage to O’Neill was more than that, in fees.

“Meantime, Dorothy had gone to Germany and brought Mother to London. Mother was tired of sanatoriums and hotels. She wanted a home, and I decided to have one. I joined them, and Dorothy and I went to Paris, to collect furniture for an apartment. I had most of it made, copies of old French pieces.

“I came home in August, and all through that month looked for a place to live. It was a terrible search in the heat. When I saw this apartment, with its outlook on the river, its quiet air and sunshine, I knew that it was what we wanted.

“My friend, Mr. Paul Chalfin, kindly looked after the decoration, and I started at once for California, to do the picture we had selected, ‘The Swan.’ This was during the latter part of September, 1929. The apartment would not be ready before November.”

In California, Lillian lived with Madame de Grésac, at Beverly Hills. There was just then a good deal of talk about kidnapping, and she was advised against living alone. Josephine, her Austrian maid, had remained in Los Angeles, but met her at the station, with flowers and tears.

Careful preparation for “The Swan” began. Lillian was admirably suited to the rôle, that of the fair Princess Alexandra, her voice quality and diction needed only slight adjustment. Melville Baker had written the script for “The Swan,” adapting it from his translation of the original play by Ferenc Molnar. She thought very well of it, and hoped for the best.

She wrote Reinhardt of her decision, and received a gracious reply. Both artistically and from the business point of view, it (“The Swan”) ought to be a success, he said, and added:

In spite of all those rather disagreeable experiences I had to go through in Hollywood, I have kept the time I spent there in most agreeable remembrance. To have been together with you, your undeviable artistic spirit, blossoming there like a rare lonely flower, and the pureness of your conviction, made me happy and will remain for me an unlosable experience for all time to come....

Making a picture now was a different matter from those very recent old days. Then, a set where action was in progress, was about the noisiest place on the lot. Stagehands and various bosses shouting to one another, the director shouting at the players—noise, noise, no end to it. Now, all was silence. Every sound, even the feeblest rustling, was recorded by the microphone. Except for the actors, their laughter, their breathing, the accessory beat of rain, or hail, the stillness was perfect. The sound stage was a padded cell.

“THE FIRST LADY OF THE SCREEN”

“With the preparation and all,” Lillian said, “I worked about three months on ‘One Romantic Night,’ as they called the picture later. Mary Pickford has a bungalow on the lot, and lent it to me. I used it as a dressing-room, sometimes I slept there, when I had to be on the lot very early. I had Georgie, my dog, and Josephine. It would have been well enough, but they were building soundstages all about, which made a great deal of noise, all night long. It was a complete little house. Josephine cooked for me when we stayed there.

“I arrived in New York Christmas morning, with a wild turkey, which I got in Arizona. It had been brought to the train by some friends of a little girl who had done my hair out there. They had often sent turkeys to me, to California. It was all dressed, and all the way across the continent, cooks on the diners kept it in their refrigerators. They were very much interested.

“We had dinner in our new apartment, our first real home. Mother was delighted with it, and has seemed better and more contented ever since. Her pleasure in it makes us all so happy.”

“One Romantic Night” was a photographically beautiful picture, with a distinguished cast. Lillian, as Princess Alexandra; Rod La Roque, as the Prince (sent, against his will, to woo her); Marie Dressler, as her designing mother; Conrad Nagel, as a tutor, in love with Alexandra; O. P. Heggie—altogether a fine company.

Yet it has been called a poor picture, and Lillian today is not proud of her part in it. It was by no means a failure. Never had she looked more lovely. No longer a victim of tyranny, brutality and betrayal, but a Princess, as rare as any out of a fairy tale, with a palace and a rose garden and suitors, with a lilting, perfectly-timed voice, Lillian appeared to have come into her own. Her acting and beauty furnished no surprise, but her voice and laugh did; she had been silent, and sad, so many years. The audience followed her through a presentation, in itself seldom more than mildly exciting, and not always that. The tutor’s astronomy at times wearied, not only the Prince, but, unhappily, the audience. Marie Dressler’s broad comedy was highly amusing, but there were moments when one got the impression that the play was not only very light comedy, as apparently it was meant to be, but a good farce gone wrong.

Only, that fairy princess in the rose garden—on a terrace under the stars, or leaning from a balcony to her Prince, was not quite farce material. And the ending helped: the Prince and Princess, in a properly ordered elopement, in quite a royal car, swinging under the castle walls, out of the picture, into the night, to the notes of a marvelously musical klaxon, added a touch that brought the story back to the realm of pure romance, leaving a lovely impression.

PART FOUR

I
“UNCLE VANYA”

It was at the end of May, 1930, at the Rivoli Theatre, New York City, that Lillian was presented in her first, probably her only, talking picture. For during those months since she had finished it, something had happened—something of epochal proportions: she had returned to the stage! A block down Broadway, in 48th Street, at the Cort Theatre, since April 15, she had been appearing six nights and two afternoons a week, as Helena, in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”

It had all come about naturally enough. When it became known that Lillian Gish was closing her contract with the United Artists, proposals arrived plentifully. The distinguished Russian manager, director, author, Dantchenko, wrote that he had begun a story with her especially in mind; Basil Rathbone sent a manuscript and wrote: “I need not say how happy I should be to do a play with you, a privilege denied me even in my very own play, ‘The Swan.’” A cable from Germany stated that a motion picture company had been formed of those who believed in Reinhardt, and that Jannings and all the best of Germany’s artists had signed; that the first picture was to be “La Vie Parisienne,” by Offenbach—three versions to be made, French, English and German, Lillian to have the position of production manager.

But then came an opportunity such as she had hoped for: One day, George Jean Nathan spoke to her of the actress Ruth Gordon, of how much Lillian would like her.

“Couldn’t you arrange a meeting?” she asked.

He could, and did. He asked them both to tea, at the Colony Restaurant.

Lillian was not disappointed in Ruth Gordon. They had one love in common: France. They talked a great deal about that pleasant land, its beauties, its castles, its wines—especially its wines—one of which in particular, they both loved, Clos Veugeot. Ruth Gordon said:

“And I know a man who has the same taste: Jed Harris, the theatrical producer.”

Someone proposed: “We must try to get a bottle. The first one of us who finds it, to give a dinner, and invite Mr. Harris.”

Said Lillian, remembering:

“But of course no one could get a bottle of Clos Veugeot, any more. One day, Ruth telephoned that she had a bottle of Rhine wine, and that Mr. Harris loved that, too. So we had a small dinner in her apartment, with Rhine wine and strawberry ice-cream. For the first time, I heard Jed Harris talk. I thought I had never heard anyone like him. It seemed to me that he knew the theatre as no one I had ever met. Later, when I went with Ruth to get my hat, I said: ‘Ruth, he’s wonderful! I’d work for such a man for nothing.’ Ruth agreed. She had worked for him in ‘Serena Blandish,’ and told me how fine he had been.

“A few weeks later, George Nathan called up to say that Jed Harris had a part for me: ‘That’s splendid,’ I said, ‘but do you think I could do it?’

“‘Of course. It’s Helena, in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”’

“I said I would read it over at once, and see if I could do it. I adored Chekhov, and had a volume of his plays, but it didn’t contain ‘Vanya.’ I was very excited. For ten years—from the time of working with Victor Maurel, I had hoped to get back to the stage.”

She ran out to a bookshop, and presently was back, deep in the play. She thought Helena a hard part—wondered if she could do it. Her stage work lay far behind her—really counted for little, though for more, perhaps, than she realized.

This was at the end of February, or early in March. Almost immediately, they went into rehearsal. Jed Harris had selected a well-nigh perfect cast. With Walter Connolly in the title rôle, the tired, tearful, disillusioned Vanya; with Osgood Perkins, as Astroff, the hard-riding, hard-drinking, disillusioned doctor; with Eugene Powers, as Serebrakoff, the ailing, fat-headed, city professor; with Lillian, as Helena, his young, beautiful, disillusioned wife; with Joanna Roos, as Sonia, his unhappy, love-lorn daughter; with Kate Mayhew, as Nurse Marina; with Isabel Irving, Eduardo Ciannelli, and Harold Johnsrud—one must travel far to find a group of players better suited to a Chekhov play, or one more congenial to work with. Ruth Gordon was not in the cast, but she came to Lillian’s apartment and worked with her. So did Mr. Harris. They believed in her, and encouraged her to believe in herself.

Going back to the stage had its difficulties. For one thing, it had been seventeen years since she had appeared before an audience, and then had never played a leading part. The audience did not matter so much—she had never been audience conscious. But the rehearsing. In the pictures, the scene was shot, the film developed, and put on the screen for judgment, all within a brief time. If unsatisfactory, it could be made over, and over again. Furthermore, it could be “edited.” Now, it was all quite different. You could not see how well, or how badly, you had done a thing; you only knew what the director told you.

She had moments of misgiving. Perhaps it would have been better, certainly safer, to remain in the pictures—even the talking pictures that had offended her as incongruous. They were new, crude—Arliss in his “Disraeli” had taken a long step towards something that, in the end, might mean, if not perfection, at least something as near it as the silent film had reached. Oh, well....

It was in New Haven, on the evening of April 6 (1930), that the curtain went up on Lillian’s first night in “Uncle Vanya.” She was nervous, after all. The moment came when Helena enters, merely to drift voicelessly across the stage. There was a burst of applause from the audience—she was not prepared for that, and was almost as frightened as on that long-ago night of the explosion at Risingsun. She quickened her step, quickened it still more—was almost running, at the exit. Jed Harris still gives amusing imitations of this first entrance across the threshold of her new-old career.

Never mind—it was a success. The leading New Haven paper, which never before had given an editorial to a theatrical performance, gave one next morning, to “Vanya.” Professor William Lyon Phelps invited her to luncheon, and was full of enthusiasm. He had seen nothing, he declared, since Mary Anderson, to impress him so much as Lillian’s Helena. He wrote a letter to the “People’s Forum,” calling the public’s attention to the play.

All very gratifying: To Lillian, however, one of the most satisfactory features of her new venture was the absence of the money element—always, after the Griffith days, a foremost consideration. The word “salary” had never been mentioned between her and Mr. Harris. She did not even know what she was to have until she got her envelope at the end of the week.

It was a gray afternoon, in the little den which has become so much a part of our story, that Lillian recounted these things. She owed a heavy debt to Ruth Gordon, she insisted, and thought of Helena as “Ruth’s child.”

And just here came one of those coincidences which are always being popped into plays and stories. In another room, the telephone rang. A maid appeared at the door.

“Will you speak to Miss Gordon?” she said.