I'll Cry Tomorrrow Page 6

  In desperation, I moved into another apartment in the same building, but two weeks later Katie and I were friends again, and I had moved back. We lived in a state of undeclared truce. Katie’s apprehension, in part, stemmed from a fact more evident to her than to me: how seriously ill David was. I did not realize it until one afternoon when he suffered a violent coughing spell and spat up blood. The doctor, after examining him, took me aside.

  “Don’t you know?” he said. “This young man is tubercular. He’ll have to remain in bed for a while.”

  I was shocked. David was sick. And because he was, and needed me, I loved him the more.

  The following night I had a social engagement with Paul Bern, the M-G-M producer whose suicide, a few years after his tragic marriage to Jean Harlow, so stunned the film world. I could not break the appointment: it was an unwritten law in Hollywood that you didn’t break appointments with producers. Mr. Bern took me to the theatre. As we sat there, my mind was with David. Desperately I wanted to be at his bedside taking care of him. The old impatience came upon me. Suddenly I felt a horrifying sensation as if ants were crawling over my skin! I squirmed, almost beside myself. (Not until later was I to learn what bizarre forms anxiety could take.) And what would Mr. Bern think of me? He pretended to notice nothing, and finally the seizure passed.

  Later, driving me home, he said, “I’m going to tell you something, little girl, as you start off in life. You have a great career before you, providing you meet the right man. You’re going to be on top of the ladder, or at the bottom. You’re just a bundle of emotions, Lillian; the wrong man will degrade you—the right man will uplift you.”

  I should have remembered his advice.

  David and I were now all but inseparable. Late one afternoon I started a particularly tough dubbing chore. I must have sung one song twenty times. By nine o’clock the scene still didn’t suit the director. David had been waiting for me since six. I committed the most grievous sin of all in the eyes of a studio executive. I pretended I heard the director say I could go home, and I walked off the set.

  That night David and I went away, across the border to Tijuana. Perhaps I would break the promise I’d made to Katie that I wouldn’t consider marriage before I was 21: I wasn’t sure. We stayed away that night. But we did not consummate our love. I knew little about sex, and what I knew confused and frightened me. My memories were tied up with lecherous old men and backstage obscenities. And David, no more experienced than I, was ill, racked with coughing spells, and I mothered him through the long hours to dawn.

  We had it all planned: one day we’d have three children, two boys and a girl, and they would have the home and garden, the parents in love with each other, and the sense of belonging I never had.

  David knew I knew he was sick, and worried about him. But when, for weeks on end, he was so full of energy and good humor, so vital in all he did, his illness seemed as remote and unbelievable as a bad dream.

  Suddenly, Jesse Lasky waved his magic wand again.

  He called me into his office one morning.

  “I’ve just had a letter from your father,” he said. “He certainly writes extravagantly about you. But there may be something in what he says.”

  Arthur, he went on, insisted that I was a great dramatic actress who had never had a chance to show my talent. Well, continued Mr. Lasky, Paramount had tested nearly 150 girls for the role of Huguette, in “The Vagabond King,” the studio’s major production. He explained that Huguette was a woman of the streets, about 32, and the sweetheart of the poet Francois Villon, to be played by Dennis King. Some of the top stars in Hollywood coveted the role.

  “Now,” he said, “maybe your father knows what he’s talking about, even if you are only 18. I want you to go across the lot to Ludwig Berger, who’s directing the picture. Tell him I want you tested for Huguette.”

  Dressed as I was, in sweater, pleated knee-length skirt, tam o’shanter, golf shoes and socks, I hurried to find Mr. Berger.

  “Mr. Lasky told me to see you,” I told him breathlessly. He glanced at me impatiently. “For what reason?”

  “To test me for Huguette.”

  “What!” he exclaimed. “My God, I ask for another Pola Negri and they send me a Louise Fazenda!” He stared at me. “Not only that—but look at you. You look fourteen years old. You’re a little girl. This calls for a woman with fire!”

  I stepped forward, stung to the quick. “I can be very fiery, Mr. Berger,” I said acidly. “Why don’t you test me and see?”

  Mr. Berger all but tore his hair, what there was of it. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in Hollywood next,” he groaned. “Go to the wardrobe department and get fitted and be here tomorrow night at nine o’clock.”

  I woke next morning with a fever of 101 and a voice that was more like a croak. The chance of my life awaited me, and I had grippe! Was the Texas Guinan jinx at work here, too? If only Dad were on hand to help me!

  Shortly before nine o’clock, a raging fever banging at the base of my skull, I appeared on the lot. I waited. Ten o’clock. Eleven o’clock. At midnight I found a blanket in a corner and crawled under it, shivering with chills, alternately dozing and waking. At two a.m. Mr. Berger shouted, “Miss Roth!”

  I staggered over to him. “All right, this is your scene.” A hand stuck a script in my face. “This is a death scene,” said Mr. Berger. “Let’s see you die.”

  That was exactly what I wanted to do. Dennis King’s standin took me in his arms, I recited my lines in a sepulchral voice, closed my eyes slowly, and died.

  “Wunderbar!” Mr. Berger threw his arms around me and kissed me. The role of Huguette was mine. I was the new dramatic find of the year. Next day Jesse Lasky exulted over the telephone, as delighted as if he’d been my uncle. “Lillian, the rushes were wonderful. You’ve got the role of the year—the plum part in the first all-musical technicolor!”

  I was ecstatic. I had found myself at last! Tragedy was me—not cross-eyed comedy. I was on top of the world. Nothing disturbed me—not even Mr. Berger’s order that I must put back the ten pounds I took off for “The Love Parade,” so that I would look older and sexier.

  David, now working as night director at Universal, shared my delight. His hours were from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. So that I could spend more time with him, I bought my first car, a Chrysler 77; and toward midnight every night I drove the fifteen miles to his studios in North ollywood. We got very little sleep, but we were rapturously in love, and all was well no matter how much others might disapprove.

  Each morning I came bouncing to rehearsal. In my little skirts and blouses and flat shoes, I must have looked ridiculous going through my part. Time and again I caught Dennis King and his co-star, Jeanette MacDonald, exchanging smiles as they watched me.

  Also observing me with some interest was a famous British actor who was completing a Robin Hood production on an adjoining lot. Tall, handsome, debonair, Robin Hood, too, doubted my qualifications. He asked me to lunch. “I’ve been talking to many of your Hollywood stars,” he began, “and they agree that it’s quite odd to have an 18-year-old girl play Huguette.”

  “Why?” I asked. He smiled down at me. “My dear, how would an innocent like you, with no experience in love, portray the fire and passion that is Huguette?”

  “Why, that’s absurd,” I retorted. “I’m very much in love, as it happens, and I have plenty of warmth.”

  He looked at me pityingly. “No, Lillian, you need a good love affair. And I could teach you the art of love— then, I assure you, you’d be the personification, the epitome, of that fiery wench.”

  I giggled.

  A few days later he approached Katie on the lot, and in a gallant manner that quite enchanted her, said, “Mrs. Roth, I’d deem it a privilege if I could take your daughter to dinner one evening.”

  Mother urged me to go. “You’ve been working hard. He’ll take you to some lovely spots. And it’ll do you good to go out at least one night with someone other
than David.”

  Perhaps because I was 18, and curious to see what would happen, I agreed. I could take care of myself. Hadn’t Albert, at Clark, learned that the hard way? I was 14, he was 16, and I had told him he must be smoking secretly because I smelled tobacco on his breath. “Is that so?” he demanded. He pushed his face teasingly next to mine, and unexpectedly kissed me on the mouth. I slapped him with a roundhouse right that I brought up almost from the floor. It swung him halfway around. He kept his distance after that. Of course I could take care of myself.

  On the appointed evening Robin Hood, and his secretary, Sidney, called for me and we drove to Venice Beach, an amusement park. “We’ll have a bit of fun here,” he said enthusiastically. Pretty harmless fellow at that, I thought.

  He escorted me into the front seat of a roller coaster. As it swept into its first dip, he grabbed the safety bar in panic. “Ye Gods!” he squealed. “This is the end! We’ll never get out of this thing alive!” As we roared on, he forgot all about me. His face was frozen: he put his head between his knees, and moaned. This was the swashbuckling hero unafraid, Hollywood’s great romantic lead, who dashed through Sherwood Forest in his tights, his mustache quivering, avenger of the innocent and unprotected….

  “Never again,” he breathed fervently when we jerked to a stop. Until 11 p.m. we enjoyed ourselves on milder amusements, while Sidney trailed behind us, carrying the ice-cream cones and popcorn, and souvenirs I won. Then I suggested it was time to go home.

  “Righto!” said Robin Hood. We drove toward home. “What say we stop at my apartment for a moment— there’s no use having Sidney come all the way into town,” he said. “We’ll drop him off there.”

  Why not? Nothing dreadful was likely to happen with Sidney there. When a woman housekeeper answered the door, I felt doubly reassured.

  Once inside, Sidney served us champagne. Robin Hood sat at the piano and accompanied himself in a romantic ballad while I sipped the champagne. It was the second time I had ever had an intoxicating drink. The bubbles tickled my nose delightfully, and I liked the vinegary lemony flavor. “It tastes like citrate of magnesia” I exclaimed. “It won’t feel like that, my dear,” said Robin Hood, stopping long enough to refill my goblet.

  Now the victrola was playing, and I was dancing and singing happily. Suddenly Robin Hood’s strong arms were around me, he was dragging me into an adjoining bedroom, trying to pull my clothes from me. I was dizzy, but not helpless: I fought him off, tearing and scratching and screaming.

  “My God, you’re a little hell-cat!” he exclaimed. “How you excite me!” But I fought and bit and kicked, and then Sidney was in the room, fixing his master’s face where I had dug my nails, and muttering worriedly under his breath, “Don’t you know she’s under age—she’s jail-bait?”

  As Sidney led me to the front door I managed to get out a parting word: “I told you I had fire!” I screamed, and burst into tears.

  Sidney silently drove me home. Robin Hood’s picture was held up for three days until his face healed sufficiently for makeup to hide his wounds.

  When the time came for Huguette’s death scene to be put on film, my temperament and physical disability conspired to help me. The heat that day was almost intolerable; the city sweltered in a temperature of almost 103 degrees, and under the technicolor lights, the mercury hit 110. We repeated the scene so often that I became hysterical, and had to be given sedatives. As I rested in the first-aid room, Mr. Bachman, the producer, rushed in. “Lillian, you’ve got to go back for one more take.”

  “No, I can’t!” I couldn’t control my sobs. “I just can’t do it again!”

  They cajoled, they pleaded, they insisted, and finally, they helped me back and the scene I played then was that used in the film—when I returned to work before the camera, exhausted from the heat, from weariness, from hysteria.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE NEWS I brought to David from the mail room was startling: my fan mail was pouring in second only to that of Clara Bow, “It” girl, and Paramount’s reigning queen. And I hadn’t even been starred in a picture!

  “Darling,” David said jubilantly, “that’s the way you’re really made in Hollywood. Not by the studio, but by the public!”

  Paramount promptly capitalized on my popularity by casting me in “Honey.” The song I sang, “Sing, You Sinners!” became a tremendous hit, and was identified with me for years afterward. It’s a favorite with audiences even today.

  In Paramount’s next film, “Paramount on Parade,” Buddy Rogers and I sang another hit: “Anytime’s The Time To Fall in Love.”

  Now Cecil B. DeMille, looking for a siren for his new extravaganza, “Mme Satan,” borrowed me from Paramount, and I found myself reading my lines to the master himself. DeMille then was a compact, balding man who wore riding pants, shiny black boots, an open-collared shirt, and was never seen without a riding crop. He was brisk and impersonal.

  The plot of “Mme Satan” called for me to steal Reginald Denny from Kay Johnson, who played his wife. We were supposed to be attending a masquerade ball on a zeppelin. At the height of the festivities, the zeppelin cracks up and begins to sink. Kay Johnson, clinging to her husband, begs frantically, “Oh, if we ever get out of this alive, please, please, give my husband back to me.”

  I retort, “On one condition. There are only two parachutes left and three of us. I’ll take a parachute and you take your husband.”

  DeMille liked my reading. “Fine,” he said. “Go to the wardrobe department and tell Adrian I want him to take your measurements.”

  Hollywood’s famed dress designer had prepared a startling costume. I was to come to the ball as a pheasant —iridescent golden bra, iridescent golden shorts, and stemming out behind, tremendous pheasant feathers. Adrian wrestled with the bra. “You’ll never fit into it,” he said, annoyed, looking at me as if I had betrayed him. “I’ve designed it for a boyish figure.”

  We consulted Mr. DeMille. “The girl isn’t supposed to be made to fit the bra,” he said sharply. “Make the bra fit the girl.” Adrian scolded and fussed, but did as he was told.

  After DeMille obtained an interior shot of me in the zeppelin, he said, “Tomorrow you’re going to jump. The zeppelin will be breaking up. You’ll jump from there.”

  I followed his pointing finger, and stared, open-mouthed. More than 200 feet above our heads was a narrow ledge. Far below it was a net. “Me, jump from up there?” I gasped. “Into that net? In these high heels and feathers? Oh, Mr. DeMille, I couldn’t possibly!”

  He scarcely looked up from his notebook. “I’ll see you at nine o’clock in the morning, Lillian.”

  I got to a telephone as fast as I could and rang up Walter Wanger, in charge of Paramount production. “I can’t do it,” I protested. “I’m frightened. I’ll break my neck making a jump like that.”

  Mr. Wanger was sympathetic. “Don’t worry, Lillian, you’re too valuable a property. I’ll ask Mr. DeMille to get a double.”

  Nine o’clock next morning, Mr. DeMille said, “All right, Lillian, here’s where you jump.”

  I jumped, thinking of things to say to Paramount if I survived. DeMille had a way of saying “jump”—and you jumped. Not once, but five times before he was satisfied.

  Almost as appalling was the scene that followed. I was to rebound out of the net and crash through the glass skylight of a men’s Turkish bath. Perched on a narrow ledge, where I was held by a stagehand so I wouldn’t tumble, I was to plunge through a large sheet of candy glass, which photographed like the real thing, but supposedly was far safer.

  Again I protested. “Mr. DeMille, in ‘The Love Parade,’ Lupino Lane was so excited by one of my kisses that he jumped right through candy glass and he was all cut up. It might happen to me, too.”

  DeMille said nothing. Instead, he strode over to a pane of candy glass leaning against the wall, lifted it high over his head like a platter, and brought it down hard on his skull. The glass smashed and shattered all about hi
m. “If it didn’t hurt my old bald head,” he said caustically, walking away dripping splintered glass, “it won’t hurt your young back end.” I jumped on schedule.

  Suddenly, everything seemed to go awry. While making a short with a rotund comic, the cameraman told me my face couldn’t be seen in a closeup kiss. “Ask him to turn aside so that we see you for a moment,” the cameraman instructed me. I followed orders, only to have the actor suddenly mutter under his breath as he held me close, “Who in hell wants to look at a little Jew like you?”

  I walked off the set in tears. “I won’t work with that man,” I managed to say when I was called on the carpet. And I wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell why.

  The front office issued an ultimatum. Go back and finish the scene—or be suspended. I finished the scene.

  I came home nights to argue violently with Mother. I simply must stop seeing David, she cried. It was affecting my work and my health. He had no real interest in me, or in my career. She would rather break my contract with Paramount, she wept, then see us married.

  She was under great pressure because David’s parents had telephoned her several times from New York. They were deeply concerned. The hours David and I kept, trying to be together despite his night shift, were only making him more ill, they insisted. But beyond this, they made clear, they would never permit their son to marry a girl in show business. This was unthinkable. If we dared marry, they would annul it.

  Everything was being done to break up our romance. David and I clung together. “They’ll come around,” he would say, trying to comfort me. “You’ll see. They’ll all come around in the end.”

  But worse was on tap. A switch in the top echelons at Paramount brought B. P. Shulberg to the Coast to replace Jesse Lasky. I quickly discovered a new hand was at the helm. One night as I danced with Mr. Shulberg at a party given by David Selznik, he said casually, “You haven’t been easy to handle lately, have you, Lillian?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked uncertainly.