“Oh, for God sakes, Clark. Look at me. I spent the day baking in black clay. I had my hair done, my nails painted, and a final fitting on this gown. I don’t want to talk about anything unpleasant.”
“When can we talk?”
“I’ll let you know,” she said tersely.
“No, I’d like to hash this out.”
“I don’t hash,” she said, ending the conversation. “Choose another moment. This is not it.”
“I want out, Ria.”
“You listen to me. I have no intention of giving you your freedom. For what? That English tart? Elizabeth Allan is not a contender. No one will know that tin horn floozy’s name in fifty years.”
“This isn’t about Elizabeth.”
“That Loretta Young? Wake up. She’s a bad bet. She was a teen bride, got the marriage annulled, and now she only goes with married men. Something wrong in the head with that one.”
“Shut up, Ria.”
“I won’t ‘shut up,’ as you put it. I won’t stand by and watch you take this golden moment in your career and throw it away as though we haven’t both worked hard to get here. This is my moment too, Clark. I am as responsible for your popularity as you are. You may act the parts, but I am here building a life that you can be proud of, that your fans aspire to—that the studio bosses respect. I got you your pay raise, and don’t forget it. L. B. Mayer had never seen dinner parties like the ones I threw for you! As for your night crawling, feel free to sneak around town in the shadows with any of the ambitious girls who want a piece of you to further their careers, but they are not entitled to all this, to the pie! You can make love to them by the thousands for all I care, but you will not dictate to me when this marriage ends, or how it will end, or if it will end. I am driving this buggy, Mr. Gable.”
Ria sashayed out of the living room to the dings of the crystals on the gown and the shimmy of her silk stockings.
Mrs. Gable walked out the front door to the waiting limousine. The night air felt good, and she inhaled it like stiff whiskey. Ria had long believed men were weak and gullible, which made them promiscuous, but she wasn’t about to give up her glamorous life over sex, which in her opinion was a lot of nothing.
Gable followed her out the door and into the car. They didn’t say another word to one another on the drive to the Biltmore Hotel.
Loretta slipped in the back door of Dr. Andrew Berkowitz’s office, followed by Alda, who closed the door gently behind her. A nurse appeared and locked the door behind them; not that anyone would have seen them enter. It seemed the entire population of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills was across town at the Biltmore Hotel, where the seventh annual Academy Awards were in full swing, with a dinner dance followed by the awards presentation.
Show business was far from Loretta’s mind that evening. Gable had called her, promising her that he was cleaning up his domestic situation. He’d noticed that she was quiet, and worried for her health.
“Loretta, tell me what’s going on with you.” Dr. Berkowitz sat on a chair, as Loretta sat on the examination table, turning a cotton handkerchief over and over in her hands. Berkowitz had been the Young family doctor for years; he had known Loretta since she began in pictures.
“I’m afraid,” she began. “I missed a period.”
“Loretta, don’t panic. You’ve been away working on a very difficult job, and that could have something to do with it.”
“But I’m never late.”
“Let’s give you the Friedman test and settle the matter once and for all. It will take a couple of days for the results.”
“Can’t you get them faster?”
“No, it takes time.”
“You’ll call me the moment you get the results?”
“I will.”
The nurse entered to assist Loretta. Alda waited outside. When Loretta emerged a few minutes later, she was wearing her sunglasses. Alda could see that she had been crying. Alda followed Loretta out to her car. Loretta removed her sunglasses and turned to Alda.
“I took the test. But I didn’t need to—I know I’m pregnant.” Loretta began to cry. “What am I going to do?”
Alda knew the signs of pregnancy from having worked at Saint Elizabeth’s, but even if she hadn’t, it was obvious that Loretta was filling out. Her slim frame was curvier, her face fuller, and she couldn’t stomach her favorite meal of the day: breakfast.
“You mustn’t tell Luca. No one can know.” Loretta turned the key in the ignition.
“I won’t say a word. I will help you in every way that I can, Gretchen. You are not alone.”
Loretta turned to Alda and threw her arms around her. “Thank you. You’re a good friend. I am so grateful.”
“My mother used to say that there is a solution to every problem. Everything will work out, I promise.”
“I don’t know how,” Loretta cried.
“Are you going to talk to Mr. Gable?”
“I’m going to talk to Mama,” Loretta said, and she began to weep.
“Clark has sent notes. Flowers. And he calls at least three times a day. Won’t you talk to him?”
“I can’t talk to him. Especially not now.”
“I believe his feelings are genuine.”
“They might be when he’s with me. But when he’s not, he’s married to one woman and distracted by any girl that crosses his path. This isn’t a man who is ready to be a father.” What Loretta wanted to say, but couldn’t, was that Gable wasn’t ready to be a husband either.
“He doesn’t have a choice now.”
“Alda, Clark can do whatever he wants. I’m the one who doesn’t have any options.”
There was only one comfort for Loretta as she sat in the car with Alda. Loretta thought back to the train, when Gable came to find her for dinner. She knew then that her life as she knew it was over. At that point, she thought it was the end of the romance that was making her sad; she knew she had no hold on Gable, none that could overcome the obstacles before them. At that time, Loretta didn’t suspect she was pregnant, but she sensed, and saw in her mind’s eye, a fork in the road. Now she had proof that there was a new life ahead, but she was alone in the world and could only rely on herself, her own strength, going forward. She wouldn’t count on Gable to love her; that had been a fantasy. Loretta would protect her career, her livelihood, and now her baby, with a vengeance.
Love, the romantic kind, was no longer on her mind.
The ticker from the adding machine hung over the desk in a long white curl speckled with black numbers as Gladys billed her accounts. The ledger was open; Gladys erased a total she had entered incorrectly. She tried very hard not to resent Mutt Belzer for leaving her with this dreaded chore.
“Mama, I need to talk to you,” Loretta said softly.
The soft light from Gladys’s desk lamp in the study threw ominous shadows against the wall. “Mr. Gable won the Academy Award,” Gladys told her without looking up. “It was a sweep for It Happened One Night. Didn’t you girls tell me you loved that picture?”
“Mama.”
“I thought you’d be happy for him. One day it will be you up at that podium. You keep working hard, and you’ll win a statue too. Maybe even for The Call of the Wild.” Gladys looked up at her daughter, who stood in the shadow. “Gretchen, let me see you.”
Loretta moved into the light, Gladys could see her daughter was in a state of anguish. Gladys went to Loretta and put her arms around her. Loretta began to cry.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m so ashamed,” Loretta said, weeping.
“There is nothing we ever in do this life that cannot be forgiven, if we are truly sorry. Nothing. Now tell me what’s the matter.”
“Mama, I’m pregnant.”
Gladys looked at her daughter and held her face in her hands. “Are you sure?”
“I went to Dr. Berkowitz, he did the test. He said we’d know for sure by the end of the week, but it’s no use. It doesn’t matter. I know I’m p
regnant.”
“You’re exhausted.” Gladys’s voice broke. She didn’t need the results of the test either; she could see the signs. Loretta had dark circles under her eyes, Gladys’s mark of pregnancy.
“What am I going to do?”
“Dry your tears, honey.” Gladys handed Loretta a handkerchief.
“But Mama, everything will be over. Our lives. This house. His career. Mine. Clark will be devastated.”
Gladys had read the newspapers and seen the fan magazines. She hadn’t asked her daughter about her feelings for Gable, because she didn’t want to know. She had spent most of the last year working with their priest to guide Loretta away from Spencer Tracy. Gladys liked Tracy, but did not want her daughter to have any part of breaking up a family. Gladys was relieved when she learned that the romance between Loretta and Spencer had been chaste, but it might have been worse than an actual fling or an affair, because real emotions were involved.
Gable was a different story.
Gable was a worldwide sensation. Many careers, including those in the front office and all of those on the lot, profited from his success. No studio was going to lose their top moneymaker on a morals charge if they could help it. The studios worked with the press to control information about their stars. The press could kill a career or rescue one. Given a choice, they would salvage the more important and profitable actor. They’d be happy to kill Loretta’s career to keep Gable’s afloat.
Men in the press offices manufactured prurient stories about the stars with directives from the studio bosses. A lie would be printed in one fan magazine, then embellished in the next, until it snowballed into a full-tilt scandal. The lives that were ruined in the process provided as much entertainment for a hungry public as the fictional stories shot on film.
The stakes were high for successful actors and actresses. A failure at the box office could do real damage to a studio boss, but they thought nothing of letting talent take a tumble to preserve their jobs. The bosses competed on every level, using scripts, directors, and casting choices as leverage against one another, and while they took umbrage at the Hays Code, they used it to sink projects before they were made and rile the moral arbiters to boycott a movie when it was released.
Publicists and reporters made an industry out of personal weakness and vice as they hunted for stories, followed up innuendoes—anything to find stars in violation of the Hays Code. The chicanery came in handy when they wanted an excuse to get rid of an actor under an expensive contract, or one who had grown old, or an actress who was suddenly box office poison or had lost her allure. A star didn’t stay in the heavens in perpetuity. Everything in Hollywood was conditional; roles, fees, contracts, and publicity. When the fans fell away from a star, so did the studio’s support. A star’s climb to the top was often exhilarating, but the fall was always devastating.
Loretta, as a starlet pregnant with an illegitimate child, was in violation of the contract she’d signed. She would be thrown out of the business. But in this moment she wasn’t thinking about her career, but the baby.
“Mama, I have to have the baby,” she sobbed.
“You’re going to have the baby, honey,” Gladys told her.
“You’re not angry with me?”
“What good would that do?”
“How could I have done this to you? To my family?”
“You fell in love.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“But it’s what happened, isn’t it?”
Loretta nodded. “I’m so afraid.”
“You know, when I was pregnant with you, I was so afraid. I went to the priest and told him that I couldn’t have another baby. I had Pol and Sally, and your father had disappeared again. And the priest said, ‘You have two lovely girls. What if you’re lucky, and God sends you another?’ And I went home and thought about it, and I couldn’t get rid of you. I just couldn’t. And look at you. I am so proud of you. You have worked hard all your life, and you’ve made so many people happy, the least of whom is me. You have no way of knowing what the future holds, or what God has in store for you.”
“But Mama, we will lose everything. This doesn’t just affect me, it affects you and my sisters and my brother.”
“We’ll be all right.” Gladys sounded confident, but it was an act. She was shaken by the news. Gladys did what any woman of faith did in times of trial; she remembered all she had been through, the loss of two husbands and the fear of being unable to feed her children, reminding herself that she had been through worse. She remembered her strength and turned to it.
“If Paramount finds out—”
“They won’t. You’ll finish The Crusades—you’re done in a few weeks—and your contract is fulfilled.”
“Mama, how will I keep the baby?”
“We’ll find a way. You are not in this alone. You have your family, and frankly, you have Mr. Gable. This is his baby too.”
“Oh, Mama, we can never tell him.”
“You must tell him. He would want to know. We will figure out how to tell him. Now, go in the kitchen and have some soup. Ruby made a fresh pot of chicken and rice, it’s on the stove. I want you to eat something and get a good night’s sleep. I promise you, you’ll feel stronger in the morning.”
“How do you know?”
“I had five babies, Gretchen. My children are the source of everything good in my life. My work, my ambition, my drive—it’s all because of you children. And there wasn’t one time, in the five times I got the news that I was expecting, that I wasn’t afraid. It’s part of becoming a mother. You learn to use your fear to stoke your ambition. I wanted to give you children a good and decent life, and the only way I could do that was to work hard and do my best. We are not going to let anything or anybody bring us down.”
Gladys dried Gretchen’s tears. She stood up and gave her a hug. Loretta went to the kitchen for her dinner, and Gladys went to her desk. She cleared it of the bookkeeping. She brushed away her tears with her handkerchief and returned it to her pocket.
Gladys opened her address book. Her hands shook as she thumbed through it. She found the names of the reporters she had come to trust, and made a list. She also made a list of friends at the studio who would help conceal information from the bosses. She wrote down names in the shape of a family tree, a safety net of people who would help them through Loretta’s situation. She also made a note to call her accountant, lawyer, and banker. She would ask them to provide a complete financial picture of all their real estate holdings, cash, and stock. If the worst happened, Gladys would know their net worth down to the penny.
Gladys had many friends in Hollywood, and she knew she could rally them if she needed help to keep the story quiet, or make adjustments in studio commitments and contracts. She knew she would have to call in favors.
There were two issues: the short-term contract commitment Loretta had to Paramount and Cecil B. DeMille and, in the long view, how to keep the secret of the baby without ruining Loretta’s long-term career prospects. Gladys jotted some figures down on her scratch pad on the desk. She looked at the calendar. Loretta had made the picture between January 1 and February 15; it was likely the pregnancy was six weeks along. They had time to figure out a plan. In the meantime, she had to keep the romance of Gable and Young out of the papers.
Alda was hanging curtains in her kitchen in the bungalow she shared with Luca in the valley when she saw a car pull up in front of the house. Gladys and Loretta got out of the car, carrying a cake plate and a box wrapped in white with silver ribbons.
Loretta stopped to look at the house, the yard, and the street. Just a ten-minute drive over the mountain, the houses went from grand to cozy, from ostentatious to familial. The bungalow, made of pine and fieldstone, was charming. The flagstone walkway was hemmed with daisies. Under the picture window Alda had planted yellow rosebushes. The stoop’s wooden canopy was covered in morning glory vines in lush purple, dripping off the simple wooden columns. The house was small
, but it was lovely in detail.
Loretta sighed. While she loved Sunset House, she could imagine being happy in a small house that she decorated herself, with a man whom she adored racing home for dinner, a man who couldn’t wait to see her at the end of a long day. It was beyond her why the simple joys of being a woman were so far out of reach.
“Come in, come in,” Alda said.
Gladys took a look around the charming living room, approving of the decor. Loretta gave Alda a hug and handed her the gift.
“You didn’t have to!”
“Housewarming!”
“Alda, darling, can you put on a pot of coffee?”
As Alda made the coffee, Gladys unwrapped a lemon pound cake she had made that morning.
“Alda, open your present!” Loretta said as Alda joined them at the table. She lifted a lovely pale blue ceramic coffee urn out of the box.
“I love it! We’ll use it right now.” Alda went to the sink and turned to Loretta. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
“Have you heard from Mr. Gable?”
“Constantly. I won’t talk to him. I’m afraid to be seen with him.”
“Which is why we’re here, Alda.”
“What can I do?”
“I’m planning a trip to Europe. We’d like you to come with us. We plan on staying the summer.”
“Are you going to have the baby there?”
“No, we figure we’ll throw the press off by going to Europe, and we’ll say that Gretchen is taking a cure, and then we’ll return and she’ll have the baby here.”
“And then what?”
“We don’t know,” Loretta said.
“Are you considering giving the baby up for adoption? Saint Elizabeth’s works with a Catholic adoption service.”
“I don’t want to give my baby up.”
“And you don’t have to,” Gladys assured her.
“Saint Elizabeth’s was a halfway house. The nuns had a hospital ward right in the building. That’s where I worked. The girls would have the babies, and the adoption service would assign the babies and the girls.”