She had no desire to reign alone.
It was 1932. She was forty years old. Mary Pickford, the Girl with the Curls, was forty years old, and looked it. She’d never had a childhood but she must remain forever a child on screen; that was her own special hell, a hell of her own making. Or was it?
With Douglas, it might be bearable. Without him…
Desperate, she felt she had one last chance to win Douglas back. She had to succeed! Not only because she loved Douglas still, although loving him now primarily meant missing who he once had been. Who she had once been.
No, she had to succeed because if their marriage failed, it would be the same thing as if Hollywood itself—their Hollywood, the Hollywood that the two of them had invented and put on the map—broke off the continent and fell into the sea. That was how much Mary fervently believed in the holiness of their union and all it stood for. She must remind him of all that they’d created together—not only Pickfair and United Artists and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; not merely the biggest, the best movies ever made. But also, the greatest love of all time; the love that all their fans looked up to, and desired for themselves.
The love that she nearly sacrificed her career for.
So how would Mary win Douglas back?
The same way she’d won him in the first place; by making a movie, of course. She’d sacrificed her youth to the camera; she’d sacrificed more. The movies owed her. She would woo Douglas back to her side, where he belonged, with a movie. He would look at her on-screen and fall in love with her again, just as he had long ago.
And there was only one person she trusted to write this movie for her; one woman. Because it had to be written by a woman. Only a woman would understand. And the best woman she knew, the only woman she thought of, was Fran.
But for the first time, Mary didn’t know if Fran would even answer the phone when she called.
“And the 1930 Academy Award for best writing goes to—Frances Marion for The Big House!”
I was frozen, shocked to hear my name. As much as I’d told myself that awards didn’t matter, and that this banquet was merely another work obligation that had to be fulfilled, I realized that I was happy to have won. Even though I knew that happiness wouldn’t last the night; these days, happiness clung to me only briefly, like a piece of lint.
George Hill, to his credit, kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “You deserve this, Fran,” and I was grateful. His eyes were full of tears, although I wasn’t sure if they were of happiness or sadness or both. “Go on, Fran.” My husband gave me a gentle shove, and I realized I’d been sitting for too long, and people were applauding, waiting for me to go up to the podium and accept the award.
My husband. Yes, George Hill was my husband, and how could that be? How could I be married again, a mere two years after my world shattered? How could I have fallen into the same old trap I’d fallen into before I’d found Fred?
Terror, it was. The fear of raising our two sons alone. Oh, just say it, Fran—stupidity. George asked, with his devoted, puppy-dog eyes, and I said yes, even though I didn’t love him, I knew I never could love anyone but that big strapping cowboy of mine who had gotten on his horse and ridden into the sunset, forever.
It couldn’t last, and it didn’t; even though George was seated next to me at the MGM table—he’d directed The Big House—we were already separated. Our marriage was a casualty of his drinking, and my career (George wasn’t nominated for his direction). Another Hollywood marriage gone bust.
George finally reached over and grabbed my arm and hauled me out of my seat, and I dropped my napkin on the table. My friends were now standing as they cheered—Hedda Hopper, tall and elegant, laughing hysterically; Marie Dressler, dear Marie, her face wet with tears. I ran to hug her, then Irving Thalberg gave me a shove so I would make my way across the banquet floor to the podium. I had to stop at every table to shake someone’s outstretched hand; there were so many, it felt as if I was at a wedding reception. I accepted all the congratulations, trying to move forward all the while, when suddenly there was a tiny figure with golden bobbed hair, eyes shining, blocking my path, her arms waving as if she were trying to stop a train.
Mary.
“Fran! Fran, darling, congratulations! I’m so glad I’m here to share this with you!”
“Thank you, Mary.” I eyed her warily, not sure how—stable—she was tonight. I didn’t see Doug anywhere, but surely he’d come with her? He never missed these things.
“Isn’t it marvelous, Fran? I’m so proud of you! I won last year and now you win and—”
“Yes, Mary, it is. Now, excuse me.” I slipped out of her feverish embrace, but not before I saw the hurt tears in her eyes—bloodshot, confused eyes. But I told myself I didn’t care; I was through caring about Mary.
None of it mattered, anyway. These awards—I looked around; Louis B. Mayer was actually standing on a chair and cheering me, even though only yesterday he’d chewed me out in his office and told me he owned me. And tomorrow, despite my trophy, he’d do the same. It was all so stupid, so self-congratulatory, yet it meant nothing. Because there was one person missing and how I would have loved to see this evening through his eyes, but I couldn’t.
Robert Montgomery—who had starred in my movie—was holding the statue at the podium and waving me up. Without another word, I marched up to the podium, where I accepted my award.
“Thank you very much.” That was all I said; that was all I needed to say. I returned to my seat, clutching the gold statue, and left soon after the last award—The Big House lost to All Quiet on the Western Front; the war movie I could never bring myself to write, after all, and why was that?
Why was my life, the real, sad, dirty, wonderful, terrible, heartbreaking life I lived, not the fantasy I wrote for Mary and for all the others—why was it the one thing I could never find the proper words to describe? Was it too much for me; too much for me simply to survive, so I couldn’t spare it more mental energy? Did I fear examining it too closely?
Probably, I would never know, and frankly I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. I was too busy trying to give a passable impersonation of living, these days.
After I unlocked my front door, I threw my cloak on a chair in the living room that Fred had never seen; The Enchanted Hill was someone else’s now. I’d sold it right after his funeral; the memories would have buried me alive within its walls.
Holding my award, I wondered why I didn’t want to share that moment with Mary; why I’d frozen at the sight of her, as if I was ashamed of her. It wasn’t that—although being Mary Pickford’s best friend these days wasn’t the coveted role it used to be, that was for certain. No, I was still angry with her—and at myself. Angry because I’d never asked her where she was when my children were born, when Fred was ill, when he died. I deserved to know, but was afraid to ask; ever since Fred died the world had seemed so impermanent, flimsier than movie sets. Mary, despite her flaws, was still someone I couldn’t bear to lose. Or rather—because I couldn’t lie to myself—I couldn’t bear to lose the memory of who Mary used to be; what we used to mean to each other.
I curled up in an armchair and fell asleep, not the first time I’d done so but always before Fred had been there to carry me upstairs and put me to bed, then slip in beside me. But when the weak rays of early morning filtered in through the closed drapes, I was still in the chair; my neck was stiff, my back ached, and there was no one to carry me upstairs. My only companion was my statue from the night before; that strange little bald man on a pedestal lay at my feet, looking up at me with a blank expression.
With a groan, I picked it up. Stiffly, I trudged up the stairs to my bedroom, looking for a place to put it—the mantel was too narrow, my bureau too crowded with pictures of the boys, of Fred. My bookshelves were crammed with books and bound scripts. Finally, I gave up and placed the golden statue on the floor; a doorstop was as good a use for it as anything.
That mornin
g I went to work as usual, leaving my sons in the care of others—a nanny for now, boarding school eventually. I was their sole support; I had to work. And if I was being honest with myself, I was also terrified of them. I was a woman who didn’t trust men; my sons represented a challenging puzzle I knew I would never solve. So I took refuge in my work, telling myself it was for their own good.
Back to work—that meant MGM now, exclusively. And Louis B. Mayer, who—after taking out enormous ads trumpeting my win for MGM—reverted to his usual antics; haranguing me, treating me like chattel. Even though I had written some of the most spectacular hits of my career for him—Anna Christie, The Big House, Min and Bill, Dinner at Eight. Unlike Mary, my first sound movies were enormously successful.
Why was that? Because I didn’t automatically think of Mary anymore when I sat down to write? Or was it because I was exhilarated to learn a new craft, for wasn’t that what writing for talkies represented? From the beginning, I instinctively grasped that the ornate language of silent movie titles couldn’t be an easy substitute for dialogue; sentences such as “The rosy dawn breaks over the majestic hills” could not be spoken, at least with a straight face. Dialogue had to sound like people actually talking; a simple enough idea, yet surprisingly hard for some screenwriters to do. Still, film was a visual medium, and I hesitated to fill my screenplays with too many words. So many of these new “talkies” were simply vignettes of people standing about and discussing, nonstop. Silence still had a place in talking pictures; in fact, it could be even more powerful.
But as I grew more confident in my mastery of this new craft, I also witnessed a change at the studio; a change, unlike talkies, I wasn’t sure I could weather—or that I even wanted to.
At MGM, Irving had gone on a hiring spree as the studio grew. Most of the new writers—mostly male; novelists and playwrights from Broadway—were only on short-term contracts, never knowing where their check would be coming from in a few months. Gone were the days when one screenwriter would work solo, seeing a picture through from pitch to finished product. Now screenplays were passed around, worked on by committee until it became an issue as to who would get credit. Irving didn’t seem to care who did; all he cared about was the finished product.
I cared. My films—along with Bess Meredyth’s and Anita Loos’s—had so far escaped this writing by committee. But more and more young screenwriters came to me frustrated by the system, wondering how on earth they could build a career this way, and when I brought it up to Irving, I was shocked by his attitude. Irving had always been the creatives’ champion, always shielding us from the blunt business mind of Mayer.
“We already have the stagehands unionizing,” Irving now said with disgust. “Don’t tell me you writers are thinking about it. I swear, Frances, I swear our friendship will mean nothing if you go that way.”
“Heavens, Irving, who said anything about a union? I’m talking about what’s fair.”
“Stick to writing your scripts and let me run the studio, Fran. Don’t get involved with these ingrates.” And Thalberg turned away—which only made me more determined to help organize a writer’s union. But I was most upset about the way he dismissed me; as if I was simply—anyone else. Any one of these new, interchangeable young men he’d hired, and not the woman—the highest paid screenwriter then and now—whom L. B. Mayer had begged to come work for his fledgling studio.
There were very few of us women left at the studio these days.
“The trouble with you girls,” Mayer recently scolded me, “is that you don’t take any of this seriously. You dash in and out of each other’s offices like it’s a dormitory at some girls’ college, laughing, singing songs. You go home to give your brats dinner instead of staying late and attending meetings. You just don’t take it seriously.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Didn’t the work count? We all—Bess and Anita and Adela, too—had been responsible for very successful pictures; practically every successful picture. That we chose to help one another, support one another, enjoy one another’s company—not to mention see our children more than once a week—did not mean that we didn’t take our work, this business that we had been responsible for creating even more than L. B. Mayer, seriously.
But I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t have the heart. I missed—oh, I missed! I missed the old days; Fred, I missed Mickey, I missed—
I missed Mary. A year and a half after I won my Academy Award, I was still missing her when one day the phone rang.
“I need you, Fran.”
Not even a hello, how are you. Only this—I need you, Fran. I swallowed, wondering what she’d do if I said the same thing to her. No, not wondering, actually. I knew.
“Fran, are you there? Fran, you’re the only one who can write my next movie. It’s a wonderful story—I want to remake that Norma Talmadge film, Secrets. Remember? You wrote it for Norma back then—back in ’twenty-four, wasn’t it? I think it’s perfect for me now, don’t you? This is very important—my career, you know, it’s—it’s rocky. And then, Douglas—won’t you do this for me?”
I couldn’t speak for a long moment; too many thoughts assaulted my mind. Mary was too old for the part. It had been a creaky, old-fashioned story back in 1924, and it was even creakier now. Audiences didn’t go for that kind of sappy costume stuff these days—not unless it starred Garbo.
“Please, Fran. For your Squeebee?”
It must have been the nickname; the memories it brought flooding back of good times, happier days. I could get Mayer to loan me out. With Mary producing, I’d have full control of the script again. I could probably even help with casting—something I missed doing, now that the studio system was in full swing and writers wrote for whom they were told to write.
Whatever the reason—loneliness? frustration? weakness?—I heard myself saying, “Yes, Mary, I’ll do it.”
And so I found myself back on the set again with Mary, and despite all I knew, all I suspected—not to mention all I couldn’t say to her—I was as excited as I’d been the first time I walked into a movie studio. Because if there was a way back to Mary—to myself, the intact self I was before Fred died and everything, including Hollywood, changed—it was here.
On a crowded, noisy, dirty, chaotic—wonderful, inspiring, exhilarating, wondrous—movie set. I’d never been so happy to see arc lights and flimsy sets in my entire life, the day I showed up to work with Mary again.
—
Lights! Camera! Action!
I had no idea when these words became symbolic of the glamour of a movie set. Because I’d never heard these words in my entire life.
I knew, because I read the fan magazines just like everyone else, that the public had an idealized notion of what a movie set was like. Hushed tones, everyone cooperating, everything moving smoothly, exactly on schedule. One director in charge, confidently commanding “Lights, Camera, Action!” And then glamour and music and beautiful, unattainable people magically being magical.
But a film set was anything but that. Sound had changed everything about the actual filming; of course, while the camera was rolling, the crew couldn’t make noise. But between takes the set was just as wonderfully chaotic as it used to be; people dropping hammers, bumping into flats, tripping over cables, props crashing to the floor, costume girls cursing because an actress tore a skirt, actors cursing because they messed up their lines, directors cursing—because directors always cursed. Shared jokes, easy camaraderie; there was still no place I felt more at home than on a movie set.
“First day, Fran, darling!” Mary appeared on set, trailed by several costume girls holding the hem of her enormous pink hoop skirt, just like ladies-in-waiting. The dress nearly dwarfed her tiny frame, but it was period appropriate. “We’re going to make a darn good movie, gang, I just know it!”
I grinned, thinking of how many times she’d said this, how many first days we’d shared. I wasn’t as jaded and sophisticated as some people—like Mayer—thought; I nearly
jumped up and down, my insides doing excited somersaults. I loved making movies—especially with Mary.
“Break a leg, Squeebee dear! You look beautiful!”
She pirouetted and tapped me on the shoulder with her parasol; I curtsied, and then we collapsed in each other’s arms, giggling.
“Oh, Fran, I just know this is it—this is going to be the hit I need! Because of you! We’re at our best together, don’t you think?”
“I do.” And I knew it then, and wondered why we’d waited so long to make another film. “We’ll be making movies together until we’re in wheelchairs!”
“And maybe even then—Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm for Old Folks!”
“Places, Miss Pickford!” the AD shouted.
Mary stopped laughing; her eyes grew anxious and for the first time I saw that there were shadows beneath them no makeup could completely cover. “Oh, Fran! I just need this to be—” She broke off and looked away, unable to finish her thought.
But I could. I always could.
“It will be. Just wait until Douglas sees you like this! You look exquisite!” She did look radiantly pretty; despite the shadows beneath her eyes, her face was still that pretty cameo, if slightly softer in profile. Her eyes were still perfect ovals of glittering emotion. But in my heart, I knew that she was a beautiful forty-one-year-old, not a girl of eighteen, which was what she was supposed to be in this scene. Her costar, the new British actor Leslie Howard, was twenty years her junior. And looked it.
My job, however—as it had always been on set, once the script was done—was to help her, ease her way, come up with lines and little bits in which she could shine. So I kept my thoughts to myself, gave her another careful hug—so as not to crush her costume and hairstyle—and filming got under way.