Scandals of Classic Hollywood, "The World Is My Mistress" by Ray Milland

"Scandals of Classic Hollywood," Anne Helen Petersen's first book, chronicles the making and unmaking of several leading lights from the height to the eclipse of the studio era. It's structured as a series of star mini-biographies, but when recounting the familiar railroading of Fatty Arbuckle or the turbulent career of Judy Garland, Petersen is less interested in compiling a history of Hollywood's juiciest scandals than in detailing how stars and their studio fixers have managed ruptures to their carefully pruned and highly valuable image. Collecting fabricated anecdote and "well-circulated legend" along with biographical fact, "Scandals" is an episodic but exhaustive study of the Hollywood studio system that puts public relations on equal footing with film aesthetics and makes a strong case that narratives of stardom can be more tragic, ironic and savagely entertaining than the movies that prop them up.

In particularly strong chapters on Clara Bow, Dorothy Dandridge, Jean Harlow and Mae West, Petersen is attuned to the ways the celebrity female body can serve as an unwitting battleground for societal discomfort about sex. Contemporary tabloids make it clear that not much has changed. Source: www.latimes.com

Grace Kelly's reputation for sleeping with any man who might further her career was deserved, since she had countless affairs with men married and unmarried. She slept with Bing Crosby while his wife was dying of cancer, meeting for sex at the pool house of his next door neighbor Alan Ladd. Her affair with Ray Milland, Hollywood's most-married man, was a major scandal. William Holden was also married when she slept with him, and Gene Lyon tried to have his marriage annulled during their affair. She slept with Spencer Tracy while he was married to his wife Louise and having his affair with Katharine Hepburn. She slept with Aly Khan and allegedly had affairs with directors Fred Zinnemann and Alfred Hitchcock.

Confidential magazine described her as "the most dangerous dame in the movies today." Her father and brother were so upset about the magazine's coverage that they stalked into the offices and beat up two of the editors. The Mogambo crew escaped Kenya unscathed except for Gable's costar Ava Gardner, who discovered that she was pregnant during the African shoot. When the crew moved on to London an abortion was arranged for Gardner.

At the time Gable was completing Mogambo, his Never Let Me Go was such a flop that Dore Schary thought about not re-signing him. Gable wanted not only an extension but for the first time wanted a percentage of his films' profits. Common now, percentage deals were never done in the 1950s. Schary and Nick Schenck were adamant that no MGM actor would set that precedent, knowing the studio system in place since the 1920s would be gone. Schary offered Gable a two-year extension, banking on Never Let Me Go's failure to sway Gable, but Gable told them they "could take their money, their studio, their cameras and lighting equipment and shove it up their asses."

When Mogambo earned raves Schary increased his offer, but Gable refused to re-sign. He left MGM in March 1954 after 51 films, but Schary was comforted that no actor had a percentage deal. Everything MGM was removed from Gable's life, except Grace Kelly. He rekindled his affair with Kelly, meeting at her Bel Air Hotel bungalow. She was also sleeping with Bing Crosby and William Holden at the time. -"The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine" (2004) by E. J. Fleming

In September 1932, Ray Milland married Muriel Weber, and they remained together for 54 years until his death in 1986. There was a whiff of scandal in 1954 when Milland was rumoured to have had an affair with his co-star in 'Dial M for Murder', Grace Kelly, who was notorious for bedding her leading men. Apart from that, the Millands led a remarkably quiet life, eschewing the normal Hollywood party scene, staying home and raising son, Daniel, and adopted daughter, Victoria. When the Second World War began, Milland was rejected when he tried to enlist in the armed forces due to an injured hand. He was an enthusiastic amateur pilot and he worked as a civilian flight instructor for the Army, as well as touring with a United Service Organisation (USO) South Pacific troupe in 1944. In 1976 he published his autobiography, "Wide-Eyed in Babylon", a self-deprecating account of his life to date. Source: www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com

"The World Is My Mistress" by Ray Milland: "Like everyone, I too have searched for something most of my life. Today I have found it. Today I am a peaceful man. I am no longer afraid of the world. People who were born sensitive and shy will especially understand this admission. I have learned how to live with myself. Therein lies [my] salvation. I'm afraid each individual has to seek out his own solution. We are what we are because - People think and feel because of luck, fate, background, breeding, environment. There is still a reason why each of us fits into his own particular pattern. And because of this reason, we are loved or loathed... Nostalgia can be the most harrowing experience of all. Maybe you go to a party, a woman walks by... Suddenly her perfume catches you. In a split second you can be rendered physically ill, or transported into near ecstasy. I vividly recall my first Hollywood party - I was new, unknown, of friends and dollars I had precious few. Here I was mingling with the great stars. I became aware that salaries and the box-office actually had something to do with people and nothing to do with human qualities." -Screenland magazine, 1954