Susan Hayward: "Brooklyn's Scarlett"

"This I was born with: an imagination and a natural talent for lying. The perfect ingredients for an actor." -Susan Hayward

Edythe Marrener (Susan Hayward) was born on the 30th of June 1917 Saturday — ‘Saturday’s child has to work for a living.’ She was a tiny baby with bright hazel eyes, long brown lashes, with a tilt to her nose and her father’s flame colored hair.

The temperament that would so ably portray the courage of Jane Froman (herself crippled by a plane crash) in the screenplay 'With A Song In My Heart' may have begun to take shape on that sultry day in Brooklyn, when a little girl, against all medical advice and odds, struggled to walk again. “After she was back from the hospital,” Wally [Susan's brother] remembered, “the ladies from the church brought over a big bag of toys and she was allowed to open one each day that she was laid up in bed. She got a big kick out of that. It added a little surprise.” The reward for the pain and the suffering was her first taste of fame — and she liked it.

“The only way I knew how to protect myself,” Hayward later explained, “was to try to scare people before they scared me.” At Girls Commercial HS, she spent a great deal of time in the library, letting herself get caught up in the shining web of words that Thomas Wolfe spun for her. It was also in that library, she read for the first time, George Bernard Shaw’s play about Eliza the flower girl who becomes a great lady. When she read Pygmalion, she might have wished for some Professor Henry Higgins to come into her life and turn it around. She would be her own Professor Higgins and make herself into someone the whole world would know and admire. One of the women in the Dramatics Department was named Eleanor O’Grady. After she heard Edythe read for the first time, she called her into her office. “I believe you have real talent,” she told the girl.“Have you ever thought about making performing your career?” Had she ever thought —!

Susan Hayward: "If I were starting out in this day and age, I don’t think I would choose an acting career. The motion picture has all changed so tremendously. I think I’d be much more attracted to a career in something like archaeology or geology. Acting, no."

Acting upon the advice of a friend, she enrolled in the Feagan School of Dramatic Arts in Rockefeller Center, New York City. She went after the much talked about ‘experience.’ Lack of money resulted in her looking for work as a model.

At this time, there was a big boom in color photography and a natural redhead would be in. Edythe checked the yellow pages of the Manhattan phone book tearing off the listings for model agencies. On a hunch, she picked out what she thought were the best by their addresses. Acting impulsively on that same hunch she walked into the Walter Thornton Agency and asked for a job. One of Edythe’s girl friends from Astoria, Long Island, Margaret Lane reminisced about those days back in 1938. “We had to break into modeling the hard way then. Armed with a folio of our pictures and a scrapbook, we’d call on photographers, artists and fashion directors — and there were about 500 of them on the list. She became artist Jon Whitcomb’s most beguiling cover girl when he began to draw her wistful, saucy loveliness, and that was the start of her climb as a model.”

Agents from the Warner Brothers New York office offered her a $50 a week contract. On September 20, 1937 at $50 a week at the Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, she began working as an extra on her six month contract. In her very first film, 'Hollywood Hotel' Louella Parsons, the powerful Hearst columnist would play herself in a movie based on her radio show. Next at Warners, she did a small bit as a telephone operator in the Bette Davis — Erroll Flynn potboiler The Sisters. The unbilled Susan Hayward in the film would be billed over the formidable Miss Davis the next time they were in another picture together: "Where Love Has Gone?" (1964)

At a starting salary of $250 a week, she made her first appearance in 'Beau Geste,' with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland. She received fifth billing but no mention in the reviews. From there, she went up to second place for 'Our Leading Citizen,' a minor effort, and dropped to fourth place in another poor film $1,000 'A Touchdown.' She began a new year and a new picture- 'Among The Living.' This part, as a small town vamp, seemed to portend the role of a vixen, which she was to portray so well throughout her career.

“All my life I’ve been terribly frightened of people. At the studio, it was the casting director, the cameramen, reporters and publicists who asked endless questions. I thought everyone was so brilliant and I felt so inadequate. At this party, those famous stars seemed so poised, so sure of themselves. Or so I thought. That’s when I got the idea that I should try to be like them.” People at the studio advised her to change because her attitude was wrong. She stopped being herself and tried to copy everyone else. She got so mixed up and became more confused than ever. Susan’s elocution lessons were laying on a finishing school accent over her pure Brooklynese. She joined the dozen promising players at Paramount — The Golden Circle. One of that group Richard Webb has not forgotten their first meeting; "I met up with her around 1940. She was a beautiful gal with a husky voice that turned me on. Susan was highly intelligent, very alert, and had a tremendous character."

Henry Hathaway, among others, agreed with that comment; “She never slept around, not at all, she wasn’t a flirt.” Susan handled men on their own terms, as she said,“I’ve been fortunate. I’ve always been liberated, but circumstances differ with each woman. I think that if a woman does the same job as a man, she should get the same respect but I personally don’t want to be in competition with a man. I would rather have him lead the way, with slight encouragement from me, of course. And some nudging to make sure he leads me in the right direction. But I have no desire to go out and run some man’s garbage truck.”

The Hollywood grapevine gossip was out. Hayward was good. One of the people who studied her work in Gregory Ratoff's "Adam Had Four Sons" was producer Walter Wanger. It was Wanger’s opinion that Susan darned near stole the picture from a darned good actress, Ingrid Bergman. Why did Paramount treat the whole matter as it were a freak of fortune and wasted her proven ability for another five years? This is one of the mysteries of the film business. Anyone can be ignored in Hollywood. More experienced actresses, noticing her fiery competence, felt threatened and pleaded with their directors not to be cast opposite her. People seemed to be always angry with her, a condition of life that she not only tolerated but actually appeared to thrive on. Her world, inside and out, was one of ire.

Susan Hayward: "I got my early training with some very good directors, William Wellman (Beau Geste) Gregory Ratoff (Adam Had Four Sons) De Mille (Reap The Wild Wind) — and they weren’t about to sit around and wait for me or anyone to get in the mood. I didn’t spend time between scenes joking with the crew or playing poker with the wardrobe women. I saved my energy so that when they said,‘Action!’ I was ready. I learned it because it was part of my trade. And by the same token, I learned to turn the emotions off just as quickly.”

Later, as movie magazine columnists would say, “He (Jess Barker) found his heart at the Hollywood Canteen — in Susan Hayward.” Another version is that Gregory Ratoff who had just completed 'Adam Had Four Sons' with Susan was on a trip to New York and caught Jess in a stage show. Seeing him, he thought that Barker would be the ideal leading man to play opposite Susan in real life. But whatever fates brought her and Jess Barker together in 1943, soon there was no turning back. She became pregnant by Barker that same year. While Susan was attracted by the up and coming actor, she didn’t consider him stable husband material and for a time toyed with the idea of having his child out of wedlock. When she finally went to the studio heads and told them of her condition, they informed her that if she didn’t marry Barker her contract would be terminated.

Jess hardly knew the emotional hurricane he was marrying, and little suspected the furies that would engulf him over the next ten years of his life. The marital storms between the Barkers began almost immediately. After three months, they broke up, only to have the studio decree that they reconcile for the sake of appearance. On February 19, 1945 at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica Susan gave birth to non-identical twins, Timothy and Gregory. Susan’s forced marriage to Barker was just an opening to the shattering circus of publicity that would later sweep over the couple.

In "Deadline At Dawn" (produced by Howard Hughes’studio RKO) she would play a dance hall girl who helps clear a naïve sailor of a murder charge. Director Harold Clurman spoke enthusiastically: "The whole experience is very vivid. Susan Hayward was very nice, but she was not in the best state there, because for some reason they (Paramount) had lost interest in her." Bill Williams, her co-star, who played the sailor in the movie couldn’t forget something that had happened; “She was a heck of an actress and a lovely human being. The last shot in the picture was when I was sitting in the bus with her; remember she was going to go with me. We had to kiss and it wasn’t right. Either I was holding her too tight or was a little too innocent about it. It went on about 3-4 hours. I said, “Gee Susie, it’s been a long time kissing you hasn’t it?” “Bill,” she said, “I gotta tell you something, you didn’t do anything for me, either.”

But it was her next Walter Wanger picture that was the turning point for Susan. Wanger bought a property, tailored made for her untapped talents: "Smash Up: The Story of a Woman". In it, she would portray the neglected wife of a crooner. It was said it was based on the life of Dixie Lee, the wife of crooner Bing Crosby.

Marsha Hunt, an excellent actress, co-starring as well in the picture recalled: “Sadly she had absolutely nothing to do with me. I never understood why. I finally realized it wasn’t personal, I couldn’t have offended her. This was a person so private and so closely involved with her job at hand that all relationships with others were nonexistent. Susan commented to the press; “Women should not drink. Women are not constituted like men; they’re too emotional and can’t take a lot of liquor. A woman spends hours making herself beautiful and then after two drinks her face falls.”

After the picture was in release, Miss Hunt met Susan in a department store in Beverly Hills. “She was dressed as for a garden party. I don’t mean she was badly dressed; she was extremely feminine, in a floating chiffon gown, wide picture hat, and little white gloves. She was gorgeous, a beautiful woman, and so gowned that your eye was fastened on her. She was standing in front of can openers, strainers, utensils, and kitchen supplies. When I glanced up from the counter where I was shopping, there she was facing me, without a sign of recognition.”

Someone who knew Susan well said, “She was painfully shy, a trait which takes the form of brutal frankness. She is almost sullen with strangers, making no effort to please them. She goes out of her way to make an unfavorable impression. She used to say, ‘you have to accept me at my worst or not at all.’ She didn’t want to wear glasses, and half the time she couldn’t make her way without them. That’s why she didn’t recognize people — she couldn’t see them.”

Her coldness, mingled with her usually superior work in front of the cameras, inspired a fearful awe. “She was a bitch!” said director Hathaway. “Anybody who is a bitch to work with has got to be a bitch to live with. That’s an inherent thing, a part of your make-up, to be an obstruction to everything. She was a little twisted, she was twisted in her walk, she always walked a little sideways, stood a little sideways, it’s a thing that was in her nature. It was in her head, her look, her walk, in the way she stood, that girl was twisted.”

In preparing for her role of Lillian Roth in "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955) directed by Daniel Mann, Susan had studied the mannerisms of seriously ill alcoholics and visited the cells of unfortunates in the Los Angeles County Jail. Through the bars of their cells, she has studied women with the “shakes.” In one scene, Susan had to play Lillian Roth at her absolute rockbottom, lost in her alcoholic obsession as she sat in the bar with the winos, it would be very important now not only to photograph Susan’s emotional involvement in that atmosphere but literally to photograph the reflection of the place as registered in her face.

The scene in the barroom is where Lillian, now a chronic alcoholic, is living in almost complete forgetfulness. She makes drunks laugh by reciting a childhood job seeking speech — ‘I’m Lillian Roth, I’m eight years old, I do imitations and dramatic parts’ — and the winos finally discover that this is the lady they remembered. They laugh at her while Susan sits there laughing too; and as she’s laughing big tears, like drops of blood, are pouring out of her eyes. It became one of the most unforgettable moments in the picture. Susan changed a lot during this period, very much aided by the story of Lillian Roth’s torment, and often went into long trances and became at times quite unreachable. “It was one of the great moments in my whole career,” Mann said about the barroom scene not simply because it was a classic moment of laughter and tears, but that she had the freedom and capacity to involve herself in a very personalized moment. Only an actress of great courage, talent and magic could have done it. It could have looked phony to be laughing and crying at the same time, big thing about Susan’s talent is that none of this was representative. What Susan did is what she experienced — that’s why the audience experienced it.”

In Susan’s tragic life, there was a deep understanding of irony and pain. A week later Susan Hayward tried to kill herself. She was alone in the living room of her house in Sherman Oaks on that Monday night, April 25, 1955. At some point, she took a large handful of sleeping pills, washed down with her usual bourbon, and decided at the last moment to call her mother. She always threw herself almost violently into her parts. She was an honest actress. -"Brooklyn's Scarlett: Susan Hayward: Fire in the Wind" (2010) by Gene Arceri

"When you’re dead, you’re dead. No one is going to remember me when I’m dead. Oh, maybe a few friends will remember me affectionately. Being remembered isn’t the most important thing, anyhow. It’s what you do when you are here that’s important." — Susan Hayward

Love is a Headache (trailer, on TCM)

Love Is A Headache trailer (1938) directed by Richard Thorpe, starring Franchot Tone, Gladys George, Mickey Rooney, etc.

A Broadway star and a columnist vie with each other over her career and the adoption of two orphans in this madcap comedy: After a flop show Carlotta Lee (Gladys George) argues with her press agent Jimmy Slattery (Ted Healy). Columnist Peter Lawrence (Franchot Tone) goes dancing with Carlotta and warns her not to take a part with Sam Ellinger. Mike O'Toole (Mickey Rooney) jumps into the ocean to save Jake O'Toole (Virginia Wiedler), and they raise money from the crowd. Carlotta gets the part from Ellinger but has her picture taken with Mike and Jake getting into the car Odell gave her. Peter sees the news photo and calls Carlotta. She calls Odell, and he asks her to marry. They find Peter at the Juvenile Welfare office, and Odell writes a check for $10,000 and calls her his fiancé. While Peter thinks, Joe picks up Mike and Jake. Carlotta calls the police, who question Peter. He says it was a publicity stunt, and papers report a hoax. Joe shows Peter the kids, and Peter sends them out the back as Carlotta, Odell and the police arrive. Peter consoles Carlotta but sees Jake's hat. Peter tries to hide it and asks Carlotta to marry. Peter tells Carlotta she must marry to adopt, and she insists he marry her. The sheriff with a pistol forces Peter to wed Carlotta, and in the final scene Mike and Jake leave them alone. This nifty comedy plays on the sexual tension between two career people, who oddly are pulled together by two orphans not wanting to be separated. Source: www.san.beck.org

You can watch LOVE IS A HEADACHE (1938) on TCM, SUNDAY 4:15 AM 24th August. A freak accident gives a fading actress a huge publicity push. Director: Richard Thorpe Cast: Gladys George, Franchot Tone, Ted Healy. BW-73 mins, CC

Virginia Mayo: The Best Years of Her Life

VIRGINIA MAYO: Sam Goldwyn gave me a five-year contract. There was very little money offered, but "little money" was only offered to every new actor or actress back then, when they were just starting out. I got $100 a week from the Goldwyn studios, but that was OK, it was fine. I knew I had to pay my dues in this industry and work hard if I wanted fame and fortune. Don't forget, it was the early 1940's. I had Sam Goldwyn hanging around my neck like that dead albatross in "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner." Maybe he had some dumb idea all of this harassment would toughen me up. The Goldwyns lived in a huge mansion in Beverly Hills, pretty opulent but not nearly as opulent as Jack Warner's. The Goldwyns, by all Hollywood standards, were pretty conservative. They'd come from very poor backgrounds and had lived through the Depression, so they were careful with money even if they did have servants and a swimming pool.

I was twenty-six when [Michael O'Shea and I] we married, and really hadn't dated much. Frankly I just didn't much like most men. They had to be perfect for me to have an interest. I remember Gary Cooper used to follow me around in his big, expensive car in those enormous outdoor studio areas Goldwyn had built, and I would turn and glare at him and wonder "what on earth is he doing that for?" I'd just keep on walking and he'd keep on driving, just behind me. I can still hear the low rumble of his big automobile's engine as he openly stalked me from that magnificent convertible car of his. Males had to have something really very special going for them before I'd even consider liking them.

Mike [O'Shea] had a very bad habit of telling directors that they could not even "direct traffic on a one way street," which obviously never set too well with those guys. Mike could be kind of abrasive to movie folk! I mean he liked acting, but in his heart I knew he'd always wanted to be a cop. The FBI people promised in the beginning that Mike, when they began to make arrests, would never have to testify. He just trusted them, and when later on he had to in fact testify, he felt so terribly betrayed. He had to get up in front of those dangerous men and be pointed out as "the fink." He couldn't believe it. It all just broke Mike, just completely broke him. Everyone turned against him. All his so-called Hollywood friends.

It was after "Wonder Man," that I met a man who would become a dear friend for all the rest of my life, and his life too, right up until he died. His name was Steve Cochran and I loved him (like a brother). He was tall, and in spite of the fact that he photographed as if he was a really big man, he wasn't. Steve was a man with a slight frame, had unusually dark, deeply smoldering eyes, thick black eyebrows, black hair, and was often cast as a gangster or a rough, hard man. Steve was none of those things in real life. He was polite and sensitive, and very kind. But indeed, he was extremely sexy and women just couldn't get enough of him. I know there's been speculation over the years that I had an affair with Steve Cochran, but I didn't.

And then came that great classic, "The Best Years of our Lives." I am inordinately proud of that film and still feel a great sense of pride when I see it on TV. This film was about four military men returning from World War II. A haunting, memorable movie, it has never gone out of style, and while my part, Marie, was that of an insensitive, flighty air-headed wife to Dana Andrews' character, it was one of the best parts I ever had. I recall John Huston telling me I should have gotten an Oscar for my role playing Dana Andrews' wife. At the American Cinema Foundation Awards in 1988, Bette Davis did say that I should have won an Oscar for my performance in The Best Years of Our Lives. I so well remember when I eventually went to Warner Brothers, I was immediately able to get the famous director Raoul Walsh on my side. That man wanted to put me in every movie he ever made! He loved me!

He tested me for "Colorado Territory" (with Joel McCrea). The Golden Years of Hollywood are over for good. I'd love to see those old types of films come back, the crazy, beautiful wonderful musical comedies, but they won't... those wonderful old films, they simply lifted people's hearts. It's a shame. A terrible, hopeless shame. Back then, people could go home from the movies with good feelings and not troubled feelings. The films always ended happily and the singing and dancing in those great old films left people feeling happy, humming new tunes. Today it seems we have begun to enjoy pain, misery and violence as entertainment. I am filled with regret over this. How did it happen? When did it get so bad?

I had the chance to work with the gentle and sweet Alan Ladd in a couple of films, and we had wonderful time acting together. I really loved that man. There wasn't anyone nicer in Hollywood and we became good friends. The rumor is that he killed himself, and I've always worried about the fact that maybe if I'd just called him in Palm Springs where he lived, maybe if I'd just done that, he wouldn't have shot himself. I'll never know, but it will haunt me.

Let's talk here about George Raft. I appeared in a movie called "Red Light" with this so-called actor. Honestly, he was awful. He could not act his way out of a paper sack and I have no idea why he was ever even hired for any movie anywhere. (I've managed to block out everything about "Red Light," probably because I had to act opposite that non-actor.) I know Mae West thought he was the cat's pajamas and they had a tumultuous affair, although it's hard for me to imagine that "actor" being tumultuous about anything. Oh, he was just terrible!

And after "Red Light" came one of my favorites, "White Heat". Jimmy Cagney remains, at least to my view, one of the most talented men the world has ever had. I have to say I'm really proud of my films. Nearly all of them. I think they were wonderful and I never, ever get bored seeing them. We had such good lines to say all the time. We didn't have to curse and show people having sex. Do you think Cagney needed to use profanities to get his message across? No way! He could scare people without using those terrible words. Bogart and Cochran and all the great movie gangsters could make us fearful without uttering one single filthy word. The shock system came much later.

We didn't want to shock - we wanted to entertain and I know we did. I have been so fortunate in my life to meet so many well-known people, and not all were in show business. I've met scientists and inventors, authors, great painters and sculptors. Show business has given much to me, and part of it is that I've been able to be in the vicinity of a lot of people who have shaped the thinking of a lot of other people. And speaking of crying on cue; June Allyson is the best at that. She was and remains a good friend of mine and we talk on the phone frequently. I wasn't much keen on talking to everyone on shipboard, but June always did. She's great like that. Anyway, she was so ingenuous, such a charming actress and was so incredibly popular. All those wonderful films she made with Jimmy Stewart, all her singing and dancing. She also could do it all and do it well—drama, and musical comedies. I remember well when she was appearing in "No, No, Nanette" in San Francisco and she wanted to stop doing the show, so they asked me to step in for her. I did it happily. I had to go up there to watch Junie perform, to learn everything she did, and it was just sheer pleasure! 

She was so professional and friendly, and it made me admire her even more. What a talent! She was always so darling. Cute without being sickening. And as a small "aside," I'll tell here how June used to stick her chewing gum on the wall just before she went on stage, and after many performances there were just dozens of pieces of chewed June Allyson gum going up and down the staircase to the stage! She was very funny. And cry? Oh, June was a champion at it! Could turn 'em on in an instant. I like her so much. June Allyson lives north of me with her current husband, Dr David Ashrow. She is the genuine article—a real What You See Is What You Get kind of person. She's very high on my list of people I like and admire. I can remember my friendship with Ginger Rogers. I never met Fred Astaire, but Ginger and I were friends. She was just wonderful, such a versatile actress and she couldn't have been nicer. The list of famous and interesting people I've met and known over the years is so long.

I know I shouldn't even be making this list, but here are some I recall: Bette Davis. What a snob! She acted like she was a queen or something. But still, I have to admit I always loved Bette Davis's work. She was good at every single thing she did. And I do remember reading in her autobiography that she told someone that "Virginia Mayo should have done that role in that movie, and not me. Better for her than for me." I don't remember the movie of which she spoke, but it was flattering. And to give credit where it's due, at the American Cinema Foundation Awards in 1988, she did say that I should have won an Oscar for my performance in The Best Years of Our Lives.  Joan Crawford. I really didn't know her but I was always frankly sort of put off by those huge lips and huger shoulders. I guess those things became her trademark, but it seemed to be too stylized for me. Vera Ellen, my dear, darling friend. She was at Mike's and my wedding. And, she could dance like no other woman alive. Mamie Van Doren. Very sexy and funny and talented. But Jayne Mansfield was a freak and that's all I have to say about that. Henry Fonda. Didn't like him. Sorry, but I thought he was a jerk. Vincent Price was a great man, author, cook, and art collector. The wonderful Ann Miller. Jane Powell. Martha Raye. Dana Andrews was dear to me. Myrna Loy, oh boy, so beautiful. Cathy O'Donnell was lovely and tender. Robert Mitchum, the perfect bad boy! Lucille Ball—I knew her vaguely. Never did like that awful "I Love Lucy" TV show. Sorry America! Jean Peters. Well, she got the prize, didn't she? Howard Hughes! Mickey Rooney (Don't ask). Guy Madison. Dear man. Rosalind Russell, a woman I never really knew, but I did admire her acting abilities. John Wayne —I really didn't care much for him. Van Heflin, good actor. George Sanders—tragic death. Married Zsa Zsa Gabor. Cary Grant—a rue! Wonderful leading man. Ann Sheridan. Billie Burke was just wonderful. Funny lady. Loretta Young—how beautiful and smart. Shelley Winters—that voice! 

Yvonne De Carlo—good actress but kind of weird! Franchot Tone. I had a friend who used to date him. He was married a whole lot of times! Olivia de Havilland—glorious actress. Irene Dunne, just the best. Wonderful in "Life with Father." Walter Brennan won three Oscars with Sam Goldwyn. Walter Pidgeon. Such a sweet nice man and of course treated me with such kindness when I got so sick on that Howard Hughes plane going to New York. Cornel Wilde. Gorgeous man. Gregory Peck, who doesn't love that classy guy?. Lee Remick, a darling woman. Debbie Reynolds—she's marvelous. Dorothy McGuire—went on a cruise with her. What a beautiful face. Margaret Sullavan. She was so melodramatic and her speaking voice always sounded as if she was about to burst into tears! Hammy. Evelyn Keyes. I just saw her recently, at a party. I do go to parties a lot, when I can and if they sound interesting. She was married to Artie Shaw, and she's very bright. She was married a lot too, and even wrote about that.

Barbara Stanwyck? Well, I hate her. She was always after all her leading men and even went after Mike when they worked in "The Lady of Burlesque." A very critical actress. Am I angry? Yeah, because she kept going after my husband. Errol Flynn was introduced to me in my dressing room one time. Alice Faye was a wonderful lady, married to Phil Harris. The beautiful, gracious Maureen O'Hara. Betty Garrett, one of my all time favorites! Gloria Grahame. Didn't ever seem to move her upper lip much, but was very funny in Oklahoma with my beloved friend Gene Nelson, a man I miss so much. What a dancer. Kathryn Grayson—so beautiful, and that voice! Patricia Neal, a fabulous woman. I admire her enormously. Glenn Ford. Kind of a lech. John Garfield. Wasn't he wonderful? Robert Taylor—the world's heart throb. Ruth Roman, a lovely woman, great actress. Alexis Smith, Kim Novak. Jimmy Stewart—one of the best. Claire Trevor. Oh, what a great actress and wonderful lady. Gloria De Haven. She worked hard, was a good actress, but never quite made herself into a big star. 

Sterling Hayden was kind of hard to categorize. A real rebel. Lizabeth Scott. Mary Astor. Humphrey Bogart. Elizabeth Taylor. Lauren Bacall is wonderful too. Piper Laurie—now she has staying power! She's still acting and goes from serious drama to light comedy and does it beautifully. Jane Fonda? She's a fine actress, however her husband Ted Turner, you know, I think if a man can give two billion to the United Nations, then he's up to no good. People like Turner want this to be a one-world instead of our having America the way we want it. —"Virginia Mayo: The Best Years of My Life" (2002) by Virginia Mayo and L.C. Van Savage

Just Joan: A Joan Crawford Appreciation

The small percentage of actual conversations Jane Ellen Wayne had with Joan Crawford, originally related to her Robert Taylor bio, although full of fascinating and salty observations, are also “ad-libbed” since she openly admits she doesn’t carry a tape recorder. Her opinion of Joan Crawford remains hard to gauge, which lends an indifferent quality to the whole thing. It’s as if Wayne was a Taylor devotee who, while using Crawford as a source for her bio Robert Taylor: The Man With the Perfect Face, decided to take a stab at Joan as well, although not quite liking or ever understanding her much. Her meetings with Crawford, however fudged the dialogue, are the highlights of the book. Cherry picking juicy details out of sequence, Wayne boldly reassembles the moment when Crawford catches second hubby Franchot Tone in his dressing room with another starlet. The invented conversation is heavy on exposition.

Crawford: “Maybe that’s why I’m making three hundred thousand dollars a year and you only make fifty thousand dollars. Everything, sex included, should be kept in proper perspective. I might add that your excessive drinking hasn’t helped.” Tone: “How else can I face you at the front door each night?” Crawford: “Perhaps you blame my ambition, but I put the blame on your lack of it!” Then there is an alleged loud clatter which causes the guard to move closer to the door. Crawford to Tone: “Go ahead. I’ve become quite adept at covering black eyes and bruises with clever makeup.” Was Wayne there in the dressing room at the time? No. And if she was, she didn’t have a tape recorder. Ain’t it nice when nonfiction allows writers to create fiction?

Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Star by Alexander Walker - Many tidbits are amusing. While married to first husband Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., their home was “furnished for a perpetual honeymoon” with a knocker on the hall door “sculpted in the shape of two heads, male and female, their lips pressed together in a kiss.” The sunporch was stacked with hundreds of dolls, “as well as mechanical baby pigs, clucking hens, and Doug’s electric railway, which was his wife’s Christmas present to him.” When MGM signed Colonel McCoy, a stickler for authenticity, to the frontier drama Winners of the Wilderness, he “was not at all pleased when Pete Smith put out some publicity stills showing Crawford teaching Chief Big Tree the Charleston.” He notes that she always deferred to her husbands in the beginning, who were valued as much for education and savoir faire as sex appeal.

Franchot Tone got her to do radio, which she feared so much that her script pages were glued onto cardboard, “lest her shaky hand made them rustle. Franchot Tone kept a reassuring hand on her shoulder pad.” -"Just Joan: A Joan Crawford Appreciation" (2010) by Donna Marie Nowak


Joan Crawford & Franchot Tone perform "Chained" for Lux Radio Theatre. Presented & narrated by Cecil B. DeMille.

“Franchot Tone used to say stardom was like a Christmas tree — when they turn the lights on you know it’s Christmas, the rest of the time you sit and watch the needles drop.” -Joan Crawford

Barbara Payton: Lusty Blonde, Not Ashamed

-"Barbara Payton certainly could be rehabilitated. It would first require an abstinence from drink. After that a concerted effort by people she loves and likes to make her feel she still has a place in the sun. There is always hope for a girl like Barbara Payton who once had the recipe and qualifications for success and happiness. Her talents can always be renewed and nurtured by realization and growth." -Margaret Steger (Psychologist Author)

Barbara Payton hardly could have picked a worse decade in which to reveal herself as a sexual "alley cat in heat" (as Tom Neal supposedly described her). Any sexual deviancy was considered dangerous in the 1950s, so much so that a Republican Party chairman once claimed that "Sexual perverts... have infiltrated our Government in recent years," and were "perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists." Much post-war propaganda, fueled by fears of nuclear war and images of happy couples setting up bomb shelters, emphasized the importance of a good family - anchored by a kind, submissive, domestic woman - as the key to keeping society stable in dangerous times. Payton couldn't have cared less. 'It’s a real sin, I think, to throw away one’s good fortune and the blessings in one’s life,' Barbara's biographer John O'Dowd said.

In 1951 her shocking publicity blitz had barely begun. Next stop on her media train was a rush of stories about her visit to Tone's hospital - by fire escape, no less - with what looked like martinis in hand to keep him happy while he healed. They even hitched up, but their union didn't last much longer than the cases of vodka it took to fuel it. This odd coupling of a Mae Westian, crass, lusty woman and a classy, wealthy movie star ground to a disastrous halt after only a couple of months." Their reconciliation and inevitable blowout was worthy of even more press attention, when Payton hurled a telephone at Tone and allegedly tried to kill herself on sleeping pills while he looked on in horror at a New York Hotel. Even the Kinsey Report (which revealed the dirty secrets behind white Americans' sex lives in the late '40s and early '50s) would have labeled Payton's behavior "outside the norm." Warner Brothers agreed. President Jack L. Warner dropped Payton from the studio and left her to wander through the professional abyss of pitiful B-movies like Four-Sided Triangle (1953), Bad Blonde (1953) and The Great Jesse James Raid (1953).

Barbara's personal life wasn't stable enough to sustain even a low-grade career. Her violence-and-alcohol charged relationship with Neal broke up and they went their separate ways, Neal to the eventual murder of his third wife and imprisonment in California in the 1960s. But was her decline really a result of the 1950s? Would she have led the sexual revolution of the '60s instead of being its martyr, if she'd only blossomed some 10 or 20 years later? Most signs point to yes. The public support that kept Hollywood suffocated by anti-Communist paranoia started to weaken as early as 1954, when Army attorney Joseph Welch made his famous retort to Senator Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" A few years later, postwar wife and mother Betty Friedan wrote her groundbreaking The Feminine Mystique, urging women to pursue careers of their own and breathe life into old ideas of female independence that had been discarded after World War II.

Soon America would be trumpeting the likes of Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Janis Joplin, Lolita, legal abortion, the pill, the Equal Rights Amendment and on and on; surely Payton could have thrived in the glimmer of this cultural flashpoint. Would Payton really fare much better as a sexual outlaw today, where pre-packaged stars politely parade their boyfriend du jour up fancy red carpets? Would she fit in while unapologetically pitting one lover against the other, publicly boozing it up, attempting suicide on sleeping pills and rejoicing in her bad publicity? Who knows? But at least she would have a reason to live. -Neal Colgrass (2004)

Barbara Payton: In 1950, a year of unspectacular note in history, except for a Korean skirmish, I was sitting on top of the world and going higher. My peculiar acting talents were worth $10,000 a week and I was in constant demand. Boy, everyone wanted me. I know it sounds unbelievable but it's true that Gregory Peck, Guy Madison, Howard Hughes and other big names were dating me. Almost everything I did made headlines. I was such hot news the papers didn't even have to use my last name. Everyone knew who Barbara was. It was like "Ava," "Lana" or "Frankie." I was in love -crazy in love- with one man, Tom Neal. And I was engaged to (and later married) the actor with the most class in Hollywood-Franchot Tone. There was my picture on the front pages of every paper in the country. I was one of the six "Baby Stars" most likely to succeed. There was Piper Laurie, Mona Freeman, Debbie Reynolds, Mala Powers, Barbara Bates and yours truly. That was in 1949. The other five are still fulfilling their promises. Me, I goofed. It was an exciting year.

I was the only blonde among the six. At seventeen and still wearing bloomers, I dragged in an Air Force Captain (John Payton) who wanted to marry me. Nowright now! I must have really been something. I think my folks were too scared by his insistence to say no. I also think they felt it would take an Air Force Captain to keep me under control. Even he couldn't do it. He said, "Honey, where do you want to go on our honeymoon?" When I said, "Hollywood" it was the first step to the end of our marriage. It made no sense. Why should I be married to just one man, have a dull life and raise a family when I could have all that glamour? I had an awful lot of money one time. I made it in pictures and I got a big settlement from Tone. One day I told Tom he was a bastard and I gave him the merry air. I still have a sad fondness for Tom. [...] And you know if I had it to do all over again, I'd do the same. It's all in heaven in a little black book with neat lines. -"I Am Not Ashamed" (1963) by Barbara Payton