Hollywood Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR GORE VIDAL AND

  HOLLYWOOD

  “Wicked and provocative.… Vidal’s purview of Hollywood in one of its golden ages is fascinating.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Witty and wonderful.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Vidal succeeds in making his history alive and plausible.”

  —The New York Times

  “Hollywood shimmers with the illusion of politics and the politics of illusion.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “A rich, history-packed addition to the author’s brilliant, ongoing vision of how our republic became a world empire.”

  —Boston Herald

  “[Vidal] manages to encompass just about everything that happened in this country from the American decision to intervene in World War I in 1917 to the death of President Harding six years later.… He never fails to instruct as well as entertain.”

  —USA Today

  “Vidal has now emerged as no less than the fictional chronicler of America itself.… Vidal’s interweaving of political portraiture with narrative has never been better.”

  —The Newark Star-Ledger

  “Masterly.… [Vidal] gives his ideas, his theories, full reign.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Vidal is the best political novelist since Disraeli.… [His] highly polished prose style, in part the fruit of his classical training, is a constant delight. One might even go so far as to call him a modern la Rochefoucauld.”

  —Louis Auchincloss, The New York Review of Books

  “Our greatest living man of letters.”

  —The Boston Globe

  GORE VIDAL

  HOLLYWOOD

  Gore Vidal was born in 1925 at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first novel, Williwaw, written when he was nineteen years old and serving in the Army, appeared in the spring of 1946. Since then he has written twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over two hundred essays, and a memoir.

  NARRATIVES OF EMPIRE

  BY

  GORE VIDAL

  Burr

  Lincoln

  1876

  Empire

  Hollywood

  Washington, D.C.

  The Golden Age

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JULY 2000

  Copyright © 1990 by Gore Vidal

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1990.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged

  the Random House edition as follows:

  Vidal, Gore, 1925–

  Hollywood.

  I. Title.

  PS3543.I26H65 1990 813′.54 89-42834

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78422-3

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  ONE

  1

  Slowly, William Randolph Hearst lowered his vast bear-like body into a handsome Biedermeier chair, all scrolls and lyres and marquetry. “Tell no one I’m in Washington,” he commanded. Then, slowly, he blinked his pale blue eyes at Blaise Delacroix Sanford. Although Blaise was now forty-one and the publisher of the Washington Tribune, he was still awed by his former chief and mentor, gone gray in his fifty-fourth year, the most famous newspaper publisher in the world, owner of dozens of journals and magazines and, most curiously, the recent begetter of that world-wide sensation a photo-play serial called The Perils of Pauline.

  “I won’t, of course.” Blaise sat on the edge of his desk, flexing leg muscles. Unlike the Chief, Blaise was in excellent physical shape: he rode horseback every day, played squash in his own court, fought age.

  “Millicent and I’ve been spending the winter at the Breakers. You know, Palm Beach.” The Chief’s face was Indian-brown from the sun. Just past Hearst’s head, Blaise could see, through the window, a partial view of Fourteenth Street until, with a dry soft sigh, the Biedermeier chair crumpled in on itself like an accordion and Hearst and chair were suddenly as one with the thick Persian carpet, and the view of Fourteenth Street was now unobstructed.

  Blaise leapt to his feet. “I’m sorry …”

  But Hearst serenely ignored gravity’s interruption of his thought. He remained where he was on the floor, holding in one hand a fragile wooden lyre that had been an armrest: the Orpheus of popular journalism, thought Blaise wildly, unnerved by the sight. “Anyway, what I sneaked into town for was to find out whether or not there’s anything to this Zimmerman-telegram thing, and if there is, how are you going to play it? After all, you’re the Washington publisher. I’m just New York.”

  “And everywhere else. Personally, I think it’s a hoax.… Why don’t you try another chair?”

  Hearst put down his lyre. “You know, I bought a whole houseful of Biedermeier furniture when I was in Salzburg and I shipped it back to New York, where I never got around to crating it. Don’t think I will now.” As slowly as Hearst had sat so, majestically, he rose to his full height, at least two heads taller than Blaise. “Sorry I smashed that thing. Bill me for the damages.”

  “Forget it, Chief.” In his nervousness, Blaise called Hearst the name that he was known by to all his employees but never to his equal, Blaise. As Hearst settled himself into a fortress-like leather armchair, Blaise picked up the so-called Zimmermann telegram. Blaise had received a copy from a reliable source at the White House and so, apparently, had Hearst. The telegram had been secretly transmitted from London to President Wilson on Saturday, February 24, 1917. It was now Monday and, later in the day, Woodrow Wilson would address a joint session of Congress on the subject of war or peace or continued neutrality or whatever with the Central Powers, specifically Germany, in their war against the Entente Cordiale, or France and England and Russia and, lately, Italy. If authentic, the telegram from the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador in Mexico, a country for some time more or less at war with the United States, would end once and for all the neutrality of the United States. Blaise suspected that the telegram was the work of the British Foreign Office. The boldness of tone was the sort of thing that only a desperate country, losing a war, would concoct in order to frighten the United States into coming to its aid.

  “My spies tell me that the telegram has been sitting around in London since last month, which means that that’s where it was written, if it didn’t start here first.” Hearst withdrew his copy from a pocket; then he read in his high thin voice, “ ‘We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare.’ ” He looked up. “Well, that part’s true, the Germans are really giving it to us, sinking just about every ship in sight between here and Europe. Dumb of them, you know. Most Americans don’t want war. I don’t want war. Did you know Bernstorff was Mrs. Wilson’s lover?”

  The Chief had a disconce
rting habit of moving from subject to subject with no discernible connection; yet there was often some mysterious link that connected his staccato musings. Blaise had indeed heard the rumor that the German ambassador and the widow Mrs. Galt, as the second Mrs. Wilson had been styled a year earlier, had been lovers. But then Washington was not only Henry James’s “city of conversation” but Hearst’s city of fantastic gossip. “If they were lovers, I’m sure it was all over by the time she married the President.”

  “You never can tell unless you were in the room, as my mother keeps telling me. The money my mother has! And she’s pro-English, too.” Hearst began to read again. “ ‘We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.’ ” Hearst looked up. “At least whoever wrote this isn’t promising them my place in California.”

  “Who do you think wrote this, if not Zimmermann?”

  Hearst looked grim. “Thomas W. Gregory, the attorney general. That’s what I hear. He’s pushing Wilson harder and harder to go to war now. Luckily, the rest of the Cabinet want Wilson to hold out because,” Hearst squinted at the telegram, “this part here is what this war is all about. I mean, Zimmermann or Gregory or the English or whoever wrote it suggests that the president of Mexico approach the Japanese and get them into the war against us. Well, that’s the big danger!”

  Blaise moved off his desk and into his chair. Back of him hung a life-size painting of himself, his half-sister and co-publisher Caroline, and their editor, Trimble. Blaise knew, everyone knew, that whenever Hearst was in need of a scare story for his newspapers, he would invoke the Yellow Peril. Although Blaise was neutral on the subject of Japanese expansion in China, others were not. On February 1 when Germany had delivered its ultimatum to the United States that all shipping from American ports to those of the Allied Powers would be fair game for German submarines, or U-boats as they were popularly known, the Cabinet had met, and though Gregory among others was eager for a declaration of war, the President, remembering that he had just been re-elected as “the man who kept us out of war,” wanted only to sever relations between the two countries. He had been unexpectedly supported by his secretaries of war and Navy; each had made the case that the United States should allow Germany its head in Europe and then, at a future date, the entire white race would unite as one against the yellow hordes, led by Japan. Hearst had played this diversion for all that it was worth. Blaise had not.

  Trimble entered the room, without knocking. He was an aging Southerner whose once red hair was now a disagreeable pink. “Mr. Hearst.” Trimble bowed. Hearst inclined his head. Trimble said, “We’ve just got a report on what the President is going to say to Congress …”

  “War?” Hearst sat up straight.

  “No, sir. But he is going to ask for armed neutrality …”

  “Preparedness.…” Hearst sighed. “Peace without victory. A world league of nations with Mr. Wilson in the chair. Self-determination for all.”

  “Well,” said Trimble, “he doesn’t say all that in this speech.” Then Trimble withdrew.

  Blaise repeated the week’s Washington joke. “The President wants to declare war in confidence, so the Bryanites—the pacifists—in his party won’t turn on him.”

  “Not to mention me. I’m still in politics, you know.” Blaise knew; everyone knew. Hearst was preparing to run yet again for governor of New York or mayor of New York City or president in 1920. He still had a huge following, particularly among the so-called hyphenates, the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans, all enemies of England and her allies. “Did you see The Perils of Pauline?”

  Blaise adjusted easily to the sudden shift of subject. The Chief’s mind was a wondrous kaleidoscope, unshielded by any sort of consciousness. Like a child, whatever suddenly bubbled up in his brain, he said. There was no screening process except when he chose, as he often did, to be enigmatically silent. “Yes, I saw several of them. She’s very handsome, Miss Pearl White, and always on the move.”

  “That’s why we call them moving pictures.” Hearst was tutorial. “She has to keep running away from danger or the audience will start to run out of the theater. You know, on this war thing, I’m for staying out just as you are for getting us in. But I’ll say this—if the people really want a war, then I’ll go along. After all, they’re the ones who’re going to have to fight it, not me. I’m going to ask for a national referendum, get a vote from everybody, you know? Do you want to fight for England and France against your own people, the Germans and the Irish?”

  Blaise laughed. “I don’t think they’ll let you put the question like that.”

  Hearst grunted. “Well, you know what I mean. There’s no real support out there. I know. I got eight newspapers from California to New York. But of course it’s too late. This thing’s gone too far. We’ll get a war all right. Then England will cave in. Then the Germans will come over here, or try to. Have you thought about flags?”

  “Flags?” This time the Chief’s unconscious mind was ahead of Blaise.

  Hearst pulled a copy of the New York American from his huge side pocket. On the front page there were red-white-and-blue flags as well as several stanzas from “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “Looks nice, don’t it?”

  “Very patriotic.”

  “That’s the idea. I’m getting tired of being called pro-German. Anyway I’m about to start a photo-play company, and I’d like you to come in with me.”

  Blaise adjusted to this new shift with, he thought, admirable coolness. “But I don’t know anything about the movies.”

  “Nobody does. That’s what’s so wonderful. You know, while we’re sitting here, all over the world illiterate Chinese and Hindus and … and Patagonians are watching my Pauline. You see, to watch a movie you don’t need to know another language the way you have to when you read a paper because it’s all there—up there, moving around. It’s the only international thing there is. Anyway the point is that Mother, who’s the rich one, won’t lend me the money and I don’t want to go to the banks.”

  At last Hearst had startled Blaise. It was true that Phoebe Apperson Hearst controlled the vast mining wealth of Hearst’s late father, but Hearst’s personal empire was more than enough to finance a photo-play company. Of course, Hearst lived more grandly than anyone in the United States on, it was said, five million dollars a year, much of which went for the acquisition of every spurious art-work for sale anywhere. “Well, let me think about it.” Blaise was cautious.

  “What about that sister of yours, Caroline?”

  “Ask her.”

  “You don’t want to sell me the Tribune, do you?”

  “No.”

  Hearst rose. “That’s what you always say. I’ve got my eye on the Times here. It’s a lousy paper, but then so was this till Caroline bought it and fixed it up.”

  Blaise’s sudden pang of envy was, he hoped, not visible to the other. Caroline had indeed bought and revived the moribund Tribune; then, and only then, had she allowed her half-brother to buy in. Now, jointly, amiably, they co-published.

  Hearst stared down at Fourteenth Street. “Four,” he said, “no, five movie theaters just on this one street. I’ve got my eye on a place up in Harlem, an old casino, where I can set up a studio.” Idly, he kicked at the remains of the Biedermeier chair. “I have to stay in New York. Because of 1920. War or not, that’s going to be the big political year. Whoever gets to be president then can …” Hearst tapped the Zimmermann telegram which lay on Blaise’s desk. “I think it’s a fake.”

  Blaise nodded. “So do I. It’s too convenient.…”

  Hearst shook Blaise’s hand. “I’m heading back to Palm Beach now. We’ll get this war anyway, like it or not. Remember my proposal. I’m only starting up in Harlem
because New York is my base. But the place to be from now on is Hollywood. You got that?”

  “No,” said Blaise. Like a circus trainer, he led the great bear to the door. “But I’m sure you’ve … got it.”

  2

  The Duchess was late. As Jesse Smith waited for her in Madame Marcia’s parlor, he studied or pretended to study Dr. Janes’s Vermifuge Almanac, a thick volume filled with lurid charts of the heavens and strange drawings of even stranger creatures of which one, a monstrous crab, gave Jesse or Jess—“No final ‘e,’ please, boys, that’s only for the ladies of the emporium”—heartache as well as heartburn, for in his recurrent nightmares there often figured a giant devouring crab of utter malignity; and Jess would wake up with a sob, according to Roxy, on the few times during their short marriage that they had spent an entire night together.

  Quickly, Jess turned over several pages until he arrived at a neutral pair of scales, more soothing than the lobster with the sting in its tail or the menacing lion. It was not that he feared being eaten by crab, lobster, lion. Suffocation was the night terror, as heavy lion’s paw covered nose and mouth.

  Jess took a deep shaky breath. Madame Marcia’s apartment smelled of boiled chicken and stale incense from a brass Benares dish filled with what looked like the burnt contents of a pipe but was actually the latest Indian Hindu sandalwood incense, to which Roxy had also been partial.

  Madame Marcia’s parlor was separated from the inner sanctum by a curtain made of strings of different-colored beads to give an Arabian Nights effect; but the beads were so dull that the effect was more like threaded penny candies. Nevertheless, half the great men and women of Washington, D.C., were said to have come here in order to glimpse the Future and so circumvent—or hasten—inexorable fate. A functioning sorceress, Madame comfortably advertised herself as “A president-maker and a president-ruler.” Behind the cascade of beads, Jess could hear Madame humming to herself in a toneless voice that suggested the higher realms of spirit until one caught from time to time, the lyrics of a brand-new song made popular by the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916, and heard, for almost a year now, on every Victrola in the land. Jess gazed without much interest at a gaudy diploma on the wall that admonished one and all that, by these presents, one Marcia Champrey was a minister in good standing of the Spiritualist Church.