All About “All About Eve” (47 page)

I was perplexed at such naiveté. Martina’s anger seemed directed at the genre of fiction. Her gnawing unhappiness apparently fed on the plain fact that Mary Orr wrote a short story and not a literal account of certain events in the life of Martina Lawrence. My follow-up questions did not lead far.

She went on, “Most of the events were true. But to make up things, out of the top of one’s head, that’s wrong. That’s immoral, that’s unethical. You see, I’ve never liked fiction, Sam. Fiction, you can write anything you want.”

I changed direction by referring to a statement from Harry Haun’s tape: “You told Harry that you met Elisabeth Bergner and her husband by catching cabs. Will you elaborate?”

The oddity of such an encounter didn’t strike Martina as odd, or if so she didn’t let on. In fact, she took the phrase “catching cabs” almost as her madeleine to release the locked-up glories of her past. Her voice grew lyrical when she uttered the phrase.

“My husband was in the war, and I was staying at the Laura Spelman YWCA on October fourteenth, nineteen forty-four, my birthday. I was twenty-three that day. The institutional gloom of the place depressed me, and so I bought a ticket for standing room to see
The Two Mrs. Carrolls
at the Booth Theatre. However, that first time I saw Elisabeth Bergner on a stage bothered me. I was disappointed. I preferred her in the movies. I couldn’t hear her very well and thought she must be ill. After the performance I saw Dr. Czinner. Smelling to high heaven with eau de cologne. Anyway, I recognized him from magazines and things, and I mentioned something about how was Miss Bergner. He said, ‘Oh, you know Miss Bergner?’ I said, ‘No, I’ve only seen her in movies.’ He said she wasn’t well and had a cold and fever.

“After that first chat with Miss Bergner’s husband, I came to the Booth Theatre every evening. It seemed so wonderful and strange to me that someone I admired and identified with on celluloid made far away in other countries was here and accessible.

“I was quite surprised that Elisabeth Bergner didn’t have a car or a hired cab to take her home. I began to help Dr. Czinner flag down cabs. I always stayed in the shadows of the Booth Theatre in the alley to wait for Miss Bergner to arrive and leave the theatre. I never attempted to speak to her.

“After a month of flagging cabs and never missing her arrival and departure, my reward came. One afternoon after the matinee, Miss Bergner took me home with her, to Fourteen East Seventy-fifth Street. Dr. Czinner had told her I was more successful than he in catching cabs, and she thanked me. I told her I thought she should get home quickly on matinee days, to rest between performances. I felt protective towards her although we were very alike physically. I was a bit taller, with bigger feet. I wore her clothes but never the shoes she wanted to give me.

“Bergner didn’t eat anything that first day she brought me home. She heated up five frankfurters, set them alone on a plate before me, and sat opposite me while I ate them—staring with those enormous eyes of hers. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and maybe never again be brought home. So I ate them and drank sweet, thick Turkish coffee brewed in its individual long-handled metal cup. That was the first of many visits to her duplex apartment on East Seventy-fifth Street.

“In the first weeks I knew Bergner she scarcely talked to me. She would exit from the stage door, come to where I waited, put her arm through mine, and take me with her to the waiting taxi. In the cab, she sat drawn up small and remote in her corner, smiling shyly, grateful to me, I thought, for not pressing her into conversation. Sometimes she seemed puzzled. She must have had questions she never asked me. I felt it in her frequent staring—quizzical, curious.

“I became her secretary. I remember my amazement and dismay when I found quantities of unopened mail in several large manila envelopes. Letters dating back many months, some even a year. Miss Bergner gave instructions that I was to be allowed out front whenever I wanted to see the show, even though its success had made it standing room only. I came just about every evening to the theatre. It made me less lonely to have some fixed place to go.

“I also began to work in the office for Dr. Czinner and Robert Reud, the co-producer of the play.

“The time came when the actress playing the role of the first wife in
The Two Mrs. Carrolls
gave her notice; she was leaving the show. The casting call went out and actresses now began to stream in to the office to try out for the part. Dr. Czinner asked me to read the scene with them. The woman who was finally chosen used to come in the office when I was there alone and rehearse with me. Her name was Alice Buchanan.

“Then the day arrived when she was to rehearse on the stage. She was to have her only run-through with Miss Bergner that evening after the performance. It was a Tuesday. Miss Buchanan was to make her debut the next day, Wednesday, at the matinee. She was frightened and nervous. The idea of playing with an actress of Bergner’s stature and reputation awed and intimidated her.

“The stage manager called up Dr. Czinner’s office and asked for another script to be brought over to the theatre. I took it over, and when I arrived they were breaking for lunch. Since Alice Buchanan and I had done the scene together in the office, she begged me to stay and rehearse with her while the others were at lunch. I had memorized Miss Bergner’s part, so I did. It was fun having a stage to move around on. It was exciting to imagine an audience back in the last rows or up in the balcony and to know that we were projecting to them. When the scene was finished Dr. Czinner surprised us by appearing out of the first rows of the darkened theatre. He came onto the stage. He walked to me, past the actress, took both my hands in his and looked at me, smiled at me. He seemed very moved, very proud.

“That night, after the performance, I brought sandwiches and drinks backstage for Miss Bergner and Dr. Czinner. Then Alice asked me to go over the scene with her until Miss Bergner was ready for the run-through, and so we got started.

“At the high point of the scene, coming down the stairs, I had the strange feeling of being watched. I was without my glasses but I felt eyes on me. It was a tense moment in the play and I was too caught up in it to stop. When I got to the footlights—there was Miss Bergner!

“Several other people were around, on the stage and elsewhere. They were all watching Bergner. Those eyes I had felt fixed on me were hers. Only hers. I’m sure of that.

“I expected her to smile. To be rather amused at how well I was imitating her. Oh, but she continued to stare. She said nothing. My excitement, my joy, departed. I was miserable. Suddenly I had the flash of knowledge: I had done something terrible. Something wrong and horrible, and it had displeased her.

“Out front, towards the back of the theatre, a stagehand was replacing a bulb in the chandelier. He must have asked a question. We onstage didn’t hear it, but we did hear another stagehand call out an answer: ‘It’s that kid that’s always hanging around out front. She’s as good as Bergner and what’s more ya can hear her!’

“The silence was cold and deadly. Finally Dr. Czinner broke the dreadful impasse. He said that now Miss Bergner would take over.

“But Bergner, in a hoarse, tight voice, said, ‘No.’ She said that I was to continue in the scene so that she could watch ‘the other one,’ meaning Alice Buchanan.

“Later I was told that I should not have continued the scene. A couple of those present said that Bergner never took her eyes from me but watched as though hypnotized, fascinated, unbelieving, to see someone else do everything she did—subtle, personal, intimate gestures assimilated after weeks of keen observation. Of course she had some acting tricks. She had some coy, Mittel Europa mannerisms that could seem affected and cute. But imitation is the highest form of admiration, and that’s all I had shown Bergner. Admiration, and unconscious empathy.

“The next day—Wednesday, as I said—Alice Buchanan made her debut in the play at the matinee performance. At the intermission, I went downstairs to the ladies’ lounge to chat with Mrs. Moran, the attendant. I told her about the day before, how I was ‘discovered’ by Dr. Czinner at noon, and then by Miss Bergner that night. I was ecstatic, and still soaring.

“Three or four days later, in my capacity as secretary, I opened a letter addressed to Miss Bergner. But the letter was all about me! A fan letter to the great actress, but devoted to a girl that she, the writer, had watched and listened to in the ladies’ lounge at the Wednesday matinee. I shall always remember the well-meant but tactless lines that annoyed Bergner so: ‘Sometimes, Miss Bergner, we fail to see talent right under our very nose. This girl seems to work in some capacity around the theatre. She has all the markings of another Ingrid Bergman or, better still, Elisabeth Bergner.’

“Later, my cousin, Mildred Brody, a psychologist, said to me, ‘What kind of person writes fan letters like this? Let’s call her up and find out.’ The woman was named Bea Elkin and she lived in the Bronx. She told us she liked Bergner although she wasn’t really a fan. She said she had been very impressed by the girl and thought that by writing the letter she could help her in some way. For you see, she had overheard me telling Mrs. Moran about my ‘discovery.’ I remembered afterwards (with Mrs. Moran’s help) that during the intermission a woman had pretended to comb her hair there in the ladies’ lounge. But in reality, she was watching us in the mirrors that covered two or three walls.

“I took the letter to Dr. Czinner. I asked him if I might keep it without showing it to Miss Bergner. He said no, the letter was addressed to her; it was hers, she must see it.

“So I left it with her other letters. Several days passed. She said nothing about the letter. I began to wonder if it had ended up unread in those manila envelopes where she stuffed unopened mail. I was eager to know her reaction. And I wanted the letter for myself. It couldn’t mean much to her, I thought, but everything to me.

“Finally I could wait no longer. Ten days later I asked Dr. Czinner about the letter. For the first time ever he was cool and abrupt. He said Miss Bergner had read it. He said she didn’t need a third party to point out my talent. She recognized it, and so did he.

“I felt everything rushing to an end, and I wanted the letter as the one tangible proof that I hadn’t dreamed this whole episode.

“I went to Miss Bergner’s home while she was away. Thelma, her maid, told me she had seen Miss Bergner reading the letter, dwelling on it, and that she had taken it with her to the theatre. I returned to the Booth. Cordette, Miss Bergner’s theatre maid, whispered that the letter was in the pocket of Miss Bergner’s fur jacket. I said, ‘Look, Cordette, I’m taking this letter. I want it, and she’ll only tear it up anyway.’

“After the performance that Saturday night Cordette informed me that I was to wait in the greenroom for Miss Bergner. That night, it seemed she took longer than usual to remove her makeup and change into street clothes. At last she walked in. She told me she had read the letter.

“Then it began. She told me how hard she had worked on her voice, and how she had labored to learn stage movement, and there I was, without training or experience, doing the same things with such ease. ‘
That
,’ she said, ‘is talent.’ She said those words sadly, not with anger or bitterness. I tried to explain that it was only because I had studied her performances so closely that I could imitate her.

“She was so cold! Never before had I felt such a chill. I realized at once that, knowing
the actress
Bergner quite well, Elisabeth the human being was a stranger to me.

“Her next command was the thunderclap: I was banished from the theatre. She could no longer trust me; I had taken property that was hers. She did say I could continue working for Dr. Czinner and his co- producer in their office.

“She left me alone and I wept for a long time. Then she came back, ready now to leave the theatre and go home. Alone, without me. ‘Don’t feel so bad. You have talent,’ she said. She added that it had happened before; in Europe, clever young women had sought to use her to advance their careers. ‘You’re a better actress than they were,’ she stated. ‘I believed in your sincerity and your simplicity.’ (In Mary Orr’s story, the Bergner figure suspects that Eve wrote the letter herself. That leads to the split.)

“I was out of her life. To prove it even further, she told me I was not to accompany her and Dr. Czinner for the weekend to Lakehurst, New Jersey, where the
Hindenburg
had crashed and burned in nineteen thirty-seven. She never spoke to me again until we met twenty-seven years later.

“For several weeks after that terrible night, I waited in the alley six days a week, before and after every show, six evening performances and two matinees, hoping she would relent and speak to me. You see, I had a little part-time job, so I would come to the theatre in time for her arrival, then go about my business and come back when the play was over. But Bergner was unmoved. She ignored me.

“That’s where Mary Orr first saw me. She came to the theatre with her husband, Reginald Denham, the director of
The Two Mrs. Carrolls
.

“I kept on working for Dr. Czinner. One day he told me that the John Golden auditions for new talent would be held soon and he wanted me to enter. I told him I had no interest in becoming an actress and that the loss of Miss Bergner’s friendship was a high price to have paid for something I never wanted. Eventually I reconsidered, went to the public library, found my material—a scene from
Anna Christie
—and entered the competition. At the finals, I was one of four winners of the John Golden Awards, Anne Jackson was another. Then I left for Hollywood. It was May or June of nineteen forty-five. Miss Bergner’s play was no longer running at the Booth Theatre, having closed a few months earlier, on February third.

“At that time I had changed my name from Ruth Hirsch to Ruth Attlee-Stewart. You see, my husband was Hans Gideon Stein, but to sound more American he changed it to John Gideon Stewart. By taking part of his name and adding Attlee, I became Ruth Attlee-Stewart, with a hyphen. No, no, Clement Attlee was not yet the prime minister of Great Britain, that was only after the war, in nineteen forty-five. Anyway, after I won the Golden Award, Bergner sent word by Mady Christians, the actress I was studying with, that I should take a professional name. She said that if I took the name Martina Lawrence, she would know it’s not a real name and she would be able to follow my career. Big deal! Here she wouldn’t speak to me, but she was interested in my career.”