Authors: Gore Vidal
The eaglelike face with the clear close-set eyes was certainly ravaged by his misadventures upon the heath of bankruptcy. But he was neither mad nor in the least bit defeated. He gave her a bearlike hug. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his gray dry cheek. “Chief,” she said and felt like weeping to find that so much of her past was now before her, still alive, still full of energy. He had helped her become a newspaper publisher in Washington; helped her in her Hollywood career as an actress and, again, with film production. He was like some good father who was blessedly absent for all but the important moments of her life.
“Caroline. You don’t change.”
“You must see to your eyes.” She hugged him without meaning to. “Cissy never let on it was you who wanted to see me.”
“Cissy’s got class.” They sat on a long divan beneath yet another portrait of the lady of the house, wearing a fur hat with the steppes of Poland fleeing from her in the background.
Each occupied one end of the huge divan, covered in tapestry. Hearst stroked the material with practiced hand. “Gobelin.”
“Millefleurs,” said Caroline.
“I’ll bet you … But I’m not allowed to bet or to buy, only to sell.” He seemed chastened.
“Are you really so broke?” Caroline had found that plain talk was best with the genius who had discovered that the only truly credible—not to mention profitable—news was what one invented.
“On paper, I was. But then that’s where money always is, isn’t it? On paper. In paper. In
newspapers
. I’ve got most of them still. I’m supporting Willkie.”
“So I read.”
“This means he’ll lose. I never pick a winner. I can’t think why.”
“You’re too Californian for the Easterners who own the country.”
“Too American, I’d have thought. How would you like a Spanish monastery?”
“To enter? You mean a convent …”
“No. To own. It has a beautiful cloister.”
“I don’t think I want any property in Spain right now.”
“Oh, it’s not in Spain. It’s up in the Bronx somewhere. In a warehouse. The stones are all numbered. Couldn’t be easier to put it back together.” He gave one of the curiously high-pitched nervous laughs that oddly punctuated his speech. “I’m not much of a salesman.”
“That’s because you’re a buy-man.”
“I’d certainly like to get my hands on that chateau of yours.”
“So would I.” Caroline felt a pain between her eyes. Sinus? Regret? “I think German troops are in it.”
“We must stay out of the war. I write a regular column these days. Brisbane died, you know. So I took over. Couldn’t be easier, writing a column.”
“Except for him. You do it better than he did. I know. I read you.” But then, Caroline thought, anyone wrote better than the pompous Arthur Brisbane, Hearst’s prime minister, as well as viceroy at the New York
Mirror
. Caroline congratulated herself on having got out of the newspaper business. Let Blaise worry about competition from Cissy, the
Evening Star
, the newly awakened Washington
Post
, which Hearst was now studying with a professional eye.
“This one may have a chance,” he said.
“Here in the cemetery of newspapers?”
“Curious place, Washington. I hated it when I was in Congress …”
“… and living in New York.”
Hearst looked at the front-page headline. “Wrong size type. Too small. This is the biggest news since the fall of France. But no one understands how important …” The voice trailed off, as Caroline took the newspaper from him. On September 27, 1940, Tokyo had joined the Berlin-Rome Axis, as it was called, a military-economic alliance involving mutual aid.
“What does your friend Harry think?”
“Harry who?”
Hearst smiled his narrow knowing shark’s smile. “I publish Walter Winchell. Remember? That awful column of his is getting the syndicate back into profit, or so my guardians tell me.”
“We are just …”
“… good friends,” Hearst completed the usual disclaimer.
“Actually he’s been busy with the election. I’ve hardly seen him.” This was not true but candor with Hearst was never wise.
“As usual, I’m not on speaking terms with the President. But I hire his sons from time to time. Particularly Elliott.”
“Because he’s so stupid?”
Hearst’s mind did not exactly flit from subject to subject so much as take great leaps in unexpected directions, rather like Nijinsky in the Russian ballet. “Japan. That’s our only real enemy. And all because we’ve chosen the hopeless Chinese as our sentimental allies after demonizing the Japanese.”
“You speak as a Californian …”
“As an American with a better understanding than anyone in the White House will ever have of Asia. Japan needs to expand. Where to? To the mainland. To China, which isn’t even a proper nation. Just a bunch of warlords fighting each other. Teddy Roosevelt—personally I couldn’t stand him, but he was the only one that ever understood that Japan is our natural ally. When they beat the Russians in 1904—brilliant, that surprise attack on Port Arthur—TR got interested in the case. Even got himself a Nobel Peace Prize for something or other to do with them. Anyway, they scared the pants off him. And they scare me …”
“Yellow Peril, as you call them.”
“Yes. Red Peril, too, if they ever turn Bolshevik. So don’t provoke them. Taft. That’s what
that
was about.”
“What was what about?”
Hearst had found a small white jade dragon on a side table. He interrupted himself. “Imperial,” he said. “I bought six. Han dynasty. We’re talking about a sale at Gimbels. What do you think?”
“Of imperial jade?”
“Of the contents of a dozen warehouses. Since no art gallery could
ever handle all my works of art, I suggested a department store. We’re taking over the boys’ department of Gimbels. You know, I’ve never
not
had money. No one ever bothered to tell me how inconvenient it is.”
Caroline tried not to show her amusement. “Now you are like your readers.”
“TR picked Taft to succeed him as president because he thought Taft understood Asia. High commissioner of the Philippines and all that. But Taft was a fool. Took against the Japanese. Sided with the Chinese over Siberia. TR was furious. After all, the Japs beat the Russians once. They could do it again with our help. And the Japs are as afraid of the Russian Bolsheviks as we are. So why shouldn’t they run Manchuria? That’s one way of keeping the Bolsheviks out of Asia. Tom Lamont even wanted to finance this railroad for them. But the Chinese somehow persuaded Taft—no, Hoover, by then—to stop the Morgan bank from financing a railroad that would have helped seal off Siberia from the Japs. Stupid. Stupid. I wish Franklin was as bright as his cousin Teddy. But he’s not. He won’t recognize Japan’s takeover of Manchuria, which is no different from us in Haiti. Asia should be Japan’s.”
Who holds Shansi Province will control the earth. Caroline could hear, in memory, the slight whistle in Henry Adams’ voice on the word “Shansi.”
“Franklin spends all his time conniving to get us into a war with Hitler, a lunatic but no threat to us, while he keeps the pressure on the Japs because …” Hearst frowned. “I can’t fathom him.”
“The Delanos used to trade with China. His mother …”
“Tell Harry. Tell Franklin, if you can ever get a word in edgewise with that talking machine, that he must let up on the Japs. Recognize Manchuria. After all, he’s recognized Russia, of all places. You know, he’s threatening to turn off Japan’s oil supply if they don’t withdraw from China.”
“How do you know?”
“A letter from Joe Grew to Franklin. Last year. From Tokyo. He said if we stop the sale of oil to Japan, they’ll grab the Dutch oil fields in Java. Franklin said if they tried we’d intercept their fleet before it got past the Philippines.”
Caroline was astonished. If the story was true, Hearst had got his
hands on a secret letter from the American ambassador in Japan to the President. “How do you get to read the President’s mail?”
“The same way I got to be me.” Hearst’s wintry smile returned; he giggled nervously. “Anyway, you don’t need anything but common sense and a knowledge of that part of the world to know Japan’s on its way up and the Chinese are going even further down and out.” Hearst tapped the Axis story in the
Post
. “Japan’s getting ready for a war with us. So, for insurance, they join up with the Nazis and the fascists. Hitler must be praying that they’ll do something to us which will take the pressure off him. Hitler doesn’t want a war with us, but Franklin and his banker friends like Lamont pretend that he does. Meanwhile the Japs are getting ready to go to war with us and we’re not told a word. Of course, it’s an election year.”
“Can you print Grew’s letter?”
Hearst’s sigh was closer to a groan. “I am kept on a short chain by the regency, as I call the lawyers that are running my affairs. But news will …”
For a moment, they sat in silence. Hearst played with the white jade dragon. Then: “Will you marry Hopkins?”
“No, thanks. Besides, he has a charming lady friend who will probably make a good wife and a good stepmother to his youngest child. Something outside my narrow human range.”
“Ah, you can do anything.” Caroline was deeply flattered by the offhand tone, which meant that the Chief was serious. “I’d like to do something in the war that’s coming. But … what?” She had lost his attention. “Marion’s off the sauce,” he announced as butler and two footmen arranged their lunch on a table in front of the fireplace.
Caroline had always liked Hearst’s longtime mistress, Marion Davies, a blond actress with a stammer and a serious drinking problem, of which the most serious aspect was how to hide her bottles from the alert eye of the Chief, whose uncanny gift of discernment was so highly developed that no suit of Elizabethan armor on the most sweeping staircase could hide, for long, her gin in its boot. But she always managed to hide enough to keep dull sobriety at bay and so increase the pleasure of her court, as fun- and gin-loving as she. A star of silent pictures, she was feared to be ruled out of talking pictures by her stammer.
Specialists had been called in. For a time, she had acted with a pebble in her mouth; then during a passionate love scene she swallowed it. Later she developed a curiously effective style of speaking that required deep breathing in the middle of words. Overnight she was acclaimed as a distinguished actress with an inimitable style. Caroline had always liked her and was pleasantly surprised that she had loyally stayed with Hearst throughout his prodigious bankruptcies.
“She loaned me a million dollars of her own money.” Hearst spoke with his mouth full; his appetite was hearty. “I’ve got to get her another production company. Before she’s too old.” This was gallant, thought Caroline; herself too old for the screen, she did not in the least mind other actresses taking their allotted places in the unphotographable limbo of age.
Hearst tasted the wine but did not drink it. “We had President Coolidge at San Simeon. Forget why. He said, ‘I don’t drink.’ I gave him some wine. ‘Is this alcoholic?’ he asks. I said, not so you’d notice. Drank half a bottle and said, ‘I got to remember the name of this beverage.’ ” The word “beverage” made Caroline laugh.
“You know I’m serious.” The pale eyes were turned upon her like a searchlight.
“About what?”
“That monastery. You’re one of the few people with money who would appreciate it.”
“But I’m living at the Wardman Park Hotel. I don’t think they’d let me put it up on their grounds.”
“No. No. I mean it. Blaise will let you have an acre from Laurel House, on the Chain Bridge side. I’ve talked to him already.…”
Somehow Caroline got through lunch without becoming the chatelaine of a Spanish monastery set high above the Potomac River, its luminous cloister all wreathed in poison ivy.
Not far from the MGM studio commissary there was a particularly pleasant—that is, seldom used—screening room where Tim had prepared
United We Stand;
had shown it to the studio executives and, most important, to the studio’s New York exhibitors, Loews Incorporated.
L. B. Mayer preferred to watch the film in his own screening room with his invaluable secretary, who did not so much read scripts to him as act them out, scene by scene; it was rumored that her performances were better than those of the stars themselves.
On October 1, 1940,
United We Stand
had opened across the country just as the presidential election entered its final phase. The President, who had said that he would not campaign, had now taken to the stump while Willkie was openly attacking Roosevelt as a warmonger and a socialist. Nevertheless, there was still no difference between the two on the necessity of aid to England as well as the defeat, somehow never clearly spelled out by either, of Hitler, whose aerial bombardment of England was at its peak, preparatory to an invasion of the British Isles. Meanwhile, Republican leaders were urging Willkie to abandon his bipartisan foreign policy and warn the nation that if FDR was reelected, there would be war in a matter of months. All of this, though hardly good for the nation, provided an ideal audience for Tim’s film. As the political debate got more and more out of control, even the President’s mellifluous voice acquired a shrill edge; it was also apparent to every filmgoer that the title was wonderfully satiric and apt. If ever there was a country seriously divided it was the United States that October; and Timothy X. Farrell was suddenly hailed as the Preston Sturges of political documentaries. “Great McGinty versus Great McGinty” was
Variety
’s heading of its favorable review. All were amazed that two candidates who were basically as one on the matter of war or peace could still find so much to fulminate about.
When L. B. Mayer had said that he was satisfied with the film, Tim realized that he must somehow have failed. Essentially, he had been anti-Hitler and anti-war. Now the film was being used by both sides of the great—not debate so much as shouting match. But Tim had done his best to dramatize an election in which neither candidate dared to say what he meant to an uneasy people who realized that something was seriously wrong with their political system. Commentators were now wondering if anyone would bother to vote on November 5.