The Jews in America Trilogy (149 page)

Joe Godsol was tall, dark-haired, suavely handsome, and athletic. He had a courtly continental manner and style of speech acquired, he claimed, from having swum in the perfumed waters of the highest society in Europe. He casually dropped the names of dukes and countesses of his acquaintance. He appeared to be, in other words, exactly the kind of grand seigneur that Goldwyn himself aspired to be. In fact, he seemed almost too good to be true, but Hollywood and Goldwyn quickly clasped Joe Godsol to their respective bosoms.

Actually, if Goldwyn had checked into Mr. Godsol's past a bit, he would have uncovered a somewhat different story. Godsol was not a European at all, but had been born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a tailor. He had made his way to Europe, where he had enjoyed a career as an elegant swindler and con man. His first major brush with the law had occurred in 1905, when he had been brought up before the Paris Commercial Tribunal for selling cheap imitation pearls as the real thing. At
the time, the press had labeled Godsol “the most colossal fake in the history of jewelry.” From then on, he was in and out of trouble and in and out of jail. During the war, as a French army officer, he was arrested for embezzling funds from the French government by tinkering with military payroll records. He had been discharged, and ordered to leave France. Still, shortly after the war, Joe Godsol found himself vice-president of the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.

It was perhaps not surprising, then, that the money Godsol had promised to bring into the company did not immediately materialize. Godsol, however, had connections from his colorful international days who were not aware of his shady past, and among these were members of Wilmington's wealthy du Pont clan. With Godsol providing the entrée, Sam Goldwyn was introduced to two of the multitudinous du Pont cousins, Henry F. and Eugene E. du Pont. Together, Goldwyn and Godsol were able to convince the du Ponts that movies were making everyone connected with them rich, that to invest in a motion picture company meant the possibility of hobnobbing with beautiful actresses and famous writers and artists, and that filmmaking was more glamorous than munitions-making. The result was an infusion of three million dollars of du Pont money into the Goldwyn company. With their investment, both du Ponts, along with Mr. E. V. R. Thayer of the Chase National Bank, moved onto Sam Goldwyn's board of directors. Soon they were joined by yet another member of the Delaware family, T. Coleman du Pont. All seemed well. It seemed, furthermore, that the film industry was at last moving up in the world. No longer associated with immigrant furriers and glove salesmen, it had apparently been given the imprimatur of the eastern business establishment.

Within months, however, disaster again loomed on the horizon. The industry itself remained depressed, and Goldwyn pictures were doing particularly poor business at the box office. The du Ponts were now having a taste of the less glamorous side of the movie business, and were nervously wondering what had become of their three-million-dollar investment, on which no return seemed to be forthcoming. Meetings were called in New York and Wilmington, and there were demands for a financial reorganization and overhaul of the company. Testily,
Sam Goldwyn resisted this, and when the du Ponts continued to apply pressure, Sam presented the board with another of his angry resignations. It was accepted.

Now, for a while, Coleman du Pont, with no movie experience whatever, served as president of Goldwyn Pictures, but when things failed to get better without the founder at the helm and, indeed, got worse, a repentant board of directors went with hat in hand and asked Sam Goldwyn to return. Graciously, he accepted the invitation. Eighteen more months now passed, but without improvement.

As Goldwyn saw it, the trouble was that, during his brief absence from the company, Joe Godsol had been working to strengthen his position with the du Ponts. Godsol may have seen a more secure future for himself in an alliance with one of the largest private fortunes in America than with the seesawing fate of a young California motion picture company. In any case, in a series of even stormier quarrels within the board, Godsol increasingly sided with the du Ponts against Goldwyn. Clearly, another Goldwyn resignation scene—which Goldwyn seemed to enjoy more and more as each new chance for one appeared—was building, and in March, 1922, it occurred. Goldwyn stood up in front of his board and announced that he was quitting, “And this time for good!” Then he added, for good measure, “And don't try coming back to me on bended elbows.”

With him he took his block of Goldwyn Pictures stock, and this meant that the quarreling between Sam Goldwyn and Goldwyn Pictures was far from over. Though Sam owned the stock, he no longer owned the corporate name. As an independent producer, Sam Goldwyn saw no reason why he could not present movies under the banner
SAMUEL GOLDWYN PRESENTS.
Goldwyn Pictures, however, objected that this interfered with their right to produce under
GOLDWYN PICTURES PRESENTS.
Both names now had a certain appeal at the box office, and audiences would inevitably confuse one product with the other. In the court battle that followed, it was ruled that in all Samuel Goldwyn productions, wherever his name appeared on the screen, it had to be followed by the disclaimer
NOT NOW CONNECTED WITH GOLDWYN PICTURES.
Furthermore, these words had to appear in the same size type as the rest of the legend. This was galling to Sam Goldwyn. It seemed like providing
free advertising for his former company on his own pictures. It was a situation, however, that he would not have to endure for long.

At Goldwyn Pictures, meanwhile, the irony of it all was that Joe Godsol, who had started all the trouble to begin with, had moved into a commanding position.

In 1924, rumors were circulating through the show-business worlds of both New York and Hollywood that a giant motion picture merger—the first of its size and importance—was about to take place. Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures Corporation had absorbed the six-year-old Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. Now Loew was eager to acquire Goldwyn Pictures. Secret meetings were being held between Godsol, Mayer, Loew and his other partners, Joseph and Nicholas Schenck and Robert Rubin, and, on April 17, 1924, a merger was announced, resulting in a new company to be called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Needless to say, the only Goldwyn stockholder who voted against the merger was the irascible Sam Goldwyn himself. He distrusted Loew and the Schencks, and had had run-ins with Mayer, whom he considered his archrival. But his voting shares were not enough to block the merger. For the new company to be formed, Sam Goldwyn had to be bought out for cash. Thus it was that when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed, Sam Goldwyn did not own a single share in the big company that bore his name.

Which suited him just fine. Sam Goldwyn had already demonstrated himself to be a man who was not emotionally cut out for partnerships. The long list of his shattered relationships with partners—Lasky, DeMille, Loew, Zukor, the Selwyns, Godsol, the du Ponts—attested to that. From now on, independence would mark his style, and at the time he outlined his producing philosophy. “A producer,” he declared, “should not be hampered by the opinions and rulings of a board of directors.” And he added, “This business is dog eat dog and nobody's gonna eat me.”

What was not announced when the formation of MGM was made public was that an unusual agreement had been secretly drawn under which three men at the top of the company were given the privilege of dividing one-fifth of the company's annual profits among themselves, before any other profits were passed along to other stockholders. This juicy piece off the top
of the profit pie was to be sliced as follows: fifty-three percent to Louis B. Mayer, a clear indication of his production dominance; twenty percent to Irving Thalberg, Mayer's youthful protégé and creative right-hand man; and twenty-seven percent to Robert Rubin, who was considered the company's financial brain. And where, one might wonder, had Joe Godsol come out in this fast shuffle? Asked what Godsol's title would be in the new company, Louis B. Mayer merely smiled and said, “Mr. Godsol is no longer with us.” Just as mysteriously as he had materialized, Godsol had disappeared.

That same year, another formidable competitor to both MGM and Sam Goldwyn would appear on the Hollywood scene in the person of thirty-three-year-old Harry Cohn. Just six years earlier, Cohn had joined Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures as Laemmle's secretary. Now Cohn announced the formation of his own Columbia Pictures Corporation.

With the founding of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, of course, Sam Goldwyn was no longer required to add the irksome
NOT NOW CONNECTED WITH
… line to the credits on his pictures. And privately he was pleased and flattered that the new corporation had decided to include his copyrighted name on its masthead. Even though he had nothing to do with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, most people just naturally assumed that he did. Now every MGM production was advertising him. He particularly liked the fact that his name got higher billing on the letterhead than that of his rival L. B. Mayer, and could even rationalize that his was the top name of all, “because Metro isn't anybody's real name.” He was delighted that the company would keep his roaring “Leo the Lion” as its corporate logo and trademark. He saw this as another nod in the direction of his greatness, his immortality. Goldwyn, whose birthday was August 27, liked to point out, “After all, Leo is
my
birth sign.”
*

By 1925, Goldwyn and the former Blanche Lasky had been divorced for ten years, and no one in the Lasky family was on speaking terms with Sam. As bitter as the divorce had been—with the tug-of-war over the couple's small daughter, Ruth, whose mother had finally been granted custody; with the prolonged fight over money; and with accusations of infidelity and
other malfeasance flying back and forth between the divorcing couple—Sam Goldwyn still professed to be in love with Blanche. Long after Blanche had moved back to New Jersey and resumed her maiden name (she was raising their daughter as Ruth Lasky, with the rest of the family forbidden to tell Ruth who her father was), Sam was still referring to Blanche as “my fairy princess.” After the divorce, Sam had been dating the actress Mabel Normand. But then, early in 1925, he met a twenty-one-year-old blond actress named Frances Howard.

Frances Howard had been born in Omaha in 1903, and shortly after that her father had moved the family to southern California, where Frances grew up in a tiny bungalow outside San Diego. The Howards were English-descended, and Roman Catholics, and Frances Howard's upbringing had been strict, Spartan, and mass-going. As a teenager, however, she had become stages truck, and had been allowed to go to New York to try her luck in the theater. She had managed to obtain parts in two mildly successful Broadway plays,
The Swan
, and
Too Many Kisses
with Richard Dix. Among the various interesting men the pretty young ingenue had managed to meet had been Coudert Nast, the son of Condé Nast. One evening she was invited to dinner at Condé Nast's Manhattan apartment, which by then had become something of a salon where everybody in New York who was young and talented and doing things gathered to meet people from out of town who were young and talented and doing things. For the occasion, she bought a $310 dress that she could ill afford. At the party, she was introduced to Samuel Goldwyn, who had just come in from Hollywood and who had arrived at the Nasts' with a beautiful woman on his arm.

Their opening words were not auspicious. Goldwyn, who had seen Frances in
The Swan
, approached her and said, “You're an awful actress.” Frances replied coolly, “I'm sorry you think so,” and was about to turn away to seek more congenial company when Goldwyn touched her arm and asked her if she would like to join him at an after-dinner party that was being given for Gloria Swanson and her new husband, the Marquis de la Falaise. Miss Howard was about to say no when her host, Mr. Nast, said, “I'll take you there, so you'll be escorted.” At the Swanson party, Sam Goldwyn said to Frances, “I'd like to see you again.” This time she thanked him and said no very
firmly. Later, she commented to her friend Anita Loos, “Guess who wants to take me out. That awful Sam Goldwyn!”

And yet there was obviously something about the man that fascinated her—his brusqueness of manner, his cocky self-assurance, his obvious need to dominate every scene in which, and every woman with whom, he found himself—even though he was more than twenty years older than she. When he telephoned a few days later and asked her to have dinner with him, she found herself saying yes. At the time, she was living in a small apartment at Eighty-first Street and West End Avenue. When she gave him the address, he said, “I can't be seen in that part of town. Take a taxi to my hotel, the Ambassador, on Park Avenue.” Even with that, she went. They dined at the Colony Restaurant and, on what was their first real date, Sam Goldwyn asked her to marry him.

Frances had been talking with Paramount about the possibility of doing a film on the West Coast, and so her reply to his proposal was an airy, “Well, perhaps I'll see you in California.” But, less than four months later, when she arrived in Hollywood, Frances Howard was the second Mrs. Samuel Goldwyn. “It wasn't that he was a bit nice,” she said later. “He had the most appalling manners. And it wasn't because I wanted to marry a movie producer to get into the movies. He'd made it very clear that the only career I was going to have was as his wife. And it certainly wasn't because he was rich because, at the time, I knew he was up to his ears in debt to the Bank of America. But there was something about him that was different from any man I'd ever known. He seemed so lonely—the loneliest man I'd ever known. Maybe it was because he brought out the mothering instinct in me.”

Her family was appalled. There was the difference in their ages, and the difference in their religions. Still, Frances Goldwyn was to prove herself a stubborn woman who knew what she wanted and who, when she had it, was determined to keep it. She had made Sam promise that any children would be raised as Catholics. She knew of Sam's reputation as a flirt and a womanizer, and knew only too well of his long-standing relationship with Mabel Normand, but had decided wisely to overlook such matters. She knew of Sam's reputation as a high-stakes gambler, and decided that, if she could not change that, she would live as best as she could with it. She knew of Sam's
love of ostentation and display—he operated on the theory that the more money he owed the more he must therefore spend, lest the competition suspect he was in difficulties of any sort—and in an effort to trim his budget got him to dispose of his “show-off Locomobile.” She understood Sam's ghetto-bred fear of tying up money in real estate, but she was also determined that they would live in a house and not spend their lives, as Sam had been doing, in a series of hotel suites. Her wedding gift to him was typically understated and commonsensical: a dozen neckties from Macy's.