The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins (45 page)

The role of André Pariseau, the leading male part, was given to somebody named Mario Laval. Just where Laval was found remains unknown. At a certain angle, in a particular light, at sufficient distance, Laval may have borne some resemblance to Tyrone Power. But his acting bore no resemblance to that of a working professional. As one of the other actors remarked, “This Laval guy was so clumsy with his lines that the rest of us thought they’d have to flash English subtitles on the screen whenever he was speaking.”

The talk among the other cast members was that Daisy had hand-picked Laval because she secretly hoped an off-screen romance might blossom between them. At least some credence might be given to the claim. Laval bore some resemblance to Don Galvan, the Mexican-born troubadour and Daisy’s first love. Laval had a trim figure, a mouth full of teeth that glowed in the dark, and swarthy Latin good looks. Amazingly, like Galvan, Laval also strummed a guitar and sang romantic ballads.

Besides Mulhall, Jenkins, Laval, and the twins—all of whom were designated for the principal roles—an even dozen additional actors were hired. While a cast of seventeen was a small number even for a B film, Fraser and Moskov found ways to multiply the cast list, according to Whitey Roberts. “Except for the actors who were the principals, everybody handled several parts,” Roberts said. “I was hired to play a doctor who examines the twins to see if they can be cut apart. I was also given the part of the minister that the girls visit to see about one of them getting married. Since much of the film’s footage was about a struggling road show, I also assumed the roles of three or four stage entertainers. I appeared as a juggler, a rope twirler, a unicycle rider, and, I think, also a magician. They got more than their money’s worth out of me, and from the other cast members, too. Most of us handled five or six roles.”
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Roberts seemed well-suited to handle the multiple roles. In the 1920s, he had performed in vaudeville as both a comic and juggler.

At the sisters’ insistence, and probably much against his will, Moskov went shopping for some tunesmiths to turn out original songs the two could introduce in the movie. He hired Henry Vars, a melodist, and George R. Brown, a lyricist. Neither Vars nor Brown seem to have had any prior film credits as professional songwriters.

After subjecting Tanchuck and DePina to four or five months of rewrite after rewrite, Frisco, Moskov, and the twins finally gave
their approval to a script in mid-July of 1951. The finished screenplay was next submitted to the Production Code Administration. The four didn’t have to wait long for a response. In a letter to Moskov dated July 26, 1951, Joseph I. Breen had this reaction:

Moskov, and especially Frisco and Daisy and Violet, were plunged into deep depression upon learning the Production Code’s ruling. They had already hired the entire cast. They were under contract with a studio to begin shooting in just two weeks. If Moskov, Frisco, and the twins had chosen to do so, they could have proceeded with the filming without the watchdog agency’s seal of approval. The Production Code Administration recommendations were purely advisory and didn’t have the force of law. But the agency did have the backing of the Motion Picture Theater Owners Association, an organization with powerful influence over which films were shown in the country’s major movie house chains. It was a foregone conclusion that if
Chained
could not win the imprimatur of the movie policing agency, it was going to be blackballed by all of the bigger and better movie houses across the country.

What Breen seems to have found most “repellent” about the storyline was that it allowed one twin to get away with murder because, at the conclusion of her trial, the judge could not resolve the execution of one sister without simultaneously sending her innocent sibling to the electric chair. Someone—maybe Moskov, maybe Fraser, maybe Tanchuck—came up with a possible solution to Breen’s objection. A decision was made to rewrite the script in a way that would leave the moviegoer in suspense as to whether or not Vivian Hamilton, and by necessity her conjoined sister, were going to incinerate in the electric chair or go free. An appeal would be made to the audience to put themselves in the judge’s position and try to decide in their own minds how justice could be served.

Two weeks after rejection, Breen’s shooting on
Chained
began at the Eagle-Lion Studios at 7324 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. The decision by Moskov to use the Eagle-Lion facilities may have been one of his smarter moves. The production company, just three years old, had six sound studios and was equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. More important, Eagle-Lion had developed a series of cost-cutting measures that enabled it to turn out professional-looking films at about half the usual cost. Eagle-Lion Studios had been the creation of Arthur B. Krim, a young lawyer with no film experience, but a genius for developing economies in movie-making. While other studios were foundering, Krim’s company was being approached by so many movie and television producers, it had to turn away business.

Because Daisy and Violet were putting all their savings at risk, Harry Fraser had been warned the twins might try to second guess his directorial decisions. In fact, Fraser said the sisters allowed him to work with carte blanche. He explained it this way: “Once we got together for the film, I took the girls under my wing, and escorted them to a supper club for a night on the town. As a result, when we
started shooting, the scenes rolled along smoothly, like water off a duck’s back.”
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Whitey Roberts also remembered the filming went easily, if more than a little rushed. “Right from the start, Moskov and Fraser told everyone that we were to handle our roles right the first time so they could avoid wasting time and money on a lot of retakes,” he said. “The shooting went so fast that as soon as we’d finish one scene, we’d all be herded into makeup to change our characters. In ten or fifteen minutes, we were back on the set, appearing before the cameras for the next scene.”
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The script for Chained for Life
, as it was finally snipped, clipped, and pasted together, told the story of the Hamilton sisters through a series of flashbacks. The film opens inside a courtroom, with Vivian Hamilton on trial in the shooting death of André Pariseau. Various witnesses are called to the stand. As each is examined and cross-examined, the movie flashes back to the events leading up to Pariseau’s death.

For Harry Fraser, the most challenging scene was a dream sequence: Soon after she and André decide to marry, Dorothy is shown completely detached from her twin during the reverie. Wearing a gossamer nightgown, she is in an Elysian garden, seemingly unfettered by her sister. She and Andreé gambol, dance, and kiss. “The sequence posed some special problems for the camera department when the action called for scenes in which the twins appeared to be separated,” Fraser remembered. “We solved it with carefully angled close-up shots which gave the illusion of one of the twins being alone.…”
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Like all seasoned film crews, the cameramen, lighting technicians and production assistants at Eagle-Lion Studios were usually blasé about being around movie actors. But none had ever before been on a set with real Siamese twins, Fraser noted, and not even they could hide their fascination with Daisy and Violet Hilton. Said Fraser: “I
remember that the script girl asked Daisy and Violet in her brash, forthright way about their love life. ‘I know you both have been married,’ she said. ‘How’d that work out?’ Daisy and Violet looked at each other rather ruefully. ‘It had its embarrassing moments.’ And that was all that was said. The subject was not pursued any further.”
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During the many months they were in Hollywood before and during filming, Daisy and Violet made several guest appearances on the Spade Cooley Show radio broadcast from Los Angeles. Because of a close friendship they had formed with him, they invited the singing cowboy to the set. Cooley was the only outsider permitted to watch the filming. The closed set extended even to Hedda Hopper, the powerful Hollywood columnist. A genius for smoking out stories, Hopper was able to piece together enough details to provide her readers with at least a hint of what the production was about. “I’m fascinated by
Chained for Life
, a picture Moskov is producing,” she wrote.

Because the backdrop for the screenplay is the world of vaudeville, a lot of its action takes place inside a theater with the cameras panning back and forth between the entertainers onstage and the audiences. Most important for the twins, the theater setting allowed them to show off their singing talents and, at least in Daisy’s case, no small amount of décolletage. Ever the hopeful coquette, she appears in a satiny strapless gown apparently designed to allow her growing
zaftigness to follow a line of least resistance and pour out of its plunging neck line.

In the way they braided their voices in harmonies, and also in their bouncy choreography, the twins delivered their songs in a jaunty, upbeat manner that suggested the Andrews Sisters. The movie gave Daisy and Violet an opportunity to introduce three new songs that Henry Vars and George Brown penned just for them. As trite as the tunes were in their sentiments, they carried images of simple, homey domesticity that, for all their yearning, the twins still had never experienced. One of the ditties, titled “Never Say You’ll Never Fall In Love,” had this refrain:

Whitey Roberts remembered how high the twins’ expectations were for their movie. “They were having the time of their lives all the time the shooting was going on,” he said. “They were just so excited at the idea of making a picture in which they were going to be the stars. They were friendly to everybody on the set. Their hopes for how the movie was going to turn out were higher than the moon.”
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As delicious as Daisy and Violet found the experience, they didn’t have a lot of time to savor their experience as working actors. “We were in and out of the studios in two weeks,” Roberts noted. “The actors, the lighting people, the cameramen, everybody worked hard to get everything right the first time. Moskov and Fraser may have seen things in the rushes that weren’t quite right, but apparently they didn’t think they were so bad that they couldn’t live with them.
As near as I can remember, there were few if any second takes for any of the scenes.”
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Daisy and Violet were left exhausted by the punishing shooting schedule. But just one day after the filming was finished, they boarded a train for Vancouver, British Columbia, where they were scheduled to appear as headliners at the Hastings Theater. It was critical they immediately resume their stage appearances to get some cash rolling in. Not only had they used up all their savings on filming
Chained for Life
, but now they were also faced with editing and other post-production work that had to be done before the movie was finished. There was also the matter of getting the Production Code Administration’s blessing so the picture would be deemed suitable for the widest possible distribution. Ross Frisco told Daisy and Violet not to worry about these matters when he saw them off at the train station. He assured them that he and Moskov and Fraser could take care of all the movie’s unfinished business. He also told them it was absolutely critical to raise additional cash quickly. Finally, Frisco told Daisy and Violet to enjoy the days ahead before the public release of
Chained for Life
. The movie was going to change their lives, he assured them. Once it appeared on the big screen, their phone was not going to stop ringing, he promised.

A
s cursedly restricting as that odd ribbon of flesh and cartilage at their lower spines could be on their love lives and their individual freedom, it was another handicap that more consistently brought Daisy and Violet sorrow. They seemed utterly incapable of seeing through the come-ons of dream weavers who viewed the twins as their tickets to fortune and fame.

It had happened again. For all the assurances Ross Frisco made that
Chained for Life
was a fail-safe proposition that would prove to be the greatest move in their careers, the Hiltons once again had been left completely disassembled by someone else’s scheme. Gone entirely was the nice nest egg they had managed to build during the past six or eight years through steady nightclub and theater work. To make matters worse, they still owed thousands of dollars to the Eagle-Lion Studios for production work on the movie, and the company was refusing to release the picture until all the bills were paid in full.