My grandfather Solomon (Sol) Baer Fingerman (right) with his younger sister, Esther, and older brother, Samuel in their father’s tailoring workshop in Denver, Colorado. He later changed his name from Fingerman to Fielding. Date unknown.

When Popa mentioned he had also done this on windy, precipitous mountain roads, I had a vision of a wiry, redheaded kid with a huge smile and a constellation of freckles across his face, loving the fresh mountain breeze through the windows and Death not able to catch up with him.

In my previous post, I thought I heard a whisper, I featured my grandparents’ relationship and the vastly different backgrounds they had come from.

Mitzi was a niece of Louis B. Mayer and daughter of his older sister, Ida Mayer Cummings, a passionate and active fundraiser who hosted some of America’s most famous people at her gala events. As a young woman, my grandmother was a stunning beauty, very elegant and a Hollywood reporter for Variety and Photoplay magazines through which she met and interviewed mega stars like Harlow and Hepburn. She was used to the film business’ edginess and moved effortlessly through very glamorous circles. Her brother, Jack Cummings, became a noted MGM producer, and her sister, Ruth, worked as a writer and composer and married a director, Roy Rowland.

Copyright Alicia Mayer 2012.
Sol, on the other hand, was raised in Denver with the majestic Rocky Mountains as his neighborhood’s backdrop. His father was a tailor and mother a homemaker who were blessed with three healthy children, two of whom – Sam and Sol – had survived the trans-Atlantic ship ride to America, and their youngest child, Esther, who was born in New York. Somehow the family settled in Denver and were joined by other family members, though I don’t know if they were siblings of my great-grandmother or great-grandfather.

Though I’m sure the families worked very hard, I think life was fairly stable and perhaps even idyllic for these new young Americans. “Popa” Sol once told me that as a boy he could happily eat an entire loaf of his mother’s challah and a quart of fresh milk. He roamed throughout the city and loved the hustle and bustle. I can only imagine Denver’s streets in the early 1900s with their nail-biting combination of horse teams, foot traffic, bicyclists and hundreds of cars, trucks and delivery vehicles with drivers still learning how to drive and no road rules per se.

I remember Sol telling me that he had learned to drive his father’s Model T as a kid and was probably no older than 12. To change gears he had to dive down to the clutch, push it down, then pop back up in a heartbeat to look out of the windscreen, hoping a head-on collision was not imminent. When Popa mentioned he had also done this on windy, precipitous mountain roads, I had a vision of a wiry, redheaded kid with a huge smile and a constellation of freckles across his face, loving the fresh mountain breeze through the windows and Death not able to catch up with him.

From what I know, Sol started off at the Denver Post probably as a messenger boy, then displayed a talent for cartoons and graphic design. At some point he designed the Yellow Pages’ first logo, and was also kept busy illustrating and designing a huge variety of ads, some of which I have. But at his heart he was a gifted fine artist and in an effort to pursue this as a career, he headed down to Mexico for a year or more. During this time he produced some very beautiful paintings and line drawings and met a handful of other young first generation American expats. But his closest friend, and whom he always hoped to be reunited with, was Mexican artist Ben Hur Baz, known for his racy but technically perfect pin-up girls.

Perhaps his travels through Mexico gave him itchy feet and he may have gone straight to Los Angeles where he eventually met Mitzi. I have no idea how their circles intersected – it seems so unlikely. Nevertheless, they fell in love and married in 1942. Sol would join the family business and become a film producer with MGM including Harry Belafonte’s debut movie Bright Road and a handful of wonderful films with Barbara Stanwyck. But the film business wasn’t for him and I am sure he longed simply to paint and draw.

Once he married Mitzi, life would never again be as simple as those days in Denver peeping over the steering wheel of his father’s Model T, his eye on the road but his heart bursting with the beauty around him.

As I covered in I thought I heard a whisper, my grandparents were mostly likely mismatched, but sitting here on this fine spring evening in Sydney – a million miles away from LA and Denver – I am tremendously grateful that they found each other.

An amazing family photo: (standing from left to right) Ida Mayer Cummings with sister Yetta Mayer Rieder, her oldest son Jack Cummings next to youngest son, Leonard Cummings and youngest daughter, my grandmother Mitzi. Jack’s first wife Marjorie Strauss sitting with my great-aunt Ruth Rowland and her baby son, Steven Rowland. Date circa 1939/1940. Location most likely my great-grandmother’s home at 828 South Tremaine Avenue, Los Angeles.

Knowing what I know about my family, the good and the bad – thanks to the books, old newspaper articles, the fragments of over-heard conversations or stories told to me – I still ache to be in that photo.

Oh, how I love this photo and wish for all the tea in China that I could step into it – even if I must be a ghost from the future, whom no one can see, but perhaps only sense; like a faint, swift change that comes when a cloud moves over a spot you were just looking at, entering your consciousness for a split second and changing your train of thought. I long to be in this moment where so many people I am related to are pulsing with life, laughing and smiling; feeling their loved ones so close that the texture of their clothes can be felt as it swishes or brushes up against their arm or ankle.

Two links in my mitochondrial line are happy bookends for this family gathering – my great-grandmother Ida Mayer Cummings, standing next to her oldest sibling, Yetta Mayer Rieder, and my grandmother, Ida’s youngest daughter, Mitzi who is probably about a year or so away from her marriage to my grandfather, Sol Baer Fielding. My direct link, my mother, is not yet born, but this and seven decades don’t stop me from feeling like I could easily come running around the corner into Ida’s garden at 825 S. Tremaine Ave and call out, “Wait, wait! I’m here! Have you taken the photo yet? Sorry I was held up – by… 70 years. But I’m here now”.

But as a ghost from the future, as much as I call out, no matter my smiling face and resemblance to everyone here, no one would turn around, no one would stop the photographer, no one would shuffle to one side or the other to make room for me in the shot, asking me what took me so long. I am just a faint breeze on an otherwise fragrant, early Spring day in 1939.

But here is my family and they seem so genuinely happy to be with each other. Here is my great-uncle Leonard – just an awkward kid looking schmick in his white pants, white shirt and a deliriously goofy smile – happily squeezed between his big brother Jack and sister Mitzi. My ghost me stands next to him, feeling impossibly maternal as he is my son’s age. But as I wrote in To Bury A Son, he will die far too young at just 44 years old in 1965 from the same disease killed Ida and Yetta’s brother, Louis B Mayer eight years before. I want to say to Leo, “Keep smiling, kid, keep smiling. Life is short”.

And I see my uncle Jack Cummings, MGM film producer, sitting proprietorially behind his first wife, the young, fragile and beautiful Marjorie, who several years after this photo he will divorce and the former Miss Strauss will drop off her daughters to her mother’s home, go back to her own apartment and leap from the window to her death.

I see the joyously happy Ruth Rowland, Ida’s oldest child, who composed music and wrote scripts at MGM, showing off her baby son, Steven Rowland, who one day will become an actor and run with the brat pack, and later become a pioneering music producer. Of the eight people in this photo, Steven is the only one still alive. He is my living bridge to this day and in fact shared this photo with me. His father, Ruth’s husband, director Roy Rowland, is absent from this photo – perhaps he is on set somewhere and has called ahead, apologizing that he won’t make it after all. Only the family business – the motion picture business – could have kept him away.

The biggest surprise of this photo is Yetta. For years I have searched for her and her descendants, with no luck. The only image I have ever seen of Yetta shows a formidable older daughter in her late teens in a precious group photograph of Sarah Mayer (nee Metzler) with her surviving children: Yetta (1876-1963), Ida (1882-1968), Louis Burt (1884-1957), Rubin/Rudolph (1888-1951) and Gershon/Jerry (1891-1947). For whatever reason, my great-great grandfather, Jacob, is not in this photo (see below).

Twenty years after standing next to her nephew Jack, in her sister’s garden, Yetta would sue Louis B Mayer’s estate in relation to property of Rudolph’s, which she would claim were wrongly held in LB’s assets at his death. I don’t know what the end result was, but one of the defendants she took action against was Jack.

Clearly, she was not the missing person I thought she was, but as yet, I have been unable to find her descendants, who would be the children of her children – Henry, Joseph, Bertha, Ruth (Kerman) and Irene (Holt). Henry, Joseph and Bertha evidently stayed in Canada, while Ruth and Irene joined their mother in LA, where all of her siblings had settled.

Once Louis B Mayer made his base in Los Angeles, he became the anchor that brought his brothers and sisters to sunnier climes than St John, New Brunswick where their parents had settled in the late 1880s and had more in common, at least weather-wise, with the old country – Russia. After Jacob Mayer and his family immigrated from Russia to England, for reasons unknown, he traveled to Ireland while the rest of the family sailed to Long Island, New York and then it appears, on to St. John where they eventually started a scrap metal business.

Perhaps it is these early hard times that were the ties that bind. Or maybe it was just being family in a time when families could be separated by murderous pogroms, or travel across the seas, never to be seen again. The Mayer clan seemed to place a premium on sticking together. Family members would also travel back and forth to St John and Montreal. And these were the days of train travel, and perhaps later, plane trips, but what mattered was… family. When Jacob Mayer came to his last years, Sarah having passed away long ago in 1913, he left Canada never to return again and moved in with remaining son, Louis, his daughter-in-law Margaret, and granddaughters Edie and Irene, until his death in 1930.

Were they always wonderful to each other? No, of course not. There were feuds, angry words, control, even law suits. There was also love, support, loyalty and shared grief. And, as this photo shows – on one glorious day, several of my family stood together, perhaps to mark the 1st birthday of a fat, healthy baby boy with glowing blonde locks, the golden essence of their adopted city and nation, and the herald of the next generation and those that would follow.

Knowing what I know about my family, the good and the bad – thanks to the books, old newspaper articles, the fragments of over-heard conversations or stories told to me – I still ache to be in that photo. The closest I can ever get to it though, as the ghost of the future past, would be to stand on that patch of grass. If only I knew the exact coordinates in space and time, I would close my eyes, perhaps rock back onto my heels, tilt my chin up to smell the fragrance of this garden and hope to feel the fur of my grandmother’s cape brush against the hairs of my arm, hear the far away echo of Leonard’s chuckle and the sound of the photographer as he says, “OK, everyone ready? 1, 2, 3!”.

Sarah Myers (became Mayer) with her five children – Yetta, Ida, Louis, Rubin and Gershon. Location and date unknown.

Copyright Alicia Mayer 2012.

My grandmother, Mitzi Cummings, interviews a very young Judy Garland, who in this photo looks like she may be promoting her first movie, musical short Every Sunday, which included fellow child actor, Deanna Durbin. Date unknown, however the location is most likely an MGM set.

Like any starry-eyed teenager, the young singer was ready to experience the glamorous world of the movie star. Instead, Garland was sent to MGM school where she met Mickey Rooney and the other kid talents of the time, most of whom were true beauties, like Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor. She was not in their league, but then again, none of them could sing like her either.

The term child star has become so infused with meaning it is almost shorthand for a universal cautionary tale populated with archetypal characters – the pushy stage mother, the manipulative agent, the ruthless studio exec, the demanding director, the cadre of devoted, starry-eyed fans.

Of course, at the heart of this passion play is the changeling who transforms from kittenish talent to sexually aware woman whereupon discomfiting shock waves shoot through our cast, upending every role and adding a new one, the unstable stalker, who also does double-duty as Death and is disturbingly intent on his prize.

As the power base shifts from those who were in control – the parent, the agent, the exec, the director, the fans – the previously understood relationship (I am this and you are that) and the expected behavior (you do this and I will do that) is in tatters. The previously relied upon business formula of ‘box office – investment = ROI’ fails as the hits thin out and the problems grow. The baby face dissolves away to an awkward ‘other’ – not yet the woman, but no longer the sweet little girl.

Then come the headlines, the story’s Greek chorus, which sings of our hero’s demise and then the unexpected but hoped for triumph, quickly followed by yet another fall. Now our hero struggles to stand. But no… our chorus sings of the inevitable – the last stumble, the decline, the end, the mourning, the tears, the questions. Was it too much too soon? Was the pressure to succeed overwhelming? Is it normal to struggle with the demands of stardom at your most vulnerable?

But wait! Another child star arrives. Quick! Run! Let’s not miss the next drama, for we know how this story goes and we know when to cry, when to cheer, and, of course, when to turn away and stop watching…

_____________________

FOR OVER FORTY years Judy Garland performed her heart out but instead of transitioning from child star to solid adult success, her life went terribly off the rails in the 1940s and never quite recovered. We watched with one eye open afraid to open both as she lurched from stellar performances to tantrums and no-shows, from happy family times to alcoholism, drug use and suicide attempts, from gold records to near bankruptcy.

And then, in 1969 three months after her fifth marriage and 11 days after her 47th birthday, just as she was attempting to get on her feet again, Judy Garland died from an accidental overdose of barbiturates. The painfully vulnerable, profoundly talented performer finished the third and final act of her short and tumultuous life in a manner which we always knew was coming but crossed our fingers that it wouldn’t be so.

In a business where thick skin is a must, Garland appeared to have no armor; she just wanted to perform.

At just three years old Frances “Baby” Gumm, as she was known then, was so keen to sing, she dashed onto the stage naked. The toddler misunderstood her cue and left the wings before her mother, Ethel, could pull a babydoll dress over her head and pull up some undies.

Just a couple of years later, when the tiny performer and her two sisters were on the road with their mother as manager, wardrobe lady, pianist, voice coach and cook, they were thrilled to get billing on a big town marquee. When the excited little group arrived before showtime they were crestfallen to see that instead of “The Gumm Sisters” their name in lights was “The Glum Sisters”.

Garland apparently never got over the pain and humiliation of this. Though the young girls were glum indeed, George Jessel, the vaudeville legend who later became a Hollywood filmmaker, put little Frances on his knee and said she was “pretty as a garland of flowers” and suggested the group change their name. While they were at it, the littlest one piped up and said she also liked the name Judy. That night a name was born, but not the star – it would be a few more years of ups and downs until finally Garland’s two older sisters fell in love, got married and left performing.

This left the young singer with a big voice and no place to go. According to Hollywood reporter, Carleton Cheney in a 1940 syndicated serial about Judy’s young life so far, Garland was singing around a campfire while on a Lake Tahoe holiday when a talent scout heard the 12-year-old and invited her to come to Hollywood. An alternate story about this period is that my great-uncle, Louis B. Mayer, sent director and musical choreographer, Busby Berkeley, to go downtown to the Orpheum Theater to watch the Gumm Sisters perform.

Either way, in 1935 Garland’s father, vaudevillian and theater operator, Frank Gumm, took her to the casting office at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At just 4′ 11″, a button nose and almost 13, no one was quite sure what to do with her until she began to sing. Someone sent word to LB’s office that he should see the kid in action. Judy Garland belted out another tune or two and evidently on this basis she was given a contract. This version of events sounds idealized but she was definitely signed on the strength of her voice alone. No screen tests were conducted. Sadly, Frank Gumm died just a few months after this, but Garland swore her father had been her lucky charm.

Like any starry-eyed teenager, the young singer was ready to experience the glamorous world of the movie star. Instead, Garland was sent to MGM school where she met Mickey Rooney and the other kid talents of the time, most of whom were true beauties, like Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor. She was not in their league, but then again, none of them could sing like her either.

In 1937, Garland made her first film, Every Sunday, a musical short with fellow child actor and MGM schoolmate, Deanna Durbin. Several films followed, including parts in the Andy Hardy series. Audiences loved her as the cutest girl next door. Her image was accessible, whereas the other young ones were something to aspire to.

Charles Walters, who directed Garland in a number of films, said “Judy was the big money-maker at the time, a big success, but she was the ugly duckling… I think it had a very damaging effect on her emotionally for a long time. I think it lasted forever, really”.

It didn’t help that Uncle Louis evidently referred to Garland as his “little hunchback”, which, if you know Jewish humor, was most certainly a term of endearment. His own closest sibling, my great-grandmother, Ida, was the same height.

Like a lot of teenage girls, Garland’s weight fluctuated, but for a bankable star, this would not do. She was put on dieting regimes and pills to slim down. I have also read contemporary articles which claim that to keep up with the frantic pace of making one film after another, Garland, Rooney, and other young performers were regularly given amphetamines and barbiturates.

I don’t know if this true, but certainly the 30s and 40s were more innocent times. Doctors recommended smoking and ‘modern’ drugs were put on pedestals, considered to have almost magical qualities without known side effects. So if Garland’s drug use began as sanctioned ‘pep pills’ there was certainly context – rather than some evil plan.

What is known is that her weight troubles and demands from MGM execs to lose weight were reported in the papers, which would be crushing for any teenager, but even more so for one whose image goes hand in hand with her paycheck and her prospects. Then mix in goddess-like beauties, young and old, swanning around on every MGM sound-stage with Garland’s intense self-doubt, and you have one toxic cocktail.

In late 1938, Garland was announced as Dorothy in the upcoming Wizard of Oz, but only because 20th Century Fox would not release Shirley Temple and Deanna Durbin was not available. When the movie debuted in 1939 it was a tremendous critical success and it was clear the choice to cast her was inspired, if not intentional. At the 1940 Academy Awards, Garland received an Academy Juvenile Award for her performances the year before, including in The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms.

During the same week as the Oscars, the star is threatened by a 19-year-old stalker who plotted to kidnap her. Earlier in the week Ethel had found “I love you” scribbled on their mailbox in red. After the young man is swiftly arrested, he tells police Garland is his perfect girl.

So now comes the cusp from child star to teenager – Garland’s sights are set on a dangerous territory just over the horizon called womanhood. At 17 she has a romance with band leader, Artie Shaw but is heartbroken when he eloped with Lana Turner. Garland then falls hard for musician David Rose, and on her 18th birthday he asks her to marry him. As Rose was still married at the time to the actress and singer, Martha Raye, the couple waited a year for his divorce to be finalized. On July 27, 1941 they married, but it would last less than two years.

Tragically, Judy Garland’s life is already assembling into that tried and true Hollywood template of unstable people getting involved with other unstable people and to no one’s surprise whatsoever, having unstable relationships. It is during this time that Garland and her mother either become estranged or the power struggle ensues. Certainly daughters in their late teens can be challenging for any parents. But with a child star, now accustomed to adoration, making enormous amounts of money, running with a sophisticated, fast crowd – Ethel would not have had much in her court. Garland’s choices would have been painful to watch for any mother, regardless of her ambitions or plans. And evidently, Ethel Gumm had a lot of both.

In 1943, at 21 Garland is given a glamor role in Presenting Lily Mars and her look is transformed with blonde hair and beautiful gowns but audiences still want her to be the girl next door and are uncomfortable seeing her as a womanly love interest. She goes back to form in 1944 with one of her most successful films for MGM, Meet Me in St. Louis, directed by Vincent Minnelli. They began a relationship and in June of 1945, Garland and Minnelli married. Nine months later, their daughter Liza was born.

Meanwhile, Deanna Durbin, Garland’s old studio school buddy, had been let go from MGM. How many tiny songbirds does one studio need? Evidently, the execs did the numbers and decided there was only room for one. Durbin, who has already had two failed marriages, has a useless stint at Universal and flees Hollywood to live in France with her third husband.

The next year Garland suffered her first nervous breakdown and cut her wrists with broken glass. She became increasingly unreliable and was pulled from film after film, declared “unfit to work”, didn’t show up for rehearsals, and in the case of Annie Get Your Gun, Garland left for lunch and simply didn’t come back.

By now, MGM is the grandest studio in the land. According to New York Times bestselling author, Scott Eyman, in his amazing biography, Lion of Hollywood: the Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer, the studio covered 167 acres. “Lot 1 encompassed seventy-two acres, housed all the thirty sound-stages, office buildings, and dressing rooms, the seven warehouses crammed with furniture, props, and draperies. Lot 2 consisted of thirty-seven acres of permanent exterior sets, including the town of Carvel, home of the Hardy family, and the great Victorian street from Meet Me in St. Louis. Here was the house where David Copperfield lived, there the street where Marie Antoinette rolled to the guillotine.”

There were three lots for the outdoor settings, including jungles and rivers for Tarzan and Trader Horn. There were 13 miles of paved road, 6,000 employees and three entrances. There were 33 designated ‘stars’, 72 featured players and 25 directors under contract.

MGM had its own police force, dentist, chiropractor, foundry and electrical plant. It was an empire at the peak of its history and its yield was hit movies and stars.

It is in this context that we not only have to place MGM’s child stars, but also Garland and her significant personal problems. So often modern commentary about Louis B. Mayer regarding individual stars like Garland reads as if they were his only concern and that he exerted a total, Svengali-like focus on each individual’s life. But how could this be possible?

Certainly, he was fond of Garland, as he was of them all. LB tried to help her and paid for her many hospital visits and other medical care. But he, and the execs he employed, were running a massive multimillion dollar business with the Loew Corporation in New York to answer to. They were trying to make movies. While other studios were floundering, MGM was a powerhouse of talent from every discipline, major hits each year and money in the bank.

After her daughter’s second nervous breakdown, in 1949 Ethel Gumm has had enough, or realizes there is nothing she can do, or both. She takes up a position as a theater manager in Dallas, familiar ground for her as she too had been a vaudeville performer prior to rearing her daughters and focusing on Judy’s career.

A year later, during a meeting between Garland, her agent and studio execs, the troubled star leaves the room and attempts to slit her own throat. She was only mildly injured but clearly it was another cry for help. Reports from the time are front page news and understandably disbelieving.

Our Greek chorus asks, where has our little girl gone? But the child star was long gone.

In October 1951, Garland opened in a vaudeville-style show at the newly refurbished Palace Theatre on Broadway. Her twice a day, 19-week engagement smashed earlier records and was described as “one of the greatest personal triumphs in show business history”, by Jack Garver, an industry columnist at the time. For her contribution to the revival of vaudeville, Garland was presented with a Special Tony Award.

But by June of 1952, Garland has married again – this time to show business manager, Sidney Luft. Just five months later in November, their first child is born, Lorna Luft. Although the next few years would be highly productive for Garland, turmoil was always just under the surface. In 1953, Ethel Gumm is found dead between two cars in the parking lot of the aircraft factory where she worked as a $60/week clerk.

Claims of an estrangement were denied by Garland’s lawyer. But it is hard to view this ignominious end for the mother of one of America’s biggest stars of the time without their being a total rift between the two.

In 1954, Garland makes A Star is Born, which is so popular and critically well received that she is considered a shoo-in to win the Oscar. In fact, so much so that a camera crew is sent to her hospital bedside where she has just given birth to her son, Joseph Loft. But the Oscar gods have made Hollywood their plaything and any chance of hubris is struck down. The Academy Award goes to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl.

It must have felt like old times feeling overshadowed by the pretty girl again. Groucho Marx sent her a telegram after the awards ceremony, declaring her loss “the biggest robbery since Brinks”. Time magazine labeled her performance as “just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history”. It wasn’t a complete loss for the awards season as Garland was recognized at the Golden Globes with Best Actress in a Musical.

From here, now a fully-fledged woman, wife and mother, Garland would make just a few more films, including Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she was Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated for Best Supporting Actress, before turning her attention to Las Vegas, TV shows and performances at the Palladium in London. Her star seemed to be burning brightly. By 1956, she is on $55,000 a week – the highest paid performer in Vegas.

Garland’s final act begins in November of 1959, when she is hospitalized with acute hepatitis. Her prognosis is grim; she is given five years or less to live. Initially the singer says she felt “…greatly relieved. The pressure was off me for the first time in my life”. But by August of that year, Garland makes a triumphant return to the Palladium and is so warmly received, she announces her intention to move to London.

Our hero seems to be conquering many mountains: her concert appearance at Carnegie Hall on April 23, 1961, was called “the greatest night in show business history” and the two-record Judy at Carnegie Hall was certified gold, charting for 95 weeks on Billboard, including 13 weeks at number one. The album won four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal of the Year. It has never been out of print.

But like an underground river, her personal life is not in step with her public appearances. Garland sues Luft for divorce in 1963, claiming “cruelty” and that he had repeatedly struck her while he was drinking. Her suit also states that Luft had attempted to take their children from her by force.

For Garland, the 60s are replete with huge ups and downs. There are command performances, including at the Palladium with an 18-year-old Liza Minnelli, and a much-loved TV show, as well as near fatal pleurisy, which hampers her Australian tour and leaves her Australian audiences disillusioned. In fact, for one show in Sydney, Garland is an hour late, forgets her own songs and after sustained booing, the singer flees the stage.

Her divorce from Sidney Luft, her third husband, becomes final on May 19, 1965, and shortly thereafter she marries her tour promoter, Mark Herron. This marriage lasts only six months.

In February 1967, Garland is cast as Helen Lawson in 20th Century Fox’s Valley of the Dolls but instead it’s Groundhog Day as she repeatedly misses rehearsals just as she had done so 20 years earlier at MGM. In April she is fired and replaced by Susan Hayward.

That July, Garland makes her last appearances at New York’s Palace Theatre with a 16-show run, performing with her children, Lorna and Joey Luft. Ironically, her wardrobe for this show is the sequined pantsuit which she would have worn in the Valley of the Dolls. Her last stage appearance is in Copenhagen in March, 1969. She marries her fifth husband, musician Mickey Deans, in the registry office in Chelsea, London on March 15.

On June 22, Deans finds Garland dead in the bathroom of their rented house. Her death is later ruled accidental by an “incautious self-overdose” of barbiturates.

Following Garland’s death, Deanna Durbin, gave one of only two interviews as a former child star and Hollywood refugee. In an honest and heartfelt interview with AP reporter and industry guru, Bob Thomas, she said that along with their strong voices, the two girls had other things in common, they “hated their lives as movie stars” and had “pushy, ambitious mothers”.

Durbin goes on to explain the fatal flaw in childhood stardom: “People put child stars on a pedestal. They expect them to be perfect little darlings; and to remain that way when they grow up. People criticize [them] when these stars grow up and prove themselves to be human beings with their own faults”.

When Garland last saw her old MGM schoolmate in Paris, she confided in her, “I didn’t like [the] publicity, [the] invasion of my private life. A person needs to have an identity of their own. When you’re a star, it’s virtually impossible”.

Deanna Durbin will be 93 in December. More than likely, she will celebrate her birthday surrounded by family and friends in the French village she has lived in for 70 years. Her legacy is not that of Judy Garland’s but then again, she lived.

Postscript: Judy Garland’s daughter, Lorna Luft, clarified her mother’s position on Louis B. Mayer. She wrote, “She loved L.B. Mayer to the end of her life. In the decade after she left Metro… she never blamed L.B. for what had happened to her. She always spoke lovingly of him to us as children and to my father. It was L.B. Mayer who paid for my mother’s hospitalizations when she became ill during her years at MGM, even when it was clear she might never be able to make another movie for him”.

Copyright Alicia Mayer 2013.

Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers with adopted children Roxanne and Ron.

“Things didn’t work out that much, you know. But I’ll never forget her. I think that she was a good woman.” Ron Pickford Rogers. Mary Pickford was reportedly too self-absorbed to provide real maternal love.

THE PICKFORD FAMILY portrait, probably taken in 1945, was most likely Mary Pickford’s and Buddy Roger’s first official photo with their two adopted children, baby Roxanne and Ronald “Ronnie” Charles Rogers, who had only been adopted around a year earlier. Ronnie appears to be no more than five or six years old, and with his tentative smile, standing next to his instant infant sister, and new mother and father, it is hard to imagine what he is thinking. After all, the two children had joined one of America’s most famous households. In fact, when Pickford and Rogers confirmed their engagement in November of 1936, it was not only front page news, the headline, “Buddy Rogers to Marry Mary Pickford,” dwarfed another headline that 150 women and children had been killed by bombing in Madrid – casualties of the Spanish Civil War.

By the time this photo was taken – probably in Pickford’s mansion, “Pickfair,” one of the country’s most famous mansions and originally her home with her first husband, actor Douglas Fairbanks – Pickford and Rogers have known each other for nearly two decades having met on the set of Roger’s first film, My Best Girl in 1927 in which Pickford played the lead role.

Roxanne and Ron have come into a marriage that is not only well established, but the couple’s wealth and standing in Hollywood is beyond doubt.

From the family portrait, Pickford, still very youthful looking at 52, exudes confidence, and for good reason – she had achieved more than any other woman in the film business. Pickford had starred in over fifty films, appearing in over 200, was a founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was one of four founders of United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffiths and Fairbanks, and even headed the studio’s production unit.

Not only is she worth

millions, Pickford has been extraordinarily wealthy for a very long time. Even back in 1918 it was reported that when Pickford filed her income tax return in person (as it was evidently done in those days) she did so with her lawyer present and her six figure earnings startled the cashier. I am sure it was a day he never forgot.

Pickford, originally born Gladys Marie Smith on April 8, 1892 in Toronto, Canada began her stage career at just five-years-old alongside her entire family – mother, Charlotte Hennessy, and sister Lottie and brother Jack Pickford. Together they crisscrossed America with the traveling theater troupes that were common at the turn of the last century and lasted until the film business transformed audiences’ taste and the many theater venues were renovated as cinema palaces. Just five feet tall, Pickford joined the motion picture business in its infancy and became so popular with audiences she was known as “America’s Sweetheart.” Her sweet face, long curly hair and slight figure became the nation’s young feminine ideal.

Paradoxically, Mary Pickford’s fame did not transfer to the ‘talkies’. Instead of fading into obscurity, though, she somehow made the leap from star to star-maker. There would be no other women with her status in the business end of Hollywood for at least 40-45 years.

Rogers, twelve years her junior, was originally from the small hamlet of Olathe, Kansas where his father was a probate judge and the family ran a 160 acre farm. Rogers was a talented musician and much-loved actor; thanks to his standard good looks and his film roles he had been dubbed “America’s boyfriend.” Yet, it was Rogers’ later career as a band leader of Hollywood orchestras and his marriage to Pickford that brought him the greatest recognition. When Buddy Rogers brought his bride-to-be to meet the family in Kansas, she caused the kind of sensation that can only occur when a mega star known to generations steps out of the screen and into real life.

Here is a news report from the day about her visit, one of the biggest events in the region’s history:

Kansas City was quick to learn of what was amiss and contributed a long stream of autos to the crowds of visitors who poured into Olathe all day. Many of them recognized the actress at Union Station and followed the Rogers’ auto. At the Methodist Church, Miss Pickford sat in a rear pew and heard BH, one of the three Rogers boys, sing in the choir. She was moved to tears by Rev. Eugene M. Frank’s Mother’s Day sermon and she accommodated practically the whole congregation that lined up outside after the services to shake her hand.

In the Rogers’ parlor, she arose to greet the constant stream of old and not so old friends of the Rogers who called. Judge Rogers took her to town to show her the courthouse and she stopped in the streets to sign autograph books. Later she went out to the Rogers’ 160-acre farm, where BH, the manager, showed her the wheat, corn and oat crops, newly planted, and the six new calves, a horse, mule and chickens.
Miss Pickford remarked that she had gathered eggs in her time and that the farm was ‘lovely’. She stopped in the chicken house to sign her autograph for Mrs. Sally Hiatt, who had followed her from Kansas City and pursued her to the farm.

It was a big day for Judge Rogers. ‘Yes sir, she shook hands with every single member of the congregation at church, and a lot of others. She never missed a one and she had something to say to everyone, too.’

Their marriage was Rogers’ first and Pickford’s third. Much was made of her refusal during their wedding to say “obey”. Instead, according to a report from the time, “In a low voice she said she would ‘love, honor and cherish until death do us part.’” The bride wore blue and their wedding – a small affair with just 17 of their closest friends and family – was held in the garden of a friend’s home, Louis Lighton, whose wife was her matron of honor. The church choir-singing BH Rogers was his brother’s best man.

Every angle of the event was covered in incredible depth by the newspapers, knowing that their readership was hungry for every last detail:

When Mary Pickford became Mrs Buddy Rogers today, she was wearing a sky blue crepe gown and dregs-of-wine shade accessories. The dress had a tubular skirt, a high waistline accentuated by front shirrings, short sleeves, empire length jacket. The sleeves of the jacket repeated the shirring motif of the skirt.

Her ‘going away’ gown was of sapphire and rust, threads of these colors running through the material. With it she wore a little turned-brimmed felt hat stitched in blue and rust leather. Gloves and shoes were of rust-shade suede.

Included in her trousseau also was the ice blue romaine crepe gown she had intended to be married in. A small veiled flared brim hat accompanied it. She also has a hunter’s green cable net evening gown with a coque feather bolero jacket. To wear with her collection of rubies, Mrs Rogers has a white chiffon evening gown of simple lines, to be augmented by a white chiffon cape.

Two day-time ensembles include a mist grey crepe, to be worn with an all-plaited chiffon coat, and a wine and white print crepe to be worn under an all-tuck chiffon coat. Included among her 30-odd honeymoon outfits was a red, green and white evening gown with a crisp print bolero jacket.

Journalists covering the news couldn’t resist mentioning Fairbanks and Pickfair, which was reportedly for sale and valued at $500,000. Most reports also mentioned her first husband, Irish-born actor, Owen Moore, who Pickford had married in 1911. Their divorce was finalized in 1920 and almost immediately Pickford had married Fairbanks. No one could say that Mary Pickford had picked Buddy Rogers to type – he was night and day to her previous husbands, especially the dashing Douglas Fairbanks, who, like Mary Pickford was very much a scion of Hollywood’s establishment and not afraid of multiple marriages.

Unfortunately for their relationship, as their movie careers foundered, Fairbanks became notoriously restless traveling overseas with or without his wife. The Pickford and Fairbanks relationship, which spanned 16 years, had become an indelible part of American life and a rising fandom centering around Hollywood actors and actresses. Though there were numerous columns in most newspapers about motion picture stars and well-known filmmakers, Fairbanks’ and Pickford’ were referred to as “Hollywood Royalty,” their union known as “the perfect marriage” and their every move reported alongside major national and world events.

Their castle, christened “Pickfair” by the newspapers, was a mansion high up in San Ysidro Canyon. Pickfair itself held legendary status and was somehow finessed into almost every article about the couple. It was like the mythical camelot for this modern-day ‘royal’ romance. The next couple and grand home to receive this treatment would be John F. Kennedy and his glamorous wife, the former Jacqueline Bouvier, whose life in the White House held the same interest for the American psyche.

But no marital home, no matter how hallowed or magical, can save a marriage. Pickford and Fairbanks separated in the early 1930s. A potential reunion and a “secret meeting” to patch up their marriage was, of course, covered as front page news. But it was not to be and when her divorce proceedings were heard in court, Mary Pickford claimed “mental cruelty.”

Fairbanks had already moved on and was overseas with his new lover, the former Lady Ashley. His divorce from Pickford was useful but he had other court troubles; Sylvia Ashley’s husband, Lord Ashley, named Fairbanks as co-respondent in a civil suit charging them both with infidelity. Released from his marriage to Pickford, and evidently none the worse for the other court matter, Fairbanks later married Ashley; but their marriage would only last three years.

Fairbanks never lived in Pickfair again, and despite its perennial association with the previous marriage, it became home to Pickford and Rogers and later to their children, Ron and Roxanne.

At some point in the 30s or 40s, Pickford became a dear friend of my great-grandmother, Ida Mayer Cummings and through her became one of the greatest supporters of Los Angeles’ Jewish Home for the Aged, a cause Ida was devoted to for decades. The family legend, and perhaps known by others, was that Mary Pickford was in fact an anti-semite. As the story goes, Ida transformed her views by appealing to her generally warm-hearted and fair nature. In her role as a primary JHA benefactor, Pickford went to endless luncheons and gala events. The family collection contains several of Mary Pickford, and in all she is impeccably dressed – almost regal.

Sadly, like many in her family before her, Pickford slipped into alcoholism. Pickfair went from opulent mansion to the island of her self-imposed exile. In the last ten years of her life Mary Pickford became a recluse and rarely left her bedroom, much less her home.

In 1976, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized her with a special Oscar “in recognition of her unique contribution to the film industry.” She did not attend the ceremony in person but instead appeared briefly during the telecast. But even this fleeting glance of a woman who had once been America’s Sweetheart was enough to cause an out-pouring of affection from the public. Pickford reportedly received hundreds of letters from around America and the world. She was evidently stunned and delighted at the reaction. But it didn’t bring her out of seclusion.

Three years later, in 1979 at age 86, she died of a stroke. At her death, Pickford and Rogers had been married 42 years.

Buddy Rogers later sold Pickfair to Los Angeles Lakers owner, Dr. Jerry Buss, who sold it to entertainer, Pia Zadora and her husband. The couple demolished Pickfair and constructed a new home on the site. There was a huge outcry about the destruction of such an historical property, but Zadora claimed it had been left in great disrepair and was riddled with termites.

Buddy Rogers died in 1999 at age 94. He was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1986.

As for Ron and Roxanne, sadly the family portrait belies the truth. Though they had the trappings of a dream life, the reality was entirely different. Pickfair was a grand house but never a home. As Roxanne and Ron grew up and the cuteness and novelty wore off, Pickford’s relationship with her children has been described as “tense” and “turbulent.” Their adopted mother criticized them for their physical imperfections – Ronnie for his short stature and Roxanne for her crooked teeth, among other things.

Both married in their late teens and drifted into odd jobs. Roxanne married a boy Pickford did not approve of. She went on to have a daughter and died in her 50s from osteoporosis.

In a PBS “American Experience” documentary about her famous mother, Roxanne appears haggard and has clearly had very tough life. Ron fared no better. In 1958 his suicide attempt was widely reported.
Despite being the son of one of America’s wealthiest women, Ron’s occupation is listed as a machinist. What happened to his wife Lenore and their two children is unknown and Ron is reported to have ended up a toothless drifter. There were no further reports clarifying his life in later years that I could find.

The odd thing about parents – adopted or otherwise – flawed as they can be, is that children are hardwired to forgive.

When remembering his adopted mother, Mary Pickford, Ron is gracious, “Things didn’t work out that much, you know. But I’ll never forget her. I think that she was a good woman.”

Official photographs are a world unto themselves – everyone smiles, everyone looks hopeful. ♛

New Mary Pickford biography:
Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies

Charlie Chaplin autobiography:
Charlie Chaplin: My Autobiography

Copyright Alicia Mayer 2013.

Mary Pickford (right) with my great-grandmother, Ida Mayer Cummings, Louis B. Mayer’s sister. The two women were dear friends, and it was through Ida that Mary become a devoted benefactor of Jewish causes in Los Angeles. Date unknown.

For those of you who follow my blog or follow me on Twitter and elsewhere, you will know that I have been shocked at the instant acceptance that Ben Urwand received from the media and in other forums for his sensationalist claims that Hollywood’s Jewish moguls collaborated with Hitler and his regime. Basically, as soon as Urwand’s publicists, Golberg McDuffie, sent out their presser about his book, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, there was a collective “we knew it!”

Expert rebuttals to The Collaboration are collected in a handy timeline here.

As a grandniece of Louis B. Mayer and my generation’s family historian, I’ve seen plenty of anti-semitic portrayals of his time at the helm of MGM, so I put a lot of this early acceptance down to the ‘greedy Jew’ shibboleth. If you’re Jewish, you develop bat senses for this one early on. I’ll never forget the adult son of a dear friend of mine talk about his boss tickling the “Jewish piano” – he meant the cash register.

Ben Urwand is Jewish and I understand this was used in promoting him and his book (his Hungarian grandparents are almost always mentioned in articles), which clearly lent his claims a powerful stamp of endorsement. It was a case of: “Hey, everybody! This guy’s Jewish and he’s slamming other Jews. It’s gotta be true!”

But what I wasn’t prepared for was the warm welcome from Jewish media outlets, like Haaretz and David Mikics writing in Tablet Mag, who concluded his glowing review of The Collaboration with the repulsive concept that the moguls were responsible for the Holocaust. (On a side note, Mikics did not disclose

that he is also published by Harvard University Press, as Urwand is.) This early review back in June unleashed, or was the harbinger for, a tsunami of hate against fellow Jews – Mayer, the Warner Bros, Goldwyn, Zukor. It is this response that has floored me, more than anything else.

To be fair, the Harvard brand and the vision of Urwand teaching himself German and slaving away in cold, German archives for years is all great stuff. I can imagine a journalist saying to a colleague over the partition in your typical open plan newsroom, “Wow, this dude is hard core! He freakin’ TAUGHT himself GERMAN. Man…”

So let’s turn the tables for a minute and imagine that instead of being Jewish, Urwand wasn’t anything at all, or perhaps of another faith. What would have happened then? Scrutiny, for one. A lot of it. You might remember that recently Reza Aslan, a Muslim author was questioned for having written about Jesus. As he rightly pointed out, his religion had nothing to do with his ability to research, interpret or write: “It’s not that I’m just some Muslim writing about Jesus. I am an expert with a PhD in the history of religions.”

For the first few weeks, Ben Urwand was treated like a rock star and his book became a pop culture phenomenon, rocketing up the bestseller list in its category.

Then the experts moved into action and began their evisceration of The Collaboration in The New Yorker (David Denby), The Wall Street Journal (Professor Jeanine Basinger), AFI’s online review (Mike Greco), LA Weekly (Paul Teetor), The Hollywood Reporter (Professor Thomas Doherty), The Nation (Jon Wiener) and in acclaimed blogs like Self Styled Siren (Farran Nehme), The Millions and others (links to all can be found here). Twitter was a storm of criticism, and many retweeted David Denby’s crucial question: “How could Harvard have published this book?” And I understand there are still other very critical reviews to come. (Hopefully, these reviewers will not make the repeated mistake that even others critical of Urwand’s book have made and repeat that Germany was a big market for the moguls. It wasn’t.)

Meanwhile, Professor Thomas Doherty’s book on the same topic, Hollywood and Hitler, was pointed to as being far superior to The Collaboration. But where Urwand gave the moguls the devil treatment, Doherty says that “Hollywood did more than any other for-profit business to sound the alarm against Nazism. It is a story not of collaboration but resistance.”

But this is not what excellent headlines are made of. It reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon I once saw with an employee showing his manager a graph, to which his boss says “Sex it up!”

Urwand has been invited to speak at a number of Jewish cultural events, including at the DC Jewish Literary Festival, the Museum of Tolerance in New York, and the Wiener Library in London, which is devoted to Holocaust studies. Why then, if his book has been expertly demolished and his central claims about the Jewish moguls are in tatters, is Ben Urwand being given the opportunity to speak within a Jewish context?

Here’s what Ben Urwand has taught us: the package is not the product. The product is the product. It’s not that Ben Urwand is a Jewish scholar giving a Jewish topic the Harvard treatment. He’s a misguided academic who got stars in his eyes all the way back at Berkeley who is trying to re-write history. And he got it wrong.

To journalists, event organizers, educators, film bloggers and writers, students of film history, and others, I say: read the rebuttals and take note of the many crucial factual errors that have been pointed out.

At the end of the day, none of the men whose memories and legacies have been posthumously trashed in The Collaboration deserve this. If they could defend themselves, they would set the record straight. But they’re all gone. As such, it is up to us to super glue that vase back together and put it back up on the shelf – carefully.

Rare photo of a young Louis B Mayer with his wife Margaret Shenberg picking apples. Place unknown, date unknown, however probably before 1920.

RIP ~ Louis B Mayer ~ July 12, 1884 – October 29, 1957

On the 29th of October, 2012 it was the 55th anniversary of the death of my great-uncle Louis B Mayer from leukemia, which also claimed his nephew Leonard M Cummings, the youngest child of my great-grandmother Ida Mayer Cummings. In my earlier post, To Bury a Son, I write about Leonard’s premature death at just 44 years old. In the process of researching Leonard’s life and death, I discovered that Ida had buried not only her youngest son, but all three of her brothers, including LB, who for much of her life was the closest to her.

As you can imagine, it is my greatest wish that leukemia has been banished back to the dark Stygian depths where it can never claim another family member.

This rare photo, retouched so each red apple springs to life from the B&W background, has probably not been seen for 70+ years. I am delighted to share it with you, though it’s a shame that I have to essentially deface it with watermarks to keep it “safe” from digital theft.

While I never knew my great-uncle – he died more than a decade before I was born – his influence stretched across all of the generations of our family, although perhaps his youngest descendants (the children of my cousins) are not touched directly or even indirectly by his legend. Naturally this is fading as time rolls on.

Of course, Louis B Mayer’s legacy to the film business endures and stretches across the globe. Whether they know it or not, today’s filmmakers are beneficiaries of LB’s innovations and vision.

For this post there were many photos I could choose from – serious portraits of the mogul or sitting at an Academy Award dinner surrounded by the many stars whose careers he helped to create – but instead I chose the young man before the fame (and infamy) at a simpler time enjoying a lighthearted and rather unlikely pursuit. Has anyone ever thought of LB picking fruit or being fed an apple?

Clearly, he and his wife, Margaret – not yet the mother of his two daughters, Edith and Irene – are having a fun time, camping it up for the camera. What makes this photo so special to me is that it is before Hollywood, before MGM; before the founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Oscars; before the Motion Picture Association of America; before the deals, the schmooze, the headlines, the money, the legend…

Before, when there was just the man.

Copyright Alicia Mayer 2012.

Louis B Mayer with Grauman Chinese Theater, Sid Grauman, and a young Marion Davies, actress. Date circa 1925. Location unknown.

 Anyone who comments about a rare early morning start to play himself in a movie that, “Birds were singing. How long has that been going on?” I could have had a lot of fun with.

Of all the early Hollywood elite that I have written about, the one I most wished I could have met is Sid Grauman, founder and proprietor of the Million Dollar Theater (1918), Grauman’s Egyptian Theater (1922) and of course, the world-famous Grauman’s Chinese Theater (1927). All three of these Los Angeles icons are still open for business, despite the Million Dollar Theater being nearly 100 years old and the Egyptian having hosted Hollywood’s first ever movie premiere – Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks – the celluloid spring for the thousands of red carpet events that have followed.

Of course, the most famous of the showman’s theaters remains Grauman’s Chinese Theater visited by over 4 million tourists each year who also tour the famous celebrity hand and footprints in the forecourt, which start with the actress Norma Talmadge in 1927. Click here to see a video of my great uncle Louis B Mayer arriving at the premiere of the movie, The Grand Hotel at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 1932. It’s quite a spectacle and we can see that Hollywood has been Hollywood for a very long time.

Sid Grauman ran his beloved theaters right up until his death in 1950, living la vida loca from his hospital room at Cedars Sinai Hospital where he stayed for several months simply because he “liked it” but dining out nightly at many of LA’s finer restaurants, his fun loving attitude and shock of crazy hair his trademarks. He wasn’t actually a patient until he suffered a coronary inclusion and died. (You weren’t a true Angeleno until you had died at Cedars Sinai.)

At his death, Sid Grauman was 70 years old, unmarried and without heirs. He had lived a very full life, effortlessly burning the candles at both ends for decades.

Not only would spending a day with Sid Grauman involve time travel on my part but also operating at his timetable which, as a theater operator for most of his life, was roughly akin to bar hours: get up late, schmooze all night and go to bed just as the world is beginning to wake.

But it would be worth it.

Anyone who comments about a rare early morning start to play himself in a movie by George Jessel that, “Birds were singing. How long has that been going on?” I could have had a lot of fun with.

Grauman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 17, 1879 to David Grauman and the former Rosa Goldsmith, who were theatrical performers on various show circuits.

Grauman the showman was born when as a teenager he witnessed a store owner in a gold rush town in Alaska read the newspaper to a gathering of miners and charge each admission for the privilege of hearing the latest news. Sid Grauman realized three things: 1) content is king, 2) the king needs a castle and 3) build it and they will come.

While men from around America and the world desperately tried to get rich during the Klondike gold rush, Sid and his father were looking for other golden opportunities. By the time Sid joined his parents in San Francisco in 1900, they had indeed been successful purveyors of entertainment for gold rush miners and were cashed up and ready to open theaters. The Graumans opened the Unique, then the Lyceum and were also involved in a vaudeville troupe that toured up the north coast.

But when they lost their lease on the Unique in early 1906 Grauman hired an ax crew to demolish it immediately after the last showing so it could not be used as a theater by the new owners. According to The Evening News of January 30, 1906, “The interior of the little theater looked as if it had been wrecked by a cyclone or an explosion” (read article here). Then came the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake on April 18, 1906, which demolished most of the city and leveled the two theaters in any event.

Grauman Sr. picked among the rubble and was able to find a working projector. I can just imagine him saying to Sid, “Son, we’re back in business!” In no time, they set up a tent theater, which advertised to the jittery residents of San Francisco, “Nothing to fall on you but canvas if there is another quake.” Again, content was king in his canvas castle and the city was so grateful that the Grauman’s were awarded a civic commendation for services to the community.

By 1917, the flickering writing was projected on the wall: where better to build theaters then at the source of where content had begun to flow in earnest – Los Angeles!

The Grauman’s went into business with Adolph Zukor, who would go on to establish Paramount Pictures, and the Million Dollar Theater was born in 1918. Sadly, David Grauman died in 1921 so did not see the Egyptian open to tremendous fanfare the next year. Grauman remained devoted to his mother until she died in 1936. Her hand prints are the only ones in the Grauman’s Chinese Theater forecourt that are not from a celebrity.

What so many people outside of Hollywood do not realize is that not only was Los Angeles a company town, but a town with lives that were inextricably woven together in ways that are hard to fathom today.

This photo is a prime example. It shows Sid Grauman with Louis B Mayer, and the actress Marion Davies, but it’s important to note that Sid’s business partners included Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, two of the founders of United Artists, along with director DW Griffiths. Fairbanks was also a founding member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), as was Sid Grauman and of course, it was the brainchild of LB Mayer. (Fairbanks also hosted the first Oscars Ceremony in 1929.) Sid Grauman was also in business with Joseph Shenck who became chairman of UA; his brother Nicholas was Marcus Lowe’s right hand man, which creates yet another layer of complex inter-connections considering Lowe’s significant involvement in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Mary Pickford was also in business with Charlie Chaplin, and of course, a great friend of my great-grandmother, Ida Mayer Cummings. Shenck was married to Norma Talmadge, who had also been married to George Jessel. They also lived on Palisades Beach Road and were neighbors of my uncle, who lived with his wife and two daughters, Irene and Edie at 625 – a home that later became the love nest for Marilyn Monroe and JFK and The Beattles crash pad. Joseph Shenck partnered with Darryl F Zanuck to start 20th Century Pictures, which eventually merged with Fox Film Corporation and became, of course, 20th Century Fox. Louis B Mayer’s daughter Edie’s husband, Bill Goetz would later run this studio.

In 1922, the heads of the four studios – the usual suspects, Shenck, Mayer, Goldwyn and Jesse Lasky – founded the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

And I could go on and on and on… in the early years of film, Los Angeles was where everyone’s lives, divorces, business partnership and the creation of the industry’s infrastructure, swirled into one great vortex, rather like the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.

So choosing to hang out with Sid Grauman for a day, let’s say May 11, 1927 would have not only given me a front row seat at the founding of the now esteemed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but I could have hopped limos and headed home to my uncle Louis’ beachfront home for a nap and catch up with my great great grandfather, Jacob Mayer who at that time was spending his last days quietly living at his son’s home until his death on April 18, 1930.

While connecting the dots in Hollywood would have been an exercise in sheer futility, Sid Grauman is particularly special because he created the castle in which surely millions of patrons have paid homage to Hollywood.

But as an actor – not so much. Years before the George Jessel movie, Sid Grauman was asked to play a poker player in another film with his dialogue limited to one word, “pass”. Here’s what happened, according to Hollywood correspondent Aline Mosby in her hilarious article for The Washington Reporter, May 14, 1949:

‘Douglas Fairbanks asked “Sunshine”, as Hollywood calls the gag-loving showman, to play a poker player in Trail of the Gold Rush.

“I told Doug I couldn’t act, no showman can. He gave me just one line, “pass”, not even “I’ll pass”.

After 20 rehearsals the cards were dealt for the make believe game and the cameras rolled. When Grauman’s turn came to speak the one word, he threw his cards on the table and stood up, “Doug, I can’t pass! I have three aces. Doug chased me off the set and didn’t speak to me for days.”‘

Grauman had three aces indeed – the Million Dollar, the Egyptian and the Chinese…

POST SCRIPT: I would like to thank the following (names where possible or Twitter accounts) for helping me to identify the people in this picture as initially I only knew that it included LB Mayer: the Toronto Film Festival, film archivist Christel Schmidt (author of the new book Queen of the Movies about Mary Pickford), author and film historian HP Oliver, Phillip Gershon, Russ McMillen, @NitrateDiva and @netminnow.

Copyright Alicia Mayer 2012.

My great-grandmother Ida Mayer Cummings with the unstoppable Mae West. Date unknown, however might be early 1930s. Mae West was most likely a VIP guest of a Jewish Home for the Aged event in Los Angeles.

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” Mae West

ONE OF THE hardest things to do is to accurately judge the impact of a rebel after society has morphed in their direction. It’s the difference between falling down a set of stairs and remembering it as stubbing your toe.

Mae West – vaudevillian, Broadway sensation, playwright and movie star – was a pioneering sex icon so many decades ago that American women had only just taken off their corsets, much less burnt their bras.

Born in 1893 in Brooklyn, by the time she was seven she was performing in amateur shows and winning local talent contests. By 14, Mae West was performing professionally in vaudeville shows and by her late teens she was on Broadway and singled out for attention by the New York Times, despite the show closing after just a few performances.

When the right material dried up, Mae West started writing her own scripts. Her first starring role on Broadway was in 1927 in Sex, which she wrote, produced, and directed. Audiences loved it, critics hated it, but city officials were aghast, especially the city’s district attorney and zealous crime fighter, Joab H. Banton, the son of a judge and determined to fight indecency in all its forms.

Banton promised to “rid the stage of naked women, if necessary by backing up patrol wagons to the stage doors and taking the performers, just as they are to the night court so the judge can see just what audiences are compelled to look at.” Of course, audiences weren’t complaining and it didn’t appear that any man or woman had been dragged kicking and screaming to see the naked women in question. Nevertheless, Banton made it clear smut would not be tolerated:

“I intend to treat the stage the same way as we treated the night clubs. Clothing must be lowered at the bottom and raised at the top, while indecency in lines, situations and elsewhere must be ended!”

On Monday, 28 March all hell broke loose on Broadway as three productions were raided and the authors, producers and entire casts were rounded up by the police, on Banton’s orders, and thrown into the Jefferson Market prison to await special sessions with three separate judges.

While Justices Direnzo, Murphy and Voorhees were most certainly pulled away from their evening meals and slippers to attend court, it’s possible the sight they met that night may have made it worth their trouble. By the time the raids were over, Banton would have brought in several dozen scantily clothed and heavily made up thespians along with the authors and producers behind their livelihoods.

Police began the night, appropriately enough, with The Virgin Man and collared the author, William Francis Dugan, and producers, Mack Cohan and Jacob Kromberg, and several actors and actresses. All were trucked over to the police station in several paddy wagons and then finger-printed, which was still enough of a novelty at the time for it to be reported, and not just a little tongue in cheek by the amazingly named United News staff correspondent, Same Love:

“The dainty whorls of Dorothy Hall and Virginia Smith were added to the municipal collection along with those of the late Gyp the Blood and Cat-Eye Annie. The police will know them next time, though they be disguised as ‘Topsy’ and ‘Eva’. Misses Hall and Smith regarded their smudged digits with displeasure.”

The police and paddy wagons then rolled on to Sex, nabbing Mae West, her two producers, Clarence W. Morganstern and James A. Timoney, and their cast. While they cooled their heels in the clink, the police then finished the night with the authors, producer and cast of the perfectly named, The Captive. Once everyone was assembled, processed and sitting with their inky fingers, the judges got to work.

Dugan, Cohan and Kromberg from The Virgin Man were found guilty of violating “public decency and maintaining a nuisance” and sentenced to ten days in the prison ‘workhouse’. The men were also fined $250 a piece – a huge sum in the day. The producers of The Captive on the other hand were, as Love reports, “Too proud or too sophisticated to fight it out in court, The Captive’s directors withdrew the piece, the cast dispersed and the charges against all hands were dismissed.”

Love goes on to indicate this was a classy production about an ‘indecent subject’, but about what is impossible to make out thanks to the mores of the time:

“The Captive far upstaged its erring sisters [and] was also a success. It was Edouard Bourdet’s lace-like treatment of a theme not polite to be aware of. Beautifully and seriously staged and directed with a cast of Helen Menken and impeccable English and American actors, it epitomized the question of censorship.”

As far as Banton was concerned, the score was two to three – one party found guilty and another choosing ‘no contest’. But Mae West and her business partners weren’t going to lay down and take it. They demanded a jury trial.

Correspondent Same Love reports again:

“Meanwhile, selection of a jury to try the 25 men and women involved in the production of Sex was proceeding in general sessions and Norman P. S. Schloss, war lord of the half dozen defense lawyers, was girding his loins for battle. In questioning the jurors, Schloss revealed that he would bear down upon the changed moral standards of today as contrasted with the mid-Rooseveltian era when the law upon which the trial is based was passed.

Just as it grew late enough to suspend operations for the day, the 12th juror was selected, completing an all-male jury, several the heads of families, none of them actors or members of little theater groups. One juror, George Wells, a contractor, bore such a startling resemblance to President Coolidge that the defendants were visibly heartened.”

As the saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor – Mae West’s risky gamble did not pay off and she and her producers were also sentenced to ten days in the workhouse. Their fines were nearly double those of the backers of The Virgin Man.

On April 20, 1927, Mae West was bundled into a police van at the Jefferson Market women’s prison in the morning and taken to Welfare Island, where it was later reported that she worked in the laundry and swabbed down hallways with a mop. I am sure she managed to make the prison uniform look desirable. If she had stayed behind bars long enough, she may have organized a cheeky, sexy revue a la Chicago. But no mop or cotton prison dress could keep this radical down.

Amazingly, after the all the unscheduled drama surrounding her first Broadway production, Mae West lived it all over again the next year with Pleasure Man, which, as the title indicates, was not Shakespeare. Tthis time West was no raid virgin – she was ready. D.A. Banton had Pleasure Man, which was showing at the Biltmore, raided on opening night and it looked like it would go the way of the three productions the year before.

West had a secret weapon: Nathan Burkan, a remarkably experienced and talented lawyer, who earlier in his career, at just 23-years-old, had been instrumental in strengthening protection for the creators of music and literature in 1904, which resulted in a significant flow of royalties from there on in. Burkan’s efforts became the foundations of America’s Copyright Act of 1909.

By the time he took Mae West’s case the esteemed lawyer had an impeccable reputation and was very well respected. He high profile clients on both coasts, including show business types like Charlie Chaplin and Samuel Goldwyn and large corporations.

It is no surprise that by Wednesday Burkan had an injunction against Banter and the police, enabling the show to go on as it did for several days, including the crucial weekend shows. It was nail-biting stuff, though, as according to a report the injunction wasn’t granted until 7pm, not long before Wednesday night’s show was to start: “Mr Burkan had failed to get in touch with the Commissioner up to six o’clock in the evening. Then he decided to seek a Supreme Court Justice and request a temporary restraining order. An hour later he found Justice Valente at his home, and the order was signed.”

Yet another judge had to schlep to the door in the midst of their well-deserved dinner, but this time to consider the other side. You have to imagine that by now, even the city’s judges were beginning to see Banter as a bit of a zealot.

With Burkan’s effectiveness it is hard to believe he ended up suing Mae West for his fees. This is doubly hard to understand as it was very shortly after the Pleasure Man mishegas, Mae West created Diamond Lil, one of her most enduring characters in the play of the same name about a racy, easygoing lady of the 1890s. It immediately became a Broadway hit and West would successfully revive it throughout her career. A movie contract with Paramount Pictures quickly followed in 1932 Mae West, even though by now she was in her late 30s.

You’ve got to be careful what you wish for. On the one hand, West is credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy in 1933 with She Done Him Wrong (nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture) playing opposite newcomer Cary Grant, but her endless struggles with censorship eventually ended her film career and resulted in some very expensive studio flops. But before her scripts were sanitized beyond recognition, Mae West would become America’s second highest paid person in the US, behind media mogul William Randolph Hearst, and she enjoyed a series of saucy roles, reeling out spicy one liners and boggling her audiences with a figure so curvaceous it was only barely contained by her outrageously glamorous gowns.

There is no doubt that when the photo with my great-grandmother, Ida Mayer Cummings was taken, Mae West was already a national mega star. Just a few years later, Harry Brandt, the disgruntled head of independent cinema exhibitors, would name her at the top of his “Box Office Poison List,” a full page advertisement in Variety magazine, which named several actors, including Joan Crawford and Marilyn Dietrich, who were so highly paid that Brandt claimed exhibitors were forced to show their films despite audiences now choosing to stay away.

Even without the visuals, Mae West was a trouble-maker. As her fame faded she shifted her attention to radio plays, but the dialog was often so sexual that after a concerted campaign by women’s clubs and Catholic groups, the FCC later deemed one broadcast, absolutely jam-packed with West’s famous double entendres, as “vulgar and indecent.” NBC not only banned her, they banned any future mention of her across all of their radio stations.

You can ban words but you can’t ban a person, and despite society eventually catching up with Mae West’s open-minded views on sexual expression, she continued on with her unique sexy stroll through life, remaining involved in the entertainment business right up to her death at 87 on November 22, 1980.

Post script:

Sadly, Mae West’s lawyer, Nathan Burkan, died suddenly after a meal at the top of his career in 1936. Just two years before he had represented Mrs Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt against shocking accusations that she was an unfit mother for her 10 year old daughter, also named Gloria. It was a celebrated, scandalous case and front page fodder for newspapers around the US and overseas. Testimony was often held behind closed doors. In the end, custody of the young heiress was awarded to her paternal aunt, Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.

At just 17-years-old, five years before she was entitled to her inheritance of over $4 million, Gloria would go on to marry the shadowy Mr Pasquale “Pat” DiCicco, first cousin of Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who had gotten into an ugly fistfight with Ted Healy at the Trocadero Cafe, the night of his death.

In 1930, Nathan Burkan was profiled by Richard Massock of The Gettysburg Times:

“Stars take their troubles to Burkan’s office and he takes them to court. Charles Chaplin, Mae West, John Philip Sousa, Florenz Ziegfield, Al Jolson, Otto Kahn, Rosa Ponselle, Arthur Train (himself a lawyer), the American Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers, and several movie corporation have been his clients.

[Burkan] is a light sleeper. He has two telephones in his elegant Fifth Avenue house and is usually at one of them. If he is not calling one of his partners in the middle of the night to discuss a legal point he has suddenly thought of, he is listening to someone like Samuel Goldwyn, who calls him from the coast at 3am to ask advice.

Burkan is a first nighter, attending every important play or picture opening and a lavish host. He attends every dinner, political, theatrical, or private that he can.

Burkan carries his office with him. Twice a year he takes it to Los Angeles [and] during his stay there, a line of Hollywood celebrities calls at his suite in the Ambassador hotel. Every summer he goes to Europe for a vacation during which he is called upon for more advice than when he is back home. Last year he finally went to Spain, where he happened to have no clients, to play some uninterrupted golf. Golf and horseback riding are his two hobbies. He gets up every morning at 5am regardless of how little sleep he has had to ride in Central Park where he has his own horse.

His perseverance is legendary and evidenced by the 10 years he gave to Jewel Carmen’s case against William Fox. He finally won. He spent 16 years winning a plagiarism suit over a play called, Cheating Cheaters.”

Shortly after his death, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers established the Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition to acknowledge the best essay on the topic of copyright.

The competition ceased over seven decades later in 2010. ♛

Mae West autobiography:
Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It

Mae West plays:
Three Plays: Sex / The Drag / The Pleasure Man

Mae West biographies:
Mae West: It Ain’t No Sin
Mae West: An Icon in Black and White

Copyright Alicia Mayer 2012.

I am so proud of my friend Aaron Wolf’s documentary, Restoring Tomorrow, about the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which my great uncle, Louis B. Mayer, and other studio moguls helped to build so long ago.

I actually wrote about this mammoth $150 million restoration project when it was announced several years ago, partly to explain the legendary Rabbi Edgar Magnin, the moguls’ spiritual leader – a tough but rewarding gig if ever there was one. He and my great-grandmother, Ida Mayer Cummings, were very close, both serving the Los Angeles Jewish community for most of their long lives.

Although at the heart of the Restoring Tomorrow documentary is the choice to rebirth one house of worship and one congregation, it really echoes a worldwide trend of shrinking faith-based communities as younger generations ask what’s in it (God/religion) for me?

Restoring Tomorrow – Trailer from Seventh Art Releasing on Vimeo.

Aaron Wolf, a young filmmaker busy living his life and prior to filming almost entirely physically, spiritually and emotionally removed from any connection to the Temple, which had figured so prominently in his childhood, suddenly felt the urge to document its restoration. His personal journey of re-connection is both deeply personal and universal. There is a scene in which he is reflected in a photo of his grandfather, Alfred Wolf, who had been senior rabbi at the Temple for decades, and you can feel the love, pride and hope that flows through generations.

The current senior rabbi, Rabbi Steven Z. Leder, who spearheaded the restoration with a fervor that is, well, religious, is the film’s co-hero. He knows he must and will succeed.

Once the will was there, and money was found, an inspiring team came together, including the leading architect, a woman who has also been a longtime member of the congregation, as well as the many talented artisans who dedicated blood, sweat and tears to returning the remarkable sanctuary’s paintings, plasterwork, and more to all their glory.

As far as my tiny involvement is concerned, I had the good luck to stumble across the documentary in its final stages in late 2015, so was just in time to supply some photos from our family’s collection.

A few month’s later, Aaron and producer Tim Nuttall were kind enough to allow me to show the film to two small, elderly audiences here in Sydney. To say the film resonated with them is an understatement as they have seen their own children, and their children’s children, drift away from the shules and community centers they helped build here decades ago.

It was a privilege to watch these two audiences respond to the film’s universal message. Despite Sydney being thousands of miles away from Los Angeles, the story resonated clearly.

No matter what religion you are, I promise you will be touched by this emotional film so if it comes to a theater near you (as they say) go see it! And if you’ve been a follower of this blog I am sure you will also be able to identify the handful of photos I contributed – let me know, I’d love to hear from you via my official Facebook page or on Twitter.

Now that Restoring Tomorrow has been acquired for theatrical release by Seventh Art Releasing, which specializes in documentaries, I look forward to seeing it in cinemas here in Australia very soon!

Mazal Tov, Aaron and the team!

Copyright 2017 Alicia Mayer. All rights reserved.

Yesterday, while reading letters and other paperwork my grandmother Mitzi Cummings Fielding set aside in one large envelope in the 1970s, I followed a trail that led me to a wealthy couple from Los Angeles who were either jinxed or blessed, I’m not sure which.

One of the items in the envelope was a delightful 4-page report by a Mrs. Anna Belousoff dated April 5, 1948 about the huge groundbreaking ceremony for the Mary Pickford Building, a project spearheaded for the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aged by my great-grandmother Ida Mayer Cummings, Mary Pickford, Louis B. Mayer, and a handful of others.

Mrs. Belousoff glowed about those assembled, including Samuel Goldwyn, Mayor Fletcher Bowron, Monsignor Father Martin Keating, Mr. Samuel Rubenstein of Post 192 of the Jewish War Veterans, Rabbi S. M. Neches, Jane Powell, Mrs. Florence Irish, Atwater Kent, Kay Keiser, Buddy Rogers, and other luminaries.

Naturally, I was curious as to who Anna Belousoff was, as Ida’s ‘Auxiliary’ committee included the who’s who of L.A.’s Jewish community.

And that’s when it got very interesting…

My great-grandmother Ida Mayer Cummings with inventor and philanthropist Atwater Kent and bandleader Kay Kyser at the dinner following the groundbreaking ceremony for the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aged, Mary Pickford Building. 1948.

It turns out that Anna’s husband, Martin Belousoff, owned the building at 8024 Sunset Boulevard, which housed the famous Schwab’s Pharmacy (always known as ‘Schwab’s drugstore’), which like most pharmacies of the day also had a soda fountain and served light meals.

There’s a persistent rumour that Lana Turner was discovered there but evidently this not so. Still, it was the drugstore of the stars, and for decades. According to the website filmsofthegoldenage.com:

“In the ’30s and ’40s you could spot Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Orson Welles, Ida Lupino, the Marx and Ritz Brothers, Marilyn Monroe, and Ronald Reagan rubbing shoulders with the rabble here. Chaplin and Harold Lloyd came to play the pinball machines… Struggling young performers could always drop in for a free meal. One of them, Ava Gardner, landed a job behind the soda fountain while waiting for her big break.”

A man hails a cab in front of the famous Schwab’s Pharmacy, founded by the Schwab brothers in 1932. It was located at 8024 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, a building owned by Martin Belousoff.

Sidney Skolsky, a syndicated Hollywood gossip columnist for the New York Daily News, used the drugstore as his office. His column in Photoplay was hilariously called ‘From A Stool At Schwab’s’.

Later, in the 70s, Schwab’s hosted a new generation of celebrities. Again from filmsofthegoldenage.com:

“Schwab’s was frequented by music-biz types like Cher and Linda Ronstadt. Ronstadt was usually accompanied by her then-boyfriend, California Governor Jerry Brown, and she always picked up the check.”

The Belousoff’s lived at 808 N. Linden Drive in Beverly Hills and twice, within just a few months, they would be feet away from shocking, violent events reported around the world.

In the early 1940s, millionaire Howard Hughes began designing the Hughes XF-11, a reconnaissance airplane to be built by Hughes Aircraft for the United States Air Force. Although 100 were ordered, only two were ever made.

On July 7, 1946, Hughes took one of the FX-11 prototypes for a test flight but the aircraft ran out of oil and he crashed right across from Martin and Anna Belousoff’s home. They were very lucky. The crash and subsequent fire destroyed three houses, but amazingly, no one was killed, though Hughes was very badly injured.

I can just imagine the Belousoff’s hearing the horrific sounds, running to their front door, and opening it to a scene of utter destruction, with wreckage and flames everywhere. Then, for weeks, the neighborhood would have crawled with investigators, photographers, journalists, and Hughes Aircraft personnel.

Months later, with the major signs of the crash carted off and rebuilding underway, unbeknownst to the Belousoff’s, their next door neighbor Virginia Hill began dating mobster Bugsy Siegel.

But Martin Belousoff had sensed something was amiss. Over a few months he had noticed a small sedan parked across the street and would later tell detectives:

“There was a man in it, dressed in working clothes. He would park there all day sometimes, and often stayed there until very late at night.”

More than likely, Belousoff was observing one of Siegel’s heavies keeping watch out on the street.

At about 10:45pm on June 20, 1947, while Bugsy Siegel sat reading a newspaper in the living room, a gunman positioned himself in the Belousoff driveway and fired a volley of bullets from a .45 machine gun. Siegel was killed instantly.

Aside from enduring the disruption of another set of investigators, photographers, and journalists, the Belousoffs must have been shocked to imagine a cold-blooded assassin just feet away from their bedroom window.

Just ten months later the star-studded Mary Pickford event was held… Considering Mrs. Belousoff’s proclivity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Ida and her fellow committee members would have been forgiven for crossing their fingers that a meteor didn’t choose that moment to fall from the sky!

Postscript:

Both Anna and Martin Belousoff died age 61 in April — Martin on April 18, 1951, and Anna on April 17, 1957. May their memories be a blessing.

Schwab’s closed in October 1983. A few years later a mall was built on the site centering around Virgin Records, which was then shuttered in 2008.

Copyright 2018 Alicia Mayer. All rights reserved.