The Books: “The Salad Days” (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.)

Daily Book Excerpt: Entertainment Biography/Memoir:

The Salad Days, by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

The first of his two autobiographies, The Salad Days takes us up to 1941. His second book has to do with his extraordinary experiences during WWII, and I have not read it, but I very much want to. The Salad Days is a self-portrait of a charming, intelligent, honest man … not all that ambitious, but born to Hollywood royalty, and learning his craft as he went. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was not the swashbuckling giant that his father, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was, but he was tremendously handsome, and had a nice career. (A long one, too.) He played small roles, starting out in the silent era, and then graduated to supporting parts. Meanwhile, he was married to Joan Crawford (or “Billie”, as he called her) and focusing mainly on his personal life, and negotiating the sometimes difficult relationship with his famous father and his young stepmother, cinema giant Mary Pickford. Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Mary Pickford were really our first major movie stars – and in a way, just because of the time and the place, they were more famous than anyone had been on earth, ever. At least in terms of being instantly recognizable, due to this new-fangled medium called the “motion picture”. Stardom was able to jump a notch in power, a couple of notches … so that these people, who lived in that time, has worldwide cache of a level that the stars in past generations couldn’t have even dreamed of. I mean, Ellen Terry was a huge stage actress – does anyone outside of theatre buffs know her name now? (Here’s a quote from her, and some photos, for those who are interested.) We know John Wilkes Booth’s name, but not because of his acting! Could you pick Eleanora Duse out of a lineup? These people were huge stars of the stage. But with motion pictures, actors joined the realm of the pharaohs, and they lived accordingly. Much of the money they made was not taxed (at that time), so the lifestyles were even more extraordinary than they are now. It was the Wild West of filmmaking. Pioneer spirit. Excess. Only one or two huge stars. They were a different breed.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. grew up with his mother (who had gotten sole custody when she and Fairbanks, Sr. divorced), and his father had gone on to the greatest success possible in Hollywood, marrying America’s sweetheart Mary Pickford. Fairbanks, Jr. was famous as a child, merely because of who his father was. Fairbanks and Pickford lived in a giant mansion and I suppose the name of the mansion reveals that the whole socalled currentday trend of calling famous couples as a blend of their two names (Brangelina, etc.) is nothing new. They lived in a mansion called Pickfair.

Based on nothing but his last name, Fairbanks was given a contract, and he started making pictures. It had to have been difficult, to have a father who was the most famous actor in the world – well, him and Charlie Chaplin (who was also his business partner). Fairbanks (Sr.), Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and DW Griffith formed United Artists in 1919, an extraordinary act of business acumen – and that studio flourished until it was brought down by the debacle of Heaven’s Gate in 1980. The history of that particular studio, and its collapse, is one of the saddest in Hollywood (a book was written about it: Final Cut : Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists – an incredible book). What a loss. But Douglas Fairbanks and his colleagues had created it to get more creative control, first of all, and also to control the distribution of their films. Brilliant. They were far-seeing people. They were not just in it for the momentary flash of glory. These people saw the future – which was in distribution (and still is today) and did what they could to get some control. It’s so rare to find artists who are also excellent businessmen/women … and those four were.

But, sadly, here I am talking about Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. when this post is about JUNIOR’S book! Typical. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. had to deal with that his whole life. He even shared his father’s name! How could he ever compete?

The most charming thing about Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (and I mean charming in the best most true sense of that word) is that he did NOT try to compete. He liked the good life, yes. But he liked it for the right reasons. He enjoyed nice things. He had a great sense of aesthetics, not just in how he dressed and behaved, but in how one should live his life. The Salad Days describes a world that no longer exists. A world of ocean liners, and white linen suits, and cocktails before dinner, and elegant manners, and a kind of bemused acceptance of the foibles of others. He was a gentleman to his core. He was married to Joan Crawford (the marriage did not last) but years and years later, when Mommie Dearest, the smear book to end all smear books, came out, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was quick to say how biased it was, and that was not the Joan Crawford HE knew. He was old-school. You are a gentleman. You do not bitch and moan about the ladies in your life. You treat your wife with kindness, and perhaps she exasperates you, and perhaps you do not understand why she has to have an entire room filled with bottles of moisturizer, but you do not make yourself undignified and unmanly by bitching, and you do not speak of her with contempt. You do not speak of anyone with contempt … that’s what good manners means. It is more important to comport yourself with dignity and grace, and try to have a little compassion, even for someone who might have hurt you, betrayed you, whatever. He stood up for her, in the crazy aftermath of that book’s release, and I think that’s pretty classy.

They were a young couple together. Glowing and beautiful. This is one of my favorite photos of them. It might be one of my favorite photos ever.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was in Gunga Din with Cary Grant, and it was one of his most successful pictures. Grant offered him the part (Grant was another one of those rare actors with an acute business sense) … Grant had admired Douglas Fairbanks Senior tremendously and had modeled much of his own behavior after him. The casual bon vivant glow, the easy grace, the immaculate wardrobe, the commitment to physical fitness, all of that … he had seen in Douglas Fairbanks Sr. something he wanted to emulate, something he – a poverty-struck Cockney boy – was not born to. He had to imitate it (which is one of the most extraordinary things about Grant: his entire thing was a persona created out of wholecloth … but it seems completely natural. He seriously has no peers). But anyway, due to his great regard for Fairbanks Jr.’s father (who died in 1939 – the same year Gunga Din came out) – he thought it would be wonderful to act with the son. The ridiculous results are one for the ages. Fairbanks, Jr. did not have the silent-screen swashbuckling melodrama of the father. But he did have a spectacular body, a rakish energy, and he was pretty much up for anything. Is there anything more fun than watching those three guys race around India and Afghanistan in Gunga Din??

Fairbanks, Jr. had a wonderful time on that picture, was very proud of it – and remained friends with Cary Grant until the day he died.

Check it out. Here are the two old friends with then-president and former acting colleague Ronald Reagan.

Amazing. The sweep of 20th century motion pictures embodied by two white-haired gents.

The Salad Days is an entertaining, gentle read … He has no illusions about himself, and yet you also realize, as you read it, that you are in the presence of a thoughtful intelligent person, a man who is able to tell his own story without seeming gaga about his own life, an honest gentleman. In white linen and bucks. Ready to put on his swimming trunks and do a perfect dive into the blue swimming pool. A cocktail on the nearby table. A glimpse of an America – pre World War II – that is gone for good. A time-machine this book is.

It’s not just wonderful for the show-biz anecdotes, but because it’s really nice to hang out with him for a while. He’s a lovely companion, a trustworthy guide.

Here’s an excerpt involving his wife “Billie” and other matters.

EXCERPT FROM The Salad Days, by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Neither Billie nor I had much opportunity to settle down in the conventional sense; we both worked too hard and hectically. Never, before or since, have I known any other professional who expended more personal energy on self-improvement courses and on her relations with her fans and the press as did the girl known as Joan Crawford. With one or two really dear friends from Kansas City, she kept up a loyal handwritten correspondence. But if she decided that some particular fan was consistently ardent and devoted enough, or if someone in the studio made a voluntary slave of himself for her (as some certainly did), they were favored by her frequent thoughtfulness and extravagant generosity.

Inclined as she was to exaggerate in so many ways, Billie went about physical fitness in typical fashion. She went to dance classes (when not filming) once or twice a week, took swimming lessons and daily exercises and massage. The cubes of ice she rubbed over her body were always as handy as her face creams and cosmetics. She did not have a notable sense of humor, and was memorably indignant when anyone pulled one of her famous legs about this routine.

She had a chosen few favorites among the members of the press with whom she shared confidences, knowing just how far they would go in printing them. Sometimes her pet fan-magazine writers submitted their articles in advance so that she could amend them if she chose. She paid fake-friendly obeisance to Louella Parsons, the shrewd and vengeful syndicated movie columnist for the then-great Hearst chain of newspapers. But then so did most of Hollywood, including me.

“Lolly” Parsons had been a friend of Marion Davies in Chicago, long before Marion had gone to New York and found her most loyal and magnanimous patron, the press titan William Randolph Hearst himself. Everyone – and no contrary voices were ever raised – loved Marion personally, although her films never quite caught on. She was delicious, irreverent, and generous. There were some who liked Hearst and some who admired him, but almost everyone feared him. His power in those days can hardly be believed in these. I recall my father once asking him, “Tell me, W.R.” – as he was called by those who knew him – “now that you’ve got your own film company for Marion, and your own newsreels are shown everywhere, why don’t you concentrate your energies more on motion pictures? That way you can have a worldwide public, instead of just the city-to-city fame that comes from journalism.”

Hearst thought a moment and then, in his high, piping voice (so strange coming from that towering giant of a man), answered, “Well, Dough, I have thought about it but I’ve decided against it. Movies aren’t that powerful, really. Why, you know, you can crush a man with journalism but you can’t with motion pictures.”

When Orson Welles made Citizen Kane, the brilliant, fictional story of Hearst, he was virtually blackballed from the American film world his talent graced so well.

Warner Brothers, once a quickie company and now nouveau-riche because of their successful pioneering investment in sound movies, took over First National (and me with it, of course). My total credits for that work year of 1929 amounted to six pictures. As indifferent as the Crawford pictures had been, mine were several notches lower. MGM at least mounted their trash well. Warner Brothers didn’t; most were just mediocre. I did make one picture that, though not very good, may be of some interest to movie buffs. It was called The Forward Pass and it was a football story, with myself as the quarterback hero and Loretta (“Gretch”) Young as the heroine. It so happened that I was a fervent fan of the USC Varsity Football team and felt no honor could be greater than to be allowed to watch practice or visit a fraternity house. Many directors and producers who were also fans did what they could to help the USC athletes get summer jobs to help pay their tuition (that should indicate how long ago all this was). And that was how we happened to hire the whole USC football team to be the “school team” in The Forward Pass. Most of them were nice fellows who were unimpressed by movie people. When the cameraman began to shoot, the players thought it great fun to rush through my so-called protective linemen and, instead of letting me run with the ball or pass as rehearsed, to crash into me, set me down hard on my backside, pile up on top of me, and then apologize. The director, Eddie Cline, was in on their joke and thought it fun too. So did everyone, except me. It was summer, it was hot, and I was not prepared for such rough going. But I knew if I so much as cried, “Ouch!” I’d never hear – or feel – the end of it.

Two of the fellows on the team were friends of mine, one a quarterback, Marshall Duffield, and the other a huge guard, named Marion Michael “Duke” Morrison. Three years later, I got Morrison a job in another picture of mine called The Life of Jimmy Dolan in which he was to have one spoken line, perhaps his first. As one of my fight trainers, he came in while my gloves were being tied on, slapped me on the back, and said, “You okay, boss?” I nodded and he exited. Morrison decided to stay in films, but under the name John Wayne.

It is impossible for me to recapture the degree of happiness or compatibility that existed between Billie and me that first year or so. I should say we were both sufficiently imaginative so that, inasmuch as we firmly decided we would “damn well be happy…” we were. This is not to suggest, however, that we were content – which is, of course, a more important state of mind and more impervious to passing influences.

There are accounts that after our marriage the atmosphere at Pickfair reverted to the marked chill Billie had caught the year before. It was said she was tense and unhappy whenever we went up there and that I had been neglectful of her when my father asked me to join him and his friends for a game of “DOUG” or a steaming first, meeting her at the house later.

Dad and Mary had been away again (he was beginning to make occasional trips alone) but had now returned. He was deep into the production of The Iron Mask, a sequel to The Three Muskateers, with another chance to play D’Artagnan.

I admit there was a discernible coolness emanating from “the Big House on the Hill” and invitations were few. Indeed, I myself was rarely relaxed there. I often felt I was “on sufferance” and I do remember Billie being occasionally uncomfortable about it. But as the outside world was not aware of this, she did not seem to take it with any real seriousness. There was certainly no outright unpleasantness between my father and me, but there was no great warmth either. Some said that Dad’s fetish of youth made the reality of my marriage to a spectacular young star a disturbing factor. He and I hardly ever discussed personal or family matters. Nor did he seem to know or care much about my professional progress. Usually our conversation was limited to sports and the news.

It may well be that I have up to now been a shade too “understanding” of my father’s variable feelings toward me. Perhaps, in balance, I have been too impatient with my mother’s overdemonstrative devotion. Probably, because Dad had been my “hero of heroes”, I overlooked many slights and rebuffs noted by others just because I didn’t want to think they had happened.

Putting myself in Dad’s shoes, I could see that, despite Mary’s poise as wife and hostess and her shrewd business acumen, he preferred her public image of a little girl. Dad had created a child-bride for himself. He was always a very jealous man, and Mary and her world were the principal targets of that jealousy. He never let her sit next to anyone else but him at any dinner table. Nor could she dance with anyone else. He had built his career on a vision of himself as the ever-young champion. I belonged to him reluctantly – biologically, if not financially or emotionally. But I was by now physically bigger than he and becoming fairly well known to a new generation, so he couldn’t exactly shake me off, or hide me.

Dad was never overtly unkind or unfair. Only rarely did he openly show anger or irritation – and then, with cause. He tried hard to be a conventional father but just couldn’t quite bring it off.

He could not have enjoyed hearing Billie’s frequent talk about having children. In fact, I never quite believed her. She often claimed she had had two miscarriages, but I had done some medical snooping that indicated nothing of the sort had happened. As she frequently voiced her fears that child-bearing might affect her figure, I suspect that was the real reason she never had children or her own. I was still too young to give it much thought. There was plenty of time for fatherhood and I was certainly not averse to it.

Nevertheless, the hint of a grandchild in the offing would not have been warmly welcomed by my father at that time – nor, I suspect, by Mary either. They enjoyed a status in the world’s imagination that is totally inconceivable and incomparable by today’s standards, and it was their serious business to keep it that way. I may have been uncomfortable in the private role of an unwitting threat to all of that, but I never realized the full extent of my influence on their lives until I heard family talk of it many years later.

In 1929, Billie made four pictures and none quite measured up to the best of the six she had made the year before. Our Modern Maidens (the one I was in too) was the most successful, though Untamed, late in the year, brought a splendid young actor, fresh from New York theater, as her leading man. Robert Montgomery and I became great companions and would share many agreeable adventures over the next dozen years. In order to get better stories and better parts, Billie carried on as hard a battle with the front office as she could without getting into trouble. She was too much in awe of Garbo to be jealous of her, but she made no bones of her jealousy of Norma Shearer, who was unquestionably given most of the plums. Since Norma was the wife of Irving Thalberg, boss of production, there was little Billie could do except grouse and protest, discreetly, to the press.

I have read that Billie tried to work single-mindedly at her career but found it difficult because of my insistence on a more “social life”. Though reluctant to dispute the views of a revered person who no longer can rebut my rebuttal, I must say that that is so much rubbish. Billie let nothing stop her admirable though humorless dedication to professional advancement. It was useless to remind her that such other star actresses as Mary, Garbo, Gish, Hayes, Fontaine, or those younger ones who came later, like Hepburn, Leigh, and Davis, hardly ever bothered to curry favor with producers, directors, critics, columnists, or groups of fans. They learned their trade thoroughly, allowed their personalities full professional exposure, exploited their best qualities, and generally stayed away from all the circuising. Billie Cassin lacked some of the natural magic of some of her peers. Yet by dint of bloody-minded determination, intelligence, and guts, she invented Joan Crawford – and in that guise she stood proudly as an accepted equal to the best of all the others.

Although I doubt if she ever heard of Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art Theater or “the Method”, she was one of a group of motion picture actors who really believed that to play a happy scene once must first get into a truly happy mood. For instance, she could not believe that Lynn Fontaine might feel physically dreadful yet be able to perform high comedy with supreme and subtle wit. Nor could she believe that a great actress like Helen Hayes could consciously reduce audiences to uncontrollable tears while she thought about having a juicy steak sandwich after the performance. Joan relied more than most silent movie actresses on the “mood music” created by a small two- or three-man combo that was, in those days, a regular part of a company’s production crew. Her great saucer eyes could spill over with tears at the first chord of “Humoresque” or whatever sad incident she chose to think of at that moment. She was so very canny about the great size of her eyes that not only did her makeup carefully exploit them but in a picture she almost always tried to hold her head down and look up so that they looked even larger.