Goldwyn by A. Scott Berg

Author:A. Scott Berg [ Scott Berg, A. ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471130069
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

William Wyler remembered reading Johnston’s The Great Goldwyn, which Random House published after its appearance in the Post. It amused him and annoyed him. “Tell me,” he asked in 1980, only half-joking, “which pictures have ‘the Goldwyn touch’ that I didn’t direct?”

16 Annus Mirabilis

THE FEBRUARY 1, 1938, issue of American Vogue ran an article by Frank Crowninshield called “The New Left Wing in New York Society.” It was about Manhattan’s “Café Society,” a “newly formed, colourful, prodigal, and highly publicized social army, the ranks of which are largely made up of rich, carefree, emancipated, and quite often, idle people.” Bordering the opening two pages of the piece was a pen-and-ink montage by Cecil Beaton. On one side he sketched symbols of old money—a manor house, portraits of ancestors, classical music, volumes of Shakespeare and French poetry; on the other he drew satirical nightclub scenes, a blaring jazz band, scandalous newspaper headlines, and Walter Winchell’s column. At the bottom of that page, in minuscule handwriting, Beaton’s marginalia trespassed into vulgarity.

“M. R. Andrew ball at the El Morocco brought out all the damn kikes in town,” read the microscopic caption to his cartoon of a magazine society page; and in print just as fine, he wrote “Party darling Love Kike” on a Western Union telegram. Then on some cards and telegrams in and around a box of orchids—legible only by turning the magazine upside down and putting one’s nose to the page—Beaton wrote, “Why is Mrs. Selznick such a social wow? Why Mrs. Goldwyn etc. Why Mrs. L. B. Mayer?”

Walter Winchell learned of Beaton’s act of veiled anti-Semitism as the first copies of the magazine were hitting the street, and he took Vogue to task in his column. Until then, publisher Condé Nast had not known of Beaton’s cryptic comments. Some 150,000 copies had already been shipped, and nothing could be done about them; the remaining 130,000 were reprinted with the objectionable lines expunged. Cecil Beaton—one of Vogue ’s standard-bearers—was discharged, his work banned from the pages of all Condé Nast publications. Privately, Beaton referred to the incident as “a wretched little foible,” a joke; three months later, he asked Nast to reinstate him. Three years would pass before Nast relented.

The incident blew over most of Hollywood virtually unnoticed. At 1200 Laurel Lane, however, it caused a cyclone of irrational behavior. The reason, said Sammy, was that “Mother realized that as far as the world was concerned, she was a Jewess.”

Quite sensibly, Frances had recently discharged one of her household maids, Senta Schmidt, when she learned the German woman had been filling Sammy with pro-Hitler propaganda. Having had this “fifth column” living in her own home, Frances was now convinced that Nazis were everywhere. She accepted both her and Sam’s having been publicly branded with Stars of David; but as Hitler began to overrun Austria and Czechoslovakia, she was determined that he would never get hold of her son. She prepared for a Nazi conquest of America by devising a scheme that would allow Sammy to assume a second identity.

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