Without Lying Down by Cari Beauchamp

Author:Cari Beauchamp [Cari Beauchamp]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 22

Frances’s world had crashed the year before with Fred’s death, so in the weeks following October 29, 1929, she witnessed the results of the stock market crash with a surreal sense of detachment. She compared the collective feeling of vulnerability and the frantic but futile search for a safe haven to being in a disastrous earthquake and her compassion was saved for the “millions of small investors who lost their lifelong savings.”

Louis B. Mayer’s hand-wringing only added to her disdain for him; his income would continue to pour in and besides, he was the one who had encouraged her to buy Richfield stock on margin. She had little patience for those who considered financial and emotional losses equivalent, commenting with an uncustomary lack of charity that she found the suicides following the crash “bitterly ironic” since she “had never heard about any man who had committed suicide over the loss of his only son killed in a war.”¹

To Frances, money was always something to be enjoyed to the fullest but never taken that seriously. She depended on her brother, Len, and her attorney, Walter van Pelt, for financial advice and invested a portion of her income in local property and developments. Along with everyone else, she had also poured money into the stock market.

To the concern of friends, Frances’s generosity continued unabated after the crash. Hedda was living in her small house and keeping her expenses to a minimum in order to afford her son’s tuition at the exclusive Black Foxe Academy. When that became difficult, Frances quietly paid the fees. Without hesitation, she made a large down payment on a house for Fred’s brother Henry and his family and she even bought an airplane for her favorite secretary, Jessie Ligertwood.²

Her friend Elizabeth Peterson claimed Frances was so “prodigal in her generosity” that friends had to “watch her like a hawk to keep her from giving away everything she makes.” She was afraid to compliment Frances on anything in her home for fear that “I’d find the whole house wrapped up in tissue paper and deposited on my doorstep on Christmas morning.” Elizabeth had been at lunch one day when another guest commented on the beautiful silverware and Frances started to gather some out of the sideboard to give to her because “I’ve got much more than I need.” Matilda was serving the meal and stepped in, taking the silverware from Frances’s hand and remonstrating her gently by saying “Miss Marion, we’ll need the silver for the dinner party tonight.”³

Mary Pickford, who saved every dress she ever owned in her attic, chastised Frances for her prolific spending and tried to shock her out of it.

“Frances, if you keep this up, you’ll be on the corner of Hollywood and Vine with a tin cup.”

She just laughed and replied, “If I do, you’ll walk right past me and not put in one thin dime.”⁴

Frances joked about her proclivities, saying she “liked to play God,” and that her friends were “the victims of my generosity and probably would have been better off without it.

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