My Story

9 higher, higher, higher

I’ve never read anything about the Hollywood I knew in those first years. No hint of it is ever in the movie fan magazines. If there are any books on the subject, I must have skipped them, along with the few million other books I haven’t read.

The Hollywood I knew was the Hollywood of failure. Nearly everybody I met suffered from malnutrition or suicide impulses. It was like the line in the poem, “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.” Fame, fame everywhere but not a hello for us.

We ate at drugstore counters. We sat in waiting rooms. We were the prettiest tribe of panhandlers that ever overran a town. And there were so many of us! Beauty contest winners, flashy college girls, home grown sirens from every state in the union. From cities and farms. From factories, vaudeville circuits, dramatic schools, and one from an orphan asylum.

And around us were the wolves. Not the big wolves inside the studio gates, but the little ones—talent agents without offices, press agents without clients, contact men without contacts, and managers. The drugstores and cheap cafés were full of managers ready to put you over if you enrolled under their banner. Their banner was usually a bed sheet.

I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes—an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.

Among the phonies and failures were also a set of has-beens. These were mostly actors and actresses who had been dropped by the movies—nobody knew why, least of all themselves. They had played “big parts.” They had scrapbooks full of “stills” and write-ups. And they were full of anecdotes about the big bosses with the magic names who ran the studios—Goldwyn, Zanuck, Mayer, Selznick, Schenck, Warner, Cohn. They had rubbed shoulders with them and exchanged conversations with them. Sitting in the cheap café nursing a glass of beer for an hour, they talked about the great ones, calling them by their first names. “Sam said to me,” and “I told L.B.,” and “I’ll never forget Darryl’s excitement when he saw the rushes.”

When I remember this desperate, lie-telling, dime-hunting Hollywood I knew only a few years ago I get a little homesick. It was a more human place than the paradise I dreamed of and found. The people in it, the phonies and failures, were more colorful than the great men and successful artists I was to know soon.

Even the crooks who threw me curves and set traps for me seem pleasant, mellow characters. There was Harry, the photographer, who kept photographing me when he had enough money to buy plates for his view camera.

“I know a real hot agent,” said Harry, “who’s crazy about you. He saw one of your stills and blew his top. And he’s no alley runner. He used to be a big man in Budapest.”

“What kind of a big man, Harry?”

“A producer. You’ve heard of Reinhardt?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, he was next in line to Reinhardt,” said Harry. “You’ll like him. He thinks big.”

The three of us sat in a cheap café the next evening. The proprietor knew better than to send the waiter over to see if we wanted anything. Harry and I had been there before. The third at our table, Mr. Lazlo, didn’t look any more promising as a customer. Mr. Lazlo was fat, unshaved, bald-headed, bleary-eyed, and his shirt collar was a little frayed. But he was a fine conversationalist. He spoke with a fascinating accent. It was hard to imagine that so cultured a man could be a bum. But I knew he was, or what would he be doing with Harry and me?

“So you have ambition to be a great actress,” said Mr. Lazlo.

I nodded.

“Wonderful,” said Mr. Lazlo. “How would you like not only to be a big star but also to own your own movie studio and make only the finest movies. No Hollywood junk. But art—real art.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

“Good,” said Mr. Lazlo. “Now I know where you stand.”

“Wait till you hear his ideas,” said Harry. “I told you he thinks big.”

“In Budapest,” said Mr. Lazlo, “if I wanted a few hundred thousand dollars I have only to telephone the bank, and they send over a wagon with the money.” He patted my hand. “You are very beautiful. I would like to buy you the kind of dinner I used to have every night—in Budapest.”

“I’ve already eaten,” I said.

“You are lucky,” Mr. Lazlo sighed. “But first, before I go on—you are definitely interested in the project, may I ask?”

“I haven’t heard it yet.”

“Are you willing to become a wife?” Mr. Lazlo asked.

“Whose?” I asked back.

“The wife of a millionaire,” said Mr. Lazlo. “He has authorized me to ask you this question.”

“Does he know me?”

“He has studied your photographs,” said Mr. Lazlo. “And he has picked you out from fifty other girls.”

“I didn’t know I was in any contest,” I said.

“No cracks,” said Harry. “This is high finance.”

“The gentleman who wishes to marry you,” said Mr. Lazlo, “is seventy-one years of age. He has high blood pressure—and no living relatives. He is alone in the world.”

“He doesn’t sound very enticing,” I said.

“My dear child,” Mr. Lazlo took my hand. His own was trembling with excitement. “You will inherit everything in six months. Maybe less.”

“You mean he’ll die if I marry him?” I asked.

“I guarantee it,” said Mr. Lazlo.

“That’s like murder,” I said to Harry.

“In six months you will be a widow with two million dollars,” said Mr. Lazlo. “You will keep the first million. Harry and I will split equally the second.”

I lay in bed unable to sleep that night. I would never marry or even see Mr. Lazlo’s dying millionaire, but it was exciting to think about it. I went around for a week imagining myself living in a castle on a hill—with a swimming pool and a hundred bathing suits.

Mr. Lazlo was one of the nicer of the scheme peddlers I met. There were a dozen not nearly as nice. Of these Mr. Sylvester was one.

My phone rang in my room.

“This is John Sylvester speaking,” the voice said. “You don’t know me but I’m a talent scout for Mr. Samuel Goldwyn.”

I managed to say, “How do you do.”

“We’re looking for a girl of your general appearance,” said Mr. Sylvester, “for one of the parts in the new Goldwyn picture. It’s not a big part, but a very important one.”

“Do you want to see me now?” I asked.

“Yes, I’ll pick you up in a few minutes,” Mr. Sylvester said. “I’m in the vicinity. And we’ll go over to the studio.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” I said.

I stood in front of my house and shook with excitement. It had happened! I wouldn’t fail! Once they let me inside nothing would ever get me out. An important part! In a Goldwyn picture! He made the best ones. And he made stars, too.

A car stopped, and a middle-aged man smiled at me.

“Hop in, Miss Dougherty,” he said.

I hopped in. We drove to the rear gate of the Goldwyn Studio.

“I always go in this way,” Mr. Sylvester said. “It’s a short cut.”

It was seven o’clock and the place was deserted.

“We’ll go to my office,” Mr. Sylvester said, steering me by the elbow. “I’ll audition you there.”

We walked up a flight of steps, down a hallway. Mr. Sylvester stopped in front of a door.

“I hope they haven’t locked me out,” he said. “No—still open.”

I noticed the name Dugan on the door and Mr. Sylvester said, patting my back, “Dugan and I share this office—for audition purposes.”

It was a well-furnished office. Mr. Sylvester told me to sit down on the couch.

“What do you want me to audition?” I asked.

Mr. Sylvester picked a script from the desk and handed it to me. It was the first movie script I had ever held in my hands.

“Which part do you wish me to read?” I asked. I could hardly get the words out of my mouth. I kept thinking, “Get hold of yourself. You’re an actress. You mustn’t let your face twitch.”

“Try one of the long speeches,” Mr. Sylvester said.

I looked up at him surprised. He seemed almost as excited as me. I opened the script and began to read.

“Would you please raise your dress a few inches,” Mr. Sylvester interrupted.

I lifted the hem above my knee and kept on reading.

“A little higher please,” said Mr. Sylvester.

I lifted the hem to my thighs without missing a word of the speech.

“I will always love you.” I read in the throbbing voice I used for “Hail To Thee, Blithe Spirit,” “No matter what becomes of me, Alfred.”

“A little higher,” Mr. Sylvester said again.

I thought that Mr. Sylvester was probably in a hurry and wanted to audition my figure and emotional talents at the same time. Still reciting from the script I pulled my dress up and uncovered my thighs. And suddenly Mr. Sylvester was on the couch. For a moment I was too sick at heart to move. I saw Mr. Sylvester plain. The whole thing was a fake. He didn’t work for Goldwyn. It wasn’t his office. He had pulled the audition gag in order to get me alone on a couch. I sat with my dress up and the treasured script in my hand while Mr. Sylvester started pawing me. Then I moved. I socked him in the eye, jumped up, kicked him, and banged my heel down on his toes—and ran out of the building.

For some time afterward Mr. Sylvester’s words haunted me as if I had heard the true voice of Hollywood—“Higher, higher, higher.”