My Story

20 up—and down again

In a movie you act in little bits and pieces. You say two lines, and they “cut.” They relight, set up the camera in another place—and you act two more lines. You walk five feet, and they say “cut.” The minute you get going good in your characterization, they cut.

But it doesn’t matter. There’s no audience watching you. There’s nobody to act for except yourself. It’s like the games you play when you’re a child and pretend to be somebody else. Usually, it’s even almost the same sort of story you used to make up as a child—about meeting somebody who fell in love with you because, despite everything they’d heard against you, you were a good girl with a heart of gold. I’ve wondered sometimes when I’ve been in a picture if the people making it hadn’t had their children ghostwrite it for them, and I’ve thought, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I accidentally opened a door and there they were—the children who really make up the movies—a room full of eight- and nine-year-old kids. Then I could go to the studio head and say, ‘I’d like to play in something a little better than the script you’ve given me. Something a little more human and true to life.’ And when he answered me that the script was made up by the finest brains in the country and I was a fool to criticize it, I’d tell him I knew his secret—the room full of babies who were creating all the movies. And he’d turn pale and give in, and I’d be given a script written by some adult and become a real actress.”

I didn’t have this daydream during Asphalt Jungle because it was an adult script. There was also an audience watching me act—an audience of one, the director. A director like Mr. Huston makes your work exciting. Some directors seem more interested in photographing the scenery than the actors. They keep moving the camera around saying, “Here’s a wonderful shot.” Or, “This is a superb set-up. We’ll be able to get the fireplace and the Oriental mask in the frame.” Or they say, “That’ll cut beautifully. It’ll give us a fast tempo.”

You feel they’re more interested in their directing than they are in your acting. They want the Front Office to praise them when the rushes are shown. Mr. Huston wasn’t like that. He was interested in the acting I did. He not only watched it, he was part of it. And even though my part was a minor one, I felt as if I were the most important performer in the picture when I was before the camera. This was because everything I did was important to the director, just as important as everything the stars of the picture did.

Johnny Hyde was as excited as I was during the shooting. He kept telling me, “This is it, honey. You’re in. Everybody is crazy about your work.”

When the picture was previewed, all the studio heads went to see it. It was a fine picture. I was thrilled by it. The biggest thrill, though, was myself. The audience whistled at me. They made “wolf noises.” They laughed happily when I spoke. They liked me very much.

It’s a nice sensation to please an audience. I sat in the theater with Johnny Hyde. He held my hand. We didn’t say anything on the way home. He sat in my room beaming at me. It was as if he had made good on the screen, not me. It was not only because I was his client and his “discovery.” His heart was happy for me. I could feel his unselfishness and his deep kindness. No man had ever looked on me with such kindness. He not only knew me, he knew Norma Jean, too. He knew all the pain and all the desperate things in me. When he put his arms around me and said he loved me, I knew it was true. Nobody had ever loved me like that. I wished with all my heart that I could love him back.

I told him about my love affair that had just ended and about all the pain I had felt. The affair was over in every way but one. It made it hard to love again. Johnny was even kind about this. He didn’t scream and carry on. He understood. He didn’t blame or criticize. Life was full of mix-ups and wrong starts, he said. He would wait for my heart to get strong again and wait for me to love him, if I could.

Kindness is the strangest thing to find in a lover—or in anybody. Johnny’s kindness made him seem the most wonderful human being I’d ever met.

“The first thing to do,” he said to me the next day, “is get you a contract with Metro.”

“Do you think you can?” I asked.

“They’ve got a new star on their hands,” said Johnny, “and they know it. Everybody is raving about your work. Most of all, you saw and heard that audience. They bought you as I’ve never seen any small part player bought in a picture before.”

A week later Johnny said to me, “I don’t want you to feel depressed, honey. We’ve had a temporary setback.”

“Metro doesn’t want me,” I said.

“You guessed it,” Johnny smiled at me. “It’s fantastic. I’ve been talking to Dore Schary all week. He likes your work. He thinks you’ve done a wonderful job, in fact. But he said you’re not star material. He says you’re not photogenic, that you haven’t got the sort of looks that make a movie star.”

“Maybe he’s right,” I said. “Mr. Zanuck said the same thing when 20th dropped me.”

“He’s wrong,” said Johnny. “And so was Zanuck. I have to laugh when I think how wrong they are and how they’ll both eat their words someday—and someday soon.”

Johnny laughed, but I didn’t. It was frightening—to be up so high in your hopes and then take another tumble back to no work, no prospects, no money, and nowhere. But I didn’t quite take the full tumble this time. I wasn’t alone. I had Johnny with me. I wasn’t merely Johnny’s client, or even his sweetie. I was a Cause he had. That’s how my friend swarmed all over the studios.

My heart ached with gratitude, and I would have cut my head off for him. But the love he hoped for wasn’t in me. You might as well try to make yourself fly as to make yourself love. But I felt everything else toward Johnny Hyde, and I was always happy to be with him. It was like being with a whole family and belonging to a full set of relatives.