My Story

21 back to 20th

It’s hard to hope with somebody else’s heart and be happy with somebody else’s daydreams. But Johnny made me happy and kept me believing in myself. I didn’t run around the studios job-hunting anymore. Johnny did that. I stayed home and took dramatic lessons and read books.

One of them excited me more than any other I had read. It was The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. It was the first book I’d read that seemed to tell the truth about people and life. It was bitter but strong. It didn’t just echo the half lies I’d always heard—about how people loved each other and how justice always triumphed and how the important people of the nation always did the right thing for their country.

Lincoln Steffens knew all about poor people and about injustice. He knew about the lies people used to get ahead, and how smug rich people sometimes were. It was almost as if he’d lived the hard way I’d lived. I loved his book. Reading it I forgot all about not having a job and not being “photogenic.”

But Johnny didn’t forget.

“We’ve landed a good one,” he reported one evening. “I didn’t want to talk about it till I was sure. I’m sure now. It’s the new Joseph Mankiewicz picture called All About Eve. It’s not a big part but it will establish you at 20th.”

“But they don’t like me there,” I said.

“They will,” said Johnny.

Mr. Mankiewicz was a different sort of director than Mr. Huston. He wasn’t as exciting, and he was more talkative. But he was intelligent and sensitive. I felt happy on the set, and, with Johnny Hyde’s help, I was able to daydream again.

The studio was always cooking up little publicity stories for the different people under its roof. I was eager for publicity, but there was one kind I refused to accept. This was the publicity you got as a result of being seen in a café at night with a fellow actor. The columnists would then hint that you and the young actor were setting out on a romance.

I didn’t like going to fancy cafés and sitting around with some ambitious profile. I didn’t like people thinking of me as being romantic about somebody I didn’t know. And I knew Johnny wouldn’t like it. So I stayed out of the cafés and the movie columns as a romance dizzy starlet.

The only trouble I had during the making of Eve came from Zsa Zsa Gabor (again) and Lincoln Steffens. They were both mild troubles but they confused me. The Lincoln Steffens trouble began when Mr. Mankiewicz asked me one day what was the book I was reading on the set. I told him it was the Steffens autobiography and I started raving about it. Mr. Mankiewicz took me aside and gave me a quiet lecture.

“I wouldn’t go around raving about Lincoln Steffens,” he said. “It’s certain to get you into trouble. People will begin to talk of you as a radical.”

“A radical what?” I asked.

“A political radical,” Mr. Mankiewicz said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of Communists.”

“Not much,” I said.

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“I skip the parts I don’t like,” I said.

“Well, lay off boosting Mr. Steffens, or you’ll get into bad trouble,” said Mr. Mankiewicz.

I thought this was a very personal attitude on Mr. Mankiewicz’s part and, that genius though he was, of a sort, he was badly frightened by the Front Office or something. I couldn’t imagine anybody picking on me because I admired Lincoln Steffens. The only other political figure I’d ever admired was Abraham Lincoln. I used to read everything I could find about him. He was the only famous American who seemed most like me, at least in his childhood.

A few days later the publicity department asked me to write out a list of the ten greatest men in the world. I wrote the name Lincoln Steffens down first and the publicity man shook his head.

“We’ll have to omit that one,” he said. “We don’t want anybody investigating our Marilyn.”

I saw then that it wasn’t just a personal thing with Mr. Mankiewicz but that maybe everybody in Hollywood was just as scared of being associated with Lincoln Steffens. So I didn’t say anything more about him, to anybody, not even to Johnny. I didn’t want to get him in trouble. But I continued to read the second volume secretly and kept both volumes hidden under my bed. Hiding Lincoln Steffens under my bed was the first underhanded thing I’d ever done—since my meeting with little George in the tall grass.

The third and last act, I hope, of my one-sided Gabor feud took place during Eve. I was sitting in the studio commissary having lunch with Mr. George Sanders, who was the hero of the picture. We had sat down at the same table more or less by accident, having entered the commissary together, also by accident. The whole thing was an accident. Mr. Sanders was just beginning to eat his chicken salad when the cashier’s assistant came to the table and told him he was wanted on the telephone.

About five minutes later Mr. Sanders returned to our table, called for the waitress, and paid his check.

“If you’ll pardon me, I must go now,” he said to me.

“But you haven’t had your lunch yet,” I said.

“I’m not hungry,” said Mr. Sanders.

“You said you were terribly hungry when you sat down,” I said, “and would have to be careful not to overeat. Why don’t you just have a bite so you’ll have some strength for your big scene this afternoon.”

Mr. Sanders looked so pale that I was really worried.

“Unless you’re sick,” I said.

“I’m in perfect health,” said Mr. Sanders, “and I must leave now.”

“I’ll drive you over to the stage,” I said. “I came in my car, and I noticed you walked.”

“Oh no, thank you very much,” said Mr. Sanders. “I don’t want to bother you.”

“It’s no bother at all,” I said. “I’ve finished my lunch. It’s a shame for you to walk all that distance on an empty stomach.”

I stood up and started to leave the commissary with Mr. Sanders, but he pulled briskly away from me and I couldn’t have kept up with him unless I broke into a trot. So I walked out slowly alone wondering what I had done to make Mr. Sanders rush away from my company.

On the set ten minutes later, Mr. Sanders’ stand-in, who was almost as charming and polite as the star himself, came to me and said, “Mr. Sanders has asked me to request of you that hereafter when you say good morning or good-bye to him, you will make those salutations from afar.”

I turned red at being insulted like this but I suddenly realized what had happened. Mr. Sanders’ wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor, obviously had a spy on the set, and this spy had flashed the news to her that he was sitting at a table with me, and Miss Gabor had telephoned him immediately and given him a full list of instructions. I laughed when I realized this, and I thought about it for some time. I could imagine loving a man with my whole heart and soul and wanting to be with him every minute. But I couldn’t imagine being so jealous of him that I would have spies planted everywhere to watch him. But maybe I was too young to understand about such things.