My Story

24 another love affair ends

Johnny Hyde’s kindness changed the outside world for me, but it didn’t touch my inner world. I tried hard to love him. He was not only kind, but loyal and wise and devoted.

He took me everywhere. People admired him and accepted me as his fiancée. But I wasn’t that. Johnny asked me to marry him. It wouldn’t be a long marriage, he said, because he had a heart condition. I never could say yes.

“Tell me again why you won’t marry me,” he would smile at me.

“Because it wouldn’t be fair,” I’d answer him. “I don’t love you, Johnny. That means if I married you I might meet some other man and fall in love with him. I don’t want that ever to happen. If I marry a man I want to feel I’ll always be faithful to him—and never love anyone else.”

Johnny was hurt by what I said, but his love wasn’t because he knew I was honest. He knew he could trust me. He was never jealous because of anything I had done. It was always because of what I might do. Most men have been jealous for the same reason. I’ve liked their jealousy. Often it was the only sincere thing about their love. Most men judge your importance in their lives by how much you can hurt them, not by how happy you can make them. But there was one kind of jealousy I never liked. It was the jealousy that kept a man asking questions about other men, and never letting up, and wanting to know more and more details. I felt then that my jealous friend was more interested in those men than in me, and that he was hiding a homosexuality in his pretended jealousy pains.

I did all I could to lessen Johnny Hyde’s fears. I never went out with other men. I was as faithful to him as he was kind to me.

Johnny Hyde gave me more than his kindness and love. He was the first man I had ever known who understood me. Most men (and women) thought I was scheming and two-faced. No matter how truthfully I spoke to them or how honestly I behaved, they always believed I was trying to fool them.

When I talk I have a habit of not finishing sentences, and this gives the impression I’m telling lies. I’m not. I’m just not finishing sentences. Johnny knew that I didn’t tell lies and that I wasn’t planning to fool him.

The truth is I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves. Men sometimes didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t. When they found this out, they would blame me for disillusioning them—and fooling them.

I have even tried to be straightforward with women. This is more difficult than being straightforward with men. Men are often pleased when you tell them the truth about how you feel. But very few women want to hear any truth—if it’s going to be in any way annoying. As far as I can make out, women’s friendships with each other are based on a gush of lies and pretty speeches that mean nothing. You’d think they were all wolves trying to seduce each other the way they flatter and flirt when they’re together.

I found a few exceptions. There was one woman who helped me a great deal in my early Hollywood days—when I used to dream of getting enough money to own more than one brassiere. She gave me money and let me live in her home and wear her gowns and furs. She did this because she sincerely liked me and because she believed I had talent and would become a star some day. I’ll call her Della and so be able to write about her without embarrassing her.

Della was married to an important movie actor. He was not only a star but a man. This is unusual not because men movie actors are inclined to be pansies, but because acting is a feminine art. When a man has to paint his face and pose and strut and pretend emotions, and exhibit himself for applause, he certainly isn’t doing what is normally masculine. He’s “acting” just as women do in life. And he acquires a sort of womanish nature. He competes with women, even when he loves one of them.

Della’s husband brought me to his home one day. I had caddied for him in a charity golf tournament.

“Here’s a hungry little kitten,” he said to his wife. “Take care of her. She’s going places but she needs a little help.”