Lillian and Dash (20 page)

L
ILLIAN AND
H
AMMETT
worked and spoke and cooked and walked and slept and made love sometimes, quietly. Each was happy to be with the other and took pains not to be disruptive. They were unhappy with their work, though, for different reasons. Lillian saw the war and her project as a lost cause but remained unhappily committed to both. She had never before worked in such a strange manner, writing to pictures she hadn’t seen about a subject she hadn’t taken real control of. It was more a test of character than of talent, a test that would end before long.

Hammett knew he could fill hundreds of pages with family stories, but until he understood the point of his “Tales,” they would remain not much more than pages with family stories. He didn’t know what he was doing either. But he was learning. At least he wasn’t drinking, and the stories had something to do with that.

They each soldiered on until Herman Shumlin obtained a rough cut of Joris Ivens’s film. In three days’ time, watching it on the living room wall of the apartment, Lillian took her phantom script and gave it life with structural bones and sinew. She only wished it all hadn’t come so late.

When she delivered her script to Shumlin, she told him she was through. Hemingway would be disappointed, he said. Hemingway should be disappointed, she said.

When
The Spanish Earth
was released, Ernest Hemingway did indeed narrate it. Most of the narration was Lillian’s. President Roosevelt may or may not have seen it. All her liberal friends complimented her on her noble attempt to save the world. Each compliment wounded her because by then Lillian had begun to know what she had not known about Spain. She knew that Hammett knew it as well. He never referred to the film.

The United States, of course, did not enter the war and the Spanish Republican cause went from difficult to hopeless to lost.

T
HE BEACH AT
M
ALIBU
in early evening is a place where some New Yorkers are easily seduced. As part of their new California ritual at the end of a writing day, if it was a writing day, Lillian and Dash sat in adjoining chairs and watched the sun descend to the Pacific. They usually drank red wine. The arms of their chairs often touched. They didn’t speak much while the sun approached the water and they only got up to cook dinner when it had disappeared completely. Occasionally they sat and watched until Venus, the white planet, emerged slowly. On those nights they either went without dinner or drove late to Calabasas for seafood.

The beach house at Malibu was not theirs. They were paying guests and that meant not just the utilities but substantial mortgage payments for the three months the new owner was traipsing through Europe with the new love of her life. The new owner, Myra Ewbank, after almost a year
with no work and then many months working under another name for minimum, was back in the film-writing business bigger and better than ever before. She was working again as Myra Ewbank for none other than Louis B. Mayer. She was not required to join her ex-husband’s phony writers’ union and was being given all the studio’s most important assignments.

Myra attributed her good fortune to efforts on her behalf by Hammett and Peter Carey, the L.A. attorney, as well the various producers, directors, and actors who once valued her considerable talent. Myra was wrong. One person alone saved Myra Ewbank’s career and did it secretly. Lillian Hellman.

Even though there was no way Myra could possibly have known that Lillian was her great benefactor, Lilly deeply resented having to make the mortgage payments on Myra’s new Malibu house. She groused about Myra’s lack of generosity and stopped only when Hammett said, “Quiet. You are ruining my sunset.” If that did not stop her, he reminded her they were renting the house from a woman who had been out of work for over a year and who could not possibly know she owed Lillian her new wealth and livelihood.

Hammett knew he had lost the debate when Lilly said, “Still, seven hundred bucks for old friends. Come on.”

Lillian had decided to step in on Myra’s behalf the previous year, back when she had to fly out to California to meet with Sam Goldwyn about her next script project.
Hammett knew these movie matters could be done easily over the phone. “I just want to see if I can do something for Myra,” Lillian had said.

“Feeling guilty?”

“About what? I didn’t kill Waxman.”

“Neither did I. And that was low.”

“Neither did Myra, but she’s the only one paying for it.”

Hammett said, “There’s not a hell of a lot can be done.”

“I’d like to try Mayer face to face.”

“Sure, look him straight in the eye and touch the soul which he no longer has because he sold it for junk when he was a kid.”

“Read all about it—Louie Meier is a human being.”

“Perhaps. But if he’s one of the Waxman guys, he can’t leave himself exposed, not even a crack. If he dumped someone like Myra in the first place, it was because he couldn’t risk having her around anywhere, in any capacity.”

“That was then, dear heart. New times call for new arrangements. I think Mayer trusts me.”

“Let me be the first to congratulate you. The word
trust
and
L. B. Mayer
have never been used in the same sentence before.”

Finally Lillian said, “Professor H., I have nothing but the highest regard for your judgment on the subject of human nature, its depths, its mysteries, its madness, but there is one member of the species I am better qualified to judge than you.”

“Namely?”

“Jews.”

“E
LISE
? T
HIS IS
L
ILLIAN
H
ELLMAN
. I’d like to make an appointment to see Mr. Mayer.”

“Would it be about a project or potential project?”

“Actually, it’s a personal matter, but if it’ll help me get to see him, then, yes, it is about a potential project.”

Elise knew of Mr. Mayer’s abiding interest in Lillian Hellman. She knew of Lillian Hellman’s interest in Dashiell Hammett. She knew of Mr. Mayer’s dismissal of Hammett the previous year. It was exactly a situation that called for, on the part of the secretary, something like, “I’m sure a meeting can be arranged. Give me time to work it out. Let me call you back.” But because she liked
The Children’s Hour
so much, Elise responded instinctively: “Tomorrow at ten. Is that suitable?”

“Suitable? I’d say ‘wonderful.’ ”

A
S AN ACTOR PREPARES
for a role, and as she did in Spain when she wanted to be accepted as a correspondent, Lillian knew it was important to dress appropriately for this M-G-M performance. Mayer, of course, expected to see the
Lillian Hellman he had met a dozen or so times at various affairs around town over the years, a handsome, confident, very talented young woman, witty and slightly flirtatious, but only playfully so. That was not the Lillian he would get at the meeting.

Her role required someone older, back from defeat in Spain, sadly carrying too much of the world’s weight on her shoulders. Onstage the actress would have dulled her hair and darkened the skin beneath her eyes. For Louis B. Mayer’s office the effect she desired had to be more subtle, more the studied result of appropriate clothing, carriage, and voice. Lillian wore a small gray hat with a half veil, a boxy gray skirt, flat black shoes, and a black button-down sweater over a white linen blouse. Lillian chose this costume with great care before her meeting. She left the sweater open. To the blouse she pinned a cameo brooch. Her theatrical purpose was not only to appear a little older than she was but to suggest, merely suggest, that she was an Old World poor relation come to ask for a favor. It was eighty degrees in Hollywood that morning.

Louis B. Mayer’s role was ever the same. He looked up from behind that immense desk and saw someone he did not expect to see. This Lillian Hellman took him by surprise. She sensed an initial advantage.

He rose and said, “Lillian, Lillian,” before they embraced. She put her head lightly on his chest and held on to him a little longer than he expected. Nothing was said. Even after they sat facing one another, nothing was said.

“So. You are looking well.”

“You’re kind.”

“You should be living out here, dear. You could use a little color. New York,
feh
. Dark and cold, too hard on people.” His
feh
was more than she could have hoped for.

“We’ve still got the place in Santa Monica.”

“ ‘Still got’ isn’t living in a place. You said
we
. That means you’re happy together?”

“
Happy
. That’s a word I haven’t dusted off for a while.”

“It’s the entire purpose in life, my dear, to be happy.” Louis Mayer fancied himself something of an expert on the subject of happiness. Happiness was what he made for people. Happiness was what he sold. Happiness was his contribution to the world and what he hoped he’d be remembered for. He placed both his hands on top of his head. “So. Elise tells me you’ve got a project idea.”

“Mr. Mayer, that’s only partially …”

“
Mr. Mayer?
Please. Louis. I’ll call you Lilly. You’ll call me Louis. And I’ll feel young again. It’s your comfort I want, dear.”

“Comfort.” She listened to the word as though it were in a foreign tongue. She bit her lips. “Comfort.
A brochel ich hab’nish
.”

No one had uttered a word of Yiddish in this office for a decade. In a swift, unguarded moment, L. B. Mayer was transformed into Louie Meier, a boy who knew this tongue … and loved it. “
Zayt mir moykhl
 … 
es guyt Litvak?
”
By asking if she, like him, was a Lithuanian Jew, Mayer was not merely inquiring about the Hellman family roots but asserting a Jewish cultural superiority: Lithuanian Jews considered themselves intellectually superior to Galician Jews, whom they regarded as a bunch of superstitious, rabbi-ridden ignoramuses.

Lillian explained that she’d picked up her Yiddish, imperfect as it was, from her aunts in New Orleans, that was why her distinctly Southern accent made her Yiddish as sweet as his was harsh. “Originally, the family was from Minsk.” A lie.

“My god, Minsk,” Mayer exclaimed, “I was born in Minsk.” Then he reined in his exuberance. “I don’t broadcast it around. The world should know I’m true-blue American.”

“Which of course we both are, thanks to our people’s courage to leave such a place. But thank God also, we’re Jews also, even if we don’t broadcast it.”

Meier wanted to get up and kiss her. What Mayer did instead was say, “So why won’t you come to work for me? Can’t you see what we could have here? This I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps. Soon we can arrange something. Right now, I’m too confused.” She touched her temple and then her heart. “You know I was in Spain when the fighting was really terrible.” He was about to speak; she stopped him with a wave of a heavy hand: “I know, I know. We don’t agree on that, Mr. Mayer. That’s not the point. What I saw … the suffering … and what Hitler is doing now with Jews … the indignities …”

He stood and poured her a glass of water.

She drank. “The suffering touched me deeply. I’m all the time
verklempt
 … I can barely write at all.”

“You’re a wonderful writer. Wonderful.”

“Once upon a time.”

“Once? Everyone admires Lillian Hellman.
Leshem shmain, get veyter
. You’ll come here and you’ll write for me. I’ll make it perfect for you.”

“I wake up all the time depressed. I’ve seen too much suffering, Louis.”

“Are you seeing someone? I have the name of …”

“Who’s to see?” Lillian wondered in the ensuing silence, during which Louie Meier was seriously thinking about what he could do to help this woman, if she hadn’t badly overplayed her role and her hand.

Meier said, “
Der oylam is a goylem
.”

“I know that—
the world is crazy
—but why should I allow it to make me crazy too? At any rate, I’ve really come to ask you for a favor.”

“Anything, dear.”

“A pretty big one, I’m afraid.”

“I just said,
Anything, dear
.” Lilly knew, of course, that
anything
was only a word in the English language; in the Hollywood context it meant,
I’ll consider and eventually you’ll know
. Mayer assumed Lillian was going to ask for some work for Hammett, who hadn’t written anything worth anything for two years, and in truth there were indeed some bones
in the M-G-M cupboard that could be thrown his way. There were very good business reasons not to turn down this
maideleh
.

“If I’m suffering, Mr. Mayer, I have a good friend who is suffering even more …”

Mayer positioned himself to deal with the request for Hammett.

“… I’m asking on her behalf because if I can see just a little bit of order restored in my world, see just a bit of sanity return, I’ll be able to sleep tonight. You can have no idea how she has suffered. And you can end her
shamdeh
, snap, just like that with an okay.”

“You haven’t said who.”