Today's selection -- from The Fixers by E.J. Flemming. Howard Strickling, Head of MGM Publicity, "fixed" star's problems during Hollywood's golden age.
“In late 1940, Strickling was called in to keep dozens of stars out of the press or jail. One big problem was Lionel Atwill's parties. He was born in England and came to the U.S. in 1932, building a career portraying suave villains in horror films such as Dr. X (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). During his loan-outs to MGM, Atwill became friendly with many actors and executives. He lived in a lovely Spanish hacienda in Pacific Palisades at 13515 d'Este Drive and cultivated an image as an erudite country gentleman surrounded by English master paintings and antiques. But his dark side was obsessed with murder trials and his weekly sex parties. The parties were by invitation only, and guests had to bring a doctor's letter certifying a clean bill of health. After a formal dinner, guests retired to the living room and ceremoniously removed everything but jewelry. Atwill assigned partners according to personal preferences and visited different rooms during the weekend-long party.
“Strickling knew dozens of MGM stars visited the parties, including Gable, Crawford, Stanwyck, Dietrich, and allegedly Mannix. Atwill's soirees remained a Hollywood secret until early 1941. His 1940 Christmas party included several underage girls, and one 16-year-old Minnesota runaway named Sylvia claimed she became pregnant there. Atwill was found innocent at trial but subsequent court proceedings led to a conviction for perjury. Strickling prevailed upon the police and the prosecutors not to investigate his parties any further, and Sylvia was sent home from L.A. with a cash settlement.
“In February of 1941, as the Atwill party stories filled front pages, a Hollywood legend was dying in a small bungalow in Beachwood Canyon. For 25 years, Larry Edmunds' cramped Hollywood Boulevard bookstore was a favorite of the movie elite like W.C. Fields, the Barrymores, Basil Rathbone, and every beautiful actress in Hollywood. Edmunds had a voracious sexual appetite and affairs that included Mary Astor, Marlene Dietrich, Paulette Goddard, and dozens of others. He also slept with men. But by February 1941 he had drifted into alcoholism and mental illness and was living in a garage apartment at 2470 Beachwood Drive, consumed with alcoholic delusions. Police found his head wedged into the stove, dead from gas fumes, near a suicide note describing little men he saw crawling through the walls trying to kill him. Of more concern to Strickling, after he received the call from police, was the house full of mementoes from MGM stars, both male and female. His men rushed to the house to remove hundreds of notes and gifts from lovers of both sexes.
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| Hollywood movie studios in 1922 |
“In the early months of 1941, MGM began filming Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde, with Spencer Tracy as the crazed doctor. He threatened to walk out unless Ingrid Bergman was given the sexy role of Ivy, the doctor's love interest, rather than Victor Fleming's choice, Lana Turner. The studio bowed and Bergman got the part. She was married to a Swedish doctor and had an infant daughter, but once filming began she slept with Fleming and Tracy, who stole the 26-year-old from his old friend. The fight over Bergman led to frequent arguments between the normally close friends. The fling lasted for several months until her husband heard about it and approached Mayer. Mannix ordered Tracy to end the affair or be fired, while Strickling told writers that Tracy was just ‘mentoring; the young actress and arranged photos of the two at a Beverly Hills ice cream shop sharing milk shakes.
“Tracy's next fling would last 30 years. When Katharine Hepburn first came to Hollywood, one of her RKO bosses described her as ‘a cross between a monkey and a horse.’ She wasn't the typical Hollywood ingenue: she was covered with freckles. David O. Selznick found her ‘sexually repellent,’ and described her as a ‘boa constrictor on a fast.’ Writer Dorothy Parker described her acting talent as ‘running a gamut of emotions from A to B.’ But fans loved her. Born into a wealthy Connecticut family, she moved to Hollywood in 1932. She left her husband behind, refusing to let him come along. But she did bring best friend Laura Harding, an heiress to the American Express fortune. The two were inseparable. Even Hepburn's marriage, forced upon her by her family, didn't end the strange relationship. She and Harding lived in a Coldwater Canyon house that had once belonged to Boris Karloff. By the time she met Tracy in early 1941, she was an established star with a resume that included A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940).
“She had relationships with men and women. Her men included Leland Hayward and Charles Boyer (both were married), and she lived with Howard Hughes. She called them her beaus but continued to share the house with Harding. The couple's weird arrangement was often discussed, since they acted as a couple and Harding described herself at RKO as ‘Kate's husband.’ Hepburn described her actual husband as being ‘swell about everything,’ and he stayed in Connecticut until she divorced him in 1936. Harding accompanied her to Mexico for the quickie divorce. In early 1941 Tracy and Hepburn were cast in Woman of the Year. The sexual tension between the two was evident from the first day. It's hard to explain why they got together. Tracy was an absentee married man and Hepburn had an aversion to marriage, whether from her earlier failure, her sexual preferences or, as she told writers, because ‘actors should never marry.; For Tracy's part, perhaps at 41 (to her 34) he wanted to trade affairs for a more permanent—but still illicit—relationship. Hepburn knew that Tracy was an alcoholic; mothering the recalcitrant drunk fulfilled some need for her. Whatever the reason, by the time shooting ceased in October 1941, the two were a couple.
“Strickling had an odd challenge with the Tracy-Hepburn pairing. For the most part, Tracy's indiscretions went unpunished in the press. He was so unfaithful that he appeared faithful. Louise lived in their Encino ranch and Tracy lived in hotels, but they spoke daily, and on most weekends he visited his children. Louise founded the John Tracy Clinic, named for their son (who was born deaf), using a sizeable portion of her own wealth. She raised millions to found research and treatment centers for deaf children. She also served on a variety of charity boards and was a sympathetic figure and a press favorite. Somehow his relationship with Hepburn went uncommented-on.
“At the same time in early October 1941, Strickling received a frantic phone call from Robert Taylor. His arranged marriage to Barbara Stanwyck was bizarre. It wasn't sexual other than experimentally, and he sometimes tested the waters with other women if the mood suited him. Stanwyck bullied Taylor in front of his friends. She once strode into their family room while Taylor had a drink with John Wayne and said, ‘Send your friends home. It's time for bed.’ He meekly complied, shrugging his shoulders.
“During that summer, 1941, Taylor had filmed Johnny Eager with Lana Turner. She made plays for most of her leading men and, Taylor's sexual identity and marital status aside, she went after him. In her memoirs Turner suggested she walked away from the affair because she didn't want to ‘break up a marriage.’ More likely, she walked away when Taylor told Stanwyck of his interest in the younger star. Even though his was a marriage of convenience between friends arranged by their studio, Stanwyck reacted strangely. She tried to kill herself.
“On October 7, 1941, Taylor found her in the bathroom bleeding profusely from gashes in her arms. She had severed arteries in her wrist and forearms and would have bled to death had Taylor not stumbled upon her. Strickling had her quietly taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, the favorite for the MGM doctors. The press was told that Stanwyck was trying to open a jammed window and had accidentally cut herself. In an odd coincidence, Strickling would use the same excuse after a 1952 suicide attempt by Lana Turner.”
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| author: E.J. Flemming |
