Whenever I stand up to make a speech about Hollywood, there is one question that’s ninety-nine per cent certain to pop up from the audience before we’re through: “Is anybody in the movies happily married?” The only answer I can give, of course, is another question: “Who can possibly say, except the husbands and wives?” I’ve been lied to many times when a marriage was crashing on the rocks and nobody would admit it. Can’t say I blame them. A man and his mate have the privilege of pretending that all is well up to the bitter end, the way people do everywhere.
Three days before she filed suit to divorce Cary Grant, Barbara Hutton said to me: “If only Cary and I could have a baby someday. We both love children. We’d like to have at least three. We’re praying, both of us. Maybe our dreams will come true.”
Barbara, Frank Woolworth’s granddaughter, was a shy, self-effacing woman who allowed Cary to play lord of the manor in their Pacific Palisades house, which had a staff of eleven servants. They moved into it with her son of a former marriage, Lance Reventlow. Cary had by far the biggest bedroom, complete with wood-burning fireplace, beautiful antiques, private entrance, and a private bathroom approximately the size of Marineland. Cary always liked his creature comforts. And if she had dinner guests he didn’t care for, he didn’t come down to dinner.
He asked me to kill the interview when Barbara called quits to their marriage seventy-two hours after she talked to me. I did him that favor. Then he married wife number three, Betsy Drake. Number one, Virginia Cherrill, who later found a titled husband, was the blonde in Charles Chaplin’s City Lights, and she lasted less than twelve months with Cary. Barbara lasted five years.
With Betsy, he took up hobbies, from yoga to hypnosis. The former Archie Leach, of Bristol, England, ex-stilts walker and chorus boy, had Betsy hypnotize him into giving up liquor and cigarettes. He subsequently gave up Betsy, who finally sued to divorce him.
When Joe Hyams wrote a series of articles quoting Cary as saying he’d been seeing a psychiatrist, Cary denied that he’d said a word to Joe. That outraged reporter promptly retaliated with a $500,000 suit for slander. It came to an unusual but amiable settlement: Cary agreed to have Hyams collaborate with him in writing his memoirs and other articles, with Joe collecting the full proceeds. Joe didn’t know how lucky he was going to be. Once he got at a typewriter, Cary couldn’t be pried loose, asked for no help whatever from his fellow author. So the actor did the writing, and the writer drew the pay. I should be that lucky.
If yoga can’t hold a marriage together, confession sometimes can. One cowboy star talked himself out of a jam for which a less forgiving woman than his wife would have thrown him out on his ear. Talking didn’t come hard to him. He was laconic on the screen, loquacious off. He had some tall explaining to do when the scandal-sniffing hound dogs on the staff of Confidential tracked him down on a weekend at Malibu, spent in the company of one of our bustiest blondes, and I don’t mean Jayne Mansfield.
The sensation hunters had compiled a timetable, at fifteen-minute intervals; the precise time he and the girl arrived in his car; the trip to do some shopping; the swim they took in the sea—every detail of the three days, supported by the affidavits of witnesses. There could be no disputing it. He couldn’t sue. Certain of that, publisher Robert Harrison already had the story on the presses.
Howard Rushmore, the lanky, sad-eyed former Communist who quit the New York Journal-American to edit Confidential, gave me the tip two weeks before the issue of the magazine was due to hit the newsstands. “I thought you’d like to know ahead of time,” he said. “I know you’re fond of the guy, and you might like to warn him.”
“It’s a horrible thing to have happen,” I said, “but I appreciate your telling me.”