They argued for months over the divorce he wanted. He was willing to pay her a quarter of his earnings for life as alimony. She demanded every nickel he earned. The sad climax came in a suite in New York’s Sherry-Netherland Hotel. In my presence she turned on him in a fury. “Get out, you Jew!” she said.
Doug’s face was a mask. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” I exclaimed. “You’re out of your mind.”
“I do, and he knows it. He’s a Jew.”
He said not a word and dragged himself from the room. He couldn’t argue about his background. His father’s name was Ulman. Doug’s mother was married five times, and had children by other husbands, one of whom was named Fairbanks. Beth knew all about it. It had been a secret, wry joke to her that, through her father’s contacts, she had been able to make her husband a member of New York’s best men’s clubs, where anti-Semitism was an article of faith. She collected her money from Doug—$650,000 in cash and securities that his brother and business manager, John Fairbanks, carried in a suitcase from Los Angeles to New York.
Young Doug adored his father, but stayed with his mother after the breakup. He didn’t emerge as a man until he married Joan Crawford. An experienced woman can teach a lot to a youngster like Douglas, Jr. He learned much about women and the world from Joan, though she wasn’t accepted by her in-laws until Lord and Lady Mountbatten, honeymooning at Pickfair, asked if they could meet her. The first time she set foot inside the front door was the night she was invited to a ball to meet Dickie Mountbatten and his bride.
The senior Fairbankses drifted apart after Mary Pickford made My Best Girl with Buddy Rogers. In London, Doug got to know Lady Sylvia Ashley very well, but he had little thought of marrying her. He made a special trip home to try to patch things up with Mary. But she insisted that he beg for a reconciliation, and he was too proud to beg for anything. He decided to sail back to England. For seven hours on the eve of his sailing Mary tried to reach him by telephone to tell him she was ready to save their marriage. But she missed him. She was too late. Sylvia was married on the rebound to Doug, who by the merest coincidence chanced to be a millionaire.
There was nobody quite like Doug. He loved everyone, and that sun-tanned charm of his made everyone love him. He would rather leap over the moon than go to the greatest party in the world, though he started drinking his way through the nonstop round of parties and night clubbing to which Sylvia introduced him. Vanity was one weakness of his. When the two daughters of his brother, John, who was born Fairbanks, wanted to go into pictures, Doug warned them: “You’ll have to change your names, you know; there can only be one Fairbanks.”
He had a handsome head on his shoulders, but it was no head for figures. I’m reminded of that every time I look out of my office window at a towering gas storage tank a dozen blocks away that looms over the old United Artists studio which Doug, Mary, and Charles Chaplin built in 1918. Doug or any of them could have bought it then for $50,000 and demolished it. But they saved their money—and it cost their company at least $3,000,000 over the years to shoot around it to avoid having the tank show up in every movie United Artists made. After many lawsuits the studio is now owned by Sam Goldwyn. It nets Frances and Sam a mighty juicy yearly income. The three stars who created it receive nothing.
Sylvia’s best friend and next-door neighbor in Santa Monica was Norma Shearer, who decided one day to give the Fairbankses a party, inviting Doug’s closest friends. At 7 P.M. that evening Sylvia telephoned Norma: “I’m terribly sorry but we can’t come. Douglas was taken ill this afternoon, and he’s much worse now.”
Their two place cards had been removed from the table when the other guests sat down to dine at nine o’clock. During the first course her butler whispered a message to Norma. She turned pale for a moment, but the dinner went on into dancing, some party games, and all kinds of fun until things broke up at 3 A.M. By that time Douglas Fairbanks had been dead five and a half hours. Later I asked Norma: “How could you do it? Your guests were Doug’s best friends.”