Ida devised what she called “the rule of illusion” that captured daydreams on celluloid and convinced the public that Hollywood was paradise on earth. “A star,” she considered, “must have an unattainable quality.” Another specification of hers: “A star may drink champagne or nectar, but not beer.”
Ida was a Christian Scientist who, incredibly in the motion-picture business, clung to her job because, as she saw it, her special position of power gave her a phenomenal chance to do good. “If you can’t help somebody,” she used to say, “what are you put here on earth for?”
That philosophy contrasted violently with her boss’s point of view. He behaved as if the earth had been invented exclusively for Louis B. Mayer. He gave and withheld his favors like Ivan the Terrible. If you crossed him, he sought vengeance. During the filming of the first version of Ben-Hur, its star, Francis X. Bushman, offended Mayer, who saw to it that the actor was kept off the screen for the next twenty-three years.
He tried to force his attentions on practically every actress on his payroll. Jeanette MacDonald had to invent an engagement and buy herself the ring as a desperate sort of defense against the tubby, bespectacled little tyrant. He chased me around his desk for twelve years until my contract came up for renewal. “Why don’t you say yes to him for once and see what happens?” said Ida, before I was ushered into his all-white sanctum to talk a new contract.
I found Louis in good form. “Why do you always resist me?” he demanded. “If only you’d been nice to me, we could have made beautiful music together. I could have made you the greatest star in Hollywood.”
“I was wrong, Mr. Mayer. There are only two questions—when and where?”
His blown-up ego exploded with a bang like a toy balloon. With a stricken look he turned on his heels and ran out the private exit of his office as fast as his legs would carry him. He just liked to talk about it. (I might add that my contract was not renewed.)
Louis owned a stableful of race horses; Ida lived simply. She once inscribed a photograph to our friend, Virginia Kellogg, who was a script writer until she married director Frank Lloyd. “I would rather have the small worries of too little,” Ida wrote, “than the empty satisfaction of too much.”
She lived in a rented apartment, drove a Dodge that Mayer gave her in a rare burst of generosity. In the evenings she listened to music or played her grand piano, which was one of the great joys of her life. Or she embroidered petit point bags as gifts for friends. What money she could save, she used as down payments on little houses, which she’d do over and resell at a small profit.
Howard Hughes wanted her with him at RKO, offered her three times the salary she was making. She refused. She had too high a regard for Howard. She knew that if she walked out on Mayer, it would set him off on a vendetta to destroy Howard Hughes, and Louis, with Hearst’s friendship, had the power to do him a lot of harm.