I had a word with Harry Brand, publicity director of Twentieth Century-Fox and a good friend to Louella and Docky: “If you want her to live, you’d better get her out of that hospital. Either she’s in the same room that Docky had or one exactly like it. She’ll never recover until she’s moved.”
Nobody apparently had thought of that. She was out of there and into the Beverly Hills Hotel the next day. Her column power is still potent, but the times and temper of Hollywood have changed. Though she doesn’t change, you can’t help but feel sorry for her. She still belabors her enemies and coos over her intimates: Mervyn LeRoy, Jimmy McHugh, Cobina Wright, all the Catholic “A” group that includes Loretta Young, Irene Dunne, Dolores Hope. She still pretends not to read Hopper, but when I broke the news of Kay Gable’s pregnancy, on the strength of a tip from a crew member on The Misfits, Louella must have read the item and put in a call instantly to Kay, begging to be the child’s godmother. At the baptism her hands were so shaky we were scared stiff she’d let young John Clark Gable fall on the floor by the font.
Louella claims that the people she writes about are all her dear, dear friends, a total she once estimated at 312. My taste runs closer to that of Dema Harshbarger, my manager, whom I have known since she first put me on radio. “I have three friends in the world,” says Dema, “and I don’t want any more. The average Hollywood friendship today wouldn’t buy you a ham sandwich.”
Five
One of the legends that haunts the typewriters of most of Hollywood’s five hundred resident reporters and columnists insists that our town is just like Podunk, a typical American community with a heart as big as Cinerama. (Are you there, Louella?) This is true, of course—give or take a few billion dollars a year. Provided Podunk can muster three dozen and more Rolls-Royces outside a movie house for a new picture opening. And pay a good cook $500 a week to steal her away from the best friend. And produce half a dozen houses with built-in pipe organs and one with wood-burning fireplaces in both the master and children’s bathrooms—it used to belong to Maggie Sullavan and Leland Hayward but Fred MacMurray owns it now.
If the majority of people in Podunk worship money like a god, then there isn’t much to choose between us. Take a man like Dean Martin. If Podunkians judge their fellows by how many dollars they earn, then Dean would be right at home. There was the day he got to arguing with his press agent about Albert Einstein.
“I made $20,000 last week,” Dean said. “What do you think he made?”
“You’re right,” said the press agent, a thoughtful soul. “That Einstein’s a dummy. I bet he never earned more than $12,000 a year in his whole life. He’s got to be an idiot.” Dean had the grace to grin. In Hollywood, where the love of money can change people’s nature every bit as fast as in Podunk, he has a reputation for cool blood behind his beaming Italian charm.
He isn’t alone in his class. It’s an obvious weakness among singers. Perry Como, for instance, sets few records for making appearances for charity. Bing Crosby, who enjoys almost nothing about his profession except the income it brings him, can’t be dragged to a benefit. It took his fiery little Irish mother, Kate, to push him out of his house to one Academy Awards show when he was at the top of his career. “You’ll go,” she threatened, “or you’ll never hear the last of it from me.” Kate was a woman to be reckoned with and still is. That was the night Bing got his Oscar for Going My Way.