Home at last, where the servants are eating high on the hog, but she has a tray with hot broth, one lamb chop, spinach or string beans, and perhaps a dab of apple sauce. There’s time to play with the children for half an hour, look over tomorrow’s script, sign dozens of checks a secretary has laid out in a folder for her. Then a body massage, and what’s left of her crawls to bed.
Is it any wonder that there hasn’t been a real, big-star hostess in our town since Doug Fairbanks deserted Mary Pickford? Hundreds have tried, but nobody’s succeeded, not even Mary. As Mrs. Buddy Rogers, she lost the glory.
Mrs. Kirk Douglas and her friend, the present Mrs. Gregory Peck, have their dreams along those lines. Veronique pretended to be a writer so she could get a private interview with Gregory when he visited Paris with his first wife, Greta, and openly told a companion, Brenda Helser of Diplomat magazine: “I’m going to be the next Mrs. Peck.” Her plan worked like a charm.
The current Mrs. Edward G. Robinson would like to be a hostess with the mostest, but she has not attained the status of Gladys, his former wife, who entertained in great style and set him going on his way to being a great art collector. It was Gladys who had the knowledge and chose most of the paintings. Collecting pictures is a neat trick for cutting down on income tax, highly recommended by financial consultants if you can afford it. You donate the paintings to a museum as an act of charity, but have the pleasure of them hanging on your walls for a lifetime.
The William Goetzes mix social ambitions with art collecting and what may be lightheartedly called “cultural leadership.” The walls of their home—it takes seven servants to run it—are adorned like a museum with works by Monet, Matisse, Roualt, Dufy, Lautrec, and a reputed Van Gogh, which Bill bought for $50,000 in 1948 from a New York gallery. When the painter’s nephew had doubts about its authenticity, the Metropolitan Museum assembled a jury of three experts. After they’d pored over the canvas, they declared that they, too, were unwilling to accept it as an original. A European art critic, Dr. Jacob Bart de la Faille, who had vouched for the picture’s genuineness in the first place, insisted that he’d made no mistake and the buyer hadn’t been taken. Then five European experts took a look and said it was a Van Gogh, sure enough. Where that leaves Bill Goetz, I don’t know, because he hasn’t told me. We aren’t in each other’s confidence and never have been.
He married Edith, Louis B. Mayer’s older daughter—Irene, the other, became David Selznick’s wife. When Edie’s engagement was announced, Louis put Ida Koverman in charge of wedding arrangements, with orders to invite all the old-line Los Angeles socialites. As Herbert Hoover’s former aide, Ida knew them; Louis did not. Edie was always drawn by pictures of one sort or another. She paid almost daily visits to Ida’s office, whose walls were hung with autographed pictures from the biggest people in America, to bombard her with fresh instructions.
She stopped in front of the then President’s photograph (“To my dear Ida ... Herbert Hoover”) and asked: “Have you invited him?”
“You don’t know him,” Ida said.
“You do and father does. Send him an invitation. I’d like to see what he sends me.”
“But he’s the President of the United States.”