Without Lying Down. Cari Beauchamp
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half Jewish, she preferred him to Owen,” Frances told an interviewer late in life. “Owen was drunk all the time. The main thing was that ‘Mama’ loved Mary to be happy and Mary was never lovelier than when she was with Doug. That was enough for Mama—if only they both weren’t married to somebody else.”9
Yet when Mary practically begged her mother for her blessing, Charlotte’s only response was to ask, “Will you ever be happy outside the church?” Even if Mary could manage to get an annulment, Douglas was divorced and that made the Catholic church’s approval impossible. Still, Charlotte was not about to repeat the mistake of forbidding her daughter to marry; this time the decision was Mary’s to make.
Mary turned to Frances and as they tried to gauge how “her public” would react, Frances decided they were too close to the situation. Aware that “even as a child, Mary had never experienced such fear and frustration,” Frances sought outside help. She needed someone who could be trusted as a friend and who, as a reporter, understood both the public’s perceptions and the business of motion pictures. Once again, Frances turned to Adela Rogers St. Johns.10
As difficult as it was for Mary to let anyone into her private circle, she agreed to invite Adela for tea. Like everyone else who went to the movies, Adela felt she already knew Mary, but the first thing that struck her as Mary introduced herself was that she had never before heard the star’s voice. Adela was enchanted and, for once in her life, more than a bit in awe.
“If I get a divorce and marry Douglas, will anyone ever go see my pictures again?” Mary asked her directly. “Do you think they will forgive me?”
Adela was taken aback, yet not totally surprised, for she had heard the rumors. Her mind raced as she realized Mary was facing a three-ring crisis—familial, religious, and professional—but before she could comment, Mary added something that would always echo in Adela’s mind as exemplifying how seriously she took her position: “Above all, there are my people to consider.”
“My people” meant more than a sense of noblesse oblige for those who depended on her. Along with the business acumen that served her so well, Mary had almost an innate understanding of this new phenomenon called stardom: the public’s sense of ownership of the personalities they took into their hearts.
Adela empathized and, assuming Mary must be very much in love to have called for her, hedged her advice.
“I think your chances are better than even if it’s handled carefully. All the world loves a lover.” Overall she was encouraging, and Mary thanked her for coming and excused herself. As soon as they were alone, Frances explained how difficult it was for Mary “trying to make an unalterable decision that might radically change her whole way of living.” In addition to everything else, her adored brother, Jack, didn’t approve of Douglas; he thought he was a charlatan trying to buy his own importance through his association with Mary. Frances and Adela both found Jack charming, yet also knew that was exactly the way many saw his relationship with his sister.
Adela asked Frances about what she thought: “Do you understand why she’s in love with him?”
Frances had long stopped trying to explain it to herself or anyone else and shrugged. “I don’t understand why I’m in love with Fred Thomson.”11
Mary made her decision. To the plea that she was “America’s sweetheart,” she declared, “I only want to be one man’s sweetheart.” She was willing to risk it all for what she saw as her one chance at happiness and once the decision was made, Charlotte and their attorney Cap O’Brien started making the necessary arrangements to make the divorce a reality.12
First, a deal was made with Owen to buy his cooperation. Frances remembered that his price was $100,000, but that seems low considering Mary’s wealth. Whatever the actual settlement, Moore sped up the process by conveniently arriving in Minden, Nevada, with his attorney after Mary and Charlotte had been in the state for only two weeks. He publicly claimed that he was scouting film locations, but his presence allowed him to be served with papers so Mary could go to court the next day. Nevada’s divorce laws were already liberal, but they required a three-month residency. Because she swore she was “seeking a quiet place to live” permanently, the time restriction was waived by the seemingly starstruck judge, who granted Mary an immediate divorce on grounds of desertion.
The newspapers painted a sympathetic picture of Mary weeping as she told sordid tales of her husband’s drinking. The reports emphasized that the couple had long been separated and the only reason the divorce came as a surprise was “because of her religious faith.” Frances and Adela spread the word that Owen had asked for a large financial settlement and Mary was portrayed as a woman who had suffered beyond any normal standards of endurance.
As soon as the hearing was over, the thought of a “permanent residence” was forgotten and Mary and Charlotte returned to Los Angeles. Three weeks later, Mary and Doug were quietly married at his house, surrounded only by her family and a few of his closest friends. Adela had been right about the world’s loving lovers; the news was heralded on the front page of newspapers across the country as the closest thing to a formal coronation of the reigning king and queen of the movies.13
When Charlotte and Mary left for Nevada, Frances and Fred had returned to New York, where they subleased a spacious apartment from the composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, hoping that by the time Frances’s work for Hearst was completed, Doug and Mary could join them for a European honeymoon.14
Frances immediately went to work on the first scenario that had genuinely excited her since her earliest days with Mary. From the outset, the sentimental tale of a Jewish mother’s love and sacrifice for her son set in New York’s Lower East Side was not the type of story William Randolph Hearst considered appropriate for the movies. Still, he had faith in Frances and when she was so passionate about the subject, he gave her a reluctant go-ahead to adapt Fannie Hurst’s Humoresque.
Frances and Fannie became friends and though the literary types at the Algonquin called her a “sob sister,” Frances respected the writer for her prolific output, her personal determination, and her independent outlook on life. Only a few years older than Frances, Fannie was just moving in with her husband of five years, the pianist Jacques Danielson. Her parents had disapproved of the marriage, but the real reason she had kept it a secret from all but their closest friends was because she was confident that keeping the relationship concealed and maintaining separate residences would help preserve their professional independence. The marriage was a happy and successful one by all accounts and Fannie, a supporter of the Lucy Stone League, kept her own name even after giving up her apartment. She laughingly claimed that she began collecting rejection slips at the age of fourteen and had amassed quite a pile before publishing her first national story when she was twenty-one. Now thirty-five, she was making more money than Somerset Maugham or Edna Ferber with her popular short stories.15
Fannie took Frances to see the Russian-born Vera Gordon at the Yiddish theater to encourage casting her as the mother in Humoresque. Frances agreed, but in a bow to the need for star appeal, Alma Rubens was cast as the girl the son falls in love with and was billed above Vera Gordon in the publicity.16
Frances had another new ally in Frank Borzage, who she had known and liked since meeting him with Adela at Inceville. Now thirty years old, the good-looking Borzage had left a promising acting career to establish himself as a talented director at Triangle before being hired by Cosmopolitan. They used hidden cameras to capture the density and grit of the Lower East Side community and that footage opened and was interwoven throughout the film. Joseph Urban designed stylistic interiors for the studio shots and Frances and Borzage grew more excited each day over what they called “our story.” Still, Adolph Zukor questioned Frances’s judgment: “If you and Fannie Hurst are so determined to make the Jews appear sympathetic, why don’t you choose a story about the Rothschilds or men as distinguished as they?”17
Zukor and Hearst insisted on a happy ending and while Frances did not initially resist their demand, she was very concerned when Fannie Hurst saw the first rough cut of Humoresque and was “indignant.” She wanted her