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 Page iv

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY, ELEVENTH EDITION

Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121.

Copyright © 2020 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. Previous editions © 2017, 2014, and 2011. No part of
this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education, including, but not limited to, in any network or other
electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.

Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available
to customers outside the United States.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 LWI 21 20 19

ISBN 978-1-260-14892-3
MHID 1-260-14892-0

Portfolio Manager: Michelle Hentz

Product Developers: Mary E. Hurley & Megan Platt
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Compositor: Aptara, Inc.

All credits appearing on page or at the end of the book are considered to be an
extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Carey, Francis A., 1937- author. | Giuliano, Robert M., 1954- author.

8
 | Allison, Neil T. (Neil Thomas), 1953- author. | Tuttle, Susan L. Bane,
author.
Title: Organic chemistry / Francis A. Carey (University of Virginia), Robert
M. Giuliano (Villanova University), Neil T. Allison (University of
Arkansas), Susan L. Bane Tuttle (Binghamton University).
Description: Eleventh edition. | New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2018.
| Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018024902| ISBN 9781260148923 (alk. paper) | ISBN
1260148920 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Chemistry, Organic. | Chemistry, Organic—Textbooks
Classification: LCC QD251.3 .C37 2018 | DDC 547—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024902

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication.
The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or
McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education does not guarantee the
accuracy of the information presented at these sites.

mheducation.com/highered

9
 Page v

Each of the eleven editions of

this text has benefited from the
individual and collective
contributions of the staff at
McGraw-Hill. They are the ones
who make it all possible. We
appreciate their
professionalism and thank
them for their continuing
support.

10
 Page vii

About the Authors

Before Frank Carey retired in 2000, his career teaching chemistry was
spent entirely at the University of Virginia.
In addition to this text, he is coauthor (with Robert C. Atkins) of
Organic Chemistry: A Brief Course and (with Richard J. Sundberg) of
Advanced Organic Chemistry, a two-volume treatment designed for
graduate students and advanced undergraduates.
Frank and his wife Jill are the parents of Andy, Bob, and Bill and the
grandparents of Riyad, Ava, Juliana, Miles, Wynne, and Michael.

Robert M. Giuliano was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and attended

Penn State (B.S. in chemistry) and the University of Virginia (Ph.D., under
the direction of Francis Carey). Following postdoctoral studies with Bert
Fraser-Reid at the University of Maryland, he joined the chemistry
department faculty of Villanova University in 1982, where he is currently
Professor. His research interests are in synthetic organic and carbohydrate
chemistry.
Bob and his wife Margot, an elementary school teacher he met while
attending UVa, are the parents of Michael, Ellen, and Christopher and the
grandparents of Carina, Aurelia, Serafina, Lucia, and Francesca.

Neil T. Allison was born in Athens, Georgia, and attended Georgia

College (B.S., 1975, in chemistry) and the University of Florida (Ph.D.,
1978, under the direction of W. M. Jones). Following postdoctoral studies
with Emanuel Vogel at the University of Cologne, Germany, and Peter
Vollhardt at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the faculty of
the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Arkansas in
1980. His research interests are in physical organometallic chemistry and
physical organic chemistry.
Neil and his wife Amelia met while attending GC, and are the parents
of Betsy, Joseph, and Alyse and the grandparents of Beau.

11
Susan L. Bane was raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and attended
Davidson College (B.S., 1980, in chemistry) and Vanderbilt University
(Ph.D., 1983, in biochemistry under the direction of J. David Puett and
Robley C. Williams, Jr.). Following postdoctoral studies in bioorganic
chemistry with Timothy L. Macdonald at the University of Virginia, she
joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry of Binghamton
University, State University of New York, in 1985. She is currently
Professor of Chemistry and director of the Biochemistry Program. Her
research interests are in bioorganic and biophysical chemistry.
Susan is married to David Tuttle and is the mother of Bryant, Lauren,
and Lesley.

12
 Page viii

Brief Contents
List of Important Features xix
Preface xxiii
Acknowledgements xxx
1 Structure Determines Properties 2
2 Alkanes and Cycloalkanes: Introduction to Hydrocarbons 54
3 Alkanes and Cycloalkanes: Conformations and cis–trans
Stereoisomers 98
4 Chirality 134
5 Alcohols and Alkyl Halides: Introduction to Reaction Mechanisms
172
6 Nucleophilic Substitution 210
7 Structure and Preparation of Alkenes: Elimination Reactions 244
8 Addition Reactions of Alkenes 288
9 Alkynes 330
10 Introduction to Free Radicals 356
11 Conjugation in Alkadienes and Allylic Systems 384
12 Arenes and Aromaticity 426
13 Electrophilic and Nucleophilic Aromatic Substitution 476
14 Spectroscopy 532
15 Organometallic Compounds 600
16 Alcohols, Diols, and Thiols 638
17 Ethers, Epoxides, and Sulfides 676
18 Aldehydes and Ketones: Nucleophilic Addition to the Carbonyl
Group 714
19 Carboxylic Acids 764
20 Carboxylic Acid Derivatives: Nucleophilic Acyl Substitution 800

13
21 Enols and Enolates 850
22 Amines 890
23 Carbohydrates 946
24 Lipids 996
25 Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins 1036
26 Nucleosides, Nucleotides, and Nucleic Acids 1098
27 Synthetic Polymers 1140

Appendix: Summary of Methods Used to Synthesize a Particular

Functional Group A-1
Glossary G-1
Index I-1

14
15
 Page ix

Contents
List of Important Features xix
Preface xxiii
Acknowledgements xxx

CHAPTER 1
_______________________________________________________
Structure Determines Properties 2
1.1 Atoms, Electrons, and Orbitals 3
Organic Chemistry: The Early Days 5
1.2 Ionic Bonds 7
1.3 Covalent Bonds, Lewis Formulas, and the Octet Rule 8
1.4 Polar Covalent Bonds, Electronegativity, and Bond Dipoles 11
Electrostatic Potential Maps 13
1.5 Formal Charge 14
1.6 Structural Formulas of Organic Molecules: Isomers 16
1.7 Resonance and Curved Arrows 20
1.8 Sulfur and Phosphorus-Containing Organic Compounds and the
Octet Rule 24
1.9 Molecular Geometries 25
Molecular Models and Modeling 27
1.10 Molecular Dipole Moments 28
1.11 Curved Arrows, Arrow Pushing, and Chemical Reactions 29
1.12 Acids and Bases: The Brønsted–Lowry View 31
1.13 How Structure Affects Acid Strength 36
1.14 Acid–Base Equilibria 41

16
1.15 Acids and Bases: The Lewis View 44
1.16 Summary 45
Problems 48
Descriptive Passage and Interpretive Problems 1: Amide
Lewis Structural Formulas 53

CHAPTER 2
_______________________________________________________
Alkanes and Cycloalkanes: Introduction to
Hydrocarbons 54
2.1 Classes of Hydrocarbons 55
2.2 Electron Waves and Chemical Bonds 55
2.3 Bonding in H2: The Valence Bond Model 56
2.4 Bonding in H2: The Molecular Orbital Model 57
2.5 Introduction to Alkanes: Methane, Ethane, and Propane 59
2.6 sp3 Hybridization and Bonding in Methane 60
Methane and the Biosphere 60
2.7 Bonding in Ethane 62
2.8 sp2 Hybridization and Bonding in Ethylene 63
2.9 sp Hybridization and Bonding in Acetylene 65
2.10 Bonding in Water and Ammonia: Hybridization of Oxygen and
Nitrogen 66
2.11 Molecular Orbitals and Bonding in Methane 68
2.12 Isomeric Alkanes: The Butanes 68
2.13 Higher n-Alkanes 69
2.14 The C5H12 Isomers 70
2.15 IUPAC Nomenclature of Unbranched Alkanes 72
2.16 Applying the IUPAC Rules: The Names of the C6H14 Isomers
73
What’s in a Name? Organic Nomenclature 74
2.17 Alkyl Groups 75

17
2.18 IUPAC Names of Highly Branched Alkanes 77
2.19 Cycloalkane Nomenclature 78
2.20 Introduction to Functional Groups 79
2.21 Sources of Alkanes and Cycloalkanes 79
2.22 Physical Properties of Alkanes and Cycloalkanes 81
2.23 Chemical Properties: Combustion of Alkanes 83
Thermochemistry 86
2.24 Oxidation–Reduction in Organic Chemistry 86
2.25 Summary 88
Problems 93
Descriptive Passage and Interpretive Problems 2: Some
Biochemical Reactions of Alkanes 96

CHAPTER 3
_______________________________________________________
Alkanes and Cycloalkanes: Conformations and cis–
trans Stereoisomers 98
3.1 Conformational Analysis of Ethane 99
3.2 Conformational Analysis of Butane 103
3.3 Conformations of Higher Alkanes 104
Computational Chemistry: Molecular Mechanics and
Quantum Mechanics 105
3.4 The Shapes of Cycloalkanes: Planar or Nonplanar? 106
3.5 Small Rings: Cyclopropane and Cyclobutane 107
3.6 Cyclopentane 108
3.7 Conformations of Cyclohexane 109
3.8 Axial and Equatorial Bonds in Cyclohexane 110
3.9 Conformational Inversion in Cyclohexane 112
3.10 Conformational Analysis of Monosubstituted Cyclohexanes
113
Enthalpy, Free Energy, and Equilibrium Constant
115 Page x

18
3.11 Disubstituted Cycloalkanes: cis–trans Stereoisomers 116
3.12 Conformational Analysis of Disubstituted Cyclohexanes 117
3.13 Medium and Large Rings 122
3.14 Polycyclic Ring Systems 122
3.15 Heterocyclic Compounds 124
3.16 Summary 125
Problems 128
Descriptive Passage and Interpretive Problems 3: Cyclic
Forms of Carbohydrates 133

CHAPTER 4
_______________________________________________________
Chirality 134
4.1 Introduction to Chirality: Enantiomers 134
4.2 The Chirality Center 137
4.3 Symmetry in Achiral Structures 139
4.4 Optical Activity 140
4.5 Absolute and Relative Configuration 142
4.6 Cahn–Ingold–Prelog R,S Notation 143
Homochirality and Symmetry Breaking 146
4.7 Fischer Projections 147
4.8 Properties of Enantiomers 149
4.9 The Chirality Axis 150
Chiral Drugs 151
4.10 Chiral Molecules with Two Chirality Centers 152
4.11 Achiral Molecules with Two Chirality Centers 155
Chirality of Disubstituted Cyclohexanes 157
4.12 Molecules with Multiple Chirality Centers 157
4.13 Resolution of Enantiomers 159
4.14 Chirality Centers Other Than Carbon 161
4.15 Summary 162
Problems 165

19
 Descriptive Passage and Interpretive Problems 4:
Prochirality 169

CHAPTER 5
_______________________________________________________
Alcohols and Alkyl Halides: Introduction to Reaction
Mechanisms 172
5.1 Functional Groups 173
5.2 IUPAC Nomenclature of Alkyl Halides 174
5.3 IUPAC Nomenclature of Alcohols 175
5.4 Classes of Alcohols and Alkyl Halides 176
5.5 Bonding in Alcohols and Alkyl Halides 176
5.6 Physical Properties of Alcohols and Alkyl Halides:
Intermolecular Forces 177
5.7 Preparation of Alkyl Halides from Alcohols and Hydrogen
Halides 181
5.8 Reaction of Alcohols with Hydrogen Halides: The SN1
Mechanism 183
Mechanism 5.1 Formation of tert-Butyl Chloride from tert-Butyl
Alcohol and Hydrogen Chloride 184
5.9 Structure, Bonding, and Stability of Carbocations 189
5.10 Effect of Alcohol Structure on Reaction Rate 192
5.11 Stereochemistry and the SN1 Mechanism 193
5.12 Carbocation Rearrangements 195
Mechanism 5.2 Carbocation Rearrangement in the Reaction of
3,3-Dimethyl-2-butanol with Hydrogen Chloride 195
5.13 Reaction of Methyl and Primary Alcohols with Hydrogen
Halides: The SN2 Mechanism 197
Mechanism 5.3 Formation of 1-Bromoheptane from 1-Heptanol
and Hydrogen Bromide 198
5.14 Other Methods for Converting Alcohols to Alkyl Halides 199
5.15 Sulfonates as Alkyl Halide Surrogates 201
5.16 Summary 202

20
 Problems 204
Descriptive Passage and Interpretive Problems 5: More
About Potential Energy Diagrams 208

CHAPTER 6
_______________________________________________________
Nucleophilic Substitution 210
6.1 Functional-Group Transformation by Nucleophilic Substitution
210
6.2 Relative Reactivity of Halide Leaving Groups 213
6.3 The SN2 Mechanism of Nucleophilic Substitution 214
Mechanism 6.1 The SN2 Mechanism of Nucleophilic
Substitution 215
6.4 Steric Effects and SN2 Reaction Rates 217
6.5 Nucleophiles and Nucleophilicity 219
Enzyme-Catalyzed Nucleophilic Substitutions of Alkyl
Halides 221
6.6 The SN1 Mechanism of Nucleophilic Substitution 222
Mechanism 6.2 The SN1 Mechanism of Nucleophilic
Substitution 223
6.7 Stereochemistry of SN1 Reactions 224
6.8 Carbocation Rearrangements in SN1 Reactions 226
Mechanism 6.3 Carbocation Rearrangement in the SN1
Hydrolysis of 2-Bromo-3-methylbutane 226
6.9 Effect of Solvent on the Rate of Nucleophilic Substitution 227
6.10 Nucleophilic Substitution of Alkyl Sulfonates 230
6.11 Introduction to Organic Synthesis: Retrosynthetic Analysis 233
6.12 Substitution versus Elimination: A Look Ahead 234
6.13 Summary 235
Problems 236
Descriptive Passage and Interpretive Problems 6:
Nucleophilic Substitution 241

21
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 He’s one of the few new faces in our industry who has been
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Elvis’ role is to create the impression of the country boy whose head is
still awhirling from the bedazzling luck that’s befallen him.
“Sometimes a silly tale starts a lot of repercussions,” he told me.
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his being delivered to an auditorium or arena where he’s singing in a
moving van, lying on a couch.
He works conscientiously at a long list of charities in semi-secrecy.
In twelve months he will raise as much as $118,000 for benefits; prides
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subtracted off the top for expenses. “We buy our own tickets, and no
free tickets are handed out to anybody. We pay every entertainer on
the program. When the benefit’s over, we give local newspapers a story
in which every item of money is accounted for.”
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as though he’ll have to pick up his training in front of the cameras as
Gary Cooper and many others did. He isn’t depending on the gyrations
any longer. “They call it the twist, but it’s the same thing I’ve done for
six years. The old wiggle is on the way out now.”
Apart from sensations like Elvis, the only place a young entertainer
can get training is in television. The studio schools, where promising
beginners were compelled to go to classes in speech, drama, dancing,
or what have you, were disbanded years ago. The studios claimed they
couldn’t afford them any longer. There’s very little point in a raw recruit
trying to crash Hollywood today. My advice, if anybody asks for it, is:
“Start in New York; get on TV; do bits on Broadway; then take a stab at
movies. Otherwise, you’re going to find California can be a great spot
to starve in.”
Elvis is lucky, too, in having an agent like the “colonel,” whose itch
for money hasn’t outpaced his protégé’s talents. A good agent doesn’t
allow his client to take on more than he can handle. Too many ten per
centers slaver for the quick buck. They’re not content to wait a week
longer than necessary. So the youngsters are booked into night clubs,
TV, personal appearances, fairgrounds, and every imaginable kind of
fee-paying frolic. In that rat race, a greedy agent can kill a promising
newcomer’s career in two years flat. I’ve seen it happen too often. The
agents don’t care. Ten per cent of a boy’s murdered future is zero, but
there are always plenty more lambs to lead to the slaughter.

* * * * *
Before I met him, I had an earful of Elvis one day from Natalie
Wood. She was tough, very young, starry-eyed and burningly
ambitious. All the beaux were after her like a pack of hound dogs—
Nicky Hilton, Lance Reventlow, Jimmy Dean, Nicky Adams, Johnny
Grant, Dennis Hopper, Bob Neal, and as many more. But she was crazy
for Elvis. She has every record he ever made.
She wasn’t only crazy for him. She was mad for stuffed toy tigers,
including one that played “Ach du Lieber Augustine.” She wouldn’t ride
on a plane without taking aboard, to read during the flight, a wad of
unopened “good luck” notes written by her friends saying how glad
they were that she’d arrived safely. She also took some tigers along as
talismans. She went through a phase of wearing nothing but black,
clear down to all her underwear. She drove a decorator way out of his
mind by ordering black drapes and black furniture for her bedroom,
where rugs and walls were chalk white. At that time, she was going on
eighteen years old, all but four of them spent making movies.
“My father said he didn’t want his child to be an actress,” she once
told me, “but my mother took me on a train to Hollywood to see Irving
Pichel, who gave me a bit in Happy Land, on location in Santa Rosa. In
my scene I had to drop an ice-cream cone and cry.”
There was no turning back after that. She used to pose in the
darkness of movie theaters because her mother, youthful-looking Mrs.
Maria Gurdin, an ex-ballet dancer, used to pretend the cameras that
ground away in the last fade-out of the newsreel were focused on
Natalie. By the time she was eight she had appeared in court, calm and
collected, to squeeze a pay increase, up to $1000 a week, from her
studio.
The build-up toward an earful of Elvis began at breakfast in the
new Hilton hotel in Mexico City. A crowd of us had gone down for its
opening, including Nicky Hilton and Bob Neal, who qualified in trumps
for the phrase beloved of society gossip columnists, “a millionaire
playboy.” Over coffee, he came in and whispered that he’d just slashed
every tire on young Hilton’s automobile, “so Natalie will have to ride
with me.”
Limousines were to take us to catch a plane home to Los Angeles.
But Nicky foxed Bob. He took another car, and Natalie, to the airport. If
either of the two swains thought he’d furthered his cause, he was dead
wrong. En route, we landed for twenty-five minutes to refuel, and I
went with Natalie to the waiting room, where a mammoth jukebox
stood waiting to be fed. Like a thirsty traveler who’s reached the oasis,
she pumped nickels and dimes into the maw of the thing to make it
play Presley nonstop from the moment we arrived until we left.
She got as far as riding on the back of Elvis’ motorcycle and staying
with Elvis at his home “because I wanted a vacation and a rest—his
parents were there all the time.” But the passion soon faded. “Since
he’s in town, why don’t you see him?” I asked her soon after her
return.
She shrugged. “He’s busy and I’m working.” Did she think the
vogue for him would last? She shrugged again. “That depends on how
he does in his next picture.” Within a matter of weeks she had married
Robert Wagner.
This pair of newlyweds made lovebirds look like scorpions. This was
the couple that invented “togetherness.” In private or in public made no
difference; they held hands, kissed, clutched each other in an
altogether nauseating display of coltish affection. The fan magazines
drooled over Bob and Natalie as the symbol of all young lovers. They
bought a boat and painted it together. They bought a $175,000 house
with marble floors and went into debt together.
When Warners suspended her for eighteen months, she sat out her
time on the sets of Bob’s pictures, nuzzling him between takes. The
marriage lasted three years. In that time, the career of Bob Wagner,
who started out as a caddie carrying clubs for Bing Crosby and Spencer
Tracy at a Beverly Hills country club, slowed down considerably, while
his wife’s took wings. Togetherness turned into that delight of the
divorce attorneys, “mutual incompatibility,” and Natalie cut fan-
magazine interviews out of her life completely.
As an actress, she’s always been a child wonder. Orson Welles
remembers her vividly in her first major part, with him in Tomorrow Is
Forever: “She was so good she was terrifying. I guess she was born a
professional.” In her teens, when there was nothing better to do, she’d
collect a bunch of young actors together to improvise scenes with her,
which she immortalized on her tape recorder. On top of the world at
twenty-three, she drew $250,000 for West Side Story, with more
money promised from Warners.
She yearns to do more live TV, which her contract allows, as a
prelude to Broadway. “The last five minutes before you start, while
you’re waiting for the first cue, is like being poised on a roller coaster,
before it swoops down. When it’s over, you feel you’ve really
accomplished something.”
Off camera, she is a ninety-eight-pound kitten who gazes adoringly
upward from her 5 feet 2 inches at the current man who takes her
fancy. Warren Beatty jumped into that category when they worked
together in Splendor in the Grass, and he dumped Joan Collins after
two years of going steady. Joan turned down four pictures so she could
stay with her ambling heartthrob. They’d talked about a wedding.
This very sexy member of the new male generation came to me to
ask: “Do you think I should marry Joan?” He received a quizzical look.
“If you can put that question, you know the answer.”
Warren isn’t alone among young actors of any generation in having
an eye for the publicity mileage to be obtained from a newsy romance.
As for Natalie, she wasn’t talking about marrying anybody, by her
account. Like most young actresses, she can’t be taken seriously on the
subject. Two months before she married Bob Wagner, she was saying
much the same thing.
When she was seventeen, she had one concealed admirer who lost
fifty pounds in weight while the torch burned him. Raymond Burr
specialized in menace roles when they worked together in Cry in the
Night. She was the screaming heroine, he was the kidnaper who had
the audience chewing its fingernails down to the knuckle wondering
whether he would kill her or rape her before the final fade-out.
I had Ray literally at my feet when I met him for the first time. I
used to lunch most every day with Dema Harshbarger in the garden of
Ivar House, a restaurant now demolished which used to stand around
the corner from my office. One day a husky fellow was laying bricks in
the patio where we were sitting, and we had to keep moving our chairs
to make way for him.
I finally looked down and saw a handsome face and a very large
body. “You don’t look to me like a bricklayer,” said I.
“I’m not; I’m an actor.”
“Then what are you doing this for?” If looks could kill, I wouldn’t be
here, he was so mad. He quit his job that night and never laid another
brick.
Ray Burr enjoys food, to put it mildly. When he fell for Natalie, he
made up his mind to reduce. As the pounds melted off, he progressed
from heavy to hero, though he made no headway with her. And that’s
how lean, hawk-eyed Perry Mason was born. This I learned after he’d
been on the show for a year.
Most of the action in Hollywood today centers on television. In the
spring of 1962, only a half dozen motion pictures were in production
there, while TV studios churned out hour shows and half-hour shows
literally by the hundred. MCA alone owned 403 hour and 2115 half-
hour negatives. The majority of the new faces in town are television
faces—like Raymond Burr; like Chuck Connors, who went from baseball
bats to Winchesters; like Vincent Edwards, who describes himself as
“an eleven-year overnight sensation” after serving that long a stretch in
the wilderness of odd jobs.
Ten years ago, the movies treated television the way a maiden aunt
treats sex—if she doesn’t think about it, maybe it will disappear. But TV
grew into a giant, and now it’s the odds-on favorite in entertainment.
It’s the turn of television factories like MCA to declare, in Lew
Wasserman’s words: “We think the movie industry has made many
mistakes in judgment. It has refused to face up to the need for
progress in the entertainment industry.”
David Susskind, of Talent Associates, another TV production
company, can arrive in Hollywood to make a movie, remarking
pleasantly: “This town is dedicated to pap. Show business here is
founded on quicksand. The people are quick to take offense at criticism
because they have a guilt complex. They know they’re turning out
commercialized junk. Basically, they are ashamed of it, and they’re
defensive.”
Neither the television industry nor Mr. Susskind used to be quite so
cocksure, and working in TV was a lot more fun before the craze to put
every show on film. David got his start in our town as a junior publicity
man at Universal-International. He sat for three days in an agent’s
waiting room, trying for an interview with the boss before he clicked
and was invited to join the staff there.
“We don’t pay much—we’re a new business,” Al Levy told his new
boy in those days before Marty Melcher and Dick Dorso squeezed him
out of Century Artists.
“I must have $100 a week,” said David. “I’ve got two children to
support.” That was what the little fellow was paid, $100 and no more,
when he wet his feet as an agent’s assistant. After the breakup of
Century Artists over Doris Day, David aligned himself on Al Levy’s side
and went to New York with him in a shaky new business called Talent
Associates.
After a few months of getting nowhere, the company’s bank
balance had sunk to ten dollars. Al felt the fair thing to do was see
whether he could help David land another, more secure job elsewhere.
He introduced him to Sonny Werblen of MCA, and David enlisted in the
regiment of cold-eyed young men in charcoal-gray suits who are MCA’s
shock troops.
Over the next three and a half years Al Levy pounded a lot of
sidewalks. Television was still the runt of the entertainment industry.
Hollywood jeered at the little black box, with its nightly parade of
women roller skaters, bicycle riders, and grunt-and-groan artists in the
wrestling ring. In advertising agencies the money was in the big radio
shows—Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.
The head of the agency TV department was usually tucked away in a
windowless cubicle next to the mail room. Radio had networks
stretching from coast to coast, television was in the chrysalis stage,
centered in a few cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Talent Associates began to get lucky when it signed Janet Blair,
who’d been dropped by Columbia after seven years making pictures.
Levy had seen June Allyson do a movie song-and-dance number with
the Blackburn Twins. He put Janet in with the twins to make up a
similar act, which ultimately was booked into the Wedgwood Room of
the Waldorf-Astoria. Richard Rodgers saw Janet there, signed her for
the road company of South Pacific, which kept her going for three
years.
Al’s hustling meantime was paying off, though nobody was making
any fortune on the prices television paid. His agency put Wally Cox,
Tony Randall, Marion Lorne, and Jack Warden into the first of the
situation-comedy series, “Mr. Peepers”—with a price tag of $14,500,
which had to be stretched to pay for everything from script to hire of a
studio. The Associates also had the “Philco Playhouse,” an hour-long
dramatic series for which they were paid $27,000 to cover everything
but actual air time. “Playhouse” had stars like Eli Wallach, Eva Marie
Saint, Grace Kelly in Scott Fitzgerald’s “Rich Boy”—the finest talents in
the theater. I even did a couple of shows myself.
After three and a half years soldiering for MCA, David Susskind
received his marching orders. He hadn’t won any medals as a salesman
or contact man. He wanted to be a bigger noise than that. I suspect
that David’s ambitions spouted the day he was born. He talked over his
problems over breakfast in a Schrafft’s restaurant on Madison Avenue.
As a result, he was taken back into Talent Associates on a six-month
trial.
They had their offices in a six-room apartment on East Fifty-second
Street, rented for $210 a month. A secretary and switchboard operator
occupied the living room. The master bedroom was the main office. In
bedroom number two sat the script writers, pounding out “Mr.
Peepers.” The back bedroom comprised the quarters of Ernie Martin
and Cy Feuer, who had the space on a work-now-pay-later arrangement
while they labored to produce a show that developed into the
Broadway hit of the season, Guys and Dolls.
Ernie said to me not long ago, after he and his partner had five hits
in a row, including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying:
“Hedda, you made me $3,000,000.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never did any such
thing.”
“You drove me out of Hollywood,” he said. “I had to quit radio or
get an ulcer.” Then I remembered. Ernie, a CBS vice president at the
age of twenty-nine, was responsible for censoring my radio scripts for
my weekly show. I always popped in three or four items which I knew
hadn’t a hope in hell of getting on the air. I’d fight over those
paragraphs until the red light glowed and I was on. That kept Ernie and
his legal eagles so busy they didn’t have time to argue over the items I
really wanted to get off my chest.
The secretary in the living room doubled as cook in the kitchen for
luncheon. Meat balls and spaghetti were ladled out to the hungry mob
of writers, actors, and directors who haunted the place at mealtimes.
“Do you have to smell up the place with all that cooking?” Martin and
Feuer would steadily complain. But since they were on the free list until
later in the matter of paying rent, spaghetti and meat balls stayed on
the menu.
The business was loaded with talents, a bunch of enthusiastic
young men who had tremendous fun in the brand-new medium that
was just beginning to grow. There were directors who went on to earn
international reputations—Delbert Mann, Arthur Penn, Robert Mulligan,
Vincent Donehue. There were the writers who set the future pattern for
drama on TV—Paddy Chayevsky, David Swift, Horton Foote, James
Miller. There was Fred Coe as producer. And David, who developed an
itch to produce.
When his six-month trial was over, he was kept on for a further six.
Then Levy went into the hospital for a series of operations and stayed
out of the business for a year. Al Levy, who has since died, was a good
and dear man; he left a glow in every life he touched.
David, meantime, had turned from selling to producing, and he
proved himself to be good at it. He helped carry the business right to
the top in reputation and influence. But he wanted to make a louder
noise. He took on “Open End,” the TV gab fest, and fell flat on his face
more than once as a would-be Socrates, most notably when Nikita
Khrushchev decided to pay him a visit.
The most flabbergasted man in television when that happened was
David. On a previous show he’d had a panel of United Nations
diplomats, including a Russian. “I’d like to have Mr. Khrushchev himself
if he ever cares to come,” David said casually, as much as to say: “If
your wife’s coming to town, stop by for a drink sometime.”
One day his telephone rang. The Russians were happy to announce
that Khrushchev would be David’s guest. Within a matter of hours anti-
Communist pickets were parading outside Talent Associates, David’s
family needed police protection, and his own life had been threatened.
For the program, he armed himself with a few carefully prepared words
with which to prod Mr. K. and prove that David was no red flag waver.
But it was like a gadfly fighting back at the swatter. David did no good
for himself or America.
He would have been wiser to stick to easier targets like Hollywood,
most of whose inhabitants are personally too scared to hit back. He has
taken a swing at Dick Powell, Jerry Lewis, Rock Hudson, Gina
Lollobrigida, and Tony Curtis, and only Tony has ever come back
fighting. “I’ve never met Mr. Susskind,” said Tony, after David had
blasted him for having “no talent and no taste.” “And when I do I’m
going to punch him right in the nose.”
David, who is unfortunately seldom at a loss for words, had his
answer ready: “If I’m not the biggest admirer of Tony Curtis’ talent,
I’ve never questioned his virility or strength. He is, in my book, a
passionate amoeba.”
Playing in television, which used to be more fun than a picnic, is
more like a salt mine now. The latest generation of TV actors, if they
click in a hit program, slave six and seven days a week to keep the
series going. The new faces soon show signs of bags under the eyes
and crows’ feet.
“Ben Casey” is a case in point. Vincent Edwards, who plays the
surly, sexy young surgeon in that hour-long, weekly series, enjoyed one
day off in the first eight months of production. “We’re in such a bind,”
he told me, “we take seven days to shoot a show to keep up the
quality. And we’re only four shows ahead of screening time.”
He has the physique of a young bull, and he needs it. He started
building muscle as a young swimmer; won scholarships to Ohio State
and the University of Hawaii on the strength of his backstroke. Proving
again the old axiom that actors are healthiest when they’re out of jobs,
his idle years on Hollywood gave him time to go out to the Santa
Monica beaches to pick up a permanent sun tan and hoist seventy-five-
pound bar bells over his head.
He came in to see me wearing a dark suit, red T shirt, and red
socks. His lunch came with him—a mixture of carrot, papaya,
pineapple, and cocoanut juice, helped down with yoghurt and a
sandwich. “TV’s a marathon,” he said. “I think the grind probably
contributed to the death of Ward Bond on ‘Wagon Train.’ I arrive at the
studio at seven-fifteen in the morning, and I’m there until seven-fifteen
at night. By the time I’m cleaned up, it’s later than that when I get
away. On Friday nights it’s usually ten or eleven.”
He has an agent, Abby Greschler, who developed Martin and Lewis
in his earlier days and who was responsible for snagging the “Ben
Casey” assignment for the thirty-five-year-old giant born Vincent
Edward Zoine of Brooklyn. Abby is celebrated in our town for turning
away wrath whenever it arises. He interrupts any harsh words from his
clients by smiling ingratiatingly and asking: “Now how’re the wife and
kids?”
He can’t use this trick with Vince because somehow he’s escaped
marriage. “I’ve been at the starting gate a few times, but I rear up and
throw my head back. My most serious romances have been with
dancers.”
 “Why dancers?”
“They’ve always been so healthy, most that I’ve known. Julie
Newmar and I used to date off and on for years. She’s a health-food
addict, too; makes the most exotic salads.” Diet is a fetish with him.
“Foods in a natural state” are the mainstay. He recently showed signs
of interest in a girl, Sherry Nelson, who is a jockey’s widow but
addicted only to live horseflesh—they play the ponies at the track
together.
Besides an agent, he also had a pile of debts when “Ben Casey”
came his way. So Greschler booked him, for extra money, into things
like the Dinah Shore TV show, which demanded rehearsing at night
after the day’s stint on “Casey.” For those appearances he sings in a
surprisingly good baritone voice. He once did some ballads and rock ’n’
roll for Capitol Records. “Five years ago one called ‘Lollipop’ got up to
number three on the hit list, but we’ll forget that,” Vince said in my
office. “I’m afraid the image wouldn’t hold up under it.”
The “image” is an invention of himself and Abby Greschler. It’s
straight Madison Avenue talk, but it’s the immemorial style among
Hollywood agents to convince the public that every star is superhuman.
Casey is supposed to be what Vince has described as a “godlike kind of
man,” a mixture of Gable, Brando, and Albert Schweitzer. Just to liven
the picture up, Vince has got to be a maverick in his clothes, like the
red T shirt, the black shirt and slacks he sported for Dinah Shore.
Greschler has a three-year plan for his protégé which calls for the
two of them to form one or more corporations to produce movies with
Vince as their star. At the end of the period Dr. Ben will supposedly
finish up a millionaire. “If you have to make pictures, what would you
like to do?” I asked him.
“Anything but a doctor. I doubt if I’ll ever play one again. I’m so
identified with it. I’m only going to do it for three seasons.”
“You’ll do it for five, they’ll offer you so much money.”
“As I sit in this office, I will make a vow. I will say: ‘I’m sorry, I
pass. My health is more important.’”
 “Ben Casey” has one bit of pleasure he can count on. “I stay up
and watch my own TV show. I have to have some reward for all this
work.”

* * * * *
There is one face in entertainment that’s new and old
simultaneously. Old because it’s been around ever since Mickey Mouse
starred in Steamboat Willie. New because the old master has been
conjuring up a project—it tells American history with life-sized,
animated figures of our presidents—that’s as revolutionary as sound
was when Jolson sang “Sonny Boy.”
Walt Disney has held on tight to the common touch and contact
with everyday people. He maintains an apartment, furnished in
grandmother’s style, in one of the buildings overlooking Main Street at
Disneyland. On many a Saturday night Walt and his wife will sit up
there, tweaking back the lace curtains that cover the windows, gazing
at the crowds below like children watching a Memorial Day parade. It’s
a real bit of Americana up to date.
He doesn’t acknowledge that anything but clean, good-humored
pictures exist. He has never, to the best of my knowledge, sat through
a single reel of the off-color, highly seasoned imports from France,
Japan, and Italy that flood our screens today. By sticking to purity and
fun he makes more money than ever before—and spends it as fast as it
pours in.
He once almost lost Disneyland to the bankers who had extended
necessary construction loans. But he was saved by the gong. He made
a new picture, which earned more money than anyone had anticipated,
and the big bad wolves were foiled again. The only living soul that Walt
fights with is his brother Roy, who is the professional hard guy in
Disney Productions, doomed to keep on wailing: “Walt, you’re spending
too much money.”
My own modest contribution to the bank balance consisted of
badgering Walt for five years to reissue Snow White, since I was
convinced that a new audience grew up every season for his picturing
of this timeless classic. In the end, he was persuaded and showed his
thanks in the heaped-up basket of presents he sent my granddaughter
Joan every Christmas.
He insisted on throwing a birthday party at his studio for her, with
her whole school class, their mothers and teachers invited. We all
watched a special showing of some Disney cartoons, then made our
way to the party, which was held in Walt’s private penthouse atop the
studio building. As the presents were handed out to every guest, ice
cream and cookies devoured, cake cut with its miniature merry-go-
round playing “Happy Birthday,” I noticed a detail that Walt had
overlooked: the walls of the room had been adorned by Disney
cartoonists with murals of rather handsomely equipped females without
benefit of clothing.
One little fellow on the guest list wasn’t paying much attention to
the gifts or the goodies. His eyes were riveted on the naked girls. “I’ve
never seen ladies like that before,” he said when I went over to him. “I
like them. I think I’ll be an artist when I grow up.”
I relayed the incident, with a chuckle, to Walt. His permanently
raised eyebrows arched up an inch or so higher. “Oh, sure,” he grinned,
“I forgot all about those pictures. There was only one youngster staring
at them? Well, that’s all right. They won’t kill him.”
 Fifteen
Whenever I stand up to make a speech about Hollywood, there
is one question that’s ninety-nine per cent certain to pop up from the
audience before we’re through: “Is anybody in the movies happily
married?” The only answer I can give, of course, is another
question: “Who can possibly say, except the husbands and wives?”
I’ve been lied to many times when a marriage was crashing on the
rocks and nobody would admit it. Can’t say I blame them. A man
and his mate have the privilege of pretending that all is well up to
the bitter end, the way people do everywhere.
Three days before she filed suit to divorce Cary Grant, Barbara
Hutton said to me: “If only Cary and I could have a baby someday.
We both love children. We’d like to have at least three. We’re
praying, both of us. Maybe our dreams will come true.”
Barbara, Frank Woolworth’s granddaughter, was a shy, self-
effacing woman who allowed Cary to play lord of the manor in their
Pacific Palisades house, which had a staff of eleven servants. They
moved into it with her son of a former marriage, Lance Reventlow.
Cary had by far the biggest bedroom, complete with wood-burning
fireplace, beautiful antiques, private entrance, and a private
bathroom approximately the size of Marineland. Cary always liked his
creature comforts. And if she had dinner guests he didn’t care for, he
didn’t come down to dinner.
He asked me to kill the interview when Barbara called quits to
their marriage seventy-two hours after she talked to me. I did him
that favor. Then he married wife number three, Betsy Drake.
Number one, Virginia Cherrill, who later found a titled husband, was
the blonde in Charles Chaplin’s City Lights, and she lasted less than
twelve months with Cary. Barbara lasted five years.
With Betsy, he took up hobbies, from yoga to hypnosis. The
former Archie Leach, of Bristol, England, ex-stilts walker and chorus
boy, had Betsy hypnotize him into giving up liquor and cigarettes. He
subsequently gave up Betsy, who finally sued to divorce him.
When Joe Hyams wrote a series of articles quoting Cary as
saying he’d been seeing a psychiatrist, Cary denied that he’d said a
word to Joe. That outraged reporter promptly retaliated with a
$500,000 suit for slander. It came to an unusual but amiable
settlement: Cary agreed to have Hyams collaborate with him in
writing his memoirs and other articles, with Joe collecting the full
proceeds. Joe didn’t know how lucky he was going to be. Once he
got at a typewriter, Cary couldn’t be pried loose, asked for no help
whatever from his fellow author. So the actor did the writing, and
the writer drew the pay. I should be that lucky.
If yoga can’t hold a marriage together, confession sometimes
can. One cowboy star talked himself out of a jam for which a less
forgiving woman than his wife would have thrown him out on his
ear. Talking didn’t come hard to him. He was laconic on the screen,
loquacious off. He had some tall explaining to do when the scandal-
sniffing hound dogs on the staff of Confidential tracked him down on
a weekend at Malibu, spent in the company of one of our bustiest
blondes, and I don’t mean Jayne Mansfield.
The sensation hunters had compiled a timetable, at fifteen-
minute intervals; the precise time he and the girl arrived in his car;
the trip to do some shopping; the swim they took in the sea—every
detail of the three days, supported by the affidavits of witnesses.
There could be no disputing it. He couldn’t sue. Certain of that,
publisher Robert Harrison already had the story on the presses.
Howard Rushmore, the lanky, sad-eyed former Communist who
quit the New York Journal-American to edit Confidential, gave me
the tip two weeks before the issue of the magazine was due to hit
the newsstands. “I thought you’d like to know ahead of time,” he
said. “I know you’re fond of the guy, and you might like to warn
him.”
“It’s a horrible thing to have happen,” I said, “but I appreciate
your telling me.”
As soon as Rushmore left, I called the delinquent husband and
got him over to my house. “How could you do this, and just after
you’re reconciled with your wife?” I said. “If you wanted something
like that weekend, why did you go in a car that anybody can
recognize? Why didn’t you go further afield—to Santa Barbara,
Laguna, La Jolla?”
“I guess I was out of my mind.”
“You must have been. You and your wife are so happy now.”
“How can I tell her?”
“Tell her the truth. Ask her to say, when her dear friends come
to gossip, that she knows all about it, and it happened a long time
ago. If you’re lucky, she’ll forgive you.”
I heard from him within an hour. “I told her,” he said, “and she
was wonderful. Now things are better than ever.” And they remained
that way until his death.
There’s probably more temptation to the square mile in our town
than anywhere else on earth. A male movie star is bait to all seven
ages of women, including female movie stars. A good-looking, virile
male can take his choice among literally thousands of girls when it
comes to romance. Some of them go into it for thrills, some in the
hope of advancing their careers. Some of them get hurt, and some
do the hurting. Many sell themselves too cheaply, a few value their
favors too highly.
Gable could have had his pick of half the women in Hollywood
after the plane carrying Carole Lombard home from a defense-bond
drive crashed on Table Rock Mountain, Nevada. He couldn’t appear
in public or private without starting a near riot. They flocked around
him like moths around a candle—duchesses, show girls, movie stars,
socialites—name them, he could have had them. He had the knack
of taking just one look at a girl and flattering her to swooning point.
He looked like hundred-proof romance, and was, unless you knew
about his dental plates, a full upper and lower set. He hadn’t a tooth
of his own in his head.
As a newcomer to Hollywood, he’d faced the usual months of
torment having his teeth, which were in poor shape, fixed and
capped to repair the cavities and fill the gaps. There was one
difference between Clark and other recruits of his age group like
Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy, and Pat O’Brien. Clark had a rich wife
at the time in Ria Langham. On her money, he had all his teeth
yanked and a false set installed so natural-looking they deceived
almost everybody but a dentist.
The script of Command Decision, filmed long after Ria had made
her exit and he’d paid her a quarter of a million dollars for the
divorce, called for a slam-bang screen battle between Clark and
Walter Pidgeon, to be staged near a fire that was blazing outdoors.
The two of them mixed it up like heavyweights. In the middle of a
wild, openmouthed swing, Clark’s uppers and lowers went sailing out
of his jaw straight into the flames. He collapsed on the ground,
helpless with laughter. “They ought to see the King of Hollywood
now,” he gasped.
Clark’s dentures supplied me with the news beat that he was
about to join up as a private in the Air Corps; a friend of his dentist
tipped me off that he was making Clark an extra set of teeth, which
had to be finished before he left to enlist.
Before Clark was nabbed by Lady Sylvia Ashley, he took his fill in
high society. Millicent Rogers, married three times before, considered
him the one real man she’d ever known. The Standard Oil heiress’
first husband was a fortune hunter, an Austrian count who revealed
himself a hidden hero when he died at the Gestapo’s hands in
Budapest in 1944. Her second was “Lucky Arturo” Peralta-Ramos,
who won two French lotteries in a row then lost her. Number three
was a New York broker, who turned the tables by divorcing her.
Millicent enjoyed twelve unforgettable months with Clark before
she said good-by. In his affairs he always had to do the pursuing, as
any man should, but she made the mistake of pursuing him. If she
hadn’t revealed how much she loved him, she might have captured
him. Then he might have been spared the miserable year and a half
he had with Sylvia. Millicent sent him a farewell letter that put into
words the feelings of every woman for a man like this:

My darling Clark:
I want to thank you, my dear, for taking care of me last
year, for the happiness and pleasure of the days and hours
spent with you; for the kind, sweet things you have said to
me and done for me in so many ways, none of which I shall
forget.
You are a perfectionist, as am I; therefore I hope you will
not altogether forget me, that some part and moments of me
will remain in you and come back to you now and then,
bringing pleasure with them and a feeling of warmth. For
myself, you will always be a measure by which I shall judge
what a true man should be. As I never found such a one
before you, so I believe I shall never find such a man again.
Suffice that I have known him and that he lives....
You gave me happiness when I was with you, a happiness
because of you that I only thought might exist, but which
until then I never felt. Be certain that I shall remember it. The
love I have for you is like a rock. It was great last year. Now it
is a foundation upon which a life is being built.
I followed you last night as you took your young friend
home. I am glad you kissed and that I saw you do it, because
now I know that you have someone close to you and that you
 will have enough warmth beside you. Above all things on this
earth, I want happiness for you.
I am sorry that I failed you. I hope that I have made you
laugh a little now and then; that even my long skinniness has
at times given you pleasure; that when you held me, I gave
you all that a man can want. That was my desire, that I
should be always as you wished me to be.... Love is like birth;
an agony of bringing forth. Had you so wished it, my pleasure
would have been to give you my life to shape and mold to
yours, not as a common gift of words but as a choice to
follow you. As I shall do now, alone.
You told me once that you would never hurt me. That has
been true ... not even last night. I have failed because of my
inadequacy of complete faith, engendered by my own desires,
by my own selfishness, my own inability to be patient and
wait like a lady. I have always found life so short, so
terrifyingly uncertain.
God bless you, most darling Darling. Be gentle with
yourself. Allow yourself happiness. There is no paying life in
advance for what it will do to you. It asks of one’s unarmored
heart, and one must give it. There is no other way.... When
you find happiness, take it. Don’t question it too much.
Goodbye, my Clark. I love you as I always shall.

You may wonder why I am using this. Millicent gave me a copy

of this letter to read and asked if I thought she should send it to
Clark. I said: “By all means.” She never heard from him again, but I
think it is one of the most beautiful love letters I have ever read.
Millicent Rogers found nobody else, never married again. Clark,
on the other hand, got as far as proposing to another woman, Dolly
O’Brien, which was rare with him. Julius Fleischmann, with his yeast
fortune, stayed in love with his wife Dolly after she fell into the deep
end for handsome, polo-playing Jay O’Brien. When he agreed to a
divorce, he settled $6,000,000 on her. “I want you to be
comfortable,” he said. One year later Julius fell from his pony and
died on the polo field, leaving an estate of $66,000,000, which could
have been the former Mrs. Fleischmann’s if she hadn’t been in such
a hurry.
Dolly, blond, blue-eyed, and full of fun, lived in style. She
wouldn’t go on a train without taking along her own bottled water,
silk sheets, and bedding. She was a lot like Carole Lombard, and
Clark was searching for another Carole. When Dolly met him a few
years after Jay’s death, he thought he’d found the woman he
wanted as his wife. But Dolly turned him down. “We live in two
different worlds,” she told him. “You’re a rich actor, I’m a rich
woman. You like the outdoors, hunting and fishing, but I’m a luxury-
loving baby. Your life, frankly, would bore me to death.”
The aging male enjoys a far better time than the average aging
female. If he’s a big enough star, the producers throw him into
picture after picture playing opposite girls young enough to be his
daughters. Coop, Gable, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne—they all were
pitched into these June-and-December screen romances, and the
public finally rebelled. But Duke Wayne was the first with sense
enough to cry halt and insist on acting his age.
Too often the wives of both stars and producers haven’t enough
to do to keep them content and out of mischief. Their husbands go
to the studio and spend their day working with beautiful girls. The
girls, wanting better parts in pictures, will do virtually anything they
can to please them. Reality and normal values got lost. The men live
with both feet off the ground. They can have any girl they try for, as
easy as plucking a peach off a tree.
When they arrive home, they often find waiting a wife who can’t
compare with the studio girls in looks. She may be complaining—I’ve
heard it a thousand times—that she’s been stuck at home with only
the children and servants for company. “Why don’t you take me out
more? Why didn’t you tell me there was a party last night? Why do
you have to work so late so often?”
 It can get irksome. I am certain one reason for the flight of
movie making from Hollywood to Europe has been the pressing
desire for producers, writers, directors, and top-money stars to
escape from nagging wives. The wives, if they’re lucky, may be given
a week or so in Paris or Rome or London in the course of production.
Then back they go to the house and the children while the husbands
live it up for months on end. It’s a pattern that has set Hollywood on
its ear. And it’s crowded our divorce courts.
Louis B. Mayer married his first wife, Margaret Shenberg,
daughter of a Boston synagogue cantor, when he was nineteen and
earning a meager living as a scrap-metal dealer. He worked like a
stevedore, breaking into the entertainment business with a
nickelodeon in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where Margaret served
behind the wicket selling tickets.
Then he got into the production end of movies. He dealt now not
in old iron but glamour. He was the boss of gorgeous girls, the kind
he could only have dreamed about before. Margaret stayed home,
the Hausfrau, unable to keep pace with him. This was a Jewish
family with strong ties of faith and custom, and Louis waited a long
time before he flew the coop. But the outcome was inevitable.
Once in New York, before the final break came, he asked me,
since I wore smart clothes and was on his payroll, to take Margaret
out and make sure she bought some decent clothes. We shopped all
day, while she tried on dress after dress, always finding some fault,
usually the size of the price tag. When we’d finished, she had just
one package to show for our pains: a new girdle, which I insisted
upon.
She tried her best to hold him, but it was a million miles from
being good enough. She fell ill, and he put her into a sanitarium, but
she refused to stay. “This has come on me because I dieted,” she
told me. “Louis likes slim girls, and it’s left me like this.” She took a
suite in a New York hotel, with a sitting room overlooking Central
Park. Her behavior there grew more and more erratic. Her memory
wandered. She’d start a sentence, then break off and go on to
something else.
After a year she moved back to Hollywood, into an apartment
daughter Edie found for her. Louis wasn’t living with her by this time.
He had other social interests. One was a singer. Another was a
woman with a child for whom he bought a house in Westwood. Yet
another was a lovely chorus girl who hitchhiked from Texas and
joined the Ziegfeld Follies.
Louis fell hard for her. His courtship coincided with her romance
with a big agent, though Mayer didn’t know about that at first. His
suspicions were aroused shortly before he was due to leave on a trip
to Europe, where she was to join him in Paris. Before he left he put
a detective on her trail. The private eye’s sealed report crossed the
Atlantic ahead of the girl, but Louis restrained himself from opening
the envelope until the next morning after she had joined him. The
battle royal that broke out then exploded Louis’ plans to marry her,
so she married the agent.
Mayer’s revenge was to bar the bridegroom from MGM and
persuade some of his pals at other studios to follow suit. The
bridegroom had a hard time of it for quite a few years. Then Louis
met Lorena Danker, an ex-dancer thirty years younger than he was
and the widow of an account executive at the J. Walter Thompson
advertising agency. He had already divorced Margaret, which cleared
the way for Mrs. Danker to become the second Mrs. Louis B. Mayer.
Now she’s Mrs. Michael Nidorf. After she married Mayer, he adopted
the daughter she’d borne Danny Danker; Louis left her half a million
dollars in his will.
Other producers and big shots habitually took their cue from
Louis, who carried a lot of weight in our town. He was the emperor
who set the social pattern. So long as he stuck by Margaret Mayer,
they stuck by their wives, too. But Louis’ divorce, after forty years of
marriage, let them loose. In the next few months there were more
top-level divorces than there’d been for years before.
 Divorce has made sensational headlines and spicy dinner-table
gossip from the days when a former Denver bellhop catapulted into
fame with a sword in his hand and dagger in his teeth as Douglas
Fairbanks. His first wife, Beth, was the daughter of Daniel Sully,
otherwise known as the Cotton King of Wall Street. As a wedding
present, her father gave her a beautiful string of pearls, which kept
the Fairbankses going year after year, when Doug was a struggling
Broadway actor.
When the larder was bare, she’d pawn the pearls and redeem
them again as soon as Doug got into another play. Those pearls also
paid for many a trip to Europe. The Fairbankses lived at the
Algonquin Hotel in New York, which bulged with actors, from Jade
Barrymore to John Drew. Included among the residents was Hedda
Hopper with the only husband she ever had. In the lobby I used to
stop to chat with a little boy with a frightened manner, kept forever
under the wing of his mother or his nurse—Douglas, Jr., whom his
father had determined should never get into show business.
Beth found the Hoppers their first Hollywood house when we
followed the Fairbankses out to that never-never-land where it
seemed that the rainbow had finally come to earth and deposited a
crock of gold for everybody. Some years after that a brisk little
blonde named Mary Pickford got herself a bungalow in a Beverly
Hills canyon. Doug, Sr., was a gentleman caller. Beth and I used to
walk past the place, but she didn’t know who was inside. I did. One
day my heart turned somersaults when she peered through a
window. She saw nothing amiss. But after that I steered our walks in
a different direction. Beth was ever unsuspecting about sex. Her own
blood ran cool. She claimed Doug spent too much time practicing
handsprings and jumping over barns to be an effective lover.
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.”
She answered: “What could I do? I couldn’t say anything. It
would have spoiled the party.”
 Not all Doug’s money was left to Sylvia. Douglas, Jr., was more
than comfortably off when he married Mary Lee Epling, divorced wife
of financier Huntington Hartford. They live in old-world style in a
small London town house with their three daughters. Douglas, Jr.,
does not stray from the hearthstone. They are extremely social, with
British and European royalty and ambassadors of all nations,
including one of our own, Winthrop Aldrich, who had a penchant at
parties for pinching old ladies in the Latin fashion. They absolutely
adored it—no one had paid them such attention for years.
Hollywood has all the excuses you find anywhere for divorce—
boredom, egotism, emotional immaturity, and the rest. It also has
some special reasons of its own—press agents who can get bigger
headlines with a scandal than with a happy home life; producers
who resent a husband or wife “interfering” in a star’s business;
managers who stop at nothing to hold onto their percentages.
Elsewhere in the world, children are usually a bond that holds
parents through many a squabble. But that’s not always the case in
the Empire of Guff, which was one of Gene Fowler’s labels for us.
This is a hard, rocky place for a child to grow up in. Some of
them don’t know who their fathers really are because they’ve had so
many in the family. They’re brought up by nurses, cooks, and
chauffeurs instead of parents because mother and father are too
busy to give them any time. All the children can be spared is money,
which is a stone to suck on when a child needs love.
Eddie Robinson, Jr., was spoiled. His mother, Gladys—the first
Mrs. Robinson, Sr.—was never allowed by her husband to lay a hand
on the boy. At thirteen he “borrowed” other people’s cars without
asking. He has been in one automobile accident after another. Now
he has a wife and child, whom Gladys helps support. Edward G.
Robinson couldn’t be accused of being stingy toward his son,
however, since he continued to make Junior an allowance of $1000 a
month.
Dixie Lee Crosby brought up her four sons strictly but well. Bing
somehow found other things he had to do, so the children didn’t see
a lot of their father. Dixie had problems in her pregnancies, when
she virtually was forced on to brandy to survive. She had to stay
home, sick, when Bing sailed off to Paris at the time Queen Elizabeth
was crowned, taking Lindsay with him and having a gay old time.
The boy went to London to see the coronation and stayed with the
Alan Ladd family at the Dorchester. Bing was having too much fun in
Paris to leave. Lindsay was the youngest and sweetest of the four
sons. Like Gary, Philip, and Dennis, he started whooping it up the
minute Dixie’s restraint was lifted.
Henry Ginsberg for a while attempted to be a kind of foster
father to the Crosby boys, inviting them to use his apartment as a
second home while Bing was courting Kathy Grant. Finally Henry got
tired of their drinking and other night-owl habits which brought them
to his door at two and three o’clock in the morning. “I like you, but I
can’t put up with it any longer,” he said, and the door was closed to
them.
I have seen the frightening looks given to her mother, Lana
Turner, by Cheryl Crane, who was found guilty of stabbing Lana’s
good friend, the hoodlum muscle man, Johnny Stompanato. I’ve
argued with Joan Crawford after she told the oldest girl of her four
adopted children that she had to leave home. “This at a time when
she needs love and protection most?”
“She’s a wild girl with no respect for anything,” snapped Joan.
I know one young girl, the daughter of one of our most married
stars, who fell madly in love with her mother’s fourth husband and
made up her mind to steal him away by hook or crook. She went to
her mother and said: “He tried to make love to me.”
This was a lie, but the woman believed her daughter. “Get out of
my house!” she raged at her husband. “How dare you do such a vile
thing?”
“Did she tell you that?” he said, appalled. “Are you willing to take
her word against mine? You remember how old she is, don’t you?
She’s fourteen.”
 “I believe her.”
“Then I’ll go. But I’ll tell you this—you’re going to have more
sorrow through that girl than you’ve believed possible in this world.
You’ll see.” He proved to be an accurate prophet.
Divorce is often an inherited affliction, passed on from mother to
daughter, father to son, like hemophilia among the Hapsburgs.
Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Doris Day, and a dozen more came
from broken homes. Their own chances of success as wives may
well have been blighted. The children of Hollywood’s broken
marriages inherit a tradition of trouble. As an example, take a look
at the Fonda family tree.
I used to wonder how Henry Fonda could so much as cut his
meat when he sat at the table next to mine when we were fellow
passengers aboard the boat sailing from Southampton to New York.
His table mate was Mrs. Frances Seymour Brokaw, whom he’d met
in London, and she was so stuck on him that I doubt she let go of
his hands for more than five minutes at a time all the way across the
Atlantic.
Hank had already tried marriage once, and so had she. Mr.
Brokaw had been the husband of Clare Boothe before she married
Henry Luce, the founder of Time and Life. Hank had been the
husband for two years of Margaret Sullavan.
Frances Brokaw was the second Mrs. Fonda—the knot was tied
in 1936—and the mother of two children: Jane, born in 1937; and
Peter, who arrived in 1940.
There is a darker inheritance than divorce. As man and wife, the
Fondas were seemingly happy for years. But Frances was
increasingly possessive, and though no divorce suit ever was filed,
Hank wanted his freedom to marry Susan Blanchard. In April 1950,
Frances took her life in a Beacon, New York, sanitarium, after cutting
Hank completely out of her $500,000 will.
The first Mrs. Fonda, Margaret Sullavan, went on to three other
marriages; to director William Wyler in 1934; to producer Leland