Hill of beans, p.7
Hill of Beans, page 7
In real life the situation was reversed because Elda had married this Hopper who was a womanizer with four or five wives already. Elda was not happy—and not so virtuous, as I can tell you from the horse’s mouth. I do not wish to spread stories, which is also ironical, since that is what after her divorce and with her new name she has spent most of her time on the stage of life doing, but the plain fact is that for the next two years we were paramours. And later on, afterward, now and then my phone would ring when she was down in the dumps because she, like a number of ladies, knew that Abdul was something of a Turkish delight.
So it was a pleasure for me and for her, I think, when we saw each other twenty-four hours ago at Union Station.
Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: December 1941, Los Angeles
After that sneak Jap attack yesterday, Hollywood is mad as hell—pardon my French—and you can bet that half the town has already fired their bucktoothed gardeners. Everyone I talked to, and that means Joel McCrea and Gary Cooper and that glamor girl Betty Field, is rolling up their sleeves and is absolutely certain their country will come out victorious. That doesn’t include Brit Charlie Chaplin, who tried to stir up trouble between Germany and the U. S. of A. with that silly dictator picture. He’d have been a lot smarter if he’d listened to that other Charlie, and I do mean the greatest navigator of the century, about who our real enemies are.
There is not a single American from sea to shining sea who will not remember for quite some time what they were doing at eleven a.m. yesterday morning: Spencer Tracy, for instance, and Irene Dunne, who were at the christening of Pat O’Brien’s newest. As for little old Hedda, you could have spotted me in the beautiful garden at Union station, waiting for the Super Chief to get in from Chicago. I was eager to take a gander at the mysterious new Warners star, Karelena Kaiser, who flew in to New York on the Lisbon Clipper just a few days ago. What a story she has to tell! Seems that her poppa was a big pal of Jack Warner, who has looked after her like a godfather ever since her dad’s accidental death. You can believe there was plenty of intrigue in her hasty departure. Herr Goebbels, the dashing head of the film industry in prosperous new Germany, had big plans for this exciting headliner and had taken a personal interest in her career. But he graciously allowed her to fly away after a lot of pleading by the man she calls Uncle Jack—and maybe a bit of arm-twisting by FDR.
Speaking of “that man,” I saw an old friend, Abdul Maljan, who I happen to know shows up in our nation’s capital whenever the president’s condition—don’t you forget that he is stuck in a wheelchair—acts up on him. Abdul came to this country as a very young man and was a championship boxer and starred in silent films. I wouldn’t know myself, but others claim he has magic in his fingers. Abdul was there to meet the same train, along with his boss, Jack Warner, who was holding a beautiful bunch of calla lilies.
Just as we were starting toward the platform, a gorgeous blonde came sprinting up to our little party and threw herself into the arms of the Warner Bros. chief. “Uncle Jack,” she cried. “Oh, Uncle Jack!” Those lilies flew everywhere. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
It was at that very moment, wouldn’t you know it, that everybody began running this way and that and gathering wherever they could find a radio, and a voice came over the loudspeaker system to announce that the United States Navy had been attacked in Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan. You could have knocked over this girl from Hollidaysburg, Pa., with a feather. The whole room began to spin and the strangest thoughts popped into my mind, like the news that Claudette Colbert was given a toy French poodle named Lulu Belle by husband Joel Pressman. The announcer was saying that thousands of American sailors were treacherously murdered, a tragedy so enormous that a gal can only comprehend it by comparing it to the more inconsequential misfortunes of her own—such as how when I tried to shine up my brand-new copper kettle I foolishly took off all the lacquer that had been put on to preserve its pristine glory and, lo and behold, next day it was black as my hat. I said to Moli, “That will teach me to keep my nose out of your department!”
I was awakened from this sad reverie by a shout. The crowd was chasing a little yellow Jap who had been pretending to prune the roses in the garden. They had him against a wall and were giving him what for and in my opinion it served him right. Isn’t it about time that we put America First?
Well, you’ve got to admit your correspondent had quite a day! And so did all of the U. S. of A. Now I’m going to sign off by offering the one pearl of wisdom—
The Terrible Turk: December 1941, Los Angeles
Play golf! You’ve heard that pearl already. And Go to the movies.
Some of what Hedda wrote was true. The Chief and the Terrible Turk were there to meet Miss Kaiser’s train. And the Chief had flowers, but they were only a bouquet of daisies and pansies I bought in the station shop. He doesn’t like to spend more than he has to. Also true: that we heard about the sneak attack over the public address system. But no one said anything about thousands of murdered sailors. That came later. The crowd did chase a man out of the garden. No one knew for sure he was Japanese. But they were kicking him and punching him as if he definitely was. I like a fair fight. So I was going to go over there and give him a hand and maybe a fist, but Hedda held onto my arm. I thought she was going to faint if I let her go. So the Americans had their way with that poor fellow.
What Hedda got wrong was the girl. She did come running toward us from the platform, but she went right by the Chief and into the arms of a man with curly hair and a shabby brown suit. That was the German, Engelsing, we’d brought over to make into a movie star earlier this year. He bent her over and kissed her, and she, like a scene in the movies, was kissing him back. That’s when the loudspeakers came on and made their announcement. The Chief just stood there, still holding his flowers and saying, “Pearl Harbor? Sunday? But that’s what I told FDR. I warned him. How come he didn’t know?”
8
THE FÜHRER’S DECISION
Goebbels: First Day of May 1945, Berlin
Here at last is Stumpfegger, mit Zigaretten und Zyanid. A handshake. Then off he goes to the children, the little glass capsules rattling in his pocket. How many cigarettes? Three. I thought I would pounce on them: to light up, to inhale, to blow out the figures of smoke. No greater joy on this earth. But here I sit staring at them as if they were wooden sticks. I suppose I have become addicted, not so much to cigarettes themselves but to Virginia tobacco. We had discussed how we might grow this strain in Romania or in Morocco. Morocco, where we missed our chance to win the war. On my desk: these three pieces of German Scheisse.
How many times did I tell the Führer that it was a mistake to deprive the civilian population of its pleasures? Especially after Stalingrad. He wanted to water the beer and not inform the people it was being done. I talked him out of that mistake. Less luck with the anti-smoking campaign. The Führer had come to hate tobacco. He said it was the red man’s revenge on the white man and that it damaged the ability of the German woman to reproduce. What else can one expect from a man who never had a beer and would not smoke? Who shoveled that mush down his gut?
I see that I, too, have joined the latest dance, leaping up to criticize the Führer the minute he is no longer with us. I should pull out my Mauser and shoot myself, the same way I would shoot anyone else I caught in such an act. This remains true even when I consider him not as a god but as a man made of bone and human flesh.
But he was a god. No woman has ever made me feel what I did, and still do, for Adolf Hitler. I still remember what I wrote in my Tagebuch when I first saw him:
Those large blue eyes! Like stars!
I thank Fate, which brought us the Führer. He gave us the gift of hate—both the hatred our enemies feel for us and the hatred we have for them: may it burn forever in our hearts.
But the man of bone? Of flesh?
No thought of that without this first cigarette. The smoke, so calm. Curling and curling. Contemplate it. Do not go mad. An axiom: the Führer is a human being. Human beings make mistakes. Ergo. . . . Ergo. I must draw this shit deep into my lungs. Ergo: the Führer made mistakes. One, above all others, has led to the destruction of a Reich that might have lasted a thousand years. Aborting the attack at Dunkirk? Allowing Göring to cripple the Luftwaffe? Delaying, delaying, delaying Sea Lion? These are nothing. In the end, the great mistake—
A tremendous blast. Right on top of our heads. Loud enough to wake the children, whether they are in this world or the next. Lights out. Silence. Dust falling on the back of my hands.
They gaze on me. I am filled with delight.
Intoxication! Enslavement!
Ah, the ventilators have started once more to hum. Come, come: now the electric lights.
Was it the Jews? Was that our mistake? Should we have smiled on them and caressed them and encouraged them to build us an atomic weapon? Never. For come what may, that is the war we have won. This victory alone allows me to leap laughing into my grave.
I know what history will say. That we were doomed on the night we invaded the Bolshevik lair. History will be wrong.
JUNE 1941, BERLIN
Like good doctors, we gather at the bedside of a sickly Europe. We are ready to insert the catheter that will drain the pestilence from the entire continent. Stalin knows it. He trembles, as if with palsy. His double game has come to its end. As the hour approaches, all in this room instinctively turn toward the east, the way the followers of Islam turn at the time of prayer. In our new Mecca, the age-old plague, and the rats that have carried it, are about to be exterminated.
The moment arrives. The Führer approaches and bestows on me a healthy, confident smile; in his eyes, which gaze into mine, there is nothing but steely determination and complete commitment. He says: “Right or wrong we must win. It is the only way. Victory is not only right, it is necessary. And once we have won, who is going to question our methods? In any case, we have so much to answer for already that we have no choice but to emerge victorious. If we do not, our nation—with us at its head—and all we hold dear, will be eradicated. So, to work!”
FIRST DAY OF MAY 1945, BERLIN
Not Dunkirk. Not Sea Lion. And not the Jews. Nor was it Barbarossa that brought on our defeat. We could have sustained the losses in the east if only we had avoided the catastrophe in the west. Why did we not? In 1941, during the heady days of July, August, even September, no one paid much attention to the increasing aggression of our Axis partner. If anything, the prevailing opinion in Ribbentrop’s ministry was that an outright war between America and Japan would lead to a favorable outcome for the Reich. Even the Führer believed such a development would be a gift from heaven—that once the Americans became engaged in the Pacific, they would not be able to pursue hostilities with us. I confess I was not immune from such thinking. But as we moved from a triumphant summer to a more dubious fall, my thoughts began to change:
What if the United States should enter the war not only against Japan but against the Reich? That would force us to fight precisely the conflict that every German statesman, and above all Bismarck, has always dreaded: a war on two fronts.
Look what I have done: lit a second cigarette from the burning butt of the first. And I swore to Magda I would never perform that trick again. It’s what the Faulenzer do, when lying in the gutter.
Well, I am in the gutter now.
Still I ask myself: How did what we most feared come to pass? It wasn’t that we did not know the intentions of the Empire of Japan. In the month of November, the Sicherheitsdienst informed us of three key things: Naito, their naval attaché, had left Berlin for Taranto to study how British aircraft had destroyed half the Italian fleet with torpedoes; that shallow water maneuvers had taken place in Kagoshima Bay; and that our ally had developed a new airborne weapon with stabilizing fins. Obviously they were planning a harbor offensive. Then, toward the end of that month, the last straw: Ott cabled from Tokyo that Yamamoto and the Japanese fleet, with submarines, had either sailed or were about to sail from northern Japan. What no one at the Reichkanzlei or anywhere else in Germany knew was where that fleet was about to go: Manilla? Singapore? The Dutch East Indies?
No one, that is, save for the Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. That was the fortunate result of my decision to take over our film industry. We had no choice but to interest ourselves in what our competitors were doing in Hollywood. Gyssling, our consul there, and a former Olympian, had many friendly contacts in Los Angeles, including the cartoonist Disney. But much of his information came from a certain Klatschkolumnistin who from the late thirties onward became more and more sympathetic to our cause. On the occasion of Frau Riefenstahl’s visit to Hollywood, she was the only one to protest our filmmaker’s treatment by the reigning fraternity of Jews.
Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: December 1938, Los Angeles
Young Doug Fairbanks has been rushing Zorlina in New York. Cafe society claims there was no problem when Marlene Dietrich arrived. He carried the torch for her a long time, but even torches go out.
Leni Riefenstahl, supposed to be Hitler’s erstwhile girlfriend, can’t even get a peek through the keyholes of our town. The studio execs have closed them tighter than a drum, especially since all that fuss a few weeks ago in Berlin when the shops of their co-religionists had some of their windows broken and a few beards got pulled. As if our guest in Hollywood had anything to do with that. I ask you: What price justice?
Goebbels: First Day of May 1945, Berlin
Yes, we pulled a few beards on that night. The masterstroke: the Jews had to pay for their own broken glass. A billion Reichsmarks. This will remain one of the great jokes of the century. But it was false to say that Riefenstahl was the Führer’s mistress. A good thing for the Reich, or we would not have been able to give the world Triumph of the Will or Olympia. And a good thing for Riefenstahl, since all his actual mistresses have ended their lives—or had them ended.
Time for the third cigarette. The last for the condemned man. Can I put it off until the gallows? Let me make the attempt. This will be a true Triumph des Willens.
Gyssling was expelled from America after we stupidly sank that Robin Moore vessel. But our ministry kept a faithful eye on Frau Hopper’s columns. Not only was she drawing closer and closer to the ideals of National Socialism, but it began to dawn on me that buried in her Klatschblatt were certain pieces of information she was well aware we might like to read.
Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: February 1941, Los Angeles
Hugh Herbert and Bob Cummings are trying to get even with Nancy Kelly. She borrowed their hankies and put lipstick stains on them. What a time they had explaining!
I was knocked for a loop last night when the new Academy Award nominations came out. That Dictator picture got five of them, including three for noncitizen Charlie Chaplin for best picture, and best writer, and best actor. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, considering the people who have most influence in this town and what their goals are for the good-old U. S. of A.
They say people get a good laugh out of that movie, but this gal under the hat thought it was practically a call to arms. Nobody asked me but I don’t see how anyone in their right mind would want America to get into this unnecessary European dust-up. I’m willing to fight and die for the little patch of Pennsylvania land that my great-great-aunt Furree got from William Penn, but not in far-off lands whose peoples share our values and way of life. Would the MAN whose resurrection we celebrate each spring want us to kill young, clean-cut boys and destroy great cities? I fear that our Christian nation is going to get dragged into a war by those who live and work among us but who are not even Christians themselves.
Here’s a tip for the restless sex. Rudy Vallee is arriving in town girl-less. Line forms at the right!
I’m still in such a dither about that Chaplin picture that I’ve decided to tell a story I thought I had best put in a drawer. It seems that for years Charlie’s Japanese chauffeur had to sit in his master’s car, ready to whisk the little tramp wherever he wished to go. Only once did he drive him to the wrong address. The supposed friend of the working class went into a real snit and said, “Don’t you dare start driving until you are sure exactly where I want to go.” A few days later Charlie came rushing down to his car and said, “Take me to the ocean.”
Kono, the chauffeur, sat looking at his employer. “Atlantic or Pacific?” he asked.
Isn’t that a scream? And that little Japanese fellow had a lot more to tell me besides that.
The other day at Mike Romanoff’s joint over on Rodeo Drive I heard someone give a cheery “Hello, Hedda!” and when I turned around there in the next booth was Bette Davis, wearing a neckline that plunged deeper than Bill Beebee’s bathysphere. And we were only eating lunch!
Speaking of oceans, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, together with all those Andrews Sisters and star Dick Powell, will be sailing to the Hawaii Theater for the premiere of In the Navy. Wait till you see the madcap maneuvers of the battleship Alabama at the end of the picture. I expect when fully commissioned, she’ll make port in Hawaii, too—along with all those other big ships sitting there in Pearl Harbor.
Well, I’ve already given you my two cents on this subject, so I might as well make it three! The element in our industry so eager to reward a picture that makes such fun of the leader of a friendly and orderly country—as Molly says to Fibber, “T’ain’t funny, McGee!”—ought to look over their shoulders to see where the real threat to our nation is coming from. It certainly isn’t from the land of lederhosen! I’m looking into my crystal ball and predicting that when the awards come out, Mr. C. Chaplin won’t win a single one. That’s because everyone knows we go to our theaters for a little relief and amusement. Why not give us cheerful, happy romance and adventure? These leave us with a song in our hearts, which is the best way I know to get us back the next night—for more!
