"It won"t last long enough for him to grow into it." Ben was always honest with her, although he was sad to see her sell it. But there was just no point in keeping it anymore. Her father was gone, as was her brother Phillip, who might actually have done good things with it, and George had already demonstrated his lack of interest.
The de Youngs turned them down summarily, but in a matter of a month, they got an offer from a publishing group in Sacramento. They had been looking for a San Francisco paper to buy for quite some time, and the Telegraph Sun fit the bill perfectly. They made Edwina a decent offer, and Ben suggested that she take it.
"Let me think about it." She hesitated, and he told her not to drag her feet, or the people in Sacramento might change their minds. The money they offered her was not fabulous, but it would allow her to live on it for the next fifteen or twenty years, and educate her remaining brother and sisters. "And then?" she asked Ben quietly. "What happens after that?" In twenty years, she was going to be forty-seven years old, with no husband, no skills, and no family to take care of her, unless George or one of the others decided to support her. It was hardly an idea that appealed to her, and she had to think about that now. But on the other hand, keeping the paper wasn"t a solution either.
It made Ben feel sorry for her, but he would never have said as much to her. "You have time over the next several years to make some investments, to save money. There are a lot of things you could do, with time to think about it." And things that she could have done too, like marry him or anyone else. But at twenty-seven, marriage no longer seemed likely. She was far past the marrying age by then. Women just didn"t suddenly get married at twenty-seven. And she no longer thought about it at all. She had done what she had to do, and that was that. She had no regrets. And it was only for the merest moment when George left that she looked into his face and saw the sheer excitement there, and felt as though life had somehow pa.s.sed her by. But it was crazy to feel that, she knew. And she had gone home from the station with Fannie and Alexis and Teddy, and gotten busy with them on a project they were making in the garden.
She wouldn"t have known what to do in Hollywood anyway, with all the movie stars and people he wrote to them about now. He made them roar with laughter with tales of women trailing rhinestones and furs, with wolfhounds running behind them, one of whom had lifted his leg on a starlet"s pet snake, causing a near riot on the first set he"d been invited on. He was already having a good time, and he was knee-deep in the movie world within days of his arrival. His friend"s uncle had actually come through, as promised, and had given him a job as an a.s.sistant cameraman, learning the trade from the ground up. And in two weeks he was going to be working on his first movie.
"Will he be a movie star one day?" Fannie had wanted to know shortly after he left. She was ten years old, and it all seemed fascinating to her. But it was even more so to Alexis, who, at twelve, was already a beauty. She had grown up to be even more beautiful than she"d been as a child, and her wistful reticence made her look almost sultry. It frightened Edwina sometimes to see how remarkable the child was, and how people stared when she took her out, and it still seemed to frighten Alexis. She had never really fully recovered from her parents" death. And the blow of Phillip"s being killed as well had made her seem even more remote. And yet, with Edwina, she was always outspoken and intelligent and a.s.sured, but the moment there were strangers around her, she still panicked. And she had had an almost eerie attachment to George before he left. She followed him everywhere, and she sat on the stairs sometimes for hours at night, waiting for him to come back from parties. Ever since Phillip had died, she had clung to George, as in the distant past, she had clung to her parents.
She was anxious to know if they would go to Hollywood to visit him, and Edwina promised her they would, although he had promised to come up and visit them for Thanksgiving.
It was shortly before that when the paper finally sold, to the Sacramento people who"d wanted it. And dragging her feet had succeeded in bringing Edwina more money. It was a decent sum, but it was not a fabulous amount, and she knew that now she"d have to be even more careful. There would be no new clothes, new cars, no expensive trips anywhere, none of it things she would miss in any case. All she needed was enough to bring up the children. But it was emotional for her anyway, when the newspaper sold. And she went down on the last day before the sale, to sign the papers in her father"s old office. It was occupied now by the managing editor he had left in his place. But in everyone"s mind it was still Bert Winfield"s office. And there was a picture of her on the wall as a child, standing next to her mother. She took it down, and looked at it. The rest of his things had been packed long since, and now she put this last photograph away, wrapped up carefully, and she sat down and signed the final papers.
"I guess that"s it." She looked up at Ben. He had come in specially to watch her sign them, and complete the transaction, as her attorney.
"I"m sorry it had to be this way, Edwina." He looked at her and smiled sadly. He would have liked to see Phillip running it, but then again, so would Edwina.
And then as he walked out, "How"s George?"
She laughed before she answered, remembering the absurdities of his last letter. "I don"t think he"s ever been happier. It all sounds a little mad to me. But he loves it."
"I"m glad. This wasn"t for him." He didn"t say it, but in his opinion George would have destroyed the paper.
They stood outside the paper for a long time, and she knew she would see him about other matters she consulted him on, but he walked her slowly to her car and helped her in with a feeling of nostalgia. "Thank you for everything." She said it softly. He nodded, and she started the car, and drove slowly home, feeling sad. She had just given up the paper her father had so deeply loved. But with him gone ... and Phillip gone ... it was finally the end of an era.
Chapter 24.
GEORGE CAME HOME FOR THANKSGIVING AS PROMISED, FULL of wild tales and crazy stories of even crazier people. He had met the Warner brothers by then, and seen Norma and Constance Talmadge at a party, and he regaled the children with tales of Tom Mix and Charlie Chaplin. It was not that he knew any of them well, but Hollywood was so open, so alive, so exciting, and the film industry so new, it was open to everyone, he claimed, and he loved it. It was exactly what he had wanted.
His friend"s uncle, Sam Horowitz, sounded like a character as well, and according to George, he was a shrewd businessman and knew everyone in town. He had started the most important studio in Hollywood four years before, and he was going to own the whole town one day, because he was so smart about what he did, and everybody seemed to like him. George described him as a big man, in stature as well as importance, and the fact that he had a very pretty daughter wasn"t entirely lost on Edwina. According to George, she was an only child, who"d lost her mother as a little girl in a train disaster in the East, and she had grown up alone with her adoring father. He seemed to know a lot about the girl, but Edwina refrained from making comments as he told them one amusing story after another.
"Can we come and see you sometime?" Teddy asked with adoring eyes. His brother was a big man to him, more important even than a movie star! And George reveled in their excitement over what he was doing. It wasn"t that he was that fascinated with the technical end of it, and being an a.s.sistant cameraman was only temporary, he a.s.sured them all, but one day he wanted to produce the films and run the studio, the way Sam Horowitz did, and he was sure he could do it. Sam had even promised him an office job within a year if he behaved himself and was serious about the business.
"I hope you work harder than you did at the newspaper," Edwina reminded him, and he grinned.
"I promise, Sis. Harder than at Harvard too!" He was penitent about his sins, and he had found something he really loved. She was only sorry Phillip hadn"t lived to see what his brother had undertaken. But then again, if Phillip were alive, George would probably still have been cutting cla.s.ses at Harvard.
The war had ended a few weeks earlier, and Edwina and he talked about it during his few days in San Francisco. It seemed cruel that their brother had died only a year before. All of it seemed so senseless. Ten million dead among all the Allied countries, and twenty million maimed. It was a staggering toll that was difficult to even conceive of. And talking about the war in Europe reminded her that she hadn"t heard from Aunt Liz in a long time, and she wanted to write to her, to tell her about George"s new life in Hollywood, and give her news of the other children. She had been desolate when Edwina wrote to tell her of Phillip"s death the year before, but she had hardly written to them since. Edwina imagined that it was because it had been so difficult to get letters out of England.
She wrote to her after George went back to Los Angeles, and it was after Christmas before she got an answer. By then, George had come home again, to celebrate the holidays with them, and tell them more stories about the stars he"d seen. Edwina noticed several more mentions of Helen Horowitz during his brief stay with them, and she suspected that George was very taken with her. She wondered if she should go down and visit him there or let him enjoy his independence without intruding. In a way, he was half boy, half man. At nineteen, he considered himself the consummate sophisticate, and yet she knew that in his heart of hearts, he was still a child, and perhaps he always would be. It was what she loved about him the most. When he was home he played endlessly with the children. He brought the girls beautiful new dolls, and a new dress for each, and a handsome bicycle and a pair of stilts for Teddy. And for Edwina, he had brought a fabulous silver fox jacket. She couldn"t imagine wearing it, and yet she remembered her mother having one years before, and she felt glamorous and beautiful when she tried it on. And he had insisted that she wear it to the breakfast table on Christmas morning. He was always generous and kind, and endlessly silly, as he walked around the house on Teddy"s stilts, and went out to greet their neighbors on them from the garden.
And he had already left again when Edwina finally heard from her aunt"s solicitor in London. He had written her a very formal letter, and regretted to inform her that Lady Hickham had pa.s.sed away in late October, but due to the "inconveniences" of the last days of the Great War, he had been unable to advise her sooner. But he had been meaning to write to her anyway, as soon as things were sorted out, he said. As she undoubtedly knew, Lord Rupert had left his lands, and his estate, to the nephew who was the heir to his t.i.tle. However, he had, quite understandably, left his personal fortune to his wife, and according to Lady Hickham"s last will and testament, she had left all of it to Edwina and her brothers and sisters. He quoted a sum that, as closely as he could figure it, was an approximation of what she had left them. And Edwina sat staring at the letter in amazement. It wasn"t an amount which would leave them rolling in tiaras and Rolls-Royces, but it was a very handsome sum, which would leave each of them secure, if they were careful with it, for most of their lifetime. For her, it was the answer to a prayer, because all of them were young enough to have jobs and careers one day, or for the girls to find husbands who would care for them at least, but Edwina knew she wouldn"t. For her it would mean being independent until the day she died, and never having to be dependent on her siblings. And she read the letter again with silent grat.i.tude to the aunt she had scarcely known and barely liked in the course of her last visit. As a final gift to them, she had saved them. It was a far greater amount than what Edwina had derived from the sale of the newspaper and carefully split into five accounts, one for each of them, but once divided it wasn"t an enormous fortune. This was a great deal more.
"Good Lord," she whispered to herself as she sat back in her chair in the dining room and folded the letter. It was a Sat.u.r.day afternoon and Alexis had just wandered in and watched her read the letter from England.
"Is something wrong?" She was too used to tragedy and bad news, which too often came in telegrams or letters, but Edwina smiled as she looked up at her and shook her head.
"No ... and yes ... Aunt Liz has died," she said solemnly, "but she"s left us all a very generous gift, which you"ll be very happy to have one day, Lexie." She was going to speak to her banker about the safest ways to invest it, for herself, and the children....
Alexis seemed unimpressed by the bequest as she looked seriously at Edwina. "What did she die of?"
"I don"t know." Edwina opened the letter again, feeling guilty that she wasn"t more upset by the loss of her mother"s only sister. But she had always been so nervous and unhappy, and her last visit to them hadn"t been all that pleasant. "It doesn"t say here."
But it might have been the Spanish influenza. It had already killed so many that year, in Europe, and the States. It was a dreadful epidemic. She tried to figure out how old Liz had been then, calculating rapidly that she would have been fifty-one, as their mother would have been forty-eight that year. It was odd, too, that she had survived Rupert by so little. "It was nice of her to think of us, Alexis, wasn"t it?" Edwina smiled as Alexis nodded.
"Are we rich now?" Alexis looked intrigued as she sat down next to her, and Edwina smiled as she shook her head, but she herself certainly felt greatly relieved by the money Liz had left them. "Can we move to Hollywood with George now?"
Edwina smiled nervously at the idea. "I"m not sure he"d be too thrilled by that. But we can certainly paint the house ... and hire a cook and a gardener...." Mrs. Barnes had retired the summer before, and except for cleaning help, Edwina had been doing it all herself to spare their funds now that they"d sold the paper.
But the idea of moving to Hollywood was not one that appealed to Edwina. She was happy where she was, and at almost thirteen Alexis was hard enough to keep track of in sleepy San Francisco. Men followed her everywhere, and she was beginning to respond flirtatiously to their advances. It was already a source of great concern to Edwina.
"I"d rather go to Hollywood," Alexis announced matter-of-factly, with her wild blond mane framing her face and cascading over her shoulders. She still had the kind of looks that stopped people on the street, and wherever they went people stared at her, whereas Fannie had Edwina"s quieter but perfectly etched features. It was odd to think about sometimes. Both of her parents had been handsome, but neither of them had had the shocking beauty of Alexis. And Phillip had been a good-looking boy. Teddy had some of that star-blessed quality to him, and George had rugged good looks like their father.
But the thought of taking Alexis to Hollywood filled Edwina with dread. It was exactly where she would most not have wanted to take her. All she needed were matinee idols trailing after her, thinking that she was twenty.
But when George called a few days later and she gave him the news about Liz, he suggested they come down to celebrate, and then he sounded suddenly apologetic.
"I"m sorry, Win ... is that tactless of me? Should I be feeling sad or something?" He was so ingenuous that she laughed at him, she always loved the openness he had about his feelings. When he was happy, he laughed, and made others laugh with him, and when he was sad, he cried. It was as simple as that. And the truth was that none of them had ever been close to Aunt Liz and Uncle Rupert.
"I feel the same way," Edwina confessed. "I know I should be sad, and I guess in a little part of me, I am because she used to be close to Mama. But I"m excited about the money. It sure makes a difference knowing I won"t have to be sitting on a corner with a tin cup in my old age." She grinned and looked like a kid again as the children pretended not to listen.
"I"d never let you do that anyway." He laughed. "Not unless you cut me in on a share of it. h.e.l.l, who taught you everything you know?"
"Not you, you brat! Cut you in on a share, my eye!" But they were both laughing and happy. He invited them to come down again, and as a lark, she agreed to come down during the children"s Easter vacation.
And when she hung up the phone, Teddy looked at her, much impressed, and asked if she was really going to sit on a corner with a tin cup, and she laughed out loud.
"No, I"m not, you little eavesdropper! I was just teasing George."
But Alexis had picked up something much more interesting in the conversation, and she was beaming at her older sister. "Are we going to Hollywood to visit George?" She stood there looking like a vision in a dream, and Edwina wondered again if she was making a mistake taking her there, but they were all so excited, and after all, they were only children. It didn"t matter that Alexis looked twice her age, and men chased after her constantly. Edwina would be there to protect her.
"Maybe. If you behave yourselves. I told George we might go for Easter." In unison, they let out a scream and jumped up and down, while Edwina laughed with them. They were good children, and she had no regrets about her life. Everything really seemed very simple.
She heard from her aunt"s solicitor two more times, and he inquired if there was any possibility she"d like to come to Havermoor herself to settle things and see it for a last time before it pa.s.sed into Lord Rupert"s nephew"s hands, but Edwina wrote back to tell him there was absolutely no possibility of her coming to England. She did not explain why. But Edwina had absolutely no intention of ever getting on a ship again. Nothing on this earth could have induced her to go over. She sent a polite letter to him explaining that due to her obligations to her family, she was unable to go to England at this time, which he in turn a.s.sured her presented no problem whatsoever. The very thought of going over there made her shudder.
They marked the anniversary of their parents" death, as they always did, with a quiet church service, and their own private memories of them. But George didn"t come home for it that year. It had been seven years since they"d died, and he couldn"t get the time off from the movie he was currently making. He sent Alexis a birthday gift, a new dress with a matching coat. They always celebrated her birthday on the first of April now, because celebrating it on the day the t.i.tanic had gone down was just too painful.
She turned thirteen that year, and Edwina bought her a new grown-up dress for their trip to Hollywood, and Alexis was justifiably proud of it. They had bought it at I. Magnin, and it was sky-blue taffeta with a delicate collar and a matching jacket, and when Edwina saw her in it she almost cried at the sheer beauty of her. Alexis stood there, smiling at her, with her silky blond hair piled up on her head, and she looked just like an angel.
They were all beside themselves as they boarded the train to Los Angeles a few days after that. "Hollywood, here we come!" Teddy shouted excitedly as they pulled slowly out of the San Francisco station.
Chapter 25.
THEIR VISIT TO GEORGE IN HOLLYWOOD WAS BEYOND EVEN Alexis"s wildest expectations. He picked them up at the station in a borrowed Cadillac, and drove them to the seven-year-old Beverly Hills Hotel, a palace of luxury perched on a hilltop. He a.s.sured them that all the movie people stayed there, and that at any moment they might run into Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, or even Gloria Swanson. They even saw Charlie Chaplin arrive, being driven by his j.a.panese chauffeur. Fannie and Alexis were staring everywhere, and Teddy was so excited about the cars people drove that he almost got run over several times, and Edwina was constantly grabbing him and telling him to pay attention.
"But look, Edwina! It"s a Stutz Bearcat!" On the first day, they saw two of those, four Rolls-Royces, a Mercer Raceabout, a Kissel, and a Pierce-Arrow. It was almost more than Teddy could stand, but the clothes were what fascinated the girls, and even Edwina. She had bought herself a few new clothes when she"d gone shopping with Alexis, and she had brought the silver fox jacket that had been a Christmas gift from George, but she felt like her own grandmother now in the clothes she had brought from San Francisco. Everyone was wearing long, tight slinky dresses, and showing quite a bit more leg than Edwina was used to exposing. But there was something wonderfully exciting about being here. She let George talk her into buying several hats, and when they went to dinner one night at the Sunset Inn in Santa Monica, she insisted that her brother teach her the foxtrot.
"Come on ... that"s it ... good G.o.d, my foot ..." he teased, and he guided and they laughed, and she hadn"t had so much fun in such a long time that she couldn"t even remember when, and for just a fraction of a moment, she felt a chord of memory rip through her.
In some ways, George was so much like their father, and she remembered his teaching her to dance when she was a little girl, and George was only a baby. But she wouldn"t let herself think about it now. They were having too much fun, and now she understood why George was so happy here. This was a world of excited, young happy people, bringing pleasure to the entire world with their wonderful movies. And the people who were involved in making them were young and alive and fun, and it seemed as though everybody down here was involved in making movies. She heard people talking about Louis B. Mayer, D. W. Griffith, Samuel Goldwyn, and Jesse Lasky. They were all making the kind of pictures that George was learning about with Samuel Horowitz. And Edwina was fascinated by all of it. But the children were even more excited when George took them to the latest Mack Sennett comedy and Charlie Chaplin movie. They thought they had never had so much fun. He took them to Nat Goodwin"s cafe for lunch in Ocean Park, and with Edwina"s permission he even took them to the forbidden Three O"Clock Ballroom in Venice, and Danceland in Culver City. And when they drove back to town, he took them all to the Alexandria Hotel at Spring and Eighth to see the stars dining there. And they were lucky that night, Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish were there, and Douglas Fairbanks with Mary Pickford. It was rumored that their romance was serious, and Edwina just beamed as she watched them. It was even better than going to the movies.
He took them to the Horowitz studios as well, and the children watched for a whole afternoon as he worked on a film with Wallace Beery. Everything seemed to move unbelievably quickly, and George explained to her that they could complete a movie in less than three weeks. He had already worked on three since he"d been there. He wanted to introduce her to Sam Horowitz, too, but he was out that day, and George promised to introduce Edwina to him later.
That night, he took them all to the Hollywood Hotel, where they had dinner, and the children looked around them in awe at the elegance of the decor, but they were even more impressed by what Teddy referred to as "George"s lady." Helen Horowitz met them at the hotel in a shimmering white gown, her blond hair swept off her face, and her skin like cream that had just been poured as the white dress molded her amazing body. She was almost as tall as George, but she was reed-thin, and very shy. She was eighteen years old, and the dress had been made for her by Poiret in Paris, she explained innocently, as though everyone had their dresses made there. She was polite and shy, and in a funny innocent yet sophisticated way, she reminded Edwina of Alexis. She had the same ethereal beauty and the same gentle ways, and she seemed to be totally unaware of her own effect on those around her. She had grown up in Los Angeles, but her father apparently didn"t like her spending a lot of time with people "in the business," and she much preferred riding horses anyway. She invited them all to ride at their ranch in the San Fernando Valley. But Edwina had gently explained that Alexis was afraid of horses. Teddy would have been happy to have gone, but he was content enough staring at the cars they saw everywhere. Edwina was beginning to wonder how she would ever get him to settle down again in San Francisco.
"Have you known George long?" Edwina asked, watching her. She was so beautiful, and in a funny way, also very simple. She had no conceited airs, she was just a very lovely girl, in a very expensive dress, and she looked as though she was very taken with Edwina"s brother. It was heady stuff, and he was very gentle with her. And Edwina watched them as they danced. There was something very sweet about the pair, something wonderfully striking and healthy and young and innocent. They were two people totally unaware of their own beauty. And as Edwina watched, she realized how much George had grown up since he left home. He was truly a man now.
"It"s a shame my father"s out of town," Helen said. "He"s in Palm Springs this week, we"re building a house there," she announced, as though everyone did. "But I know he would have liked to meet you."
"Next time," Edwina said, watching George again. He had just met some friends, and he brought them all over to meet Edwina. They were all a racy crowd, and yet they didn"t look like bad people. They just looked like they were having fun. They were in a business which almost required it, and which brought fun to thousands of other people. And whatever it was that they did, or didn"t do, it was easy to see how much George loved it.
The children hated to leave, and after agreeing to extend their stay by a few days, they went back to the studio to watch him work again, and on that particular day one of the directors asked Edwina if she would allow Alexis to appear in a movie. She hesitated, but much to her surprise, George shook his head, and when he declined, Alexis was in dark despair almost until they left. But when Edwina and George talked about it later, he told her that he thought it would have been the wrong thing for her.
"Why let them exploit her? She doesn"t even know what she looks like. It"s fun down here. But it"s for grown-ups, not children. If you let her do this now, she"s going to want to come down here and go wild. I"ve seen it happen, and I don"t want that for her. Neither would you, if you could see it." She didn"t disagree with him, but she was surprised at his conservative position vis--vis his sister. For a boy of nineteen years, nearly twenty, he reminded her more than once, he was surprisingly mature, and he seemed to fit in extremely well in the sophisticated life of Hollywood. She was proud of him, and she was suddenly doubly glad that she had sold the paper. If this was what he wanted, then he would never have been happy there. She had done the right thing. And so had he, when he had come to live here.
The children were despondent when they checked out of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and they made her promise that they would come back often.
"How do you know George will want us to?" she teased, but he looked over their heads at her and made her promise that she would come down and bring them.
"I should have my own place by then, and you can even stay with me." He was planning to buy a small house with the money he had inherited from Aunt Liz. But for the moment he was still sharing an apartment with a friend in Beverly Hills, just outside the city. There were a lot of things he still wanted to do, and he knew he had a lot to learn, but he was excited about all of it, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to be a diligent student. Sam Horowitz had given him the chance, and he was going to do everything he could to live up to his expectations.
He took them all to the train station then, and the children all waved as they left. It was like a whirlwind that had come and gone for them, an exciting dream, a flash of tinsel that was suddenly gone, as they sat staring at each other on the train, wondering if it had ever happened.
"I want to go back there again one day," Alexis said quietly as they rolled toward San Francisco.
"We will." Edwina smiled. She had had the best time she"d had in years, and she felt eighteen herself again, instead of nearly twenty-eight. Her birthday was in another week, but she had just had enough celebration to last her for the year. She smiled to herself as Alexis looked at her intently.
"I mean I"m going back there to live one day." She said it as though making a plan that nothing in this world could interfere with.
"Like George?" Edwina tried to make light of it, but there was something in Alexis"s eyes that told her she meant it. And then, halfway home, Alexis looked at her again with a puzzled frown.
"Why didn"t you let me be in the movie that man asked me to be in?"
Edwina tried to make light of it, but Alexis had that same intent look in her eyes that she had had for days. It was a look of intensity and purpose that Edwina had never seen there. "George didn"t think it was a good idea."
"Why not?" she persisted, as Edwina busied herself rolling up Fannie"s sleeves and then glanced out the window before she looked back at Alexis.
"Probably because that"s a world for grown-ups, Alexis, people who belong there, not amateurs who get hurt doing things they don"t understand." It was an honest answer after giving it some thought, and Alexis seemed to accept it for the moment.
"I"m going to be an actress one day, and nothing you do will ever stop me." It was an odd thing to say, and Edwina frowned at the vehemence of the child"s words.
"What makes you think I"d try to stop you?"
"You just did ... but next time ... next time will be different." She sat looking out the window then, as Edwina stared at her in amazement. And who knew? Maybe she was right. Maybe she"d go back one day and work with George. She had a feeling that he was going to make it. She found herself wondering about Helen, too, about what she was really like, and how much she cared about George and if it might be serious one day. There was a lot for all of them to think about on the way home. And eventually, Edwina fell asleep listening to the wheels as they carried them home, and on either side of her, the younger children slept, leaning their heads against her shoulders. But across from them, Alexis sat staring out the window most of the way home, with a purposeful look that only she understood, and the others could only guess at.
Chapter 26.
THE NEXT FOUR YEARS IN HOLLYWOOD WERE EXCITING YEARS for George and the people who had become his friends, The films made included The Copperhead, The Sheik, De Mille"s Fool"s Paradise, his comedy Why Change Your Wife?, and the budding movie industry rapidly turned to gold for everyone involved. With Sam Horowitz teaching and protecting him, George had an opportunity to work on dozens of important movies, and from cameraman he went to third a.s.sistant director, and eventually, he began producing, which had always been his dream. The promise he had made Edwina four years before when he first left for Hollywood in 1919, was a reality for him by 1923.
Early on, Horowitz had even loaned him out to Paramount and Universal, and George knew everyone now, but most of all he knew his business. And like the Warner brothers that year, Sam Horowitz had just taken out incorporation papers, and hired several writers and directors. And Sam was the first to go to Wall Street and interest serious investors by convincing them that in Hollywood there was real money to be made. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had joined D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin to form United Artists, and there were similar groups forming too. It was an exciting era to be involved down there, and Edwina loved hearing about it. It still amazed her that her little brother"s wild dreams had come true. And he"d been right, it was certainly a far cry from running their father"s paper, and this was much more his style than staying in sleepy San Francisco would have been.
Edwina and the children went down to visit him two or three times a year, and stayed in his house on North Crescent Drive. He had a butler, a cook, and an upstairs and a downstairs maid. He was quite the man about town, and Fannie insisted that he was more handsome than Rudolph Valentino, which only made him laugh. But Edwina had long since noticed that the girls around Hollywood seemed to think so too. He took out dozens of actresses and starlets, but the only girl he seemed to really care about was Helen Horowitz, his mentor"s daughter. She was twenty-two years old by then, and even more beautiful than Edwina had thought her when they first met. She had a startling sophistication about her now, and the last time Edwina had seen her with George, she had worn a skin-tight silver lame dress that took people"s breath away as she sauntered casually into the Cocoanut Grove on George"s arm. She seemed oblivious to the stares and the cameras, and Edwina asked him later why Helen was never in her father"s movies.
"He doesn"t want her having any part of all that. It"s all right as long as she"s on the sidelines. I suggested the same thing to him years ago, but he wouldn"t have it. I guess he"s right. Helen"s untouched by all this. She likes hearing about it, but she just thinks it"s funny." And something about the way he talked about her always suggested to Edwina that something might come of their friendship one day, but thus far nothing more than a longtime romance ever had, and Edwina didn"t want to press it.
Edwina had just taken the children to see Hollywood at home in San Francisco, and was arguing with Alexis about why she could not go to see Loves of Pharaoh, when the telephone rang, and it was George calling from Los Angeles. He wanted Edwina to come down and go to the premiere of his biggest movie with him. They had borrowed Douglas Fairbanks for it, and he said that the opening parties would be terrific.
"It"ll do you good to get away from the little monsters for a while." Once in a while, he liked to bring Edwina down alone. But the outcry was too great this time to allow it, and finally two weeks later, Edwina left for Hollywood with all of them in tow. Alexis was seventeen by then and just as lovely as Sam Horowitz"s daughter, except that her hair wasn"t bobbed, and she had never worn silver lame. But she was still a strikingly beautiful girl, now even more so. And people still stared wherever she went. Alexis was a beauty. And it was all Edwina could do to keep her suitors from knocking down their door. She had no fewer than five or six admirers at any given time, but she was still a relatively shy child, with a fondness for Edwina"s much older friends because she felt safer with them. Fannie was fifteen, and surprisingly domestic. She was happy in the garden and baking cakes, and she was happiest when Edwina was too busy doing other things to run the house. Edwina had made several wise real estate investments, and now and then she had to go somewhere to check on them with Ben. He had long since forgotten his romantic dreams about Edwina, and now they were only good friends. He had married two years before, and Edwina was pleased that he seemed very happy.
And at thirteen, Teddy was already talking about going to Harvard. He liked Hollywood, but what really appealed to him at this point was running a bank. It seemed an odd choice for a thirteen-year-old child, but he had the solidity of their oldest brother, and he reminded her of Phillip much of the time. George was the only one thus far with a wild flair for the unexpected, but for him the quixotic world of Hollywood was exactly what he needed.
They stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel this time, because George had other houseguests, but the children, as Edwina still called them, much to Alexis"s disgust, thought it more exciting at the hotel. Pola Negri was staying there, Leatrice Joy, Noah Beery, and Charlie Chaplin. And Teddy went crazy when he saw Will Rogers and Tom Mix in the lobby.
And Edwina was very flattered when her brother invited her to the opening gala at Pickfair. She bought an incredible gold lame Chanel dress, and in spite of her age, she felt like a young girl. She was thirty-one years old, soon to be thirty-two, but she hadn"t really changed in years. Her face was smooth and unlined, her figure even better than it had been years before. She had had her shining black hair cut in a shingled bob that year, at her brother"s insistence, and she felt very chic in the gold dress, as they walked into the house Douglas Fairbanks had built for Mary Pickford as a wedding gift three years before. They seemed very happy there, and it was one of those rare marriages that worked in spite of the glamorous world they lived in. Few relationships seemed to last from one of Edwina"s visits to the next, except this one.
"Where"s Helen?" she asked George as they stood in the garden at Pickfair, drinking and watching the others dance. He hadn"t mentioned her this time, which for George was very rare. He seemed to go everywhere with her, everywhere that mattered to him, although they still saw other people, but it was Helen who made him smile, Helen he cared about when she had the smallest problem or the merest cold, Helen who had his heart. But he seemed in no particular rush to get married, and Edwina had always hesitated to ask him about it.
"Helen"s in Palm Springs with her father," he said quietly, and then he glanced at Edwina. "Sam thinks we shouldn"t see each other anymore." It explained the sudden invitation to the premiere, and her absence now. Edwina had been thinking for several hours that this was a party he should have gone to with Helen.
"Why not?" Edwina was touched by the look in his eyes. Beneath the jovial exterior, he looked crushed, which was unlike him.
"He thinks that after four years of seeing each other, we should either be married or forget it." He sighed and accepted a refill of champagne from a pa.s.sing butler. He had drunk a little too much champagne, but ever since the onset of Prohibition three years before, everyone had. It was a favorite sport going to speakeasies and hidden bars, and at private parties, the bootleg liquor flowed like water. The Volstead Act had seemed to have turned a lot of innocent people into alcoholics. But fortunately, George didn"t have that problem, it was just that tonight he was so d.a.m.n lonely for Helen, and Edwina could see that he looked unhappy.