My Memories — by Mae Murray

Chapter I — Sunday, May 24, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, May 24, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 92, p. 93, p. 94, p. 98, p. 99.

Illustration captions, as printed Mae Murray, at the Time She Took Irene Castle’s Place in “Watch Your Step.” Her Immediate Success Drew the Unwanted Attentions of Two Hot-Headed Young Socialites — Jay O’Brien and Jack de Saulles. Their Romantic Rivalry Drove Her to Hollywood and Fame. (Credit: Culver Service) The Rich and Ardent Jay O’Brien Forced Mae to Marry Him at the Point of a Gun. [A third caption, on the right-hand inset, is clipped at the page edge in this scan and is not recoverable from the Atlanta Journal copy.]

IT WAS 4:30 that Winter afternoon and in the softly-lighted, melodious room of the Cabaret Sans Souci a small blond girl swished about the tables of friendly groups. She wore a ruby-red taffeta dress, and her puckered young lips were painted the identical shade of the dress, of her silly flower hat, which covered one eyebrow, and of her satin slippers. She also wore red wrist-length gloves!

You have never seen anyone more confident. Her blue eyes, under drooping lids, danced over the crowd. She was conscious of admiration from the men and envious curiosity from women.

Well, that girl was I.

I had been in choruses and dancing acts. I had worked long and hard to become a featured dancer at the Sans Souci, at Broadway and 42nd Street. I’d rung a lot of bells by then, but anyway, I had arrived.

Why, I even had an apartment in the West Seventies and big, colored Jenny, who doubled in brass as maid, bodyguard and chaperone. Jenny waited to go home with me every night and she never cared how late that was.

This certain afternoon there was a general excitement. The headwaiter was busily giving orders to the help as Otto Kahn had engaged a table for a large party that night. The Sans Souci, you see, was on a par with the Stork or 21 of today. The fashionables and celebrities started gathering there around 4:30 in the afternoon for “high tea.” The men usually drank Martinis and champagne cocktails and only the women drank tea. Most women did not smoke or drink then in public.

Already there was a crowd. I remember that D. W. Griffith and the Gish sisters had just come in, and I prepared to go on with my first number. The lights turned down and the opening bars of my music began when the headwaiter came rushing over to me.

“Miss Mae!” he cried. “Mr. Berlin is here to see you. Mr. Irving Berlin.” He repeated the name in awed tones.

I turned to see the dark, lean figure of Irving Berlin hurrying toward me. His large eyes were bright with excitement and he seemed tense and electric. He grabbed my hand and spoke in a whisper:

“Little Murray,” he said, “you’ve got to help me. Can you go on in Irene Castle’s place tonight in ‘Watch Your Step’?”

“Wh-at, Mr. Berlin?”

“You’ve got to go on—Irene is very ill. The doctors will not allow her out of bed. You’ve got to help me.”

A ghost kicks its gleeful heels about this particular chapter of my life and lights it Neon bright with memory, so it is where I choose to begin this story.

You don’t become a dancer unless you are born with rhythm in your blood and know your destiny is to dance. I think I realized I was intended to dance from the time I was five.

And now, after dancing from Broadway to Hollywood, over European and South and Central America and back to Broadway, I still live to dance.

I believe that once you share rhythm with anyone—call it love, sex or friendship, a bond is formed which can never be broken. This explains why Rudolph Valentino (we loved to tango together!) crossed a continent once just to talk out his heartache with me. Why after waltzing “The Merry Widow” with John Gilbert I was the one person in all the world to whom he confided the reason for the humiliation which caused him to drink himself to death. Rhythm lovers have a strange bond.

I believed that someday I would become a great dancer and consequently I danced myself into a glittering world of fame, and it seemed, of endless, limitless fortune. As if I were a character come to life out of “The Arabian Nights,” I danced my way into riches overnight. My name flamed in lights from a thousand theatres. I heard the streets of the world humming and whistling the theme song of my screen success.

You see, it was love for dancing which made me the personification of the picture version of The Merry Widow. I—and it—became synonymous. I became the bride of one of the handsomest and most sought-after playboys in New York. I became a Princess, the bride of a Mdivani!

And, penniless, I have slept the night on a Central Park bench, other down-and-outs sleeping around me.

I have had my share of sadness—yes. And yet, I still feel I’ve had more than my share of gladness.

I knew what disillusion meant when I could not put aside my ideals for Jay O’Brien.

I’ve never told this before:

I was never really Jay’s wife!

It hasn’t always been in-step for me. My “glamourous” prince turned out to be only a myth. Yet, I loved him. He was the first to teach me what it meant to say “My heart is broken.” He was Mdivani, the father of my baby…I thought, in my sorrow, that life had lost its rhythm, which was a sin, that thought. No person is allowed to do that to another—forever.

I awoke to find the millions I had worked for—vanished. I was so broke once I did not have food. Yet at one time my salary had been $25,000 a week! I had no place to sleep and I sat on a bench in Central Park all night.

I have tried to dance through life.

Does this sound curious? It may be, but it’s a fact. I haven’t been very much concerned with things other than dancing. I ran away from home more than a dozen times before I was 12. My family could do nothing with me. I was more interested in learning how to dance, watching and mimicking those who had studied, than I was in following the dictates of my straight-laced family. I was only interested in dancing, which I believe accounts for my success. I was impatient with anything which took me from the world of illusion, which is so often a dancer’s reality.

IRENE and Vernon Castle were the most talked of dancing team in New York and the stars of the musical comedy, “Watch Your Step,” which Charles B. Dillingham produced at the New Amsterdam Theatre—and Irving Berlin, who had written the music for the show was asking me to dance in it!

“You’ll have to come with me now—this minute!” Irving said.

“I have to go on with my number now…There!

…my music has started.”

Irving clenched my hand more tightly.

“Not now! You’re going with me! I’ll fix it with the manager and Mr. Dillingham will make up any loss to him.”

In one movement Irving pulled me through the exit. He didn’t even stop for me to get a wrap but threw his own overcoat over my taffeta dress.

We ran to the New Amsterdam and down the aisle to the stage.

“I’ve got her! I’ve got her!” Irving cried, clinging to my arm.

Vernon Castle was at the footlights. I saw him make one leap into the air, arch, clear the orchestra pit and land in the aisle beside me.

Vernon was a tall, lithe, graceful man. I had watched him hour after hour as he danced with Irene, and dreamed that I danced with him.

His hands clutched my arms.

“Can you do it?” were his first words. I was too breathless to answer. He repeated again, “Can you do it?”

I remember that he asked then “Can you do it for us?”

For us…you see, that was Vernon Castle for you.

“Of course,” I answered, and added with the confidence of extreme youth, “I can do anything.”

He laughed. Then, without even asking me if I wanted to get into practice clothes, and without thought for my bouffant dress, he lifted me onto the stage.

Irving Berlin was at the piano, playing the opening bars of music for the Castle number, and I soon began to fall in step with Vernon—and we began performing what are known as butterflies to waltzers. I knew then that dancing was a kind of ritual to Vernon Castle. Every bit of his character was expressed in his rhythm, just as I had imagined it would be.

He looked down at me and said, “We blend—you’re a dancer.”

I said, “Yes,” because I knew that I was.

But everything did not go so smoothly for me. None of Irene’s clothes would fit me, and to keep harmony with the sets I must have costumes of the same colors as hers were. But this marked one of the highlights of pride in my life—I had so wanted to be perfection during my engagement at the Sans Souci that I had gone to Lucille, even though it had taken about all of my weekly salary, for my costumes.

Lucille, who loved perfection in clothes as I loved perfection in dancing, had had a model of my 96-pound figure made that her sewing women could fit me exactly. So, it was soon arranged that Lucille’s fitters came over with my dress form and yards and yards of materials.

Between 5 and 9 o’clock I had rehearsed all the Castle numbers and been fitted and sewn into materials to constitute costumes for that night.

From Irene Castle’s famous blue-taffeta-ed and mirrored dressing room, just before the curtain went up that night, I heard Irving Berlin making an announcement to the audience which made me grow pale under the lights around the make-up shelf:

“Ladies and gentlemen, during Irene Castle’s illness little Mae Murray, who has just made a dancing success in the Cabaret Sans Souci, is going to dance at tonight’s performance. But if any of you want your money refunded, please come to the box office at once.”

In the awful stillness which followed, I couldn’t wait in the dressing room. I rushed out in the wings, my heart pounding hard and loud. I felt like going out on the stage and begging everyone to stay and promising that I would not disappoint them. I would not be an Irene Castle—but I would be Mae Murray, and I had been born for this night!

The show started—and soon Vernon Castle was leading me in the opening number. My heart beat wildly and my toes never seemed to touch anything but clouds.

Vernon Castle’s gentle voice steadied me.

“Just remember—you are a dancer,” he said.

“After tonight,” I told him with all earnestness, “I can never forget.”

Vernon Castle and I formed an unbreakable bond during that exciting, hectic, never-to-be-forgotten night. It was the bond of rhythm lovers.

We never missed a beat of the beautiful music, never missed a step. You might have thought that we had been rehearsing for weeks, instead of a few short hours. I had stepped into a brand new and very exciting world.

But finally the curtain was rung down after the last number. And up and down and up—and the applause kept on. Vernon was pulling me out on the stage, to take a bow.

“It’s for you, Butterfly,” he said.

Not until then did I realize that the applause had been for me.

Charles Dillingham rushed to me backstage, tears flowing down his face. He hugged me so tightly I could hardly breathe, crying:

“You were wonderful, wonderful!” Then, “And no one—not even one person—asked for their money to be refunded!” he said.

Then someone touched my arm. It was the head waiter from the San Souci [sic].

“Miss Mae? The place is packed—waiting for you—everyone knows!”

For the first time in hours I remembered the Sans Souci and my job. I was expected back. I had a night’s work yet.

“Are you too tired, little Murray?” asked Irving Berlin. “I’ll fix it for you, if you are.”

Tired? I was never more excited and exhilarated!

“We don’t know how long Irene Castle will be out of the show and you are the one to carry on for us—please do it, won’t you?”

“Of course,” I told him, without a doubt that I could.

When I returned to the Sans Souci that night, the personnel crowded around my dressing room. The manager was at the door. First he asked, “Are you going on, Miss Mae?” Then he asked, “Are you all right?”

I had an obsession for cold showers and to scrub with a brush. It was a habit from early childhood and I had persuaded the management to install a small shower beside my dressing room at the Sans Souci.

Now, undressed, I stepped under the shower and turned it full force, ice cold. Ever since that night, there has been something about the rush of an icy shower, the needle-sting, the quickening sensation of the bristled scrubbing brush—the smell of soap, which has made me glad. No matter how low in spirit I may be, let me step into a cold, cold shower and the memory of that night lives again.

There I was under the shower, with Jenny running around excitedly, getting my night costume ready…and then, stepping out, and seeing a banquet set up on my dressing table!

When I went out for my number that night I was fresh and fragrant and well fed. Afterwards—even after an encore, the applause kept on. I hurried to change my costume and return—and I came back wearing a white satin gown, fitted as only Lucille could do it.

As soon as I stepped into the big room, a burst of applause almost deafened me. Everyone was standing at their tables, applauding and cheering. This kept up. I didn’t know it was for me until suddenly a man came toward me, smiling. That man was Otto Kahn, the worldling and Wall Streeter. His bright brown eyes held mine as he clasped my hand.

“This is for you!” he said. “You see, we all know what you did tonight.”

Mr. Kahn led me over to where his party had a large table at the edge of the dance floor. There was a place for me, marked with a mound of white gardenias.

Mr. Kahn introduced me to his many guests. There were many—and among them some of the greatest Broadway stars and most prominent members of Manhattan society. Everyone wore evening clothes.

I was seated on Mr. Kahn’s right. I remember thanking him for the flowers and saying, “Gardenias are my favorite flowers. How did you know?” And he replied, “I only know that you look like one.”

The waiter filled my glass with champagne.

“I never have had a drink,” I said, but the explanation brought unbelieving glances as it inevitably did.

I was to drink champagne another time, but under far different circumstances—at another celebration.

Soon I became aware of someone standing beside the rather pretty dark girl on the other side of the table. He was one of the guests to whom Mr. Kahn had introduced me.

“May I have this dance, Miss Murray?” he asked.

I got up to go onto the dance floor, but he just stood there, looking down into my face.

“Do you know me?” he asked.

“You know I don’t,” I said. “I’ve never had diplomacy.”

“Well, you do now, don’t you?” And he told me his name was Jack de Saulles.

He was the famous Yale quarterback and socialite, but the name did not mean anything to me, as I know that he expected it to. His arm went across my shoulders, as if he would protect—or possess me.

I learned later he had rather possess than protect. It was a too familiar gesture, but I dismissed it, or tried to.

Just then another man had come over. I realized then that de Saulle’s [sic] gesture was symbolic of his saying:

“This is mine.”

The other man had to take only a few steps to reach us, but he took those regally. He was a striking man, about thirty-six, with dark, sleek hair, dark eyes, very well groomed. He looked as if he had just been released by his valet. His white dress shirt gleamed with pearl studs. I may have seen pearl dress studs before, but I did not remember. Now, I could not take my eyes from the pinkish gems fastened in the beautifully fitted shirt.

The first thing this man said to me was:

“What fascinates you?”

“Do I look fascinated?”

I thought him a little fresh. As though he expected that I should be fascinated by him!

“Yes,” he said, “you do—and you are. I happened to be in the audience tonight at the New Amsterdam.”

He came nearer then. “You were wonderful,” he said.

“You—you thought so?” I asked, strangely grateful for his praise.

He looked down into my eyes—and it seemed then that there were only two of us in the room.

“His name,” said de Saulles flatly, “is Jay O’Brien. I surmise that he already knows who you are.”

“Yes,” Jay O’Brien and I both said at once, our eyes holding.

“I’ve seen her before tonight,” Jay O’Brien said to his friend, but looking only at me.

“I wish that I had,” de Saulles said.

These two were representative of the wealthy play crowd, who lived on inheritance—who knew polo, yachts and travel, who lived in a world of which I knew nothing. I felt the sudden centering of every woman’s eyes in that room upon me, because I had them at my side.

And the thought whipped across my mind in the form of a question: “What can they want of me?” This questioning thought was to lash me many times after that night, many, many times before I found the unhappy answer. Because I was not aware of what my success meant I did not feel that I had anything in common with these society men. And it was a long time before I realized that acclaim and success had attracted them to me.

And something else, too. Not my looks or charm or natural sweetness. Mercy, no! Not that these hindered me—but without success and acclaim—and without a new, untouched reputation I wouldn’t have been there by their sides for a second.

I didn’t know all this then. I had such a lot to learn.

I remember that I looked up into Jay O’Brien’s eyes and thought how lustrous and dark they were—and I had another thought, too. “How cruel.”

What is he like, I wondered, inside that white-white shirt, behind the pearls?

But now Jack and Jay wanted to dance with me. I had risen to dance with Jack, but Jay removed his arm from my shoulder and had his arm about my waist.

“I bet ten thousand I’d dance with her tonight,” Jay said to his friend as he turned me away from him.

We were on the dance floor—and while Jack pretended to give in gracefully, I could see that he really did not like it.

The music throbbed—a tango. And there without thinking of movement or rhythm, Jay O’Brien and I were dancing as if we had danced together always.

Our timing was so perfect I could not speak. I closed my eyes and wondered if all this night had been a dream, and that this was a continuation of it. I was never more thoughtful. I looked up into his immobile, finely chiseled face and saw it registered no expression. It had the perfect proportions and even features of a statue. The only difference, I thought, was that I could see a muscle in his right jaw throb.

I caught my breath with a kind of pain. I don’t know why, but I did. My heart skipped a beat. It was omnious [sic], that feeling which rushed through me.

Jay O’Brien was bad for me—yet fascinating, as often something which is bad for you can be. Even though this man was many years older than I, his attraction was undeniable.

Jay O’Brien had wanted to met [sic] me, dance with me—yes, and to win his bet. Yet—I couldn’t believe then that he had been serious about the bet. I thought he had only said it in fun. But I didn’t know Jay, or I would have believed. He would bet on anything under the sun.

He held me closer against him and I pulled away, subconsciously resisting his magnetism.

“Don’t go away from me, because I tell you I’m going to take you home. I understand that no one else does.”

“I haven’t any play time. You see—I—work.”

“And I see you are lovely. I see that you like me. And I know—and you know—that we have something in common.”

There is such a fine line between like and dislike.

I said an odd thing then, something I was to recall many times during the next few years.

“I just like honest people,” I told him.

“What makes you feel I’m not honest?” Jay asked.

I had no answer. I couldn’t say that he both atttracted [sic] and repelled me. I didn’t think that far into whatever I felt. I guess I hadn’t learned to think. But Jay was going to begin to teach me soon.

The tango music ended and before we could walk from the dance floor Jack de Saulles was beside me. He had been dancing with the slight, brown-eyed girl I remembered sitting beside him at Otto Kahn’s table.

Jack’s hand clutched my wrist and he held me back with him as Jay and the girl, with whom de Saullles [sic] had been dancing, walked ahead.

“Promise me something,” he whispered. “Wait for me tonight—let me take you home. I’ll leave with the party, but I’ll come back—Let me—not Jay O’Brien, take you home!”

I told him that no one was to take me home. I never allowed that. “I never go out alone—with anyone, either,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “But Jay and I have a bet on—he’s won once tonight from me—now you help me win over him? You know, I got you first—give me a chance to score this goal.”

I felt like a football player myself just then.

“Look,” he said, holding me back on the floor. “I want to be with you. Don’t you understand?”

I understood, all right, but I did not let him think so. I tried to wrench my wrist from his hand—and just then the brown-eyed girl turned around and saw us.

He dropped my wrist quickly.

She didn’t say anything. She was the quiet, timid type—a wisp of a girl with too much hurt in her eyes. Her name was Blanca and she came from one of the richest families of Chile (and had a fortune in her own name).

“She is jealous,” I said too quickly. “I’m sorry I said that—her eyes are so sad—I mean—she loves you—and she’s hurt. She overheard what you said to me.”

“Because she is Mrs. De Saulle [sic] she doesn’t own me. I do as I please!”

“Oh—”

“You’re going to see me soon—alone?”

“Never alone!”

I was glad it was time for my next number. I wanted to get away from these people…whose lives seemed to be made up of betting, of intrigues…of matching wits.

Although I managed somehow not to return to the Kahn party again that night, I was conscious that both Jay O’Brien and Jack de Saulles were watching me.

For the following week I was pursued nightly by Jay and Jack, who sent flowers and perfume and trinkets.

I was still in “Watch Your Step,” because Irene Castle was still ill. My life was a mad exciting routine of working, sleeping and getting clothes made. Jay O’Brien always seemed to be where I could see him out of the corner of my eye. And there came a night when I climbed into a taxi as usual, and discovered Jay sitting there with Jenny. Jay, you see, had outwitted both the driver and Jenny.

It seemed ridiculous to make a scene just because he insisted on seeing me home. Somehow I knew it would do no good—Jay was determined. And when we drove up in front of my apartment house, he helped me out and stood on the walk while Jenny went inside.

The arc lights were just beginning to pale in the first dawn and the wind from the Hudson made me shiver.

“You know I’m in love with you,” he said.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. I’m going to marry you…Now, doesn’t that make me an honest person in your eyes?”

“Honest…”

“You said you only liked honest people…say you like me now.”

It took a long time to say what I had to say. I didn’t know he was in love with me. I hadn’t expected it. I said that he really wasn’t…our worlds did not, never would blend…his world was put together with polo ponies, yachts, travel, money; mine was a small, scantily furnished apartment, where I struggled to get enough sleep, exercise, and keep my clothes presentable. I had time to fall in love…and just then—I didn’t want to.

“Why don’t you love me?” he asked.

“I want to be free,” I said.

That took him back a little and he said, “I’m not used to—indifference.” He pulled his hat down and turned his eyes away. I could see the muscle in his right jaw throb.

“I’ll have to teach you that you can’t be free.”

Then he flagged a passing taxi and drove off without even looking back at me. I felt a little sadness, but it did not last long.

I was in “Watch Your Step” for three weeks before Irene Castle was able to return. After the last performance, Mr Dillingham, Irving Berlin and Vernon Castle sent me a large box of American Beauty roses. There was a smaller box enclosed which held red and white butterflies—live ones. And fastened to this small box was a personal check of Charles Dillingham made out to me for $5000! And a note asking if this was satisfactory as payment for the weeks I had given them!

The check seemed enormous to me then—it is still a goodly figure. Yet, there came a time long off when I made that much in a week! Now that I think of it, I know that I saved the show for Mr. Dillingham, and he might have paid me many times that much and never missed it.

However, then I was tremendously grateful and happy—because it seemed a measure of appreciation as a dancer—which was the fulfillment of my imagination and dreams.

After the strain and excitement of appearing in “Watch Your Step,” just doing my dances afternoon and night at the Sans Souci seemed almost quiet. I began to miss Jay O’Brien too—and when de Saulles came in one afternoon, I was unusually glad to see him because I could question him about Jay.

But de Saulles had certainly not come to talk about Jay! He had come to invite me to his apartment where he was giving a party, he said.

“Your wife,” I said—”is she coming, too?”

“Oh, you’re afraid, Litttle [sic] Red Riding Hood? Well, you don’t need to be. Marilyn Miller and Olive Thomas and many of the girls you know will be there. I’m inviting forty guests in all…so you will be chaperoned.”

I said I didn’t think I could come, but he was insistent. It was to be given in his duplex studio.

“You can have lots of fun before your midnight show,” he persuaded. “Besides, you can check me all you like—if you think I’m just trying to get you up to my apartment. Call Marilyn Miller and ask her to come with you—why, you can even bring your Jenny as a bodyguard!”

I should have expected something was wrong, but I didn’t. Everything seemed all right and I decided to go.

Marilyn and I went together, as Marilyn’s new show had not yet opened and she was free. I’ll never forget how impressed I was as we walked into Jack’s studio. It was so ornate and extravagant and luxurious. The deep piled carpets, silver and oil paintings! The place was filled and everyone was chattering.

The long table in the dining room was banked with red roses and draped with lace. A hedge of crystal glasses sparkled about the centerpiece of flowers and tall burning tapers.

Jack de Saulles held his arm for me and together we led the guests in to dinner. To my surprise, he seated me at the head of the table.

“This is to be my place, Jack…not your wife’s?” I asked.

A frown crowded between his brows. He looked so unpleasant I was sorry I had mentioned his wife’s name.

“Mrs. de Saulles,” he said too distinctly, “is not here. She was not invited. She’s out on Long Island where she belongs, and doesn’t have to worry about seeing me holding your hand…And another thing Jay O’Brien hasn’t been invited, either…so can’t we have some fun together?”

We didn’t go on with what hinted of becoming a quarrel. I made no answer. Of course, I had no way of knowing that it would only be a short time until the quiet Blanca de Saulles would find a sure way of answering her husband.

There were so many diversions just then at that party. An orchestra was at each end of the great room, and it seemed to me that every celebrity on Broadway sat around that table.

Everyone talked and laughed at once. The girls screamed with delight as they opened the tissue-wrapped packages which lay at each plate. I opened mine to find a gold compact with “Mae” encrusted with rubies on the lid.

There was pheasant…on a silver tray…wild rice…sparkling burgundy…champagne…music…laughter…singing.

“Come Mae, dance with me,” de Saulles said, standing beside me.

“Not now—” I said, seeing that he was a little drunk.

“Now!” he said. Leaning over me, he spoke in a voice too low for the others to hear. “I want to hold you in my arms.”

He reached over and tried to kiss me.

Then something happened. Everyone at the table looked up over my head. I turned, and there Jay O’Brien stood, tall and sullen.

“Jay!” I cried, my hand going guiltily to my damp, kiss-smeared cheek.

“Hello, party crasher!” Jack said.

“I crashed on time. I should say,” Jay replied, his eyes becoming dark slits. “So you’ve won, you skunk! You said you’d get her to your apartment, all right—and you have. But before I pay you, I’ve got something else for you—”

I saw Jay’s fist reach out and crash into Jack’s jaw—saw him sprawl across the table. Then Jay yanked him up and leaned him against the wall. Stepping over to the table, Jay caught hold of the lace cloth and with one strong pull, spilled the flowers and wine and food onto the floor!

I saw Jay coming toward me. Then I tried to scream.

(To Be Continued)

Chapter II — Sunday, May 31, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, May 31, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 84, p. 85, p. 88.

Illustration captions, as printed The Lovely Blanca de Saulles and Her Son. Her Husband’s Love Affairs and His Kidnaping of the Child Drove the Chilean Millionairess to Pump Five Bullets Into His Body in One of America’s Most Famous Shootings.

I SAT there too stunned to move.

I saw Jay O’Brien strike his friend, Jack de Saulles and send him sprawling across his own table, before his forty dinner guests. I saw Jay pull the dazed Jack to his full height and lean him against the wall. Then Jay stepped over to the table, grabbed the cloth and with one strong pull spilled flowers, wine and food into a pile at my feet.

Then Jay turned and started toward me, moving slowly and deliberately, with a glazed expression in his eyes.

“He’s insane!” I thought. “What is he going to do to me!” But I could not speak and I could not scream.

He came closer and glass broke noisily under his foot.

He was beside my chair. He put his hands on my shoulders, ran his fingers down my arms and clenched my elbows. Suddenly he lifted me from the chair, where I was half covered with strewn flowers.

He held me in front of him, held me high on a level with his eyes. My feet did not touch the floor. He was trembling and his voice was low and husky.

An electric current trembled from his body through mine. And it seemed that everyone in that excited room understood it—and was awed.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

“Jay! You’re mad!”

“Why did you come?” he asked. “I don’t want you here!”

“You’re hurting me. Let me down, I tell you!”

“Answer me first!”

“I’ve told you before—I don’t belong to you or to anyone. I want to be free.”

“I told you that you couldn’t be free!”

Then I did something which broke the tension. I laughed.

“I’m no kidnaped baby, Jay,” I laughed again. “You didn’t have to rescue me! You’re being silly! You’re jealous!”

Jay stood me on my feet and I kept on smiling. The room fairly burst with excitement. Loud laughter and hysterical chatter broke loose and crowded together. But Jay did not smile. His face became more like a mask and whiter. This thing was not over yet. Jay had reached a place in his jealousy where it had become more important to dominate and possess me than anything else.

I could feel his tautness. He was shaking. His eyes squinted as he looked down at me. I knew I had not succeeded in breaking his tension, only in increasing it. Jay could not bear having these people laugh at him! It made him seem a fool—this was why he was losing control. The muscle in his jaw throbbed faster.

Suddenly his hand went out toward me. His fingers went around my throat.

Something happened inside me then. All the questions which had puzzled me and lived in my heart and mind about Jay were, it seemed, being answered.

In that strange moment I realized a truth which was to help me through many another tragic period with Jay and with other men, too. I was not afraid. I held my chin higher and forced my throat closer into Jay’s trembling fingers. There wasn’t a sound in that room when I spoke.

“Go on,” I said. “You’ll justify all my doubts and answer every question I’ve had about you.”

Jay O’Brien dropped his hand and stepped back.

I don’t know how long it took all this to happen, and of course, I can’t recall everything exactly as it actually occurred. I remember that Marilyn Miller came over and put her arm around my shoulder.

“Gypsy,” she said, calling me by the nickname she had given me when we were kids. “You were swell. Bernhardt never held the stage better.”

Together we laughed nervously, trying to pass off a trying situation.

Two waiters had taken Jay in tow. They were holding his arms, as if they expected him to break away as they led him toward the opposite end of the room. I saw then that Jack de Saulles was surrounded by friends, who apparently had kept him from going after Jay. It was apparent that Jay would be held by the waiters until Jack wanted him freed.

Jack was obstinate and knew what he wanted. He wasn’t ready to quit trying to get it. He wanted to be with me and he wanted Jay out of his way.

Suddenly Jack broke through the circle of men around him and made one of those rushes, for which he had become famous as quarterback at college.

Now he dashed my way, lifted me with one arm and hung me over his shoulder. He didn’t stop running until he had raced down three flights of stairs and we were outside in his car.

Without a word he dumped me into the seat beside him and started driving. Before I realized it he had raced through Central Park and was along Riverside Drive.

“Now you’re a kidnaped baby,” he laughed. “We’re going to talk, Mae—and it will be easier alone. It’s about Jay.”

I decided it would be better not to let him think I was as angry as I actually was. Or as uncomfortable, driving without a wrap in the Spring night.

“I thought you and Jay were close friends,” I said calmly.

“No men are friends where a woman is concerned.”

“Listen, Jack—I don’t want to be ‘a woman’ in your and Jay’s lives. I can’t understand why you bet with each other about me…”

“You see—it’s because you play hard to get. You know how to puzzle a man.”

“You big playboys are awfully silly. I don’t do anything.”

I wondered how I could ever get out of his car—just where he was taking me. I knew I had to calm him, but how?

“Look, Jack—I want to dance—to make my own living and live my own life—and I don’t want to make anybody unhappy…”

“Maybe you’ll like making somebody unhappy—wouldn’t you like to feel you have that power?”

“You might, but not me.”

“Smart, aren’t you?” he said. “Think I enjoy making Mrs. de Saulles unhappy? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“You seem to think that.”

“There are a lot more interesting things I can think of.”

I said that we had better turn back toward town.

“That’s foolish,” said Jack. “Don’t you know you’ll run into Jay O’Brien as soon as you step into Sans Souci tonight? Do you want him to finish up that little business he tried to start with you tonight?”

“Do you actually think that Jay would dare come to the cabaret and make a scene?”

“Mae, I know Jay a lot better than you do—he’d dare.”

“Let me telephone and find out if he’s there.” We stopped at a restaurant while I phoned. The headwaiter answered the phone.

“Miss Mae!” He recognized my voice. “Mr. Ziegfeld is here—he is waiting to see you! Mr. Florenz Ziegfeld!”

“Oh! Oh—but is Mr. Jay O’Brien there, too?”

“Yes—yes he is. But Mr. Ziegfeld—”

I was dizzy when I came away from the phone.

“Mr. Ziegfeld is waiting for me!” I told Jack.

“And—Jay,” he said. “Very pretty for you.”

“But do you think Jay would?”

“Listen, Mae. I know Jay better than you. He’ll make you sorry.”

Maybe he was right, I thought. I had had one experience that night which was indicative of the turmoil Jay could cause.

“Jay will spoil whatever Mr. Ziegfeld might think of you—now I’m really being your friend.”

“If you are my friend, then you’ll take me back to town. I’m not afraid of Jay O’Brien.”

Jack laughed and leaned back comfortably in the automobile seat.

“Want to go back? Well, I’ll show you I can do what you want me to do—I can take you back to town, all right. But no matter how fast I drive you can’t get back in time. We’re in Yonkers and I can’t make town in less than an hour.”

That was too late…too late.

It was a long unhappy drive back to town for me. De Saulles drove with an evil smile on his face, as if he were enjoying my upset night. There was an exhilaration about him as if he experienced great satisfaction from the things which had happened.

He didn’t seem human. He didn’t care for honesty or decency. Everything was a kind of evil game to him.

“It’s not the money, Jack, you won tonight because you succeeded in getting me out. You don’t need that, do you? It’s not power—you can’t care so much about power over me. It’s just some kind of a game all the time.”

“Don’t worry your pretty curly head, pet,” he said.

We turned into my street then, and it was nearly three as he had driven so slowly back to the city. A car was in front of my apartment house and on the street a tall man in a top hat was walking nervously up and down the pavement.

That man was Jay O’Brien. Jack and I recognized him at the same time—and Jack drove faster but not fast enough for Jay to miss seeing us as we passed my house.

“And that, dear child, is how bets are won,” said Jack.

“Let me out at some hotel—just let me be alone, please,” I told him, “to be away from both of you!”

“You can’t get in without baggage—in your evening gown and without a hat. But I’ll take you to a hotel where they know me and I can fix it up for you.”

“You’ve done enough fixing for me, Jack.”

I thought of course that I would wait in the lobby until he left and get a taxi. I needed the comfort of my little apartment and Jenny’s protection!

He drove up in front of a hotel in the West Fifties and stopped. I got out of the car. Jack was right beside me and he held my arm. But his grip was not secure enough to hold me. I broke away and ran over to a policeman standing on the corner.

I only asked the policeman a few directions, but Jack didn’t know what I was saying and when I turned around he had driven away. He could be a socialite and a hero-athlete, but he was a bore to me. He had caused more disturbance in my life than anyone I had ever known!

Jay was not outside the apartment house when I taxied back there. Jenny was waiting up and met me at my door. Her round face was all anxiety as she caught me in her arms.

“I waited till 3 for you, Miss Mae, so I had to come home when the cabaret closed. A lady here to see you, says she’s yo’ friend. She was here when I come home. She won’t take no coffee or nothing—Miss Mae, where you been, honey, all dis night? I been worrying myself sick.”

Over Jenny’s shoulder I could see a woman sitting on the couch. She had on a small dark hat and a dark coat. I didn’t recognize her at first because I had only seen her once before and then she had worn evening clothes at Otto Kahn’s party.

“You’ve been out tonight with my husband, haven’t you?” were her first words to me.

I stepped nearer.

“You’re Blanca de Saulles…yes, I have been. But, listen—” I sat beside her. “I don’t want your husband.”

“He’ll never do you any good,” she said. “He’ll never give you anything—only take from you.”

“I don’t want him—”

“I wonder if I can believe you?”

She looked at me with large suffering eyes. Then I remember she raised her hand to her throat and touched a crucifix which hung by a fine chain. Such doubt was in her eyes.

I asked her to look at my gown, ruined from my struggles, and from the wine which had spilled on its tulle skirt…I told her that her husband had caused me to miss my performance and perhaps lose an opportunity of a lifetime that night…Then I reached over and put my hand over hers, which still touched her crucifix.

“With all I ever expect to be I swear to you I do not want your husband.”

“He pursues you—”

“Yes—and I don’t know how to outwit him, how to meet his tricks.”

Then she answered sadly: “It is always that way with someone new.”

At that moment Jenny came in, saying she had made waffles and coffee.

“You’ll both feel a lot better if you eat some breakfast,” Jenny drawled, persuasively.

“Will you have some with me?” I asked Blanca de Saulles.

She looked at me for a moment, then she stood up. With a hurt little laugh, she said, “I will break bread with you.” Her words were sincere and full of meaning.

During those morning hours, almost till noon, this girl who seldom talked very much even to those who knew her well, poured out her story to me. She told me about her convent upbringing, her family in Chile, about meeting Jack in Paris when she was just out of the convent…about their baby…and the injustice she had known from Jack during their marriage. Now, she said that her fortune was entirely within his control and she was helpless.

“I want to divorce Jack, but I am strange to the ways of this country. I have no friends. I no longer have money in my own name,” she said. “I had hoped you would help me—divorce him and get my baby.”

“You thought I’d be your evidence?” I asked.

She gave me a heartbreaking look.

“Forgive me, I did hope so, but now I know better.”

I promised Blanca de Saulles that I would help her be happier.

“Do you like to dance?” I asked.

“Yes. I used to dance,” she said meekly. “That was in Paris.” She seemed to be thinking that had been not so long ago, but that much had happened meanwhile to take the desire for dancing from her heart. Then she began to cry. I tried to comfort her and it seemed we had always been friends.

“Oh, you must go out dancing—you will see how much it will help. Your husband can’t mind if it will help you to be happier.”

She said that she would go dancing and I promised to make some plans for her. Later in the Summer I introduced her to Rudolph Valentino and Rudolph took only one look at her soft brown eyes and was her slave.

When I walked to the door with Blanca she promised to come again and I said she must come often. We pressed our cheeks together and I felt we had formed a delicate and rare friendship.

I didn’t think I could sleep but I did…because it was several hours later when I became aware of extraordinary fragrance. It seemed that the entire floor of my bedroom was covered with flowers. Large vases and boxes set about the floor.

I began opening the cards which Jenny brought to me.

“They been arriving ever since you went to bed, Miss Mae,” she said.

They were all from Jay O’Brien! The first box of roses had held a note. It was written on heavy note paper.

“My precious baby—Can you forgive me for something which never really could have happened? I’ve had many hours to think and regret and now I know you are my whole world. Even the first time I am in love. And I am in love with you.

“I’ll wait here for your call. Please forgive and call, “Your Jay.”

Suddenly Marilyn Miller, wearing a pink suit and blue hat came bursting into the room. She did a ballet leap over the flowers and sat beside me.

“Oh, Gypsy!” she hugged me. “Something wonderful for you—I’ve come to tell you Ziggie wants me to bring you to his apartment this very afternoon.”

The moment we entered Ziggie’s apartment he came forward to greet us. Holding my hand, he said:

“You have certainly been making noises, young lady, on Broadway. And I expect you to make a lot more. I have something for you, if you would like it. I think it will work out nicely for you.”

He wanted to give me some special things to do in the Follies which would open at the New Amsterdam. And as he described them, using his large expressive hands as he talked, I could see myself dancing…dancing again at the New Amsterdam Theatre, where I had danced and won such success with Vernon Castle only a few weeks before.

“Do just as Ziggie says,” Marilyn proddded [sic] me. “Everything will be great.”

It was agreed that I go right back into rehearsal as the Follies would open in five weeks.

I wanted to work more than anything else—but Jay in his crude and romantic way had made a strange impression on me. I had no serious idea of falling in love with him. In fact, that afternoon when I left Ziggie’s, Jay had completely left my thought until Marilyn said:

“After Jay O’Brien behaved so badly last night—spoiled a wonderful party for all of us—I hope you’ll never see him again.”

I had to tell her then about his pathetic note.

“He says he loves me, and he’s waiting for me to call and forgive him.”

“Let him suffer,” she said.

But—I did call Jay and I met him in the Crystal Room at the Ritz, where he sat and talked for hours.

“You’re going to marry me,” he said.

“Jay, I’m going into the Follies.”

“You’ll see,” he said. “I know. I can’t go on in a constant state of depression, tortured and jealous. You’ll marry me.”

Within the next few weeks the Sans Souci closed for the season and Mr. Ziegfeld started rehearsals.

I met many well-known personalities during those weeks, and among them was Rudolph Valentino. He was a magnificent specimen of humanity and had a disposition which matched his physical beauty. Just to see his expressive hand lying on the back of a chair was art.

Valentino and I happened to be in the same group one afternoon. He came over and sat by me—we seemed to become friends immediately.

Rudy and I had a unique understanding. We were both attracted to each other from that first afternoon. Call it sex, if you will, but I call it a dancing friendship. Which is why our bond lasted, lived long and strong.

“I don’t want to leave you, Murray,” he said, “You and I are in tune. You do things to my heart.”

There was something sweet, tender, almost child-like about Valentino.

Eventually the opening night of the Follies arrived. Seats on the front row sold for $100 apiece.

But something was wrong, someone I had expected to be there was missing. I kept searching the audience in my excitement. Where was Jay? Could he forget me this night?

My specialties went over thunderously. Then came the episode which was Ziggie’s pride. In this number I was “Merry Pickum”—a travesty on the name Mary Pickford. It was a burlesque on motion pictures.

As soon as the show was over, Mr. Ziegfeld sent word up to the dressing room which I shared with several others, that he wanted me to come down immediately. I threw on a robe over my costume and hurried down to him.

There was a slight, dark-eyed man with Ziggie and he introduced him. His name was Adolph Zukor.

“Miss Murray, I believe you have a future in motion pictures,” he said. “Come to my office tomorrow and let us talk about your place in Hollywood.”

“Thank you, Mr. Zukor. Hollywood?” I shook my head. “I don’t believe I’d like to go there. I had rather dance than act in pictures—and I love Broadway too much to leave it.”

Adolph Zukor smiled tolerantly at me and winked at Ziggie.

But before I was halfway up the stairs to the dressing room I was wondering again about Jay. It wasn’t believable that he would ignore me on this night!

I remember looking at the flowers, examining the cards, when suddenly Jenny caught my arm and fixed her eyes on me.

“I see you looking and searching there, honey,” she said. “Why you care, Miss Mae, ’cause dat Mr. Jay’s card ain’t here?”

All Broadway was celebrating that night, but the man who had said I was his world had deliberately forsaken me.

Was I beginning to betray myself to myself? Was I beginning to realize that I could not be free, as Jay had said?

(To Be Continued Next Week)

Chapter III — Sunday, June 7, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, June 7, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 88, p. 89, p. 90, p. 92, p. 96.

Illustration captions, as printed “The Girl With the Bee-Stung Lips,” a Drawing by the Popular Artist Nell Brinkley, Who Was Inspired by Mae’s Pouting Mouth, Which, Mae Explains, Brought Her First Publicity. Robert Z. Leonard, Mae’s Second Husband, the Well-Known Hollywood Director, Shown With His Second Wife, the the [sic] Actress Gertrude Olmstead, At a Costume Party.

“JENNY, I don’t have to stay in New York. I can go to Hollywood and be in the movies,” I said. “Mr. Zukor told me tonight I could.”

“Well, well! Ain’t that nice!”

“He did, Jenny—honestly.”

“I knows, honey. But you ain’t going. So jest git yo’self dressed and let us go home. You had plenty excitement. Calm down.”

I knew Jenny was right. I was being silly, letting Jay worry me. But he had taken the heart out of me by not coming to my opening night of the Follies. I didn’t mean to let him affect me that way. I didn’t intend that any man should matter then because I wanted to concentrate all my energies and thought on work. But still—I kept remembering that I had gone through dance after dance, looking out over the audience for the man who said he loved me—and he hadn’t been there. Now, a cartload of flowers was piled in my dressing room and not one blossom had been sent by him. You see, the opening night of the Follies was not all what I’d expected in some ways.

Jay knew that was the way to impress me. It certainly did. I don’t know how long it took me to take my costume off and get ready to leave the theatre. Jenny kept watching me out of the corner of her eye and sympathy in her voice when she spoke said much more than her words.

She was right, I did have to stop worrying. I had work to think about and no time to puzzle over Jay O’Brien.

“Hollywood,” I said aloud. “Mmm…Mr. Ziegfeld says I’ve made noise on Broadway. I bet I can make a bigger noise. I’ll bet they would meet me at the station with a band playing and a carpet strewn with flowers. That’s the way they do things in Hollywood!”

“Stop mumbling your misery, honey. This is Jenny you talkin’ to.”

In Hollywood I’d soon know I wasn’t in love, wouldn’t I? While I kept wondering about Jay and the experience of that night my brain was beginning to form pictures with quick and beautiful rapidity. I had not lost my head, I told myself, on the contrary. However, my reflection in the mirror told me something had happened to my heart. My eyes were a sight from crying.

Backstage of the New Amsterdam was half-lit and dreary and echoed with voices of stage hands eager to finish their chores and get out. With an unhappy feeling I stopped on my way out and looked at the stage and the rows of empty seats and tried to call back some of the noise and music and ecstasy I had known there an hour earlier. But I could not disguise my feelings, and I remember that I stood there holding to a piece of scenery and swallowing my tears and feelings as if I had swallowed bushels of torn up programs.

I turned and ran out the stage door—and there in the shadowy midnight stood Rudolph Valentino. He caught me up in his arms and held me close.

“Oh, Rudy—you’ve waited for me!” I cried. “I didn’t know—why didn’t you send word up to me you were here?”

He held me away from him, looked at me for a little while. “It was better this way,” he said. “Tell me you are glad to see me.”

Then I told him so and thanked him for his flowers. We kept standing there, and then suddenly Rudy caught me in his arms again and held me—held me because he knew I was going to cry and could not help it.

“Go on—you’ll feel better,” he told me. “I understand.”

“No—you couldn’t possibly.”

“But I do, Murray. I’ve known for a long time.” Then he said, “I wish you would never see that guy again—or want to see him. Or even think about him.”

I wished the same things, I told him, but just then wishing didn’t seem to help very much.

We got into the waiting cab and drove to my apartment, but that was one night that I sent Jenny in alone. Rudy and I drove until almost daylight, and talked out many things. Strangely enough, Rudy DID seem to understand and still he continued to be as eager as ever to be with me whenever he could.

His attention made time move much more swiftly and happily. The Summer was a blazing one and unable to sleep late during the day I often got up early and went to Long Beach where I swam and lay on the sand until time to come in for the show. Long Beach was quite the place to go then and fashionables in their colorful bathing suits and sports clothes created a gay atmosphere, which I enjoyed.

It was there one afternoon when Valentino and I were sitting on the beach that he offered me a surprising confidence.

“Murray, I’ve met Blanca de Saulles.”

Something in his voice made me turn quickly and look at him.

“Rudy,” I said, “how many times have I told you that what you felt for me was fascination and that another girl would come into your path and give you all the things you want.”

I told Rudy this because almost immediately I felt that much lay quivering and unspoken between Blanca and him. I couldn’t explain to Rudy what I sensed about Blanca, that she had no love in her heart. For any man. That she was broken-hearted.

Naturally Rudy, dancing in various cafes around Manhattan, knew all about Jack de Saulles, but I realized very soon that he had not expected the playboy’s wife, Blanca, to be as he found her.

Rudy was soft in Blanca’s cultured hands. He had never known a woman like her and he became obsessed with wanting to do something to please her. My heart ached for Rudy and it ached for Blanca. And it occurred to me too late that Rudy was, of all men, the one who could understand and sympathize with her predicament. Thus, he took his place in her secret life…it was he who got evidence for her divorce from Jack and when Jack learned this, he had Valentino imprisoned and held on a false charge. De Saulles, in this action, wanted to destroy the value of Rudy’s testimony in court, as all value of his words would be lost. This of course, was a terrible and vicious thing to do and Jack was to pay for it. Rudy never deserved such treatment.

While I was much concerned over Rudy and Blanca. I was still torn in my mind about Jay O’Brien—which was puzzling. I had not seen Jay or heard his voice for so very long and yet, I kept on looking for him in the audience night after night and listening for his calls and expecting some word. His name rushed out and roared and tingled in my ears through every performance…and the sound of it beat there cruelly in my heart when I was alone, disturbing me as I tried to rest, frightening me in sleep.

I knew Jay would come back. I knew that I could not keep him away if I tried. He would come back and make me wish more than ever I had never known him.

In two weeks the show was to leave New York on tour and Mr. Ziegfeld gave a party on one of the roof gardens for the cast. Many of us were sitting at the table when Jay appeared and came over and sat beside me. I remember what excitement this caused, as by then it seemed that everyone knew there was some strange attraction existing between Jay and me.

Ziggie greeted Jay cordially, although his being there beside me, never looking at me, yet seeming to dominate me just the same, caused a strained effect on the party. But Jay dispelled this cleverly by threading his praise of the Follies through the group.

“You’ve seen the show?” I asked, almost gasping with surprise.

“Seen it?” Jay smiled. “I’ve been there four nights a week since the opening!”

“Oh—”

Jay mentioned something pleasing about the work of every performer at the table—and I sat there, waiting, hoping he would include me.

But he never said one word that I might take personally! NOT ONE WORD! I felt the full cruelty of his blow then. But my brain began to work fast and clearly. It began to tell me I should be intelligent enough to get away from this peculiar misery which sat beside me in a perfectly cut dinner jacket. So he had watched me dance night after night..And wouldn’t let me know it!…Now that he let me know he couldn’t even give me a compliment, but sat among my fellow workers and praised them and said no word to me!

My heart hammered hard as I sat there beside him feeling his mind and desire enveloping me. Then I sensed he had decided to take me home from the party.

There would be time when my mind and emotions argued and my heart would win. But this time I did not give over to the crucial and furious abandon of emotion. What kind of man, I asked myself, was this who could fascinate me? No—what kind of girl was I to allow it to happen to me?

I got up from the table as if I were going to the powder room, instead I went into the service elevator and left. I hurried into a cab and drove home as quickly as I could.

As soon as I was awake the following day I made up my mind that I would accept Mr. Zukor’s invitation to see him and as quickly as I could I went to his office.

“You’ve been a long time thinking this over,” Adolph Zukor greeted me when I walked into his office.

But now that I had come to talk with him about going to Hollywood I felt uncertain. Hollywood seemed strange. I tried to tell him that. But then, suddenly standing beside his glass-topped desk, I said:

“I’ll go to Hollywood, Mr. Zukor, if it will be gay.”

“How’d you like to be met at the train by a big brass band?”

“Fine! And a flower-strewn carpet to walk from the train into the studio on?”

“Biggest red carpet you ever saw!”

“And the loudest band?” I asked. “Promise me?”

“Is that all you want?” he laughed. “Well, you’ll be crazy about Hollywood.”

“I’ll go then as soon as I finish my contract with Mr. Ziegfeld.”

It was decided that afternoon that I was to work under the banner of Jesse Lasky at the Paramount Studio in Hollywood. Many other plans were made, I remember saying:

“I want to travel with Jenny, my maid. I couldn’t be separated from her.”

“Naturally,” agreed Mr. Zukor, and then he added: “You will have a de luxe drawing room, Miss Murray.”

Adolph Zukor had a contagious, playful whimsical way, which attracted me. And influenced my decision to go to Hollywood. When I was a child and in emotional distress over something I did not understand and therefore did not know how to cope with, my father would become whimsical. I could laugh and dance then and forget that I had been crying. My father used to tie a red sash about me, give me a tube of red paint from his paint box and let me decorate myself for a war dance. I would dance with my head thrown so far back I could look at the sky—and imagine the clouds were waves and mountains beside the sea. I wanted to whirl over and about them.

That day I remember walking down Broadway my head thrown back looking at the clouds and imagining I would dance around them in Hollywood where a great band would play for me and yards and yards of red carpet would be thrown across the ground for my toes to touch. I could follow my own fantasies over that carpet to the tune of that blaring band—and all the noise and disquiet Jay had caused in my heart would be forever quiet! That was my hope—my grasp toward the whimsical.

I walked right into Jay O’Brien!

I had the feeling, a little later, that he had seen me go into Mr. Zukor’s office and had waited outside for me. But the excitement of seeing him at first was volcanic inside me.

“I’m going to Hollywood, Jay!” I told him as quickly as I could.

“Are you?”

“Yes, yes! I—we—can say good-by right now!”

Exhibitionism, of which I had to have plenty to become a dancer, had pranced out then. I had managed, unconsciously, to parade out a startling bit of news and it knocked Jay off his feet before he had a chance to talk about my walking out on him the night before.

“Jay!” I said. “Please be glad with me. I want you to be glad.”

“I don’t want you to go to Hollywood.”

“When I’m gone—it will be much better for both of us,” I said, surprising myself by such an adult speech. “We are bad friends, you and I.”

“It’s because you won’t marry me, my baby. You know that as well as I do. I have everything you want, everything—why do you go on making us both unhappy? You’re going to marry me—you’ve got to believe that.”

“I am a dancer and an actress. I want to believe that I am—and with you I cannot believe anything. Not even that you love me.”

This conversation and so many others like it are entwined in my memory of Jay. So many scenes. Now this one took place in the late afternoon on a curb on Fifth Avenue. But it will never be forgotten and seems as fresh in my memory as though it took place yesterday.

“You seem to think it’s what you do that counts,” Jay said. “It’s what you are—you’re just a precious baby who belongs to me—not to Broadway, not to Hollywood! Dancing and acting and running away from me and doing the things I don’t want you to do—they don’t count. You’re still my baby, don’t you understand that by now?”

The sight of his pain made me dizzy and a great pity for what he seemed to be suffering flowed through me.

The peculiar pity I had for him prevented me from running away when he caught me by the arm and pushed me into a cab.

His arms were around me and his lips were on my face for the first time. I heard him sob against my hair and my heart acted funny. I was more puzzled than ever about what strange bond there was between Jay and me. I didn’t understand it and yet I wondered if I shouldn’t try harder to understand. Here was a human being in torture because of me. I had been unhappy about him. It did not seem right. His influence on my emotional life had not ended.

“All right! All right, Jay—I’ll marry you,” I heard myself promising.

His eyes met mine in a tearful moment.

“I will—but you’ll have to wait until I make one picture in Hollywood.” I knew I could not work if he were near me!

“Wait?—No! I’ll go to Hollywood with you.”

“No you’ll stay here! That’s the only way I’ll have you.”

When I left for Hollywood some time later Jay took me to the station. I was a mixture of emotions that day. After all, I hated to leave New York and my friends. Hollywood seemed a forbidding, frightening place even with Jenny beside me—even with visions of band and carpet waiting.

Jay tried to be tender but our parting was something I’ll always remember because it snapped some new bond between us. Jay did it with a threat. He said.

“I intend to hold you to your promise, baby, about coming back after one picture and marrying me.” Then, his hands on my shoulders, he said, “Remember—if you don’t come back—I’ll come out and get you.”

I stepped from the train in Hollywood expecting the band and red carpet, but there was no band. No carpet. I’d taken Mr. Zukor’s whimsy too literally and I was disappointed. But I was greeted by a pleasant looking man, carrying a large bunch of red roses, which he handed to me. He was part of Paramount’s personnel and had been sent to greet me and see about my baggage.

We went to the studio and without fanfare right into the beautiful, luxurious office of Mr. Lasky. I had met Mr. Lasky before with Mr. Zukor, and now he beamed enthusiasm about what was about to happen to me. He lost no time but handed me a script after the first few minutes in his office.

“We want you to read this overnight so that when we meet tomorrow you will know the story of your first picture,” he told me. “You are to be co-starred with Wallace Reid.”

Everything was so fast and furious and I was groping and wondering. My picture had been underway but a short time when I learned about the projection room where the shots which had been taken the previous day were run off. I made an arrangement with the operator to meet me there each night after the usual hours and run the film of me over and over. I would sit there for several hours studying myself, saying over and over, “I don’t like me!”

I studied those films trying to find out why I did not like myself and all through it I kept hearing the voice of the director saying to me, as he said over and over through the day:

“You’re not in the Follies now!”

I was in Hollywood, in pictures, and I did not like myself! I came to believe it was because the director was suppressing me, because he thought I was a fresh kid from the Follies, who was a dancer and who knew nothing about acting. He was trying to direct me according to his ideas of what I should be rather than what I really was.

This was a history making period in Hollywood—called the glitter era only by those who did not work in pictures. Everything was different there from any other place encountered in fiction or fact. People worked furiously for release. It was all beyond anything I had even imagined.

So many times I have been asked—how did you receive the title “The girl with the bee-stung lips.” Almost the first publicity I received in Hollywood was in regard to my lips and mouth. It did seem as though they were something very extraordinary. When I speak, my mouth naturally forms a sort of pout when I use certain words that I believe has caused a formation of muscles in my face which control the mouth.

At the end of my first film everyone around the studio was saying, “Even though Mae Murray is from the Follies she can act.” Can’t you imagine how I bubbled inside!

Then plans were being made for my next picture. Telephone calls and telegrams were coming daily from Jay asking when I was coming back to New York.

I pacified him by promising to come and he kept reminding me of my earlier promise and threatening to come to Hollywood.

I knew then I must do something about Jay. I couldn’t risk his coming to Hollywood, so I went to Cecil de Mille and asked him to let me go to New York before beginning my new work. I felt that when I saw Jay I could convince him how necessary my career had become. And I explained to Mr. de Mille that before I could go on with the next picture I must attend to something that was vitally important to me in New York.

“I promise you I’ll be back here in two weeks,” I said.

We shook hands on it. The following day I started for New York.

I tried earnestly to make Jay understand what was in my heart and mind, that I was sorry I had promised to marry him. I begged him to free me from that promise. But I could feel Jay’s resentment. I sensed that I was getting nowhere in the discussion with him.

Suddenly I decided the best thing for me was to get back to my work, so I slipped out of New York without telling Jay.

In Hollywood I was told that a new director had been assigned to my picture, that his name was Robert Z. Leonard.

It was interesting how many opinions Bob Leonard and I shared in common from the start. He not only seemed to sense my ideas but he elaborated on them. I was happier than I had ever been. Here was a man who seemed to think with me and for me in my work.

I watched and listened to him in raptures. I ventured to give him ideas and suggest re-taking certain scenes. When I remember Bob now Hollywood seems very near, and many of our good times together come back to live in my memory.

I have never been one who could have an ordinary life. And Bob Leonard even understood this. He knew that the perfection of work meant more to me than anything else. He had an odd character in that he despised lack of talent. He adored success and he adored my ability.

We had worked together for some week before the night he asked me to have dinner with him. It was a cool, California night, a blessing after the hot day in the studio. We drove far out in his car to an inn on a mountainside and stopped. We talked for hours, across a red-checked table cloth and a simple meal.

I realized when Bob had brought me home that he had told me nothing about himself, but I sensed that at last I had met a man who was as eager to do a job well, as I was. We talked the same language! I believe that he had the most extraordinary admiration for my work of anyone I’ve ever met.

Next day working with Bob Leonard was even more enjoyable. Everything clicked. As I was leaving the studio he came over to me and said.

“For the first time I am beginning to know what a benediction work can be—you’ve made me understand.”

We were together during many long drives and for the first time I drank in the scenery of California. One Sunday we took a picnic lunch and did not head back toward home until after sunset. When I came into the house Jenny was in a state of excitement. New York had been trying to get me on the telephone all day, she said. And as she told me the phone began ringing. I knew it was Jay.

I started to the ringing phone and then I stopped and turned back to Bob, standing in the doorway. I caught his arm.

“Don’t go. I won’t talk long and I wish you’d wait.”

That request was to have a tragic sequel.

“Baby!” Jay’s voice came steadily across the continent. Then a long wait. “What you did wasn’t very smart. You forgot to tell me something else besides good-by when you left here. Know what that was?”

“Oh, Jay—”

“Forgot to tell me about your new director, didn’t you?”

“Oh, Jay—can’t you just let me alone, please!”

“No!” He hung up.

I felt cold and shaky when I came away from the phone. The whole room was still and it seemed that all the beauty of that day had been spoiled. Then I heard Bob’s kind voice asking, “Anything I can do?”

“I want to tell you about it, Bob.” And I did tell him the whole story.

“Do you love him—at all?” Bob wanted to know.

“No—no! Only—”

“I’ve wanted to say something to you—but I had hoped to wait a little longer. My decree of divorce has not become final yet…you see, I’ve loved you since the first day we worked together. As soon as I’m free I hope we can be married.”

We talked into the night about what might be done to protect me from Jay. Bob planned to engage night and day shifts of both men and women detectives to act as my bodyguards in my home and to and from the studio.

Then, on a certain morning I was called to the studio phone. It was Jay calling. He had arrived.

“Baby!” he cried excitedly. “Here I am. When do we meet?”

“We do not meet, Jay. And do not come here to my home. I am being guarded against you everywhere. Please believe me!”

“What do you expect me to do then? Go back on the next train?”

“Yes, please. That’s all I want of you.”

He hung up—but he called me many other times that day—and at last he promised to leave town that night if I promised to say good-by to him at the station without bodyguards.

When I walked into the station that night Jay was there and greeted me profusely. With him was his wealthy and socially prominent friend “Pud” Sickles and his pretty wife. I thought these friends had come to see Jay off.

Suddenly Pud Sickles said: “Jay’s train doesn’t leave for an hour. We’re going out in my car…have a little surprise.”

So, we all got into Pud’s car—Jay and I sat in the back seat—and soon stopped at a large white house, obviously a residence. We got out and walked up to the door and Pud rang the bell. The four of us were admitted to a well furnished living-room.

“Who lives here?” I asked Jay, now that I realized it was not the Sickles’ home.

Hooking his arm through mine and pinning me against him, Jay placed his hand in his coat pocket. Then he answered my question:

“The judge who is going to marry us.”

“You can’t do this, Jay.”

“Oh, yes I can. Everything has been arranged. What do you think I’ve been doing in town all day?”

Then I felt that coat pocket pressed into my side. And I knew what I felt was a gun.

I looked around for Mr. and Mrs. Sickles, but they were not in the room. I began to talk fast. I begged Jay not to go through with the marriage. I told him I did not want him and only wanted my career.

“Jay—I’ll tell the judge I don’t want to marry you and that you’ve got a gun in your pocket!”

“You can take your choice. I could kill you—but I couldn’t have you then. I could kill your red-headed boy friend and you couldn’t have him and you couldn’t have your career, either. Know why? The publicity of having a director killed over a movie star would fix everything for you with your public!”

I couldn’t scream or even try to get away from him any longer. He had thought of everything. Everything! For the first time in my life I knew fear, and that’s why the situation slipped out of my control.

Pud Sickles and his wife came into the room then with a man.

“Judge,” Jay said, “this is the future Mrs. O’Brien.”

The gun punched into my ribs. I felt my face stretch into a smile. I heard my voice say, “Yes—yes.”

I was so frightened I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Then, with Jay’s arm still locked through mine, with his gun jammed painfully in my side, we went through the marriage ceremony…

Jay pulled me against him and pressed his lips on mine. I swore to myself that would be the last time Jay O’Brien would ever kiss me. And it was!

(To Be Continued Next Week)

Chapter IV — Sunday, June 14, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, June 14, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 88, p. 89, p. 94, p. 96.

Illustration captions, as printed Mae Murray, at the Door of Her Portable Dressing Room Now Used by Greta Garbo Because of Their Mutual Friendship With John Gilbert. Mae’s Second Husband, the Director Robert Z. Leonard, With His Second Wife, the Actress Gertrude Olmstead, Shown at a Hollywood Party. Mae Murray, Wearing a Striking Headdress in One of the Poses That Made Her Face Famous Throughout the Country.

TELLING Bob Leonard that I had married someone else was the hardest thing I ever tried to do.

I have never seen such hurt and disbelief in a human’s eyes as when we stood in his office that night, barely an hour after my marriage to Jay O’Brien, and I struggled to put into words what actually had happened.

“I’ve just gone through the wedding ceremony, Bob,” I said, holding his hands. “I couldn’t help it—he would have shot me! I’ll never be his wife, Bob—never let him even come near me!”

“You did that? How could you!”

“I couldn’t help it! Jay kept his gun in my side.”

“He wouldn’t have shot you! No man could kill anything so lovely—I’d rather you’d let him shoot you than—”

“I’ll never live with him, I promise you! It’s you I am going to marry! And if I hadn’t gone through the ceremony with Jay—he said he would have shot you—or me. It would have been one of us, Bob—or both.”

I went over and over the story to him, over and over, because it was beyond Bob’s imagination, beyond his belief that the thing he feared most had actually happened.

I had gone to call Bob as soon as Jay’s friends had taken us to the hotel in Los Angeles, where a wedding banquet had been prepared. I saw my chance to get away in the midst of the first burst of congratulations and excitement and champagne. I dodged behind a hedge of palms, then ran out a side entrance of the hotel, climbed into a taxi and when I was certain no one had followed me I got out and phoned Bob. Knowing that I would be protected from Jay best at the studio I told Bob to meet me there in his office.

“Oh, dearest—dearest!” Bob’s face twitched with pain. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight.”

“I hope you never do again.” He held me close and it seemed that I cried out of my heart all the anguish and anxiety I had ever known because of Jay. I said after a while when I began to feel better, “Bob, maybe it wasn’t a real marriage ceremony.”

“How could it have been! I think I remember where the judge lives, let’s go find him and explain what actually happened.”

I remember how hopefully we walked into the judge’s house a little later. The judge, a kind-eyed man, listened calmly as I went through my story again.

“You should have spoken up before the ceremony,” he said, unimpressed.

“But can’t you help? Take it off the records? It wasn’t a real marriage.”

“It was a real marriage,” he said. “I’m not the one to help you now. You’ll have to see a lawyer.”

Bob and I came away feeling more depressed than ever—and I looked furtively at every passing car.

Jay would try his best to find and force me to come with him that night. He would never rest when he thought of himself as being out-smarted by me—and laughed at by his friends because his bride had run out on him!

There seemed no place I could go and feel safe. Bob and I drove for hours feeling too licked to talk.

“Mr. de Mille!” I cried suddenly. “He’s helped me before—let’s tell him what has happened!”

Bob agreed that was a good idea, and said we would need the help of the entire personnel of the studio, now that Jay had a legal hold over me, if I were to stay away from him.

When we told Cecil de Mille about it that very night, he and other executives of the studio worked out a plan for my safety.

I was sent to a ranch, a few miles outside Los Angeles and owned by one of the studio heads. I was guarded there throughout every hour for the following five days—during which studio officials succeeded in making clear to Jay what I had tried so long in vain to do. He must go on his way and leave me. So, Jay was eventually convinced and left for New York on his honeymoon alone. But even then a man was sent, unknown to him, to watch him en route to New York. Had Jay attempted to turn back to Hollywood, he would have been stopped.

It took some time to free me from this peculiar union. Bob Leonard was attentive and patient, and a great comfort to me; during this waiting his final decree arrived and we made careful plans for our future together.

Eventually Bob and I were married. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for me to become his wife, and he treated me as though I were some precious jewel entrusted to his care. Life seemed quite complete, peaceful and satisfying. Just as I had expected it would be with him..

By this time I had a large house on Franklin Avenue, in Hollywood. I had jumped into big money after my second picture and I was able to make home life very nearly like the fairy tales I acted in at the studio. I set my heart on doing this—and I did a good job. The house spread gracefully in the midst of lawns and trees and blooming gardens. I had a staff of servants and gardeners. My furnishings were colorful and unusual, and I carried magnificence into the finest detail. For instance, I had satin sheets on every bed and a gold dinner service.

One huge room held only my many clothes and a maid did nothing but keep them in perfect condition. In fairy tales there is always a mistress of the wardrobe. And I saw myself as the princess in a fairy tale. You see, although I had been in pictures a short time my earnings would afford everything my heart desired.

Everything I wore was specially designed for me. I had dozens of everything, even my cobweb lace panties were made to order.

Bob and I took our places in Hollywood life and entertained frequently—and were entertained in various homes where the celebrities gathered and were amused by each other.

Charlie Chaplin would fetch a kettle and a napkin from the kitchen and do a pantomime of Salome, holding us spellbound with his art.

Now I was about to make “Delicious Little Devil” and the world which Bob and I shared seemed without a cloud until word came to me that Rudolph Valentino was in serious trouble and needed help.

Jack de Saulles had learned that Rudy would be Blanca de Saulles’ witness in her divorce from him. So, Jack, to discredit Rudy’s testimony, and through his influence of position and money, had been able to have Rudy held on a false charge. But Rudy was able to prove within a few days he was innocent of that charge and was freed.

I knew the anguish in Rudy’s heart. I knew that he realized he could do nothing more to help the woman he loved, and that Jack was determined not to let her have her way in the divorce which meant taking the child with her to Chile.

Rudy would now be unable to get work in New York cabarets. Jack de Saulles would see to that!

When I explained to Bob, he promised to help me, help Rudy.

I called Rudy over long distance. “Come right out here,” I told him, “and we’ll plan something.”

“Murray,” he said, “bless you.” This showed Rudy that I believed in him and it showed everyone that Hollywood believed in Rudy when he became my leading man.

In my picture, Rudy took the part of the playboy son of an Irish contractor. The part brought him to the attention of those in power, and he was very good. He made so good, in fact, that he was eventually, as we all know, started on his brilliant career, beginning with his part in “The Four Horsemen.”

But in the midst of his success Rudy carried the mark of Blanca. Nothing, not even fame and fortune through his own talent, erased the cloud she had cast over his heart. He could not understand why she had refused to see him after his trouble, why she had not been grateful. It was hard for him to accept the fact that when she realized she could not use him to gain her own ends, she no longer had any interest in him. While the world sought him, and acclaimed him as a great lover, Blanca de Saulles, the unhappy, undesired wife of a playboy, did not want him! This hurt his heart—not his ego, his heart.

There was the time when Rudy with heartbreak in his eyes and voice told me this terrible news:

Blanca had shot and killed Jack!

The newspapers headlined the facts—Blanca, the little convent-bred girl, heiress to millions, niece of a one-time President of Chile, who had married Jack de Saulles, of Social Register and Yale football fame, shot and killed her husband when he would not let her have their child.

Rudy tried to reach Blanca then. He followed every account of her. I’ll never forget how he grieved for the woman he loved while she was held on a charge of first degree murder!…Through the ten days of her trial he was like a trapped animal. He would come and sit with me beside a burning candle and whisper prayers…the prayers of a boy’s heart for a mother, the prayers of a man for a woman, a lover begging that a life be spared, asking forgiveness.

“I killed him because he would not give me my boy,” was Blanca’s only defense. I shall always remember the final address which Blanca’s lawyer, Henry A. Uterhart, made to the jury. This is what he said:

“The motherhood instinct is not a thing to be trifled with. If you put your hand into a den of tigers and try to pull away one of the cubs the mother tiger is going to spring at you. Mother love is the most powerful emotion in the world.”

There would be a day when I would know the meaning of those words far better than I did then—try to get solace from them—and yet against them I remembered there is a commandment which not even my instinct as a mother must allow me to break.

The jury agreed with Mr. Uterhart and the verdict was “Not guilty!”

Blanca was free and she still refused to communicate with Rudy.

But on one of my trips East, I went to Blanca and asked that she just let him look at her, that she need not even speak to him—or look at him. This was a strange mission to send me on—but I was too touched by Rudy’s sorrow not to try to help him. I succeeded in that Blanca consented to walk through a hotel lobby where she knew Rudy would be sitting. It was understood that he would not speak to her, or try to touch her hand.

She kept her word—Rudy kept his!

Afterwards Blanca and her son went to the Orient to live—and I have often thought that she was kind in going so far from Rudy. After a while he came to speak of her less. But even when he fell in love with someone else, I knew that he had never escaped the shadow Blanca de Saulles cast over his heart.

Rudy threw himself into his work just as Bob and I did. We saw each other frequently and sometimes found time to play together, but I was beginning to long for the East again. I loved my great house and the California climate. It had been fun to live there peacefully with Bob. Still I missed New York and the short visits I made there for clothing and a round of the shows did not make up for the long months I was away.

So, when I came into a new contract with Paramount I was given the privilege of working in either the Western or Eastern studio. I decided on the Eastern—and just then Cosmopolitan gave Bob a wonderful contract in New York, so we could come East together, although for the first time since we had met Bob and I would work apart. It meant that we would have to feather a new nest in the East.

Life moved swiftly for me. I bought a tremendous cooperative duplex apartment and made it a more elaborate fairyland than the California house had been. The ceiling of my living room, for instance, was hand-painted in pure gold leaf and cost $7,000. The beams were all hand-painted and I had exquisite antiques and rugs, stained-glass windows, and a running fountain whose trickle echoed through the entire place.

Bob was quite happy directing Marion Davies and I enjoyed working with my new director, George Fitzmaurice, an Irishman who had been educated in France. He had a leaning toward the exotic and bizarre, which I liked. So, we blended.

My first picture with George was “On With the Dance,” and its success caused the studio to start us working together immediately again on “The Right to Love.” For this we needed a Turkish setting, and the entire company went to live in Florida for the duration.

There was an estate on a private island, just off the Florida coast, which lent itself perfectly to every scene. This work, too, was received with great approval and George and I worked together again in “Idols of Clay.” This was an extraordinary story of a girl’s degradation, and offered me a different kind of role. I marvelled when I saw myself on the screen, depicting such stark tragedy. I hadn’t known tragedy then—but I was to learn soon enough.

By this time Bob had finished his contract and I still had one more picture to do under my contract. But Bob began talking about a vacation and he wanted me to go with him. I knew that he disliked having me work under another director and while he had been happy in his work, he had missed our association. Sensing his loneliness and because I believed that he loved me too devotedly to travel without me I fell in with his idea of our going to Europe together then.

“We’ve been too busy working to play enough,” he persuaded. “Lets go to Europe.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Zukor if he’ll give me a leave,” I said.

I’ll never forget how delighted Bob was when I came home that afternoon and told him Mr. Zukor had consented to let me go to Europe. I had worked long and faithfully on the three pictures under my new contract and the studio had decided I was entitled to a vacation.

“Dearest, go buy all the clothes and baubles you want,” Bob enthused. And I began making lists and sketches and thinking up designs and went out shopping that afternoon.

When I turned into a Fifth Avenue shop I ran into Olive Thomas. After I’d gone to Hollywood, Olive came out, too, made pictures, met and married Jack Pickford.

Almost simultaneously we cried:

“I’m getting ready to go to Europe!” Then Olive added: “It’s to be my second honeymoon!”

I was so surprised and so glad to hear this news from Olive, that I forgot my own excitement. All of us knew Olive’s cross had been her marriage to Jack, who was the brother of Mary Pickford and who was a picture star by right of his own talent.

Jack was the kind of man women sought, and yet he should never have been married because he could not accept marriage. He had a peculiar attraction to women and this had often caused Olive heartache. She soon reached the time when she lost her perspective and thought that all she really wanted was Jack’s adoration, his love—and she did not want to share it.

She and Jack had their differences and many times had almost broken up their marriage. But now Olive was again happy.

“I’m buying everything—everything for the trip,” she said. “Jack told me to take fifty trunks, if I wanted them.”

She put her arm through mine and pulled me into the shop with her.

“I’m so happy because this trip means that Jack and I are starting all over—just like new. We’re just going to be in love with each other—and no more troubles!”

She was so pretty and so vibrant. I wondered how any man could fail to love her—how any man could mistreat her. But I was to recall her words later and under far different circumstances. Now I cheered with her and together we shopped the entire afternoon.

We planned to meet for lunch at the Ritz in Paris—and we set a date, which would mean that we would have been abroad long enough by then to have many things to relate.

I crossed with Bob on the Olympic the following week. Olive and Jack were to sail a little later.

I had been to Europe many times as a child, with my grandmother, a wealthy woman, whose hobby was travel. I had been sent to convents throughout Europe, as grandmother would park me a few months in the care of the nuns and go off traveling, then pick me up and take me to see the places she had seen on her journey which she thought I might enjoy.

But this was my first trip abroad since I had become a picture star! Word flashed ahead of my arrival to Spain, and there I was greeted by a crowd at the boat. People lined the streets and cheered and threw flowers. I was toasted at the bull-fight and had my picture taken with the hero of the arena—how the crowd cheered me!

I stored away my impressions of all this, which afterwards formed the nucleus of the picture “Fascination,” in which I formed the steps of my dance after the bull and his antics—my Dance of the Bull.

In Paris, my film, “On With the Dance,” was just being advertised, as films were released a year later there after their American showing. I was greeted everywhere and entertained lavishly.

Cecile Sorel, the famous French actress, gave a soiree in my honor in her historic mansion, just across from the Louvre. Voltaire once lived in this mansion where marble stairways wind from floor to floor, where the ceilings have exotic lighting effect and the walls are hung with priceless paintings. The dining room was all marble and leopard skin—and her main salon held furniture from famous palaces. It was a fitting setting for my hostess, who was the embodiment of Continental chic.

She had invited more than a hundred guests to meet me that afternoon and in the midst of it I was asked to dance. I said that I would and the music started.

But as I was almost finishing my dance something happened. Suddenly my cobweb lace panties—some of those which had been made to order—dropped about my ankles!

Nonchalantly, I kicked them off. But when I tried to retrieve I could not find them because the guests had torn them to pieces of postage stamp size for souvenirs!

My embarrassment was saved by the hostess’s utter glee.

“Lee-tle dove,” she cooed. “You are beeg success!”

Every person in the room held up a tidbit of lace and cheered and laughed.

Cecile Sorel was a true pattern of a great French artist. I wanted to study her, the way she fingered her ropes of pearls—and I remember how impressed I was by the perfume burners in the posts of her great bed. I decided that very afternoon that I would try to put my impressions of her, and her home, and her friends into a picture. Bob and I talked it all over late into that night—and later we carried out the idea successfully in my picture, “Peacock Alley,” in which I portrayed a French actress.

Oddly enough, my little accident of the lace panties seemed to inspire the Marchesa Casati. She was a woman of vast wealth, who owned palaces in Paris, Rome, Venice and other historic cities.

She was a beautiful woman with a wealth of red hair. Once she invited her fashionable friends to a reception in her great house on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.

When the first-comers were ushered into the vast drawing room they were astonished to see the Marchesa standing in the centre of the room beneath an ancient Venetian chandelier—wearing nothing. She carried a beautiful ostrich feather fan and on her feet were dainty gold slippers. Her aureole of red hair, set off by a diamond crescent, seemed to flame under the ancient chandelier.

The guests had difficulty in retaining their self-possession. The women advanced, however, and shook the Marchesa’s hand. The men plucked up courage and kissed her hand.

That broke the ice. The reception was much more successful than the usual social affair.

I was to meet Olive Thomas. I had read in the papers of her arrival with Jack, and I had often thought of her—and hoped that she and Jack were having the romantic, new beginning Olive had dreamed they would have.

Our plan was to meet at 1 at the Ritz—alone.

Bob understood, and it was arranged that he would call for me two hours later.

I remember waiting in the lobby, as I was there promptly. Olive came along later—and as I saw her slim figure approaching me I felt that tragedy had started to envelope her.

In the dining room I ordered luncheon for both of us, and I tried to make conversation with her—but there seemed to be a shell of unhappiness about her which I could not penetrate. She did not touch her food, but kept smoking a chain of cigarettes.

I realized she wanted so badly to tell me what was in her mind—but she dreaded to bring out the picture which was so unlike the dream she had hoped would come true.

“Tell me,” I said. “If it will help—and it might.” Suddenly a blessing of tears rained down her face. “That’s better, darling,” I said.

At first she tried to stop crying, and then she no longer tried. She seemed in a tragic world all her own, and nothing, not even the glamour of the Ritz and the constant merriment there could touch her.

I paid the check as quickly as I could and persuaded her to go for a drive with me. For an hour we drove around the noisy streets of Paris, and Olive sat beside me, unseeing, clenching her hands and letting go a torrent of tears.

After a long time, she said:

“I thought we were going to be so happy, remember—”

I held her hands then. And listened to her heartbreak. It was just this sentence:

“Jack left me the moment we reached Paris.”

She had not seen him for five days. She had no idea where he was. She only knew that he had told her he was going out to have some fun. She had sat five days and nights in a hotel waiting. No word, no call—forgotten. He had said she should forget about him as he had come to Paris to see the sights and not be bothered with her.

I tried to comfort her, tried to light her interest in some other thought. Couldn’t she have some fun, too? Did she have to make herself ill because Jack was out having his kind of fun?

“It means he doesn’t love me—doesn’t want to begin our new life—this is what he did before, in our old life, which we were to put behind us. Don’t you understand that this is the end—end of everything for me?”

I said I did not understand anything of the kind. What about her work? She had won her own place in pictures. Her future was assured in Hollywood if she could stop letting Jack interefere [sic]. Many men were waiting for her to be free of Jack. She was so pretty, so desirable to all.

But it seemed that every word I uttered only meant the same thing in her mind—that no matter what others thought, Jack Pickford wanted to be away from her—that he would bring her on their honeymoon to Paris and forget her.

“Jack is all I want. I love him,” she kept saying over and over.

Finally I drove her to her hotel and left her with the promise she was to have dinner with Bob and me that night.

Just before dinner she telephoned me. She had news: Jack had been in their suite when she returned. “We quarreled, terribly,” she said, and her voice trembled with the memory.

“He says it’s none of my business where he goes and what he does. This is his vacation and he has a right to some fun.”

I began to feel a little better for her, however, because at least she had seen Jack. I asked her to bring him to dinner.

“Jack has arranged a big party of his new friends tonight at Zelli’s,” she said. “I must try to rest till time to go. I’ve got to look my best, haven’t I? Maybe—maybe he’ll want to be with me—again.”

Her words were not those of the independent, beautiful Olive I knew. These were the words of some one begging for crumbs. I did not want her to go out with Jack’s friends in that mood—and I begged her to give up her plan to go with them and to come with Bob and me.

“No, no! I want to be with Jack, Mae—you know I would be miserable if I weren’t.”

I knew she would be miserable if she were, too, but it did no good to keep talking to her, because she had made her decision.

But I planned to go to Zelli’s that night, too. And when Jack and Olive came in late to the fashionable gathering place, Bob and I had invited a party of friends and our table was close to where Olive and Jack were.

Olive did not see me at first, and I had a chance to study her face. I have never seen such tragedy on a girl’s face. She sat there, trying her best to go through the motions of someone having a good time. She was at one of the gayest places in the whole world, but in her heart she was the most miserable human being alive. She was dressed superbly, and I knew so well that everything she wore had been chosen to please Jack. But her eyes looked out over the crowd—and back to Jack, who was having the gayest time of anyone in the whole place. He was talkative and bright-eyed and full of laughter and champagne and his eyes never once met Olive’s—and it seemed that he extracted some kind of pleasure from knowing that she sat there unnoticed.

I thought of Jack de Saulles’ words to me one other time—he had said that maybe I would enjoy the power which comes from knowing you can make someone else unhappy. It seemed that now Jack Pickford was enjoying torturing Olive—because she loved him so deeply and seemed to ask so little from him; just a smile, some little notice.

Suddenly I caught Olive’s eye and signalled to her to follow me. I felt I had to talk with her. We entered the powder room. I remember how she grasped my hands as soon as we sat together in a corner, and suddenly all the things she had been unable to say in the afternoon flowed out then.

“I cannot go on living any more, Mae,” she said. “Jack has hurt me too badly. It is the last time, I promised myself. I can never stand it again! I want his love. I want Jack!”

I tried to talk, to reason with her.

“You can come to live with Bob and me.”

“No, no—I only want Jack.”

It was strange, our talking that night. I said so many things, made so many suggestions, but nothing seemed to register on Olive Thomas’ mind. I tried to tell her about a great force, which is so much greater than anything else—to pray. That would help her to believe in herself.

Olive laughed hysterically. “I don’t believe in anything.”

I was still trying to talk to her, when a message was sent in. It was to her from Jack and it was curt and thoughtless. And unkind, as it was relayed to us by the maid:

“Mr. Pickford says if you want to go along with him you’ll have to hurry up and come now!”

I felt her flinch from those words. “Don’t go, Olive, with him. Stay with me!” I begged. I put my arms about her. She stood up and pushed me away hysterically.

“I’ll go with him, Mae! I’m going—” Her shadowed eyes turned furtively from me and she took a deep breath, then quickly ran out.

I listened to her staccato steps, and I hoped a guardian angel would guide her steps. I sat there, feeling numb. The feeling of tragedy was all around me. I could not feel right about her going.

When I came back to my table Jack and Olive and their party had gone. I looked at the empty chair, where Olive had sat, and wished that I might have been able to reach her…that I had been able to penetrate that shell of tragedy about her.

All night I thought of Olive and wondered what I could do. I started to call her hotel, and yet, I thought, if she needed me she would call me…if I could help, she would let me know.

Early next morning I learned that Olive Thomas had taken poison. She was in the hospital. As quickly as I could I went to the hospital, and tried to see her. But the doctors would allow no one to see her then. They uttered no word of hope—day after day—and then the end, which she had chosen, came.

The world grieved with me because Olive Thomas. so young and beautiful, with every promise, had taken her own life! If she had only been able to believe in a tomorrow. If only…I had been able to convince her that she could get back in step, back in her true rhythm!

(To Be Continued Next Week)

Chapter V — Sunday, June 21, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, June 21, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 81, p. 82, p. 85, p. 86.

Illustration captions, as printed “The Luxurious Studio Living-Room of Mae Murray’s New York Apartment, Which Was Furnished With Rare Italian Antiques and Costly Works of Art.” (AJ p. 81) “Mae and John Gilbert in the Famous Scene from ‘The Merry Widow,’ a Spectacular Film Success.” (AJ p. 81) “The Magnificent Moorish-Style Beach House of Mae Murray at Playa del Ray, California—the Scene of Her Greatest Triumphs and Unhappy Married Life.” (the photograph spans the gutter; the caption’s left half is on AJ p. 81, its right half on AJ p. 82) “Robert Z. Leonard, Mae’s Second Husband and First Love, Whose Expert Film Direction Was Responsible for Her Early Success in Motion Pictures.” (AJ p. 82) “Mae Murray’s Life in Hollywood Was a Series of Box Office Hits But Her Happiness Was Marred by Her Husband’s Jealousy Over the Reality of the Love Scenes.” (AJ p. 82)

I FELT that Fate bungled somehow when Olive Thomas chose to die for love rather than live for it. She had been blind not to see there could be a brighter path for her.

Of course, Jack Pickford was shocked and grieved by her suicide and he was conscious-stricken. Helplessly he mourned, with the world watching him through quizzical eyes, wondering why he could not have saved his young and talented wife.

I tried to bring myself to see him and yet—the memory of Olive’s confession to me a few hours before she swallowed poison was too haunting. I couldn’t put it out of my mind.

I tried to feel tolerant and understanding toward Jack, who had broken my friend’s heart because he had been himself and therefore was unlike what she wanted him to be. But I could not trust myself with him.

Some of Olive’s anguish might show in my eyes if not in my voice and words. No matter how humble and remorseful Jack would have been—and I’m sure that he was intensely so—I could not risk hurting him more.

Perhaps Olive’s spirit guided me away from Jack, because suddenly I decided not to continue the trip, which was to have included many other countries in Europe.

“I’ve got to go home and get back to work as quickly as I can,” I told Bob Leonard. “I can’t put Olive and Jack out of my mind. I can’t go on trying to have a good time.”

Bob didn’t refuse and I thought he was agreeable to the plan. So I cabled Mr. Zukor that I was ready for work. He replied to come along, but that George Fitzmaurice was in the midst of directing another picture and a new director would be assigned to work with me. Innocently I expressed to Bob my disappointment over hearing that he was not available now.

I’ll always remember how this affected Bob Leonard, because it was then I discovered a trait in him that I had not imagined he had before. This trait was to change the course of our lives, but just then it served only to bring our lives and careers closer.

Bob began to walk the floor of our sitting room, then suddenly he turned and looked at me with the hurt eyes of a child.

“You’ve got to know this some time because I can’t always keep it from you. I can’t bear to have you work with anyone else. You and I belong together,” Bob told me. “We’ve touched the heights together—and I’ll never be happy when someone else works with you.”

“Why, Bob—I didn’t know you felt that way. You never told me before—”

Bob Leonard did love me. I had never doubted it—and now I was more certain of his devotion than ever.

I realized for the first time that Bob’s love was a jealous love. Perhaps it always had been, but never having felt jealousy myself I had not suspected it in him.

“Tell me you love me and that you don’t want anyone else to work with you.”

“I do love you, Bob, I want to work with you. I’m going to cable Mr. Zukor now that I want you to direct me in ‘The Gilded Lily.'”

“That’s what I want,” Bob said.

It was also what Mr. Zukor wanted. He cabled us very quickly and then Bob was happy to return to New York. We lost no time in catching the first available boat for home.

Bob’s and my efforts and work on “The Gilded Lily” were rewarded in many ways. The film was widely praised and the studio offered both of us new contracts. Other studios wanted to engage us. It was difficult to make a decision and we were glad we hadn’t when the most amazing thing happened: A proposition was made to me by a group of men who represented the wealthiest of automobile manufacturers in Detroit. They were interested in motion pictures and wanted to angel a company for me!

I invited all nine of them to dinner at the apartment.

I remember that night so well. I sat at the head of my table, Bob at the foot. I was the only woman there—hostess to controllers of the greatest automobile fortunes in America!

“You can run the company just as you like,” one man said.

“You can spend as much as you wish—” said another.

“You can have your say over everything from stories to sets—”

Then one said: “We will get the greatest director in the business for you.”

Bob Leonard sat at the foot of the table saying nothing. All conversation had been directed toward me.

At that point I caught my breath long enough to say, “To me, Robert Z. Leonard is the greatest director in motion pictures.” I raised my hand toward Bob.

Bob’s eyes met mine down the long length of the candlelit table, and I think we both were remembering in that second the things he had pleaded with me for, his confession to me, during our vacation.

“What would you like to call your company, Miss Murray?”

I looked at the huge Marquise diamond on my finger and replied:

“Tiffany,” because anything from Tiffany’s had always seemed the essence of quality.

“Then, it is to be ‘The Tiffany Productions,'” another man said.

Our first picture was to be “Peacock Alley” and was to embody all the ideas we had stored away during our vacation in Paris.

The story was ready. It called for a big lumbering kind of hero, of New England background. He was to go to Paris as his father’s business representative, fall in love with a French actress, the toast of the town, marry her and bring her back to New England, where she was all but slaughtered by the disapproving townspeople.

Monte Blue seemed the right man for this part. His quiet reserve seemed ideal. So, Monte was engaged.

Every day and often late into the night I worked under tremendous lights wearing my peacock costume, which consisted of wool tights, thickly sewn with spangles to represent the feathered body of a peacock. The tights fitted like skin from head to toe. There was a massive tail of peacock feathers which only made the costume warmer. A dozen Kleig lights focussed upon me gave out the most intense heat. But for long hours I danced in the heat, wearing this hottest of all costumes.

Each day the spangles melted, and each night twenty women had to be hired to work six and seven hours to sew them back on again!

At the end of the picture we had a musical score written and then rehearsed a band for my dance sequences. We rented the ballroom of the Commodore Hotel and sent out 1500 invitations to persons in the motion picture industry. Six thousand came!

The whole film industry was talking about Bob and me and of our accomplishments. Wires and phone calls came with congratulations from everywhere.

Bob and I couldn’t wait to get started on our next film, which was to be called “Fascination,” and in it we were to use the ideas we had gathered while in Spain.

We completed the film and began planning the next, “Jazzmania.” I remember the morning I had come in from a ride in Central Park and Bob and I began discussing the new work when suddenly Bob said:

“This story will need extensive outdoor scenes and crowds of people and I think we should go to California to make it.”

“California, Bob?”

“Don’t you ever become a little lonesome for the house out there?” He looked at me earnestly.

“I didn’t know that you did until now, Bob.”

The truth was, Bob had never really liked New York. He loved the West and its feeling of space. I have always adored New York, which to me is exhilarating and filled to the brim of all things to draw on for inspiration and imagination.

I did not want to leave New York. But I did realize that Bob had his heart set on going to California.

I knew Bob had given in many times to please me and he had made so few requests of me. When he did ask something it meant much to him. Knowing this and wanting to make him as happy as I could I agreed to go to California.

I wondered if going to California would really make him any happier. After all, it is not the place that has the power to make a person happy. It’s all within your mind and your own attitude.

When Bob came into my room, I said, “I really don’t want to leave New York—do you want to go West so very much? Or, is something else wrong? Can’t we talk about it and straighten out whatever worries you? We can do that here as well as there.”

He looked at me and didn’t say anything for a little while. And in those seconds I saw the hurt look of the small boy come into his eyes just as I had seen it in Paris.

“Tell me, Bob.”

“I’ll tell you—” but a flame of temper flared in his eyes now in place of the hurt. “I don’t like having men make love to you. Oh, I know it’s all in our work. I know that. But I know that there is a man in New York who would really like to make love to you, not make-believe, and I want to get you away from him!”

“I don’t know what man you imagine that about. I don’t know—”

“No, you don’t, and it isn’t imagination. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either, Bob. I don’t like anything like this between us—and now I’m glad you want me to go to California with you.”

“That’s what I want,” he said firmly.

“Bob—you mustn’t let doubt come into your heart about me—about us,” I begged. “It will destroy the magic between us.”

“You don’t love me the way I love you—you’d understand how I feel about the love scenes. I want to write them out of the script. I always want to—but I don’t because you seem to want them left in.”

I looked at him and felt his words run jaggedly through my body. I trembled.

“Bob, you’re jealous!” I said. “It’s hard to talk to you now. It’s never been before.”

He picked up one of my dresses from the top of the trunk and flung it on the floor. Apparently he found relief in that gesture. It started him talking.

“It isn’t easy to tell you that I’m madly in love with you!” he said.

“Why isn’t it easy to tell me anything, Bob? We are good friends.”

“You don’t love me the way I love you!”

I came around the trunk then and caught his hand, held it.

“Bob, I love you.”

“Well, all right, get ready and we’ll go back to California.”

The anger left his eyes then and as he held me in his arms I prayed that we would never go through another such scene in real life.

In California we had found each other, worked together, loved and married. Was that why Bob wanted to go back to the West? Did he hope to reclaim the ecstasy of first love? I wondered. I thought about that scene of ours a lot. It was on my mind most of our trip West, although nothing more was said of it then.

“Jazzmania” was to be made on the MGM lot, where we rented studio space. I was to portray a young queen of a make-believe country. The script called for two leading men and Rod La Rocque and Robert Frazier were engaged, and Jean Hersholt took part of a general in this picture.

It was fun to be at the same studio with beautiful Barbara La Marr, Eleanor Boardman, and Norma Shearer.

Bob seemed happier but more and more he wanted me to himself. We went on long drives, took picnic lunches to the beach, just as we had in other days.

I soon was back into the life of Hollywood. I had an automobile specially built. It was a town car to end all town cars, with a cream and black patent leather, collapsible top. Two men, in cream and black uniforms, sat on the box. My lap rug was made of sables. The interior of the tonneau was all in soft yellows with cloisonne fittings.

I was working long and hard, and so was Bob. At times it seemed as if we were on a mad merry-go-round and I sensed more and more that Bob needed to rest and relax.

“Jazzmania” was finished. Then came “Mademoiselle Midnight,” then “The French Doll.” Life and work moved so swiftly. Everything seemed to be going according to our dreams—that is, except one thing. Bob was becoming more jealous. He was trying more and more to strike out the love scenes from my pictures. I knew this was not right and that the man-and-woman element had to be strong in the stories or they would not pull.

They were beginning to know about Bob in the studio—and they knew I was worrying about Bob’s attitude. There was a great tension, as you can imagine, in Bob’s and my life. At times I found it almost impossible to work.

I was making “Circe, the Enchantress,” and in the midst of a love scene I heard something crash. I felt everything stop and I knew Bob had done something. I stepped out of the focus of lights and saw Bob walking hurriedly across the studio. I called him and he did not look around. But suddenly he did turn and stare at me with blazing, angry eyes. He said nothing but sharply turned and left the studio.

I was too upset to continue work and went to my dressing room. After a few minutes Nick Schenck and Louis B. Mayer sent word that they wanted to talk to me in the office.

What could they want to say to me that I could defend and still be loyal to Bob? I did not want to talk about our difficulties to them. I don’t know just what I expected, but it was quite different from what actually happened when I went into Nick Schenck’s office.

I walked in and Nick looked at me with wise and knowing eyes.

“Little Mae,” he said, “We want you to sign a contract with us, but we do not want Bob to direct you.”

They didn’t want Bob to direct me? Yet, Bob and I were—had been, a working unit. I didn’t need to ask questions. I realized that they knew what was in my heart. I couldn’t say anything.

“We have wonderful plans for you, Mae,” Louis B. Mayer persuaded. “Better than ever.”

But what about Bob, I wanted to ask? What plans did they have for him? I could not resist saying:

“No plans could be wonderful for me unless they included Bob. Surely you both know this.”

They shook their heads. It was a delicate situation for all of us.

“Think about our offer,” they both said. “We’ll expect to hear from you soon.”

I left them but they asked me to return the following day and the day after that. They still did not want Bob. They insisted that I should sign a contract without him. I didn’t know how to tell Bob this and I felt that I should. Yet, I simply couldn’t.

“I can’t sign unless you include Bob,” I would say to them.

Then there was the afternoon when Bob came barging into my dressing room.

“What are you up to? Trying to get a contract without me? I’ve watched you going into Nick Schenck’s office!”

I looked at him, unable to speak. I saw him across a chasm of doubt and pain and distrust. I could not find words, I was so stunned.

“Work!” cried Bob. “I guess you’ll call this your work, too—dirty work. Double crossing under-handed!”

“Stop—stop! Bob—you’re ruining everything. You don’t understand—”

But Bob was angry. All the quiet peace of his nature had become discord and noise.

“I do understand. Schenck and Mayer have been in conference with you because you want a contract without me. You who told me in Paris you wanted to work only with me…you who have told me you did not mean what happens in the love scenes the minute the camera stops grinding. You—”

I got up from my chair. I could not take this sitting down. I got up and looked into Bob Leonard’s angry eyes. Because suddenly I could tell him the truth:

“I have been talking about a contract, Bob,” I said calmly. “I refused to sign because they did not include you. That is the truth!”

“Didn’t include me”…he stepped back. “And you asked them to include me? Are you trying to be funny?”

“I am being truthful. I’ve always told you the truth, Bob. I have refused to sign the contract without you.”

(Continued from Double Page)

But as I looked at Bob, now suddenly silent, across the chasm which had formed between us I realized for the first time that the magic which had held us together had gone.

As soon as I could I went straight to New York and opened the apartment. I had much to think about and I realized that one of the most important decisions of my private and public life had to be made. Only I could make it.

I went for long walks in Central Park, rode horseback. I saw no one. I communicated with none of my old friends. I had been there barely a week when one morning I looked over the balcony of my bedroom and saw Bob sitting downstairs.

“I’m very much ashamed,” were his first words.

I knew that he was, so I listened.

“You don’t understand how it is to love as I do. If you did you would not look at me as you are now. You would forgive me for all the things I said. You don’t know how it is to love—madly.”

“But you do not love me—madly!”

“You say that when you know how hard I have worked for you and with you. Together we have, as you have said, reached the heights. We have enjoyed the fruits of our success together. Yet you say I do not love you?”

Then there was a stillness, broken only by the trickle of the fountain.

I spoke first.

“I will not sign a contract, Bob, unless you also are given a contract.”

I saw Bob sink into the great stuffed chair and put his hands over his eyes. I went to the telephone and called the New York office of the studio and asked for Mr. Schenck. It was known he was to arrive from Hollywood that day. I made an appointment.

The first thing Bob said when we walked into Mr. Schenck’s office was:

“Nick, why have you turned against me?”

“I haven’t turned against you, Bob.”

“You are trying to separate me from my wife.”

“That isn’t the idea, Bob.”

“You want to give her a contract without me.”

“Listen, Bob. We are a business organization and as such we look upon Mae as a commodity. We want her for the picture ‘The Merry Widow’ but we have chosen the director for her.”

I was never to forget the expression on Bob Leonard’s face just then, because it was dreadful to see.

Then Nick Schenck said:

“We know now that in order to get Mae to sign, we have to offer you a contract. We are prepared to do that.”

All pride seemed to drain from him. He was stunned. Now Bob saw that I had been telling him the truth, that the power I had only through being a box office attraction had been used to the utmost for his good. He knew now that I had not wanted to hurt him, and that instead I had fought desperately to save his pride.

So Bob accepted the contract and he accepted the situation.

MGM should be grateful that I insisted on Bob having that contract because he has given them many fine pictures and has had many renewals of contract since.

The Merry Widow picture and I are synonymous now, which is my reward for struggling against the greatest odds, against almost everything there is for a girl to struggle with and against in a Hollywod [sic] studio when it was being made. My desire to make the film live drove me to do many things I had never done before. Why did I? I had enough money. I had power, fame and success. But something greater than these drove and obsessed me to make the film version of The Merry Widow the classic which it is.

John Gilbert, with his fiery, wild eyes and flashing teeth, his love for music and adventure, his sense of timing and rhythm, was to my mind the man in all the world who could take the part of the prince, to make love to me in The Merry Widow. I argued for him with Irving Thalberg and Eric von Stroheim—and I won.

In the midst of a love scene with him I looked out over a piece of scenery and saw Bob Leonard looking at me with unhappy, hungry eyes. Bob and I were living in the same house then, keeping up appearances, but we were making no pretence to each other of having a life together.

How often I longed for Bob’s understanding and his help. But that was past me now and gone forever. You cannot turn back.

But the strain of our situation was trying, and although I worked at the studio from early to late and often slept there in my dressing room just to keep from going through more emotional scenes with Bob when I went home, I knew I would soon have to find a way to dissolve my marriage with Bob. But I pushed this thought to the back of my mind most of the time. I had other more immediate problems.

I began to wonder if I had had enough work, because for the first time I needed to have my soul and heart replenished. I had had to fight too hard. I wanted the feeling of freedom once more and I knew that until I was free of my marriage to Bob Leonard I could not feel entirely free. So I decided I would go to Europe because it seemed a playground. I decided I would allow no one to know where I had gone. I managed this well enough, and left my address in confidence with my Los Angeles bank.

In New York I decided against going to the apartment, as it would be the obvious place to trace me, and as I planned to be in New York only one day I went to the Ambassador Hotel. I arrived early one morning and thinking it was too early for anyone who might know me to see me in the lobby, I walked in. I remember a group of men were standing near the desk and suddenly one of the men came rushing over to me.

“If it’s about business,” I shook my head, “I can’t talk to you now. I’m on vacation. I’m leaving tonight for Europe. And the only place we could have an interview is on the boat.”

“Then—we’ll be on the boat.”

His raised hand indicated his four smiling companions.

They were to open a new life to me, offer me a chance to do greater work than I ever done [sic] before. These men represented the United Films Association, one of the greatest film organizations in all Europe, and known as UFA—pronounced “oofa.” They offered me a new contract, which involved millions and every privilege, if I would make films in their Berlin studio.

The day I signed the contract I was given as “a bonus in advance” a check for $75,000.

In Hollywood I asked MGM to free me from my contract. But they did not want to let me out of the contract and when I learned that Basil Rathbone was to play opposite me in the next picture, “The Masked Bride” I tried no longer to persuade them. I had always admired Basil and I knew it would be fun working with him.

Then—The Merry Widow was released at the Embassy Theater in New York—and seats sold for $5 each the opening night. It was handled as a special feature, with two showings daily—afternoon and evening—just as a legitimate show.

Suddenly the streets of the nation were humming with the tunes of The Merry Widow—and my costumes were copied in every show window. Everywhere I went people cried “Mae Murray, The Merry Widow!” I became the personification of that story and of those tunes.

It was after that I became convinced that it would be unpatriotic to make films in Germany. So I sailed for Europe, went back to the UFA group, explained and gave back the advance bonus. They understood and regretfully accepted the severence [sic] of our contract together. This was news which travelled quickly to America.

A cable reached me immediately from the MGM office asking me to get in touch with them to discuss a contract with me at the earliest possible moment.

If only I had not come back at this time!

Then I would have avoided a lot of heartache. I would not have met David Mdivani, one of three brother princes, who married rich, well known, attractive girls—girls who could choose from the most illustrious men of all the world, but who were all won over, just as I was, by the illusion of romance.

I met David and from the very first he fell desperately in love with me—but I did not love him then.

(To Be Continued Next Week)

Chapter VI — Sunday, June 28, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, June 28, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 82, p. 83, p. 88.

Illustration captions, as printed “A Reception Room in Mae’s Luxurious New York Apartment, Filled With Art Treasures and Noted Antiques. Through the Iron Grille Can Be Seen the Dining-Room.” (AJ p. 82) “One of the Patios of Mae’s Beach House Near Playa del Ray, California, Where She Did Much of Her Extensive Entertaining for the Hollywood Colony.” (AJ p. 82) “The Wedding Party at the Marriage of Mae Murray to Prince David Mdivani. Rudolph Valentino, at the Right, Gave the Bride Away.” (AJ p. 82) “Prince and Princess David Mdivani in an Affectionate Pose. This Photograph Was Taken Immediately After Mae Murray’s Marriage to the Handsome Georgian.” (AJ p. 83) “Greta Garbo, a Friend of Mae’s in Hollywood, Who Later Used Mae’s Portable Dressing Room on the Studio Lot.” (AJ p. 83)

WHY couldn’t I play as glamourously as I worked in Hollywood? I resolved that I would and with this decision I ended my rounds of amusements, shopping and sight-seeing in Europe and soon caught a boat for New York.

“I want no emotional ties,” I said frankly to everyone. “I am in love only with my freedom.”

[The two lines above are transposed in the printed column: the page sets “everyone. ‘I am in love only with my freedom.'” before “‘I want no emotional ties,’ I said frankly to”. A linotype line-transposition; corrected here to the evident reading.]

Strangely enough this form of reticence acted as heady wine to the many men who tried to make love to me.

In New York I was given a new contract by MGM. It was a wonderful contract, calling for four pictures, and it gave me command of the studio.

But just then, my mood for play traveled even faster to Hollywood than I did. By the time I reached there a round of gaiety had been planned in honor of my return. This included the most extraordinary entertainments of the film capital, as my hosts were the men who composed the group called “heads of the studio,” and they entertained for me in their palatial homes.

In the midst of all this gaiety plans were made for my next picture, which was to be “Altars of Desire,” but my play-mood was not yet to be put aside. I had worked too hard, but you see, I had not played hard enough yet and I meant to. Everyone knew I was a success at work, now I was to show that I could be equally successful at play.

I began a series of entertainments which even made the movie colony stop and look, because no film had ever included more elegance than my “Special Sundays,” and play-crowds of two continents flocked to my home.

My guests included many of the friends I had made abroad, among whom were Rudolph Friml, Ambassador Alexander Moore and William Gibbs McAdoo. Also, the stars of Hollywood, the directors and writers, and columnists, the social lights of America and many titled Europeans—including David Mdivani.

My “Special Sundays” began at two in the afternoon with a luncheon for 30 guests. During the afternoon my massive house and gardens would fill with more guests, to whom caterers served all sorts of things to eat and drink.

Two orchestras played continuously, and a special portable wooden floor was set up in the garden, so there was dancing outdoors, as well as in the house. Singers and violinists and a variety of entertainers were engaged. And over everything, giant-sized candles burned, lending the fairyland effect which I loved.

Many amazing attachments began at my “Special Sundays.” Acquaintances became friends; friends became rivals. Strange confidences and proposals were given to me in the candlelit gardens in the music-laden house.

In this romantic, glamourous setting men who had paid me homage before now asked me to marry them. Those who had asked me to marry them before, now became fervent in their pleas.

It was here that Ambassador Alexander Moore, a world renowned diplomat and publisher, said that he wanted to take me as his wife to visit all the countries of the world.

“Your life as my wife,” he promised, “will be as it was destined to be—you will receive homage in all parts of the world.”

“I can’t even think of accepting your proposal,” I told him. I believed Alex Moore to be a fine man, with high ideals. I did not doubt his sincerity, and I was equally sincere when I told him something I was often to remember.

“Marriage to me will never be for the sake of position.”

It was during one of these “Special Sundays” that John Gilbert came to me with Greta Garbo on his arm. Greta’s heart was heavy and because I had helped John when he was depressed, now he wanted me to help the woman he loved.

John’s great eyes burned over Garbo, followed her as he relinquished her to me for a heart-to-heart talk.

Greta and I had known each other at the studio, but now we were to become closer friends. Holding my hand she told me that the studio was trying her almost beyond endurance. Her eyes and voice were clouded with sadness as she asked me how I had ever had strength to live through my ordeals there.

I was touched by her earnest plea for help. I sensed then what many others were to believe about her later—her great sincerity, and that there are no small places in her heart; in her rich mind there are no small thoughts. She is generous and idealistic and sensitive. But these are the things about Garbo which are not easy for many to learn because she does not accept acquaintance easily.

I told Garbo then something which has helped me through some of my most trying ordeals. Something which often has worked beautifully for her.

“Tell me, Mae, how do you get the strength to endure such exacting requirements? How do you find the patience?”

Then I told Greta about a ritual I practised, something which I think I have always known, even from the time when I was a little child, lost in a forest, and prayed for guidance.

It seemed then that a hand guided my footsteps to the right place.

I told Greta why I always insisted on having a small, portable dressing room at the studio. How there, with only space for a chaise longue and a dressing table, I could refresh my spirit, strengthen my heart. I told her how I went there alone, and locked myself in, how I kept a kind of shrine, where a candle burned beside fresh-cut flowers. There I always received guidance, when I asked for it.

I could not have explained this to everyone, but Garbo drank in every word. I told her in minute detail how carefully I had my place-to-be-alone decorated from floor to ceiling after every picture.

“It gives me strength and refreshment just to go there and be alone. Nothing can be too powerful and annoying so long as you take a few minutes out of your vexation to be alone.”

Isn’t it interesting to know that later when I left the studio Greta took over my portable dressing room? I like to think of her there. I feel it holds only good. And I believe that Greta has often found guidance there.

Fascinating Bebe Daniels and Bessie Love were among my frequent guests. The best known writers, directors and stars mingled in my home with men and women unheard of by the world but whom I liked to have around me.

David Mdivani was often in my home. He was not one of the men who showered me with flowers and gifts, some of which represented fortunes in themselves.

But from the first moment we met, David tried in every way a man can, to impress me with his admiration—and soon, his adoration.

He was a wonderful specimen of manhood. In physical perfection he far surpassed any man in Hollywood. Even so, David Mdivani did not call forth any response from me. At first he was just one of my guests—but soon he became one of my most persistent suitors.

After the others had gone, suddenly David would appear, having secreted himself somewhere about the house, waiting for a chance to be alone with me. Then his continental charm and manners would be exerted to dispel whatever annoyance I showed.

David would follow me around wherever I went and the way he bent over my hand and kissed it was to the observer a thrill. All Hollywood began to talk of his devotion to me, of the hunger in his blue eyes when he watched me with other admirers.

When my picture “Altars of Desire” went into production my rounds of banquets and parties had to stop. When I worked, I never gave my energies to anything else. But no matter at what time I came home from the studio, David would be waiting. I would send him on his way quickly, but nothing seemed to discourage him. He would be back just the same the following night and be just as ardent. He would tell me over and over how much he adored me. Didn’t I believe him, he would ask, with such tragedy in his eyes?

I wasn’t interested in his or anyone’s adoration. I had work to do, I would explain, and say that he had to understand. Night after night we would go through this same kind of discussion. David would plead with me to believe that he loved me more than his own life. I would laugh and send him along.

But one night my watchman came to tell me that Prince Mdivani was on the steps of the house. He was ill.

Naturally I was distressed to learn this and had David brought into the house, where he was cared for several days. During this time I did not go near him.

This should have been my warning. However, when I learned from his attendants that he was well enough to go on his way I sent him a farewell note, wishing him good luck and saying that he must not attempt to see me again. I told him, too, in that note, that he must believe that I had no place in my life for any man.

When David came to my door about a week later and begged me so desperately to go driving with him, I felt it wasn’t too great a favor for me to grant him, since apparently it would give him such great happiness.

Instead of going in my own car with chauffeur and footman, I went with David in his car. As we drove along he seemed so elated, so very gay—and suddenly so triumphant.

We drove some time when I realized it was getting late.

“David, it’s now time to turn back,” I said. “I have work to do.”

I received no response from him. He drove faster, and soon we were high up a mountain side, in a lonely place.

David still did not answer me and it was clear that he had a plan. I noticed a grim expression on his face and I wondered what was going on in his mind.

He kept driving faster and faster. Then, suddenly the car stopped—so suddenly I was startled.

Then David grabbed me in his arms and almost devoured me. Against his strength and emotion I was helpless.

At first I was so angry and furious I could have done anything to him, if I had had the strength. But all through my absolute helplessness, strange forces were beating on my mind, I was asking myself.

“Is this man’s love the reality? Is this romance of life? Have I had the wrong conception before? Are the things I have been acting in my work only the shadow of love and life? Is reality when someone loves you so dearly and devotedly they will dare anything to win you?”

David Mdivani was like a human hurricane. His force and emotion were driving against me—the actual daring of his plan, his campaign to win me!

Here he was beside me, as physically perfect as any man I had ever seen, and he loved me daringly, devotedly. The full force of the situation held me…and during that night the whole future of my life was decided.

Before David drove me back home again I agreed to his plea to marry him!

My heart was controlling me then—and it would for a long time to come.

The news that I would marry David Mdivani traveled swiftly over the world. It was heralded, I was a princess of the motion picture industry. David was a prince, his family having come from Georgia, Russia.

Our engagement caused a sensation and drew such tremendous publicity that Hollywood rocked with it.

Wires reached us from all parts of the globe. Rudolph Valentino asked if he could give me in marriage and happily planned a breakfast for the wedding party.

Then, my wedding day! It was, indeed a day of days. It was all fantasies in one. No fairy story could ever equal it.

The words of the marriage ceremony affected David so much that tears were on his cheeks as we exchanged vows.

“…to love and cherish forever” are the words which seemed to affect him most.

David voiced his pledge and when we kissed, his arms went around me and I thought he would crush me right there in the church.

Had I only been able to know what heartbreak, what disillusion this chapter of my life would hold! But there were no questions to be asked—there were no doubts. My heart hammered so loudly, filled with the picture of romance and yearning for the fulfillment of all my story-book dreams.

After the wedding ceremony we went to the Ambassador Hotel, where Rudy gave us an elaborate wedding breakfast, in keeping with the dream-like reality. A great, tiered cake sparkled and towered in the center of a lavishly decorated table. Champagne and flowers and music and laughter and tears of happiness were everywhere. News cameras were clicking. Telegrams and cables were arriving from all over the world.

I remember how Rudy put his arm about me and looked into my eyes.

“Blessing to you, little Murray,” he whispered. “May you only know happiness.”

“Only the greatest happiness from now on!” I said in all confidence.

Then David was beside me. He held a glass of champagne to my lips, then touched the glass to his own mouth. Looking possessively into my eyes he spoke in a voice loud enough for everyone there to hear—

“My wife!” he said.

And that was the only name David ever called me from that moment.

“My wife.”

Never by my own name again.

So, David and his wife left the wedding party in a shower of rose petals and rice…left with cheers ringing in our ears…with music and laughter. We went to Del Monte, to San Francisco and to many other beauty spots of California. For many weeks we lived in Paradise…and we would have covered more miles if I had not had to come back to work.

Now my world was complete. In my husband’s arms I found completeness. This love was the real thing, the important factor. Now, for the first time, my life was whole.

The first cloud which I saw shadow his eyes came when I said we would have to go home, that I had three more pictures to make under my contract.

“Why can’t you end that contract?” David asked. “I don’t want my wife to work. I want you to go away with me to Europe, the country I know better than this. We can live there, just us.”

I tried to explain, but David would rather kiss me than listen when I tried to talk about the seriousness of my picture contract.

(Continued from Double Page)

Then, he would say: “I want to have you all to myself—away from everyone. In a castle…just you and me..my wife…just my wife, that is quite enough for you to be!”

“I will give up my profession, David, when I finish this contract,” I promised. “Then I will devote my life to only one task—just to making you happy. We will go wherever you say, do whatever you want to do—anywhere in the world.”

All through the making of “Valencia” I not only carried one baby—but two. Because David had now become as demanding as a small child. The fact that I was with child and still continued working regularly at the studio seemed almost more than he could bear.

He expressed another and almost greater concern over the fact that anyone beside himself should know that I was to have a child.

In his country this could not be. It had never been so in his own family he said, pointing out that I was debasing the customs of his land. He fretted constantly about this.

Could I not believe what anguish he was going through—knowing that the woman who bore his name, whose body carried his child, would work and allow the world to know his and her most intimate secret!

Everything within him rebelled against the customs I was forcing him to accept and countenance.

“At this time, a wife’s life should be entirely in the hands of her husband,” David told me one night as he lay sobbing like a child beside me. “My wife should belong to me—only to me, and depend entirely on me—but you—you, my wife, belong to the world! I can’t bear it!”

His sobs were so deep. They seemed to tear from the depths of his body.

Couldn’t I give up my work, give it up for the sake of his love, for his happiness, and for our baby…for us?

I held his head on my shoulder and talked to him, promised him all the things he wanted and for which he wept. This made him stop crying.

“Since going away and having a new life in a new country means so much to you, I’ll leave Hollywood as soon as ‘Valencia’ is finished.”

“Promise me you’ll leave everything, never look back and that from then on your life will be my life.”

“You can be the head of the family, David—our family.”

“My wife,” David said. “To do with just as I please!”

I loved David Mdivani so sincerely that I placed my life in his hands. I trusted him because he was my husband.

I kept my word to David, and when “Valencia” was complete, sure enough, David and his wife—not David and Mae Murray, who won her place in the world because her mind worked clearly and was never clouded with emotion—David and his wife slipped out of Hollywood and before anyone knew what had happened, we had crossed the Atlantic!

I had worked out everything just as David had wanted me to, even keeping our destination secret from the servants in my own house. I had traveled without even a maid. Because David wanted no one who had ever been near me before to be near now. Such were his wishes and since they apparently meant so much to him I did not go against them. I even worked out the plan of paying the servants sufficient wages to carry them until they found other employment — by having their wages reach them after we had reached our destination.

There was no detail overlooked in perfecting David’s desire to have me away all to himself.

It was truly wonderful to give myself over so completely to his keeping. Remembering now the disillusion which followed later brings an ache to my soul.

Of course, my running away from the studio caused terrific excitement!

Although David and I had fully believed we had hidden our route of travel, we could not, so we soon learned. Because the studio managed to obtain my bank address in Europe through my Los Angeles bank. And such a barrage of cables has never before or since been received by one girl who had run away from her job.

The messages varied in their degree of persuasion and command. They came in bunches at first, then more slowly. Here is one of the first to reach me:

PREPARATIONS ARE READY FOR YOU TO PROCEED AT ONCE TO STUDIO WILL EXPECT YOU TO RETURN BY RETURN BOAT PICTURES ARE SOLD AND MUST BE DELIVERED TO EXHIBITORS

What did I care? I was in love and loved. What else could be so important? I was going to proceed to do only the things David wanted me to do. I had made my decision and nothing could make me think of doing anything else. David and I were not to be disturbed in our fairyland. No reality could penetrate to us with its materialistic meaning. We were living in the most luxurious hotels on the continent, buying everything our hearts desired! Let the messages come! Let them say what they would!

Then this cable came, and its ominous words also failed to impress me. They were to sear their meaning on my heart later. They were to burn themselves into my brain.

THE ONLY THING FOR YOU TO DO IS TO COME BACK AND WORK ACCORDING TO YOUR SIGNED AGREEMENT OTHERWISE YOU WILL SUFFER LARGE LOSSES AND RUIN YOUR REPUTATION

They were right. The only thing for me to have done was to come back. How often I was to wish I had listened. How often I was to long for forgiveness. Then, I did not come back. And this was to bring me unending displeasure from all the powerful groups in the Hollywood motion picture industry that could be influenced by those who held my unfulfilled contract.

But then—I believed that no one could ever cause me a moment’s worry. Nothing could hurt me. I was too happy. I was with my husband! In our world. I would never need anything or anyone, except David. And, when I attempted to reason, I went no further than to justify what I was doing. I just dismissed the whole thing with “I can’t go against my husband’s wishes.” David did not wish me to tell them why I had run away or that, to me, he came first in importance—and last. We knew that they would soon figure all this out for themselves, and it need not be spoken or written.

If only they had known how innocently I showed indifference to their offers, their pleas, their threats!

I thought if I ever needed protection, David would protect me. You see, I had only love in my heart, and confidence that those who had worked with me and had shown in so many ways they respected and believed in me would still remain my friends…that no matter what I did they would go on loving me.

Now, surely, just because I wanted to make the fairyland I had acted become a reality… surely they would understand, be tolerant and forgive me when they knew the truth, which they soon would.

I was entirely guided by human emotions then, and mistakenly I was placing divinity in a person—in David.

His delirium of gladness was reflected in me and there was no cloud in all our sky.

When Koran, my tiny, perfectly formed baby was placed in my arms I thought that my heart would burst with pride and happiness.

From that moment, my baby boy became my god. No matter what argument, or trying situation, no matter what David Mdivani asked I granted. Because, you see, so very early I became terrified that something might happen which would separate me from my child.

David knew this. He knew what was in my mind and heart better than I did myself. He knew that when I gave myself I gave without restriction—gave all. He knew that my little boy held my heart strings.

I was trapped in my own fairyland!

(To Be Continued Next Week)

Chapter VII — Sunday, July 5, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, July 5, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 80, p. 81, p. 82.

Illustration captions, as printed “Mae Murray and Prince David Mdivani, Shortly Before Their Marriage, Shown Before the Oil Wells David Drilled On Their California Beach Property.” (AJ p. 80; credited Culver Service) “A Recent Photograph of Mae, Who Tells in Today’s Chapter How Her Titled Husband’s Desire for Her Not to Work Upset Their Happiness.” (AJ p. 80) “Prince David Mdivani With Koran, His Son, in the Days Before Custody of the Child Caused the Litigation Between Mae and David.” (caption spans the gutter; left part on AJ p. 80, right part on AJ p. 81) “‘In Detroit, David, Who Couldn’t Stand the Idea of Having Me Work, Locked Me in the Dressing-room When I Started to Get Ready for My Performance. ‘I Can’t Help It,’ Was All He Said. ‘You Are My Wife.’ Finally, the Stage Hands Had to Break the Door to Release Me, While David Stood by Watching Me.” (AJ p. 81) “The ‘Pink Palace’—the Beach Home of Mae and Her Husband, Near Playa Del Rey, California.” (AJ p. 81)

AT FIRST I did not think of myself as being trapped in my own fairyland, yet actually this was true. I was trapped by emotion. I might not have realized it for some time later, but David was anxious that we build a pink palace on the shores of the Mediterranean.

We had everything else, it seemed. Why shouldn’t we have a castle? My bankers in Los Angeles answered “No!” in firm, down-to-earth tones. Their reason was that we did not have enough liquid cash left.

This was really startling news. It did not seem possibly true. I had thought there was enough money for all our desires—forever.

In definite but diplomatic terms my bankers informed me that the state of our finances was delicate. They advised that I come to California and discuss in person certain phases of our investments.

Could I go back, after promising David I would never return?

And even if he should consent to go with me, wouldn’t it be unfair to take him and the baby and the nurses with me such a long distance when I intended staying such a short time. I might go alone, yet this did not seem likely. I had hardly been out of my husband’s sight since we had been married.

But now he decided that perhaps the bankers were right. I agreed to return as quickly as possible. It was also agreed that he would keep the baby with him.

I sailed alone—and heavy-hearted.

In California, the bankers, who had become my friends during our many business transactions, looked at me with solemn eyes. Now it seemed they felt I seriously needed advice. Our fortune had been constantly dwindling and was not being replenished. We would now have to begin spending our principal.

The bankers told me that our property along the ocean front in the section of Los Angeles known as Playa del Rey had become some of the most valuable property in the State.

They pointed out something I had almost forgotten: We owned more of that property than any one individual—that it was selling for $2,000 a foot! They told me, too, that the film notables were buying and building more and more in that section—thus enhancing the value of our holdings.

I decided to stay there and watch out for our interests.

I cabled David and without further delay he arrived in Hollywood with the baby and nurses.

I straightway told him that we would have to begin spending our principal unless we could quickly rearrange our financial affairs.

I turned over the management of my apartment houses and other investment properties. I asked David to allow me to dance on the stage again, as I was offered a personal appearance tour of the United States in my own revue. An entire company was to travel with me. The settings and the music and the costumes were to be my own choice.

I remember telling David in great detail about the offer, and about the large salary included.

The cloud of unhappiness gathered in his eyes. How he disliked the idea of his wife working! I knew all this. I knew, though, it was one sure way we could replenish the liquid assets.

Like a heartbroken child, David looked at me and said:

“You promised me never to come back here, you promised me never to go to work again…and now…NOW!”

“Look, David. I know all that—but now we have to be practical.”

After a while, he reluctantly gave in to my plans.

I soon started on the tour. It was thrilling in many ways, as the audiences greeted me with great warmth and appreciation. I knew that I had been missed. I loved dancing again. But, there were times when I became so lonesome for David and my baby! I would telephone across the continent every night just to hear my baby’s gurgle…just to hear David’s sleepy “hello.”

I reached the place where I would have David and the baby, the two nurses and the dietician come to visit me. Sometimes Davis [sic] would fly to me alone, unexpectedly. By the presence of my loved ones I could be replenished in heart and spirit. We were a unit which must never be divided.

But during these visits David would often look at me and large tears would well in his tragic blue eyes.

“Don’t you know what you are doing to me?” he would say. “You are killing me. I can’t stand having my wife out on a stage dancing for the eyes of the whole world!”

In Buffalo, David locked me in the bathroom when I started to get ready for my matinee performance. I tried my best to persuade him to let me out, but he refused, although he knew the importance of my appearances and of my earnings. Finally the theatre management came to the hotel and demanded entrance to my suite. Then, the engineer had to be called to remove the door because David had managed to do something to the lock, so that it could not be opened.

In Detroit, David sat calmly in my dressing room, watching me prepare for my dance. Ten minutes before time for me to go on, he walked over to the door and locked it.

“I can’t help it,” was all he said. “You are my wife.”

The stage hands had to break the door to release me, while David stood by watching me.

There were so many things I could not understand about David, things I will perhaps never understand.

I wished that he could be occupied with something which would keep him from worrying about me. Of course, he was managing various business projects, as he had been since his return to America. But he would hurry through these and fly to wherever I was. I realized his pride suffered in many ways. The emotional strain and the physical strain of five or six shows daily was almost too much for me to carry. I knew I had to do something about David, as the tour was too successful to change.

In 16 months I had replaced half of what had been spent.

I hit upon an idea, which I thought would re-establish David’s former state of contentment. This idea, I thought, would solve other problems between David and me, as well.

“David, do you still want our pink palace?” I began.

His eyes lit up immediately.

“Let’s build it on our beach property in Playa del Rey, where it can be just as you wanted it to be on the Mediterranean. Many of the film luminaries have homes at the beach now—” I named several, including Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, Francis Marion, Jesse Lasky, and Norma Shearer.

His enthusiasm was intense when I outlined my plan to build two other houses beside our palace, after it was finished. In this way we could insure harmonizing architecture near our own place, and when we sold the other houses the expense of building our own would be cleared.

For the following year (it took a year and $90,000 for the house to be built) my life with David ran smoothly. And when we moved into the palace, it was indeed like moving into a fairyland on earth.

The pink stucco Moorish house sat gazing out to the blue Pacific, built stately on piles, so that the waves swept its high wall. Every room had a dome ceiling. Every suite was decorated and furnished just as a palace should be. Every modern convenience—electrical and mechanical—had been installed. There was a unique inter-house telephone system, where you could listen or talk to each other in any room without holding an instrument to your ear. There were radios in every room. The servants’ quarters and the garages were up to the very minute. Nothing had been left out.

My own suite had white stucco walls, with black carpets and black velvet drapes. My bed was specially built, hand-carved and bright with inlaid gold leaf. The white Venetian furniture, which blended with it, was inlaid with gold leaf and hand-painted with many cherubs and curlycues. I had black marble tops on the dressing table and chests and many mirrors on the walls, which were also hung with Chinese green and red hand-embroidered hangings.

The electric fixtures were of Venetian glass and represented baskets of colorful fruit.

My bath tub was large enough to swim in, and so that my tiny son might crawl about on the floor beside me when I swam, gilt gates and grilling were around the pool, that he would not fall in.

I seemed only to live to get back to my house, to be with my baby. Then I would forget how lonely I had been on the road, that I had many strenuous performances every day and that I had been lonesome at nights.

Koran was learning to talk, and to listen. As I swam, he would ask me all the questions a child chatters to his mother. But during these times I tried to instill many things in my boy. I told him that I had carried him beneath my heart, and how dearly I loved him. I told him that I hoped he would become a fine man.

Sometime later David came into my dressing room, his eyes bright with enthusiasm.

“I want to dig an oil well close by!”

“An oil well close by? Why, David, what are you talking about? We have just finished the house and now you want to dig an oil well! You aren’t serious?”

“But I am serious.”

Then he told me that oil had been discovered on the property. That the finest and richest vein of it was flowing directly beneath our beautiful palace!

And it was all true.

“What I want to do,” David said, “is put down a well right away. Let us sell one of the investment properties, because an oil well will bring a hundred times more. It will be a gold mine!”

David knew our next plan was to build two other houses on the land we owned.

I did not want to sell any of those holdings—certainly not to dig an oil well.

“You know that through making the tours for the past three years I have been able to replenish the liquid asset fund and to build this house without having to sell anything or to go into the principal. I don’t want to upset our plan to build the other houses.”

“I want to drill the well, I tell you!”

I sat there numbly for a while and then I answered: “I won’t drill a well. It is the first time I have ever refused you anything. But I have to refuse you this.”

“You are breaking another promise to me. You are refusing me something that will assure our financial independence.”

He got up and walked from the room. My heart told me numbly that he was never to be in agreement with me again.

But there was our baby! It was because I feared somehow, some way, I would lose my baby Koran that at last I gave in.

And David had the wells drilled. They came in—roaring and spouting and rich! Fortunes in themselves!

Terror crowded into my heart, and claimed it as completely as love once had. I lived in terror. I was out of step, out of harmony. And it seemed that I only lived to look at my baby—and wonder.

In the long nights I would lie and hear the waves splash on the wall of the breakwater of the castle…now my shattered fairyland. My heart would beat so hard and so painfully I thought it would burst.

During those miserable nights David would come into my room, stand beside my great gold-leaf bed and tell me that now I should be happy…now I was his wife—really…that was what marriage really meant. I should be happy with him completely…with my life in his hands…didn’t I know that a woman’s love should be that way? That for a man to be happy he had to be truly the head of his castle, in command of his wife and of his son?

Then David, as if my tears only aroused his emotions, would crush me in his arms and kiss me wildly, declaring that his love for me was the consuming flame of his life.

“My wife! My wife!” he would say over and over.

I did not go on with my tours. I was too worried and fretted and broken hearted to have any lilt in my heart. My days were usually spent talking to finance men in a futile effort to learn what I could do to salvage my own individual independence.

I packed a bag. I knew I must leave—and I had a plan. A producer in New York had once wanted to put me in a play on Broadway. I had refused before when he offered it to me—now I saw the play as a means of having a place for my baby in the country, away from David and the anxiety of my life in California.

Now I had a picture in my mind of bringing my boy East and having a place in the country, near enough to New York for me to be with him.

I said good night to my child with a prayer of gratitude in my heart—that I would have the intelligence to bring him up, to make of him a fine man, healthy in body and mind.

David never dreamed I would leave him.

I tried to shut my mind and my heart when I got on the train and I did not leave my compartment until I reached New York. For three weeks I lived as quietly as possible, and I even asked the hotel clerks to withhold all information regarding me.

But a friend of David’s saw me on the street and through this man David traced me—and there David was knocking on my door.

At first I thought something had happened to the baby and I opened the door.

“My father is dead!” David moaned—and he begged me to go to Paris for the funeral!

I did not want to go. I would not.

“We will begin a new life together, if you’ll go,” he said. But this did not move me either.

Then he said, “What will the world think if you do not go?”

I did not care what the world would think. He sailed and from the ship he cabled, pleading again for me to leave for Paris.

Every day for a week David cabled, but I did not answer.

I read of the funeral which was as elaborate as a king’s.

As quickly as I could I went back to California and to my attorney. For four months we worked toward perfecting plans for my divorce.

Then I was ready to go to court with everything. I would have to let the world know all the things I had tried to hide—now I was going to claim my boy, and free myself from David Mdivani!

But I had not even begun to imagine the difficulties that I would encounter!

I knew that I was going to have trouble in getting my divorce from David Mdivani. I meant to ask for three things only—first, my freedom, second, a financial arrangement, and last, the custody of my boy. If only David would be reasonable about it!

But he did not want a divorce. He was opposed to it in principle and he insisted that I come back again and live with him as his wife.

My apprehension grew after each conversation with him. I knew that this domestic discord would have an ill effect upon my baby. So I placed Koran in a convent where the Nuns would care for him. He needed a woman’s tenderness, and Sister Aloysius, head of the convent, was wonderful in her understanding of his needs.

I continued to live in the pink palace and my funds continued to dwindle. I knew during those months what actual need was. I believed that some of David’s wealth belonged to me. The only servant I had left was a faithful Chinese boy, whose loyalty I shall never forget.

There were times, when having sold small possessions for food, there was nothing left on which I could realize any money. The Chinese boy stayed on. He would catch fish from the ocean, make a fire on the beach and prepare food for me, who once had controlled a fortune.

I believed I had legitimate claims in my divorce fight, yet at that time no one in Hollywood knew that there had been discord in my marriage with David.

It all seemed like a nightmare. At first I would become determined to fight David in the courts, and then I would hesitate. I would hope that he was convinced I did not want to live with him any more. I felt that when he realized this he would give me the baby and let me go.

(Continued from Double Page)

David told me that he knew I could bring no charges—that I had not a witness to anything I might charge against him. I knew I no longer had any power. I knew that David’s arguments were right. And yet I continued to try to persuade him.

“Just give me my little boy,” I begged the attorney. “Can’t I get my divorce that way—quickly, and the custody of my boy? That is all I want.” My attorney knew that a reconciliation was practically impossible. So my divorce went to court and David did not contest it. I was given my freedom and the custody of my child. But now I had to earn money. I still wanted to do a play on Broadway, but there was more money to be earned in personal appearance tours.

I was given a contract for a tour and, soon, audiences welcomed me warmly everywhere. It tore my heart to leave my baby! But the Sisters had my itinerary and daily sent me letters from Koran, written in great, sprawling words, which glowed about my heart. Whenever possible I spent a week in New York to be near him.

My salary was good and my debts were gradually being paid but I was so lonesome for my baby. Then as if in answer to my prayer, a play was offered me on Broadway! I accepted the offer and soon appeared in “The Milky Way.”

The critics praised my voice and diction as well as my acting and appearance. The public had seen me in every kind of part in pictures, but now I showed that I could hold my own in a legitimate show.

When the season was over and “The Milky Way” closed, I accepted a personal appearance tour. This time I placed Koran in a school in charge of the Brothers. I thought that the Brothers would guide him as a father might. You see, I had no alternative. Koran had to be kept in school.

While touring Canada, a group of Englishmen offered me a contract to go to England to make a picture, take part in a play and broadcast over the radio. This work would extend over a period of one year, and would pay $120,000.

One whole year away from my baby seemed an age. But I reasoned that my earnings, added to what I had already saved, would make possible the fulfilment of my dreams. I would be able to live with my boy and give up my career.

I went to England to look over the studio and meet the men with whom I was to work and I agreed to return when the ten remaining weeks of my personal appearances in the States were completed. I returned then to America, worked out my contract and made plans to leave.

I was to leave New York on a certain Saturday night—a midnight sailing—and knowing that would be my last chance in so very long to hear my baby’s voice I telephoned the school a few hours before sailing time. I was told that Koran could not come to phone.

“Koran is in the infirmary?” I repeated after the Brother.

“Yes, but we did not want to tell you, for fear you would worry,” he said.

I was assured that the school doctor had attended him, that in accordance with my previous instructions, an outside doctor had also been called in. I was assured that my boy was not ill enough for me to worry, that everything would be done for him during my absence.

But my heart was not satisfied. I knew it would be impossible for me to sail from New York knowing my baby was ill.

I immediately called a friend, who came with his car and drove me as quickly as he could to the school. But with all his haste, I did not reach the school for an hour after my phone call.

I hurried to the infirmary. Koran’s little arms were like a furnace around my neck! I knew that something more had to be done for him.

(To Be Continued Next Week)

Chapter VIII — Sunday, July 12, 1942

The Atlanta Journal, July 12, 1942 — American Weekly section. Source pages: p. 84, p. 85, p. 86, p. 88.

Illustration captions, as printed “One of the Saddest Moments in Mae’s Life Was When She Said Good-by to Her Son Koran in Dr. Cunning’s Office. She Was to Leave for California That Night and Didn’t Have the Money to Take Her Son With Her.” (AJ p. 84) “Mae, as She Is Today, Still Hopeful and Confident That She Will Accomplish a Comeback in Hollywood.” (AJ p. 84) “Jack Pickford, Whose Marriages to Olive Thomas and Marilyn Miller Ended So Tragically.” (AJ p. 85) “Marilyn Miller, Star of the Ziegfeld Follies, Refused to Take Mae’s Advice and Married Jack Pickford, Only to Have Their Romance End in Divorce.” (AJ p. 85) “Mae Murray, At the Height of Her Fame and Fortune, Before Bad Luck Stripped Her of Her Wealth, Her Husband and Her Child’s Affections.” (AJ p. 85) “Koran, the Son of Mae Murray and Prince David Mdivani, Over Whose Custody Two Court Battles Were Fought.” (AJ p. 85)

I HAD gotten my divorce from David Mdivani. I had won the custody of my son, Koran—now he lay desperately ill in the school where I had placed him.

The Brothers and my friend helped me carry Koran out into the car and we drove as quickly as we could into New York. We were refused admittance in the first hospital we went to and the second. But at the third I rushed in saying what I knew I had to say in order for my child to receive attention.

I said that a doctor had admitted me, which was untrue, but I knew that something had to be done quickly for my child.

“Have you money?” was the next question.

It was Saturday night and many phone calls were then made to many doctors before one could be located.

“Dr. Daniel Cunning is coming over to the hospital now,” I was told at last.

Only a little later an emergency operation was performed on my boy for double mastoids.

I did not sail that night. I did not sail the following night or the month after that. My baby was too near death. I had to cancel my contract. I was too busy accomplishing the impossible. I stayed by my child through long, exasperating months.

The baby’s nurses were eventually dismissed, but then I had to stay with him.

Dr. Cunning still called on Koran daily. During those hectic months there had been many doctors in attendance to Koran, but I felt that I knew Dr. Cunning best. He was a pleasant sort of man. He often spoke of his family, who lived near Albany, New York. He told me how his two sisters and three brothers, all unmarried, lived there and that he went up to be with them every week-end.

He seemed to lead a peaceful, normal life and I often wished I could live that way with my child.

“You say my child needs to be in the country, Dr. Cunning,” I told him one day. “And I’ve heard you speak so often of your country home, where you go week-ends. I wonder if your family would allow my little boy to stay there?

“Doctor, no matter how much you charge me I’ll pay. You know that I’m a large earner. You know my reputation.”

I had allowed no one to know my actual financial predicament. My natural instinct to protect my boy told me that everyone must go on thinking that my money was unlimited so that he would receive the best care and attention.

Dr. Cunning decided then that Koran could go to his home and all arrangements were completed, every detail worked out to our mutual agreement.

This pleased Koran, as he had seen more of Dr. Cunning than the other doctors. After leaving the hospital Dr. Cunning had called regularly at the hotel and when Koran was able to go out I had taken him to Dr. Cunning’s office. When the dressings were changed, in order to divert the child’s pain, Dr. Cunning would tell him that when he was well he would take him to his house in the country.

But it tore my heart to be separated from my boy, although I had the consoling thought that he was in a home with a doctor who knew his case, and where at the slightest disturbance the family could communicate with the doctor if he were not at home.

With this great weight off my shoulders, and feeling that now I could plunge right into work where I had left off, I started trying to pick up threads which had been broken when my boy became ill. I knew I could not make the English connection now, but I felt there were numerous things I could find to do in New York.

But something had happened to me during those agonizing months.

I would plan to go in to see agents and producers and theatrical managers about work but somehow I always lost my nerve. I would put off going until the following day, and then I could not make myself go.

I had been running full force, like a speed motor, for terrifying months.

Out of many acquaintances in New York there were only three who seemed to understand my struggle against despair. These were three young men, who shared an apartment. If they had had money I could have had it, but they didn’t. Therefore they gave me something greater, which was understanding. In my presence they never opened a subject which might echo unhappily across my heart.

In their unselfish intent to divert me they pooled their savings one night and invited me to El Morocco, to listen to the kind of music I liked, to be in an atmosphere of gaiety and color, with a smartly dressed crowd, bent on having fun.

Marilyn Miller was there, looking especially lovely. She was with Chet O’Brien, her very good looking husband, and I thought what a striking couple they made. Watching Marilyn, who had not yet seen me, I regretted the coolness which had come between us since Flo Ziegfeld sent me to ask her not to marry Jack Pickford.

Ziggie had hoped to keep Marilyn from being hurt by Jack, and he had asked me to tell her how Jack had broken Olive Thomas’ heart. I told Marilyn, but she married Jack, anyway, against everyone’s advice.

Marilyn was hurt and unhappy in that marriage and her divorce from the screen star was inevitable.

As if she could not forgive Ziggie and me for being right in our warning, she had only nodded when we met after that. But now she looked at me and smiled, then signaled me to meet her in the corridor outside the dining room.

I hoped, as she clasped my hand and held it, that she would not ask about my troubles, and she didn’t. She had too many of her own.

In the confidential way she had talked to me when we were children, Marilyn told me then what was soon to become a Broadway legend. She told me that Sam Harris, producer of her show “As Thousands Cheer” had disliked a prank of Chet O’Brien’s. It was such a small thing. Chet had only done it for fun. And there seemed no point in taking the prank as an offense, yet Sam Harris discharged Chet, who had held an important place in the show. Marilyn, in her loyalty, stood up for Chet and finally married him. (They had been in love for months, but only their intimates knew it.)

“But now we can’t work—that’s what every producer on Broadway tells us,” Marilyn said tearfully. “We want to work. We love each other and it seems unfair to have us banned!”

I was touched by her grief and forgot my own in trying to make some plan to see her again.

“I’m going into the hospital tomorrow for observation,” she said then. “To find out what’s the matter with me.”

If only some one had gone to Marilyn and said to her: “We have a wonderful part for you in a new show—a sure-fire hit—so please get well right away,” I’m sure she would have recovered from that severe sinus infection. But no one did.

And Marilyn lay in her casket in St. Bartholomew’s Church a month later!

I felt that I had to see her alone. I went to the church and saw her lying there, like a big doll, as if she were sleeping.

Marilyn and I were all alone except for the policeman on guard, and as I looked at her in her casket I was reminded of the fairy story, “Snow White.” I placed some tiny pink roses in her hand and thought of the many happy times we had had together.

I don’t know how long I stood there beside her, but when I heard others arriving I left. I walked out of the church, into the sun, hoping it might warm me.

Now it seemed I was more deeply sunk in my own tragedy than ever before. I realized that I must do something…something. But what? I tried hard but I could not govern my emotions. Even raising enough money to exist and to visit Koran at intervals was impossible. Weeks soon stretched into months and finally at the end of Summer I could not meet the demands of my hotel. I had never faced a situation like this before. I did not know how to cope with it. I could only think of running away from it.

I had kept selling my belongings until I had nothing left but two changes of clothes.

I put some soap, cold cream, handkerchiefs, underthings and stockings into a hat box, left the remainder of my possessions in the hotel—and for two days and nights I lived in Central Park.

How did I exist, not eating or sleeping? I don’t know. I don’t remember just how I passed the long hours as I tried with all my strength to think of a way to turn.

I took short walks, drank water from the fountain, refreshed myself at intervals in the small building beside the carousel—and came back to sit on a bench and stare into space.

My heart was so heavy and I was so forlorn, trouble clouded my entire sky.

The sun had come up and as I sat on the bench that last morning a messenger boy rode past on his bicycle. He looked into my face and whistled. He passed and I looked after him. He looked around and smiled as if to say, “I know who you are.”

I began to wonder, “What have I done to be here?” I had done only the things I believed were right. Then I asked, “Why can’t I do again the things I should do?”

The messenger boy rode past again. Now he was whistling “The Merry Widow Waltz.” Suddenly I smiled. I began to listen for the upbeat and to change my timing.

I picked up my hat box and through the park I walked to Fifth Avenue. As I passed the Pierre Hotel I met some friends I had not seen for a long time. They were just getting into their automobile when they saw me.

“Come with us, Mae,” they said. “We’re driving to Saratoga for a few days.”

Instantly I knew they would pass where my boy was staying.

“There’s a place near Albany I’d like to go,” I said. “Could you take me that far?”

All the way my friends, who had no idea of my predicament, were talkative and gay. And I kept face, never telling them that we were together in answer to my prayers.

“Mummy!” Koran cried in delight and ran across the lawn to hug me. And then it seemed as I held him that I could never let him out of my sight again.

I stayed at the Cunning home several days, as I had often done before. The doctor, was there, too, for the racing season.

The Cunning family were quite attentive to my child, and I could see that the country air and sunshine had been good for him.

The day before I knew I must leave I spent hours gathering courage to throw myself on the mercy of Dr. Cunning. I knew that he and the entire family were wondering why I had not discussed with them the amount I owed.

I went to Dr. Cunning with the burden of my heart, which until then I had carefully hidden.

“I have not asked you what I owe here, doctor,” I began, “because I’ve had no money to pay you. I couldn’t insult you by intimating that Koran would not be welcome had you known I could not pay. There have been times, doctor, when I haven’t had money to come here to see my boy, or even to telephone him. So now you may understand my many letters to him.

“If I know Koran is safe and that there is no recurrence of his illness, doctor, I can go on with my work. I will—but unless I am at ease in my mind about my child, work will be impossible for me.”

Now Dr. Cunning asked:

“When do you feel you’ll be starting on your new work?”

“I believe within six weeks,” I answer, “I’ll be able to grasp my work. You see, the days and nights I have been alone in the park have helped.”

He looked at me then as if he thought he had not heard correctly, and then I told him in detail how I had stayed in the park for two days and nights without food, without sleep…and how my prayers had been answered through my friends who had brought me to see Koran and to have this talk with him.

Dr. Cunning asked:

“How long do you think you will go on like this?”

I felt then as if I should not have told him about staying in the park or about any of my problems—yet, I felt I had had to tell him for my child’s protection, and to convince him of our need for his mercy.

“I’ll be earning within six weeks at least, doctor.”

“Well,” he said. “I guess we can carry on.”

The arms of my baby had given me new courage and when I left with my friends the following day for New York, I checked into a new hotel, feeling that I soon would be able to meet all my bills.

The first call I made was on the man who had once acted as my agent.

“For the past two weeks I’ve been trying to locate you,” he said as soon as he heard my voice.

He told me that a group of men who knew my box office value, wanted to form an independent company and list me among their stars!

“They will pay your fare to California for conference,” he said. “Can you leave right away?”

Before I left, I called Dr. Cunning with my news and asked him to keep his promises about caring for Koran.

In Hollywood I took part in daily discussions about work with the men who had brought me out. Plans were discussed for the new pictures I would make.

Through publicity the whole of Hollywood knew I was in town and I was asked to make several guest broadcasts on the radio. A New York station heard me and offered me a contract. But the most important thing was the picture contract now in preparation.

I had been in Hollywood for some weeks now, waiting for definite developments, and the waiting was wearing. I had no idea of the reason for the delay until I ran into a friend and former director, in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel.

“My little star!” he greeted me warmly. “I am sorry about what has happened to you. We made such wonderful pictures together—and to think that now these people out here should want to stop you from working!”

“Are they really stopping me?” I asked, but I was beginning to understand.

“That’s the talk of the studios, Mae. I’m sorry, little star. But I don’t believe you can ever return to the screen. I only hope you can.”

In the next meeting I had with the group of men who had brought me to Hollywood, I came straight to the point:

“Have you been having trouble because there is is [sic] a blockade against me?” I asked.

They admitted they had.

I wired acceptance then to the New York radio station, as I could not afford to wait longer in Hollywood, and I came East immediately.

I went on the air and made a big success. Not such big money but what a spiritual triumph! Notices about my voice and radio personally were gratifying, but they brought my debtors swooping like vultures on my salary!

So I had to go to Dr. Cunning again and explain. I had little money to live on, but out of that I managed to give the doctor and his family something. I paid them whenever I could all during that year. I asked the doctor if Koran was well enough to live with me in New York, but the doctor shook his head and said, “Not yet.”

Meanwhile, Koran’s school let out for the Summer. I had only a little money but enough to bring Koran into New York with me for a week. I had been trying to accumulate enough money to get to California to consult my atttorney [sic] about means of insuring Koran’s future.

(Continued from Double Page)

I engaged a small furnished apartment overlooking the park, stocked the pantry with the things he would like to eat.

The first day we had such fun and the bond of love was so strong between us that it seemed to make up for everything I had gone through for him.

Just then I had but $60. This would not pay my fare to California. Now again, I have to say if—if only I had had enough money to have taken Koran with me to California the next day!

But in order to raise my own fare, I would have to sell little things which girls I knew liked enough to buy. I thought out all details of my trip as I waited for Koran to waken. And I realized painfully that I would have to send him, when he did wake up, back to that family and pray for his protection until I could arrange for his future welfare.

I telephoned to Dr. Cunning that something unexpected had come up quite suddenly and consequently I would have to leave immediately for California.

After taking Koran to Dr. Cunning’s office, I disposed of my possessions, bought my ticket and packed my bags. I left for the West that night.

In California, I went to the lawyers’ office immediately.

“Isn’t there some way I can get money for the continued support of my little boy?” I asked. “And yet still have the child in my custody?”

Immediately my lawyer informed David Mdivani’s attorneys of my request.

David answered, after many conferences, that he would support our boy—provided I would give him full custody.

This I could not do!

During the hearings, Judge George Dockweiler, examining my divorce decree, found that Koran was under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles court. It would, then, be best to bring the child back into the State of California.

This meant that I would have to cross the Continent to get Koran and bring him back—and David gave me the fare to Albany to return with my child to California.

I rushed back to get Koran. But I ran into trouble. In Albany the court refused to let me take him.

When I look back over the heartbreaks of that trial, it is hard to believe such a thing actually happened.

“She has no place to take the child and has shown the possession of no facilities to care for him.” This was Judge Bergen’s decision against me. But I knew all this. It was my reason for asking the California court to get support for Koran.

All through the trial I was prevented from going near Koran.

I tried to see Judge Bergen later. But he would not see me.

What could I do then but go back to California again and try to resume negotiations for help from David?

The day my case was to open in Superior Judge George Dockweiler’s court, in Los Angeles, David called me on the telephone and we talked about what had happened in Albany.

Now men and women from all walks of life crowded into the Los Angeles courtroom. Days passed and then:

The news flashed over the radio: Judge Dockweiler granted me $400 a month for my little boy!

Everyone knew that this money was not for my use, but how beautifully I could use it for Koran!

Now all I had to do was go to Albany and pick up my child. While I was waiting for the court to release the first payments to me for my boy my radio contract came through! It seemed that in winning my child I had also won my contract at last. It was a good contract, to feature me in a serial and there were records to be made also of programs featuring me. These records were to be sold in Australia. The combination of work, to extend over a year, would bring me $84,000.

I quickly returned to Albany to Judge Bergen’s court with all my credentials.

But Judge Bergen’s first ruling was that I had to wait for my boy to finish his school term.

When the end of school came I asked for another hearing. Then Judge Bergen put this off for ten days. This time he said he could not hear my case for ten days because he had not had time to study my papers.

Now it was more than ever important that I get Koran and return to California because my radio work was ready to begin there.

David had put up $40,000 in cash within the court’s custody to cover an appeal. Everything was right and in order—but still Judge Bergen told my impatient lawyer:

“I’m only interested in what’s happening right here—not in what’s going on in California.”

Nothing my attorney pled for succeeded in moving Judge Bergen. He still postponed the case 10 more days.

As my attorney and I left the court and went out into the street I went immediately to a telephone and long distanced my lawyer in Los Angeles and told him what had happened.

Now my attorney instructed me to stand my ground, not to leave Albany. Even if I had to give up the radio contract, I would definitely have my boy.

I did not want to lose all my high hopes, but now my spirits were ebbing. And from the glimpse I had had of Koran in the courtroom my heart yearned to be near him. I asked my attorney if he could arrange to have someone drive me out to the Cunnings’ house to see my child, and he arranged for me to be driven out with two men from his office so that I would have reliable witnesses to anything which might happen.

“Koran, have you some word of love for Mummy?” I asked.

My little boy did not greet me as I had visioned. He became hysterical.

The two men, who had driven me out, ran over to me, pushed Koran aside and led me back to the automobile.

The two men took me to my hotel room, called my attorney and asked him to come to me immediately.

He understood now that I had to go to California so that I could see Judge Dockweiler and tell him word for word myself just what had happened.

That very night I left. In California I tried not to collapse. I fought with everything I had. I asked the radio people if there could be a postponement of the beginning of my work, but they could not then change their schedule. Wasn’t there something, I asked my attorney, to do to break the deadlock in Albany?

(Continued from Page 14)

He answered me by saying he would ask for a two week’s [sic] extension of the hearing because I was in no condition to return to Albany then.

“Tomorrow, when you are more rested,” he said. “I’ll arrange an appointment with Judge Dockweiler. Possibly he can think of something to be done.”

For so many months my prayer had been, “God, show me the way. No matter what it is, I’ll do it. Even if it is against my own desires, I’ll do it. There must be something wrong for me to continue suffering as I am. This cannot be God’s way.”

My radio rehearsals were ready to start—but I had made my choice between my work and my child. All that mattered to me since Koran had first been placed in my arms was—Koran.

But since the unbelievable episode with him, a knife was in my heart, so deep that I do not know yet how I endured the pain.

Whatever I did, wherever I went—sleeping and waking the pain was there, holding off my breath. And one night at the home of a friend it squeezed my heart tighter, tighter until my breath was gone.

I did not know anything then for days, while doctors worked over me with inhalators, while I struggled for consciousness.

A miracle happened then. You see, I believe in miracles and when I tell you what happened surely you can never doubt why I believe.

In my coma of pain I looked up into the eyes of my Saviour, who had guided me in childhood. His compassionate eyes were now filled with understanding and love for me as he said:

“Are you sincere about wanting to be shown the way? Are you truthful when you say you will go against your own desires to follow that way, if I tell you it is God’s way?”

“I am sincere . . . just show me.”

“You must give up your boy to his father,” the Vision said. “You have worshiped your child beyond God and this is a violation of the first commandment. You have suffered because you have worshiped a human being more than God. You must remember that all God’s commandments are made only for happiness. Therefore, for you to be happy they must be obeyed.”

Give up my child? Could I do that? Even that?

“If I must—then I will do that,” I said.

“That—is good . . . I will be with you always.”

For the first time in so very long the pain left my heart. I could breathe…I felt as if a soothing hand was wrapped around the aching muscles. I took a deep breath and spoke to my friends, who had kept a long and tiring vigil about my bed.

Very soon I was able to go to my lawyers and tell them my decision, which made them gasp with astonishment.

“Voluntarily I am going to give my boy to his father,” I told them.

“You—what?” they cried in amazement.

“Yes . . . voluntarily. It has been revealed to me that this is best for the child. I know now that even though we take this last step in the court and that I can have him in my custody for all time, I know that I cannot be happy with him. I will wait until he is mature, and then if he wants me, he will understand. I will know that I have done all that I possibly could do for his happiness.”

In my heart I knew that I had placed my boy in God’s hands and therefore he would have to receive divine guidance. I had to place him there completely, which I have. From that moment I began to live a new life.

It took a few months to get my voice back. It had left me entirely for awhile and then I could only speak in whispers. But after a few months I came back across the country, strong in mind and body and spirit. I was in New York only a few days when John Murray Anderson sent word to me that he was about to produce a cavalcade of the silver screen and that he wanted me to be the star of his revue, dancing The Merry Widow Waltz just as I had danced it in my motion picture.

John Murray Anderson has often expressed his high regard for my work, and he is also my friend, and as he outlined his production to me I felt that I should be in it just as he wished me to be.

The success of my appearance in the Cavalcade of the Silver Screen was so overwhelming it was heralded all over the country.

On the opening night, after my number, people rose to their feet to applaud, climbed on their chairs to cheer. The applause kept on, and on. Nothing else could follow, except my encores, again and again.

The critics said—

“Mae Murray is a show stopper.” “To see Mae Murray dance is to know what dancing means.” “People rose and stood on their chairs and cheered—and we cheered with them.” “Mae Murray was a personal triumph!”

In every newspaper and magazine, wherever comment on my performance could be written, I was declared an outstanding and overwhelming success.

John Murray Anderson came running to me that opening night. He caught me in his arms, crying.

“You thrilled them, Paradise! Don’t you ever take yourself away from them again!”

(“Paradise” is his nickname for me. He says I remind him of a Bird of Paradise.)

As John Murray Anderson said those words to me I realized I had been wrong in going away from the millions, who loved me, to sacrifice myself to just two persons. I prayed that I would be forgiven. Because that taking-myself-away from the multitudes was not done because I loved them less. I always have and always will be devoted to them. Which is why I have fought so hard to give the public perfection in my work. I feel that they, the people, know me for what I really am. They hold me in their hearts, as I hold them in mine.

My one desire, as my heart reaches out to all creeds and all colors, all God’s children, is to impart to them the knowledge which I now have. This is the knowledge that will assuage all their griefs, overcome all their obstacles. Countless persons have tried to learn what this magic is—and it is very simple when you know. Possibly that is why it has often eluded those who would know it. It has to do with no one but yourself. When you obtain this wisdom you then have mastership. And this will give you the happiness which is God’s promise. When you learn to listen to Him, then joy is yours.

As I go out dancing and all those who are also dancing on the floor, step aside to watch me and cry out, “How you dance! What joy it is to watch you!”

I also know that I serve the people best through my own joy. I am joyous when I dance. Then I am completely in tune. The desire of my heart is to serve and if it is through acting and dancing then that is how I will carry out God’s will. If He has another way for me, I will listen attentively for His guidance, and be led by His will, not my own.

(THE END)

Transcriber’s postscript (not part of the 1942 text): The comeback Mae Murray announces in her last paragraph did not come. She never made another film. Her son Koran, whom she gives up in the final chapter, was raised by his father; mother and son were largely estranged for the rest of her life. In 1964 she was found disoriented on a street in St. Louis and taken to a Salvation Army shelter. She died in a Woodland Hills motion-picture home on March 23, 1965, at 79, and is buried at Valhalla Memorial Park. Readers who want the documented life alongside her own version should see Michael G. Ankerich’s Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips (2012), which tests many of the claims made here — among them the gunpoint wedding, the rescue of Valentino’s career, and the custody fight of the last two chapters.