My Life as a Mankiewicz Read Online Free PDF Page A

showdown occurred at a black-tie meeting of the Directors Guild in the ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was not open to the public. Before anyone spoke, they had to identify themselves to the stenographer who was taking down everything that was said. At that time, only directors belonged to the Guild (no assistant directors or production managers, as is the case today) and there was only one female director, the actress Ida Lupino. This resulted, Dad remembered, in every speaker beginning with “Gentlemen, Miss Lupino…” DeMille spoke first, making his case: these were dangerous times; foreign infiltration into the fabric of America was a real danger. He went on to list the names of some who opposed him. Dad was appalled when, for some peculiar reason, DeMille affected a thick foreign accent while naming them: “Villy Vyler, Billy Vilder,” and so on. Rouben Mamoulian (The Mask of Zorro, Blood and Sand) stood up. He told DeMille he'd never been ashamed of his accent before and wasn't going to start now. William Wyler rose angrily and asked DeMille what he was doing during World War II when he, Wyler, was making The Memphis Belle in an American bomber on missions over Germany. The meeting was spiraling out of control.
    Finally, the great John Ford stood up. Dad's stomach churned. Ford's politics were to the right of Attila the Hun, but no director in the history of Hollywood had ever been held in higher esteem. Ford introduced himself to the stenographer: “My name is John Ford. I direct westerns.” Nervous laughter from those assembled. Ford began: he supposed that he and Joe Mankiewicz didn't share one political opinion, that he was much closer in social philosophy to DeMille. But, he went on to say, and directly to DeMille, he didn't like DeMille personally, and especially the way he'd insulted some of his fellow directors in his speech tonight. As for himself, he'd be happy to sign a loyalty oath, but goddamnit, no one was going to force him to do it. “So what do you say?” he asked the crowd. “Why don't we all go home and give the Polack”—Dad—“back his job?”
    Dad won the impeachment vote in a landslide. He never forgot Ford for what he did. DeMille left the meeting a broken man. Later on, to appease the entire Guild, especially the center right led by Frank Capra (himself an immigrant from Sicily), Dad did accept the idea of a loyalty oath, but only on a voluntary basis. He never signed himself, nor did many others. In many ways, this was Dad's finest hour. He stood up for what he believed with the odds heavily stacked against him and at great personal risk to his reputation and career. Later on he told me: “Looking back on it, I wish I hadn't been so dismissive of the oath right there on the New York docks. Maybe I could have returned to L.A. and negotiated a compromise, the kind we finally came up with. But DeMille made that impossible, and when you say what you really feel and you mean it, you have to see it through.”
    Shortly afterward, Dad resigned as president, but not before admitting assistant directors and production managers into the Guild. He was moving to New York and was a filmmaker, not a labor executive. He wanted Chris and me to grow up in an international city bursting with energy. The home of Broadway, the New York Times , the Yankees, Giants, Dodgers, and Wall Street. He wanted us to get an eastern education at the best schools in the country. He was, after all, the son of a distinguished professor. He actually believed that kids shouldn't be allowed to go to school in blue jeans. He used to say about Los Angeles only half in jest: “I don't think that people were physically meant to live here. It's an artificially inseminated desert. When the ‘big one’ hits, it's going to crack off and fall into the ocean. Later on, neon signs will float to the surface and the rest of the world will wonder what everyone