Part 3 (1/2)
As a teetotaler, Hearst frowned on excessive drinking The first cocktails of the day were served at 6 pathered friends in her rooms for surreptitious drinks, people whotheir own flasks would find theuest at San Simeon was permitted two cocktails, no ly childlike One night his feelings were hurt because he hadn't been included in a game of charades ”Well,” said the actor Jack Gilbert, ”we'll play a charade on our own, and act out the word 'pill-box'-I'll be the box and you can be the pill” WR rushed out of the roo the door: ”I don't want to play your old charades” On other, happier occasions he would get up and tap-dance with the h-and his friends were loyal enough-to suppress the Ince affair when news of his death became public Some years later Elinor Glyn insisted that all the rumors were lies, and that Ince had left the boat and died of heart probleestion which he had refused to have treated because he was a Christian Scientist Chaplin said that he had not attended the boating party at which the death was alleged to have occurred, but that Glyn had told him Ince had died of a heart attack To this day no one knohat really happened because the only witness who ossip columnist Louella Parsons, accepted a lucrative job from Hearst when she stepped ashore and never spoke of the incident again The ated by the police
At last even Washi+ngton found it initude Fears about Hollywood's corruption of Ae that the film industry was created and run principally by a (to name producers and directors alone) the Polish Warner brothers, Louis Mayer, Irving Thalberg, Adrian Zukor and Sa could have
In 1922 the US president Warren Harding's staunchly Presbyterian forer, Will Hays, was created first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of Aed with i codes of morality both onin theuard ”Ae and the home, were approved in 1930 and enforced from 1934 The first dictate read, ”No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it” Heated love scenes-like those for which Pola Negri had been celebrated-and references to ”impure love” were banned, in case they aroused improper passions; virtue and y were not to be ridiculed and gangsters were not to be portrayed as syton politicians, the appearance of morality remained far more important than the practice of it
President Warren Harding and his wife Florence, 1921
5
”My God! HOW THE MONEY Rolls IN”
WILL HAYS'S CONNECTION WITH HOLLYWOOD DATED BACK to two years before he was appointed president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of Ae Theatrical League” arrived in Warren Harding's ho's presidential ca Newly roup of actors and entertainers pledging their support for Harding in the upcoood nature, his sociability, his sincerity-and perhaps above all for his nobly presidential looks Lillian Gish described him as ”a Roman statue carved out of marble” and was charmed by the way he held his arms out to her and her sister, Dorothy, when they were invited to the White House for a screening of one of their !”
Fellow politicians found hi won the Republican noreed that the ti, politically conservative (as a senator he had always voted with the party) and with immense popular appeal, would be aswas no less realistic about his attributes After receiving his party's nooes in with a pair of eights and con confirmed expectations ”A; not nostruitation, but adjustery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experience in internationality, but sustainment in triu out of breath Soe and overblown rhetoric convinced voters that he stood for a return to what he called ”normalcy” after the turbulent war years
Even the 's Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, commented on his preference for ”three-dollar words” William McAdoo, one of the failed De's speeches ”leave the i over the landscape in search of an idea; soling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork”
The journalist Williareed that he was ”densely ignorant At best he was a poor dub who hadwith the politicalMe service clubs-the Rotarians, Kiwanians, or the Lions-uttering resounding platitudes and saying nothing because he knew nothing” Harding may have looked like a president, but he wasn't equal to the challenges of the job Yet Harding's simple, wellintentioned affability struck a chord with millions of American voters His election as less a landslide than an earthquake, thepresidential victory ever; he came to office in early 1921 on a national wave of buoyant optirin,” reported one newspaper won 61 percent of the popular vote and thirty-seven of forty-eight states-his cah of relief For 's ned affidavits denying their involve, and the passionate letters and erotic poetry Harding had written to the paper), his mistresses had been paid off out of a secret account funded by the National Republican Co's craving for rouration the President-elect had to be prevented froht for an assignation
People joked that anyone who had to live with Florence Harding deserved extra-curricular activities, but despite his infidelities Warren (or ”W'rr'n,” as Florence called him) seemed to dote upon his determined, heavily-marceled wife Certainly he always deferred to the woman he called the ”duchess” and trusted her implicitly; she was the one person he knew for sure had his interests at heart
Seven years her husband's senior, Florence Harding was the most eian queen, Elizabeth, had visited Washi+ngton in 1919, Mrs Harding (then a senator's wife) had met her not with a curtsy but with a ”level eye [and]an outstretched hand” A declared suffragist, she was the first president's wife to have voted for her husband, following legislation that granted wo is elected there will be two P- well, personalities personalities in the White House,” wrote a journalist during the ca in the background of her husband's greatness” in the White House,” wrote a journalist during the ca in the background of her husband's greatness”
Florence hadand then helped him make a success of his newspaper, the Marion Star Marion Star Dory than broil steak and boil potatoes,” she said ”I love business” She refused to pretend that she wasn't interested in the running of her husband's ad bossed W'rr'n around for years, she had no coets, writing his speeches, attending govern on behalf of her many interests, which included all-female prisons, Girl Scouts and animal welfare She and Warren were childless but they both loved animals; their Airedale, Laddie Boy, was fa brought a breath of fresh air and modernity to her role as First Lady and to the White House, throwing open its doors to visitors (and often leading tours herself), screeningjazz at presidential functions She was the first First Lady to fly in an airplane (with a woman pilot), the first to hold her own press conferences for female reporters, the first to welcome divorcees to the White House, and sheblack schoolchildren as well as white at White House receptions Her unabashed proht to be the power behind the throne When John Anderson, a Swedish i the US citizenshi+p test in the early 1920s, was asked ould assume the president's duties if he should die in office and replied Mrs Harding, the judge, s, let him pass
After a crisis in 1911, when Florence discovered letters fro the affair they had been having for more than five years (and would continue for almost a decade), an impasse was reached Florence decided to stay with the man she still adored and turn a blind eye to his infidelities, as long as they were contained enough to jeopardize neither her pride nor his career The price she paid was isolation Afraid offemale friends because she suspected that they would try to ensnare Warren, she devoted herself to his interests ”I have only one real hobby,” she said ”My husband”
This willingness to put Harding's needs before her oas evident in the public sphere Friendly, easy-going Harding never put anyone's back up or said no to anyone-his razor-sharp wife decisively did it for him As bold as she was abrasive, Florence relished political battles Her secretary described Warren looking on with ade
But while Florence's tenacity and drive in part compensated for her husband's weaknesses, like hie of character They were no match for the band of unscrupulous cynics who saw in the laid-back President an unparalleled opportunity to get rich quick When the Hardings moved into the White House, wrote the popular historian Frederick Allen in his 1931 review of the 1920s, ”blowsy gentlears stuck into their cheeks and rolls of very useful hundred-dollar bills in their pockets began to infest the Washi+ngton hotels[and] the oil-, Warren Harding was a man's man, a meolf, whisky and women, and his administration reflected his interests He created, said Alice Roosevelt Longworth (daughter of forton hostess), ”a general atmosphere of waistcoat unbuttoned, feet on the desk, and the spittoon alongside”-and, with his ”girlies,” as Longworth said he called thee of uses”
Harding's inforuileless style uise The year he took office, he confessed to a journalist that he was having trouble co to terms with the complexities of his new duties ”I don't knohat to do or where to turn in this taxation matter Somewhere there o to straighten it out in my mind But I don't knohere the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it And there h both sides and know the truth Probably he is in soe or other But I don't knohere to find hiet him My God, but this is a hell of a place for a man like me to be!” He put his hand to his head, smiled at his own disco's initial response was to form a cabinet to coive the State Departhes, the Republican presidential candidate for 1916; he brought in the efficient and progressive Herbert Hoover, who had served under Woodrow Wilson during the war, as Secretary of Commerce; his commitment to business interests was underlined by his choice of Andrew Mellon, the alunate, as Treasury Secretary These men were experienced and reliable
Less popular was Harding's decision to appoint to the Attorney-General's office his closest political ally, Harry Daugherty, as a reward for his long-standing support Under his aegis the Justice Departherty was the most proroup of trusted friends ( played whisky-soaked poker sessions through the night in the private roo the drinks
Harry Daugherty and his sidekick, Jess Smith, lived in a house two blocks fro Lafayette Square, a notorious gay cruising ground) froherty conducted most of his Departherty's invalid wife, Lucie, who had reh Jess remained close to her They were, said one friend, ”partners if ever two herty declared Smith was ”indispensable to herty (according to one of Daugherty's agents) ”with a dog-like devotion”
Snappily dressed, shi+fty-eyed Jess Se diaherty's inforers in all the pies in town, hu with its catchy chorus: My sister sells snow [cocaine] to the snow-birds My father sells bootlegger gin My grandma does back-street abortions My God! How the money rolls in!
My brother's a poor missionary He saves fallen women from sin He'll save you a blonde for five dollars My God! How the money rolls in!
Smith sold useful introductions to shady businessmen, pardons and paroles for criminals, and istores out of a sreenstone house on K Street An Ohio lawyer-turned-bootlegger, George Reovern 40 ht and i's attitude towards Prohibition was e hypocrisy and his own eagerness to ignore unpleasant facts if they interfered with his pleasures or peace oflikes to drink as much as I do, he is prepared to stand or fall by the enforceround that it is the law and must be enforced,” one of his forworth said that throughout the twenties, ”the Cabinet member who did not take a drink when it was offered to hiworth herself later beca and practicing Prohibition because it was the lahen Prohibition first came into effect she had a hoin froents, Gaston Means, later claireen house in K Street” that, between 1921 and 1923, he had turned over 7 ers Means had started work at the Justice Department on a weekly salary of 90 but, thanks to Jess Srasp of his job requirements (”I was to do as I was told and ask no questions”), he was soon living in a fully-staffed house with a ton in a chauffeured Cadillac His house contained an arsenal of weapons and had a buried safe in its garden
Sirls were shi+pped in froraphic fil a couple of dolls who later put on clothes, changed their nahtly,” res went too far A ”dope fiend” call-girl was either accidentally hit on the telass s, as present, was hustled ahen the dead girl's brother tried to blackherty and S used it for assignations with his ”lullapaloozas,” ned by Evalyn and Ned McLean Wealthy, feckless Ned McLean was proprietor of the Washi+ngton Post Washi+ngton Post, known during Harding's ad's passions for drinking, ga; his mistress, Rose Davies, was the sister of Marion Davies, W H Hearst's lover It was McLean, aided by Gaston Means and Jess Sirlfriends in the run-up to the election McLean even ent of the Bureau of Investigation (which a former private eye, William Burns, ran for him as a personal protection racket) with a nominal salary of a dollar a year
Mrs McLean was the indulged only daughter of an irown up, as she put it, in a hos never influenced decisions On their honeymoon she and Ned had driven round Europe in a vast, pale yellow Mercedes filled hisky, with Evalyn in a chinchilla coat ”decked with fiftyin Paris on the way ho present and bought the cursed 92-carat dia confidently that bad luck for other people would be good luck for her
Ever since she first stole what she called ”fluid emerald” (creme de menthe) from her parents' drinks cupboard in her early teens Evalyn had been an alcoholic When her brother died at a tragically young age, grief helped turn her into a morphine addict ”In those days a woman, diamond laden, could buy laudanuist what he asked,” she wrote, describing the ani under her bedrooance was legendary Alice Roosevelt Longworth cattily declared that she loved going to the McLeans's parties because they were ”so endearing in [their] vulgarity” Evalyn, she said, ”could be very likeable with her queer loud voice and great generosity” although Longworth, who despised the Hardings, had dropped her when she became friends with Florence in about 1915
Perhaps because she showed no interest in sleeping with Warren, or perhaps because they both had notoriously unfaithful husbands, Evalyn beca's only trusted fe erness to enjoy the world of riches that had been opened to hih she added that while he had the charm necessary to succeed, it was his ho possessed the a the President, Ned and Evalyn McLean seeain fro known to be their closest friends According to Lillian Gish, their home was ”said to be the unofficial White House” They provided an escape from the pressures of official life in the forton, Friendshi+p (which, incongruously, had once been a monastery), where Evalyn's petdid the rounds of the 18-hole golf course Jess Smith called Friendshi+p ”a da's presidential can that the McLeans burned the entire print-run of The Illustrated Life of President Warren G Harding The Illustrated Life of President Warren G Harding, a book exposing Harding'sthat he was descended from runaway slaves and that Florence had Jewish blood
Other Harding cronies were greedier A character in John Dos Passos's 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer Manhattan Transfer justified graft like this: ”a live man, nowadays, wants more money, needs more money than he can honestly make in public life Naturally the best men turn to other channels” By this definition corruption was only natural-a form of survival of the fittest and evidence more of a man's ambition than of immorality or criminality This philosophy see surrounded himself and to whoraft like this: ”a live man, nowadays, wants more money, needs more money than he can honestly make in public life Naturally the best men turn to other channels” By this definition corruption was only natural-a form of survival of the fittest and evidence more of a man's ambition than of immorality or criminality This philosophy see surrounded himself and to whom he felt such a misplaced sense of loyalty
When he beca had wanted to make Albert Fall, his former seat-mate in the Senate, Secretary of State, but Republican elders dissuaded him Fall contented himself with the Departht the six-shooter-carrying Fall looked like a ”patent on Evalyn McLean also found Fallhat and ”the cigar that stuck forward froular jaas about the size of a lead pencil and as poisonous as a cobra”
Harding had none of White and McLean's scruples about his friend, but his faith in hiation file recorded that Albert Fall, a one-tie, had borrowed money to buy his seat in the Senate, and had colluded in the murder of one man and his six-year-old son and tried anotherin the wild Southwest, Fall was an arch anti-conservationist determined, as Secretary of the Interior, to exploit the nation's rich resources of oil, tierously short of ready cash
It was Fall who introduced the Hardings to Harry Sinclair Sinco, as he was knoas a self-herty, had contributed to Harding's can fund, was a keen poker-player and, as part-owner of a baseball team and owner of a Kentucky Derby winner, had attractive connections to the sporting world When Fall asked Harding to approve the lease to Sinco of oil rich naval land at Teapot Don As a ave Fall's son-in-law 233,000 in bonds, 85,000 in cash and a herd of pedigree cattle
Sinclair was not the only oilman to benefit fro 100,000 in cash Edward Doheny, head of Pan-Aranted the lease of naval property at Elk Hills, California, also on extremely favorable ter's presidential ca 25,000 to pay for publicity photos of Harding with his parents to counteract rus had befriended the ingratiating Charles Forbes and his hen they were vacationing in Hawaii in 1915 and Forbes was supervising the construction of the new naval base at Pearl Harbor Six years later, despite having almost no relevant experience, Forbes was placed at the head of the new Veterans' Bureau with a 450 allant wounded veterans of the Great War were the official cause closest to Florence Harding's heart Genuinely ht, she fund-raised on their behalf, nursed theht to her attention Utterly taken in by Forbes's boastful affability, she had urged her husband to appoint him to what she considered the most important of roles
In just two years, Forbes sucked the Veterans' Bureau dry He reported ed and then sold theht replacements froovernment land sold for hospitals in return for a share of the profit from the sale; he awarded hospital construction contracts to fired to the husband of one of his 's sister; a secondcontractor to whoave access to his rivals' bids He took friends and girlfriends on lavish, bootleg-fueled junkets across the country, ostensibly on Veteran's Bureau business In all, it is estimated that in two years he cost the Government 200 million-of which he personally appropriated perhaps 36 million
These unprincipledneeded to be flattered and cajoled into bestowing her support upon them Both Fall and Edwin Denby, the Secretary of the Navy i of naval land, wrote to the First Lady assuring her that they would do all they could ”to do as you desire” Daugherty hi seen the President without her, ”Of course you know it-you know everything which he or I do or thinkI a that I always give your instructions preference over his” Only Forbes-perhaps the closest socially to Florence-paid little attention to her deate the cases of specific veterans ho's suspicions as to Warren's friends' true activities and motives were awakened
By the suhteen months after he had taken office, the pressures of his position earing on Warren Gas The appalled president of the Rail Workers Union described Harding as being too drunk to negotiate during talks at the White House Harding confessed to a friend that he had no appetite for the exercise of power and would rather be a diploh he added, pathetically, ”probably I should be a very poor ambassador”
Florence was also affected by the strained atile for many years, declined rapidly in September 1922 and she relied ever more heavily on the quackish and eccentric hoht with the she suist Emile Coue to the White House and daily repeated hisbetter and better”