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From under my Hat
guests— oh, they really turned out the honor guard for Joe Hergesheimer.
He was especially attracted to one hostess, Aileen Pringle. She was the boon companion of his friend Henry L. Mencken, the Baltimore Sage. Only top-drawer writers were given dinners at the Pringle home; what evenings they were!
Aileen was a Metro star; not triple-A, but her films which costarred Lew Cody made enough money to pay for some of the epics which failed. Aileen was a good actress but wouldn't conform. She indulged in the cardinal sin of receiving only friends in her home; she never invited her bosses— any of them. When her long-term deal ended, it wasn't renewed, and her career was over.
True she did befriend David O. Selznick when he worked in the prop department at MGM Studio for fifty bucks a week. She fed his ego, assured him he'd be the biggest breeze in Hollywood someday. But who would expect the great Selznick to remember those days?
David's memory is notoriously short, but it failed him completely the night he got every award that could be heaped upon him for Gone With the Wind. It was embarrassing to see how many times he was called to the podium and handed a golden Oscar. It was even more embarrassing that during all his speeches he never once mentioned the great lady responsible for all his glory. Her name? Margaret Mitchell. She was only the Author.
I once listened in on a conversation between Hergesheimer and the highest-paid studio scenario writer of the moment, who asked plaintively, "Why do my books always turn out mediocre?"
"A good book is like having a baby," Joe replied. "If you waste your being and your love on inferior people, you take on their low quality and it waters down your creative ability. You waste your substance and forfeit the right to creation." Huh! What's that again?
That year of 1926, Joe paused in Hollywood so long that he was moved from the Lasky home into a bungalow at the Ambassador Hotel to make way for another famous author.
Joe's bungalow faced Pola Negri's. Rudolph Valentino had died in New York and was about to be interred in Hollywood. From his
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