The Great Depression; Interview with Karen Morley. Part 2

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, that's why, I think, that's why they made Dinner at Eight.

INTERVIEWER:

Yes. OK-

INTERVIEWER:

OK, begin.

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, you know, in '32 or 3, the studios got panicky, because they were sure they were going to get taken over by the banks, they were going to go bankrupt and it was all going to be terrible. They got together and decided that everybody would take a fifty percent pay cut for an unlimited amount of time. We didn't know how long it would happen, but we agreed because we didn't have much choice. There were two people that didn't agree, Greta Garbo and Wallace Beery. So Metro quick got everybody together and made Dinner at Eight. We got everybody for half-price.

INTERVIEWER:

I understand, and I've talked to a couple of people, and I don't know whether you felt this at all, but that the fifty-percent pay cut, was when, you know, and the Sinclair campaign, and the studio's reaction to that, it was just kind of compounded, you know,

each other. Do you remember anything on that? I know you said you weren't that aware of the Sinclair campaign at the time, but was it like, 'enough is enough'? Did you get that feeling?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, Mayer, I think Metro was head of the anti-Upton Sinclair campaign, and I know a young director they had shoot those supposed interviews with men on the street, except the men on the street were well-paid, and they all were dressed to look very dirty and messy and drunken, and awful, you know. They were the people that were for Upton Sinclair, and the director became quite disillusioned with what was supposed to be the truth, as Metro saw it, and quit, he wouldn't do it after a while. It was, I think any fool looking at it would know it was a fake, but maybe not, and that was run in news reels all the time.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, what did you think about Mayer and Thalberg, what were your impressions of them?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, Mayer was, you know, a benevolent dictator, he thought. A lot of people found that very irritating, I didn't much like it. Thalberg, of course, was the bright young, up-and-coming everything producer. He was a person that had been ill as a kid, and read all his life, he was in bed for years and read, and read, and read, and read, and he had a wonderful story mind. He was not a particularly attractive person and he was particularly, not at all nice to actors, but I think he was very valuable. In the first place he understood one thing, which everybody at Metro agreed, that movies were made for women, that was the audience. If they went to the movies, then they took the men and the kids, and went to the movies, and the movies were about women, mainly, and their, their, what was considered women's problems at the time. Like whether to admit you were not a virgin when you got married, or whether to work after you got married, and stuff like that.

INTERVIEWER:

But together they exerted the control, in the thing, or was it mostly Mayer—

KAREN MORLEY:

Mayer. Mayer was a total dictator.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Can you tell me a little about working on Our Daily Bread? What was your experience like, what was King Vidor's, you know, vision?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, the studio loaned me to King Vidor to make Our Daily Bread, and

it was not the kind of part I was very interested in, because it was a goodie-goodie lead, and I was much more interested in playing women who died, or killed people,

or had fierce problems and so on. But nevertheless, [coughs], it was a lovely script and very interesting, and so we were going to shoot it in Tarzana, so I went out to Tarzana and there were four houses there. One belonged to Edgar Rice Burroughs, it was his big house, and then there were three little houses, so I rented one of the little houses, which little house was three bedrooms and a maid room, so I guess it was about a nine room house. But anyway, that cost a hundred and thirty-five dollars a month, and we had moved out there for the duration of the shooting. It was a very pleasant picture because

King Vidor

was a very easy-going, friendly fellow and never bossed anybody around, and had a very wonderful attitude toward films. He

was a very musical person. His films always, you can see, are similar to music, and the climax of Our Daily Bread was

his idea, of course, and

set to music by metronome. When we shot those scenes, there was a metronome going for us all the time,

and there was one that didn't get in the movie, I was kind of sorry, where we [coughs], we fed the workers by night. It was a beautiful stuff, you know, with moonlight and fires and the metronome going boom, boom, but that didn't get, everything, not everything could get in the picture. But it was a very interesting experience, and I was not,

I had no idea what a co-op was or whether it was a good idea or not, but I think that King, who was a conservative person, had an idea that people should just get together and help each other,

and not depend on the government, and in this case not to depend on big business either, which was doing rather poorly at the time. People have said that how could it be, that a person so conservative would take his own money- and he was notoriously conservative where money was concerned- take his own money and blow it on this picture. He didn't have a good release for it, he was in trouble, he had to borrow more money and he mortgaged his property, and he was passionate about it.

INTERVIEWER:

Was this a vision that he felt, or do you know, was this a vision that he felt was shared by a lot of people and that's why he felt compelled to—

KAREN MORLEY:

I'm ashamed to say, I don't know. I was not given to theorizing at the time.

INTERVIEWER:

Were you aware at all at the time that the film was not released in California during the Sinclair campaign? No? OK.

KAREN MORLEY:

I didn't know it.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Did people talk, I mean, doing a film like Our Daily Bread, which deals with kind of a social problem, did you ever talk about any of the content, or what, you know, how to act the scene in a certain way because of the kinds of emotions or problems that it involved?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, when you have a picture about the unemployed, everybody has a story to tell, you know, and there was a lot of talk about unemployment, and unemployment is

nothing new to actors, gotta say, so there was a lot of talk about act-, unemployment and what it does to people. Not very much talk about any way to solve it, I don't think.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Can you tell me a little bit about, do you remember working on Gabriel Over the White House?

KAREN MORLEY:

Gabriel Over the White House was the god, the brainchild of William Randolph Hearst, and he financed it, wanted it put on. He was in favor of Roosevelt at the time, felt that he was the savior of the country, and so he made this picture about a no-good who gets a knock in the head and becomes an angel, and is going to bring peace to the world by blowing up our Navy, which he does. It's extraordinary to think now that that picture could ever have been made, it's just so naive, and to think of Hearst as a naive person seems ludicrous, but there it was.

INTERVIEWER:

Do you remember what you felt about working on that film? About your role?

KAREN MORLEY:

Oh, I don't know, it was fine, I liked it. All the people were nice, it was wonderful to be with Huston, and Franchot was darling, and it was fun.

INTERVIEWER:

So it wasn't like, a goodie-goodie role, or something, it was more the kind of role you liked?

KAREN MORLEY:

No, yeah, it was a little better.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, can you tell me, can you give me your favorite film to work on, what film did you like the best?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, I think I liked Arsene Lupin the best, it had the two Barrymores in it, John playing Aresene Lupin, and Lionel playing the cop that's out to get him. I'm a police spy, and I get all dolled up and we have a big romance, and in the end, you know what happens. Lionel forgives him, and we go off into the sunset. But it was fun, and they were so darling and funny. Jack was on the wagon, and it was just a lovely experience. I don't think I was any good in it, but I had a lot of fun.

INTERVIEWER:

I want to get back to the idea of the working mother, I remember before you told me that, having a child, even though you did have help, meant that the moment you were done you just felt like you had to rush home, and that you weren't thinking about the other things that were going on, is that true?

KAREN MORLEY:

It's just awful, to be a mother—

INTERVIEWER:

OK, tell me about, why you decided to become an actress.

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, I didn't decide to become an actress, really. I decided to become a doctor, but my family ran out of money and I had to leave college after only a year. I wasn't prepared for anything, I went to work in a department store and I knew that was

not my future, so I decided to take—my family would let me live at home for a year, you know, without contributing much—so I thought, I'll take a year and give it a crack, because I'd always been in all the school plays, you know, but that was just for fun. So I made the rounds, and I did a few plays, there was some theater in LA at the time, small parts in some plays, and I did some radio, and I went round and round at the studios, and at the end of the year, I hadn't got anywhere. So I sold my books, and said, well, I'll give it six more months, and in about three months I had a contract at Metro. But I had never planned, I wasn't good looking enough, and I didn't—I thought you had to be wonderful, but there was some very poor acting going on at the time

, that gave me courage.

INTERVIEWER:

But I mean, was it this, I mean, the image that you have of Hollywood, at that time, you know, you get discovered working at the, you know, the local cafe or something, at the diner, I guess it would have been at that time. You know, that Hollywood was some place where you could one minute be a poor unknown, and the next minute be living in a mansion or something, I mean, was it, was that kind of true? Those things were possible there?

KAREN MORLEY:

Once in a long time, once in a long time somebody is discovered, somebody thinks gee, what a great face, or what a lovely person, and said, do you want to be in the movies? But that's very, very rare. Most people slug it out, they work in theater, they work any place they can, they become assistant stage managers, and make the rounds, and do their best, and eventually they get a break.

INTERVIEWER:

Were you at all attracted by the glamour of it, or the money, or was it just really a job to you?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, it's hard to say. I knew that the money would be good if I got a break, I mean, better than working in a department store, and it was fun, acting was always fun for me. I thought I would just take this wild chance, what could happen, what have I got to lose? But I suppose, having done it always, from the time I was a little kid, I was always in some kind of play or other, I suppose I had a stronger attraction to it than I realized.

INTERVIEWER:

Can you tell me this last part again, instead of saying 'it', saying 'acting', or 'being an actress'. You were telling me, since you always, from the time you were young, were always in plays, you had a strong attraction to being an actress. I just want you to repeat it again, please.

KAREN MORLEY:

Oh, well I hadn't ever, as I told you, planned to be an actress, but since I had always been in something or other, some church play, or school play, or the Girl Scout play, or something or other, by the time I finished high school I had done a lot of stuff, and also I had taken a lot of courses. I took some more courses when I was in college, and they all tended to be theatrical. But that was my idea of fun, I didn't dream of doing it seriously.

INTERVIEWER:

All right, why did you leave Hollywood? What was your reason for deciding to leave, well, not to leave Hollywood, per se, but to leave MGM?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, I'm probably the only—well, living now, certainly, but I mean, even forty years ago—the only living person that broke a Metro contract. I resented the terrible paternalism. I just could not bear it. I just wanted to be freelance, and so I told them and they didn't believe it for two years. After two years of just loaning me out and then not using me themselves, they thought I would change my mind, I got out. I know it sounds absurd, and I'm sure if I had had any sense I wouldn't have done it, but I was young and headstrong and I didn't like being bossed around.

INTERVIEWER:

I mean, this kind of bossiness, was it something that, was it, I mean, how did it...I guess it's kinda hard to understand that, can you—?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, it was 'cause Metro, I mean, Mayer thought he could tell me not to get married. I didn't think that was any of his business, and he told me I ought to listen to my parents. And I finally got mad and I didn't tell him I was mad, it probably would have been better if we had fought it out, but I just sulked instead and decided I wanted out.

INTERVIEWER:

Was it hard to be freelance in those, I mean with the studio system at that time was it hard to be

KAREN MORLEY:

No, but you didn't get the good jobs, and I didn't want to sign a contract with anybody else, because it would have been the same thing all over again. So I just, you know, I could always work, but it wasn't the really good stuff.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, can you tell me, just, and I know that you didn't hear much about it, but could you tell me anything you remember at the time that you heard about Upton Sinclair or the governor's race, was there any little bit that you heard about it, or were you aware of it?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, the treatment of Upton Sinclair was disgraceful. I think any intelligent person knew that the campaign against him was a fake, and that all these things they said about him were not true, and the people that they interviewed were actors or something, I don't know, extras, maybe. But it was so unfair, it was just, it was just lousy, but so many people were so afraid of anything smacking of Socialism that they were frightened. And nobody knew what to do. The system had never fallen apart that badly before. There had been bad times, but never on this world-wide scale, people were petrified, they didn't know what was going to happen. It was just a very fearful time, easy to frighten people.

INTERVIEWER:

I know that you said also that you didn't experience, I mean, in terms of the studios, any kind of direct experience of their telling you not to vote for Sinclair or trying to influence you politically, but did the atmosphere exist that people may have been, actors or writers, may have been afraid to express their own opinion? Politically? Or was it not that way?

KAREN MORLEY:

No, I don't think, actors were not very political—most of them—and what they had to say was of no importance to anybody. No, I don't think actors were given a bad time about their politics. Their politics at that time were, are you a Democrat or are you a Republican? It was later that the radical actors appeared, from New York, pretty much.

INTERVIEWER:

You told me that-

INTERVIEWER:

I had asked you about being a working mother in Hollywood, but was it like being a woman in Hollywood? An actress?

KAREN MORLEY:

Well, it was nice being a woman in Hollywood

. Unlike wives, who were not working, had a very rough go, but actresses had a very good time. You were invited in with the fellas, really, you know, you could do almost anything. If you wanted to see the rushes you could, and at parties men talked to you when they didn't talk to their wives. As I said, it was the era when the big stars were women. There were a few very big male stars, but most of them were women, and the stories were about women, and a working actress had a very good time, I thought, on the whole.

INTERVIEWER:

Was there ever a picture that you wanted to play in that you weren't able to-

KAREN MORLEY:

Oh sure, how many pictures I didn't get?

, a hundred, a hundred, no, you very rarely got the ones you wanted to play the most. I wanted Imitation of Life, and I didn't get it, oh, lots of things.

INTERVIEWER:

And that wasn't, did that have anything to do with your decision to leave at all?

KAREN MORLEY:

No, well, not really, I don't expect to have choice when you've only been there a couple of years, it'd be absurd to think you were going to have a choice of scripts. I didn't expect that. I liked people to be—