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Cagney by Cagney Page 21
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Amidst the ragged and the underfed
The love of beauty raises up its head
In this poor quarter. Existence struggles
For its daily needs, yet wants, finds time to
Nourish some few seeds with sun and water.
Here potted red geraniums meet the eye
On bits of string, pale morning glories rise
In grotesque bow’rs with squalid poverty
Around begirt. What moves man’s heart to grant
A plot of dirt the boon of flowers I
Know not. Yet I know to beauty’s door the
Polished wealthy and the ragged poor both
Come a-knocking. One builds a garden on
His acres wide; the other in a single
Bloom takes pride—each heart unlocking.
Now, I submit this is one hell of a job of poetry. And when one remembers that it was written over fifty years ago when Bill was a kid, the achievement looms even higher. From first to last, it bespeaks life involvement and that wonderful gift that comes free to us all if we will only take it—and with which life is enriched beyond description—wonder.
Some fifty years ago, I can vividly remember sitting beside a newly cut tree stump while the sun was streaming down on it, catching the almost invisible motes dancing and bouncing in the air. Suddenly I noticed a little spider leaping up, grabbing something I couldn’t see, and dropping back on the stump to eat its prey. All I could see was the sun and the dust motes, but that spider was worrying away at its meal, doubtless feeling a sense of genuine accomplishment. Pondering that little episode made me realize once again that many, many things exist in life that we don’t see, hear, or understand—to our loss. I put it this way:
All space is filled with wondrous things,
Unseen by human eye.
Before us hover queens and kings,
With realms that float and fly.
It was wise of them to make a choice,
And decide to remain invisible,
For early in the game they found,
To be seen is to be divisible.
Finding the world is full of hate,
Afflicting alike the small, the great,
Knowing no bounds, or social stations,
Enveloping towns, destroying nations,
Refusing all manner of Christian teaching,
Laughing aloud at the earnest beseeching
Of thoughtful men in thankless jobs;
Cynically calling them deluded slobs,
For presuming to hold that The Christ is living,
And all that’s good is of God’s own giving.
13
If these pages are to be at least adequately self-revealing, it would seem essential that I talk a bit about my political coloration. That, after all, is—or should be—a vital part of a persons care and concern for the society in which he lives. I have tried through the years to maintain an active interest in the forces and influences that control our country.
When I was a young guy in the early 1920s, I met a man who was a Socialist. He had a place out in Free Acres, New Jersey, where he was constructing a cabin for an artist friend. At this time the vaudeville act my Bill and I were working was in trouble, bookings were scarce indeed, and so I was most pleased when my Socialist friend, knowing our bad situation, kindly asked me if I wanted to go out to the country and help him with the cabin. With the ever-present necessity of keeping alive I accepted unhesitatingly.
Free Acres at the time was a single-tax colony. Every conceivable kind of political philosophy was represented there. There were Communists, although nobody thought of them as Communists at the time; they were essentially Socialists. Then there were the philosophical anarchists, and the Republicans, and, of course, the Democrats. These people had acquired a quarter-acre of land, put up a little house, and made that their home base. When I got there at twenty-one years of age, I had no fixed political philosophy. I hadn’t any idea of anything really. My big concern of the moment was where the next meal was coming from. It was only with the passing of time that I found out that the man who had invited me, Will Crawford, was a Socialist, as were many of his friends.
It would be odd indeed, given my age and sense of gratitude, if I hadn’t imbibed some of their philosophy. This was never in any doctrinaire fashion. It was just a question of my lending a voice to the protests of the very troublesome times of the twenties. Then, with the passing of the years, I began to see the fallacies of any kind of doctrinaire approach. Increasingly, in my book, to take a hard-and-fast approach was a great mistake. As my life interests grew, I assumed what might in general be called a liberal stance.
In the 1940s, a defense fund was created to raise legal fees to free Tom Mooney, who had been implicated in the Preparedness Day parade bombing of 1916. I had read an awful lot about Mooney’s situation and became very interested in it. The material I read was insistent in its position that Mooney and his cohort, Warren K. Billings, had been framed by the district attorney of San Francisco. I was invited to go up to San Francisco to help Mr. Mooney, and I actually went into the prison. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him, but I waved to him and he waved to me.
After leaving the prison, we went to a meeting at some big hall there whose name eludes me, but I have never in my life seen such a wild-eyed gang as that group. They were absolutely nuts. Screaming, yelling, giving vent to God knows what psychotic upsets, and doing everything except what one would consider appropriate to helping their man in prison. That was the end of that for me. I never went back. There is also the time when a collection was taken up around Hollywood to buy an ambulance for the Spanish Republican Army. As a soft touch, I contributed, and that was all you had to do those days to get yourself in a very unhappy position. The public was convinced that anybody who gave a dollar to the government forces in Spain was a wild-eyed Communist. My liberal “reputation” grew.
Subsequently I got involved in a liberal group, the name of which I have mercifully forgotten. It had a leftist slant, was very well organized, and made a point of recruiting celebrities, among them Ronald Reagan and myself. When Ronnie and I saw in which direction the group was headed, we both resigned the same night. From that time forth neither of us looked back to where we’d been.
I had worked for Mr. Roosevelt in his early campaigns, and I was still for him in 1940 when Willkie ran for the presidency. My close pal Bob Montgomery was a Willkie man, and this of course made not the slightest difference to our friendship. In the American system, differences of opinion were not only allowed, they were cultivated, not as so frequently in these days thrust stark and unmannerly at you. So Bob gave a big party on election night, installing a ticker tape in his home, invited some old Republican friends—and the Cagneys. I said to Bob, “I think you’re making a mistake inviting me and my Bill. We’ll be like the death head at the feast.”
“Well,” said Bob, “if you don’t come, I won’t give the party.”
We went. It was black-tie, all very fancy. My wife wore a huge Roosevelt button, and when we walked into this group of rabid Republicans, we were received in some quarters with coolness. Old Frank Craven, with whom I’d just finished a picture, wouldn’t even shake hands with me. In any case, my Bill was wearing a low-cut dress with her Roosevelt button very forthrightly displayed on her bosom, and one Republican said, “Well, where she wears it, you can’t hate it.” That was one of the very few laughs of the evening. When the result of the ticker tape began chattering away, even the few laughs remaining dwindled away to silence.
As a decidedly Rooseveltian Democrat, actors of conservative kidney at that time looked on me with scant warmth. John Wayne didn’t like me at all, and I didn’t approve of him because I thought he was being used by Louis B. Mayer and the rest of the producers to set up what I called a company union in opposition to the Screen Actors Guild. John’s union was quite conservative, but I never thought of it in that way; I could only see its being used by the producers. John co
uldn’t see my point of view at all, and I don’t blame him for that. Now, with the passing of time, my strong conservatism has placed me generally in John’s camp. A remarkable man, John. When one realizes he has played virtually the same part over the years, wearing virtually the same clothing, and maintaining a very high status in the business, it’s clear that whatever John Wayne is, people love him, and that’s about the best recommendation I can think of. His staunch patriotism and concern for his country’s welfare are frequently derided by the liberal left, and they try to laugh at him. But nobody laughs at John Wayne. He can make himself felt wherever he is and whatever he does.
My move to conservatism was precipitated by my lack of admiration for Mr. Truman’s performance after he took over from FDR, and so I cast my first non-Democratic vote, for Tom Dewey. When Dewey was defeated, I called Bob Montgomery and said, “Well, I took care of your boy, didn’t I? I cast my first Republican vote and down he goes.”
In my liberal days I was helped to remain that way on at least one occasion by a negative studio stimulus. In 1934 the studio heads took it upon themselves to defeat a California gubernatorial candidate, Upton Sinclair. Sinclair had been a propagandist for the left all his creative life, and as a Socialist had written some wonderfully enlightening books on the horrors that came out of the Chicago packing houses, and similar social evils. The studio heads decided that the way to defeat Sinclair was to collect two days’ pay from all employees and donate this “contribution” to Sinclair’s opponent. I refused, and at a meeting held at the studio, Jack Warner said, “There’s a guy in the studio who one of these days is gonna need a favor from us. And will he get it? No. Because he’s a professional against-er.” I rather got the idea he meant me, but I cared not at all. Let’s say that I disagreed with thinking that made these studio heads sound and act like feudal lords.
In any case, I believe in my bones that my going from the liberal stance to the conservative was a totally natural reaction once I began to see the undisciplined elements in our country stimulating a breakdown of our system. From what I’ve seen of the liberal attitudes toward the young and the permissive attitudes in the schools, and everybody pulling every which way from center, I consider these all inimical to the health of our nation. Those functionless creatures, the hippies, for example, just didn’t appear out of a vacuum. A few words came to me one day about their curious lethargy:
Disturb not their fixed, eternal placidity,
Don’t delay their rambling rush to nowhere,
Their need for nothing, non-requires validity.
Their boat is a void demanding they go where
Nothing’s a must and nothing’s a rule,
Just to live and breathe and stare and stool.
To repeat, people like this just don’t happen. I blame much of our problems with today’s youth on the liberal boys, the gang with no fixed view of things, no absolutes. Like the shifting sands, they accommodate to any passing cloud of fancy—to whatever they think is best for them at the moment. By implication they say: do anything you damned well like.
But conceivably, sadly, maybe Clemenceau, the old Tiger of France, was right when he said, “The affairs of men are so complicated that rather than try to solve them, it’s better to let them kill each other.” I think it was also Clemenceau who said, “I wouldn’t give a sou for any young man who hadn’t been a Socialist by the time he was twenty—but I would be perfectly willing to kick his behind if he were still a Socialist by the time he was forty.” I escaped Clemenceau’s wrath on both counts, and I can now consider myself an archconservative.
When one looks at the Watergate business, it is disheartening to see exposed the behavior of people in high places, drawing fabulous salaries supposedly in the service of their country, when it is really themselves that they are serving. It’s shocking. I got a letter from a lady recently in which she said, “I’m sixty-five and I have all the apprehensions of the aged person. Where does our country stand now? Are we tobogganing toward destruction?” That and other misgivings she sounded in a really fine letter. I answered, “Dear Mrs. So-and-So: Do be of some cheer. Early on in my life I read a book that contained the sayings of famous men on their deathbed. One of the most striking comments was the Duke of Wellington’s. He said in effect that he was glad he was dying because the world was going up in flames to utter destruction and he didn’t want to be around to see that. Scant consolation, perhaps, in that—but the Iron Duke uttered those words in 1852, and the world is still around.”
The Watergate business is simply an extension of this monumental kind of self-seeking that debauches our leadership. And this general scheme is going on right now in Peking and Moscow and Addis Ababa. Everywhere is that fella with the aim that he is going to be somebody at anybody’s cost. Anybody’s cost except his own, of course. These men because of their strong ambitions get the good jobs, and when they get close to the seat of power, they think they can do no wrong. They use that power for their own purposes and are above penalty. I must say I was physically ill at the entire picture of Watergate. Now that Mr. Nixon has been found wanting, will it rest there? We mustn’t forget that there are forces in America that do not want Mr. Nixon, Mr. Ford, or any other kind of conservative or near conservative in office, and these forces are bent on finding power, too.
Bob Montgomery sent me a press cutting a short time ago. It’s an editorial treating of England in 1783, and its description of the British political turmoils of that year sounds exactly like our current situation: corruption rampant, the country almost bankrupt, a pervasive loss of faith in leadership. Then along came William Pitt the Younger, who threw his great strength into the chaos and reversed the downward order of things. Why are we today in the same difficulty as the English then? I think it’s all grounded in one thing: lack of integrity. The only tiling we can do is hope things will reverse themselves, but it’s going to take a very strong character to walk in and say, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not working at the moment, is it? Let’s do something about it!” Someone has to move the country at whatever sacrifice to himself. Which is what FDR did when he got in office—changed the whole country around. Business said he was great until he started to step on business’s toes—and we’re still feeling the results of that kind of thing.
One great American leader was a particular hero of mine: Teddy Roosevelt, that wonderful maverick. Tom Platt, the Republican senator and head of the Republican party in New York in the nineties, just couldn’t figure Teddy out. Tom, having played by his own rules and the rules of the political game of his time, just couldn’t understand Teddy doing the things he did or saying the things he said. “He’s a nut!” Tom said about Teddy. “But you know something else? He’s going to be elected!” And he was—with Tom Piatt’s forceful help.
I was approached to play Teddy about fifteen years ago, and I would have been glad to do so if a script with some depth had been available. But none was.
In these sad days, our country could use another Pitt the Younger or Teddy Roosevelt to move us, to get us going again.
But at least let’s be thankful for what we have in the way of liberties and safeguards. Imagine what would happen in a more authoritative government when the ambitious few find themselves in positions of authority! It’s the old story of the ambitious few trying to rule the many, as now obtains in Russia. Years ago I knew Lincoln Steffens, the great muckraker, and as an enthusiastic Socialist, one remark of his is remembered perhaps more than any of his others. After a trip to Russia, he said, “I have seen the future and it works.” I often wonder what Steffens, as a professional author, would think of Russia today and its treatment of Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the Soviet Jews.
It’s manifest to me that one’s point of view is the essential clue to one’s life function. A good friend of mine, a reliably solid actor who’d been around many a year, said to me one day that he’d be scared to play the lead in a picture. “I’d be frightened by it,” he said. I
asked him why and he said he didn’t relish the responsibility of it. “Didn’t that ever occur to you?” he asked. I could honestly say it never had because all I thought about was not the position or my aptitude or anything else. To me this was just a job to be done, and I did it to the best of my ability. It never occurred to me to shirk the job just because I was afraid of it. This touches on the Watergate business in that if a reliable young person isn’t willing to enter the halls of government and take on the needed responsibility for the betterment of us all, an unreliable young person can easily come along and do the job to the detriment of us all.
Politics needs more than ever these days young people of remarkable talent—incipient Lincolns—who can help refurbish this old world. A long time ago I wrote a little something that touches on those who can help us to a better existence:
The function, soul, of genius,
Is to renovate the new,
And open doors to vistas
Hitherto unseen or even partly known,
So that those who follow after
Can make some part, however small, their own.
14
The last curtain call is usually the nicest. When it’s time to go, you should go. I’ve always thought how sad it is to see fellas and gals hanging on and hanging on after the party is over and the applause has died. It’s sad because if there is any one truth about show business, it’s that the finish is written before the prologue. Inevitably, after the career has had its ups and downs—and some of those ups can be breathlessly high—there comes a time when the jig is up, and when it’s up in show business, my dear fella, it’s up.
I’ve seen the biggest of them who just could not understand what had happened when the time came and they had to make their exits. One chap I know has never recovered. In his bitterness he says he’s just as good as ever and just as big as ever in the minds of the people. Nothing can unsell him on the idea that he’s still a top-flight star. Alas, he isn’t.