But the following Sunday, which was open house for tennis, Tim brought her along. On Sunday evenings I always let the personnel go off and dined out, so I invited Tim and Miss Barry to dine at Romanoff’s and after dinner I drove them home. The following morning, however, she called up and wanted to know if I would take her to lunch. I told her I was attending an auction in Santa Barbara, ninety miles away, and that if she had nothing else to do she could come along and we would lunch there and go to the auction later. After buying one or two things I drove her back to Los Angeles.
Miss Barry was a big handsome woman of twenty-two, well built, with upper regional domes immensely expansive and made alluring by an extremely low décolleté summer dress, which, on the drive home, evoked my libidinous curiosity. It was then she told me that she had quarrelled with Paul Getty and that she was returning to New York the following night, but that if I wanted her to stay she would do so and give up everything. I reared away in suspicion, for there was something too sudden, too odd, about the proposal. I told her quite frankly not to remain on my account, and with that I dropped her off outside her apartment and bade her good-bye.
To my surprise she phoned up a day or so later to say she was staying over in any case, and would I see her that evening. Persistence is the road to accomplishment. Thus she achieved her object and I began to see her often. The days that followed were not unpleasant, but there was something queer and not quite normal about them. Without telephoning she would suddenly show up late at night at my house. This was somewhat disturbing. Then for a week I would not hear from her. Although I would not admit it, I was beginning to feel uneasy. However, when she did show up she was disarmingly pleasant, so my doubts and apprehensions were allayed.
One day I lunched with Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Sinclair Lewis, who, during conversation, commented on the play Shadow and Substance, which Cedric had starred in. Lewis called the character of Bridget a modern Joan of Arc, and thought the play would make an excellent film. I became interested and told Cedric I would like to read it. He sent me a copy.
A night or so later Joan Barry came to dinner, and I talked about the play. She said she had seen it and would like to play the girl. I did not take her seriously, but that evening she read the part to me, and to my astonishment gave an excellent reading, even to the Irish accent. I was so enthused that I took a silent test of her to see if she were photogenic, and it turned out satisfactorily.
Now all my qualms about her oddities vanished. In fact, I thought I had made a discovery. I sent her to Max Reinhardt’s school of acting as she needed technical training, and since she was busy there, I seldom saw her. I had not yet bought the rights of the play, so I got in touch with Cedric, and through his kind help the film rights were purchased for $25,000. I then put Barry under contract at a salary of $250 a week.
There are mystics who believe that our existence is a half-dream and that it is difficult to know where the dream ends and reality begins. Thus it was with me. For months I was absorbed in writing the script. Then strange and eerie things began to happen. Barry began driving up in her Cadillac at all hours of the night, very drunk, and I would have to awaken my chauffeur to drive her home. One time she smashed up her car in the driveway and had to leave it there. As her name was now associated with the Chaplin Studios, I became worried that if she were picked up by the police for drunken driving, it would create a scandal. Finally she got so obstreperous that when she called in the small hours I would neither answer the phone nor open the door to her. Then she began smashing in the windows. Overnight, my existence became a nightmare.
Then I discovered that she had been absent from the Reinhardt school for several weeks. When I confronted her about it, she suddenly announced that she did not want to be an actress, and that if I would pay her and her mother’s fare back to New York and give her $5,000, she would tear up the contract. At this juncture I happily agreed to her demands, paid their fare and the $5,000, and was glad to be rid of her.
Although the Barry enterprise had caved in, I was not sorry that I had bought Shadow and Substance, for I had almost completed the script and thought it a very good one.
Since the San Francisco meeting months had elapsed and the Russians were still calling for a second front. Now another request came from New York, asking me to speak at Carnegie Hall. I debated with myself whether I should go or not, and concluded that I had started the ball rolling and that was enough. But a day later when Jack Warner was playing on my tennis court, I spoke about it and he shook his head cryptically. ‘Don’t go,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
He would not say, but added: ‘Let me tip you off, don’t go.’
This had the opposite effect. It was a challenge. At that moment it needed very little eloquence to ignite the sympathy of all America for a second front, for Russia had just won the battle of Stalingrad. So I went, taking Tim Durant with me.
At the Carnegie Hall meeting, Pearl
