The transaction was simple; it meant writing my name on a piece of paper and the car was mine.
Investing money was a problem and I knew little about it, but Sydney was familiar with all its nomenclature: he knew about book values, capital gains, preferred and common shares; A and B ratings, convertible stocks and bonds, industrial fiduciaries and legal securities of savings banks. Investment opportunities were rife in those days. A Los Angeles realtor pleaded with me to go into partnership with him, each of us putting up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to buy a large tract of land in the Los Angeles Valley. Had I invested in his project my share would have amounted to fifty million dollars, for oil was discovered and it became one of the richest areas in California.
thirteen
MANY illustrious visitors came to the studio at this time: Melba, Leopold Godowsky and Paderewski, Nijinsky and Pavlova.
Paderewski had great charm, but there was something bourgeois about him, an over-emphasis of dignity. He was impressive with his long hair, severe, slanting moustache and the small tuft of hair under his lower lip, which I thought revealed some form of mystic vanity. At his recitals, with house lights lowered and the atmosphere sombre and awesome when he was about to sit on the piano stool, I always felt someone should pull it from under him.
During the war I met him at the Ritz Hotel in New York and greeted him enthusiastically, asking if he were there to give a concert. With pontifical solemnity he replied: ‘I do not give concerts when I am in the service of my country.’
Paderewski became Prime Minister of Poland, but I felt like Clemenceau, who said to him during a conference of the ill-fated Versailles Treaty: ‘How is it that a gifted artist like you should stoop so low as to become a politician?’
On the other hand Leopold Godowsky, a greater pianist, was simple and humorous, a small man with a smiling, round face. After his concert in Los Angeles he rented a house there, and I visited him quite frequently. On Sundays I was privileged to listen to him practising and to witness the extraordinary facility and technique of his exceptionally small hands.
Nijinsky, with members of the Russian Ballet, also came to the studio. He was a serious man, beautiful-looking, with high cheekbones and sad eyes, who gave the impression of a monk dressed in civilian clothes. We were shooting The Cure. He sat behind the camera, watching me at work on a scene which I thought was funny, but he never smiled. Although the other onlookers laughed, Nijinsky sat looking sadder and sadder. Before leaving he came and shook hands, and in his hollow voice said how much he enjoyed my work and asked if he could come again. ‘Of course,’ I said. For two more days he sat lugubriously watching me. On the last day I told the cameraman not to put film in the camera, knowing Nijinsky’s doleful presence would ruin my attempts to be funny. Nevertheless, at the end of each day he would compliment me. ‘Your comedy is balletique, you are a dancer,’ he said.
I had not yet seen the Russian Ballet, or any other ballet for that matter. But at the end of the week I was invited to attend the matinée.
At the theatre Diaghilev greeted me – a most vital and enthusiastic man. He apologized for not having the programme he thought I would most enjoy. ‘Too bad it isn’t L’Après-midi d’un Faune,’ he said. ‘I think you would have liked it.’ Then quickly he turned to his manager. ‘Tell Nijinsky we’ll put on the Faune after the interval for Charlot.’
The first ballet was Scheherazade. My reaction was more or less negative. There was too much acting and too little dancing, and the music of Rimsky-Korsakov was repetitive, I thought. But the next was a pas de deux with Nijinsky. The moment he appeared I was electrified. I have seen few geniuses in the world, and Nijinsky was one of them. He was hypnotic, godlike, his sombreness suggesting moods of other worlds; every movement was poetry, every leap a flight into strange fancy.
He had asked Diaghilev to bring me to his dressing-room during the intermission. I was speechless. One cannot wring one’s hand and express in words one’s appreciation of great art. In his dressing-room I sat silent, watching the strange face in the mirror as he made up for the Faune, putting green circles around his cheeks. He was gauche in his attempt at conversation, asking inconsequential questions about my films, and I could only answer in monosyllables. The warning bell rang at the end of the interval, and I suggested returning to my seat.
‘No, no, not yet,’ he said.
There came a knock at the door. ‘Mr Nijinsky, the overture is finished.’
I began to look anxious.
‘That’s all right,’ he answered. ‘There’s plenty of time.’
I was shocked and at a loss to know why he was acting this way. ‘Don’t you think I had better go?’
‘No, no, let them play another overture.’
Diaghilev eventually came bursting into the dressing-room. ‘Come, come! The audience are applauding.’
‘Let them wait, this is more interesting,’ said Nijinsky, then began asking me more banal questions.
I was embarrassed. ‘I really must get back to my seat,’ I said.
No one has ever equalled Nijinsky in L’Après-midi d’un Faune. The mystic world he created, the tragic unseen lurking in the shadows of pastoral loveliness as he moved through its mystery, a god of passionate sadness – all this he conveyed in a few simple gestures without apparent effort.
Six months later Nijinsky went insane. There were signs of it that afternoon in his dressing-room, when he kept the audience waiting. I had witnessed the beginning of a sensitive mind on its way out of a brutal war-torn world into another of its own dreaming.
The sublime
