Had Tyler not been killed, Nora’s relationship with her mother might have evolved into something different. It was already apparent that Nora was growing tired of Harriet’s constant supervision, and during the filming of The Latest Game, our penultimate film together, I began to notice a change in the way she behaved around her mother. Instead of listening to—or at least tolerating—her mother’s comments and advice, she would simply turn from her, and sometimes go so far as to get up and leave the room. During a review of the rushes, when Harriet criticized the angle at which her daughter held her head, Nora stood up, stomped her foot, and exclaimed, “Mother!” A few days later, I saw Nora and her mother on the Perennial lot, gesturing and shouting at each other. Even Nora’s appearance had changed—she’d cut the long, flowing hair into a less girlish style, and had abandoned the flowery gossamer dresses for the sleek, fitted dresses of the ’20s. It was noted by several people that she was starting to look more grown-up. I wasn’t truly surprised when, a few weeks later, I began to hear word of Nora going out at night, attending various parties; apparently Harriet hadn’t found a way to keep her daughter from escaping their huge new mansion. One evening, I even saw Nora at the Cocoanut Grove, dancing with Charlie Chaplin. There was a new, more worldly aspect in her carriage and expression, and I found my eyes returning to her again and again. She appeared happy and intoxicated, looser than I’d ever seen her, almost desperate in her need to be free.
I do not know what caused this sudden marked rebellion. Perhaps she’d finally realized that it was she and not her mother who held the real power in the family. Perhaps it was a natural consequence of a young woman coming of age. Or perhaps it was simply that she was in love, since her most common companion during her nights on the town was Ashley Bennett Tyler. The young Mr. Riner Jones was gone, and for a while he was replaced by several other, older men. But whoever Nora might be entangled with in a given week or month, it was Tyler who accompanied her most often. Nora’s mother was aware that she was going out in the evenings; one of the arguments I overheard was about a party she’d attended without her mother’s consent. I almost felt sorry for the woman, since the one thing she had control of, her creation, as I’m sure she saw it, appeared to be slipping away. On the other hand, I was glad, in an almost paternal manner, to see Nora enjoying herself and achieving some separation from Mrs. Cole.
That evening I saw her dancing at the Cocoanut Grove may have been the last carefree night she ever had. For it was only a few weeks later that the incident occurred that changed everything forever. It happened during the making of Into the Wild, the otherwise undistinguished work that achieved a certain notoriety because it was the last picture that Tyler directed, as well as the last film in which both Nora and I appeared. Indeed, it almost didn’t proceed to shooting at all—the studio had not been for it, but Tyler convinced them, partly by promising to scale back my role. In subsequent years, I’ve often wished that he had not succeeded; the course of all our lives might have been very different.
Into the Wild was filmed up in what is now the Angeles National Forest, in a small open space enclosed by cedars and Douglas firs. This clearing was the size of a house and lit with a nearly preternatural light, which filtered in through a break in the branches far above the forest floor and hit the ground as bright and focused as a spotlight. Every morning for more than a week, a caravan of cars would make its way up through the winding mountain roads, followed by a truck which carried the film equipment. The trip was only twenty miles, but it took well over two hours, as most of the road was not paved. We drove up in street clothes and got into costume in unheated temporary sheds. Our hands would shake in the sharp morning cold.
The plot involved an explorer, played by Tyler, his bride, played by Nora, and his Indian wilderness guide, which was me. Tyler was both acting and directing, and I saw immediately the effect that this dual role had on Nora. Playing Tyler’s wife seemed to stir her to a new level of agitation, so that when she talked to him, or touched his shoulders, or enfolded herself in his arms, there was a flush in her cheeks that had nothing to do with performance. During the few scenes when their characters quarreled, her anger and disappointment seemed utterly real, and she would continue to rage or cry after the camera stopped rolling. Even these shows of emotion, though, seemed different somehow—not girlish pouting, but rather more womanly suffering. As usual, her mother wasn’t present, since Tyler had barred her from the set. But on the last day of filming, Mrs. Cole made the trip to the forest uninvited, and following a brief argument with Tyler—and after she informed him that her driver had left—he reluctantly allowed her to stay.
We were filming a scene where the explorer finds that the party’s belongings have been ransacked in the night. He is angry at first, and then consoling to his wife, who fears correctly that there are hostile Indians—one of them played by John Vail—lying in wait in the woods.
