Their version: Frederick Ives was a jealous man.
Her version: Frederick Ives was a jealous man.
As a boy, he was jealous of his schoolmates. Of their grades, of their success in sports. Of their teachers’ affection for them, and sometimes even of the ire they could inspire.
At home, he was jealous every time his sister, Francine, took the seat at the head of the dinner table, and when he started arriving early so he could have it, he was jealous of how casually late she’d stroll in, still covered in mud from the stables, how unbothered she seemed by their mother’s disapproval.
When he was twenty, a girl who’d spent weeks batting her eyelashes at him got engaged to another man, and though he had no intention of marrying her, he was jealous then too.
At twenty-seven, when his long-absent father forced him to relocate to the castle he’d built on the coast, Freddy was jealous of his half-orphaned cousin Ruth.
Of the delight she seemed to cause her uncle Gerald, and the careful structure to her life, which neither of Freddy’s parents had ever bothered to give Freddy as a boy.
He was born with enough money to buy almost anything, and so all he ever wanted was the things he couldn’t.
He was jealous too when Francine found something new to want, in the form of success at Hearth & Home Journal, and when she strong-armed the business back into the black, proving herself as their father’s true heir.
He tried to want Royal Pictures. To want the sleek, wood-paneled corner office he’d been given for no good reason—and frankly spent many afternoons napping in. He tried to want the secretary, Shelley, he’d been assigned and then promptly began sleeping with.
About twice a week, she informed him of a new meeting set by his father, and he quickly learned that these were the negotiations for contracts Gerald didn’t actually care about securing.
He brushed off actors, writers, and directors onto his son with regularity. And just as Gerald hoped, Freddy bungled those talks time and again with his total lack of knowledge about the business.
Even though he knew this was the role he was set to fulfill, it made Freddy feel incompetent, and he didn’t like feeling incompetent. Lazy? Sure. Incompetent? No. It was a matter of control.
He was asleep at his desk, face plastered to a stack of unread scripts (on which he’d been supposed to write notes last week), when Doris Bernhardt stormed into his office one day in 1935.
“So this is what I’m worth?” she demanded, marching right up to him. “I make him a pretty penny, and he shunts me off to the deadbeat son?”
Freddy’s secretary came rushing in next, slowed down by her kitten heels, and never had he seen such a stark contrast between two women. Shelley was dainty, bird boned with auburn hair and lush lips that matched her lush hips. She wore a long skirt that swished with every step she took and had a habit of toying with the necklace she wore around her delicate throat.
Doris Bernhardt was tall, angular, with thin lips and narrow hips. She wore flat shoes and wide-legged trousers, and not a lick of makeup that he could see. She had to be nearly thirty years old, but he doubted she would’ve had leading lady potential even if she were younger.
“Mr. Ives,” Shelley said, oozing apology, “I tried to tell Ms. Bernhardt—”
Ms. Bernhardt rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, she told me all about how busy you are this morning. She insisted I come back next week for my scheduled meeting, but I had a feeling you’d be able to squeeze me in between some of your other important appointments.”
Shelley gaped at him, helpless. He became aware, abruptly, that if he didn’t take control, he was automatically ceding it to Bernhardt.
“Thank you, Shelley,” he said. “I’m happy to speak with Ms. Bernhardt. Hold my calls.”
He never really got calls, but it felt like the right thing to say, like it might give him back a fraction of his power, which suddenly seemed absolutely essential.
Shelley wavered.
“Goodbye, Shelley,” he said coolly, and she finally retreated.
He waited a second, just stared Bernhardt down. She stared right back, jaw set.
“Would you care to sit?” he asked.
She snorted, then slowly walked behind his desk and took his chair. He fought a smile. Rather than sitting across from her, in one of the slightly lower chairs positioned there, he rounded the desk too and leaned against it, arms crossed. “So what would you care to speak to the deadbeat son about?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I wish to speak to Gerald Ives about a new contract.”
“What about it exactly?” he asked, because he of course had not yet read the new contract being proposed to her, and did not in fact even know who she was.
“Well, for one thing,” she said, “I’d like to know why I’m being offered less money, for a longer term, when I’ve already been benched for the last six months. Is he trying to send me running to Universal?”
Of course he was. But for some reason, Freddy wasn’t supposed to admit this. “You know,” he said instead, “it’s not uncommon for actresses around your age to see fewer opportunities in this business.”
“Actresses my age?” she spat at him, lunging to her feet.
“I don’t mean any offense,” he said. “But you’ve got to be realistic here.”
She tipped her head back on a throaty laugh before leveling her fiery gaze on him. “I’ve got to be realistic?” she repeated. “I’ve got to be realistic? Yes, of course I’ve got to be realistic! I’m one of two female directors this studio has ever worked with. I’m acutely aware of my reliance upon realism at all times, whereas someone like you—someone raised in a castle and handed a job he doesn’t do, in an industry he knows nothing about—need never trouble himself with anything so mundane as realism!”
“You’re a director?” he said.
The question triggered her derisive snorting instinct.
“You’re a woman,” he reminded her.
“Yes, I believe my speech touched on that,” she said.
“Have you directed anything I’ve seen?” he asked.
Her face went red with anger. “I should hope so, given your position at Royal Pictures.”
She named three of her films. One he’d never heard of. Two he’d seen, and of those two, one was a smash hit. “Why would he be trying to get rid of you?” he asked.
Most of the time, he understood his father’s decisions.
Ms. Bernhardt snorted again and waved down her length with a flourish.
“Because of your dreadful wardrobe?” Freddy said, flummoxed, and he saw the first flash of what Doris Bernhardt looked like when she was smiling.
Like a cat with three canaries lined up in its jaw, little yellow feathers sticking out in a row. He couldn’t look away, could barely stand to blink and miss a second of that expression.
“I don’t have much sway here, Ms. Bernhardt,” he said.
“Bernie,” she interjected.
“Bernie,” he said. “As you pointed out, I do very little and know even less about this industry, and as for my father—well, he may have built a castle, but I assure you I wasn’t raised anywhere near either it or him. But you’re right that offering you less money is insulting, after what you’ve brought in. I’d be insulted too. Which might be the point. But if I had to guess—and of course I do—it has less to do with willfully insulting you and more to do with taking a gamble that you won’t walk, because you can’t. Because Universal and MGM won’t want you. He found you. He gave you your chance and cultivated your talent, and now he thinks he can get you for cheaper than you’re worth, because, very likely, he can.”
With another angry huff, she threw out her arms. “So it doesn’t matter that I’ve proven myself again and again in this business?”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Judging by what I’ve heard from the many women I’ve come to know in the business, this is the industry standard. It’s…realistic.”
She collapsed back into the chair, a look of exhaustion sweeping over her, and though she was tall and angular, she looked delicate then. He both wanted to comfort her and suspected she would sock him in the jaw for his trouble.
He cleared his throat. “I will ask him though. I’ll plead your case.”
Her gaze narrowed warily. “Why?”
With total honesty, he answered, “Because I want your next movie. I want it here, at Royal Pictures.”
She surveyed him for a long moment, then rose from the chair. “Thank you for your time,” she said, not with deference but not with sarcasm either. “But I won’t be renewing my contract with Royal.”
She turned and walked from the room, and Freddy felt that loss, that emptiness, that moroseness he sometimes awoke to in the morning, multiplied tenfold.
He wanted something. He wanted something he couldn’t name, and so couldn’t reach out and take.
After that, he was a goner.
