Time of Her Life

After work on her sixth (which would eventually be published as her seventh) novel stalled, Kay found herself unable to write. Anything. 

So she started doing finger exercises on the typewriter. Then, at the prompting of her publishers (at 2am in the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel, if we take Kay at her word), she agreed to tell the story of her stories. What resulted was This Is On Me, a “hodge-podge autobiography, bubbly and easy to take throughout and really memorable in spots,” according to The American Mercury. 

The book owes its “hodge-podge” character to the fact that it is both autobiography and anthology, “interlarded” (to borrow Mercury's term) “with samples of pertinent literary work, including complete short stories.”

And though Time magazine felt the stories and sketches would not have been missed, their reviewer found This Is On Me “lively reading,” and “a welcome change from the usual preening of popular authors on How-I-Learned-To Write.” The critics, in fact, appear to have been quite unanimous in their praise; I have not found a single review that was less than glowing.

Parts of This Is On Me appeared first in Ladies’ Home Journal (beginning with the December 1939 issue) under the title Time of My Life. The Journal excerpts featured photographs that were not included when the book was published in the summer of 1940. This Is On Me was instead illustrated with simple line drawings by Susanne Suba. Suba was a successful and well-regarded artist and illustrator, but I think This Is On Me would be just that much more valuable as autobiography had the photos been retained.  

Left: This photographic timeline appeared in Ladies' Home Journal;

Above Right: Photo of a rather prim looking Kay from the book's dust jacket

Hollywood Hiatus

After Don't Ever Leave Me failed to wow the reading public, Kay found it difficult to do much writing. A novel begun during this period wouldn't be finished until some 7 years later (and would, quite sadly, end up being her last).


But between the years 1936 and 1941, Hollywood released at leat five motion pictures based on Kay’s work.  Here’s a chronological rundown:

LADY OF SECRETS
Columbia, 1936

Ruth Chatterton starred in this adaptation of Kay’s short story Maid of Honor, originally published in Cosmopolitan in September 1932, and reprinted several times.

The New York Times called Lady of Secrets “a picture that sashays back and forth in space and time without progresing far in any direction,” one that “is scarcely worthy of its cast…[which] moves stiffly and with obvious embarrassment through these morasses of plot and of dialogue…” Kay later defended her original story as “a pretty good one,” even if the resulting picture was an admittedly pretty bad one. 

Lady of Secrets is the only picture of this bunch that I have not seen.

MANNEQUIN

MGM, 1937

Originally titled Marry for Money, the story was adapted as a vehicle for Joan Crawford, and paired her with leading man Spencer Tracy.

The New York Times said the picture

“restores Miss Crawford to the throne as queen of the woiking goils and reaffirms Katharine Brush’s faith in the capitalist system. That system…infallibly provides every poor but pure button-hole stitcher with an eventual millionaire who respects her and dangles a tempting wedding ring.

“So what we have, if you haven’t guessed already, is a sleek restatement of an old theme, graced by a superior cast and directed with general skill by Frank Borzage, who has a gift for sentiment. All that is more than the story deserves.”

Joan went on record saying that she wasn’t thrilled with Tracy, and it kind of shows in their on-screen chemistry. The two never appeared together again.

LISTEN, DARLING

MGM, 1938

Kay’s original screen story (not the screenplay) was developed from a minor background character that made a brief appearance in Don’t Ever Leave Me. The New York Times called it  “winsome,” “a natural, pleasant and sensible little film. Judy Garland (who gets to sing three numbers, including “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart”) and Freddie Bartholomew kidnap their widowed mother (Mary Astor), lock her in a trailer and start touring the countryside in search of a suitable husband.

“If this sounds too cool-blooded and unromantic,” said The Times, “be reassured Freddie Bartholomew and Judy Garland conduct their matrimonial tour with charming unworldliness, despite the surface sophistication of their enterprise.”

It’s not giving anything away to say that the husband arrives, in the form of Walter Pidgeon.

Listen, Darling is certainly the best picture of this group.

HONEYMOON IN BALI

Paramount, 1939

Though Kay gets screen credit (along with Virginia Van Upp and Grace Sartwell Mason), virtually nothing of her 1936 story Free Woman was used, beyond the fact that the heroine is a successful and single career woman. Hardly an original idea.

And if, as The New York Times asserted, “the writers have reaffirmed the male prejudice so cogently and have given their own sex such short shrift,” if parts of the picture are “inexcusably tiresome,” one can hardly blame Kay; I've read the story and seen the picture, and I say that with absolute confidence. I actually find Honeymoon quite enjoyable.

 Very interesting is that fact that, according to a 1936 announcement in The New York Times, Paramount intended to borrow Jean Arthur from her home studio Columbia to star her in an adaptation of Free Woman. That's the picture that should have been made!

ANDY HARDY'S PRIVATE SECRETARY
MGM, 1941

The New York Times didn't much care for this one, which is obvious from the opening line of Bosley Crowther's review:

“Thank heaven that Andy Hardy has finally graduated from high school and is on his way to college—the college of hard knocks, we hope.”

Rooney is really quite unbearable, full of snobbish condescension as the BMOC of Carvel High. He patronizes two poorer classmates (a brother and sister) by very generously allowing the brother to decorate the auditorium for the graduation exercises, and hiring the sister (Kathryn Grayson making her film debut) as his “Private Secretary.” 

Because he’s spread himself so thin (because he’s such a vital force at Carvel), he flunks his English exams and nearly doesn’t graduate. But everyone rallies 'round their Andy, who, in the end, is rewarded with a shiny new roadster. “We hardly think Andy deserved it,” quipped Crowther. Of course, without access to Kay’s original story, there’s no way of knowing if the unpleasant changes noted in the Andy Hardy character can be attributed to the writing…

Kathryn Grayson, however, rated much higher in Crowther’s estimation:

“[She] makes [Andy] look like a chump by her grace and modesty.”

She sings in the picture, too. A little bit too much.  I have to confess: I have never been a fan of Grayson’s.  She’s always been a little too cute, a little too saccharin-sweet for my palette.

I absolutely HATE the ’51 remake of Showboat. Which is mostly her fault. 
Sorry.

Should've Left Well Enough Alone

First appearing in Cosmopolitan magazine, Kay’s 1935 novel Don’t Ever Leave Me did not, despite mostly favorable reviews (The New York Times was quite generous in its praise), enjoy success similar to that of its predecessors. Kay would later lay the blame on her own constant tinkering, her incessant re-writing. In fact, she told The Times in 1942 that the novel wasn't written at all—it was “carved.” Kay was, however, she further explained, ultimately pleased with the result. Along with a few other writers, bless their hearts.

Sidney Cunningham dances with Don Lamont at the Labor Day dance.
Was the one wandering white strand inlaid in her otherwise black hair
grown or manufactured?  And what was the story of the little black cat
tattooed on her back? Magazine illustration by McClelland Barclay.

Reading the reviews today, I am reminded of that assessment by the Times in 1944: “the interesting thing about Katharine Brush's work has always been not so much what she says as how she says it.”

Regarding the how of Leave Me, one finds little in a negative vein:

“The large audiences that were captured by Young Man of Manhattan and Red-Headed Woman will not be disappointed…” (Leane Zugsmith, NYT)

“[Brush is] very readable for the moment…devilishly adept…” (John Chamberlain, NYT; “Books of the Times”)

“[Brush] has achieved a slick-as-cream smoothness which lesser popular writers must envy desperately…On certain contemporary matters her work is definitive.” (Edith H. Walton, The Youngstown Daily Vindicator)

The what, on the other hand, left the same critics unsatisfied.

Here’s Chamberlain:

Superficially, Miss Brush is a novelist of Scott Fitzgerald’s order. But only superficially. Both of them have very retentive memories for the ephemeral that gives each year its special tone. But…Fitzgerald is interested in character, in people making moral decisions. Miss Brush tries to be. But the typical and the topical are always diverting her…[T]he world of character, of moral decision, is neglected…

And although Walton thought the novel warmer than Red-Headed Woman, and found in it “faint, undeveloped traces of social consciousness,” she predicted that the book would be “unbearably nostalgic” ten years into the future. She twists the knife a bit by concluding that Don’t Ever Leave Me “will disappoint only those naïve optimists who once supposed, on the basis of her short stories, that Katharine Brush might develop into a writer of consequence.”

Ouch.

Left: the rather drab dust jacket of the first edition; Kay's name is now larger than the title. Right: Inscription inside Swanie's copy of Leave Me

Renwood Tonight

Other Women is ultra-rare with its
jacket: in my 5+ years of collecting,
this is the only one I have found.

In 1933 Farrar & Rinehart brought out Other Women, a collection of some of Kay's previously published short works. Half of the stories are set in Renwood, Ohio, already known to Kay’s readers as the home of Lillian Andrews. One story, in fact, centers around Louise Bartlett, the Renwood socialite who so ruthlessly and methodically cuts Lillian down to size during the course of a cocktail party in Lillian's own home. Published in 1930, the story very interestingly provides the first glimpse of Lillian, unnamed, mentioned only in passing. Here is Lillian in embryonic form, one which would later grow and develop fully into that notorious Red-Headed Woman. 

The fictional Renwood was based on the factual East Liverpool, Ohio, where Kay 
and her husband (and shortly thereafter their son Tommy) lived  from 1920 to 1926. Although Kay later maintained that she liked life in East Liverpool just fine, the pettiness, pretentions, and hypocrisies of Renwood’s ladies who lunch are archly chronicled by Kay, with little effort at concealing the contempt in which she must have held such narrow-minded provincialism. 

East Liverpool's country club is still there today; one of
Lillian Andrews's driving ambitions was to be afforded
entrée to the upper echelons of Renwood society, 
whose center was the country club.

Kay's handwriting was quite obviously 
the basis for the book jacket type.

All the Pretty Red-Heads

Putting us on:
Dressler, circa 1931

As with the casting of Scarlett O’Hara years later, 
it would seem that virtually every female star in Hollywood was “considered” for the part of Lillian Andrews in MGM’s screen adaptation of Red-Headed Woman. Many of the names can certainly be dismissed as just so much hype (Garbo? Give me a break!); but so tireless and extensive were the efforts of MGM's publicity machine that no less than sexagenarian 
(with perhaps an emphasis on the "sex") comedienne extraordinaire Marie Dressler was prompted to throw her own hat in the ring!

What Bow's Lil Andrews
might have looked like

"It Girl" Clara Bow was reported by Time magazine as a natural, if not necessarily first choice. But this seems to be just another rumor, originating with Louella Parsons. Parsons claimed that MGM's Irving Thalberg sought her opinion regarding who should get the part. To that end, Parsons conducted a “poll” in her column, asking her readers who they wanted to see in the part; Bow, apparently, was America's overwhelming choice. But I can find no independent evidence (other than the Time piece) that Bow was ever seriously considered for, much less offered the rôle.

The only name that appears to have been seriously in the running is Joan Crawford, whose assumption of the rôle seems to have come close to becoming reality: The New York Times went so far as to announce Crawford as MGM's likely choice in October of 1931. But  according to at least one source I have seen, Crawford was given the thumbs down by Kay herself, though Kay makes no mention of any participation on her part in the casting of the picture in This Is On Me. (Interestingly enough, Crawford would play another Brush heroine five years later in Mannequin, but more on that in a future post...)

Joan Crawford almost looks as though she's posing as the artist's rendering of Lillian Andrews!

Carole Lombard, circa 1931

Other suggestions that at least look plausible on paper are Carole Lombard and Barbara Stanwyck.  

But by early May of 1932 the Times announced 
the final cast, shortly after declaring that

Miss Harlow has specialized on the screen in distasteful women and the fear of the average star 
that she will suffer from an unsympathetic part is 
just so much cream in Miss Harlow’s coffee.

What strikes me as funny is the fuss that was made at the time over Harlow’s 
hair-color—platinum blonde—which was hardly natural to begin with. One writer 
expressed dismay that the character would have to be turned into a blonde, and Parsons argued that the part should at least be given to a real red-head, conveniently ignoring the fact that Bow’s own red tresses came from a block of henna! And it’s odd that in the finished, black-and-white picture, Harlow’s hair (a wig, according to the Times) doesn’t even register as all that vivid. It makes me think of how Bette Davis’s “red” dress in Jezebel was actually not red at all…

I vant to be a red-head:
Garbo would eventually get her chance
to go "red," for 1939's Ninotchka