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ROBERT MONTGOMERY
by George Frazier
Holiday Magazine
February 1952
No one who has watched him on his Monday night television appearances would be likely to dispute the efficacy of the cat nap.
At forty-eight, Montgomery is not conspicuously less trim, casual, or boyish-faced than he was some twenty years ago, when he established himself as a valuable movie personality by his deft portrayal of an undergraduate in a picture called So This Is College. About him, as he submits to the merciless scrutiny of the television cameras, there is no hint of weariness or strain, no suggestion that he is a man of vast and, on the whole, remarkably effective indignation, no betrayal of the none-too-well-known fact that, in addition to performing arduous professional chores, he is also dedicated to an unremitting war on evil.
Over the years, indeed, Montgomery has accomplished such redoutable feats as gaining recognition for the Screen Actors Guild; gathering the evidence that sent Willie Bioff, the racketeer, to a Federal penitentiary (thereby enabling Westbrook Pegler to win a Pulitzer Prize); ridding Woonsocket, Rhode Island of organized gabling; and persuading the voters of Massachusetts to defeat a measure that would have legalized lotteries in their state. That he achieved all this without evidencing the slightest trace of nervousness or fatigue may well be because, unlike most scourges of malevolence, he has mastered the art of relaxing.
Montgomery, who bears no resemblance whatsoever to what a crusader is supposed to look like, is a figure of such grace and elegance that there are those who find it difficult to take him altogether seriously. He is tall, slender, erect, and so impeccably turned out that the lat Frank Curran of Brooks Brothers, whose clientele included such fashion plates as the Duke of Windsor, considered him the best-dressed man he had ever seen. Montgomery is not conspicuous, however, and his clothes come from such dignified houses as Brooks', and McDonald, Heaths, his shoes from Maxwell's in London. He is so correct, indeed, that although he is an incessant smoker, he refuses to carry cigarettes in his pocket. Thus in order to avoid destroying the drape of his jacket, he goes around with a package clutched in his hand. To all appearances, he is a man without a care in the world--except perhaps the drape of his coat. The paradox he thereby poses makes him singularly rewarding to examine in terms of relaxation. Certainly no one in the entertainment world knows more about it than he. The cat nap, however, is far from the complete story.
Not long ago, Montgomery sat in his office in the RCA Building and discussed his talent for remaining composed and fresh under even the most exasperating circumstances. "Sleep," he said, "is the big thing, of course. I'd have folded up long ago if it hadn't been for the cat naps. But I've depended upon other things too. Reading, for example. If I can pick up a book and read, the whole world can blow up around me and I won't be aware of it. For me, reading is utter relaxation, the way sleep is. One of the reasons I like flying so much, incidentally, is because I find it easy to sleep on a plane. As a result, I arrive at my destination completely revitalized. But there's another thing that enables me to realx, and that's having a wide variety of interests."
Montgomery is nothing if not eclectic. He is shrewd, expressive, well-informed and although he would undoubtedly demur, rather more opionated than he would have had people believe when, upon being signed as a radio commentator a couple of years ago, he announced, "I don't think possesion of a sixty-dollar typewriter qualifies me as an expert on anything." This, of course, was far too modest a disclaimer, for, as it happens, he is an expert on many, many thing, including springer spaniels, which he is often called upon to judge in field trials; wing shoothing, at which he is skilled; the life and literature of Scott Fitzgerald, with whom he was on close footing; legalized gambling, to which he is unalterably opposed; communism and oragainzed crime, which seem to him the only two forces that can destroy the United States; British racing cars, which he used to drive in competition; trade unionism, for which he battled at the risk not only of his career but of his life as well; guns, of which he has a superb collection; and the U.S. Navy, the story of which he will narrate on a television series and of which he would now be Assistant Secretary if Dewey had been elected President in 1948.
Obviously, not all of these addictions provide relaxation in the strict sense of the word. As dispassionately as he might investigate legalized gambling, for example, Montgomery cannot do so with the blithe spirit he displayed one afternoon a few months ago at Farmington, Connecticut, where he had gone to judge springer spaniels. And although, at another period, he was completely engrossed in his fight to gain recognition for the Screen Actors Guild, he nevertheless found it exhausting. It was then that his ability to relax proved his salvation. Settling down in the library of his home in Beverly Hills, California, he would pick up a book. Almost immediately the cares that had plagued him during the day--the threats from racketeers, the intimidating attitude of the movie industry--would be forgotten and from then until bedtime he would be, not in a community torn by strife, but in a world enchanted by the presence of the lovely girl known as Zuleika Dobson. "I owe a lot to Max Beerbohm," he once remarked. "I'd dip into Max, become oblivious to the troubles of the day, and by next morning I'd be raring to get at Bioff again.
But if Montgomery's varied interests frequently enable him to escape from worries, they also prevent his ever becoming bored. Indeed, a good deal of his considerable charm as a conversationalist (as well as a good deal of his ability to feel at ease among stragers) lies in his enormous store of fascinating and recondite facts. Whether he is discussing the Robert Vogeler case, the short, unhappy life of Jean Harlow, a Lagonda car, or the gambling situation in Nevada, he almost invariably manages to produce at least on startling item not generally known.
In view of all this, it is hardly surprising that he is regarded with a measure of envy around NBC, where he occupies a tastefully appointed sixth-floor office which has an uncluttered desk, comfortable club chairs, and, on the walls, six water colors of shooting scenes which he commissioned Lasell Ripley to paint around Towners, the upstate New York community where Montgomery used to spend many happy hours in a house which is now occupied by his former wife. He was born not far from there and his affection for the countryside is deep.
The place of his birth, however, is not strictly speaking, what is listed in Who's Who in America. That, together with one other piece of information in Who's Who, requires some slight annotation. His name was not always Robert, nor was his birthplace Beacon, New York. The elder of the two sons of Henry and Mary Weed Montgomery, he was born in the Hudson River town of Fishkill Landing and named Henry, Jr. That was on May 21, 1904, or nine years before Fishkill Landing was to unite with adjacent Matteawan and become Beacon, and some twenty years before he was to abandon Henry, Jr. as being less favorable to an acting career than was Robert, which he has never bothered to have legalized, although his son is known as Robert, Jr.
It was not until he was sixteen years old and a student at Pawling School that Henry realized that he was not a son of wealth. That year, his father, an industrialist who had been affluent enough only a few months before to send him to Europe, died suddenly, leaving his wife and sons almost destitute. Henry found himself abruptly deprived of the countryside, a fact which helps to explain his present almost passionate rush every other week end to Milford, Connecticut, where he recently built a small house.
Henry responded to the emergency posed by his father's death by becoming a mechanic's helper with the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Four months later, he took a job as a deck hand aboard a Standard Oil tanker that was bound for the West Coast. When the ship returned to New York, Henry decided to remain there and try his hand at writing.
A few months later, the young man with whom he shared a Greenwich Village flat got him a walk-on part in a play called The Mask and the Face. The star of the production, however, was an imperious man named William Faversham, who did not believe in sparing anyone's feelings. When Montgomery arrived at the theater for the second night's performance, he found a note from Faversham. "The marts of trade," it read, "are yearning for young men like you and my advice is to get out and stay out of the theater." Even as long ago as that, though, Montgomery was elated at a challenge. Although he was out of The Mask and the Face by the end of the week, he was not out of the theater.
For the next few years he applied himself to learning his trade by appearing in stock, mostly with a Rochester, New York, company that was directed by George Cukor, who was later to establish himself as one of Hollywood's ablest craftsmen. Eventually, he worked his way back to Broadway. One of the first plays in which he appeared upon his return was The High Hatters, which expired after only two weeks.
Montgomery was not discouraged, with the result that soon afterward he was cast for a play by Edgar Selwyn called Possession. He handled himself so impressively that Samuel Goldwyn signed him for a Vilma Banky picture then on location in New York. After two days, he was fired by the director. Undeterred by its awareness of this, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer immediately put him under contract.
It was soon obvious that MGM had acted wisely. The advent of the "talkies" having suddenly made one of its most popular stars, William Haines, a questionable asset, Metro saw in Montgomery a young actor endowed not only with good looks and flippant charm but also with stage training, who might be a logical heir to the kind of roles with which Haines had become associated. Montgomery's deft performance in a callow effort called So This Is College strengthened that impression. Unfortunately, however, it also served to get him "typed." From then until 1937, when the studio yielded to his pleas and permitted him to accept the formidable challenge posed by the part of the psychotic killer in Night Must Fall, he appeared, with a few such notable exceptions as The Big House, in one bit of froth after another.
Montgomery suspects that he was allowed to make Night Must Fall only because the studio hoped that his failure, of which it was confident, would teach him a measure of humility. If this was so, it was singulary myopic, for, only a few months before, he had made it apparent that he believed implicitly in the dignity of his prefession. No movie star in history, indeed, has ever done more to make the industry conscious of its obligations to its employees. His battle to win recognition for picture people was masterful, fearless, and--in keeping with the motto of the Screen Actors Guild, "He best serves himself who serves others"--entirely unselfish.
This long, uphill fight lasted from 1933 to 1939 and involved, in addition to Willie Bioff and his henchman, George Browne, the interests of the Capone mob. Montgomery and other members of the Screen Actors Guild (by this time Montgomery was its president) were threatened in typical gangland fashion. Once, after Montgomery refused to appease Bioff, he found his tires slashed; two days later, the upholstery. Soon after this, a bomb was planted in a Guild car.
People who were close to him during this period recall that they had never seen him so relaxed. Instead of submitting to Bioff, as more powerful men had done, he went to the board of directors of the Guild and asked that he be given $5000 to spend on an undisclosed project. This, together with $7000 of his own, was used, as he later explained, to pay two former FBI men to make a thorough investigation of Bioff's activities.
If Montgomery was delighted with the dossier that was eventually presented by his investigators, he was also somewhat bewildered. "Having collected all this evidence," he said, "I didn't know what to do with it. But fools rush in, so I put in a call to Henry Morgenthau." The next morning, Laurence Beilenson, the Guild's counsel, flew to Washington and laid the dossier on Bioff before the Secretary of the Treasury.
In all the turmoil that began with the formation of the Guild and ended with the apprehension of Bioff, however, Montgomery had not forgotten how to relax. If anything, he had come to master the talent completely. On evenings when things were quiet, he sat in his library pouring over first editions. On days when he was not making a picture, he played tennis or tried his hand at polo. And at least for a while during those placid evening and sunny days his mind was untroubled. Once, according to a classic among Hollywood legends, he even got a little drunk and would up a rioutous night spent in the company of Franchot Tone by driving his car up onto the lawn of Mrs. Tone's (Joan Crawford's) home. When Miss Crawford recalls the incident, she is likely to imply that it was Montgomery who got her then-husband intoxicated. Montgomery's reaction to this is a broad smile, a shrug, and the observation, "I'm no saint, but Franchot---!" Although Montgomery drinks scarcely at all, a fact to which he attributes his trim figure, there is reason to suspect that he feels there are occasions when a drink or two helps permit one to relax from the cares of the world. At any rate, it is reported that he adopted this view as he listened to the election returns on the night in 1948 when Truman began to race ahead of Dewey.
Ordinarily, however, Montgomery does not hide from disaster. With the outbreak of the second World War, he responded to the challenge by serving with the American Field Service Ambulance Unit attatched to the French Armies during the collapse of France. He thereby became one of the first ranking American performers to participate in the war.
Shortly after his return to this country, Montgomery appeared at the New York Herald-Tribune Forum and spoke on "The Responsibility of the Motion Picture Industry."
Never one to curb his impulses, he made a speech that could scarcely have endeared him to Hollywood and ended it: "I am not an industrialist. However, in an attempt to solve some portion of the problems of the industry of which I have been a part, I have studied various industrial organizations and have always found the spirit of these organizations is only as good or as bad as the spirit of their leaders. I am convinced that that condition exists in the motion picture industry today, and I am convinced the weakness of leadership under which, to my knowledge, this industry has been struggling is directly reponsible for the poor quality of its average product in the past, and will make it impossibe for the industry to perform its function in national defense...with any appreciable degree of success."
Montgomery's studio could hardly be blamed if it failed to receive him with affectionate arms when he went back to Hollywood a few weeks later. In order to put teeth in its displeasure, however, it loaned him out to Columbia, which wanted him for the lead in a fantasy that it was anxious to produce. Fantasies are usually box-office failures and Metro had no reason to suspect that the one in which Montgomery was cast would be an exception. He realized this, too, and approached the assignment with the eagerness which he reserves for the seemingly impossible. The result, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, was not only a picture of superior wit and charm but a huge financial success as well. By the time it was released, however, Montgomery had been commissioned a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve and was serving as assistant naval attache in London. On December 7, 1941, he was ordered to Washington to install and preside over an operations room in the White House, a job that gave him an opportunity to work in fairly close contact with President Roosevelt, whom he admired enormously. It offered too much security for his picaresque taste, however, so he asked for sea duty. The following March he was sent to Panama with a Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron.
GOOD-BY TO HOLLYWOOD
That October, he was sent to the South Pacific, where he saw action at Noumea, Espiritu Santo, Guadalcanal and New Georgia. He was then returned to the United States to recover from tropical fever. In December, he went to England with Destroyer Squadron 60. From June 6 to June 23 he participated in the action at Omaha and Utah beaches and in the attack on Cherbourg. In November, 1944, he was retired with the rank of commander.
Back in Hollywood, Montgomery found that he was restless. When the American Broadcasting Company approached him in September, 1949, with an offer to do a weekly commentary, he responded eagerly. A few months later, an offer from NBC to serve as a television producer made him decide to sell his Hollywood house and take up residence in new York. Although he refuses to make any prediction, it appears unlikely that he will ever return to the movies, except for an occasional picture which excites him.
Montgomery's pleasure in his present work is manifest in the chipper bearing he presents when he arrives at his office around 9:30 in the morning. From then until late in the afternoon, when he stops in at the posh Raquet & Tennis Club (of which he, along with the late John Drew, Fred Astaire, Arthur Little, Jr., Richard Barthelmess, and Elliott Nugent, is one of the only six members ever accepted from the acting profession) for a steam bath or a few games of backgammon, he rarely rest in the conventional sense. Throughout the working day, however, he almost always manages to steal a few minutes sleep. Not one for night clubs or parties, he spends his evenings with his second wife, the former Mrs. William Hale Harkness, in their house in the East Sixties. Every other week end (i.e., when there is no Lucky Strike show) he usually drives to Milford, Connecticut, where he enjoys shooting or other relaxation. Here he sees his children, Elizabeth, an extremely pretty and popular honey blonde who is a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College, and Robert, Jr., a fourth-form student at proper and highly-regarded St. Mark's in Southboro, Mass. Both children live with his former wife, from whom he was divorced in 1950 after twenty-two years of marriage. Skip, as Robert, Jr., is known, baffles his father, who sometimes says, "He plays pretty good polo, but, damn it, it'd be nice if he could spell too."
Along with his conviction that changing one's job is part of relaxing, this refusal to accept defeat submissively is an important factor in his determination to enter politics in the foreseeable future. No other field of endeavor, he thinks, offers a greater challenge. Being canny, however, he realizes that it would be a mistake for him to run for office without first having gained experience and stature in an appointive position. Oddly enough, few actors, or, for that matter, entertainers, appear interested in public service.
If Montgomery should run for office, he will do so as a Republican. Although once an ardent New Dealer, he left the Democratic Party in 1940 to work for Wendell Willkie. He campaigned for Dewey in 1944 and 1948 and if the Republicans had won the last election, would have been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a position for which even his detractors admit he is singularly well-equipped. At the moment, he is hopeful that a Republican victory in 1952 will bring him an appointive job in Washington. Then--as Robert Montgomery, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy or whatever he may be, rather than as Robert Montgomery, the movie actor--he will be able to present himselft to the electorate as a man of dignity and substance.
At least once a month, Montgomery makes it a point to address some gathering or other. Thus far, his audiences have been as delighted as he. "I enjoy talking to these people," he says. "I believe in them. I don't kid myself for a moment that they don't come to hear me out of curiosity. I know that my entertainment background is what gets them to come. But the point is that they do come." They came in droves, as a matter of fact, on the day last March when, as a guest at the Philadelphia Bulletin Forum, he acted as moderator in a panel discussion among a college student, a marine, and a veteran of World War II on the subject "What Are We Fighting For in Korea?" No one who was present is likely to forget Montgomery's concluding line. "We have in Washington," he said, "a sad monument to the Unknown Soldier. The only sadder monument we could have in this country would be one to the Unknowing Soldier." As he uttered this line, his audience was deeply touched, not only by his unmistakable sincerity but by his calm and freshness. To all appearances, he was a tirless and indestructible man. Boarding the train in New York only a few hours before, however, he looked weary and indifferent. But between there and Philadelphia he had, in a manner of speaking, recharged his battery by napping for three quarters of an hour.