Marlene Page 16

  We fought together, shoulder to shoulder. Gabin made films, complied with his contract, and then decided to join the Free French forces. He wanted to fight. I understood this wish very well. I was his mother, his sister, his friend—and more still.

  I accompanied him to a secret port near New York where he embarked on a destroyer bound for Morocco. We swore an eternal friendship to each other like little children, and I remained alone on the wharf, a poor, forsaken little girl. The destroyer was sunk somewhere between the United States and Morocco, and I heard nothing more about him. I enlisted in the U.S. Army, was ordered to New York, and was dispatched from one port to another … but I’ll talk about this episode of my life later. Gabin survived the sinking of his ship and landed in Casablanca, as I learned later. My lonely “child” had lost all contact with me. I was terribly worried. Where was he? I knew he needed me, and I could sense this longing from the other side of the ocean.

  Everybody knows Gabin’s acting talent. No word need be spent on this subject. What is not known, on the contrary, is his sensitivity. The tough-guy façade and the macho stance were put-ons. He was the most sensitive man I knew, a little baby who liked best of all to curl up in his mother’s lap and be loved, cradled, and pampered. That’s the image I have of him.

  We were all expatriates in America: We were living in a foreign country; we had to speak a foreign language and adjust ourselves to unknown customs and ideas. Although we were film stars, we felt lost. Gabin, quintessentially French, protected himself against every foreign influence in his modest home. I had to cook French and speak French with him, and we socialized only with French actors and directors. This life pleased me enormously. I really felt at home only in the company of French friends. In my innermost being I felt a kind of frustration, yearning, a dream for a homeland that had originated in my youth and drew me to the French.

  Gabin was the man, the superman, the “man for life.” He was the ideal all women seek. Nothing in him was false. Everything was clear and transparent. He was good and outdid those who vainly tried to do the same for him. But he was stubborn, extremely possessive, and jealous. I liked all these qualities about him, and we never seriously quarreled.

  Gabin knew how to adroitly resist the siren songs of the new French regime under Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain. He wanted to join Charles de Gaulle. Sacha de Manzierly who at that time directed the de Gaulle office in New York, helped him.

  The heroic deeds Gabin performed during the war are well known; less well known is his enlistment in General Jacques Leclerc’s armored tank division. For him it was as dangerous as a plunge into a snake pit.

  Jean Gabin had a deep aversion to anything relating to electricity. It was useless to ask him to change a light bulb or to repair an electric iron. And he had the same phobia about fire. Now it often happened that tank crews perished in the flames of their burning vehicles. Gabin was certainly aware of this danger, but he didn’t shirk it and came out of it without a scratch as always. He enlisted with the Second Tank Division and got as far as Berchtesgaden. He brought back no souvenirs from Hitler’s hiding place. I regretted that, but he had none to show me upon his return.

  In France nobody knew anything about Gabin’s attitude—all people think actors concern themselves exclusively with films and never allow themselves to confront reality, especially if it’s dangerous. Once again I was enraged, he wasn’t. He remained calm and went looking for a place where he could live and store his belongings. That was in 1945, after May 8, the day that marked the end of the war in Europe.

  The soldiers returned home, except for the Americans. I continued to work for the troops stationed in France, troops who were jittery because they might be sent to fight in the Pacific where the war continued. I, too, was afraid. I longed for the end of the war, and I was not alone. After the bloodbath we had experienced in Europe, we impatiently awaited peace. We didn’t, above all, want to be sent to another front where everything would begin all over again.

  Jean Gabin had left the army after the end of the war and resumed his work in a Paris that was no longer the one he had known. He didn’t like his new life. Winter arrived. It began to snow. He grumbled about the slush everywhere in the streets. He still felt himself to be an actor, but in the presence of Parisian crowds, the rich, untroubled by the ubiquitous mire, he didn’t dare complain.

  Gabin could never stand the bourgeoisie. At that time he was very impulsive. He had patience only with his friends. He was very nice to us, but easily infuriated when he encountered an injustice. For then it seemed to him that he had fought in vain, all soldiers feel that way, but Jean Gabin didn’t have enough sympathy or patience to accept this contradiction.

  It was easy for us civilians to show understanding. But when you’ve nearly lost your life, things look different. Jean Gabin understood that. He had voluntarily thrown himself into combat, he didn’t want to be “in a safe haven” like many other stars who, when summoned by their consulates, always found an excuse to avoid enlistment. He went there and stared reality in the face unflinchingly. A benign fate alone had preserved him from death and annihilation, physically and spiritually.

  His strength helped him to look disaster straight in the eye and survive. One of the fascinating aspects of his personality is this rare mixture of courage and tenderness. On the night of May 8, 1945, we both wept when we heard de Gaulle’s speech, and we understood what there remained for us to do. He in his way, I in mine.

  I also remember the winter of 1944. We were close to the front at the time of Bastogne, but we didn’t know our exact position. That was also unimportant. We obeyed orders. After Bastogne our destination was changed, and we were sent to the south. Again the rumor that the front would be strengthened by the “Free French Forces” and the Second Tank Division was making the rounds. One afternoon my performance was dropped, I asked an officer to get me a jeep, and I set out on a search for Gabin. Finally I found his division. Evening descended on a great number of tanks standing in a field. I began to walk and look for gray hair under the caps of the “fusilier marines.” Most of the soldiers looked almost like young boys; they sat around, relaxed, and watched the oncoming twilight. Suddenly I saw him from the rear. I called out his name; he turned around and said: “Merde!” That was all. He jumped out of his tank and locked me in his arms. I had hardly regained my breath when the signal sounded for the tanks to line up in formation. He climbed into his vehicle again, and soon all you could see was a cloud of dust and all you could hear was the growling of motors.

  I returned to America. We often would phone each other. Things were not going smoothly with him, but I couldn’t help him. When a war is over, soldiers are always sad. It’s a very peculiar sadness. There is no egocentricity about it, and it affects those who have fought and killed, those who can no longer find peace—a feeling I know all too well. Each one must define the word kill for himself. Once you’ve received an order to kill, that’s legal. Nevertheless, it means to kill, no matter how you look at it. You put an end to another person’s life only because you have been ordered to do so. And then you also get a medal for it. But if you dispose of someone who has really harmed you or your family, you’re thrown in jail. Such are the rules, and they’re difficult to understand. Neither Gabin nor I ever accepted them.

  We met again after the war. He had no work, neither did I. Regularly I would be told in reproachful tones, “You haven’t been on the screen for a long time.” Gabin and I responded to this dig in the same way: “Damn civilians!” we would intone in unison. All these people who had sat comfortably behind their big desks, whom the war had not so much as touched, were imposing their laws on us.

  But what was to be done? We were at their mercy for better or worse. We were completely broke, of course. How could we have earned money during the war? Now, as we could have predicted, we were penniless. We had only our medals. And you can’t eat medals.

  My decorations hang on the wall, but they’re here only for the ch
ildren. Normally, fathers receive medals, not mothers. The French medals are the only ones that really mean something to me. No, I shouldn’t say “the only ones” because the Medal of Freedom that America awarded me is very precious to me. The French medals “Knight of the Legion of Honor,” “Officer of the Legion of Honor,” filled me with great joy. France, the beloved country, honored me, a simple American soldier, a simple woman who had loved France since childhood.

  In 1946, I returned to France to make a film, Martin Roumagnac, with Gabin. It wasn’t a very good film, although we had all been enchanted with the script. It dealt with the immediate postwar period: Electricity, fuel and groceries were rationed. Nothing new to us. Since I played the role of a provincial beauty, I had a permanent wave and wore ridiculous, supposedly fashionable, clothes.

  Gabin taught me to contract my words, since I was not allowed to speak cultivated French. He sat near the camera and corrected me with infinite patience. Since Georges Lacombe, the director, expressed himself only in incomprehensible sounds, Cabin took over the job of telling me what I had to do. He took on an enormous responsibility.

  It should have been an easy task to be a much-desired woman, “to live on air and love,” and to be envied by all other women because I had drawn the first prize—Jean Gabin. But it wasn’t so at all. Nobody believed in my sincerity, no doubt because of my own fault or the fault of the “image” people had of me.

  Jacques Prévert (he had written “Dead Leaves,” a song I was supposed to sing in another film, and was furious when I declined to play the role) wrote a very bad, disparaging review of the film.

  Martin Roumagnac was a disaster. The names Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich were not enough to lure moviegoers. I was crushed as always when I felt I had failed to come up to expectations. Gabin remained calm: “Let’s wait awhile,” he said. But I couldn’t do that. My financial problems forced me to return to Hollywood to make a film under Mitchell Leisen’s direction, Golden Earrings. The money I was paid was half of what it had been before the war. That, too, was a bad film, but when you need money, you’re ready to do anything.

  Nobody knowingly decides to make a bad film. At the beginning everything was going along fine. Even the dressing room attendants who fixed my clothes and whose fingers could hardly hold the needle because of the cold, believed that Martin Roumagnac would be a good film.

  In retrospect, I find that Gabin and I had a rather easy life in the United States. It was a miracle, but I don’t know how it was wrought. The fact is that things seemed very easy. The house I had found for him with its garden and fence looked like a small rectory Gabin felt well there, loved every tree and every shrub, strolled around and regaled me with stories about France. However, he never said that France was better than America.

  Besides, he loved America. That’s amazing for a Frenchman. Gabin judged simply, intelligently, and directly as only few foreigners do. He accepted America and Hollywood in his own way. And he decided to love them without analyzing them, without putting them under a microscope. This in no way means that he found everything commendable. He liked to joke with me about some of his reservations.

  I was there to protect him. He did not notice. He considered me his peer. He had never experienced anything of this kind. I loved him as my child—indeed, for a certain period of time he took the place of my daughter who was no longer a child. He was gentle, tender, and had all the traits a woman looks for in a man.

  An ideal being, the kind that appears in our dreams.

  I lost him as you lose all your ideals, but only very much later. By the time he was again living in France, I had become to him merely a companion whom you lovingly take in your arms for the last time. My love for him has remained strong, unfading. He never asked me to prove it. Gabin was that way.

  ON FRIENDSHIP

  Very few understand the meaning of this word. Hemingway understood it; Fleming understood it, and Robert Oppenheimer, to cite a few names.

  Friendship is related to maternal love, sibling love, eternal love, the love that is pure, dreamed of and yearned for. It is not love under the pretext of love, but, rather, a pure feeling, never demanding and therefore eternal.

  Friendship has united more people than love. It is precious and it is sacred. It unites soldiers in combat, strengthens resistance, it encompasses us all even when our intentions are obscure.

  For me, friendship is the most precious possession.

  Anyone who renounces a friendship sees himself or herself excluded, forgotten, forever pushed out of the circle of friends. That’s how simple it is. Friends who deceive each other are condemned to death, if I may say so, and they will always wonder why they no longer find any acceptance. I despise them. They are the lowest of the low. The moment you experience the blessing of a friendship you have the sacred duty to obey its laws. Regardless of the consequences that may ensue. The rules of friendship must always be observed in silence or in words.

  This is not an easy task, and at times it requires superhuman effort. But friendship is the most important human relationship, of far greater importance than love. Love is inconstant. Love, save for maternal love, is unfaithful and always finds good reasons for it. Friendship is genuine, or it’s simply not present, and it’s easy to make the distinction.

  As soon as friendship has you in its grip, it carries you along at full sail. You can’t go wrong about the person. A promise among friends, sealed with a handshake, is an inextinguishable vow.

  There is a group of people who never experience what friendship can be—the escapists. They steer clear of difficulties, theirs and those of others, they don’t want to relate. Woody Allen has defined them: “They close their eyes before all problems—go shopping instead.” I agree 100 percent with that definition. I’m surrounded by them, and I wage a futile battle to restore them to reality. They try not only to run away but also to shift the blame onto others. A pitiful lot.

  All efforts are in vain. They escape.

  WRITERS

  HEMINGWAY, OF COURSE!

  OUR FRIENDSHIP NATURALLY GAVE rise to much gossip and gabble. It’s about time the truth was told. I was aboard a ship sailing from Europe to America. When? I’ve forgotten. At any rate, I’m sure it was after the Spanish Civil War. Ann Warner, the wife of the all-powerful Jack Warner, gave a dinner on board to which I was invited. When I came, I immediately noticed that twelve guests were seated around the table.

  “Please excuse me,” I said, “but I can’t sit here, we’ll be thirteen, and I’m superstitious.” (I was standing at that moment.) Nobody made an attempt to get up, so I remained standing. Suddenly a giant leaned over me. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll be the fourteenth.” I looked up at the giant, saw Hemingway, and asked, “Who are you?” This shows how ignorant I was.

  Order was restored. We were now fourteen around the table aboard this ship bound for New York. The dinner—just as at Maxim’s—began, and my gigantic table companion took me by the arm each time he wanted to make a point. At the close, he escorted me back to my cabin.

  I loved him from that very first evening.

  I have never stopped loving him.

  It was a Platonic love.

  I say this because the love that Ernest Hemingway and I felt for each other—pure, absolute—was a most extraordinary love in the world in which we lived. Beyond all doubt, this was a boundless love beyond death—even though I know very well that it doesn’t exist. At any rate our “amorous feelings” lasted many years when no hope, no longing, no wish for fulfillment remained to either of us—a period during which Hemingway felt only a deep despair, just as I did when I thought of him. We never lived together, but perhaps that might have solved certain problems. I respected Mary, his wife, the only one of his wives whom I knew. Like her, I was jealous of his former wives. I was only his friend and remained that in the years that followed. I have preserved all his letters, and I’m not willing to entrust them to a museum or to a collector. Not because, I think I can take
them with me in the Beyond, but because I don’t want a stranger to lay his hands on them. They belong to me. He wrote them for me, and nobody will earn a penny from them. I shall do everything possible to prevent this.

  He was my “Rock of Gibraltar”—a nickname he loved. The years without him have gone, one more painful than the other. “Time heals all wounds,” it is said. A very optimistic but, unfortunately, false maxim, which I very much deplore. The void Hemingway has left in us and in the world will never close again. He was a writer but also a man who—without weighing the consequences of his action—decided to leave us. But after all, that was his decision.

  We regularly wrote to each other when he was in Cuba. He would answer me “by return mail,” as he put it. We talked on the phone for hours, during which time he gave me good advice, and never once told me to hang up and stop bothering him. He sent me his manuscripts, and once he said the following about me: “She loves literature and is an intelligent and conscientious critic. When I have written something that I find good, she reads it and tells me that it pleases her, then I am perfectly happy. Since she is well versed in things I write about—people, countries, life and death, questions of honor and conduct—I pay more attention to her judgment than to that of the professors. Since I believe that she understands more about love than anybody else.” An extremely generous judgment, as was typical of him.

  I shall never understand why he loved me “so intensely” as he said. The fact is our love even survived the war. Occasionally, I would meet him during this period—he always beamed with pride, had a thousand plans in his head, whereas I would be pale and sick, but I would pull myself together to cut a good figure. He had written a poem about the war that he made me read aloud. “Take this whore death as your lawful wife …” “Read further,” he said, when I faltered. He actually called me “kraut,” a word used by GI’s to designate Germans. To me it seemed ridiculous to call him “Papa” as did many of his friends. I believe I called him “You.” “Tell me, You,” I would interpose, since this was the only expression I could find—“tell, tell me,” like the little lost girl that I was in his and my own eyes.