The Honeymoon

I have a very good (single) friend who keeps running his vacation plans by me.  He wants to go to Italy later this year, and based on my Olimpia Quartet he has designated me his travel maven.

He forwards me potential travel itineraries and beautiful pictures of gorgeous Tuscan villas and romantic Roman getaway spots. He wants to have a memorable trip and he seeks out my good offices on all these scrumptious venues.  I am fond of this guy and would like to help him however I have not been invited along.  Which brings me to…

The Honeymoon.  A Short Morality Tale by Ellen Ross

Cast of Characters:

Joseph L. Mankiewicz.  Hollywood Heyday’s Triple Threat.  Writer-producer-director of such classics as All About Eve, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, People Will Talk, The Barefoot Contessa, Guys and Dolls, A Letter to Three Wives, Sleuth, and the notorious and ruinous Cleopatra.  Winner of four Academy Awards- two for Best Original Screenplay and two for Directing.  Nominated a zillion times.  Two honorary Lifetime Achievement Director’s Guild awards.  Steered George Sanders and Edmund O’Brien to their two Academy Award-winning performances.  Urbane, pipe-smoking graduate of Columbia University, sophisticated, witty, very clever.

Frances Dee.  Lovely dark-haired movie actress.  Born in Los Angeles and then relocated to Chicago where she attended Shakespeare Elementary and Hyde Park High.  Spent two years at the University of Chicago before heading back out to California.  On a lark, she  worked as a movie extra.  Discovered- and given a juicy co-star part alongside Maurice Chevalier.  Beauty and brains.

Joel McCrea.  Six feet two of California Golden boy.  Handsome leading man.  Born in Pasadena, started working in early movies as a Western stuntman.  Unbuckled his chaps to star with the likes of Miriam Hopkins in “women’s pictures.”  Then he dusted off his dinner jacket and trotted out the savoir faire to headline in the legendary Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels and The Palm Beach Story.  As he weathered, he ended his long career as a western star.  Very successful in business, as well.  Owned tons of prime California real estate.  His ranch was well over three thousand acres.  Died a wealthy man.

The Tale:

Once upon a time the very intellectual, beauty-loving and cultured Joseph L. Mankiewicz fell in love with the glamorous and smart Frances Dee.  This was SOP for Mank.  He fell in love a lot.  (He eventually married three times.)  But in 1933, before he married any of his wives, he fell for Frances.

And so he proposed.  And she accepted.

These glad tidings sent him onto an orbit of happiness.  And, as he was old world and old school, he planned an elaborate European honeymoon for his blushing-bride-to-be and himself.  And when I say  “planned, ” I mean PLANNED.  He laid out a well-organized German blitzkrieg through Europe’s still-glamorous and not-yet-war-torn capitals.

I say “German” because although Joe was from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, his Jewish parents were just off the boat and proud of their roots and traditions. (Hitler had not yet made calling someone “a German” a dirty epithet.)

Joe naturally wanted a beautiful and memorable honeymoon of intellectual depth and charm, and to that end, he went about making meticulous rooms bookings, sight-seeing opportunities, destination restaurant reservations, and scheduled visits with famous foreign intellectuals and celebrated people at every stop.

(Sidebar:  Joe was not only proud of his heritage he was proud of his name.  Unwieldy and “un-American” as it was.  When he hit it big in the movie biz he became a soft touch for all his Mankiewicz relatives who hadn’t been so lucky financially.  Even though plenty of them had changed their names to less vowel-laden forms in hot pursuit of their American Dreams.  Morton or Miller or Manton.

One day, one of these guys was at Joe’s house waited for a little something to tide him over cash flow-wise and he carped about how difficult the name “Mankiewicz” was to spell.  Let alone pronounce.

Joe fixed him with a steely gaze.  “Not so hard to spell on the bottom of a check, is it?” he asked as he signed over another one.)

Back to this future honeymoon.  It was a masterpiece of German engineering.  And Mank extolled its virtues to Frances in heavy anticipation of the joys- both carnal and cultural- to come.

But before Mank had the chance to say “I do,” he was hit with a Big Bertha of a bombshell.

The lovely Frances had eloped with the hunky Joel McCrea.

This hurt on many levels.  Including the fact that although he was handsome, Mr. McC. was not exactly an intellectual heavyweight.  In fact, it was well-known all over Tinsel Town that his horse was better equipped to spell C-A-T than he was.

Mank was dumbfounded that any gal as smart as Frances was could throw him over for a certified dumbkopf  like Joel.  But that is exactly what happened.

Frances Dee had jettisoned the brainy and uber-talented Joseph L. Mankiewicz in favor of the horse opera star, Joel McCrea.

But she hadn’t thrown out the itinerary with the bath water.  The newly-wedded McCreas took Mank’s honeymoon. After all, why waste it?

Joel and Frances did go on to become on to become one of Hollywood’s most enduring love stories.  They were married blissfully for fifty-seven years.  In fact, he died on their final wedding anniversary.

The Moral:

Unless you’re a travel agent, NEVER waste your time planning a dream trip that somebody else is going to take. I may not have the smarts to win four Academy Awards but I do know that much.

Thanks to Joe.

Prosit!