Since Loretta and Tom's lives were rooted on different coasts, they decided to establish a home in each place. Tom had his apartment in New York, and Gladys had been assigned to find and decorate a home for them in the Beverly Hills area.
Within months of their honeymoon, Loretta, Tom and Judy moved into a house on Camden Street. Gladys had created what their friend Ray Milland called "a miniature estate." Every square inch was utilized, down to the lily pond outside the master bedroom window.
Now, what was puzzling to Loretta was the lack of movie offers coming in since she had turned down Daryll Zanuck's contract offer.
At first, she had been glad for the respite, but as the months went on with no word from her agents, she wondered if it had been wise to become a free agent.
"Loretta, I've been looking around and the scuttlebutt is," a friend told her, "that you're being blacklisted, the studios just won't give you another movie job."
Myron Selznick was livid when she told him of her suspicions. "Over my dead body are they going to blacklist you!" he shouted, and phoned Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia pictures, a solid, but second-rate studio at that time.
"Harry, I'm going to do you a big favor," Myron announced grandly. "You know I'm asking $100,000 per picture for most of my stars. But you can have Loretta Young for $50,000 - if you come up with a good script for her."
Harry Cohn was well aware not only of the blacklist, but of Loretta's popularity. And Myron was offering him a good financial deal. He sighed. "I always had a crush on her anyway," he told Myron.
Not too long after that conversation, Harry sent Loretta a script for The Doctor Takes A Wife, with Ray Milland as her costar. That picture, and Harry Cohn, broke the blacklist for Loretta and made it possible for her to make films again.
Next: The War Years
Excerpts © copyright 2000 Joan Wester Anderson. All rights reserved.
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