Free Pieces of My Heart by Robert J. Wagner

backstreet romance. I was going on location to make movies, she was going on location to make movies, and there was no chance of a marriage in that place and time, so it was bound to run out of steam. She finally sat me down and told me that it was too difficult for her. She loved me, but….
    I couldn’t argue with her reasoning. There was simply no way we could have been married at that time. I would have always been Mr. Stanwyck, and we both knew it.
    And that’s how it came to an end.
    She was an enormous influence in my life, and still is. I remain immensely grateful. I gave her things, nice things, such as a four-leaf clover necklace made out of platinum and diamonds, a piece of jewelry she always set special store by. But the things I gave her were dwarfed by the things she gave me. If I had to limit it to just one thing, I would say she gave me self-esteem. To have a woman of her beauty and accomplishment see value in me and give herself totally to me couldn’t help but have a powerful impact on my psyche. Barbara was the first savior in my life.
    More concretely, she gave me values I never had before. I’ve mentioned that she gave me a love of reading, but she also taught me to appreciate art. I still have two landscapes she gave me, one of San Francisco, the other of Paris. Without her, there’s no doubt in my mind I would have gone in a different direction, and not a better one. For one thing, I would have spent more time with my contemporaries, and frankly, none of my contemporaries were in Barbara’s league.
    I always kept in touch with Barbara. I don’t know who the men in her life were, although I’m sure they existed. I know she had escorts, although I assumed most of them were gay.
    Toward the end of her life a burglar broke into her house and pistol-whipped her. She was an elderly woman by then, and it sent her into a downward spiral. When she was in the hospital dying, I called, and she asked me not to come and see her; she wanted me to remember her as she was. I felt I had to honor her request. As we talked, she told me she was wearing the four-leaf clover necklace I had given her. Barbara was cremated wearing it, and her ashes were scattered over Lone Pine. The fact that a piece of me remained with her at the end was and is some consolation for her loss.
    Occasionally, on screen, Barbara had a wary, watchful quality about her that I’ve noticed in other people who had bad childhoods; they tend to keep an eye on life because they don’t think it can be trusted. After her mother was killed by a streetcar, she had been raised in Brooklyn by her sisters, and from things she said, I believe she had been abused as a child. She had lived an entirely different life than mine, that’s for sure, which is one reason I found her so fascinating. I think her early life was one reason she had such authenticity as an actress, and as a person.
    Barbara was the first woman I ever loved.

FIVE
“MAINLY, IT WAS THE WIG.”
     
     
    On location in Tarpon Springs, Florida, with J. Carroll Naish and Gilbert Roland in Beneath the 12-Mile Reef . ( BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF © 1953 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. )
     

E ach of the major studios was like a royal court that was in competition with the other royal courts. Each studio had a social lion who maintained a prestigious individual salon, and it wasn’t necessarily the studio head. Then there were the salons that owed no special allegiance to any studio but cherry-picked from all the elites, such as the one maintained by Bill and Edie Goetz.
    At Fox, the elite circle was presided over by Clifton Webb. I worked with Clifton on Stars and Stripes Forever, a biopic about John Philip Sousa, then Titanic, and I was invited into his group. Clifton’s friends included people like Noel Coward and Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder’s partner, who never got much credit from anyone, especially Billy. Charlie was a kind, well-educated, very bright gay man who was