Questions and Answers

“The envelope please. The Oscar for best actress in a supporting role goes to …”

Just imagine that in that great  movie year 1939 – the year of   “Gone with the Wind,” The Wizard of Oz,” “Stagecoach,” “Ninotchka,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and “Wuthering Heights”- GertrudeandAlice had starred in a movie version of  THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF ALICE B. TOKLAS and the double feature at the local Bijou one-screenplex would have been Gertrude’s children’s book THE WORLD IS ROUND produced by Walt Disney!

Well, it could have happened, though it didn’t. Studio politics and World War II probably side-tracked plans.

After the success of the Autobiography, GertrudeandAlice visited Hollywood in the spring of 1935 as part of their six month criss-cross lecture tour of America. They were guests at a star-filled dinner party in Beverly Hills and Gertrude had a lively discussion about film with Charlie Chaplin who was seated next to her.

From what she said to him, it’s a wonder that a few years later she expressed real interest in having movies made of her works. She had told him that she felt movies would become mundane like newspapers “a daily habit and not at all exciting or interesting, after all the business of an artist is to be really exciting and he is only exciting when nothing is happening…”

Gertrude had also seen herself in newsreels of the tour that spring and “it gives me a very funny feeling and I did not like that funny feeling.” But by the following year when she heard that their good friend Thornton Wilder had been offered work in Hollywood, she and Alice again gave some thought to having the Autobiography made into a movie.

If they had had their way, GertrudeandAlice would probably have gone Hollywood, hearing about what lucrative deals were made there and  that movies could generate considerable profits.

It wasn’t,however, until Gertrude’s children’s book THE WORLD IS ROUND was about to be published in 1939 with illustrations by Clement Hurd in the US edition (it was first featured in Harper’s Bazaar magazine in 1938 and even inspired a very popular series of  rugs for children’s rooms using Hurd’s designs) that there was renewed talk about making movies of Stein’s works. The British edition of the book was illustrated by Francis Rose and he felt that the book would make a perfect film. There were even rumors that Walt Disney might be interested in it.

Excited by this film project, in letter exchanges with her friend Carl Van Vechten, Gertrude once again brought up the idea of making a movie of the Autobiography. Van Vechten contacted Bennett Cerf, Gertrude’s friend and publisher at Random House, who was also very enthusiastic about the idea. Van Vechten closed one letter with:

“Of course you both would have have to appear in the picture. Even Greta Garbo and Lillian Gish couldn’t be you and Alice. I can’t wait for this! It will be wonderful!”

But wait they all did as WWII hit Europe and GertrudeandAlice spent the war in occupied France, another Hollywood trip, which may have clinched the deals, now impossible.

So we can only imagine the newsreel from the Oscar ceremony for the awards for the best films of 1939 as the envelope is handed over:

“The Oscar for best actress in a supporting role goes to Alice B. Toklas for “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas!”

And imagine Charlie Chaplin leaning over to Clark Gable saying:

“That’s the fifth Oscar for that damn film and I thought Miss Stein felt this was all so mundane!

Tagged Alice B. Toklas, Charlie Chaplin, Francis Rose, Gertrude Stein, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, The World is Round, Thornton Wilder