Robert Wagner, It’s Cold Up There!

I am not, by nature, a mountain-climber. I go big for valleys and warm, heated rooms. When I heard, among the bits of snatches of American gossip meted out to Americans abroad, that Bob Wagner had fallen hard for his co-star in The Mountain, that he and Barbara Darrow were The Real Thing, I didn’t think it was going to involve me in ice and snow and doctor bills. I merely thought I’d have a look for myself. So I took a train to Chamonix, an attractive little resort town at the foot of Mont Blanc in the French Alps and went straight to the hotel where the cast and crew were staying. It was called Les Alpes.

“I am looking,” I said to the desk clerk, “for Monsieur Robert Wagner, the movie star.”

The desk clerk leered in approved French fashion. “Monsieur Wagner,” he said, “cannot be disturbed. He is with a friend.”

“Aha,” I said, carefully concealing my delight. (A good reporter does not let the quarry know when she is on his trail. She sneaks up on it with care.) “This friend,” I said casually, “this friend works with him in the moving picture, yes?”

“Yes,” replied the little man.

“This friend and Monsieur Wagner,” I continued, “they are in his room, yes?” We smirked at each other briefly.

“What do they do there?” I snickered.

“I believe,” said he, “that they talk to each other.” A bell rang and the little man arose. “Excuse me,” he said. “The room number is 214 if you would like to see for yourself.”

“Ah,” I murmured, “these blasé Europeans.” I took the elevator to the second floor. The door of 214 was ajar, so I looked on. And there, sure enough, was Robert Wagner with his co-star, Spencer Tracy, and they were talking to each other.

Except for one brief-excursion to Paris together, Bob Wagner and Barbara Darrow never left the Alpine town where The Mountain was filmed. Both claimed the cold was “invigorating!”

I retired to the lobby to think things out. After a while, the desk clerk returned.

“You told me,” I said accusingly, “that Monsieur Wagner was with a friend.”

“Is he not?” asked the man, who, I now noticed, looked remarkably naive for a Frenchman. “Is he not with Monsieur Tracy, his friend, who is also in the film?”

“He sure is,” I said bitterly. “Thanks heaps!”

“It was nothing,” he said, and held his hand out for a tip.

The direct approach

The next morning I decided to try the direct approach. I waited until a decent hour and then tapped discreetly on the door of 214. There was no answer. I knocked louder. Even a movie star, I thought, should be up by now. It was almost ten-thirty, the sun was high, and location trips to Switzerland cost money. As I was trying the door, the chambermaid appeared. “If you are looking for Monsieur,” she remarked, “he is not here.”

“Where is he?”

“That way,” she said, and pointed straight at the ceiling.

I looked up. My quarry was not hanging from the chandelier.

“Up,” the girl said. “Up the mountain. They are all gone up the mountain since five in the morning.”

“Five,” I said weakly. “You mean five—like in dawn?”

“Ah, no,” said she, smiling gently. “Five is before dawn. However, if you like, you may go up the mountain and see him. Anyone may go up the mountain.”

I went back to my room and put on heavier shoes, in case there was any walking to be done. Then I went down to the lobby, on my way up the mountain. In the lobby, seated at a large table, I saw a man who looked American. He was sitting in front of a heap of French, German, Italian and Swiss newspapers, and he was cutting them up and pasting things in a scrapbook.

“Hello,” I said. “You look American.”

“I do, huh,” he said belligerently. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“Are you with Paramount?” I asked.

At local events Bob and Barbara preferred Coke to wine, spouted their few words of French at every possible opportunity. The natives, used to tourists, preferred to talk English to them!

“Yeah. Publicity.” Suddenly he brightened. “Hey,” he said, “can you read French, German or Italian?”

“No.”

“Neither can I,” he said heavily.

“Then how come you’re clipping all these papers you can’t read?”

He looked surprised. “Gotta keep the scrapbooks up,” he said. “Otherwise how do we know if we’re getting any publicity?”

I thought about that for a while. Then I said, “How do you know what to cut out?”

He sighed. “Well, sometimes there’s a name, Wagner, Tracy, Darrow. Sometimes a picture. Rest of the time, I play hunches. Someday,” he said thoughtfully, “someday those scrapbooks are going to make mighty interesting reading. . . .”

Mail

I noticed a stack of mail on the table and glanced at it. All the letters seemed to be addressed to Bob Wagner. All were in feminine handwriting, some were perfumed and all were marked personal.

“Who are these from?” I asked.

The publicity man looked up. “His mother,” he said briefly.

“His mother gets around,” I remarked, riffing the pack and noting that they came from Claremont, La Jolla, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Berkeley.

“Very active lady,” said the man, removing the pack from my hand.

“Well,” I said, rising, “guess I’ll be off. Going up the mountain, you know.”

The press man put down his scissors and looked at me with respect. “Got a guide?” he asked.

“Guide?”

“It’s a three hour hike to location. All the transportation went hours ago.”

“Hike?”

“Well, of course, if you really don’t mind walking. . . . Wagner and Tracy do it every morning. Never ride.”

“Thanks,” I said. “When do they get back?”

“Dinner time. They walk back.”

“Fine,” I said. “See you in the dining room.” I went back to my room and took a nap.

Dinner time I sat down at a table near the publicity man. The Paramount crew straggled in. Slowly. No Wagner. I waited. When we reached dessert, I tapped one of the crew men on the shoulder. “Where’s Wagner?” I asked.

“Just call me R.J., boy mountain goat,” Bob announced. On his hikes up the Alp, he amazed the populace with a weird, off-key yodel.

The man shook his head. “Never comes to dinner,” he said. “Poor kid works till he’s half dead and then walks all the way back down this Alp. Goes right to his room, takes a hot bath and collapes on his bed.”

“And doesn’t get up again?” I croaked.

“Well, sure he does. He gets up tomorrow morning around five, five-thirty.”

“Where’s Miss Darrow?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “In her room, I suppose. She writes a lot of letters.”

What could I do? I’ll tell you. The next morning I got up at five a.m. and walked up the mountain with Robert Wagner. Walked—ha!

I had met him before, briefly, and he remembered me and was most cordial. “Talk about anything,” he offered, right off. “Tell you anything you want to know.”

“Great,” I said. “Girls!”

“Love ’em!” he replied instantly.

“Any one in particular?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Debbie Reynolds. Terry Moore. Jean Peters. Barbara Stanwyck . . .”

“Never mind them,” I said, and paused for emphasis. “How about Barbara Darrow?”

“Wonderful girl!” he said. (I took out my notebook.) “I’ve known her for years. Used to date her!”

“Used to?” I gasped.

“Sure, great kid. People say actors can’t get along with actresses. I say, nonsense. I’d marry an actress in a minute if I loved her.”

“Used to date her?”

He sighed deeply. “I suppose we’re supposed to be a big new romance,” he said.

“Brother, you sure are. Don’t you read the papers?”

“What, in French? Listen,” he said. “There’s absolutely nothing between us. She’s one of the two actresses in the picture. Naturally I see her around here. We walk around. We talk. We act. We eat.”

“You did Paris together!”

“We sure did, and we had a great time. Wonderful girl. Only, there’s no romance. Besides, I think she’s engaged or something.”

I dropped my notebook and slid down the slope twenty yards trying to retrieve it. Bob came after me, picked me up and set me on my feet. “This way,” he said, showing me how to walk. “Call me RWJ., boy mountain goat.

“What a city, Paris,” he said. “Loved it. Hired a chauffeur named Fitzpatrick—imagine, a French chauffeur named Fitzpatrick—and drove all over town. Went through the Louvre, went out to Versailles, saw Napoleon’s tomb—everything.”

“In other words, behaved like a tourist.”

“Sure, That’s what I was. What else? And those dolls. Oh, those French girls, man, they’re the greatest.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What about the German ones?”

“Germans? I never got to Germany.”

“I wasn’t going to mention this,” I said, “if you and Barbara were A Thing. But I hear you found a couple of German chorus girls in Paris, name of Alice and Ellen Kessler, and did every night club in town with both of them.”

“You’ll have to talk louder,” Bob remarked. “Can’t hear a thing in this wind.”

“Expect to get back to Paris soon?”

“Well, no,” Bob shouted into the breeze, which was now attempting to shove us back down the mountain. “Shooting schedule keeps getting fouled up here. Keeps raining. Can’t shoot in the rain. So I don’t think I’ll get off again.” He grinned. “Don’t mind a bit. Love to work.”

“What do you do when it rains?”

“Sit around, mostly, talk to Spence. Spencer Tracy. Greatest guy I know. He helps me with the game.”

“The movie game?”

“My gin rummy game. I’m becoming a pro. When it clears up enough, I play miniature golf. Keeps my hand in.”

Girls

“How about dates?”

“What can you do? Small town, not many girls.”

“Little man I happened to meet in the hotel” (I’d followed him around for an hour) “says you went out with a girl named Jeanne Levi, from a local beauty parlor, and Frank Westmore cut you out. What’d he do, talk shop?”

“Wind gets worse all the time,” said, grinning.

“Let’s sit down and talk about Jeanne Levi,” I panted.

“You crazy?” Bob inquired. “We’d freeze to death. Yeah, I got lousy luck. Girl came down from Paris once, a Dior model. Wow! Came down with some guy from Miami, and he got lost en route. I offered to help find him—perfect gentleman, that’s me. You know, figured he might be weeks getting found. Great girl, spoke English and everything.”

“So what happened?”

“Wouldn’t you know? I found him! Then there was a girl reporter came from Paris to see me. Came down in a pouring rain. Lent her my coat to wear to the train and then I missed the train and never got it back. Nice coat. Nice girl, too.”

“You sound like you’re having a great time.”

“The best. Love it here. Wonderful people, wonderful scenery. Weather’s not so good, but you can’t have everything.”

“Don’t you miss home?”

“Oh, sure, all the time. Can’t wait to get back. Love it there, too.” He grinned. “What can you do? I’m just naturally a happy personality.”

“Mountain goat,” I said, “would you mind going on alone? I’ve got a train to catch. And an appointment with a case of double pneumonia waiting for me.”

“Gee,” he said, “that’s a shame. Gonna shoot some good stuff today—great picture. Like you to meet Spence and Barbara.”

“I couldn’t shake hands if I did,” I said. “My fingers would come off.”

“Poor girl,” said Bob. “Want my scarf?”

“No, thanks, you’d never get that back either. Just turn me around and point me down.”

“It’s steep,” Bob hollered. “Be careful!”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ll slide down!”

Halfway down I turned for a final look. Bob was still heading straight up. He looked like he was leaping from rock to rock. From where I stood, you couldn’t tell him from a mountain goat.

THE END

—BY COLETTE FERRY

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1956