Beatrice Ames Stewart
In 1923 she met a friend of Crocker's, Donald Ogden Stewart, while living in Paris. He had just had great success with his novel, Mr and Mrs Haddock Abroad. Stewart later wrote: "She was living in Paris with her father, mother and younger sister Jerry, and I went to see her on the recommendation of my old Yale friend Harry Crocker who was engaged to her... I took Beatrice out on the Yale blue-plate special tour of Paris, including the royal box at Zellis, and ending up in the early morning at Les Halles for a spot of onion soup chez at Le Pere Tranquille. I concluded that Harry was a very lucky boy, but as she and her family left Paris almost immediately I didn't see her there again."
Beatrice later broke up her relationship with Crocker and decided to marry Stewart. He wrote in By a Stroke of Luck (1975): "We were both looking for marriage... Bea was young and beautiful, and I was very happy. She was a gay fun girl, loved parties and dancing, understood my kind of humor and had plenty of her own. Clara (his mother) and she got on together beautifully and I could hardly wait to introduce her to Bobby (Robert Blenchley) and Dottie (Dorothy Parker)." In fact she remained friends with Dorothy Parker for the next forty years.
Robert Benchley and Marc Connelly both attended the wedding: "The wedding was to be held in a fashionable small church in Santa Barbara's suburb, Carpentaria. Don's mother had come out from Ohio for the wedding and had been living near my mother in Hollywood. Benchley was to be best man and I an usher. The day before the wedding we two drove up to Santa Barbara for a party. To make the next day's two-hour drive as comfortable as possible for Mrs. Stewart and my mother, I asked Hollywood's leading car-rental company to provide their best chauffeur-driven limousine. Because many motion-picture stars were expected as guests, all cars arriving at the church received the attention of a crowd of spectators."
The couple moved to Hollywood in 1930. Over the next few years he worked on twenty-five films including Laughter (1930), Finn and Hattie (1931), Tarnished Lady (1931), Rebound (1931), Smilin' Through (1932), The White Sister (1933), Another Language (1933) and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934).
Donald Ogden Stewart was converted to socialism by The Coming Struggle for Power by John Strachey. "It suddenly came over me that I was on the wrong side. If there was this class war as they claimed, I had somehow got into the enemy's army. I felt a tremendous sense of relief and exultation. I felt I had the answer I had been so long searching for. I now had a cause to which I could devote all my gifts for the rest of my life. I was once more beside grandfather Ogden who had helped to free the slaves. I felt clean and happy and exalted. I had won all the money and status that America had to offer - and it just hadn't been good enough. The next step was Socialism."
Beatrice Ames Stewart did not share his political views and this created problems for their relationship. In 1936 Stewart and Dorothy Parker drew the attention of the FBI by forming the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL). Other members included Alan Campbell, Walter Wanger, Dashiell Hammett, Cedric Belfrage, John Howard Lawson, Clifford Odets, Dudley Nichols, Frederic March, Lewis Milestone, Oscar Hammerstein II, Ernst Lubitsch, Mervyn LeRoy, Gloria Stuart, Sylvia Sidney, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chico Marx, Benny Goodman, Fred MacMurray and Eddie Cantor.
Beatrice began an affair with Count Ilya Andreyevich Tolstoy. Stewart was also romantically involved with Ella Winter and in 1938 Beatrice asked him for a divorce. Donald Ogden Stewart recorded in By a Stroke of Luck (1975): "When I got back from holiday my wife had news for me. She came to the farm on Mothers' Day to tell me that she wanted a divorce in order to marry Count Ilya Tolstoy, a grandson of the writer and a 'defectee' from the Soviet Union whose government had sent him a year or two previously to an Iowa Agricultural College in order to perfect himself in the art of raising horses for the Russian farmers. I had had no suspicion of anything. My enthusiasm for my own 'rebirth,' which I had hoped would make her love me all the more, had blinded me to the fact that we had been drifting apart for some time. In the meantime I had fallen in love with Ella (Winter) and she with me. But I also loved Bea, and would not have left her. She was my wife and the habit of marriage to her was strong. Everything in the house was a reminder of her. I was momentarily angry at her 'desertion,' especially at a time when I was becoming increasingly isolated because of my beliefs. My pride was also hurt. But she convinced me that in Tolstoy she had found her real love, and I agreed to her request."
Donald Ogden Stewart married Ella Winter in 1939. However, Stewart spent the 1944 Christmas holidays with Beatrice: "I had gone up to the Christmas vacation exercises at the South Kent School where Ames and Duck were enrolled. And there was Beatrice who, after two marriages following ours, was living alone in a small two-roomer in New York. She was, as far as I could observe, the same old Bea. After a couple of drinks at her friend's home near the school where she was staying. I became the same old Don. There were a lot of laughs. Ten years seemed to have rolled way and caused a return to the days when nothing mattered but fun and present laughter."
Beatrice remained close to Dorothy Parker for the rest of her life. According to Marion Meade, the author of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? (1989): "Bea, unlike the others, never pulled a face when Dorothy reached for the Scotch". After the death of her husband, Alan Campbell, they spent a great deal of time together. Beatrice told John Keats: "I would prepare dinner for her. I was feeding her in the last year, but we never said anything about it. I gave her money to go home with every night." Parker died of a heart-attack, in New Jersey on 22nd August, 1967.
Primary Sources
(1) Donald Ogden Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck (1975)
When I got back from Holiday my wife had news for me. She came to the farm on Mothers' Day to tell me that she wanted a divorce in order to marry Count Ilya Tolstoy, a grandson of the writer and a "defectee" from the Soviet Union whose government had sent him a year or two previously to an Iowa Agricultural College in order to perfect himself in the art of raising horses for the Russian farmers.
I had had no suspicion of anything. My enthusiasm for my own "rebirth," which I had hoped would make her love me all the more, had blinded me to the fact that we had been drifting apart for some time. In the meantime I had fallen in love with Ella (Winter) and she with me. But I also loved Bea, and would not have left her. She was my wife and the habit of marriage to her was strong. Everything in the house was a reminder of her. I was momentarily angry at her "desertion," especially at a time when I was becoming increasingly isolated because of my beliefs. My pride was also hurt. But she convinced me that in Tolstoy she had found her real love, and I agreed to her request.
Thus, in its eleventh year, came to an end a marriage which had been a gay one, often a happy one, but very rarely a real one. The name of my play should have been The Doll's House, not The New House. The luncheon which followed Bea's tidings to me was symbolic. She had brought to the farm from New York her sister Jerry, and a very good screen-writer friend of mine named Phil Dunne, both of whom knew the purpose of the journey. So we sat around the luncheon table gaily pretending that. nothing had happened, just as Bea and I had pretended for ten years that our happy life could continue indefinitely if we just didn't look too closely at it. After luncheon we even walked through the looking glass into Ames' life and tried to persuade the ten-year-old that mummie and daddie were going to be just the same after the divorce. But Ames wasn't buying that. His frightened tears brought a little reality, and made us feel that it wasn't going to be quite so easy for those who couldn't pretend.
(2) Marc Connelly, Voices Offstage (1968)
There was another occasion that summer when my mother became socially conspicuous. Donald Ogden Stewart had become engaged to Beatrice Ames, daughter of a prominent Santa Barbara family. The wedding was to be held in a fashionable small church in Santa Barbara's suburb, Carpentaria. Don's mother had come out from Ohio for the wedding and had been living near my mother in Hollywood.
Benchley was to be best man and I an usher. The day before the wedding we two drove up to Santa Barbara for a party. To make the next day's two-hour drive as comfortable as possible for Mrs. Stewart and my mother, I asked Hollywood's leading car-rental company to provide their best chauffeur-driven limousine. Because many motion-picture stars were expected as guests, all cars arriving at the church received the attention of a crowd of spectators. I was in the doorway when Mrs. Stewart and my mother alighted from a handsome Hispano-Suiza. On alighting they were not identified by the celebrity hunters. The hearty laughter they heard as the car drove off made them look back at it. The politically conscious rental company had attached to the back of the limousine an enormous poster reading: "Vote for Clyde Zimmer for sheriff."