Crowned Heads by Thomas Tryon Read Free Book Online Page A

she had surfaced in some unlikely outpost, once in Samoa, once aboard the Ranee of Sarawak’s yacht, once in the Yucatán jungle while visiting the Mayan ruins.
    In the mid-twenties she had completed a number of pictures in a row: Without Remorse, Judith and Holofernes, Impératrice, and in the autumn of 1925 she was loaned to Paramount to begin the spectacle Queen Zenobia. She returned to AyanBee early in 1926 to do A Woman’s Past, which was to be followed later that year by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. She was fatigued, and as she often did to rest between pictures, she left Hollywood for Europe. It was known that also on board her ship was Jan, or John, Sobryanski, who was from then on to figure so importantly in her life. Heir to a large lumber fortune, only scion of a venerable Polish name, John Sobryanski was cultured and sophisticated, and though some years her junior, obviously smitten with the famous star. By the time the ship docked at Le Havre, the entire passenger list was speculating on the romance. Subsequently they were seen together in Paris, watching the races at Longchamps, then in London, at Ascot, where they were formally invited to meet their majesties in the royal enclosure; Queen Mary was a close friend of John’s mother, the countess Sobryanski.
    Subsequently they toured, à deux, on the Continent, in a well-photographed maroon Hispano-Suiza, journeying eventually to Kraków, to the ancestral estate, where Fedora met Countess Sobryanski. Later they went to Berlin, where Vando’s clinic was then located. Improstein had introduced the doctor to many wealthy and influential Germans and his work was still enjoying considerable patronage. Following Berlin, the couple went to Switzerland and pictures of them boating on one of the lakes in pastoral calm made the papers, worldwide. Count Sobryanski was later to buy a small château in Montreux, at the end of Lake Geneva, prior to the loss of the Kraków estate in the war, but it was perhaps merely coincidental that a short time later Vando opened another clinic at Basel, only several hours away.
    The idyll was eventually interrupted when Fedora was required to return to Hollywood for wardrobe fittings and tests for Madame Bovary. She had wanted to play Emma for a long time. Unfortunately, production difficulties were encountered, then script problems, and the film was twice delayed. Louella Parsons described her as chafing under the enforced wait, and quoted her as having let it be known that she would rather be back in Europe for the winter season. Then, just before she was to begin the film, she collapsed. The cause given by Parsons: Vando’s regimen. The picture was finally abandoned altogether, but instead of returning abroad, Fedora sequestered herself in her Beverly Hills house.
    Next, a broker disclosed that the property was up for sale. People came to inspect the vacated premises, but it added little to the legend of their goddess to discover that the house was unpretentious, that she lived modestly and used toilet paper like anyone else.
    Then a San Francisco paper printed a photograph of a Spanish-mission-style domicile, with a banner line offering the tantalizing question: “FEDORA’S NEW HOME?” The building was the Convent of Santa Margarita up in Monterey, and word had leaked that the actress had got herself to a nunnery and was “in retreat” behind its walls, resting after her collapse. She found little rest. Newsmen marshaled in squads, manning posts at the main door and at salient points about the grounds. Photographers attacked the rear walls, where they were confronted by outraged nuns, who demanded they leave the premises. One enterprising reporter attempted an assault over the wall, where his intrusion among the outraged sisters was sufficient for him to verify that yes, Fedora was within. He had glimpsed a woman sitting in the garden and he had not the slightest doubt that it was she whom he sought. Rumor became rife that she