Crowned Heads by Thomas Tryon Read Free Book Online Page B

intended taking vows.
    The siege turned into something of a carnival, with assorted vehicles parked helter skelter at the entrance, radios playing, food being consumed, and litter strewn about.
    Fedora remained invisible. Then suddenly all the hoopla proved fruitless, since its object had mysteriously reappeared in Hollywood. No one had seen her leave the convent, but a limousine arrived at the Bel Air Hotel, where the star was now registered; she was driven to the studio, where she lunched with various notables in the commissary, photographs were taken to mark the occasion, and a new movie was announced. Such furor did the actress Fedora occasion and thus were her comings and goings noted by an eager and curious world.
    She completed Ophelie, one of her most beloved silent pictures, that year. She received her first Academy nomination for The Red Divan, but lost to Norma Shearer. Her films were released with almost unvarying regularity through the following decade. During this period it seemed she had given up her penchant for travel; she seldom left Hollywood or its environs. She preferred her new house in Pacific Palisades, with its view of the ocean. The property was enclosed by a high stucco wall, over which could be glimpsed only the tops of banana trees, and few visitors were admitted. Her housekeeper-companion was an Englishwoman, Mrs. Balfour, the widow of a Scot who had raised alfalfa in the San Fernando Valley. After his death she moved to Encino, and it was Viola Ueberroth who found her and brought her to Fedora.
    Then, in the middle thirties, the Sobryanskis, mother and son, arrived unexpectedly in Hollywood, and their itinerary was diligently recounted by the papers. They visited Shirley Temple in her bungalow at Fox, lunched with L. B. Mayer at Metro, and at AyanBee they came on the set to watch Fedora and Willie Marsh shooting The Player Queen. Everyone knew the reason they were there: Sobryanski was hoping to persuade Fedora to marry him. Despite their wide acquaintance with notables, neither Barry nor Marion had ever met the count. What details there were were most accurately reported in the Tole biography (Tole had himself secured several interviews with the count, who was still living in Menton, while the countess spent most of her time on Crete). His mother was the countess Maria Yvonne Lislotte Chernieff Sobryanski. She seldom went to movies and initially had never seen Fedora on the screen. Of the old nobility, she hardly approved of her son’s involvement with an actress—and an “older woman”—no matter how beautiful or famous. The reasons for her change of heart were as obscure as other details of the story, but the fact was that the two women did afterward become exceptionally close friends. Though the three were the object of considerable speculation in the press, no one had ever accurately divined the true relationship. But at the time, lacking the success he sought with Fedora in Hollywood, the forlorn count returned with his mother to Europe.
    It was further noteworthy that the link between Fedora and Countess Sobryanski was more closely forged during the war, when Fedora sought refuge at the château in Switzerland, and that she was later a frequent guest at their other residences—the Paris apartment, their horse ranch in the Camargue, and the villa on the island of Crete. Just before the war John had finally married and produced the heir required to ensure the title, and his wife seemed as much in evidence—and as good friends with Fedora—as was his mother. By then the family estates had been wrested from the Nazis by the Russians, but since Countess Sobryanski had been outspoken on the subject of Communism, she was not permitted to return to Poland, and spent her time exiled on Crete. Barry recalled for Marion the Life (September 23, 1946) photographs of Fedora and the countess exploring the labyrinth at Knossos and other excavated sites. Lislotte, always a regal figure, was now