Leslie Howard's Diary

[All parens and some brackets were printed in the book. I assume the parens were Leslie Howard's and the bracketed notations that appeared in the book were Ronald Howard's. However, most of the bracketed notations are my own. Howard, his wife, Ruth, and their son, Winkie, were living on Magnolia Drive in Great Neck at the time this diary was begun but at some point they purchased their own home and moved. Because those important events, along with the purchase of a Cadillac, are not noted, I assume that the missing dates throughout the diary were not merely dates Howard didn't make an entry—the pages were removed for some reason which Ronald Howard does not specify. Spelling and punctuation are Mr. Howard's]

Tuesday, 1st January 1924: Washington (Shubert Belasco Theatre) Outward Bound cast list: Margalo Gillmore, J. M. Kerrigan, Alfred Lunt, Lionel Watts, Beryl Mercer, Charlotte Granville, Dudley Digges, Eugene Powers.

Wednesday, 2nd January: Rehearsal for purpose of rehashing play. Various authors, wives and retinues arrive. Great fun altering play. Which version do we play tonight? Do we know we're dead or alive?

Saturday, 5th January: With Lionel Watts to the White House armed with letter from the Judge (Ottinger, Asst Atty General). Shown through the place with great courtesy by venerable retainer. Particularly impressed by Dining Room [unknown if Howard meant the State Dining Room or the Family Dining Room] and Blue Room. Last two shows in Washington.

Sunday, 6th January: Very cold weather. Leave Washington one o'clock, arriving Pennsylvania (station) N.Y., 6 p.m. In Great Neck at 7. Find family all well and Christmas decorations left for my inspection. My Wink delighted with electric train [which Howard brought from Washington, D.C.]. We proceed to test it. With Ruth to (Scott and Zelda) Fitzgeralds [the Fitzgeralds lived at 6 Gateway Drive, Great Neck, just one block over from Leslie Howard]. Home slightly inebriated to pass night in ice-bound chamber.

Monday, 7th January: Utterly futile rehearsal at 12 a.m.—for which little Leslie an hour late. Dinner with Alfred Lunt. Opening of Outward Bound at Ritz Theatre. Much heart-pounding and jumping of nerves. Get through pretty well. Audience reduced to jelly. Afterwards to low haunt with Hazzards (Great Neck friends)—whisky followed by gin at Great Neck.

Tuesday, 8th January: No rehearsal—strange! Actually have time to breathe. First day with my Wink for five weeks. Remarkable sport with Roller Coaster (child's hand-steering cart on rubber wheels). Second night audience one better than first.

Wednesday, 9th January: First Matinée of Outward Bound. Success of play seems assured. Both houses packed and apparently thrilled. Dined with Alfred [Lunt], also Beryl Mercer and Charlotte G. [Granville] Yes, sir! To Algonquin to supper with Wilfred [Noy], (his uncle) and Maggie [Margalo Gillmore]. Slight contretemps with colourful lady!!

Thursday, 10th January: Spend half the day with Wink constructing electric railroad—with unfortunately high casualty rate owing to excess of power. Another big house at theatre.

Saturday, 12th January: End of first week of NY fun. Prospects excellent. Probably over 12,000 dollars on week. Received full salary. Dined with Ruth and Vi Evans at Coffee House after deadly hunt for fancy dress costume. After show to party given by Francatelli's [May have been Charles Francatelli, the son of Charles Elmé Francatelli and brother to Violet Francatelli, a survivor of the Titanic sinking]. Greatly entertained by drunks, perverts and bores. Bed around 4 a.m.

Sunday, 13th January: Quiet day. Rose at gentleman's hour of 1.30 [p.m.]. Wilfred [Noy] and family to lunch and for day. Edifying pastimes such as puzzles, electric trains, short walk, newspapers, much conversation, meals, etc. Just a nice suburban Sunday. Feeling immensely pure despite Ruth's doubts.

Monday, 14th January: Most of the day wasted—messing about. Ruth went to town early with rotten fancy dress. We met after theatre and took Mabel Lewis [Mabel Terry Lewis] to supper at Algonquin. Saw [Alexander] Woollcott, [Heywood] Broun, Mark, [Marc] Connolly, Bob Benchley, Ruth Hale, Margalo [Gillmore] and others. [Alexander] Woollcott tells us interesting theory about status of a play before production—practically non-existent. Also that Eugene Walters is about to dramatise Boule de Suif. This sort of thing always happens!

Wednesday, 16th January: Lionel [Watts] and I go to Alfred Lunt's for dinner. Spend afternoon discussing wonderful dinner, cocktails and cigars we are to have. After matinée stand forty minutes in rain waiting for taxi and then have beastly meal in lousy restaurant. Laurette [Taylor] and Hartley [Manners] at show. After to supper with them thus breaking seven months feud. [Howard wrote a piece for Vanity Fair, "And Now the Radio Actor," in 1927 about his first radio appearance in which he appeared with "Laurette." The show goes badly and he states about Laurette that "it was some months before she would speak to me." Trivial Fond Records, pg. 74] Home 2.30 train.

Saturday, 19th January: After show we go to Laurette's [Taylor] to supper. Also there Geoffrey [Kerr], Marc Connolly, Margalo [Gillmore], the Swopes [Herbert Bayard Swope], Dwight [Taylor], Marguerite [Courtney] and Hartley [Manners]. Played more or less ridiculous games during one of which it is elicited from Laurette [Taylor] that Christ was a modern, a European, wrote the Bible, the Ten Commandments and other interesting, and previously unknown, facts. We leave somewhat dazed just before 5 a.m. and drive home in thirty-five minutes.

Sunday, 20th January: Slumbered till after noon. Lunched in bed nursing unpleasant throat. Ruth indulged in marathon walk with two escorts. Went with my Wink for a stroll over golf links during which he expressed great curiosity over his origin. Find great difficulty in answering as I don't really know myself. After all where the dickens do we come from? Nobody knows—any more than were we go to. A mother at one end, a grave at the other—but there must be more than that. In the evening with Ruth and Hahn [Ray Hahn] to local movie to see The Slave of Desire. My God! Poor Balzac!

Thursday, 24th January: A little skating today with Wink. Ice very good. Wink very comic figure—his first experience on the ice. Rather like Mr Pickwick.

Sunday, 27th January: Lunch party at home—Margalo [Gillmore], (Alice) Brady, Gurney, Lionel (Watts). Spend morning running down liquor. Finally locate some at Scott Fitzgerald's. Childish games in afternoon. Trains first—then football. Little drink party in evening with Fitzgeralds. My Wink not well. Old chest again. Read him Peter Pan from new Barrie collection. Both of us much intrigued.

Wednesday, 30th January: Missing train, taxi to town. Enormous matinée—dozens turned away. Lynn Fontanne at 1st and 2nd Acts. Feeling particularly depressed. Part seems hopeless and ineffectual. Have desire to leave it as soon as possible.

Thursday, 31st January: Day of incredible idleness. Fiddled from morning to night (no connection with violin). My poor Wink still in bed but improving. After show am visited by one Heenan of Majestic (steamship) accompanied by sultry vamp. Arrive home, I regret, in yellow taxi (or was it green?) at unseemly hour, beating dawn by a short head. Not unreasonable annoyance on part of wife.

Friday, 1st February: Perfect day (climatically). Went walking with Ruth and, in spite of late night, insisted on faun-like dance in main road—Spring being distinctly in the air. Ruth full of apprehension about 12th child this last 12 months.[Apparently, Ruth's menstrual cycle was generally late and she had missed her period again and was concerned she was pregnant—which she was.] To Laurettes [Taylor] after play. Ran into Jack Buchanan, Gertrude Lawrence, 'Mattie' [A. E. Matthews], Violet Heming, Freddie Lonsdale, Ethel Barrymore, Daniell, Rubinstein. Retired at 5 a.m.—Hartley [Manners] giving up his room to me.

Saturday, 2nd February: Up at twelve, breakfasting at Laurette's [Taylor]. To matinée. Rushed about between shows to get copy of The Gulf [Leslie's play]. Full of hope it may please Ethel B [Barrymore]. Down to 12th Street after show but she not home.

Sunday, 3rd February: Hear on radio of death of Woodrow Wilson. We are all much affected. So great a man that most Americans fail to understand him, idealism not appealing to them.

Monday, 4th February: To Laurette's [Taylor] after show. Very dull bridge party consisting of [Alexander] A. Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Swopes and others. Only reason for going—Lady Diana Manners [later Cooper] never turned up, so wished had stayed at home. Sat up with Dwight [Franklin], Burton Rascoe and Laurence Stallings.

Friday, 8th February: Walking with Wink. Many things under discussion. Considerable progress with Higginbotham (current play-writing). More satisfied than usual with play.

Sunday, 10th February: To day we wake up to find first snow of the winter. Wink very excited. We make attempt at tobogganing. Scott Fitzgerald calls up at midnight asking me to go over to their party. Ruth threatens separation if I go—so decide it isn't worth it.

Monday, 11th February: Today is an auspicious day in the life of our Winkie. First day of School. What a terrible word. Instinctively he recoils from it at the last moment with a nameless dread which I can so well understand, having never got over it myself. Thus must the young bird feel on the day its parents tell it it must fly for the first time. Hated letting him go. Society has laid its first grasp upon him and it will never let him go. Some snow still so after school we buy a sleigh and go forth winter sporting.

Wednesday, 13th February: Another matinée which is very tiring. Between shows with Margalo [Gillmore] to Deems Taylor's. He plays some of his Beggar on Horseback music, also Casanova. Both are beautiful. He is quite one of the cleverest people I have ever met, and so versatile—composes, plays, writes, 'architects' and carpenters.

Friday, 15th February: Put in good deal of work and finish play. Am very fond of Hig—but whether it will ever see the light of day (?). [It did—under the name Murray Hill.]

Sunday, 17th February: Dwight Franklin comes today to work on model of Wink. It seems very promising. Wink and I for a little sleighing in snow. On our way over golf course in dusk Wink asks me two questions: 'Daddy, does one have to die?' and 'Why are we born if we have to die?' Why, indeed. Even to a child's mind the futility of it all is obvious.

Thursday, 21st February: Conceived idea for story or play—Polygamous Paul or Virginia Dreams. Travel to town with S. Fitzgeralds and [Ernest] Truex.

Friday, 22nd February: Washington's Birthday. Extra matinée thereby adding fifty dollars to family fortune. Interview at 5.30 with loquacious art-teacher. Decide to take private lessons with [Alfred] Lunt before proceeding to art-school. Wearied with gentleman's incessant talk stagger to club and dinner.

Monday, 25th February: Drive to town with Ruth, Wink and Miss Goss [Florence Gospel, the nanny]. Very late for appointment with drawing master. Alfred [Lunt] and I undergo first lesson. Pre-Raphaelite gentleman discourses rapidly, loudly and interminably on shattered torso of Hercules. We hope we have learnt something. Dined at club with Mattie [A. E. Matthews].

Tuesday, 26th February: Today Wink struts forth in inspiring panoply of new coat, hat, gloves, etc.—of very sporting and unmistakably English design. He begins to spread his wings—the male peacock in all his glory. The older garments were, however, put on for a little sport in the melting snow.

Thursday, 28th February: Most of day occupied in trying to get rid of unholy headache acquired God knows how. Drive through mud to see unspeakably beastly shack with doddering fool of estate agent. [Apparently, Leslie and Ruth had decided they wanted to own their own home and furniture.] Made headache much worse. Very annoyed. Train very late to town. Bored with performance. More headache—stomach probably deranged. Ruth meets train and car won't start. End of perfect day.

Sunday, 2nd March: Interesting visit to Sing-Sing prison to present Outward Bound to the dear convicts for the good of their souls. We are met by ambassadorial gent, looking like Sherlock Holmes or Lord Grey, who turns out to be forger doing second term. Name of Wyatt, son of a judge. Performance rather agonising in brown paper scenery. Dinner was pork, potatoes and salt-petre.

Monday, 3rd March: To my drawing lesson. [Alfred] Lunt not turning up—still suffering from effects of Sing-Sing. Did Mr. Hercules in yet another position. Shall soon know the gent's anatomy.

Tuesday, 4th March: Walking with Scott Fitzgerald over golf-links we discuss Otto Braun and the advance of science over the arts. Poor old Wink in bed with cold—but the snow is melting. Spring is in the air.

Friday, 7th March: Missed drawing lesson on account of water on the knee. Another memorable day for the poor cat who, having produced four dusky offspring, has three of them destroyed by Ruth with spartan ruthlessness. Justifiable kittencide! One consolation in being human—one can have fourteen with impunity. Perhaps the cat is better off after all.

Saturday, 8th March: Party at Laurette Taylor's to see private showing of new film Happiness. Present, among others, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Elsie Janis, Jeanne Eagels, J. Buchanan, Noël Coward, 'Mattie' [A. E. Matthews], Violet Heming, Philip Merivale, Lionel Atwill, etc. Film not over-good—but Laurette [Taylor] charming. Home 5 a.m.

Sunday, 9th March: Dwight Franklin and his mother to lunch. My Wink perfectly delightful all day. He insists on giving me a rose presented to him by Mrs. Franklin [Mary C. McCall, Jr.]. He stands it in water by my bed.

Monday, 17th March: Today we went to see The Miracle [film with Diana Cooper [Lady Diana Manners]] but was bored on several occasions. Thought it old-fashioned melodramatic hokum dressed in beautiful raiment, modernised by a veneer of symbolism.

Sunday, 23rd March: Drive to town. Tea at Margalo's [Gillmore] large party. To Laurette's [Taylor] to dinner. Small but amusing party. Played various absurd games till small hours, during one of which made brilliant speech on birth control—or lack of it. Home 4 a.m. [Howard had most likely learned that his wife was pregnant at about this time.]

Monday, 24th March: Pathetic little incident with Teddy Bears [Winkie had been teased for taking his teddy bears to school.]. The world is fastening its grip on my little Wink. He must not let the world think he is sentimental. He must be hard and manly, reserving the soft things for the privacy of home. Please, little Wink, don't lose your sweetness.

Thursday, 27th March: Drive to town with Ruth and Wink to see Fairbanks picture The Thief of Baghdad. Wink in ecstasies over magic carpet, invisible cloak and other manifestations of the supernatural. How we love the impossible.

Tuesday, 1st April: The world is fooled today by the sudden departure of spring in a snow blizzard. Wink rushes out in the midst of it to cover up his precious bulbs with leaves to protect them. Mary Kennedy [actress and writer, Deems Taylor's wife] writes a spring poem to Wink which appears in today's World.

Thursday, 3rd April: Thirty-one years ago today there appeared in a small house in Forest Hill, London, a very bald baby boy who was, at least at that time, a great pride to his newly married parents. It seems a long long time to have been in the world and not so very much to show for it. A little knowledge, a little sadness, a little happiness and a good deal of waste.

Friday, 4th April: Outward Bound still going steady despite rumours of closing.

Sunday, 6th April: Wilfred [Noy] and family spend day. Scott F. [Fitzgerald] comes round in afternoon to hear reading of Peggy's [his cousin, Wilfred Noy's daughter]. Very amusing.

Friday, 18th April: Good Friday! Rain, rain, rain! Incessant and torrential. Stayed in and finished Higginbotham and gave to Scott Fitzgerald to read.

Saturday, 19th April: Interviewed McLellan (George McLellan, theatrical manager) again re Spanish play (Spanish Nights by Gladys Unger) [title changed to The Werewolf] Also saw odd bird named Lee Shubert. Took play to read. Outward Bound down this week. Salary 50 dollars less.

Monday, 21st April: Early to town with Ruth. See McLellan and agree to play in Spanish play if terms all right. This is a big if. [Title changed to The Werewolf. This was Howard's next play.] Duse's death today at Pittsburgh by hideous irony of fate.

Sunday, 27th April: [Wilfred] Noys and Knox Orde [actor] come down for day. Scott F. [Fitzgerald]. Calls—also H. B. Warners.

Monday, 28th April: Started rehearsals for Spanish Nights [The Werewolf]. Very Spanish and very nocturnal. Cast: Lennox Pawle, Sidney Paxton, Reginald Mason, Charlotte Walker, Gabrielle Fleury, Jose Alessandro, Marion Coakley. Clifford Brooke directing with some interruptions from Gladys Unger and George McLellan.

Tuesday, 29th April: Rehearse all day. Outward Bound at night. Very tired.

Wednesday/Thursday, 1st May: Rehearse. Exasperating leading woman being bad actress and congenital idiot combined. Horribly fatigued. [Reginald] Mason out, Warburton Gamble in.

Saturday, 3rd May: Ten actors at rehearsal! Leading woman last word in B.Fs. Laryngitis appears imminent. Outward Bound to close next Saturday.

Sunday, 4th May: Conviction about laryngitis confirmed. Speechless! Take a long rest at last.

Saturday, 10th May: Last day of Outward Bound. Dine at Players (Club). After show go to [Alfred] Lunts with [J. M.] Kerrigan and [Alexander] Woollcott. Stay night at 70th Street. Rain.

Sunday, 11th May: Drive home to lunch in pouring rain. Wink says sometimes when he dreams he has a comedy as well as a feature dream.

Wednesday, 14th May: Rehearse. Hear we are to play Chicago. This the limit. Send McLellan wire protesting and demanding compensation.

Monday, 26th May: Travel to Stamford (Connecticut) for opening of Werewolf [new title of Spanish Nights]. Ruth with me. Wink promised to write and send me drawings. Exceptionally promising opening. Ruth Chatterton and Basil Sydney very enthusiastic among others.

Wednesday, 28th May: Say sad farewell to my Ruthy at Grand Central amid confusion and babel of traffic. It is always so hard to leave the ones one loves. A long tedious train journey and Buffalo at ten at night.

Thursday, 29th May: First performance in Buffalo after rehearsing most of the day. Awful audience!

Friday, 30th May: More rehearsals and another appalling performance. Matinée (Decoration Day) cancelled as only one small boy appeared at box office.

Friday, 6th June: Business improving. Tennis. Wink sends me some flowers from his garden. Bless him.

[Leslie Ruth in her book, A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 93, discusses some entries here in regard to the performance of the play in Chicago which are not included in Ronald Howard's book, Trivial Fond Records—the origin of this diary. Leslie Ruth's notations, "House not so good, disappointing...Business is a bit better...Begin to feel confident about play after all...Business fine," are all proof that there are more diary entries which were not included in Ronald Howard's book.

Also worth noting: Leslie Ruth also talks about her father's return to New York the first week of July and states that instead of coming straight home, Howard is "lured to dinner in New York before catching the train to Great Neck." Leslie Ruth goes on to state that her mother is "miffed" and writes in Howard's diary "dinner with lady in New York" to make sure that her husband knows she doesn't believe his story about a business meeting. (pg. 93)

There exists a photo on Ginevra Di Verduno's very well-researched site, Inafferrabile Leslie Howard, that shows Howard with Claudette Colbert on the tennis court dated 1924. The same photo appears in Hollywood magazine in the June, 1934, issue but it is dated 1926 and Colbert claims that she and Howard became good friends while she was appearing in a play in Chicago in 1926. However, I have not found any reference that places Howard in Chicago in 1926.

The coincidence of (1) his diary notation of Friday, 6th June "Tennis," (2) the picture of Howard and Colbert on the tennis court in Chicago dated 1924 on the named website, (3) his wife's suspicions that he was involved with another woman, (4) the missing notations in Howard's diary, and (5) the ending of diary notations altogether shortly after his return to New York may all be the source of rumors that Howard and Colbert had an affair. When Leslie Ruth is born on October 18, Ruth makes another angry notation. See the note below. Ronald Howard also notes in his book, In Search of my Father, pg. 42, that after Leslie Ruth was born, the couple's relationship changed to one of "undemanding quiescence, a plateau of acceptance. They shared a home and family responsibilities—but occupied separate rooms."]

Saturday, 28th June: Notice put up today to close in Chicago. Five weeks altogether here.

Saturday, 5th July: Close in Chicago.

Tuesday, 8th July: Show closed for summer.* Period of idleness commences.

Monday, 4th August: Rehearsals again for Werewolf.

Monday, 11th August: Reopen Werewolf at Long Branch [New Jersey].

[Leslie Ruth notes more entries in her book regarding expenses, "very worrying," "much anxiety that the latest Howard may be given birth to on Broadway or other inconvenient spot," and "Endless discussion concerning impending confinement. It grows very wearing. I might be having the baby myself. (pg. 96) Leslie Ruth then states that Leslie was overtaxed with worry and responsibility while waiting for the baby to arrive and stopped writing in his diary. (pg. 97) However, Leslie Ruth includes in her book (pg. 101) another passage "recorded" by her father, this one made during the summer of 1925.]

* The play then went on a short tour via Asbury, New Jersey and New Haven, Connecticut—and opened in New York on 25th August. After the first performance Leslie's only comment was 'Difficult first night'. The following morning, after reading the press, he wrote: 'Awful notices—but play may catch on.'

The play, however, did not catch on and the cast were asked to take the usual salary cuts. Even this could not save the Werewolf once the New York critics had savaged it, and a week later it was taken off. On 18th October, Leslie became a father again. As my sister wrote in her biography, 'Ruth finally produced a daughter'—yet in his diary 'Leslie recorded nothing.' In fact, it was Ruth who made the entry on that auspicious day: 'Today I presented my husband with a beautiful daughter, eleven pounds and eleven ounces; maybe sometime he will write on the subject.'

'But he did not,' my sister wrote thirty-five years later, 'rather as if the blow had been too much for him, he never wrote in that diary or any other again.' My sister's sense of humour over this lack of observation on the part of her father, however, disguises the fact that she was in due course to receive as much, if not more, affection and attention than Winkie had before her. In fact, Leslie became slavishly devoted to her. However there was one more diary entry, in Leslie's hand, after 18th October. It is the last diary entry he was ever to make. Under 29th December, 1924, it reads: 'Opened Buffalo with Isabel'."

Trivial Fond Records, pgs. 41-48


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