Maisie in Hollywood
The Tempestuous Life of Marcelline Mulot (The Introduction to a Series)
Mulot was a queen of the silent screen, one of the very first.
Between 1922 and 1928 she starred in no fewer than 24 productions. She earned, and spent, a fortune. But her films disintegrated in industry vaults. Today, who knows the name?
She made the sort of extravaganza that critics dismiss, but which fans savor and cherish. Her pictures featured lavish sets and props and gorgeous clothes. Mulot wore stunning costumes, frequently more changes than the other cast members combined.
Her on-screen persona was one that almost everyone could relate to. Men adored her come-hither sauciness. Women admired her pluck. She got away with bits that, delivered by a more intense actress, would have been immediately rejected by the Hayes Office, guardians of public morality. Semi-nude seduction scenes can hardly be taken seriously when the sizzling sexpot stumbles over her lover’s tail during her frenzied Dance of the She-Dervish.
She had footage from the film in her possession. She ran it for me on an ancient Powers Cameragraph projector, which was a thrill in itself. “Here it be!” she squealed as the infamous gyration appeared on the screen.
I knew what was coming, but had only seen stills. I was on the edge of my seat.
“We assured the Hayes creeps I’d be good, a jeweled strap affair criss-crossing my six titties, which until then I’d been very casual about cloaking.
“Cover up, I was told. The code read, female bosoms to be draped at all times. Nothing about an exception for mice. Well, that really got my goat. On a whim I flashed Rudy a rouged tug. There!” She jumped from her chair in excitement. “Did you catch it? One of my lollipops bare naked to the world! It got past the fools, can you believe it? What a laugh we had about that!
“Rudy whipped his tail around. I tripped over it, fell into his arms, which wasn’t in the script. He was supposed to spurn my advances. I was to pick up a mango, munch on it calmly, and grind the remains into his gorgeous puss. I figured the director would insist on tossing the take, but when we saw the rushes, well, no way was I gonna let the scene be junked.
“Back home we ran around in our birthday suits, no one thought nothin’ of it,” she confided. “Leave it to a bubble-brain blue-nose to demand that — Christ Almighty! — even a damn mouse cover her bubbies. Okay, the truth: It wasn’t an accident, It was my way of saying, Fuck you, Mr. Hays, you moron!”
She shook her fist gleefully. “Maybelle Snodgrass didn’t get from Devil’s Asshole, Kansas to top-of-the-heap Hollywood without being a sly bitch. I called the shots on my sets. It was my career, a big career, at stake. I had approval of director, cameraman, make-up, the works. Then came the incident. Don’t ask about it, got it? That’s off limits.”
Fifty years gone and the scandal was still a raw wound. Despite her warning, she eventually opened up. Talk about your fall from grace: on top of the world, furs, yachts, queen of the lot, on a par with Swanson and Normand, three years later behind the perfume counter in Macy’s. The drinking, the drifting, read it here, folks, nowhere else. The lady will have no more to say on the matter.
Marcelline (she preferred Maisie, her childhood nickname) was never a great actress, but she had a joie d’vivre that made up for thespian deficiencies. She played the adorable hussy over and over. She tried to broaden her reach several times but the public would not have it.
Her celebrated ‘copulatory stare’ (stolen from Theda Bara was the film colony consensus. Mulot denies it, claims it was the other way around) seems quaint today, the libidinous thrill of those charcoal-rimmed beady eyes is lost to us, desensitized as we are to lust-lite in these triple-X times.
Her brazen vamp now seems roll-your-eyes loony, not the daring portrayal it most assuredly was.
I was able to obtain a letter of introduction to the lady from one who had known her when. Like Garbo, but without Garbo’s bucks to cushion the fall, she had chosen to drop out of sight. She could have gone into TV, exploiting the curiosity factor, but she preferred not to deteriorate in the public eye. You’d hear of a sighting now and then, but no solid lead. It took a good bit of sleuthing to track her down.
After a period of probation, she granted an eager film student’s request to conduct a series of interviews. The transcripts of those sessions plus the wholly unexpected access to private photos and mementos form the basis of this piece on the work and life of a pioneer of the cinema, a sadly underrated, all but forgotten artist.
By the way, though she paired with him only once (as both the straitlaced professor of Egyptology Francellia Fortesque and her ancient-era counterpart, the wanton Princess A’isha, in ‘Spell of the Siren Sands’), her favorite co-star was the swoon-inducing Rudolph Rodentino.
Rodentino. I guess that name rings a bell, eh?
MM took her last breath on June 2, 1988. You might wonder about her unnatural longevity. I sure did. Her answer was, “Clean living, sugar,” accompanied by a smirk. Maybe the preparation she did for the role as an Egyptologist (she was a maniac for research) furnished her with the secret of a Biblical, and then some, span of years. We’ll never know, will we?
She did not pass alone. I was at her side. I had moved her into my small Jane Street apartment. I constructed, out of a shoebox, wire, gauze, and miniature silk roses, a replica of the luxurious canopied four poster from “The Princess Zakahara”, the gift which she had received from the studio at the wrap-up of production on her first smash hit. Luckily, I had a dozen stills to work from. It was a pathetic piece of craftsmanship, but it gave her great joy.
She died in that bed, surrounded by her photographs, full of piss and vinegar to the end, her agile wit diminished not one iota, bright as ever, a delight to be around. Did you happen to catch the obit in the New York Times? I reproduce it at the end of the book.
It has taken me thirty years to complete this labor of love. Why so long? Like Mulot, I’ve led a bumpy life. Also, I had no luck finding a publisher. Today we have ebooks. I can put this out by myself.
Perhaps the delay was for the best.
I had originally dealt gingerly with the lesbian affair that ended her film career. The world has changed radically since then.
Miss Mulot, knowing that I intended to fashion a book from her reminiscence, begged me to be circumspect. The foremost proponent of Anything Goes, circumspect! (Mae West had nothing on Maisie. By the way, they admired each other. Are you surprised?)
Maybe she was looking to fudge her personal story for the sake of her film legacy, to let her all too brief cinematic work hold the spotlight, rather than her decades-long turn as a flim-flam artist/crank/kook, although that was the role she’d always relished above all others.
That was then; this is now. The time to tread lightly upon the sensitivities of jingoistic moralists is past; it’s time to be brash. MM, the invincible, irrepressible, altogether admirable spirit that she was would surely agree.
If she were alive today, I don’t doubt that she would be game to flash an ancient tit and scream, “I am who I am. Take me or leave me!” She’d let loose with her raucous squeal: “Sweetie, fix me up with a drinkie, eh? (she loved a dry martini with a length of celery in it), throw Cole, that scoundrel, on the Victrola (Cole Porter, she knew him well), a little boogie-woogie will perk us up, kiddo.”
Some take a cocktail onion instead of an olive in the libation, in which case it’s referred to as a Gibson. She started the fad for a celery stalk stir dunked in vermouth. It was called a Mulot. I’ve yet to find this bit of cocktail trivia on Wikipedia. I guess I’ll have to insert it myself.
I will speak, by and by, about her obsession with a certain cheese product, a fetish she picked up when she made her final–frankly, sordid–stab at salvaging her career in Germany, in Der Glanz des Heuhaufens (Splendors of the Haystack). Go to one of her wild parties, take her, not a bottle of wine, but a tub of cheese-goo, you were her best pal.
That was mostly PR for the books she self-published, a sub-sub-genre, lesbian mouse smut. She staged signings at the few accommodating venues, leftist bookstores and bohemian coffee houses. Buy a copy, she’d scribble a wise-crack and autograph it. (Those items bring good money today. One went at Christie’s last ephemera sale for four-hundred bucks.)
You’d get your picture taken with her. You got fed. She’d serve Cheese Whiz on celery stalks, with a wink and a sales pitch: “Read my book, eh, kiddo? Got some neat Cheese-Goo recipes in it. Sorry, no Mulots today, not in the budget.”
Bring your own gin, she’d donate celery dipped in her favorite vermouth. That amusing offer got her press. She tried to extract a modest sum from the vermouth company for the plug. As might be imagined, they preferred to keep their distance.
That snub she fed to Winchell, along with a zinger: ‘My vermouth is class, but me, I’m trash’. He ran it. It was a tasty item, and the name Mulot still merited a mention. Needless to say, he roughed her up–that was his stock-in-trade. She didn’t mind. Her crack went (as we would say today) viral.
Maisie the Moocher (as Winchell gleefully christened her) didn’t miss a trick.
That’s how she got along, on sweet cons and considerable charm. She used people, but gently. They, mostly, adored it. She said to me once (Man! She knew everybody) “The screwball got his best bit from me. I have always depended on the kindness of suckers, that was my gag. Mine! People love when you call them a sucker, if you do it to their face. If you happen to be the former ball-of-fire Marcelline Mulot.”
She told me: “I called him Cuckoo-Bird.” (Can it be that’s how Gore Vidal came by the Glorious Bird, his name for Tennessee Williams? Yikes!) “He and I ran with the same crowd. We bumped heads plenty. He’d latch on to me at a bar, an opening, and follow me around. I thought he was a weirdo. Then I caught on. I’d spit out some inventive vulgarity, you know me and my mouth. He’d whip out a notepad and take it down. It was annoying, but I never made an issue of it.
“He swiped from me. Everyone knew it, everyone who mattered. Hey, I dined out on it for years. Folks knew they could count on me to turn a dull gathering into a happening, as they used to say. I collected a circle of friends who were more than glad to do for me, thank God. It ain’t like I can march down to the market and buy my own damn gin.”
Martini put away, she’d launch into her chicken dance, that’s what I called it, crack-you-up dips, twirls, and kicks from the ‘Bird of Paradise’ number she’d performed during her stint on Broadway. I got so I could match her move for move, until we’d both collapse in a fit of giggles.
Good for what ails ya, peoples. The cure for those Up-to-Here/Enough-of-This-Crapola Blues.
Have a Mulot and get silly. I recommend it.
Read Part One: She Came to Prominence As An Actress, But Her First Love Was Dance at
