Lowell Sherman — The Least-Known Man in Hollywood (1932) 🇺🇸

September 24, 2024

Lowell Sherman is an enigma to his friends, as well as to his public. The Hollywood natives see him as a monocled man of the world — witty, risqué and cold. But like you, they have never suspected he is sentimental to the core. Right now, having been left by his wife, Helene Costello, he has Hollywood guessing. The town can’t figure him out — but you’ll know him better after reading this story

by Sara Hamilton

“When Lowell Sherman’s pretty wife, Helene Costello, walked out on him a month ago, Hollywood sat up in amazement and gasped, “Why, I thought they were devoted. What ever happened?”

But no one seemed to know. For Lowell couldn’t be approached. Not, of course, unless you wanted to crawl home on all fours and apply raw steaks to sore spots. And Helene wasn’t at home. Not to Hollywood.

So rumors thicker than pea soup flew about. All hot and all wrong. For the few on the inside, who really knew, weren’t telling. Weren’t telling, for instance, that the whole trouble wasn’t the old story of too much mother-in-law (the lovable Mrs. Costello is now dead), but too much brother-in-law.

For Lowell Sherman is a splendid actor. A movie actor. In Hollywood. And brother-in-law John Barrymore is another splendid actor. A movie actor in Hollywood. Need more be said?

Jealousies and unpleasantness arose. And suddenly two once-closely-united sisters found themselves growing farther and farther apart.

Aware that Sherman — the screen’s most successful actor-director — knew everything there was to know about movie technique, Barrymore would insist upon having his advice (as he had it in his first talkie, General Crack), and then fret himself into a fever over the outcome. If Lowell offered a suggestion, John hied himself off to a corner to turn it over and over in his mind — to find the catch. For Hollywood suggestions are usually full of catches. Like prizes in popcorn.

And so, without anyone being exactly to blame, the thing grew and spread beyond the walls of a Hollywood sound stage to the stucco mansions of these two in Beverly Hills. But blood, even in Hollywood, is thicker than seltzer water, and Helene walked out. To see Dolores.

“I haven’t seen Dolores’ baby for months,” Helene cried to friends. “I’ve just got to go.” And she went. All of which turns the bright, glaring spotlight of Hollywood on Lowell Sherman. “What manner of man is this?” they ask.

Well, Lowell Sherman wears a monocle in his right eye, a hat brim dipped over his left one, and an “ah-there” look in both. “Keep away!” Hollywood warns. “He’ll send you reeling out into the well-known sunshine with both ears, burning. You’ll even believe Santa Claus has a love-life when Lowell’s through.” And so the word swings around the town and has swung for many a day. Just as Lowell Sherman has intended.

For this man has simply kidded Hollywood to death. More completely than Hollywood has ever been kidded in the past. Lowell Sherman is truly and honestly the least-known man in town.

He wears invincible armor — an exterior of polite, cold, sharp-tongued sophistication. And no one has ever suspected, no one has ever dreamed, that behind that armor lives another Lowell Sherman. A man of warm tender feelings. A sentimentalist to the core. Hollywood’s supreme sentimental sophisticate.

He likes to burn your ears

If you were to walk up politely to the monocle-wearing, brim-dipping Mr. Sherman and inquire as to his favorite sport, he would give you an answer that would not only curl your hair permanently, but act as a facelift and gland-rejuvenator.

For that’s his act. The armor which carefully conceals from the world that here is a man who thrills at the mere soft strains of “Shine On, Shine On, Harvest Moon.” Because a woman of the stage, his beloved stage, once sang it. Never having known the late Nora Bayes personally, so strong, so fiercely within him burns the passionate devotion for the theater, and all it stands for, that he is visibly depressed that one who gave it so much has passed beyond.

“Shine On, Shine On, Harvest Moon.” It gets him.

He’ll finger for hours an old scrap of material. Just an old patch. Tenderly, reverently, he’ll handle it. Because it once belonged to a costume worn by Edwin Booth. Lovingly he’ll turn the pages of Robert Mantell’s old prompt-book.

Hollywood’s unsuspected sentimentalist. At home.

To the world he presents a debonair, worldly wise, man-about-town manner. He’s like a delightful villain in a Noël Coward play — who has no place on this side of the footlights. One who goes about constantly flicking his English cigarette with a polished forefinger. Tap, tap, tap. Three puffs and nonchalantly it’s cast aside. In five minutes’ time he’s tapping another one.

From his lips, with lightning-like rapidity, fly forth rapier-like thrusts, keen, biting bits of sardonic humor.

In a certain picture which he recently directed, the question of how to cut a certain scene arose. The supervisor insisted upon cutting it one way, Lowell another. They argued and wrangled and discussed it. Then one day Lowell and a friend strolled into a projection room to see the picture and found, to his utter surprise, the picture had been cut the supervisor’s way. That was enough.

Outraged, he marched into the supervisor’s office. Again they argued and quarreled. “It’ll be cut my way,” insisted the supervisor. “It most assuredly shall be cut my way,” insisted Lowell. Back and forth they argued. All afternoon. Came the twilight, as the movies were wont to say, and they were still at it.

“Well, let’s think it over tonight and discuss it tomorrow,” the supervisor barked. Sherman crossed the street to a parking station for his car. Suddenly close beside him a huge Airedale rose up from a seat and snarled ferociously at him. Without batting an eye or raising his voice, he turned calmly around and remarked, “Yes, and you’re wrong, too. It’s going to be cut my way.”

He has a ghastly temper. But he’ll sit calmly by without uttering a word when he should by all rights be raging. And then at some trivial little thing he’ll vent his rage on someone handy. And tear about madly, with gestures.

He knows this old world

The word “sophisticate” has been misused in Hollywood. The natives are prone to pronounce anyone a sophisticate who is not exactly naive. But Lowell Sherman is Hollywood’s truest sophisticate. He is not only an American, born and educated here. He is an internationalist. About him swings a world. And as it revolves he can place a finger on every spot and discuss intelligently the political problems of that country.

He’ll walk up to a painting. It’s a Corot, a Whistler, a Rembrandt, he’ll say. Never missing it. But — and here’s where Lowell Sherman out-sophisticates Hollywood — not only does he instantly recognize the masters, but he knows, to the most intimate detail, the life of the man behind the brush. And of famous musicians, as well. He is an expert at knowing exactly what happened to a certain famous man and a farmer’s daughter on a certain summer’s night at a certain wayside inn. Always his stories lie on the side of sentiment. Of tender, even beautiful reminiscences. His mind is steeped in them.

He collects Chinese pieces. He owns among his collection a rare Chinese doll, more than a thousand years old. He possesses Tang statuettes, gorgeous robes, among them several prayer robes. And not only does he possess them, but knows the story behind each piece. He has to know the story.

His monocle a necessity

He owns fifteen cigarette cases. These he changes to suit his clothes. A square case for morning, an octagonal case for afternoon, an ebony case for evening. So what?

But the monocle is, after all, not an affectation. It’s a necessity. He is extremely near-sighted in one eye. And rather than mar the perfect picture of a bored man-about-town with a pair of sexless spectacles, he sports a monocle. Without it, he’ll squint himself into a headache.

He’s the perfect host. “Come over to my house,” he’ll insist to his friends. No role pleases him more than that of host. His carving at table is an art in itself.

It’s there, in the peacefulness of his home, among his few close friends that the real Lowell Sherman emerges. Turning over old theater programs he has collected. Not to be displayed, but to be loved. He’ll read over the names of men and women whose last scene was played before he ever came to the theater. Over and over he’ll read them. With the suspicion of a catch in his throat. A suspicion of a tear in his eye. All the sarcastic wit, the slightly lewd allusions, the worldly manner, stripped in a flash.

He’s acting right now

“I don’t wonder at Helene Costello, his wife, leaving Lowell Sherman,” a certain woman remarked, the other day. “I always did think him a stony-hearted, sharp-tongued sophisticate. But now he’s a snarling bear. I wouldn’t go near him.”

I wouldn’t, either. For I’m unreasonably touched by good acting.

What Hollywood doesn’t understand is that the ferocious snarling of Lowell Sherman to-day is nothing but the protective snarls of a wounded animal. A great, splendid, heart-breaking performance.

For the real Sherman, the sentimentalist, is done almost to death with grief. He’ll recover, of course. He has before. But Hollywood will never suspect what went on behind that mask, that restless tapping on an English cigarette. For he does his stuff so thoroughly.

I happened to be passing across the lot at RKO Studios the other day. Sherman, for all the world like a risqué and charming villain, with his immense overcoat collar turned up about his throat, his hat brim dipping and his monocle gleaming, passed by. Suddenly a strange young woman tripped out of a nearby building.

Their eyes met. They passed. There was a pause. Two pauses. A pause apiece, in fact. A little backward glance. Over a shoulder. A faltering. A hesitating. Another glance. An eyebrow raised. A mustache twisted. A monocle gleaming. A parting of sweet, young lips. A flashing smile. Two flashing smiles. A last backward glance. A last — well, Lowell Sherman was merely passing by. True to form. Giving Hollywood a grand time.

And, incidentally, Lowell wasn’t having such a bad time himself.

While all Hollywood was buzzing with speculation about what Helene’s grounds for divorce would be, Lowell suddenly opened suit, himself. Always doing the unexpected. How can Hollywood figure him out?

He alleges that Helene called him “an old man” and “a ham actor.” If she really said these things, you can imagine how they rankled with Lowell Sherman — an actor so smooth that Hollywood has never, until now, guessed the real Lowell Sherman.