I was so caught up in her magical account that it took some time to tear my eyes away from her grand performance to see how Weber was taking it. He sat back on the couch with hands locked over a knee, wearing a smile of total triumph. He’d tricked her! Set her up! He’d purposely bored us so as to lure Arlen into taking over and telling his story the way he knew it deserved to be told: with the enthusiasm and delight of a zealous convert, of someone thrilled to see the light and committed to being part of the design.
His scheme worked perfectly. When Arlen was finished, she was the most excited person in the room. She could see the future and it was hers. She ended by describing her role. From the tone of her voice, if the film had been a house for sale, she would already have bought it, moved in, and been reading a magazine in the den.
We sat in charged silence, the three of us in thrall to her performance. Roland was the first to speak. Arlen was still so into what she’d been doing that her head jerked slightly at the sound of his voice.
“I think it’s your cup of tea, sweetheart.”
Turning to him, her eyes slowly registered what he’d said and what it meant. “It is. I think I have to do it, Roland. If I don’t…” She walked to the large window that looked out on the vineyards. “I was going to plant sunflowers over there. Sunflowers and pumpkins over there. I love pumpkins when they’ve just begun to grow. They remind me of little Japanese lanterns.” She stood at the window with her back to us for a long time. It was her moment and she owned it in all of our lives. When she turned, her eyes went right to Weber. “You bastard. I don’t know whether to thank or kill you.”
“Ah, come on. It’s like eating grapefruit—after the first bite it’s not sour anymore.”
She gave him a false exaggerated smile that was gone in an instant. “Fine, then you take the first bite.”
I started feeling odd after we returned from Europe. When that moved up to odder, I went to a doctor and found out I was pregnant. Unfortunately, I am one of those women who has to fight their body the whole way to bring a child to term. There was one complication after another. By the time Arlen had returned to America and began filming, I was flat on my back in bed and thus unable to work with her.
Perhaps it was for the best, because from day one, Wonderful was plagued by difficulties that had everyone either pulling out his hair or trying to avoid the wrath and roll of studio executives growing ever more ballistic as they watched both the budget and shooting schedule climb into the ionosphere.
No one wanted to upset me because I was having my own tough time, so what little I heard was watered way down. They were having “difficulties”; one of the actors had taken sick (in fact, had had a major stroke), which threw filming off… that was what I heard. But then an article appeared in the Calendar section of the L.A. Times entitled “Wonderful Chaos” which went into delighted gory detail about what was happening on the set, and it scared me good. When I told Roland I’d seen the article and asked what the hell was really going on over there, he sat on our bed and, sighing like a sick old man, began by saying it was a catastrophe and he’d be amazed if the movie was ever finished. Weber was renowned for bringing every one of his pictures in on time and under budget, so what was going wrong on this one? My husband, who ain’t no dummy when it comes to making movies, shook his head and said, “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. I get the feeling he’s Job with this one. Anything that can go wrong has or will. I gave him a present the other day as a joke—a motorcycle helmet. Know what he did? Didn’t smile. Said, “Good idea,” put it on, and went right back to work. Worked the whole day wearing a goddamned helmet. And you know what’s worse? I don’t think anyone on the set laughed when they saw him in it.”
One of the people who saved the project was Arlen. Everyone connected with it said she was invaluable. When she wasn’t in front of the camera, she was on the sidelines trying either to pep someone up or soothe a savage executive who was threatening for the fifteenth time to shut the picture down. Weber swears that when the head of the studio called him in for the inevitable do-or-die meeting, Arlen insisted on being there. She spoke so logically and compellingly about the film that the cynic in the two-thousand-dollar suit across the table from them said okay, go ahead and finish. Weber won a great many prizes for his work on Wonderful, but to his credit each time he gave an acceptance speech he said without Arlen Ford they never would have completed the film.
To be honest, I don’t like the movie. I love scenes in it, especially the opening. All that hazy snow, silence; then as things start to focus, we realize everything is upside down. Then the roar comes up and we’re shown that it’s not snow, it’s confetti. The world upside down in a snowstorm of confetti. Camera rights itself, changes perspective, pulls back, and there’s the little girl being held out a window by her feet in the middle of a ticker-tape parade. I love that. I love many parts of the film, but the story Weber and Arlen told us in Vienna was far warmer and happier than the final result. Real art shows you in great, eye-opening detail that, the world is either a good or a bad place. Both are valid, certainly, and it is up to us to decide how we want to fit those unarguable truths into our own experience. I saw Wonderful for the first time after I’d fought my body and an incompetent doctor to give birth to a healthy child. I didn’t want to be told life is a series of flickering accidents and twists of fate that were here and vivid but finally confusing. I believed important battles could be won; that that was so because we possess certain great weapons—commitment, stamina, love—that can even the odds against us.
Admittedly I am old hat and stuck in many of my views. Wonderful touched off emotional sirens and loud debates wherever it was shown because, if nothing else, it was a movie you had to see if you wanted to be considered hip or informed. Critics and loudmouths had a field day with it. It was a masterpiece, an insult, an empty diatribe, a cautionary exegesis (honestly, they used that word) that brilliantly illuminated… It was a success. A high-brow film that appealed to a wide audience who willingly went back to see it again in case they’d missed something first time around.
To spice up the stew even more, after it had been out a while and begun winning nominations and prizes, Arlen announced at the Berlin Film Festival that she was retiring from acting. Why? Because she’d had enough. She was charming and funny about it and very candid. She admitted that, with the exception of this film, her career had not been successful in recent years. She preferred to retire now, having done the best work of her life, rather than years down the line when she’d be thrilled just to get character roles. “I like to believe I have some character, but would rather not think of myself as one yet. That comes soon enough. It’s just better to go out riding the elephant at the front of the parade. Simple as that.”