How Irene Dunne Found Sudden Riches

It was just past dawn and the early morning fog put a nipping chill in the air over the little town of Torrance, a few miles away from Hollywood. Weary from an all-night vigil, Irene Dunne stood in the midst of a group of dishelved workmen and with them breathlessly watched a hole in the ground.

For once her usually immaculately groomed person was all wrong. Grease and mud splittered her from head to foot. One cheek was smudged with black oil. Her teeth were chattering, as much as from excitement, however, as from the cold.

Out of the hole she watched would come, in the next few moments, success or failure. Out of it might come weeks of wasted effort, time and money, or out of it might come precious black gold. There was no way of knowing which.

That moment of waiting was one of the most dramatic in her entire life. She admits that now. The tension was almost unbearable. Suddenly a wild shout went up.

"Oil!" a man screamed. "It's there. Lots of it! We've got it!"

The knees of the erstwhile glamorous great lady of the screen buckled without warning and she precipitously sat down in the middle of the of a puddle of muck and mud.

Irene Dunne had brought in a gusher!

Do you ever have hunches? Do you believe in them?

It was nothing but a hunch she had about that well with a little over a month ago, but she played it to the hilt. And now she has a well that is flowing 350 beautiful big barrels  - and that means 350 beautiful dollars - a day.

Exciting? Of course! But far more important to Irene, I think, is the promise of happiness that has nothing to do with money, a happiness that a few days ago seemed improbable she would possess for some time to come.

I'll tell you about that later. She doesn't talk about it but she does't have to; you can see it in her eyes, hear it in the lilt of her voice, and sense it in her spirit which is free and gay, as if some heavy weight had been lifted. Which it has.

But you can't get a word in edgewise when she talks about her oil well, and that's something of a record. Getting Irene to talk at length on anything is one of the thoughest jobs in Hollywood: the Sphinx is a noisy chatterbox in comparison. She runs on and on about oil, and the way she tosses technical terms in your face leaves you frantically trying to catch up with what it's all about.

There is one funny angle to the whole thing. Oil was the one thing Dr.Francis Griffin, her husband, warned her about when she first came to California and he stayed behind in New York to take care of his extensive dental practice.

"Don't let the "oil bug" bite you," he cautioned her. "If anybody comes around trying to sell you an oil well, sweetheart, take to the high hills!"

And really I think that's one reason Irene is getting such a huge kick out of this whole thing; it does the best of husbands no harm to have a chip nicked off their superiority now and then.

The whole thing started one day when Irene and Dr.Griffin were returning from the races at Hollywood Park. Irene remembers she had dropped ten dollars because she had played the favorite instead her "hunch horse". The road home ran through the little town of Torrance which had been the site of an oil boom twenty-five years ago. It has as many derricks dotting its landscape as an octogenarian's birthday cake has candles.

Suddenly they came upon an acre patch of ground, bare save for field grass turning brown, sandwiched in between the many wells.

"That's funny", Irene commented idly, "Wonder why that patch hasn't been developed?"

"Proved is the word", Dr.Griffin amiably corrected.

Heretofore the doctor's closest association with oil, I might add, was being the brother of the man who invented the well point, and a well point has nothing to do with an oil well. It's a gadget contractors use in a pumping system when the run into water.

"Well, whatever it is, I wonder why it's bare," Irene went on, "I wonder who owns it?"

"Standard Oil, probably," Dr.Griffin opined. "They control a lot of stuff around here."

"Hmm", his wife murmured.

It was at that instant, she said, the hunch was born. But she kept it to herself.

The next day she drove to Torrance to find out who owned the land. The doctor thought she was playing golf. She discovered the property was listed in the name of an old couple whom we shall call the Smiths because, now that they have a little money, they don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry in Los Angeles trying to get it away from them.

The Smiths lived in a modest little home not far from the oil field. A gentle-faced woman in her sixties met Irene at the door.

"I'm Mrs. Francis Griffin," Irene introduced herself, "My husband and I are interested in your property in the oil field. Have you ever thought of drilling a well?"

Of course they had, Mrs. Smith replied, only they never had had the money to be able to do it. Sinking wells was a big gamble, and they had all they could do to make ends meet as it was. Besides, only a month ago had they finally received a title on the property although they had paid taxes on it for twenty-nine years. Something to do with complications in a community lease...Yes, sinking wells cost a lot of money and Mrs. Smith and Mr. Smith earned only a modest salary as salesman in a Torrance store.

"I've got a hunch," Irene began, and then went on to explain what she had in mind. She and Dr. Griffin would finance the sinking of a well, and they would lease the property of the Smiths on a generous percentage basis. She would bring the doctor down tomorrow to talk to Mr. Smith about it. As she turned to leave, Mrs. Smith interrupted.

 

Oh, Mrs. Griffin," she said, and there was a twinkle in her merry blue eyes, "by any chance have you seen a movie called "The Joy Of Living"?"

Caught off guard, Irene said she had.

"So have I", Mrs. Smith said succintly.

Incidentally, that has been the only time Mrs. Smith has indicated she recognized Irene's stellar identity. Since then Irene has been only "that sweet Mrs. Griffin who was smart enough to know a good thing when she saw it." But you can bet Mrs. Smith is anticipating Irene's next picture "Love Affair" in which RKO will co-star her with Charles Boyer, with more than ordinary interest.  

That night at dinner Irene casually brough up the subject of oil. "By the way", she said, "Standard Oil doesn't own that property in Torrance."

"No?", her husband answered. "Who does?"

Timing it perfectly, she dropped her bombshell.

"We do", she said. "That is, we're going to if you like the idea." She went on to explain her hunch, and the plans she had in mind.

Dr. Griffin seized on them with an enthusiasm that surprised even Irene. And yet in a way, it didn't. She knew all too well how difficult it was for a man to content himself with at daily round of golf, even if he was on a vacation visit. Dr. Griffin leaves his practice in New York as often as he feels he can to spend some time with Irene and their adorable little daughter, Missy. A man who has been busy all his life must keep busy or there is no peace in him.

The deal was signed with the Smiths the next day and work starte immediately. Drilling an oil well always is a gamble, but in a field which was exploited twenty-five years before, the gamble became even greater. Tenaciously Irene clung to her hunch.

 

Three shifts of men kept at the drilling night and day but still the time seemed to drag. As the zero hour approached, Irene fought to contain her impatience.

Dr. Griffin was at the field every day. Irene wanted to be but, for appearances'sake, it was decided she should go about her daily routine in a normal way. Neither wanted any inkling of what they were about to get out in Hollywood. Secrecy made it more exciting, added zest to the adventure. Besides, a conspiracy of silence seems to be the correct attitude toe strike when you are drilling an oil well, they were given to know. Then, too, if the well failed to come in, if Irene's hunch proved a dud, they would save themselves a lot of ribbing from friends.  

And thereby rose a rumor that had Hollywood guessing plenty for awhile.

The Francis Griffins were pffft! Really? Why certainly! Wasn't it perfectly obvious when Irene turned up alone at parties two Sundays in a row! Certainly the doctor played golf, but you don't play golf all afternoon and evening, too! And wasn't she alone at Claudette Colbert's dinner party the other night? It certainly was too bad, but there it was. Poor Irene!

Poor Irene was having the time of her life chuckling at the situation. Every fresh rumor that reached their ears would sent the Griffins off in gales of laughter. This was the best joke ever! If only the well came in...

They were dressing for the premiere of "Marie Antoinette" when word reached them that there was a chance "she" ( I wonder why oil wells are always "shes"?) might come in that night.

We'll be there," Irene promised. "We'll be a little late but we'll be there."

I'll bet that to this day Irene can't remember a tenth of what she saw on the screen that night. All she wanted to do was to get out of the theater, change her white crepe evening gown, ermine coat, and Paul Flato jewelry for boots, a heavy shirt and a pair of overalls and get out to Torrance.

One more coal was added to the fire of gossip when the Griffins failed to show at the swank party at the Trocadero which followed the brilliant premiere.

"What did I tell you?", one busybody announced. "Of course they went to the premiere. They had to. That's business. But something is awfully funny when they don't show up here. There's something in the wind, you mark my words."

There was. Oil. As Irene neared the field, the pungent smell of it filled her nostrils and set her heart beating wildly.

Hollywood and the movies were more than a few miles away. They were part of another world, an unreal world. This was the real thing, this was a true drama. No longer was she a glamorous movie queen, living a life envied by millions of other women throughout the world. Here she was a woman, standing beside her husband as other woman had done before her, praying that the thing to which they had pinned such high hopes would come true. This was something they had done together, and as such, I think, it meant more to her than any screen triumph.

Oil was in their ground. They knew that. The formation tester had proved that the day before. But how much? It might be of a gusher proportions or a thin little trickle, not worth pumping.

The workmen already had run in the "liner" and the tubing. The "Christmas Tree" was hooked up. They were ready to start "swabbing", the process by which suction is created and the oil forced out in the event sufficient natural gas is lacking to force it out.

If there was only something she could do so that she might have an actual hand in the thing, thought Irene.

Summoning courage, she faced the foreman. "Can I help?" she asked.

The foremand looked at her in amazement. He noted her tiny white hands, her slim fragile figure enceased in spotless overalls ludicrously to big for her. He started to nod an abrupt "No". Then he saw her face and somehow in a clumsy fashion managed to read from it how much she wanted to help, how much it meant to her.

"Sure, lady," he said roughly. "You grab the brake lever."

Irene grabbed - and hung on all night. As if the fate of the world depended upon it, she manipulated the lever that controlled the "draw works". the line that lets the "swab" up and down the pipe.

Four o'clock came and nothing had happened. Still grimly she hang on. Fourthirty. Nothing but the grating noise of the "swab" monotonously sliding up and down. Quarter to five. Five o'clock.

"Don't you think we'd better go home, dear?" Dr. Griffin asked. "You're tired."

"Uh uh", Irene grunted. "I'm going to bring her in. I've got a hunch."

Three things happened almost simultaneously. There was a low rumble, a great spurt of dark liquid shot up into the air, and a man screamed "Oil!" as the stream continued steady.

That was when Irene sat in the mud puddle. Dr. Griffin sat down beside her, mud and all, and they threw their arms around each other.

"I've brought it in," Irene told him. "Now it's up to you to keep it running."

"Will I", he shouted gleefully. "Watch!"

Now it's my turn to have a hunch. It concerns that happiness I spoke of earlier in this story. My hunch is that the separations of the Griffins - she in Hollywood at her work and he in New York at his - are at an end.

Maybe you've wondered why the doctor didn't just chuck his fine practice in New York and live permanently in Hollywood with his wife and daughter, since naturally that is where he prefers to be.

Well, Dr. Griffin isn't the kind of man who could just be a movie star's husband. Never in a thousand years. His self-respect would never permit it. I'm sure if he had a job to do out there, an important job, a man's job, nothing in the world could keep him away.

He's got that kind of job now. Try running a flock of oil wells and find out.

Wells, in the plural?

Oh, sure. Irene says she's going to bring in some more. Just as soon as she has another good hunch!

 

(Movie Mirror, October 1938)