R.I.P. Paul Gregory

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Reza
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R.I.P. Paul Gregory

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BRUCE FESSIER
Producer Paul Gregory died the way he wanted to in Desert Hot Springs


Paul Gregory was one of the great film, TV and theatre producers.

His classic film noir, “The Night of the Hunter,” starring Robert Mitchum, was ranked the second-best movie of all time, behind “Citizen Kane,” by the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema. He produced Herman Wouk’s adaptation of Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” in Santa Barbara and took it on a journey that ended up with 415 performances on Broadway and an Emmy for a live TV production.
Gregory died last December at age 95, but few people knew about it. He wasn’t given a public memorial service and he didn’t receive the kind of appreciations show biz luminaries usually get. Film historian Alan K. Rode, who produces the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs, was shocked to learn just last month he had died.
Noting that Gregory worked with British actor-director Charles Laughton on both “The Night of the Hunter” and “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” stage play, and national stage tours of “Don Juan in Hell” and “John Brown’s Body,” Rode said “Paul Gregory and Charles Laughton were one of the more significant entertainment collaborations of the 1950s. During a time of Cold War and the Blacklist, American popular culture was significantly bettered by their work.”

The Desert Hot Springs Historical Society finally gave Gregory his just desserts Oct. 27 at a dinner at the Miracle Springs Hotel, where Gregory could be seen enjoying a martini or lunch — often by himself.

The historical society passed out commemorative bookmarks in Gregory’s honor, saying, “We have lost a great talent, a gentleman, as well as an international celebrity with the passing of Paul Gregory.”
I went there to cover the event, only to have the host, Audrey Moe, ask me to say a few words about Paul. I could only say how badly I felt that I never wrote a news obituary about Gregory. His death was kept so quiet, I said, I didn't find out until at least a month later. I got the feeling he didn’t want any fanfare for his final curtain. I was glad the Desert Hot Springs Historical Society was giving him a public remembrance to give me an opportunity to write about him.
After my talk, I asked Audrey and Mike Bickford, the owner of Miracle Springs and the Desert Hot Springs Spa — and the apartment building where Gregory lived in his final years — if anybody had talked about how Paul died, and they said no. Audrey said she didn’t think I should mention it in my story.
I talked to another speaker who eulogized Gregory that night, 84-year-old business journalist Jim Newman, who befriended Gregory in New York when he had aspirations of becoming an actor. They met again in Kansas City in the early 1960s while Gregory was producing staged readings with husband-and-wife stars Patricia Medina and Joseph Cotten, who would become the Desert Theatre League’s first lifetime achievement award winner in 1988. Newman and Gregory often got together in the desert when Newman had a home in Indian Wells.

Newman didn’t see any reason why I should not report that Gregory committed suicide in the apartment Bickford provided for him. Gregory was an individual who didn't live his life by other people’s conventions. Why shouldn't he have the right to die his way?
Newman said he last talked to Gregory last fall, and he was still sharp and in good spirits. He didn’t take his life because he was suffering from some mental illness. His body was failing and most of his friends were gone. He didn’t want to live that way anymore.

REMEMBERING GREGORY
Newman was working with Gregory in Kansas City when Gregory proposed to Janet Gaynor, Hollywood’s first Academy Award-winning Best Actress. She was 14 years older than Gregory – an eternity in those days. But those kind of things didn't matter to him.

Robert Mitchum played a character that Paul Gregory said reminded him of his father in Gregory's ...more
Submitted
What Newman remembers most about Gregory was “his humanness. Although he was dealing with weighty matters in the theater, he always remained just a guy from Des Moines.”

Gregory grew up in Iowa with a mixed heritage: He was a part Cherokee Indian and he said he had African-American cousins. Newman, also part Cherokee, called him by his Cherokee name, which translated to Feather.
Gregory was truly a man of the world. His mother shipped him to England to live with her sister, who had married a wealthy Brit, after his philandering father abandoned them when Paul was 9. He stayed there 10 years, absorbing their culture and returned with an English accent. He returned to Des Moines and got involved in radio, competing against a station featuring Ronald Reagan.
He became a producer after moving to Los Angeles and meeting a choreographer he had admired in England. She was so unknown in L.A., she hired him to promote her show.
He produced his “Don Juan in Hell” in Santa Barbara after meeting the legendary playwright, George Bernard Shaw, the year before his death in 1950. He met Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Serge Diaghilev and Gertrude Stein after producing some Laughton readings in Paris.

"It was like 'Midnight in Paris',” he told me in 2013. “I've seen that movie four times.”

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
I met Paul when he was living at this cool, old Western-type ranch he developed with Gaynor in Desert Hot Springs called the Singing Tree Ranch. I later visited him at his home in The Springs Country Club in Rancho Mirage after Gaynor died following an automobile accident and Paul married art collector Kay Obergfel. I also had lunch with him at Miracle Springs.
I told the Historical Society audience that Paul loved Obergfel, but he was miserable going to the society parties she dragged him to. I recalled being surprised to see him standing alone at one such party. I went over and had a pleasant conversation with him.
He said the 26 years he knew Gaynor, including the six before they were married, “were the happiest time of my life.”
They met when Gaynor was married to the designer, Adrian, and Gregory had Adrian do some work for him. When Adrian died in 1959, Gaynor, one of the first movie stars to own a home in the desert, put a small house she had in Hawaii up for sale. She asked Gregory if he’d like to look at it and he bought it on the spot. After spending $40,000 to fix it up, he invited Gaynor to visit.

“That was the beginning,” he said. “I had no more idea that I'd end up marrying Janet Gaynor than I'd think of being an astronaut to Mars.”
The Hawaiian humidity was bad for Gregory’s arthritis, but Gaynor had another small house on 50 acres in Desert Hot Springs. Gregory bought 50 acres next to that and fixed it up. Marilyn Monroe was one of their first visitors. Gregory also bought 200 pairs of specialty pigeons from Marseilles, France, where they have famous pigeon races. After five years, he had 5,000 pairs of breeding pigeons. Then he added cows and sow hogs to his working ranch. Within five years, the farm was making $1,000 a week.
“It was the most fun in my life,” he said. “We were dealing with things that were grateful to get something to eat.”
Stars such as Tallulah Bankhead, Truman Capote and even Julia Child visited them in Desert Hot Springs. It became a place where stars could enjoy the real desert instead of the artificial desert of Palm Springs.

DHS ACTIVITY: City attempts a music festival
Newman said Gregory used to wonder why he would come to the desert and live in Indian Wells. When asked about Desert Hot Springs' winds, he’d say, “Wind? You mean therapeutic breezes.”
Bickford never realized how internationally renowned Gregory was. He said Gregory owned restaurants before coming to DHS, so they shared war stories about that business.
“He was a very humble, very salt of the earth kind of guy,” Bickford said. “We were always happy to have him dining with us and sometimes staying with us.”
The Desert Hot Springs Historical Society designated Gregory as “A Living Treasure” in 2005 and called him the greatest promoter the city ever had.

Newman said simply, “He loved this community.”
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