In the early part of this century, Europe was not only the undisputed center of letters and the theater, but also of the budding art of film-making. Almost legenary talents - GRETA GARBO, SERGEI EISENSTEIN, THOMAS MANN, FRANZ WERFEL, BERTHOLD BRECHT, ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, ERNST LUBITSCH, IRVING THALBERG, S.N. BEHRMAN, CHRISTERPHER ISHERWOOD, FRED ZINNEMANN, and many more - were creating some of the greatest art that the century would know. Many came to the United States, and it was from these giants that the American film industry and the golden age of Hollywood were born.
Salka Viertel, actress and writer, was one of the rare talents at the center of this creative storm, and its migration. Her unique memoir spanning two continents, two world wars, and almost half a century recalls the giants and their imaginative and technical contributions, which have had such a profound influence on contemporary film-makers.
Selka Viertel's own life in the frenetic world of European and American theater and film was one of challenge and excitement. Born at the turn of the century into a middle-class Jewish family in Galicia, she made her way to Vienna and became an actress. Discovered by MAX REINHARDT, she married the Austrian writer-director BERTHOLD VIERTEL, and after a decade of postwar theater in Germany, where she helped found the avant-garde repertory company DIE TRUPPE, she moved to Hollywood in 1929. In California, Mrs. Viertel raised her sons and joined the story department of MGM, working closely on all the major films in which Greta Garbo starred. At the Viertel house on Mabery Road in Santa Monica, Salka entertained the outstanding intellectuals, writers, and artists from Europe as well as the Hollywood personalities, who were the beautiful people of the time
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS reveals Salka Viertel as a warm and courageous woman who has been actively engaged in liberal causes for many years - at the expense of her career during the days of JOE McCARTHY and the " Hollywood Ten. " Her memois brings to life one of the most important eras in the film and theater world and introduces readers to the gifted and intelligent woman who was so much a part of that era - Salka Viertel herself.

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The Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel
A Theatrical Life, Vienna, Berlin, Hollywood

From her autobiography she writes in CHAPTER 46

A TAILWIND MADE THE PLANE ARRIVE in Shannon an hour earlier than scheduled and, of course there was no Peter at the airport. It was seven in the morning. He had told me that John Huston's place was not far from Shannon but, as it turned out, it was near Dublin. When I finally got Peter on the phone he said he had not expected me so early. "Take a taxi," he advised, grandly. Obediently I did as he said and indeed I greatly enjoyed my ride; but it took more than three hours. How green the country was, even at this time of the year. It was raining and my driver, a talkative old man, happy to have a passenger who was a stranger in Ireland, enumerated all the members of his family who had emigrated to the United States. Most of them lived in New York but no money in the world would make him live in that city. Enchanted with the lilting cadence of his speech, the hard rr's and the clear vowels, I agreed with him.
The huge, gray mansion which John Huston had rented was crowded with guests. Peter embraced me, and introduced the very lovely Bettina, a lost soul among the hunters, writers, John's assistants and secretaries. The occasion for the gathering was Tim Durant's marriage to an american divorc'ee, which had been planned , with everyone on horseback. It had to be postponed, because a few days before a woman had been killed riding to hounds and there were six weeks of mourning. Ricky, Huston's beautiful wife, was an emphatically gracious hostess, while he divided his day between horses and working on a screenplay with Peter. In spite of the mourning, everyone was very cheerful.
I liked Bettina: she was, as Jigee had written, "utterly adorable." She told me that she had been trying for weeks, with the help of a dictionary, to read Peter's novel, The Canyon. Peter looked well, his book White Hunter, Black Heart, had just appeared and although the fascinating hero was modeled on John Huston, it had not disturbed their friendship. He had arranged with Irwin Shaw, who was in Klosters, that I surprise Jigee on New Year's eve at a party in the Chesa Grischuna. There was not enough time left to visit Hans in London, but he was expecting me later, on my way back to the States, when we would spend more time together. So, on December 30 I flew from Dublin to Paris to embrace the Achards and Pozners. Then, the next morning, I boarded the train to Klosters.
During the two days in Dublin I had hardly slept, and the brief hours in Paris were exhausting. The transition from America to Ireland had been too abrupt, too sudden. Dublin was as Joyce had described it - or did I imagine that? I promised myself to explore it the next time I went there. Meanwhile, the train was carrying me to Klosters, which I could hardly find on the map, and it seemed to take the longest time. My heart was pounding and I had a steady humming in my ears. The windows were covered with frost, the countryside invisible. All the compartments were packed with people in ski-pants and parkas, and from Basle on, the German sounded so foreign that I could not understand a word. It was like a traumatic recurrence of my Gastspiel in Zurich, when in the thick fog I could not find the theater.
It was dark when I changed into the Kloster/Davos train, which was so crowded that I had to stand between two broadshouldered skiers, and every time the train took a curve I bumped into one of them. They did not seem to mind. Everyone was elated because it had been snowing for a week. The train stopped often, and at each station more skiers got on. One of the men I had been leaning on pointed to a vacated seat, and I was starting toward it when a lady, who had overheard me mention that I was getting off at Klosters, said that Klosters was the next stop and the train would halt for only three minutes. I extricated myself from the embrace of the two skiers, who helped me to find my suitcases and I got off into the coldest, purest air, which cut my breath. Hundreds of people were on the platform but no porter in sight. Then I heard a scream: "Salka, Salka!" and Jigee in ski-pants and a black anorak pushed through the crowd and crying and laughing, we clung to each other. The next minute, Irwin Shaw, suntanned, bursting with vitality and more dear than ever, embraced me. He had told Jigee that some of his friends were arriving and suggested she go with him to the station. As she was utterly unaware of who was coming, the surprise worked even better than planned.
Of course, the first thing I wanted was to see Christine. But Jigee insisted that my first hours in Kloster belonged to her. "Once you have seen Christine we will all cease to exist." She refused to take me home. Vicky had gone to a party with schoolfriends and we could talk undisturbed at the Hotel Chesa Grischuna. We walked there in the starlit winter night, the snow crunching under our feet. I had not seen such a night and so much snow since my childhood.
Irwin left. We would see him and Marian later at the New Year's party in the Chesa. I realized that the Chesa was the center of Kloster's social activities. Jigee only permitted me to wash my face and hands, but would not let me change. We sat down in a corner of the empty restaurant. It was in the Swiss style, paneled with carved wood, elegant and comfortable. The owner, Mrs. Guler, a young, handsome woman, said that there was no room in the hotel, but invited me to spend the night in her own place. Peter had informed her about my coming and she had reserved a room for me in the Hotel Weisskreuz, only a few steps from the Chesa, but it would not be free until the next day.
She left us, and Jigee and I began our marathon talk, constantly interrupted by laughter and tears. Things we could not say in our letters poured out without restraint. I could not help noticing that she had made a certain image of herself, which was quite at odds with reality. She was full of contradictions but insisted upon her consistency. She had written me that she lived in Klosters because she loved skiing, but it came out that she hardly ever went on the slopes because she could not stand the cold. But this was unimportant. She could not accept that Peter, who had passionately loved her, had fallen in love with someone else. It was useless ro remind her that she herself had not been immuned from falling in love. She only felt her own suffering and refused to admit having ever inflicted it upon others. but Peter was very generous toward her and she wanted his friendship. She knew that the right solution for her was to go back to the States and start a new life, but she had no intention of doing so.
The restaurant had filled with people in evening clothes, and in our pullovers, and with our tearful eyes, we looked quite out of place. Marian and Irwin, Anatol Litvak, Robert Capa, Jigee's British friend Colette Harrison, embraced me. Chic people from Hollywood and New York greeted me, but everything was unreal and scrambled, like in a kaleidoscope. At midnight, the lights went off, then on again, and the old year was gone. Jigee and I were crying again. She lifted her glass: "To Vicky and Christine and to Peter, Hans and Tommy." Then Irwin and Marian clicked glasses with us, also Capa, with surprising tenderness. By then my reactions became more and more automatic and when Doris Guler finally came and offered to take me home, I clung to her like a drowning man to a lifebelt.

The white glare outside the window woke me. I was lying in a spotlessly white bed in a charming bedroom in a completely silent house. I looked out of the window; everything was covered with snow, huge mounds of snow, and not a soul to be seen. It was eight. I took a bath, dressed and went out. As I passed the Chesa Grischuna I saw that it was open and went in to get breakfast. I wanted to kill time until I could see Christine. Jigee had told me that she would be up at nine. The Chesa spic and span and no one could have guesses that a large crowd had been dancing there until the early morning hours. Four sedate, pipe-smoking Swiss sat at a table, drinking red wine and playing cards. I had my cup of coffe and a croissant, then asked a pretty waitress in a Grisons costume if she knew how I could get to Frau Viertel's house. I had noticed that Jiggee was very popular at the Chesa. The waitress described the way: I only had to cross the bridge over the river and walk to the last house at the end of the village, before the road turned uphill.
It was a perfect winter morning - almost too perfect, too much like a picture postcard. The sky incredibly clear and blue, the high mountains surrounding the valley not threatening at all, and everything white, white, dazzlingly white, the branches of the firs bending under the loads of snow. A river flowed through the valley which, to the east, was closed by the Silvetta glacier, transparent and glittering like a huge bluish crystal. Scattered on both sides of the river were chalets and farmhouses, neat and well-kept, many old ones weather-beaten but stately.
I passed the Hotel Weisskreuz, where my luggage was just being unloaded, then the Silvretta Hotel, from which American skiers were loudly emerging, and continued through the village street. From the stables on the ground floor of the old wooden houses came steaming warmth and the smell of cows; I heard their low mooing. Then I saw the house where Jigee lived. I could hardly breathe and felt like crying. "It's the altitude," I told myself.
The house was old, 1773 was engraved over its door, and Jigee's apartment, "Ferienwohnung" they called it, was on the ground floor. In front of the house was a child's sleigh with a blanket, ready to go for a ride. The door was open and I went in. I found myself in a dark hall. After a while I discerned a big tile stove in which a good fire was burning. I could hear whispering behind a door, which I approached on tiptoe and opened. In a spacious kitchen, warm and light, a beautiful young woman was sitting at a large table eating her breakfast, while a very small, delicate creature, in a dirndl dress and white apron, was pulling a toy wagon with a teddybear in it. She trod loudly on the floor with her sturdy shoes and the young woman was shooshing her. She stood still when she saw me. I called: "Christine!" She came toward me slowly, stopping now and then, smiling with her blue eyes, which had Berthold's dark lashes. Her hair was light blond, like Peter's when he was her age. I picked her up and held her while she looked me over very seriously, touched my white hair cautiously, then, with gleeful laughter, buried both hands in it. A tidal wave of tenderness and love engulfed my incorrigible heart.