Modern Screen (Jul-Dec 1945)

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(3) Rush me FREE chart showing efficient toothbrushing method. Name Address City 112 V Zone ... State PRINT PLAINLY and I have to sit and listen to all those tired old chestnuts and pretend to laugh. My lip's about to split, so for Pete's sake lay off!" In Joe's case his trouble wasn't a brown study, because he wouldn't know a case of the glooms if he met one walking down the street. He's an extrovert supreme, himself, but there have been times when it took a gag to pull him off a camera brain block, twice, in fact, in one picture, "I'll Be Seeing You," where Joe played that psycho GI. Oddly enough, in both instances it was Bill Dieterle, the Dutchman, who's supposed to be so heavyhanded and ponderous when he gives with a megaphone, who swung the gags. One time was the day Joe had to hurdle the big scene he'd been dreading, where he sits in his tiny YMCA room and slowly goes to pieces. It was the big nervous breakdown and after a couple of days of breathing hard and sweating and shaking and quivering and going through all the symptoms of a mental case, Joe was just about able to punch his way out of a wet paper bag, but they still hadn't gotten the take they wanted. So he was sitting talking the scene over with Dieterle before they tried it again when the make-up man came up with the inevitable big powder puff and dabbed it on Joe's face. Ordinarily, Joe Cotten hates make-up people to dab at him like a cat hates water, but this time he was so bushed and Dieterle so intense in his talk that Joe never even noticed. When finally the director asked, "Are you ready?" Joe said, "Sure," but in a voice that didn't even convince himself. But just before the camera rolled, Joe looked, as he always does, in his little pocket mirror to see that everything in the face department is in order — and he let out a yell. From his neck to his noggin he was in blackface! The guy had slipped him a make-up Mickey Finn, on Bill Dieter le's orders, with charcoal instead of powder. Joe roared so heartily that there wasn't a nerve left in his body and the next take was it. The other time was even more baffling to Joe because the set Gremlins got him right in the middle of a laughing scene, and if there's one thing Cotten can't hold in, normally, it's a hearty guffaw, and sometimes even when it's not too tactful he raises the roof. But this day his particular job was to hah-hah all day long and right up to a climax in the late afternoon when he was booked to really let himself go. But when Joe went in for the grand closeup of his molars — he couldn't laugh a dribble. He was all laughed out or something, because when he opened his mouth, strange little dry squeaks seeped out, his smile was crooked and his eyes looked like glazed oysters. After a few "Cuts" even the crew got worried about Joe. They all gathered around and told him the most ghastly jokes — and Joe loves jokes — they made faces and did impersonations and even dug up a few old-time clown sure-fire favorites, and Joe adores clowns (his favorite collection is photographs of all the famous circus clowns that ever tumbled around a ring). But it was still no go. Every attempt at a belly laugh only brought on a belly ache for poor Joseph and things were in a pretty pass indeed. But they kept trying, more and more grimly, and then suddenly in the middle of a take a Western Union messenger gal dashed on the set yelling, "Telegram for Mr. Cotten!" Joe ripped it open, fearing the worst kind of black news, but as he read, while the crew watched with bated breaths, they saw him relax into the first genuine grin he'd come through with all day. Then he read it out loud — this wire from a group of well-known Hollywood shady ladies, complimenting Joe on the love scenes he'd made a few days before and making him various kinds of attractive offers. The wire was signed, "Bill Dieterle." Again it worked, because right away Joe stepped into his closeup and laughed the lens off the camera until they had to tell him to stop. It's a cold day in July indeed when Joe Cotten finds himself limp as a dishrag on a movie set, and the brace of instances described just now are about the only times on record. Usually, Joe is as busy as a Mexican jumping bean. He's known as "the guy who won't park" by the grips and props and, as I said, make-up men try to catch him on the fly but rarely succeed. He's tried to relax, but it's not for Cotten. When he reads he finds himself looking right through the printed page; he can't even add up the score in gin-rummy, and when he goes in his dressing room and closes the door, as some stars do, he gets claustrophobia. So Joe has given up long ago. Now he never sits down. The nearest he ever comes to it is what he calls "the football squat" and he has an odd crotchet about that. He played a bit of football in school and it struck him that you never saw a football player who's been in a game park himself on the bench if he was due to go in the game again. They might squat, or kneel or stoop down a bit, but if they sit down they get dull and Joe likes to keep lively. He doesn't even keep a canvas chair on the set. rehearsin' fool . . . What Cotten prefers to do to pass the time in the long, irking waits between scenes that curse every Hollywood actor's life, is keep right on acting. Usually, he finds another actor who's glad of the chance to run over the next week's scenes. Joe worked that way with Teresa Wright all through "Shadow of a Doubt" and with Claudette Colbert in "Since You Went Away." Joe's a rehearsing fool, having been sold on that idea in his Broadway days when he'd prepare a play eight weeks or more sometimes before he ever saw an audience. He spent two weeks with Bill Dieterle on his own time running over dialogue and action before he ever saw the set of "I'll Be Seeing You," and his huddles with Alfred Hitchcock before "Shadow of a Doubt" were as drawn out as a WPA project. But he refuses to memorize a line at home because when he does he pollparrots it off the next day on the set like "a Fuller Brush salesman." Besides, he has a private conviction that lines memorized are the easiest forgotten. He never even learned them by heart when he did long plays before the footlights and it's a cinch he'll never start now. Joe's loaded with all kinds of hoodoos which are hangovers from his days on Broadway. Frankly, he wishes he'd never heard of half of them but it doesn't do him any good now. The two most potent bits of black medicine he observes are the old stage spooks of hats on the bed and whistling in the dressing room. Whenever anyone commits those theatrical sins in his presence Joe runs to the stage door, spins around like LiT Abner's Mammy conjuring up her late, greatgrandmammy, and chants a weird ritual that's too involved to print here and doesn't make much sense, anyway. However, it does two things, Joe's convinced, it keeps the guy who tossed the hat from getting fired and also it keeps Joe Cotten from getting fired (as if there was any chance of that). No superstitions make much sense when you analyze them, and Joe knows it, but he keeps right on being an abject slave to mumbo-jumbo. The hat on the bed spook sticks with