Modern Screen (Dec 1931 - Nov 1932 (assorted issues))

Photograph by Freulich Photograph by Eugene Robert Richee THEM G They're not stars now— but just you wait a year or so. All four of them look like first rate movie material GLORIA STUART LORIA is the girl that Paramount and Universal fought over. And she an unknown at the time ! They both wanted to give her a contract. Out at Universal they call her "our Gloria." She is one of the luckiest gals ever. If she wants anything she does not go after it. She just wants it and waits . . . and it comes to her. As her chance at pictures did. Gloria always participated in school dramatics. Then financial reverses almost thwarted her hopes of going to college. But she wanted to go to college. And need we explain that business took an upward trend, enabling her to register at Berkeley? But three years of campus life found her tiring of philosophy from text books. She grew fond of the phrase "Bohemian life." It intrigued her. She met a young sculptor named Gordon Blair Newell, who with his sister, lived in the artist colony on Knob Hill in San Francisco. Visits to their little home found her fascinated with the artists, musicians, writers, poets she met there. Poverty assumed loveliness. She fell deeply in love at the end of her junior year, announced her engagement to the sculptor. Gloria was invited to play at the Golden Bow, a Little Theatre, and was asked to write for "The Carmellite." a local weekly newspaper. The theater paid nothing; the newspaper $25 a month ; and her husband's income was $20 per month. A career became a necessity, but Gloria made no move. She knew things wrould work out without her interference. She was offered a role at the Pasadena Playhouse, one of the best-known Little Theatres. In her second play, "The Sea Gull," both Paramount's and Universal's casting directors saw her. She's working in "All America" — with the All America football team. Her tall, lovely blondness will get you. CHARLES /^HARLES LAUGHTON ■ is a Britisher. His career LAUCHTON ^k^.^ m England reads much like that of his countryman, Clive Brook. Trained in the hotel business, he rose to the excellent position of hotel manager before that old bug, acting, started buzzing in his ears. With frugal living he was able to save enough money so that he could enter the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Literally, he starved for his art, the while he wasn't so certain he was just the fellow to be a successful actor. It seemed that fame and fortune were playing a game of hide-and-seek, until in April of 1926, they allowed him to catch them. You will be introduced to him ... as a madman ... a fiend ... a murderer. His first screen performance shows him as the insane commander in Paramount's "Devil and the Deep." There is an interesting little story leading up to his appearance in this picture. Arrived in Hollywood, Charles startled his studio bosses by demanding a small part in a picture to accustom himself to picture methods. Accordingly, arrangements were made with Universal, and he appeared as a "bloody" Englishman in "The Old Dark House." At the moment M-G-M has put in their bid for Laughton to render his original role in "Payment Deferred," which they are bringing to the screen. After that, Charles will work with Cecil B. DeMille, as Nero in "The Sign of the Cross." His resemblance to our mental picture of the wicked Roman Emperor is almost breath-taking. But for all of his forbidding countenance, he is a typically courteous and well-bred Englishman. Very reserved. And very charming. His hands are startlingly small. His wife, Elsa Lanchester, accompanied him to Hollywood. She was famous on the English stage, too. 47