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

Modern Screen but a tooth-brush. "A tooth-brush is all right, but even if you hang it around your neck on a string it doesn't exactly clothe you," Lee said. He knew about six people in town. He made out a list and started driving. They found their hands pumped, their backs slapped, and a torrent of words flooding them. A motor roared, and Lee was gone, and so were all their clothes. Inside of an hour he had his wardrobe, and his friends were wondering if they would have to stay in bed the rest of their lives and have their meals brought in. "^J O story could be written about Lee ^ without most of it being devoted to his gay, loyal friends. They are a part of him. A few years ago a play called "Broadway" opened in New York. Authored, played, and presented by people comparatively unknown, it "made" every one of them, and was a sell-out hit for ninety-seven weeks. A fantastic feeling, almost of brotherhood, has survived among the original members of the cast, most of whom are now in Hollywood. Phil Dunning, Bob Gleckler, George Abbot, John Wray, the cripple of 'The Miracle Man,' Paul Porcasi, the bald, round-headed, dotmoustached Italian you see so often as a gangster or head-waiter, Tommy Jackson, the tight-lipped detective who killed Robinson with a machine-gun in 'Little Caesar,' and Lee — somehow they feel that, for the rest of their lives, their fates are inextricably bound together. (Tommy Jackson has named one of his babies for Lee.) They call themselves The Wednesday Evening Dinner Club. One evening a week they meet, wearing screeching ten-cent neckties of horrible orange-and-green polka-dots and stripes. Six men pick the restaurant. The seventh man, to the tune of boos and jeers, goes meekly along to pay the bill. The dinner is ordered from the right-hand side of the menu, everyone choosing the most costly food he can find whether it agrees with his digestion or not. Often the bills run to fifty dollars, which Member No. 7 must pay without a murmur. It was while returning from one of these dinners that a couple of the "members" found a dummy fire-hydrant in an alley behind a theatre. They dressed it up in a hat and coat and put it in Lee's dressing room, so that, when he snapped on the light, he would think it was a bandit lurking there. Always superstitious, Lee has carried the clumsy thing with him ever since, as a goodluck charm, although it has cost him more than $150 to ship it back and forth across the country. Recently he moved it from his studio dressing-room to a place of honor in his apartment. That was the day Warner Brothers fired him ! HIS high spirits account for the stories of his drunkenness. Hollywood, bowled over by this sudden inrush of mad, dynamic energy, knows only one answer : "He must stay drunk twenty-four hours a day to keep it up." Lee is said to have given a party when he was living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker that lasted three days and nights. He is said to have been drunk all through the making of "Blessed Event." There are a few realists who say, "If that's the way to make a picture like 'Blessed Event' in twenty-one days, then the best thing for the rest of us to do is get drunk." But a good many people believe the stories word for word. The usual way to reoly to such rumors is to insist: "I've never tasted a drink in my life." Tracy refuses to lie. "The difference between me and some other people in Hollywood," he says, "is that they pull their shades down. If I felt like taking a drink I'd just as soon take it in the middle of Sunset Boulevard. I'd rather do that than sneak it. These guys that come out of their offices saying, 'Me? I haven't had a drink in years !' — meanwhile chewing a clove! I'd rather be called a drunkard any day than a hypocrite \" And so a drunkard Hollywood will probably go on calling him, for a while. Whereas really, though not a teetotaler, Lee is not in any sense a heavy drinker. It is easy to understand how the stories get started. With a friend who has a similar sense of humor, Lee went one evening to a restaurant where there were bread-sticks on the table. Five minutes later he and the friend were staging a mock duel with the breadsticks for rapiers. And ten minutes later people were whispering, "Lee is tight again." It might not meet with the approval of Emily Post, that dinnertable conduct, but certainly it was not liquor. What Hollywood doesn't yet understand is that here is a chap who, off the screen, has the same kind of mad vitality that the four Marx brothers have on it. There just are some folks like that. They're the lucky ones in life, who don't have to use any artificial means of getting into good spirits because they're in good spirits all the time, naturally. But Hollywood will come to understand. The old town just hasn't quite had time to catch its breath yet, since Tracy hit it. The quarrels and misunderstandings will be all nicely patched up. So don't worry. You'll be enjoying Lee Tracy on the screen in many, many more pictures. You see, first of all, there are several millions of dollars in cold, hard cash to be made from his personality. Second — and surprisingly enough — beneath his harum-scarum exterior he hides a sensitive and highly capable artist. (He starved for eight years to get on to the stage, by the way.) As Tommy Jackson, his dearest friend, says about him : "The difference between Lee and a lot of other actors is that Lee is an actor." And that's true enough. As you, yourself, will soon realize. MODERN SCREEN CAN BE BOUGHT AT THE S. S. KRESCE AND S. H. 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