Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

MANNER Your new Fall suit in 100' r wool worsted gabardine . . . with that smart go-everywhere look born of perfect tailoring, subtle cut, and expensive hand-detailing. Green, wine, black, brown, also yarn dye grey and heather brown. Sizes 10 to 18... unbelievably priced at a mere 39.95. ,1. g_I._ gij/yi j , , beware of the experts (Continued from page 35) a three-year art scholarship to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and everybody insisted that I would be crazy to pass it up. "But I don't want to be an artist!" I insisted. "I want to act!" Nobody listened; or, rather, they said I didn't know anything about it and should pay attention to those who did— the experts. It's not easy for a young girl to fight against opposition like that. I did it but I didn't make friends in the process. I turned the scholarship over to the boy who had won second prize and today he is a well known commercial artist in New York. Secretly I liked his paintings better than mine anyway. Today I still paintthings like my porch which I have just bedecked with vines and Pennsylvania Dutch figures. This job will never win a prize but for a girl who didn't have a three year art course it ain't bad. A fter I joined the Elizabeth Peabody xi Playhouse in Boston I went to work in a tea shop. I was hired as a waitress but rehearsed dialects as I worked, which promptly incurred the criticism of the manager who told me that if I would pay attention to the art of toting a tray and lose my "high falutin' " ideas I'd be better off. I didn't neglect my patrons but I would try out different voices on them Sometimes I would adopt a Back Bay accent, sometimes I spoke a la Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis, and he even caught me once talking like Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights. He didn't know it was Olivier. He accused me of talking like Arthur Treacher! When I was sixteen and had appeared in about fifty amateur and semi-professional shows in and around Boston I decided it was time to try Broadway. The combined vote of friends and the people with whom I had played amounted to a staggering "Nay!" but just to show you what silly little girls are made of I went anyway I was scared and nervous but I just had to fulfill the urge within me. Not six weeks after I arrived in New York something happened that I was sure would make me one of the youngest successes in the history of show business — Sam Goldwyn wanted me for a test. It was made and not ten days afterward I was practically the youngest flop in the business. Mr. Goldwyn ruled against me. I don't blame him. Not only he, but I, had been doublecrossed by the know-it-alls. Mr. Goldwyn had asked that the test be made without makeup and under conditions that would show my hair whipping in the wind as I recited some lines • • • any lines. He had already sensed something that I wasn't sure about for years to come; that my features were too sharp for accentuating make-up, I looked better with just a softening touch or two of the pencil. But he got ill and had to leave for California before the test was set I was placed in the hands of a local director. The latter, when I showed up, announced • I was to do a scene from Street Scene which he had selected, and what is more' I was to be made up for it and play the role in a sophisticated manner. "We're really going to impress Mr. Goldwyn with you," he told me. "But I thought Mr. Goldwyn didn't want me made up," I protested. "Look, you're nothing but a child " he replied. "What do you know about it?" There was nothing I could say; I was just a child. The test was made and the only word I got was that it was negative. Mr. Goldwyn, I suppose, was disappointed came very close to going off the deep end. Trs funny, but history repeated itself a few years later with my first formal test in Hollywood. I knew by this time what sort of things I did well and what I didnt, and I also knew the kind of make-up that helped me and the kind that hindered. But again I had nothing to say. A studio was making the test which had been obtained for me by my agent, and the studio had its know-it-alls who were out to defend their reputations The shooting took place only the second month after I had come West and the report on it was so bad that I. felt as if I had been blasted out of show business forever. It was a flat verdict that read. Just not motion picture material." "What are we going to do now?" I asked my agent. "We? . . ." he asked, and he didn't have to say another word. He was impressed by the experts. He was dropping me. I suppose I did about the same thing any girl would do in a spot like that. I went home to my room, carefully lowered the shades, decided not to kill myself just yet, took one look at myself in the mirror and fell on the bed weeping. Two tests . . . and both bad! I thought of what I had done in New York after the Goldwyn test. I had worked as a cigarette girl, as a hat check girl and a model. After a while I had gotten up courage and gone after a show part again had tried out for the lead in Junior Miss and had failed; my body was too mature and my face too young, they told me. And just to make sure I got the idea one of the coaches took me aside and said You re a nice girl— why don't you go home and forget about show business7" 'Why don't you go home . . .?" I'd been told that a thousand times. "Why don't you get married and have a family instead of trying for the stage?" That one, too, has been fired at me again and again. And the other one was, "Look, kiddo, with all the tens of thousands of youngsters trying for the spotlight what chance have you got'' u iJ^ey teach y°u any mathematics in school? Which shows you how crazy you have to be sometimes to get anywhere because as soon as I saved up $200, I spent half of the money for a railroad ticket to Hollywood. ■ Comehow I recovered from that heart. breaking Hollywood test and for nearly four years I plugged away steadily, and only towards the latter part of this period did I begin to confound the experts jgu n to get bits in Pictures with here and there a better part sandwiched in And then began further tests, one after the other, until I had had eighty of them— count them, eighty!— with some of the most provocative and generally unsatisfying results imaginable. For instance, another girl and I were tested for the lead in a serial picture. Jungle Princess, at Universal-International. I won ... but did I? Yes, I got the role ot the serial queen but the other girl got the star part in a Walter Wanger feature' wrif na^e of Ae Picture was Salome. Where She Danced. The name of the girl was Yvonne De Carlo. I was tested for Crossfire. Gloria Grahame got the part. I was tested for The Killers Winner— Ava Gardner. I tried out for That do you want a star to visit your home? see paqe 8! C'CK