Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1932)

Itain Orings ller .Luck Don't Call Hi m x latin um SHE comes from Boston, wears size four shoes, has the biggest blue eyes in captivity and is one of the few natural blondes in Hollywood. For a year Bette Davis loitered on the Universal lot as the mild, little sister who played country maidens too cute for words, and then she emerged in "The Man Who Played God" and "The Rich Are Always With Us" as one of the smartest moderns in town. Her eyebrows, in strange contrast to her hair, are black. When she was a kid in summer camp schools, Bette was thrown in the lake on the average of seven times a day to wash the mascara from her eyebrows. It didn't wash. It's just there. As an awkward girl in her teens, with a squeaky voice and no personality worth mentioning, Bette arrived in New York with her mother. " I haven't much money," Mrs. Davis confided to John Murray Anderson, "but won't you take her in your stage training school?" Anderson did and Bette won a scholarship, four stage engagements, fell in love and eventually into Hollywood. She has a perfect mania for picking up things and putting them in place. She's orderly and loathes it. She usually arrives ahead of time for appointments. Loves to go to parties, but feels she's a social flop because she always gets sleepy by the time everyone arrives. And sleeps through all the fun. She has been in love with the same lad for six years, off and on. Mostly on. The harder it pours, the better she likes it. She was born during a heavy rain storm, and every nice thing that has happened to her since has come in the rain. She knows rain brings her luck. Let it pour. She's grateful nice things just happen to her, for she feels sure she hasn't the stamina to fight for them. "Success," says Bette, "is usually just a pain in the neck. And those who are successful are often too miserable to know it." Yet she herself is on the road to success. IF you call Gene Raymond a platinum blend you'll regret it. Of course, he is and always has been since the first sign of a baby curl appeared on a bald pate, but he doesn't like the sound of the phrase. His hair is naturally platinum colored and so are his eyebrows and lashes. That's how you recognize the lad who played tunes on your heart-strings in "Ladies of the Big House." But he looks much bigger in pictures than in real life, and his face much rounder. It is really a long, narrow face and, although well built, he is a slight man. That's why he's always trying to gain weight and that's why he eats almost anything that's set before him, if there's enough of it, but prefers several yards of a big juicy steak which verges a little on the rare side. He is crazy about horses and he doesn't play polo so much as he'd like because the game is too rough on the horse. A cold, biting snow is his favorite type of weather and that's one reason the perpetual sunshine of Hollywood gets on his nerves. He's active in New York, and in Hollywood he is as lazy as a studio gateman. He was bitten by the manaha bug and swears it's the climate. A trouper all his life and one of the leading Broadway juveniles, he determined that he would have everything Hollywood offered, so he rented a house with seventeen rooms, swimming pool and tennis court. His mother and brother share the house with him, for he isn't married — yet. Big parties bore him — he'd rather be with a small group of friends, or walking or riding horseback alone. Or maybe just listening to the radio. He likes symphonic music but leans toward the melodic for his real enjoyment — " Liebestraum" and "Melody in F" are his choice. Pictures in which he can really act are his favorites, and in the scene in the cell at 4 a. m. when the talk was done in whispers he was pleased with himself for the first time. "I think that scene really had something," he said. 61