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MAY BR ITT
sexy
Swede 'n'
By HELEN LOUISE WALKER
HoW CAN SHE be so cool over all this?" the man wanted to know. "Look what's happened to her . . . 'The Young Lions' and 'The Blue Angel' . . . And now all those adjectives — 'The sultriest, sexiest import since Garbo or Dietrich.
How did she feel about all this — the standing ovation and all that jazz after "Young Lions"?
May faltered a bit, trying to explain. "I suppose I should say that I was flattered and happy," she stammered. "But actually I think I didn't believe it was happening. I couldn't see why it should. I didn't see what I was doing here, anyway. I never planned to come here."
And so she didn't. Her career simply happened to her. And no one can say she is "cool" about that, as we shall see. She was a lonely girl for a long, long time.
May (she pronounces it "My") was born in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. Her father was, and still is, a postal employee. May did very badly in school, especially at algebra, and finally left to study photography. She thought that might offer an interesting and exciting life, photographing interesting people and events all over the world. She had been at it barely a month when Carlo Ponti came in, did a double take and invited her to go to Rome to make a screen test. May was "cool". It was her father who urged her, "You may hate yourself later on if you don't take advantage of this opportunity." So . . . May went, still in a "cool mood." "I didn't expect anything to come of it," she says, frankly.
What "came of it" was a series of leading picture roles in Italy, winding up with a contract with Twentieth CenturyFox here. "I still don't know why," says May. But she is beginning to guess!
Some reasons may be her lissome figure, her blue-grey eyes and her long, blonde, silky uncurled hair. A few freckles scattered here and there don't do any harm, either.
But, aside from these obviously advantageous physical aspects, there was the innate ability of May to project emotions which registered on the screen. It seemed at first almost as if she did not know she had this ability. But the
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They're calling May Britt the sultriest foreign import since Dietrich, but by temperament, this Swedish lass is more inclined to play it cool than hot
REHEARSING her songs for "The Blue Angel," the picture that made Dietrich a star a generation ago, May is quite composed.
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