Silver Screen (Jun-Oct 1940)

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a Harmless Vegetarian WALTER PIDGEON is one of the contradictions of Hollywood. He is a family man who takes the business of acting with intense seriousness. Yet he never wanted particularly to be an actor. He is a singer who never sings in pictures. Yet he loves music. He is a fanatic who religiously keeps in physical form. Yet he never takes Hollywood's standard exercise, golf. Hates it, in fact. He never eats meat. Thinks it disturbs your system and your thinking. He believes in hunches. But thinks they're frequently wrong. His size (he's six feet, three inches) has limited him somewhat in the roles he plays. After all, it wouldn't do to have a leading man towering over a short star. That would never do. Size, too, has forced Pidgeon to play* a certain kind of part, worldly-wise, man-about-town, boulevardier. "Not a bit like the real Pidgeon, I assure you," he maintains. "I've grown into a role. I'm just a fable. The casting director looks over the script, finds a clubman type, the sort with the inscrutable little Oriental manservant, and says, 'Send for Pidgeon.' Somehow, I've come to suggest midnight rendezvous in bachelor apartments, with subdued lighting and a suave manner with a cigarette case. Which, you'll admit, is all wrong for a cautious, harmless vegetarian like myself. Yes, I've come to be a film fable." I think the strangest thing about this actor is that he believes life moves in cycles. "It moves in cycles," he says with finality, "and there's nothing on earth you can do about it. Too many people waste their time and their energy bucking a turn in their cycle. Those people go down to defeat. The thing to do is to ride the riptide. Relax. Tire out defeat. Wear it down. Wait But be ready for the next cycle. Be ready to recognize it and hop on when it swings by. "I call all this my sundial theory. It's rather dull in the morning, the sunshine picks up by eleven o'clock, by two it's bright, then it fades. That's the way with cycles. They're as inevitable as time." Right now Pidgeon is riding his third Hollywood cycle. Giving it a nice, rounded work-out, I might add. But he knows that somewhere in the distance he will have to get off and walk. He's preparing for that. This summer Pidgeon is starting off with his wife on a motor trip. He will tour the West and the Middle West. He is going to pick a home for that future day when a cycle drops him by the wayside. "I'll be set and ready," is the way he puts it. "I want a real home away from Hollywood. At a nice, safe distance from the studios. Once you've been in the movie maelstrom, you never could be happy on the edge of the firing line, watching the procession go by. I want to find a spot well away from Hollywood." That haven, of course, will be, as he puts it, "when things go to pot." Pidgeon has been married nine years. He wed Ruth Walker in 1931. There is a daughter, Edna, by a previous marriage. To understand Pidgeon, if you can, you must know his career. He was born in St. John, New Brunswick, the same town in which Louis B. Mayer, the movie producer, saw the light of day some years before. Mayer and Pidgeon, by the way, are good friends and the producer has been a kindly adviser through the years. Pidgeon's grandfather was a sea captain; his father, Caleb Pidgeon, owned a chain of merchandise stores in Canada. Walter went to grade school and high school in St. John. His favorite boyhood memories are of sailing out into the Bay of Fundy and listening to old salts spin tall tales. Pidgeon still loves fishing. Once he was taken on a hunting trip. Then it was that he shot his first buck moose. "A beautiful animal," he says. "I still remember how it staggered and fell. I've never shot an animal from that day to this." Pidgeon went on to the University of New Brunswick, at Fredericton. There he excelled in college dramatics, was pretty good at soccer and hockey. He-enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1917, served with the 65th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, but never saw active service in France. After the armistice, he went to Boston, worked with a brokerage house for two years. But he was restless. He began studying acting at the Copley Dramatic School, got a job with the E. E. Clive stock company. Clive now does character roles in Hollywood. Meanwhile his voice had developed and he managed to get a job with Elsie Janis. He appeared with her in American vaudeville and in a London revue. Then, in 1925, he came to Hollywood under contract. He djd a few pictures, but soon he was back on Broadway. He didn't land. The end of a cycle. [Continued on page 62]