Screen Guilds Magazine (May 1936)

MORE FUTURE Local Boy Makes Good Few actors in pictures are kept as busy as merry, bright-eyed Roscoe Karns, Para¬ mount featured player who is always sought by other studios the moment he has a Paramount lull. (He is now in Marion Davies’ “Cain and Mabel” on his fifth loanout to Warners in a year.) Mr. Karns, one of the few native South¬ ern Californians before the camera, was born in San Bernardino, educated locally (at USC, after prepping at Harvard Mili¬ tary Academy, from, which he’d sneak out at nights and usher at theatres wearing his school uniform) and made his profes¬ sional debut with Marjorie Rambeau’s company in San Diego stock. Traveling north and east, he hit Broadway in “Civilian Clothes,” was signed to a film contract and brought back for “Wings” and many other great silent. The coming of talking pictures found Roscoe Karns playing the Hildy Johnson part in the coast production of “Front Page.” Since then he has done outstand¬ ing roles in more than 40 sound films. If young Mr. Karns wears a necktie in a good role, he continues to wear the same tie in every picture until he hits a part he doesn’t like. Then he buys another sup¬ ply of cravats. He is a baseball and Roscoe Karns A military school uniform led to “Civilian Clothes ." popular fiction fan, and possibly the only actor who has never earned a dime out¬ side of show business. Roscoe Karns has arranged his future so that he need never worry about earn¬ ing his livelihood outside of his profession. He has provided the safest and most reli¬ able income offered anywhere today for that day when he chooses to take off his lucky necktie, surround it in mothballs. With Benjamin Leven as his Annuity Counsellor, Mr. Karns has treated him¬ self to a New York Life annuity which will take care of the future without in¬ vestment worries or any other problems. In selecting the company with which to contract for an annuity, wise Mr. Karns chose the oldest, largest and most depend¬ able life insurance company in America. In picking the annuity counsellor to ad¬ vise and arrange his annuity, he selected the man who has been consulted by a ma¬ jority of Hollywood annuity purchasers— Benjamin Leven, largest-volume annuity man in America during 1935. There is no obligation, there is no at¬ tempt to “high-pressure” you, if you call Benjamin Leven (HE. 3862) and ask him to draw up a Schedule of Future Income to fit your requirements and your present ability to purchase. • 24 To Richard - With Love (Continued from Page 8) ing is rotten, lonely, desperate work; well, as dear old Percy Hammond put it, ‘ ‘ Anything that isn't writing is fun. ' 7 Do it for love, and that's just what you'll get—and your own, at that. Put down six words and cross out four; change those four again and again un¬ til they are something near what you mean—they never will be exactly. May¬ be you'll have fifteen minutes of elation —sweeter than first April, brighter than running water—until you've deposited your manuscript in the mail box. Then, if it's published, pray for the approba¬ tion of the six people in the world you want to like it and the one person you want to like you, and never think about money—just as well, too, for you won't get it. Write for your lovely, rhythmic sal¬ ary in the moving pictures, and you get it Every week you get it,—pretty. Put down six words and change eight of them; and then have from fourteen to forty people change those eight over and over again. Work at your words all day long, and take them to bed with you at night, and leap from your pillow in the little hours crying, “Oh, God, I've got to do that courtroom scene, and how is the district attorney going to outwit Claudette Colbert and marry her?" You needn't worry about those six people that you wanted to like your work; they '11 never see it, nor you. Probably you'll forget about those fif¬ teen minutes of elation; it doesn’t mat¬ ter—you won't have them. But you get your salary, and that's what you came for, and that's what you're here to earn. Honest, you understood that, and expected to work for it. You didn't ask for a soft racket. And baby, you don't get it. Well. Mr. Schayer, as he so resound¬ ingly told us on that Black Saturday night in the Hollywood Athletic Club, has been a successful screen writer for twenty years; his name rings across the continent from Hollywood to Needles. “It's a soft racket," cried Mr. Schayer. I dared not answer him, before all those people. But you get brave in print, and so maybe I can say it— “Oh, shut your face, Richard Schayer! Shut your face, shut your face, shut your face!’ ’ TAILOR 514 Park Central Bldg. 412 West 6th St. Los Angeles Phone TUcker 2592 6367 Hollywood Blyd. _ GL. 6302 1043 Westwood BSvd. W.L.A. 34034 JOHNtj^LLYjR tfdgh mwmmvimjiaissir m roqbm WAMPAS CUSTOM BUILT PORTABLE AUTOMATIC PHONOGRAPH-RADIO COMBINATION 8 Metal Tubes—AC and DC For all around Quality in a class apart Operates Open or closed The Screen Guilds’ Magazine