Hollywood (1938)

A Day With a Queen [Continued from page 32] awe— such things as telephone calls, the radio, last night's movie. Following the Dauphin out to the soft drink stand, went a figure in sober gray and black. That man could have given Louis at least a hint as to the electric age to come. Benjamin Franklin, intent at the moment on a beaker of buttermilk while awaiting his own appearance in a later scene, was — you recall — the man who sent up a kite in a Philadelphia thunderstorm in order to learn about electricity. He didn't introduce radio to the French court during his visit there as envoy from the infant United States, but he's the grand-dad of radio just the same. And of all modern electrical items, including the movies. As in Quaker hues he rubbed elbows with the rich plush and satin of French nobility, somebody exclaimed how Walter Walker (that is "Benjamin Franklin") had made himself up to look exactly like the picture of Franklin on a hundreddollar bill. I wouldn't know about this. But 1 do know that Robert Morley in make-up so resembles the true Louis Sixteenth that they don't mind photographing him side by side with an authentic portrait of the monarch. | Behind Louis Sixteenth and Franklin, and headed toward the ice cream wagon, came Louis the Fifteenth, grandfather and predecessor of Louis the Sixteenth and sponsor of the latter's marriage. Despite the heliotrope brocade, he was unmistakably John Barrymore. When Norma first saw him on the set she forgot her lines; not account of the heliotrope brocade but account of admiration. She'd never met him before! No fooling. Since her own start in pictures he had been one of her great favorites of stage and film. Once, in the earlier days, they were working in adjoining sets and Norma, then nearly unknown, used to dart out the back way and over to his set in order to watch him from afar. But they had never happened to meet. Not even during the production of Romeo and Juliet, for they didn't appear in the same scenes. Louis Fifteenth was joined at the ice cream wagon by the Due d'Orleans (Joseph Schildkraut) , the meanie of Marie's reign, all the time stirring up trouble. And by Mme. la Motte, as played by Mae Busch of the silent cinema. Norma, because she also hero-worshipped this actress when Mae was a star and Norma only a beginner, sent her own car to bring Mae to the studio when tests of her for the role were to be made. gf Lafayette sauntered up for a strawberry ice cream cone, followed by a detachment of the Swiss guard on the same errand. Here came the studio trolley that ambles about the lot and debouched a lady in waiting, her emerald skirts carefully spread. Hopping briskly to the ground she lifted the hoops high to avoid the dust. Everybody roared. It was a rather cool day and beneath the 40 hoops she was wearing bright red slacks. They looked like flannel underwear. The sight mightily intrigued the royal choir boys grouped nearby. They whistled in unison, to the lady's confusion. These little tykes, short brown wigs forever wildly a-flying, pulled more tricks daily than a harried supervisor could anticipate, stopped the heartbeats of the wardrobe department by shinnying fire escapes in their white surplices, and intermittently at the proper signal turned their faces heavenward and broke into beatific song. [ I was having a root beer with the Princesse de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's dearest friend (Anita Louise), in turquoise with mountainous plumes to match — when the nobility began to dash back to the sound stage for another go at the wedding. Norma and Morley had been sent for, but their standins still knelt before the altar, looking as if their knees were pretty tired of it all. To "Skats" Wyrick, ex-football star at UCLA, and stand-in for the Dauphin, somebody had sympathetically handed a cigar and "Skats" was carefully keeping the ashes away from his blue velvet coat. The Cardinal, in crimson robe, delicate lace and little round cap, sat fast asleep on a stool. Tyrone Power, the romantic "Count Fersen" of the picture, the young Swedish aristocrat whom Marie Antoinette loved, came suddenly through a doorway talking to Norma Shearer. Tyrone who had no part in this marriage scene, wore modern brown tweeds and probably couldn't realize how odd he looked next to a lady in a gown like a white balloon and a coiffure like piled-up soapsuds. g "Ready, baby?" inquired Director Van Dyck. He was speaking to Norma Shearer; and the first time he called her "baby" and "kid" everybody looked as horrified as if he were addressing Marie Antoinette herself. Everybody, that is, but Norma. She didn't mind at all. Indeed, to this first picture she has made since the death of her husband, Irving Thalberg, (it is also the first picture in which Van Dyck has directed her), Norma brought her own brand of courage; the kind of courage that can smile. She left her private grief outside the sound stage door and, the moment she crossed the threshold — despite the sharp memories that must have tormented her — she became Norma Shearer the actress and the gracious friend. Almost the last time I had seen her was during a sequence of Romeo and Juliet when Irving Thalberg looked on so proudly as she danced in the great banquet hall of the Capulets. "Ready!" she smiled now at Van Dyck and took her place before the chapel altar. In accents like cream and Chinese gongs Nigel de Brulier as the Cardinal read the rolling Latin of the marriage service. "Okay," called Van Dyck, "But it is Greek to me! Can we have it in English?" Nobody knew it in English. Scurry, scurry. Find a translator. Find a typewriter. Tap out the Latin lines in English and hand 'em quick to the Cardinal. Boy, will that pair NEVER get married? Two wardrobe assistants brought a low stool for Marie Antoinette (the French court had once again dropped en masse to the floor) and arranged her wedding gown with its garlands of shirred ribbon so it wouldn't crumple. 9 Marie was fond of ornate clothes. In this picture, the action of which covers twenty years, Norma wears 34 costumes, each over 52 pounds in weight, not to mention 18 wigs. Each dress was draped over a steel hoop which in turn was fastened to a foundation so adjusted that the weight hung from the shoulders. The hoop had a petticoat under it, a second frilled petticoat fastened to it, and a much more frilled petticoat over it . . . although the ladies of the real French court are said to have worn no lingerie whatever, tsk, tsk. Moreover, Norma's wigs, and those of the others, had metal framework of considerable weight to keep them in shape. When the real Marie Antoinette held formal court, she wore a coiffure so lofty that a page had to follow behind with a wooden prop to hold it in place till she was settled in her chair of state. "Which only proves," commented Norma, "that a woman can get used to any kind of clothes!" Incidentally, it took a lady of the French court, in this most extravagant epoch woman's dress has ever seen, a good five hours to climb into her formal apparel, including the coiffure. Thanks to talon fasteners for clothes and whatnots to hold wigs in place, an M-G-M lady of the French court could leap into her formal attire in five minutes. ■ Van Dyck summoned the principals once more to their wedding. The high, sweet chant of those impish choir boys arose. The English translation had come. Having been wed in Latin, Marie and Louis were now wed in English. And then, for good measure, in Latin again. . . . Thoroughly married, they proceeded in the cockeyed but (believe it or not) efficient Hollywood manner to do the scene before the one just completed. That is to say, they next did the wedding procession which comes before the marriage. Two wardrobe women carried Norma's train as she disappeared beyond the entrance archway of the chapel. Organ music burst forth in a joyous strain Slowly through the archway paced the bridal party, a tossing crest of pastel plumes, a following surf of brocade and velvet topped by a foam of white wigs with here and there a flash of jewelled sword hilt or of coronet. The bride ... if Norma thought ai that moment of her own wedding day, or of how she and her husband together had planned this very picture for her there was no sign on that calm, faintlj smiling face. She moved forward, the veil frosted with silver falling about hei ! ^^^m