Hollywood (1938)

/ ■ Merle Oberon's very wise and very pretty little head was bothered by a number of very big worries as she waited for the first studio call that would bring her in front of the Samuel Goldwyn cameras set up to shoot the opening scenes in The Lady and the Cowboy. And worry No. 1, among a host of others, arose from the charming English star's discovery that all is not gold that glitters — even in Hollywood. And the reason she had classified this fact as worry No. 1 was because, after wearing down three pencils to their respective erasers, she had finally figured out that despite the upper bracket salary she would receive from Mr. Goldwyn for her work in The Lady and the Cowboy and Wuthering Heights, she would have the staggering sum exactly nothing to represent her cinematic labors when the cameras stopped rolling. "It begins to look as though I came over here this time merely for the ride," she declared the day we visited her in her Santa Monica home. "You can see for yourself,'' she added, picking up a handful of papers upon which she had regimented row after row of tiny figures. "The more I work the less I'm going to have, and if I stay in Hollywood too long I may have to have a benefit!" We hinted in our best diplomatic manner that perhaps she had been detoured somewhere by an error in her arithmetic, that she had confused herself somewhat by placing her financial cart before her financial horse, and that while all play and no pay didn't make Jack — to paraphrase an old and honorable maxim — it might be well, before her worrying became a habit, to order a fresh supply of paper and pencils and start all over again in her calculations. Her answer to this was an emphatic shake of her very pretty little head. "There's nothing wrong with my arithmetic," she insisted. "All these figures Even though Merle Oberon is one of the most successful stars, life holds many worries for her, too By E. J. SMITHSON come from my attempt to work out my income taxes. I use the word in the plural and there's nothing wrong in that, either, because I have to pay both the British and American governments a part of my earnings. Not that I dislike or object to paying an income tax — or taxes. As a matter-of-fact I think anyone who pays an income tax should consider herself very lucky. But after I divide up part of my salary between England and the United States, and then pay all my other expenses, there really isn't enough left to bother about. So when I say that I'm working for Mr. Goldwyn for nothing I really mean it." And she really meant it when she said she'd be broke if she stayed too long in Hollywood because one doesn't have to be a mental giant to figure out that there's a bottom to every pocketbook — even those well -filled ones owned by the top stars of the motion picture colony. And that's worry No. 1. Not only that, but it's reason No. 1 why this talented and gracious young English beauty is seriously considering, even now, plans for her return to British studios immediately after her second picture, Wuthering Heights, is completed late this fall; and no one can blame her if she does, because after all, there's little sense, if any, in working — even in the MOVIES— for nothing. Worry No. 2 springs from her dual contract with Alexander Korda in London and Samuel Goldwyn in Hollywood. "When Darryl Zanuck borrowed me from Mr. Korda for his Hollywood production of Folies Bergere de Paris in 1935," Merle explains, "my speech was decidedly British in accent and, since I knew I was scheduled to appear in other Hollywood pictures, I studied hard to Americanize -it. And then, just as I was beginning to talk like a native daughter of California I was called back to London to make two pictures for Mr. Korda and my speech had to become British again. Now here I'm back in Hollywood again and once more I'll have to iron out my accent so that [Continued on page 63] 33