Hollywood (1938)

What Color is Your Personality ? [Continued from page 29] pearl gray without it. Moreover, you can't pin pearl gray down, so to speak; you can't dictate to it, I mean. Because, put pearl gray under a bright light, arrange things the way you think they should be — and it simply disappears. Yet, while you lose it when you try to circumscribe it and 'bring it out' (as you can do with less unusual tones), it's there just the same ready tc emerge . . . on its own terms. Pearl gray, iridescent and independent, is pretty nearly unique in the color gamut." B Not merely her acquaintances but likewise the members of her family are subjected to this color test of Lola's. Though they may not be aware of it, she sees her sister Priscilla as silver and her sister Rosemary as a Paisley pattern. Sort of nice, either notion. "Silver sparkles," Lola explained, "yet if you turn a piece of silvercloth in a certain way it has no color at all. I've seen that kid, Priscilla, sparkle like a diamond, then become like marble. She's the real silver you see in an old wedding ring, silver symbolic of an old soul in a very young girl. Silver comes out of the ground and goes through fire, and you put it in the sun and it sparkles. Or in a dark corner of a mine you suddenly see a light — and it is silver. "A silver personality like Pat is the kind who could drive a covered wagon to a new country, and love it." H Rosemary is very different, she went on. People right in the same family can have colors so different that it's amazing. "A Paisley," Lola repeated, "that's Rosemary. A combination and apparent conglomeration of colors, but a definite pattern nevertheless. From the maze of colors you can pull out one tint in a Paisley that shines above the rest. Possibly it's chartreuse. Without losing any of her Paisley pattern, Rosemary, I'd say. has more chartreuse than any other shade; it predominated, and through the Paisley it has a pattern of its own. "Chartreuse is yellow and green together. The green is deeper than apple," Lola meditated, half closing her eyes, "and the yellow doesn't exactly mix with it and still the two shades do blend. The yellow is a wonderful complement to brown, and Rosemary has chestnut hair. Yes, golden brown and green make the yellow glow I see around her. It's the shade of the moss you see in the tops of the highest redwood branches. There it is, far away, remote, but a beautiful thing for you to look at. ■ "Joan Crawford is white, and white as you know is a combination of every color. You've almost got to be perfect to wear it — your skin, your hair, must be just right — and Joan wears it often. "White is sc symbolic of what Joan stands for. Anything that's strong, that's staple, no matter what color it starts out; anything strong enough to be washed by the ocean, for instance, and not be de stroyed by it, as a rock or a length of good, staple cloth — shines white in the sun. In fact, it turns white. Even the side of a rock, if you catch it in a shaft of sunlight after the waves have swept over it, has a white shine on it. "Joan's continual desire to improve herself projects a shine of white about her. I can see it every time I look in her direction. White is sincere. There's no fleck in it. It isn't anything but white. | "I see Gary Cooper as navy blue. His isn't a color that changes or fades. It's a versatile color, too; you can wear it with anything, and it wears so well and it is always navy blue. The shade is conservative, yet it enhances any particular attribute you happen to have. It's fundamental, dependable, and therefore always popular, forever in style. It is there. Gary looks his best in navy, incidentally. When the Shriners held their convention in Hollywood, Charlie McCarthy turned out in tails and monocle. That's Bergen in the topper H "People frequently wonder why they happen to wear a certain color so much. It isn't," Lola claims, "a matter of 'happening.' Look at your own wardrobe, and you'll probably find that you have more clothes in one special color, or shades of that color, than in any other." There's no mystery about it, either. If you say it's because the color looks well en you, in a way you are putting the cart before the horse. Why does it look well on you? Just because you express that color, or it expresses you. There is one color which evokes the best in you, whether looks, disposition, mood. This is true of everyone, she explained,, and about the worst mistake you can make is to wear black if you're a gold individuality or gold if you're a cerise or . . . but you get the idea. Nor is this so other -world and improbable as it may at first appear. Psychologists say a good many of the irritable moods that beset our daily lives would vanish if the heliotrope people stopped living in vermilion homes, and the vermilion people stopped trying to work in chocolate brown offices. JK When they began to delve into the whys and wherefores of technicolor in Hollywood, discovering why this com bination of shades "did something" to the face of a star and wherefore another combination of shades didn't, they ran across the psychology of color and began to investigate it pretty carefully. They found that color on the screen could establish a mood in the audience. If you remember Becky Sharp, you'll recall how the red of draperies, of wine and of uniforms grew more prominent as the threat of war and bloodshed grew nearer. Without the audience realizing it, this heightening of reds put them into the frame of mind to expect conflict. Nobody starts a fight simply because there's a red rug in the living room, even though the words "seeing red" indicate how much the color red supposedly is connected with belligerency. But many an individual has been vaguely irritated by a certain living room, has felt ill at ease in it and snappish, and has blamed on the dinner or the hostess what may have started as a kind of reflex protest against this red rug That is, if he's the sort of person who re-acts badly to red. Lots of people love it. ■ "Now, Shirley Temple — she's bright yellow," Lola observed, "she couldn't be anything else. She is sunshine. You never saw a more sunshiny child, or one who gave more sunshine to others. To me, the way she moves around and speaks is like sunbeams flickering over something dull and changing it to something bright and wholesome." ■ The importance of color in people's everyday existence, Lola proceeded, can hardly be overestimated. Whether you know it or not. "Everybody wants color," she said, "he may get it symbolically from the person in whom he's interested; that person to him is a 'colorful character' — or else he isn't interested. He may get it from his daily work, or else he speaks of his life in terms of color as 'drab.' The spectrum, actual or symbolic, is a thing from which nobody can escape." | Bye and bye I happened to mention Clark Gable. What item of the spectrum does the screen's greatest hero represent? "Clark Gable," said Lola, "is the shade of natural wool. That strong, light beige. He's real and homespun, he's durable, he is always himself. If Gable had lived in another age, he'd have been a frontiersman." ■ And this color idea works! Going home, imbued with the thought of everybody wrapped in his psychic pigment, I ran into a crazy -quilt. Yes, sir, a crazy-quilt, criss-crossed with all tints and tones, standing at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Right away I realized that I'd gone psychic, too, and was beholding a color aura beneath which at second glance appeared a brown suit and maroon tie. "Oh, hullo!" said the crazy-quilt, waving his hands and giving that chuckle, "Woo-woo!" It was Hugh Herbert. 36