Hollywood (1940)

Cary Grant as the gallant backwoodsman, Richard Carlson as young Thomas Jefferson, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as the wealthy Britisher and Martha Scott as a Colonial belle in a scene from The Howards of Virginia which was filmed almost entirely in beautiful historic Williamsburg in Virginia Sir Cedric Explains He might never have been an actor, except for a desire to keep an unpleasant disposition a secret, so he claims with much good nature By ED JONESBOY | From winning a beautiful-baby contest to becoming the favorite actor of the devastatingly critical Mr. George Bernard Shaw is a long and toilsome road, but Sir Cedric Hardwicke made it. I found him sprawled on the lawn by the swimming pool of his Beverly Hills home in a most un-English fashion. He didn't look like an actor. Lying there twiddling his toes in a pair of Mexican sandals, he might have been anything else from broker to beachcomber. That, I somehow resented. I like for my stars to look like stars whether on the screen or not. So I began the interview a trifle bitterly. Why, I asked Sir Cedric, did he become an actor in the first place. A starling strutted querulously across the grass. Sir Cedric eyed it gravely. "I am like that bird," he said. "I was born with a particularly unpleasant face, and a still 36 more unpleasant personality. So, early in life, I decided to take steps to conceal them both. That's why I became an actor." "What about that beautiful-baby business?" I demanded. "It wasn't my fault," he said. "I demonstrated against it with a precocious violence, but it did no good. Being just one year old, you know, I couldn't walk very well. So I went on a sitdown strike. That's when the photographer caught me." "And so?" "The picture," he continued sadly, "won the contest. Naturally I was perfectly furious. From that day forth I resolved to spend as much of my public life as possible behind disguises." "Then you've always been an actor?" "Always," he said. "I once tried to act my way through medical school, after my family decided I should follow in my father's footsteps and become a doctor. I failed the first examination that I took. It was also the last. My father was so distraught that he bundled me off to the first school he could think of. I was pleased to discover it was the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts." The starling had stopped its rambling over the lawn, and with its head cocked sideward was dubiously staring at the Englishman with its bright, yellow eyes. "He doesn't believe a word of it," said the actor. "Birds have such wonderful intuition." "There's a story connected with this one," I said. "We brought the sparrows over from England to fight insects, and they became a greater plague than the bugs. So we imported the starlings to fight the sparrows, and they became worse pests than both insects and sparrows combined." "With that record," Sir Cedric suggested, "they should be very fine actors." "Impossible," I said. "They can't change their attitude. They're always candidly grumpy." "Then they should be theatrical critics." "You don't like critics?" "On the contrary," he assured me, "I am very fond of them. It was a critic who really gave me my first good boost on the stage. I had a walk-on part in The School for Scandal with just two words to say after I got on the stage. The next day after the opening a critic wrote that the entire cast was commendable with the exception of young Cedric Hardwicke. He overacted his part truly dreadfully. "A producer who had read the criticism sent for me. He said, 'My boy, if you can act badly enough to attract such attention in a two-word part, your future in the theatre is assured.' His attitude piqued my pride. So I joined Frank Benson's Shakespearean troupe for a tour of South Africa. "It was supposedly virgin territory for plays of the better sort. Carrying Shakespeare to Africa, we thought, was a novel idea, but when we reached Johannesburg, we found that five other troupes had preceded us in the previous three months. Besides that, Johannesburg itself was under martial law, and there were rumors of a plague, a threat of war, and, oh, I forgot to mention it: The railway coach bringing our props to Johannesburg caught fire and most of our equipment was destroyed. So we did all that was left for us to do. We gathered together what was left of our props and turned inland to the backwoods country. We rambled over the veldts, playing wherever night overtook us. "One night in a mining hamlet we were giving She Stoops to Conquer in a hotel dining room. We made exits and entrances through a barroom. A group of miners were in there drinking, and each time one of the troupe passed through the place, he had to share a drink with them. An actor is a kind of public property, you know. Before that evening was over we were almost public charges, too. "By the third act several of the troupe were completely unconscious. One fellow had taken it upon himself to play two parts, which was, of course, all right, ex [Continued on page 44]