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Mary Bayless, extra player who appeared both versions of Metro's Smilin' Through, chats with Jeanette MacDonald, t-tar of the new Technicolor production. Norma Shearer and Fredric March were co-starred in the film made nine years ago
By MARY BAYLESS
as told to HELEN HOVER
■ "Report tomorrow morning for Smilin' Through," the casting office told me, and I felt a curious thrill run up and down my spine. Now I've been doing extra roles in pictures for some ten-odd years, and the excitement of working in films has worn off, I can tell you. Working in pictures is a job with me — not an adventure any more.
But this was different. Just nine years ago, almost to the day, I had received the same order from Casting. "Report tomorrow morning for Smilin' Through!"
Then, the tragic Irish heroine, Moonyean, was Norma Shearer. The Moonyean I worked with the other day was spirited, red-haired Jeanette MacDonald. I wanted to see what they were doing with Smilin' Through these days, how they were treating it.
Time seemed to have stood still when I walked through the set the first day and saw the stately prop manor house. It had been redecorated, repainted and repaned, but it was the same house in which Norma Shearer and Fredric March made love in the old Smilin' Through. Seeing it again reminded me of the time Miss Shearer, looking as fragile as a glass doll, did a scene there wearing a lovely taffeta gown heavily embroidered at the skirt. Although sound film had been introduced some years earlier, they were still having trouble. Every time Miss Shearer walked, the gown swished and made a thunderous noise in the sound room. Finally, they solved it by lining the skirt with flannel, but it was such a voluminous skirt that it took two seamstresses all afternoon to make the gown "sound-proof."
First day of work on Smilin' Through, Technicolor model of 1941, I bumped right into Romance with a capital R. Standing beside the famous gate, surrounded by hundreds of sweet-smelling blossoms and kissing for all they were worth, were Jeanette MacDonald and
Circle: Cast together for the first time in their long successful film careers, Jeanette MacDonald and Gene Raymond (Mr. and Mrs. in private life) play sweetheart roles in the immortal love story, Smilin' Through
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