Hollywood (1942)

A new threat to Gable, Taylor and Tracy looms up in the person of Jean Gabin, whose first American film is 20th CenturyFox's Moontide. Marlene Dietrich is his companion Imported Idol By DRAKE HUNT ■ Actor George Brent built the house perched like an eagle's nest atop the mountains fringing Hollywood. Director Edmund Goulding lived in it and shaped its character. But all trace of previous dwellers has been erased by the powerful presence of Jean Gabin, the tough, sensitive, natural Frenchman who calls it home today. Gabin, who by all commonly accepted standards is no actor at all — just pure man — makes his own atmosphere. As simple as a Down East fisherman, as direct as a Bob Feller fireball, this newcomer to the Hollywood scene is destined to make an immediate place for himself in the hearts of America's movie-going millions. Already he has won the devoted following of the comparative few who have been privileged to see the imported versions of such Gabin masterpieces as The Grand Illusion, The Human Beast and Port of Shadows. '"The Spencer Tracy of France" is the label already applied to Gabin by some critics. The term is an injustice to both unique actors. They are friends, despite the fact that they exchanged no more than ten words during Spencer's visit to Europe a few years ago. Their conversation then was restricted to pantomime, pidgin-English and pidginFrench, but they warmed to each other spontaneously. Gabin, ■who has no love for money and little enthusiasm for un necessary work, sugested to Tracy that they both take a year's vacation and tramp around the world together, hunting and fishing. That's the kind of carefree fellow Gabin was then, before the fall of France. Too old for sea duty in the French Navy, in which he served as a gob on minesweeping patrol in the World War, Gabin fretted on the sidelines until the disaster came. Then, no longer blithe and with a sprinkling of gray in his thick hair, he set out for a strange country to make a new life in a highly competitive field. One look at the man assures you he will make good. The only obstacle to his immediate success upon arrival in Hollywood was his complete lack of English. But the way he set about learning it resembled the way Gene Tunney set about learning how to beat Jack Dempsey, by using his head and eternally striving for perfection. After four months' tutoring, Jean Gabin's American speech is letter-perfect in all the simpler forms of every-day usage. He has mastered the tricky "th" sound and slowed down the rolling "r" characteristic of the Frenchman. Compared with Charles Boyer, domiciled ten years in this country, Gabin sounds like a native of Chicago. Learning the language and the special American way of pronouncing it have constituted a full-time job. When he paces the wide terrace of his house 'way up among the airlanes he is repeating Mother Goose jingles to get the rhythm of English speech. His reading is chiefly newspapers, with emphasis on the slangy Broadway and Hollywood gossip columns, the society news and the sports pages. Four hours a day he spends with a tutor, Mrs. Mary Lait Salemson, an American woman whose son was Paris correspondent for American newspapers for many years. Their conversation is entirely in English except when a deceptive American figure of speech can not be explained except by a French figure of speech. English grammar is a nightmare to the Frenchman, who struggles manfully with it nevertheless. "It is hard for me," he admitted, "because I never learned French grammar. I discontinued school at the twelfth year." An accurate musical ear, a family characteristic inherited from his mother and from his father, Joseph Gabin, a French musical comedy idol, stands him in excellent stead, however. He is a perfect mimic and after an hour's session of listening to the radio (speeches and commercials preferred) he can reproduce flawlessly such stock advertising phrases as "No money down, easy convenient payments," "Are you weak, rundown, sluggish?" and "Visit the friendly credit dentist." Night life he holds to a minimum, going out dancing occasionally with his old friend Marlene Dietrich. He was present during one of Hollywood's memorable cafe brawls and it left a bad impression on him. "Now I remain with my schoolbooks in the evening," he says, like a dutiful child. "The only events that occur up here are fights between dogs. I act as the referee. It is better than watching fights in cafes." He has familiarized himself with the wild life on the mountainside and recites his lesson proudly. "We have birds and animals for neighbors," he enumerates proudly. "Mockingbirds, owls, doves, rabbits, deer and skunks. Also there is a tiny beast with a long name — the caterpillar." Production was to have started long ago on the first Hollywood Gabin picture. Gabin was ready and the script was ready and Twentieth Century-Fox was ready. The slight hitch was that Gabin didn't like the screenplay that had been fashioned from Willard Robertson's story Moontide, although he had approved the book. "The words were not natural for me," he explained. "It was not the kind of language I would use in French. In English I am still Gabin. I must have language that sounds like me or I am no good." So they threw the script away and started again, with the high-priced and highly-skilled Nunnally Johnson at the typewriter. His advisers are urging: "You'd better go out now and have your fun before people recognize you. After your first picture you'll be mobbed wherever you show your face." "We'll see," replies the man on the mountainside. "It is more important now to do my lessons." : ] 18