Hollywood (1942)

You Can Bet On Bet f^ By ULORIA BRENT ■ Meet the girl who had no compunctions about tackling a voodoo role. Half the girls in Hollywood were afraid to play little Cassie, one of the central characters in Warners' pretentious picturization of the best-selling novel, Kings Row. The role called for the gamut of emotions, and that's a big order for any actress. Betty Field leaped at the chance — and did a mighty sweet job of it, too. By this, you may gather that Miss Field is an actress who likes to act for the sake of acting, and not to nutter gummed-on eyelashes at the hero with the wavy hair. And you're right. Most Hollywood belles are transported to seventh heaven when given a new boy friend or a white fox wraparound. These things don't constitute bliss for Betty. Give her a good, meaty role and neither earthquake, hurricane nor flying glass will bother her. No fooling. Betty was so keyed up when she reported for her first day of work in Kings Row that when she was to pound with frantic desperation on a door for a scene, she completely overlooked the fact that th top of the door was of ground glass. Sf banged at the door and her fist went rignt through it. The cameras stopped turning and everyone rushed to see how badly she was hurt. "Pooh," she said casually, when first aid was summoned. "Tie the bloody thing up and let's get going." Since the age of eight, Betty has been intent on becoming an actress and nothing will ever change her opinion that to be an actress you must take the profession as a holy endeavor and work like the very devil. She has intelligence, she has humor, she also has a pair of well-shaped Dietrichs and blond hair that is getting increasingly blonder, but she insists that she has no glamour. "This hair," she mutters, running a hand savagely through it. "Peroxide. Cassie's a blond trick." She's so normal that she seems batty to Hollywood. Young, breezy and unattached, she appeared like a new addition to the Sweater Set when she sashayed into town. But she insisted she wasn't good looking, stayed home with her scripts and her paintings (she's an art lover) and waited a year before she set foot inside As herself, Betty Field is a fresh and breezy young girl, yet she portrays the most difficult role with amazing conviction. Below, as the trollop in Blues in the Night (first and second pictures), third, as the embittered mountain girl in Shepherd of the Hills, and last, as the neurotic Cassie in Kings Row of Ciro's. Even then, her visit was most unethical. She ordered tea, didn't go tearing around waving to everyone or peer anxiously for the photographer. A camera lad did amble toward her table, but he slunked away disappointedly on closer inspection. "Thought it was Cobina Wright at first," he mumbled apologetically. When Betty learned she had been mistaken— even so briefly — for a glamour girl, she preened. "The biggest compliment I've ever had," she twittered happily. She never considered it a personal affront to be brushed aside like that, and not being recognized as a celebrity herself doesn't bother her one whit. She has a plain and wholesome quality that makes her look like most other girls, and fans pass her up. Recently, she was bagged by a youngster for her first autograph in Hollywood — after two years in pictures! Bestowing a grateful look on the youngster, she reeled happily and wrote: "To one in a million — and I mean that!" H>_3 doesn't like living in Hollywood and won't spend any more time there than she has to. As soon as she's finished with a picture, she makes quick tracks to the airport. She likes New York because it wakes her up. She thrives on its uncertain climate and its noise. She insisted upon a contract clause allowing her six months off every year for Broadway and stage work, and flabbergasted everyone by getting it. Friends point out to her the advantages of settling in Hollywood and tried to coax her to stay put in the land of eternal sunshine. "So I bought me a house with a swimming pool," explains Betty, "figuring that that would keep me harnessed. I dunked myself in the pool twice but it held no fascination for me. I got homesick for the subways and crazy taxicabs. The first free moment between pictures, I turned the keys over to the gardener and was off for New York." As a child in Boston, where she was born, Betty was so intent on getting on 40