Modern Screen (Dec 1938 - Nov 1939 (assorted issues))

MODERN SCREEN HOLLYWOOD'S A DANGEROUS PLACE (Continued from page 29) he and Mrs. Boyer entertain a few close friends. . . As when, shortly before "Marie Antoinette" went into production, Norma Shearer came to dine with Charles and Pat, and the three of them spent the evening discussing Charles for the role of Louis XVI. which Norma then wanted him to play. But he didn't think he was suited to the role, either by stature or temperament and so declined, with thanks. That is characteristic of Boyer. Neither gratified pride, vast sums of money nor shinier laurels can tempt him to do something in which he does not believe. Whenever he has capitulated it has been because he had gotten himself involved in a contract which robbed him, temporarily, of the right of free choice. NO, there is no pride of pomp and circumstance, no personal vanity in Charles Boyer. If there had been personal vanity he would not have said, as he did to me, that playing Napoleon in "Conquest" has given him more personal satisfaction than any role he has ever played on the screen. I thought of what Spencer Tracy said just the other day, "Boyer's Napoleon should have won the Academy Award last year. He deserved it far more than my Manuel did." But in spite of Boyer's magnificent performance there were fans galore who lamented bitterly because the Boyer face was lost to Bonaparte. "We want Boyer, not Bonaparte !" they shouted. Charles thinks less than nothing of his looks. He told me, "I dislike playing always the lover, the romantic hero who must inevitably 'get the girl.' I am sorry that it began this way for me because, in Hollywood it is hard to break away from precedent. To harp upon one string becomes monotonous. Ronald Colman, I think, chooses excellent roles. He preserves his romantic appeal but is, at the same time, a character actor with a mansized job to do. ) "I am a gambler by nature," smiled Boyer. "If I should sign anywhere a seven year contract the excitement for me would be dried up by the end of the first year. Without excitement I cannot work — I would not want to live. I do not like to feel safe. I enjoy the game of chance, not on the gaming tables, but in my own life. I want only to have enough money so that, in case of illness or old age, my family will be suitably protected. "I have always been a gambler. I gambled when I first broke my home ties to become an actor. I threw away, for an ambition which was purely instinctive, generations of safe, conformist living, an established business, a life where I would always have known where my next full meal was coming from. For in my natal Figeac, in France, my father and my grandfather before me had been manufacturers of agricultural implements and I could have followed snugly in their footsteps. I could have been another respected, substantial Citizen Boyer of Figeac with nothing more erratic than the farmers' seasonal needs to plague my days. Cut down RUNS this way ... Runs come easily when silk loses elasticity. Save the elasticity of your stockings— Lux them after every wearing. I threw that all away for the chancy lot of the entertainment world." Yes, Charles Boyer threw substance and safety away for the chancy lot of the entertainment world and he became, then, the idol of Paris, the idol of all France, with every theatre in which he played a veritable hothouse of adoring women, and their escorts. Then he threw that away to come to Hollywood, to follow the demon lure of the shadowy theatre. AND now, again, safely under the Wanger wing, he has come out from under, preferring to throw his own dice. Because he wants to do the parts he believes in. "Not Hamlets," he told me, smiling. "I am not pretentious. I want to do intelligent, simple, human pictures. No, not even an 'Algiers.' 'Algiers' is colorful. It is entertaining — but not the kind of thing I want. I'd like to play the Man of Today, with all the worry and anguish which is the lot of the average man of today, who puts so much heart and sweat into so fragile a way of living. I wonder that people do not write more stories about him, this contemporary man who is more than half a martyr." We left the sun-deck then to go indoors, into one of the large and splendidly proportioned rooms which make Mr. Boyer's new home overlooking Benedict Canyon. It was as he gave a backward glance down the steep declivity which leads to Hollywood that Charles said, "That is a very dan-ger-ous place . . . but not the kind of danger you suppose." I was curious. te "You bet we do," girls say "With a iob and a wes salary I'm more ever a Lux fan! It makes stocking d elastic — just as it keeps stockings < longer so they go into runs less of A little goes so far IT'S EASY to cut down n with Lux," girls say. 1 saves elasticity— stockings i under strain. Runs don't pot often! Soaps with harmful all and cake-soap rubbing wea elasticity— then runs may co saves elasticity