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

MODERN SCREEN yOUK flAVO* .TOWN" Spic and span, people say when they first visit Flavor-Town (Canajoharie, N. Y.). "What flavor and quality," you'll say when you try a package of Beech-Nut Gum. Six varieties. Refreshing and restful. TRY ALL 6 OF OUR DELICIOUS FLAVORS and see which you like the best. Besides the popular Peppermint, there are Beech-Nut Spearmint, Oralgum and 3 flavors of Beechies Peppermint, Spearmint and Pepsin. 72 fantastic things for the sake of a 'pose,' but they don't live for twenty-four hours out of the day in a house they don't want to live in just in order to pose. "When I come back from my vacation," said Bette, "I'm getting out of this house. Yes, it's charming, but it's too big for me. What do I want with all these rooms, living alone as I do? I'm going to buy some land, build myself a little, white brick three-room house. In it I will have all the things I love most, my old things, my books, my dogs and no responsibility. I'll be able to close the front door and go away whenever and for as long as I please and have no big overhead eating my head off. DEOPLE have asked me, 'What have 1 you left to want?' As far as living comforts are concerned, I answer, nothing. I'm of the school of thought which holds that you can only sleep in one bed at a time, wear one dress at a time, eat one meal. I've got all the material things I want and a good many more than I want. But I've got intangible things left to want, and want badly. The kind of things you can't see or touch or hear. Time in which to dream. Oh, the kind of things you can't put into words. I want, especially, to get to the point where I can play and have fun. Never in my life, not since my childhood, have I had such a time. I've always been something of a Mrs. Atlas. Well, Mrs. Atlas is about to revolt and rebel. Mrs. Atlas is going to shove the world off her shoulders and go gay! "For, I've been completely a damn fool, working as hard as I have. . . . Five pictures in twelve months! Asinine! Partly my own fault, of course, because I have fun when I work. It's obvious that I'm having fun so no one feels sorry for me. Also, I'm the kind of a person who, dead tired though I may be, give me ten days rest and I'm all right again temporarily. Even now, as I'm about to depart on what I may aptly describe as 'a much needed vacation,' I'm thinking that I'm kinda anxious to do a remake of 'One Way Passage,' with Brentie. That interests me. "But I know that I am a fool, indeed, if I don't take more rest, learn how to relax, take lessons in leisure. That's why I'm holding out for a two-picture a-year contract. You know, women won't face anything. All too few of us say, 'I'm going to get old. And then I'm going to get older.' No, we say, 'It happens to other people; it can't happen to me.' And so we don't conserve anything, neither our strength, our looks, our time or our money. I've been among those who haven't faced things. I'm facing things now. "So," said Bette, "I am going on a vacation. When I come back I am going to build me a little, three-room house. I am going to keep on screaming for a two-picture-a-year contract until I get it. And then, come 'lerve' again, the wish to marry again, I may be able to function like a normal human being, a wife and a mother for six months out of every year, anyway. Until that time comes, I have no personal plans — neither marriage with Brentie, reconciliation with Ham nor my eyes on other horizons. I guess," grinned Bette, "it all adds up to this: If it's being a damn fool to be a human being, it's just too bad, isn't it?" LITTLE ORPHAN JULIE (Continued from page 41) when Warners sent for him after "Four Daughters" was released. He had already returned to New York, thinking his part would be cut. "But he was kind of hoping it wouldn't," says Mrs. G. She is very honest about him. She doesn't know why, but she thinks "he's lousy in pictures." And she never went to a preview until "Juarez." Then Julie invested in a tuxedo and she, in her first evening dress, and, incidentally, they sported these fine raiments three times that very first week. She was disappointed in "Juarez" because "they showed so much of Julie's back." She would love him to do bigger parts, "but Muni always gets them." He worships Muni. On the stage he played the office boy to Muni's "Counselor At Law." "You can learn from him," he says. "And Cagney. I'd like to do a picture with Cagney. And Bette Davis. I could learn from her. I'd like to make 'The Outward Room' with her." He would also like to do 'Jean Christophe' and the life of the young poet Heinrich Heine. "He was an exile from Germany. It would be just like today. Now I'm making 'Dust Be My Destiny.' It's a swell idea, proving that the nobodies are as important as the somebodies." He went on to talk more about his work. He talks fast, excitedly, and lets grammar go hang. He hopes they won't give him any more prison pictures. He gives them "hot" ideas all the time, "but it goes in one ear and out the other." At present he would love to take time off to jump on a boat to Mexico or even to his old home port, New York. "I've never been on a boat," he says. We walked over to the set. His is a workman's walk. You see it on sailors and bricklayers and sometimes a farmer going home, a walk starting from the hips and sort of hiking itself as it slouches along, while one hand rests in a back pocket. It is not a graceful walk. But it is altogether likable. AND then there is his grin, which is -fi sudden, honest and lightens his whole face. And most of all there is his laugh. You see people shake their heads over it. They say, "You've got to like a guy with a laugh like that." You do. It starts low and it suddenly shouts and seems to catch on to everybody else's laughter. I think it's because of those traits that he'll never lose the name of Julie. His grin and his laugh do not mean he isn't serious. He is — very. Scratch any liberal organization on the coast, organizations like "The Motion Picture Guild," whose first picture will be Erika Mann's "School for Barbarians," or "The Motion Picture Democratic Committee," and you will find, head first, among the sponsors — John Garfield. I said goodby on the set. And he sank down into his chair and I saw him pause to do a typically Hollywood act. Now, don't get sore, Julie. He sat in that chair holding a big photograph of himself, and began a requested autograph. "To One of the Dead End Boys," he wrote, and then chewed the end of his pen as, like any conscientious star, he thought of what to say. I left him figuring it out.