Modern Screen (Dec 1940 - Nov 1941)

I, T3S A HECK OF A James Craig went to college for seven years — but not because he was stupid! He went that long because he was smart. He wanted an education that would equip him for any number of things, not just one. But he never dreamed that, among other things, he was equipping himself to crash Hollywood. "When I was back in Texas fumbling passes," he says, with a grin and a hint of a Texas drawl, "I thought of actors as a bunch of sissies. The locker-room talk about 'the Little Theatre group' was pretty bawdy." If somebody had told him five years ago that he was just the type to get up in front of a movie camera and talk love to somebody like Ginger Rogers, he would have kayoed him. And don't think he couldn't have! He's 6 feet 2Vz inches, weighs 190 pounds, and played fullback. But nobody thought of telling him five years ago, or ever: "You ought to be in the movies." The first time he heard those fateful words was when he said them to himself. It wasn't that he suddenly fancied his looks. What he suddenly fancied was the kind of salaries that Hollywood paid. He's disarmingly frank about it. "I grew up with just one ambition," he says. "To make money. It sounds cynical, but it's the truth. And why not tell the truth?" When Jim was 17, his father lost all his worldly wealth. He later made another fortune, but in the meantime Jim got a pretty good idea of what it was like to be without money. His father was (and is) a building contractor, who traveled all over the country on construction projects — a fact that may partly explain Jim's own wanderlust. Also, his great-grandfather was part Cherokee. "From all I hear," says Jim, "he liked to move around, too. All my other ancestors were farmers. They stuck close to home." On February 4, 1912, his dad's construction project was in Nashville, Tennessee — so Nashville became Jim's birthplace. And James Henry Meador became his name. "Hollywood didn't change it. I did. 'Meador' sounded like a bad word in Spanish. I don't know where I got the 'Craig.' From the play, 'Craig's Wife,' I guess." While he was growing up along with several brothers, the family moved all over the country — to Kansas, to New York, to Richmond, to Florida, but Nashville still remained their home-town. "That's where I went to school. And I was always MOST OF US'LL SETTEE FOR SOME MOONLIGHT AND SUN ON OUR SUMMER VACATIONS, RUT JtM CRAIG HELD OUT FOR A MOVIE CONTRACT! terrible in English. That is, until the eighth grade. Then I ran into a little old teacher, as tough as nails — she must be 85 now, but she's still teaching— and when she got through with me, I knew grammar. Before that I didn't see any sense in worrying about it. Nobody ever gave me a reason why a subject should be this, and a predicate should be that. But she did. So I stopped being a rugged individualist as far as grammar was concerned." But not as far as education in general was concerned. "Seven of us decided we didn't like going to a big city high school. We all fancied ourselves as tough muggs, and we didn't like the discipline. We had to study too hard to play f ootbalL So we went together and bought an old broken-down Ford and drove out to a country high school every day and played football out there. Nobody in Nashville would have given ten cents for the futures of any of us, but we're all doing all right today." The year Jim graduated from high school was the year that his Dad lost his money. That was 1929. "The gloom was pretty thick around home that summer. There was a lot of talk about how I probably couldn't go away to college. I decided I'd light out and bum around the country a little and see if I couldn't find a college that would take me even if I didn't have a bank book. I sort of had my eye on a couple here on the West Coast. "Even if I didn't have any luck, I figured the change of scenery would do me a whole lot of good. Jim has two women after him in RKO's "The Devil and Daniel Webster"— Simone Simon (above) who s making a film comeback, and co-star Anne Shirley. 56 MODERN SCREEN