Modern Screen (Dec 1947 - Nov 1948)

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Lightweight, washable RELAXO comes in our own exclusive, specially knitted lastex fabric, for greater comfort with control. In Nude, White and Black. Extra sizes, Girdle or Panty Girdle 3.98. Hi Satisfaction GUARANTEED or m your money refunded. With detachable crotch (small, medium fijii and large sizes only). i RELAXO GIRDLE CO. Dept. 7B | 42-18 13th Street, Long Island City 1, N. Y. ■ Rush me RELAXO Girdles, as indicated. i I will pay postman $_ plus postage on receipt. Check sizes and colors wanted. NAME ADDRESS CITY ZONE _STATE_ i SAVE MONEYI Check here if you enclose ', S check or money order. We pay postage. Same J „„ J refund GUARANTEES. I 102 l * had been thinking — "There's lots of time yet. She's too young." I knew now I was wrong. Age isn't always measured in years. Rita was ready. What if she did quit school? She was a Cansino and born to dance. Next morning I told her she would be my dance partner. That was the real start of Rita's career. We practiced for three solid months — four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon without let-up. Rita's girlish pounds melted away, her figure slimmed out into the right curves in the right places. I polished every Spanish dance I'd taught her. I put on the finishing touches and made her a professional dancer. Rita was only 15 when we danced at the Foreign Club. In one way, we were a curiosity. People would bring their friends to watch us and have them guess what we were! They'd always say "brother and sister." They couldn't believe we were father and daughter and I suppose a lot of bets were won that way! Soon we had a better offer and went to Agua Caliente, just below the Border. Agua Caliente was then in its hey-day and the favorite resort for Hollywood producers, directors and stars. Many of my old New York stage friends, now in the movies, looked me up — and all fell for Rita. The big shots of the studios saw her, too — and soon we were commuting between Agua Caliente and Hollywood, making screen tests. We made six. None was any good. Because the camera saw what I saw, beneath Rita's dance -floor costumes and grown-up grace: she was still a little girl — too young to play the parts they lined up for her. One still makes me laugh to think of it — they tested Rita to play a vampire. At fifteen! Rita was impatient, but never impulsive. I never saw her get angry or temperamental. She took my advice. She was a good girl, a good daughter. Finally our chance in Hollywood came — not much; only a solo dance for Rita, a few feet in the Fox film, Dante's Injerno. But I knew it was a good showcase for Margarita, and I wasn't wrong. Studio executives raved when they saw the rushes. Rita was in pictures! And she was only 16 years old. couldn't say "boo" . . . At the time she was signed, of course, Rita was no actress at all. She could barely say "boo" when it came to speaking lines. But she plunged into drama school and worked as hard as she had at dancing. It was six months before she said one line into the mike — and I'll never forget that first disastrous part. It was just a few lines in a picture, a Warner Baxter picture, El Gaucho. The Argentine theme was, naturally, what got Rita the job; and she was a dancer again, but with dialogue. She prepped for her big moment, working like a beaver. Her call was for seven in the morning. We thought that meant seven at makeup, filming later — but no! Seven was the hour set to shoot pictures and we arrived with no makeup or costume at that fatal hour. What was worse, Rita's scene, with the star, Warner Baxter, was the very first scene of the day. They could do nothing until they filmed that. It was a terrible morning. While poor Margarita tried to throw on her costume and makeup for the biggest chance of her young life, the assistant director barked angry scoldings over her shoulder every minute. The company waited an hour ' and a half. By the time Rita did arrive she was so nervous she was in tears. And, of course, too, she blew her precious, well-studied lines sky-high! I doubt if she ever would have got through her first scene without a certain gal lantry which I'll always remember on Warner Baxter's part. He saw the terrified, nerve-wracked girl in a spot and after her third blow-up made a terrible one himself. "You see," he laughed, "I can do it, too." That broke the tension and Rita was all right. I'll always believe that Warner blew up on purpose. I never felt so sorry for Rita in my life as I did that morning, unless it was a morning several months later when she suffered the greatest heartbreak of her experience— a wound, incidentally, which still gives her a twinge to remember today. Rita was picked by Winfield Sheehan. Fox's production boss, to play the title role in Ramona. She had taken all the tests successfully; the part was hers. She even had her costumes made and fitted, her script memorized. Then, 24 hours before she was due to step on the set, Fox merged with 20th Century and Darryl Zanuck moved into the production seat. He canceled Rita's star job in Ramona. Probably he was right; neither my wife nor I thought Margarita was ready to star. Just the same, to Rita it was like seeing the pot of gold at the rainbow's end snatched right away from outstretched fingers. It was a terrible disappointment to a 16-year-old girl with stars in her eyes. She was heartbroTten. She cried all day and into the night — at home— not at the studio; Rita was too proud for that. I told her, "Now listen, honey, that can happen to anybody at any time in show business." For a whole week, I took her to the beach, to picture shows, anywhere to get her mind off the disappointment. But she never forgot. Some years later, when 20th Century-Fox borrowed her to star in Blood and Sand, Rita had the satisfaction of being brought back at a big star's salary — many times what her contract paid her then. And she couldn't help gloating a little over that. She's veryhuman, that daughter of mine. Only a few weeks after Ramona was snatched away, Rita's first picture contract ended — and with it Rita's budding career as a Hollywood actress. She fought her way back, the hard way, through Hollywood "horse opera" Westerns, tackling them with the same determination and courage (she'd never ridden a horse in her life until she did for a camera) that she had everything else. Along the way, perhaps I helped some, but mostly MODERN SCREEN 'May I go in and look for my little sister?' "Couldn't find her!"