Modern Screen (Dec 1948 - Oct 1949)

YODORA the deodorant that works TWO WAYS WHICH GIRL HAS THE GABLE? Nancy Davis (Continued from page 53) have to go back to Clark's New York trip last winter when he appeared at the U. S. Air Forces show at Madison Square Garden. At parties and affairs all over town during his stay, a new beauty appeared with him. Together, they dropped m at a I cocktail party at the Waldorf Towers given by the wealthy Tommy Royce. They lunched at 21 and dined at the Colony. They saw the Broadway shows. When they attended High Button Shoes the audience applauded Clark when he got to his seat, and he had to get up and take a bow. The eyes of everyone were very much on the girl with him as well. People everywhere kept asking, "Who is she?" The first, quick identifications were wrong as usual There was talk about her being a Continental belle, a wealthy heiress, an English girl he had met during the war. It took Louella Parsons to furnish the right answer, even if she was 3,000 miles away in Hollywood that night. She correctly named Nancy in her column and told of her being a young stage actress and the daughter of a Chicago brain surgeon, Dr. Loyal Davis. Shortly after the item appeared, Clark went back to the Coast, leaving Nancy behind in New York. the eyes had it . . . People who saw her around Manhattan after his departure expected to find her on the sad side. After all, she'd seemed radiant in his company, looking in every way like a girl who was having the most wonderful time of her life . . . and this wonderful time was now over. But, surprisingly enough, Nancy's manner didn't fit that part at all. In fact, she seemed happier than ever, acting more like a girl who knows something is beginning — rather than ending. Naturally, some of her friends jumped to conclusions and were after her to talk about Clark. But she was evasive. She looked things, but didn't speak them. Yet, one late afternoon at a cocktail party at the home of one of her friends, Mrs. Shirley Wolfe, she couldn't restrain herself and had to say a few words. A guest, in from Hollywood for a visit, mentioned hearing that she and Clark had been seen together frequently. "Oh, Clark is divine!" she is reported to have said. "I love him. He's the most charming man I have ever met." In show business, things like this can be said without their meaning much. And girls who have said them have gone on to other things — and other men. But not Nancy. Not long afterwards, she was missing around New York. Not long after this, she was present in Hollywood — very much present. For soon word drifted around that she had a great big movie contract, same being with MGM, and MGM being, as if you needed to be told, the studio where Mr. Gable earns his breadand-butter plus. It must not be thought that Nancy was signed without the usual screen test being made to determine what her photographic and voice possibilities were. That is to say, a screen test was made. Yet there was little about it that could be called usual. In fact, it was such a gilt-edged operation all around, so well supervised artistically and technically to make sure nothing went wrong, that when the details got to be known, any number of aspiring starlets around Hollywood gulped their envy frankly to any and all who would listen. The sum of their remarks was, "It should happen to me!" Or, as one girl, with a more direct mind, put it: "He should happen to me!" The scene Nancy did was a sequence from East Side. West Side. As a rule, a new player is tested by whatever directing and camera personnel is available. But Nancy, as she herself explains, was "lucky " The director she had was Mr. George Cukor, just about the top man in his line in Hollvwood, let alone MGM. In his career only the most precious of moviedom s stars have ever been assigned to him — from Garbo and Norma Shearer of old, on up to Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart and Deborah Kerr today. These are the sort of artistic responsibilities he ordinarily shoulders. The cameraman, the fellow who can really influence the executives who see the test into saying either "Hello" or "Goodbye," was George Folsey. His job, too, is hardly that of merely testing new talent — he is among cameramen what Cukor is in the directorial field. Some of Folsey's pictures, both released and unreleased, include State of the Union, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, The Great Sinner and Operation Malaya. How did the test turn out? Fine. Nancy had some honest words to say about it afterward. They were, "I don't know what I'd have done without them!" And then, within two weeks after the test was made, an announcement was forthcoming from the front office which was quite in keeping with the general uptake of her career since she first saw Clark in New York. The studio declared that it was going to make Death in the Doll's House, from a recent best-seller, and that Nancy was the first actress to be assigned to it — in a major role. Subsequent announcements added Ann Sothern as the star, and along with her, little Gigi Perreau, the eight-year-old girl who scored such a triumph in Enchantment. one world . . . Since Clark's interest in her has become known, there has been a general weighingin of Nancy's appearance and background, and the consensus has it that she runs very much in the mold of the sort of girls he likes. In her middle twenties, she is tall (five-feet-five sans heels) and slender (117 pounds). And since, in addition to there being the tradition of the stage in her family, she was also a Junior Leaguer in her deb days, she should not be out of place in Clark's world — which lately seems to include the social set. Nancy's mother, Mrs. Edith Davis, was a well-known actress who worked with such greats as David Belasco, Chauncey Olcott and George M. Cohan. Nancy's godmother was the late Alia Nazimova — whom she pairs with the late Laurette Taylor as her all-time favorite actresses of the stage. (Incidentally, she and Clark agree on Spencer Tracy and Walter Huston as tops among screen actors.) She started her education in The Girls' Latin School in Chicago and went on to become a Smith College girl in Northampton, Massachussetts, majoring in dramatics and English. While in high school in Chicago, she did a little radio work and was president of the dramatic club. During her summer vacations at Smith, she worked in stock in New England and Wisconsin, later in New York. She says, "I can't remember my exact 'start.' I always wanted to be an actress — used to watch my mother and stay backstage as i. STOPS not just masksperspiration odor 2. SOFTENS and beautifies underarm skin Oh joy, oh bliss! YODORA is different . . . doubly divine, doubly effective, because it's made with a face cream base. Works two ways : 1— really stops perspiration odor . . . 2 — keeps armpits fresh and lovely-looking as the skin of neck and shoulders. Safe for clothes, too. Today, try YODORA, the wonderful deodorant that works two ways! Product of McKesson & Robbins, Bridgeport, Conn. Tubes or jars 10^, 304, 60«i