Modern Screen (Dec 1933 - Oct 1934)

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Hours later, its alluring fragrance will still delight you. Blue LUaLU FIFTH AVENUE • NEW YORK J Face Powder, Lipstick, Perfume, Cold Cream, Cream Rouge, Brilliantine, Talcum Powder. Each only 10c at all 5 and 10c stores wanted me to play the boy in it when he got around to make it. We made a gentlemen's agreement and shook hands on it. I agreed to stay away from Hollywood and out of pictures until he was ready for me. I went back east and to the stage. I worked with stock companies, trying to learn a little more about acting all the time. "When Vidor was ready he sent for me, but after I arrived something happened about the business arrangements and I had to wait three months to begin work. Finances got a little low. I didn't get a large salary for my work in the picture, but I would have played the part for noth ing. It was worth it, wasn't it?" he asked eagerly. He says he has always been able to save a little money. "Even when I was a kid on the streets in New York I always managed to have a little money in my pocket. But now I want to save more than just a little money. I want a home. I want to build for the future. I banked everything on that picture and I'm glad I did." And after you've seen it, you'll be glad, too. And you may be convinced that the route of hard knocks to success is the best way. Perhaps it's like the "longest way home." Do Hardships Help a Fellow? No! (Continued I was seventeen, which is really bad. That does either one of two things to an actor. It makes him stop working and sit back on the laurels he has won or it makes him feel ever after that he is going down hill instead of climbing." DOUGLASS was born in Berkeley Square, one of Los Angeles' fashionable sections, and there he lived during the early years of his life. His summers were spent on the family estate, EdgeclifT, in Altadena, which he describes as "an awfully nice old place with lots of trees and quiet. The house must be fifty years old and had round copper bath tubs when we bought it. It's not a snooty place at all. There aren't any marble benches," he added with a laugh. When he was twenty he took over a small guest house, a stone's throw from the big house, for his own. It was handier to the swimming pool and there, in his own place, he was free to practice his theories of interior decoration to his heart's content. "No one but me could live there," he laughed. "The floors are bright yellow, the furniture bright red and the walls and ceilings white. The curtains are yellow and it's very gay inside but, out of consideration for the family, it is very conservative outside — plain white with green shutters and a white picket fence. Of course I take my meals at the family house when I'm up there." The neighbors tell how, at the age of six, he put on shows in his backyard with the aid of the gardener, the servants and most oi the household furniture for props. And when he organized a dramatic club and put on plays at high school it proved to .be so strong an attraction that the athletic board had to send out an S. O. S. for football players. He always knew that he must be an actor, and says, "Nothing else I ever tried seemed to matter." The only time he ever wavered in his desire to act was when he decided to be a writer. "I had a book of poems published when I was about ten. I suspect there was considerable drag used to get them published, but it seemed to me at the time to be quite an achievement. When I was seventeen I realized that everything I had written was terrible so I went around and stole copies of my book that my friends kindly kept on their library tables, and destroyed them. I called the book 'Pipe Dreams' and I had never smoked a pipe or anything else. The verses were very sophisticated and vicious. Oh, and they were awful !" DOUG'S school days were not the ordinary school days of other high school boys. He went every day from school to the Pasadena Community Playhouse, where he rehearsed and acted almost continuously. When he was fourteen he played in "The from page 71) Lady with the Lamp" at this theatre. Joseph Schildkraut saw him and said, "You have grease paint in your veins," and Douglass believed him. He spent every spare minute at this theatre. When he was not acting he directed little plays for the workshop connected with the theatre, leaving little time or energy for his school work. At examination time he would visit each one of his teachers and explain why he hadn't been able to study harder, how important it was for him to graduate so he could go ahead with his career. "Finally I graduated — with circles under my eyes," he told me. When he was determined to go immediately to New York and seek a job on the stage instead of going to college as his parents wished, they offered but the mildest opposition and financed his trip. When he left his mother wrote two pieces of advice on a slip of paper and handed it to him. Send your laundry out weekly so you will always have fresh linen," he wrote, "and write me a post card once a week. I won't expect a letter." She had faith that her training for seventeen years would carry him along morally. Within three months he had a job in a play and has earned his own living ever since. Of course it wasn't as easy as it sounds. He didn't have a job laid in his lap. It's true, he never had to go hungry or wonder where he would sleep while he was waiting for a job. He needn't have worried if he never did get a job, but he would have, for his heart was set on a career in the theatre. But he had to work and study hard, he had to make the rounds of managers' offices, he had to swallow disappointments. "I went to Miss Helburn's office at the Theatre Guild every day," he said of that time. "I sat there so much she had to give me a job to get me out of her office." ONE season's success in New York brought about a motion picture contract and Douglass was thrilled to come back to his home town to play opposite Joan Crawford in "Paid." But when he felt he was not progressing he asked to be released from his contract. Of course he knew he would be taken care of financially. He had a home to go to, he took no great risk in throwing up a lucrative contract. But, in justice to Douglass, I think he would have done the same thing without a nickel behind him. Immediately he signed another picture contract but when he was again disappointed in roles, again he asked to be released. At that time he thought he was through with pictures forever, but greater success on the stage when he returned to New York brought him continued offers from motion picture companies. Now, freelancing, he can choose his roles, play stage engagements between pictures and at 90