Modern Screen (Dec 1933 - Oct 1934)

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If you don't get the same joy and satisfaction from Silvaray as from higher priced lipsticks, we'll send back your ten cents. But be sure you get a Silvaray. At your 1 Ocf Store B. Kronish & Bro., New York varqy Dumb Like a Fox (Continued from page 45) work. But I was just dumb enough not to care. The way I figured, in my poor way was : I wanted to get somewhere. I looked at all the guys who had graduated and tried to find the big shots among 'em. Tried to figure just how far four years of study and graduating had got them. It was a cinch for me to win the Olympics. Of course, if I'd been bright I'd just have held back and not gone, and graduated like the rest of the fellows. But I just quit school and went. I didn't even have to work hard to win. And for nine years I went all over the world swimming. Japan, London, Amsterdam — oh, almost every country. In my way, I figured I was seeing the world without it costing me anything. I even felt sort of sorry for those guys back in the University of Chicago. "Somehow, I didn't think a lot of talk helped most people much. Especially talk about yourself. But they wouldn't have let me talk about myself if I had caught the habit early. 'Don't think you're so hot' is what they always tell athletes. Football or anything else. A guy's got to keep in tip-top form and that's the line coaches use to do it. I'd say 'hello' to everybody and that was about all. I was just a swimmer. I could swim a little faster than someone else. But somebody else could do figures a little faster than the next fellow, and some other guy could preach a little more eloquently. So what of it? "And when I did mix with people a bit — well, I was invited to the big homes. If I accepted, I somehow found myself in the swimming pool with a lot of people crowded around. And I ended by giving a free exhibition. "So I sort of decided that if you travelled all over the world and didn't say much, but watched the people of all classes you were bound to meet, you couldn't help but learn an awful lot about all people. If you didn't waste time talking yourself, you could learn how to tell what they really meant behind their words — when they were talking. "After nine years of this, the coach came to me one day and said, 'You're going to quit going into competitions. You're going to do exhibitions. Good money. Ten thousand a year to start.' So I designed a bathing suit — I should know about bathing suits — and started giving swimming exhibitions to sell it. That's what I was doing out here. Oh, yes, since you asked about my education, which I don't like to talk about — a dumb guy shouldn't, you know — I went to night school most of the time I was travelling around for competitions. I WAS hanging around the Hollywood Athletic Club when Cyril Hume, the writer, told me about Tarzan. I came down and talked to Benny Thaw who was casting. And he didn't give it to me. I didn't know why, then. He sounded sort of final, but being just dumb enough not to know better, I went back to Cyril Hume who brought me down to Hyman's office. Van Dyke was there. I took off my shirt. 'That's the fellow I want,' Van Dyke said and sent me back for a test. It was no good. But Van Dyke still said, 'That's the fellow I want,' and made a test of me himself. And no one — dumb or bright — is better in a test than the man who directs it." "And that was when you had your nose made over?" Johnny laughed. "Take a look at my nose. If it had been made over for beauty, don't you think even a dumb guy would have seen that the Doc made a better job of it than that? I've broken my nose three times. Once playing ball with Doug Fairbanks, Senior. I used to go over to his place a lot." I took a look at Johnny's nose. And laughed. It is the best answer to that accusation. You look at it on the screen and you'll see what I mean. Then I looked at Johnny's eyes. Direct, honest. And I laughed again. How many young screen players would have played at Doug Fairbanks, Senior's, and been so dumb as not to let the world read about it? Why, there could be no better publicity for any movie star. "Well," he interrupted my open stare, fidgeting around and hunting for the lunch check. He made it evident he didn't enjoy staring. "We made that picture in fourteen weeks and I waited two years to make another. And that's about all there is to tell about me. Only, don't you try to tell the world I'm a bright fellow or anything like that. "I've spent two years around here watching people and I've got it all figured out that it's awful easy for a bright guy to be a ham actor. You don't have to do anything— just react to a scene the way the director tells you. I'm just so dumb I don't want to be a ham actor, I'm studying with Josephine Dillon and if I can get polish on my diction and a chance — maybe I can feel on the screen. I'm just dumb enough not to want to be a Tarzan all my life." "And say, about that money business. Don't quote me wrong on that. I should be kicking about $500 a week when another guy's still selling swimming suits for $250.00 ! I chuckled all the way home from that luncheon with Johnny Weissmuller. Of course, I'd learned long ago just how dumb he really was, but still — mry mind flashed to his sentence. "I talked to the casting director. He didn't give it to me. I didn't know why then." So he knew now ! He knew that Bobbe Arnst, the first Mrs. Weissmuller, had gone to Metro and begged the officials not to give him the Tarzan picture. "He's a grand kid now. Unspoiled. Don't let him go into pictures. Please. Something might spoil things for us, for me — " She had pleaded against an opportunity for Johnny Weissmuller. And suddenly I was adding two and two and getting four. I felt certain I was not guessing. The secret of that original divorce was out. There is no drawback to an ambitious man like a wife who does not approve of his profession. Bobbe Arnst had not wanted Johnny to turn actor. He knew it. He had known it then. He had foreseen — what had he said, "When you travel around the world and say nothing, you sort of get to understand what people are thinking no matter what they are saying." He had foreseen that a wife who did not encourage and understand and want him to be an actor — So he had married an actress. Fallen in love with one who knew every trick of his new business and who wants him to be a success. In fact, we could go on for pages. And we'd prove just one thing. Johnny Weissmuller is so dumb he wants the world to think he doesn't know a thing. Then he'll have plenty of time to really promote — Johnny Weissmuller. 98