Motion Picture (Feb-Jul 1935)

MAD ENOUGH famous! Cod, Massachusetts, who made a movie star of Charles Farrell. Farrell sat dozing in the box-office of his dad's little picture theatre in Onset one evening. He was dog-tired ; school had been tough enough, but he had to hurry home, chop wood, go to his dad's short-order restaurant, peel the spuds, help cook, serve, wash dishes, and then rush to the theatre in time to get it swept out before starting on his job as ticket-seller. Farrell was dozing when the old lady pushed her dime at him. He didn't even see her. She banged the window with the palm of her hand and Charlie rubbed his eyes. "Young man," she said, in a stern voice, "you'll never get anywhere in this world, sitting there day-dreaming like that." "Madam," said the irate Charlie, "some day you'll have to stand in line to buy a ticket to get into this theatre to see me — a big star in pictures." Farrell looked at me and grinned. "Do you know," he said, "in the years that followed, whenever I got in the dumps, I thought about what I had said to that little old lady? And thoughts of my boast to her always spurred me on." Doris Sent Gary West IT was pretty little Doris who pointed the way to the greater glory for Gary Cooper. "I had never been interested in any one girl until I met Doris at Grinnell College," said Gary Cooper. "Until A. D. (After Doris) I had no particular ambition of any kind; but Doris fired me with ambition, and is, indirectly, responsible for my career in pictures. Doris told me, after we had talked of marriage, that she could never live in a cold climate, and she urged me to go to California and seek fame and fortune. I followed her advice. In the months that followed, during which I made a house-to-house canvass of Los Angeles homes for a photographer, I had letters from Doris to cheer me up, and on. Starvation, finally, forced me into the movies." (And whatever became of Doris? She suddenly married someone else — perhaps giving up hope that Gary would ever be a success. And wondering if she had doubted his resourcefulness must have egged him on to prove himself.) A story in Motion Picture Magazine, which Miriam Hopkins chanced to read, is responsible for La Hopkins' career. Miriam was a young girl in Georgia, with plenty of family and no money, and very unhappy in her inactive life, when she read an article about a glamourous dancer who was finding fame in Hollywood. This dancer had come from just such a conventional atmosphere as that in which Miriam was living. "'Why can't I be glamourous, too?' I asked myself, and I began turning it on. That story sold me an idea and the moment my family moved to New York, my dancing career began." His Nickname Was "Sickly" IT'S a far cry from Miriam Hopkins to Johnny Weissmuller, but Johnny's tale is worth telling — especially to the anemic. "I was a skinny, sickly kid, in Chicago," said Johnny. "I was forever being tested for tuberculosis. My dad was a brew-master, but even his good beer didn't help me put on weight. However, I did nothing about it until a nickname was tacked on me. That nickname was 'Sickly.' "I detested the name. I cried about it. That was all I could do, for I was too weak to fight. Then, (Continued on page 81) Top to bottom, Claudette Colbert, high-hatted by a maid; Charles Farrell, accused of dreaming; Miriam Hopkins, "bored" in a small town; Robert Montgomery, fi r e d as an oiler 29