Motion Picture (Aug 1940-Jan 1941)

Still Pulling Them In [Continued from page 34] of stardom and Jeffrey is the first to admit he didn't make it in one jump. One of the first rules in playing golf is to "follow through." I don't know that Jeffrey plays golf, but all through his career he has followed that advice. He is a good example of a young man who knew what he wanted, and who never forgot to follow through. He has recently become, so they tell me, the problem child of the publicity department. Not that he thinks he doesn't need publicity since he has become one of the most popular young actors on the screen. Good heavens, no ! It is simply that his sensations when contemplating an interview are similar to yours that last five minutes before you jump into a cold shower, and he postpones the ordeal as long as possible. A trifle late for our appointment, he hadn't the excuse of being delayed on the set of All This, and Heaven Too. He just wasn't working this day but had been out house hunting and was flushed with success. "I found an ideal house," he enthused with as much enthusiasm as he ever displays. "It's high on a hill and far enough off the beaten track to be almost isolated. It has fresh air, sunshine — everything I want." Jeffrey is tall and straight and there were evidences of the sunshine he enjoys so much on his tanned face and even in his light brown hair, which falls back in a wave that should make any girl with straight locks want to kill him. He is quite serious with a normally pleasant expression on his face. When he laughs, it doesn't change for he holds his mirth inside him as though it were his own private joke, and chuckles softly. In his quiet way he enjoys life a lot but is reserved to a point of shyness and he's as New England as a pot of Boston baked beans. Intelligent and a good student, he talks well on a great many subjects and tries hard to cooperate with reporters on the topic of Jeffrey Lynn but thinks it is the hardest part of being an actor. They have to exert a little pressure to get him near the publicity department. CC\X 7" ELL," he protests, "I no more than V V get through the front door than someone yells at me and wants to know the name of the girl I was out with the night before. I don't think it is nice to mention the name of a young lady just to get publicity. Think how embarrassing it must be for her." Which is becoming modesty on his part for I doubt if there is a young lady in town who wouldn't be delighted to read in her morning paper that she'd been out dancing with Jeffrey or even that they were the "hottest couple in town." After two years in Hollywood Jeffrey hasn't learned to put his inhibitions in the bottom drawer and take it as a compliment that the whole world wants to mind his business for him. He is a stickler for accuracy. "No," he will say, in discussing the least important matter, "it wasn't three months. It was four." So if he tells you of his former hardships, it isn't to inspire sympathy but, rather, in the interests of keeping the record straight and to amuse bis listener. He will admit, however, that things that sound pretty funny now weren't to be taken lightly at the time thev happened. Jeffrey wasn't working His way through college when he had the job of doorman; 62 he'd already got his degree. He was earning a meager livelihood while he attended the Theodora Irvine Studio for the Theatre which, in plain English, was and is a dramatic school where he had won a scholarship. " T WAS being taught a modified Oxford 1 accent," he said in explaining why people laughed, "and I practiced it on the doorman job. I couldn't blame them for laughing, for I must have sounded funny. I looked funny, too, with my baby face sticking out of a uniform several sizes too large. But if the suit didn't fit, the job did. It suited my needs perfectly." He didn't earn much money and he thinks his social status wasn't improved but his working hours dovetailed with his classes at the dramatic school even to his day off, which was Tuesday. That was the day his' drama class put on its plays. "I couldn't have much," he told me, "because I paid four dollars a week for my room and tried to eat on a dollar a day. Then there was carfare and incidentals and I had to furnish my own make-up and costumes for the school plays." Saving a little was important to Jeffrey. Thrift was one of the things taught him at home by his Swedish parents ; in a home where there was always enough but where luxuries were unknown. What he was able to put aside on that job enabled him to take the next step toward the top and become a member of a stock company where he received no salary but a lot of practical experience. Recently Warner Brothers, to whom he is under contract, and are co-starring him with Olivia de Havilland in Episode, sent word down the line to various studio departments that from now on Jeffrey is to be "given the works." That means he is to be given an all-round build-up in good roles, publicity and cooperation of every sort. For several months he has been working up to this climax and until recently he had just one bitter complaint. He did wish people would stop referring to him as "that nice boy." Not that he minded being thought nice, although he has been here long enough to know that no actor ever got any place in pictures by having a reputation for being the chap a girl could trust, but he did wish that once in a while someone would say, "Oh, you mean that good actor." At last he has his wish. Now people say, "He's such a good actor — and the nicest chap." In fact, a succession of consistently good performances have aroused so much favorable critical comment that he has become overnight the object of that little Hollywood game known as "I saw him first." A mention of his name now will often call forth an enthusiastic, "I told you to watch that lad. He's going places !" The amazing thing is not that Jeffrey is a good actor but that he ever became an actor at all. He thinks he never would have if he hadn't first taught school. The faint whiff of grease-paint wafted over the amateur productions of his drama classes was enough to bolster a half-formed determination to go on the stage. "There were just three professions for a man to which my father had serious objections," Jeffrey said. "He didn't want any of his children to be lawyers, actors or traveling salesmen. He didn't think those endeavors had much to offer the world. And so far as acting is concerned, he didn't see how anyone could make a decent living at it." Jeffrey laughed over that and added, "My experiences in trying to get on the stage didn't give him any reason to change his mind. My mother knew I wasn't very flush. She would write and beg me to come home and take up some sensible profession. When I signed a motion picture contract it was all very bewildering to them." The showing of his first picture in his home town brought mingled feelings to his family but when neighbors, having seen it, called to congratulate his parents on having such a famous son, they were more confused than ever. "How wonderful," the friends told his family, "that your son is in a position to bring happiness to the world." That put an entirely different light on things and the Linds in a body visited the theatre to see for themselves. The audience that day, in addition to seeing Four Daughters, was treated to a first hand view of the reactions of Jeffrey's young nephew. He couldn't understand why Uncle Jeff, apparently among those present, ignored his family in favor of one of the Lane sisters and he finally registered his disapproval by shouting at the top of his baby voice, "Why doesn't he talk to us?" It is likely that the baby is by now an ardent movie fan but Jeffrey recalls that he himself never heard of a motion picture until he was eleven years old. BORN Ragnar Geoffrey Lind on a thirtyacre farm near Auburn, Massachusetts, a suburb of Worcester, one of the lad's earliest ambitions was to change his name because his playmates nicknamed him "Rags." So he made no protest when Hollywood renamed him Jeffrey. He remembers when he was a little boy, watching people drive by his home in automobiles and his second determination was some day to wear a white collar and drive a big car. A relative who lived on an adjoining farm, did the field work for the Linds while Jeffrey's father went into the city every day to work. But they had cows and horses and chickens. If it were necessary for Jeffrey to milk a cow for a scene in a picture, he could do it without any coaching. He and his seven brothers and sisters knew all the delights of riding atop the big wagonload of hay ; of feeding the chickens, looking after baby animals and hunting for eggs in the barn. The Linds were working people, thrifty, honest, industrious, God-fearing, "Puritans in every sense of the word," Jeffrey said simply. They enjoyed simple pleasures. Mr. Lind, fond of music, thought his family numerous enough to make up its own orchestra and gave the children music lessons. Jeffrey had piano and violin lessons. "I don't know how my father could afford it," he said thoughtfully. "It must have been a great sacrifice because he never earned a large salary and there were so many children. Sometimes when I think about it now I don't know how we lived on so little, but we never wanted for any necessities." Aside from the usual childish adventures, life went along in a placid manner for Jeffrey until he graduated from the friendly little district-school and enrolled in high school in Worcester. There being no later train, he went to the city each morning [Continued on page 64]