The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

Connolly the Courteous {Continued from page 21) Co-starring with Courteous Connolly in this new comedy by Sydney Howard is Ernest Truex. Another fine "trouper" who prefers footlights to sunlight. As I watched them rehearsing, I realized what a relief it must be to walk into a role and become part of it with only the soft-voiced suggestions of the author or director. No electricians yelling "Kill 'em!" or "Light 'em!" No sound technicians announcing "O.K." or "N.G." with the identical inflection, after you have given "your all" in a scene which may be the last one of the picture being shot on the first day of production or the first scene being made on the last day. It all depends on the schedule, and for five years now I've been marveling at actors playing death scenes in pictures before they had even started to live. In the theater you die six nights a week and two matinees. Each time there is a new audience for your last gasps. In pictures you just stay there dying and dying until the director, cameraman, sound technician, producer and several authors admit that you did a swell job of kicking off. Mind you, I'm not speaking from personal experience. The nearest I ever came to dying for the cinema was when I saw myself on the screen for the first time. I'm admitting after a long stubbornness, born of California fever which made me resent any one saying that they could miss anything while in my adopted state, that I quite understood why both Mr. Connolly and Mr. Truex looked so pleased with life at that rehearsal. What they missed in films I had quite forgotten about as a comparative spectator. Sitting in a ringside seat, watching the successes and failures of Hollywood, I have not missed an audience's applause, probably because I have taken no risk of not receiving it. Still preferring a good film to a play, I shall argue no longer when such artists as Helen Hayes, Maurice Chevalier, Walter Huston, Ramon Novarro, Mr. Connolly and others leave the flickers flat for a dash into direct contact with an audience. More power to them! It's a great thing to have two irons in the fire, no matter how hot the blaze of approval appears to be. Mr. Connolly will return to Hollywood and films. He likes both, but meanwhile he is enjoying big city life, staying up late, sleeping late and meeting a lot of his old friends who do not eat, sleep, talk and think pictures. After rehearsal we went to his apartment, where Mrs. C. was hostessing a cocktail party. The place was packed with friends welcoming them home from exile. Ernest Truex and Kay Johnson were the only Hollywoodians that I saw, and they have both shaken the gold dust of California for the star dust of New York. It was a gay party, but what I miss most in New York is not being able to slip out quietly from a gaiety-charged room into the cool green of a patio. As we were on the ninth floor, I did no slipping. I mingled and snooped. Found out that Mr. Connolly was in that certain war, and a Marine at that. Mrs. Connolly is a well-known actress, Nedda Harrigan. Her most satisfactory performance so far took place nine years ago when she shared honors and billing with her husband in producing their little daughter Anne. Learned that "The Captain Hates the Sea," which through a series of bad breaks took months to film and had the heads of Columbia tearing out what hairs their big brains still function under, was a good break for Connolly. The Captain may hate the sea, but he loves it. We've got a date to stalk a swordfish off Catalina next Summer if they ever let him out of the studio, once they get him back. I've been admiring him in the theater for years, but was unaware that we shared a "Remember When" until he said, "That was a pretty good ball team you had back in 1912!" As I was figuring out that too much work is apt to tell on the mind, after all, he added, "But we trimmed them thoroughly." "^"0, dear friends, we were not "a couple of other fellows." I was playing in "The Slim Princess" and the Elsie Janis Ball Team was made up of members of my company. Mr. Connolly was with Sothern and Marlowe. It all came back to me. I remembered how our team were bragging about what they were going to do to the Sothern and Marlowe bunch. That gang of long-haired legits was going to bite the dust of one of Chicago's better ball fields. They forgot that it was Shakespeare who said, "The play's the thing"! In that ball game they proved the Bard of Avon enthusiasts knew about "hits and runs" on the diamond as well as in the theater. Connolly claims that my gang ran into some pro-substitutes. Well, I wasn't playing and he was, so I couldn't argue. I wouldn't argue with him anyway, because they tell me that during those many months at Columbia he won all his objectives, which causes me to admit I'm wrong again. He can't be anything like "just a nice plain sort of family man." He must be just a nice plain sort of Phenomenon! Just Let Me Act {Continued from page 6) became panic-stricken and, crouching down, pulled my coat up over my face and head, refusing to get out. An official notified me it was a rule of the airport that all passengers leave a plane while it is being refueled. 'It's also a rule,' I reminded him, 'that an airport must first be cleared.' So I stayed where I was until he had cleared it. I'd had all the autograph fans I could stand." From the memory of that sustained onslaught Miss Harding turned to the solace of a cigarette before indulgently resuming : "The pity is that millions live vicariously, through the lives of others, in their adventures, emotions and imaginations. Not that we don't value intelligent appreciation, prize it dearly. When an actor gets a letter, as occasionally he does, offering helpful suggestions about his work, he is so grateful and so delighted that he will run all over the lot reading it to others. I know how much a letter means to me." "To be true to yourself?" "Yes, just that," agreed Miss Harding, "for it helps me to see the faults in my work and perhaps to correct them. But you cannot, and should not, of {Please turn to page 60) ¥> OUT EYES CAN HAVE THE SAME BEAUTY AND APPEAL AS these . . . The Approved Mascara Maybelline Eyelash Darkener instantly darkens eyelashes, making them appear longer, darker, and more luxuriant. It is non-smarting, tearproof and absolutely harmless. 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