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ere!
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With that greeting Jack Oakie has sold himself to Hollywood
By JACK BEVERLY
WHAT a traveling salesman some organization lost when Jack Oakie decided to become an actor! Jack could walk into Newcastle and sell them ten tons of coal every time he opened his mouth. He could sell ice to the Eskimos and fur coats to Hawaiian diving boys.
He could — yes, did — sell himself to motion-picture producers. He did not give short weight. The order was as specified even if the salesman did paint a rather glowing account of the product.
He is the closest thing to the picture most of us carry in our minds as representing the old, breezy type of traveling salesman I have ever met. He exudes good fellowship with every move. He is the biggest gladhander and bunk artist in Hollywood. He could bluff a Chinese mandarin out of his ancestor's ashes — and make the mandarin like it.
According to Jack Oakie that is just the way he sold himself to motion pictures.
"Bluff," he says, "pure unadulterated bluff. That's the way I got into pictures, never heard of me. No one out here knew me
Jack Oakie used to be in vaudevillj. They say he saw Joan Crawford in motion pictures and decided to folic v her to Hollywood. He didn't manage to meet Joan, but he is one of the few vaudevillians who have made good on the screen.
They'd But I
made 'em knew me and remember me and think I was the answer to a producer's prayer. Sometimes they don't know what they want anyway. They're kinda glad to have somebody else decide it for 'em. 1 came along and explained how good I was and what I could do for pictures — and there I was. In. You gotta toot your own trumpet in this league."
Jack comes from New York. I wish I could reproduce his accent exactly. The microphone fails to get it altogether. Plain print is impossible. He is a dese and dose and dem guy — and yet he isn't. You can catch words like those occasionally but not always.
He 'could have been a politician; New York and Jimmy Walker lost a great aid when Jack Oakie decided vaudeville would be more fun. Because he can circulate, mix, and remember people's names with the best ward heeler in Brooklyn or Manhattan.
HI, there," is his pet expression. If he said it once the other day as we were walking about the Paramount lot he said it twenty times in five minutes. He would see a still camera man taking a shot of a building fifty yards away. "Hi, there, Pete," would boom out. "How's she blow?" And Pete would yell back, "Hello, Jack."
Or he would spy a couple of laborers digging a ditch for a new water main. "Hi. there, gophers. Diggin' 'em deep today?" A pretty extra girl, new on the lot. would go hurrying by, "Hi. there, sister. Where you been keeping yourself? They make you a star yet?"
Breezy. Vivacious. Radiating cheer.
And yet, when we parked ourselves for a few moments in his dressing-room, the foam in his nature died down. The sparkle was still there, but it did not fizz, if you know what I mean.
JACK OAKIE relaxed. He became more of the man he is rather than the man he has sold himself as to Hollywood.
"Sure," he said, "I'm gettin' by pretty well. I'm sittin' pretty at the moment. But I'm not kiddin' myself. I'm liable to land out on my ear any time. Anyone is. in this game. That's why I'm not goin' nuts and buyin' houses and living up to every nickel I make. That isn't so very much, as things go out here, but it is going to be more and that right away. (A new contract calling for more salary is being fixed up for Oakie at this writing.)
"I'm going to get mine while the gettin' is good and I'm not going to be surprised or cry when it stops coming in. Anybody who takes this racket seriously ought to have his head {Continued on page 111)
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