The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Jun 1933)

Our Fight to Crash the Studios galow. We had food; we could laugh. So I started to get our first dinner in the new place. Horrors! There were no pots and pans! Nothing at all to cook in. And it was late, and we had nothing with us that could be eaten without cooking, we only had bacon, flapjack flour, coffee, corn-meal, dried lima beans. We had the food, and the stove, and the gas and no pans. That time I was discouraged. But it didn't stop Clark. He kept right on grinning. He went exploring and came back from the alley with a kerosene can. He cut it in two and made a kettle out of part of it, and a coffee can out of part of it and a frying pan out of part of it. So we had beans and flapjacks and coffee — and a lot of laughs — for our first meal in our home. Can you stop that kind of chap? I don't believe it can be done. If that kind of chap is ever stopped, he will stop himself. Then what? Clark's voice lessons in the early morning. Piano practice. His acting lessons — play reading — work, woi'k, work, but no students, no money coming in — it must come in, somehow. And Clark must not go back into an office. This was his big chance. So I got a job. A friend gave me a job, because he had known me when I was a leading woman on the stage. He was publishing a theatrical magazine. He was also operating a scenario school. He gave me work criticizing first efforts of aspiring movie writers, and I read thousands of story plots that were sent in in answer to an advertisement he printed asking why the old man in the accompanying illustration was picking a carnation out of a garbage can. HARD work? Yes! But when ambitious youngsters come to my door and ask me to help them, and tell me of their hopes and yearnings, I always try to find out whether or not there is someone standing by to help — someone who can laugh — someone who can "take it"; someone they care enough about to want to make good for so that there will be comfort and satisfaction in attainment. Success is rare in this field of international striving, and it cannot be won alone. I got sixty-two dollars and fifty cents a month for half a day's work — from eight in the morning until one. And that was a lot of money, it kept me out of the house while Clark did his practicing, and it paid the rent, which was twenty dollars a month, and paid the grocery bill — or some of it. You can count it up. Then two or three of my old students drifted in and thought it was picturesque, and studied again, and paid me tiny prices to fit the tiny studio. And Saturday afternoons and Sundays I posed for Luvena Buchanan Vysekal who wanted a model for the Fall exhibition. She's a stunning painter. I was fiercely proud of the way she made me look on the canvas. That beautiful work and the fine high talk about real art used to come back down the hill to the little home on the alley, and make it all seem possible — this plan to make a fine actor. Again there was not enough money coming in, so I rented a typewriter (Continued from page 72) and copied scripts at night. After all, one white shirt, an old pair of knickers and a shiny blue serge suit won't get you far in Hollywood. ONE of my most vivid memories of Clark in those days is the picture of him working on those clothes. He said I didn't know how to sew on buttons properly — and he was probably right. I know my neighbor had to show me how to wash wool socks after I had ruined one of the precious pairs. She showed me how to iron shirts, but I could never do it right. So Clark would trim the fringe off the shirt cuffs and sew on the buttons, and rip off the collar and turn it when trimming the fringe would no longer suffice. And as he acquired another shirt here and there, he would have the collars altered to the long pointed ones that Barrymore wore. All of his shirts — all three of them — had patches in the back where the shirt mender had taken off the tail to make the real actor collar. I remember one shirt with a lovely blue patchin the tail, that was particularly conspicuous on our washline. The cooking went better. We had Photo by Wide World Jobyna Ralston, always athletic, particularly keen on tennis, was forced by the doctor's orders to abstain from all forms of strenuous exercise when it became rumored in the family circle that the little stranger you've heard about was soon to arrive. Jobyna spent her time at Palm Springs, Dick Arlen running down for week-ends and between pictures. a grand supply of utensils now. Ella Buchanan, the sculptress who has recently been honored by the French government, discovered our plight and gave us a honeymoon shower of kitchen things. That was a party. She has a huge studio full of fine work, and she had a lot of people come to the party and they all brought things — kettles, frying pans, mixing bowls and a ridiculous collection of "home helpers," consisting of dish towels and dust cloths and such things for Clark, who promptly turned them over to me. He was far too thoroughly Dutch to help in the kitchen, that was woman's work. THEN it seemed time to start the career. Dennison Clift was directing at Fox and we had been at Stanford University together. I wrote him a note and he sent for Clark to go over to the studio. And he got his first job. I had tried to interest other friends, but always the same answers — not enough looks, not well enough dressed, not enough experience, no style. Even June Mathis, who wanted to do something about us, couldn't use him, and was very unhappy when she told me he just wouldn't do. But Dennison Clift, clever and kind, said, "Surely, I can use you in the next picture. I'll give you a call. It will be a scene at a party — Tuxedo and everything — three dollars a day." Three huge shocks in one remark, as Clark told me when he came rushing home. "Hey, honey, I've got a job! Do you hear? I've got into the movies! A job! Hurray!" And he whirled me around in the little kitchen, almost knocking the Irish stew off the stove, and shaking the whole house as I beat on the ceiling with the wooden spoon. Then he set me down suddenly. "But where'll we get a Tuxedo — evening things — shirt, shoes, pants — everything? Gosh! But it's three dollars a a day, and there will be several days, maybe a week!" Clark found out about a dress suit rental place, and by some means — perhaps just the contagious grin — persuaded the proprietor to let him have a complete outfit. Clark's first day's work in the movies was done in that rented outfit, from the shoes up, even the necktie and the handkerchief in the Tuxedo breast pocket. At the end of this great first job, of course the rental of the grand outfit ate up most of the twelve dollars — four days' work it turned out to be. But that didn't matter. Now Clark could get other things to do. He was no longer inexperienced. That first job is always the hardest to get. Now he could register at Central Casting Bureau, and now he was a motion picture actor. We were very happy. Clark Gable had come to Hollywood, he had seen the fight ahead, and he had got a job. That is to say, his foot was on the ladder, but the top was a long, long way ahead. THE process of barbering, pressing, cleaning, getting make-up and all completely wiped us out financially, so that the morning Clark left for his first job there wasn't any money at all anywhere. But there was food in the house — a can of beans, coffee, bread, no (Please turn to page 76) 74 The Neiv Movie Magazine, March, 1933