Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

I IO Photoplay Magazine for August, 1931 for Clean-limbed Loveliness THERE is no uncertainty in removing hair with X-Bazin . . . its action is sure, safe and quick. This creamy depilatory leaves your skin smooth, white and hairless instead of with the blue, shaved look of the razor. The future growth of hair, too, is definitely discouraged. Insist on X-Bazin — accept no substitutes. At drug and department stores — 50c in large tube; sample tubes lOcin 5 and 10 cent stores. yS^-Bazin is the reliable hair remover for legs, arms and under-arms that expect to be seen! Hall & Ruckel, Inc. Est. 1848 Bklyn., N.Y. X-TRA quicA IOU can make just as good pictures as the PROFESSIONALS Robert C. Bruce, \uorU-famecl camera artist, tells of twenty years' adventures and experiencr* in photography Read "Camera Secrets of Hollywood" before you make your next picture. It will tell you how to make prize winning photos and better movies. * * * Send $1.25, which includes postage. Address Dept.K. CAMERA SECRETS PUBLISHING COMPANY Metropolitan Studios • Hollywood, California He Kept on Working [ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51 Nevertheless, it definitely started him on a stage career. He joined a stock company, and played seventy-two weeks in stock, largely in Rochester, New York. He played seventy characters during this period, mostly old men, and calls it his "college course." It was during this time that he gained most of his experience in reading lines, being prepared for emergencies and getting an all-around training he couldn't have gotten otherwise. It also taught him how to live on practically nothing a week, for many times the troupe was left stranded and had to get back to town as best it could. It was just one of those good old trouper's experiences without which no real actor's life seems to be complete. With this long apprenticeship behind him, he returned to Broadway again and began the steady succession of flops that was his unhappy lot on the legitimate stage. He played in "Arleen O'Dare," "One of the Family," "Dawn," "Garden of Eden," "The Carolinian," "Legend of Lenora" and others. Finally, he played in something that approximated a hit, Edgar Selwyn's production "Possession." It was in this play that Samuel Goldwyn saw him, liked him and signed him for the Banky film from which he was immediately fired by Santell. HAVING been detoured on the road to fame and fortune so many times before, this inauspicious start in pictures didn't keep Bob from working his way into a part in "So This Is College," which was his first work in pictures. But it didn't stop M-G-M from kicking him right out again, either. "So This Is College" took forty-nine shooting days besides two months of rehearsals and retakes. He had a second part, and by the time he had finished it he was forgotten. When he applied for his next picture, an indifferent hand waved him out of the way. He was beginning to weaken by now, but insisted he had to work to eat and that he still liked eating. "Well, they're looking for a boy for 'Three Live Ghosts' at United Artists," the casting director told him, so he scurried over there. It is commonly supposed M-G-M procured that part for him. They didn't. Bob sought out T. Freeland, United Artists director, and sold himself for the part. TOUT Bob was worried. His self-confidence ■'-'had received a jolt from which it was but slowly recovering. The M-G-M contract he had signed was optional and the six months was almost up. Metro had made no move to renew it. He was worried and paid little heed to his role in "Three Live Ghosts." Freeland knew something was wrong, but instead of writing him a note such as Faversham had done, or firing him as Santell had done, made inquiries and discovered the real reason for Bob's indifferent acting. Here Bob got a real break. Freeland put two and two together. "If we telephone M-G-M and tell them we are interested in Montgomery and want to know if they are going to renew his contract, they'll think we want to sign him and then they'll probably renew it. And I'll get some acting out of him." So Freeland took a chance and framed the call. "We'll call you back and let you know in a couple of hours," was the reply from M-G-M. The outcome was that Metro renewed and Montgomery, with his contract in his pocket, gave a corking performance in "Three Live Ghosts." When he returned to his home lot he was no longer a stepchild, he was the leading man in "Untamed," with Joan Crawford. A steady succession of parts then followed, his work attracting mounting notice until Metro, impressed not only with his acting, but with the 1,500 letters he received from fans every week, made him a star. Which, of course, is the right ending to a story of an ambitious young man who just kept on working and refused to be discouraged. Alabama & London [ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47 ] through, very few have kicked over the traces sufficiently to embark on a career and life of their own, and granted the first two, to make successes of themselves. Tallulah Bankhead finally rebelled, became first at least a mild success on the New York stage, became later the greatest stage star of London, and in her first talking picture, achieved a personal triumph as an actress and as an American counterpart of the type of screen performer now in vogue — the other similar types being Garbo and Dietrich. But where Dietrich has husband and child, and where Garbo is more or less of a recluse, Tallulah Bankhead has lived gregariously, unhamperedly, uninhibitedly. She is a modern of moderns in this respect. "Please, Jean — !" (This, pleadingly, when she was sixteen) . HERE'S a cable from C. B. Cochran, the London producer," she announced when she was twenty-one, to a roomful of people in New York after appearing with mild success for several years on the New York stage. "The cable states that he has decided, after all, not to use me in his production of 'The Dancers/ with Gerald Du Maurier. He's found a better type in London, he says. "Well, my friends, I've never received this cable!" Whereupon she tore it up. "As I have beautiful eyes and legs, I'll get that role," she announced in that deep, husky, and at times, so very determined voice of hers, a voice that can be meltingly lovely where she wants it to be. And then and there she borrowed the money to go to London. The eyes and legs worked their spell. The star whom Mr. Cochran had engaged was paid her regular salary not to appear on the stage during the run of the play. And Tallulah got the job. The inhibitions were gone in 1921, you see — ' the man-shy Southern girl had already become one of the spokeswomen of the new post war independence in women. Any woman, wherever she may hail from, whatever may be her background, is doing something in a big way when she breaks away and stands on her own feet, but when a tradition ridden Southern girl does it, it is doubly remarkable. Back in Huntsville, Alabama, where she was born, she always had an ambition to go on the stage, but it remained in the back of her head. It never really came out until after her Washington, D. C, debut, when she left