Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1939)

as a tank town three thousand miles west of the Grand Central Station, three thousand miles from a snowstorm in Central Park, three thousand miles from Fifth Avenue on a spring day, or Radio City by night, and she is interested, she takes notice, she begins to do the wooing. "You ought to know me better," says Hollywood. "I'm wonderful. I can offer you greater rewards than New York ever heard of. Stick around awhile, baby, and you'll never want to go back to Broadway." AFTERWARDS, the girl named Alice Faye could always remember her first impressions of Hollywood. A big rambling place where it took you hours and miles to get from one place to another so that she was always late. Wide-open spaces and sunshine, hot dry sunshine, and everything closed up at night, just when you'd been used to starting the day's work or play. Dark cavernous stages you could put a whole theater into, and people who spoke a strange language and never talked about much of anything but motion pictures and didn't hardly seem to know New York existed except as a place you telephoned to or got wires from. "We'll call New York and let you know." "Wait till we get the night wires from New York." A scary, unfriendly place for a good-natured kid who was used to crowds and bright lights and noise and lots of clowning and families all crowded into a few rooms. There was too much outdoors to Hollywood. "Let's go back to New York, Rudy," she would say, tugging at his sleeve in her special way for calling the master's attention to her. "It's funny out here. Let's go back to New York." "Don't be such a baby, Alice," Rudy said. "Do be a good child. I'm in no hurry. I like it here." Oddly enough, it was to be Vallee who went back to New York and Alice Faye who was left behind, weeping her heart out, in the bewildering world of Hollywood. Left behind against her will, chained to a startling and unwelcome movie contract, scared almost out of her young wits, left behind to become, a short five years later, Hollywood's only candidate for real, oldtime, all-embracing starring honors. Hollywood — somebody in Hollywood — had seen in the scared little chorus girl, with her ridiculous nostalgia for New York, that rare and precious combination of tears that are so close to laughter, and laughter that sings over tears — ■ had seen the enormous emotional imagination and dramatic heartbeat of the child who had known so well the trials of the poor and had learned life from the swarming tenements and street scenes of the biggest city in the world. Crude, sure. Lots of rough edges, some cheap chorus-girl-and-night-club mannerisms, no education and all the wrong experience. But Darryl Zanuck's ruthless eye saw something, saw that here was a personality that might some day be rich and real and honest and escape the synthetic glamour under which Hollywood girls were being slowly buried. Could she do it? Could they lick that fear and shyness that manifested in a funny little defiance, in a withdrawal from Hollywood and all its works? Her handicaps were terrific and not the least of them seemed then — especially to the scared, defiant Cinderella who felt that she was at the ball all right but her fairy godmother had forgotten to change her ragged clothes for the proper finery — not the least of her handicaps seemed then the life that lay behind her. East side, west side, all around the town, The tots sang Ring a Rosy, London Bridge Is Falling Down, Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke, Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York. "Run home and grow up," Alice was advised when she registered as a chorus girl at thirteen. But, in less than three years, Alice was a Chester Hale girl (right) — and, a year later, was enjoying a modest success when she gratefully sent her latest portrait (above) to her first dancing teacher, Billy Newsome West side. Tenth Avenue with the Ninth Avenue El roaring near by. Houses flush with the sidewalks of New York, where the kids played and screamed and fought and defied death under the hammering, swift traffic. Women hanging out windows, yelling back and forth to each other the news and gossip of the day; big, sordid, violent, commonplace, reeking of life and death and disaster and triumph and the fight for existence. Hurdy-gurdies ground their shrill music above the rumble of trucks and the rattle of the Elevated and the whistles from the steamers floated in sometimes. In the summer when the heat came down like the outposts of hell, the people and their kids sweated, and in the winter, under the pressure of snow that was grimy almost before it hit the streets, they were blue with agonizing cold. But it was life. A stone's throw away on one hand the majestic Hudson flowed, and on the other the main artery of the great city, Broadway. At night you could see the glow of millions of lights against the sky. ABLAZING they were that soft May night when pretty little Mrs. Leppert knew that her time had come. Under their glittering benediction, within sound of Broadway's roar, the baby was born and the old women, drawn as always by the miracle of birth, heard the first thrilling cry almost on the stroke of Broadway's witching hour of midnight. Maybe that had some influence; maybe Broadway (Continued on page 83) 19