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The Man Hollywood Couldn't Beat
The story of a man, his wife, and an amazing interlude in their life together. You know the man as Gene Raymond
He came to tell her, thinking he was confessing failure. Jeanette MacDonald's answer was ready, warm, sincere: "Oh, Gene, I'm so glad!"
IT is largely from a handful of friends that we bring you the story of the new Gene Raymond, the man who has returned from two years of "mysterious" seclusion to the studio whose contract he rejected just that long ago. There are those who would call it "What Hollywood Can Do To a Man"; to us it is the story of what a man can do first of all to himself — and for himself. It is the story of a man who revolted and, fortunately, lost. For it was in defeat that Gene Raymond found himself and his perspective on success.
Before we talked to those closest to Gene, we talked very briefly to the man himself. We already knew that RKO had hurried to take up his option upon the completion of his comeback picture, "Cross Country Romance." We knew the studio was planning bigger breaks for him, that as a first move, they had handed him a role in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," the new
Carole Lombard-Robert Montgomery opus. We knew that a quiet guy with a three-cornered smile had been given a rousing welcome by a sneak preview audience in an unpretentious picture. We knew the welcome ran through the whole hard-boiled studio setup.
Now we know the "why" of all these things. For we found, as we talked to Gene himself, a change as great in the off-screen man as the audience had found in the actor.
Gone, first of all, were the cagey reserve, the tense wide smile, the eager to-appear-friendly handshake, the quick lithe walk and the fabulous blond hair. Here was a relaxed, interested-in-you young man with a smile in his eyes that matched the grin with which he said "Hello." A guy with close-cropped, darkened hair, who admitted readily its color got brushed into it. Here was the actor who used to blow up resentfully at any
mention of his hair, now saying calmly, "Sure, I brush the stuff in it every day. If they don't want blonds on the screen, they don't want blonds!"
Here was the actor who had once told us seriously and carefully and with a grim sincerity that he had lived his entire life according to plan. Who had said, "Everything I do is planned. Always has been, since I was a kid. I won't marry until I retire. A man should make as much of a career of marriage as a woman. I know myself and I won't play a scene unless I think it's right for me. I'll argue that with a director any day. If I can't get the parts I want, I won't work."
The last is exactly what happened. He grew tired of the wisecracking roles to which he'd been assigned. He said a definite "No, thank you" to a contract that most actors would have given their eye teeth to have been offered. When friends tried to advise him to take (Continued on page 98)
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