Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1941)

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I The Truth About TEMPERAMENT Now boldly brought out into the open — a disclosure of evidence Hollywood has hidden for years i BY "FERRLESS" THIS is the time of the Hollywood year when the name of Luise Rainer turns up again in movieland conversations. For, whenever Hollywood is discussing the newest Academy awards, the strange history of the girl who won the coveted Oscar two seasons in succession and now does not have a movie job is talked about anew. People who do not entirely understand Hollywood cry fie upon it for neglecting Luise Rainer and her undoubtedly great talents. But inside Hollywood explains by saying: it was temperament. Foreign-born stars seem to come more naturally by temperament than do native Americans. Eccentricity of dress and action is more in their tradition than in ours, but Rainer had them all topped. When she was combined in "The Good Earth" with Paul Muni, who has his own quota of temperament, even a studio as strong, powerful and accustomed to stellar didoes as Metro groaned for months after the picture's finish. When you got the combination of Muni, gloomy, high-browish and insisting upon a perfection that demanded possibly twenty takes to a scene, and Rainer, MAY, 1941 alternating for no visible reason between tears, laughter and temperamental delay of scenes, you got a set of supercolossal headaches, for all concerned. On "The Good Earth" things were so bad that Sidney Franklin, then a director (and the director specifically of "The Good Earth"), now a powerful producer, said bitterly, "I hope never to have to sit through the finished version of this film. I don't want to be reminded of the misery I went through in getting it finally ended." So while there is never any forgetting Rainer's work in that picture or her telephone scene in "The Great Ziegfeld," the word sped around Hollywood about her and when her contract with Metro ran out, no other studio signed her. Not that all temperament is gone from Hollywood. Not by a hatful. There are two very temperamental belles still around Hollywood, Ginger Rogers and Jean Arthur. There was one very temperamental man, Fred Astaire. But the Misses Rogers and Arthur have unique talents and definite box-office pulling power so they are perhaps forgiven their occasional temperamental explosions. After Fred Astaire split up with Ginger Rogers he was for some time "between pictures." In fact, the only film he has made in the past year is the independently produced "Second Chorus." Freddie was a good boy on that one, only squabbling a bit with Director Hank Potter and once mentioning that he hoped he would never make another picture with Potter again. Potter, in turn, said nothing, but on-the-set observers gathered the impression that he vice-versa-ed on the Astaire sentiments. The Hollywood cold shoulder, the "box-office poison" tag and a couple of seasons on the New York stage taught Katharine Hepburn her lesson. Being extremely intelligent, too, when she returned (Continued on page 104) 67