Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1941)

Hollywood's Greatest Love Story (Continued -from page 30) severe routine of lessons and practice for her voice. Now on the set on that very first picture, when young Deanna was daily becoming more important and writers were daily adding a bit more here and a bit more there to her originally fairly small part, was a young man named Vaughn Paul. Six feet of him, moving easily with the grace of a trained athlete, going about his small business as a second assistant director — which to tell you the truth is not very much more than being a glorified messenger boy. There was a shyness about young Paul. He was just out of college — he had graduated from Hollywood High School and gone on to U. S. C. He was greatly interested in economics and politics, and in high school had been star of a championship basketball team and had made the all-city nominations. At U. S. C. he broke his ankle early and was out of basketball so long he never went back. At the studio where his father, Val Paul, had been an important executive, they thought young Vaughn a little too serious, a little too aloof. Of course, he had been brought up in the motionpicture business, he had heard it talked, seen it grow, as his normal background. The truth is that motion pictures fascinated the tall, blond blue-eyed boy from the very beginning. Only he never wanted to be an actor. He is, frankly, much better-looking than a good many of our present crop of leading men and there is for some reason nearly always a dearth of young leading men in Hollywood. But Paul's idea was different. At U. S. C. — where, by the way, his reputation is completely different from that which he enjoys at the studio and where he was known as a still-watersrun-deep type of humorist who would go any lengths and spend any amount of time on a good gag — at college, then, he had spoken often to the boys who were his friends about pictures. There is a tale in Hollywood that the saying "Motion pictures are still in their infancy" actually originated on the Universal lot, where Vaughn Paul and Deanna Durbin now work, with Uncle Laemmle. Young Vaughn Paul, in bull sessions at college, was apt to echo those sentiments — with due modesty. The great art of the cinema in all its best aspects had only begun. They found him intensely interesting, the young men who were his mates at college. He had, they said, "ideas." Also, they said, he was a swell guy. That, as you probably know, is the highest praise of the younger generation. ONE thing they remember well. He never seemed to care much about girls. When the phone rang and it was a dame for Paul, he usually stalled a little — and didn't go out. Girls, of course, were very nice. But he wasn't in any sense a wolf. He wasn't a woman-hater or anything, but he was too busy. The feminine sex hadn't as yet impinged upon his life and consciousness. He liked the fellows, he liked all forms of athletics and he liked his work — which he referred to as a background. As a matter of fact, both in high school and at college, he was extremely popular with the fellows. He never had a girl — never "went steady" with anyone. Always a little shy JUNE, 1941 "Hey! Know any tricks to amuse baby bunnies? I've been putting my best foot forward all morning — but it's no use. They just grumble and take naps. Shucks, there oughta be something the sillies would like . . ." 'Hold on — maybe they feel the way I do when I'm hot and cross and some foolish grownup's trying to make me chuckle. Maybe what they really want more'n anything is something soothing to cool 'em off! . . ." m. mi NSrV "Gleeps! That's it! Silky-cool Johnson's Baby Powder! Just two shakes of a rabbit's tail and I'll be back with double rubdowns for everybody. Then see if these fellas don't wiggle their ears and start to frolic." What a thrill! A rubdown with soft, soothing Johnson's Baby Powder is the high spot of any baby's day! It's swell for chafes and prickles. Mighty inexpensive, too." JOHNSON'S BABY POWDER Johnson 6s Johnson, New Brunswick, N. J. 1)5