Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1941)

No Sex Appeal? (Continued from page 39) Flynn. It's only that dashing Errol is one of the choicest swordsmen in Hollywood and Ford likes them choice. The Ford face is no particular masterpiece of nature. It's the Ford eyes and the Ford smile that are the chief divertisements. The eyes are dark and flashing. The smile is boyish and friendly. The Ford voice, while we're doing a catalogue of charm, is more or less ne plus ultra. It's low and slow. And not overworked. Mr. Ford can sit back and listen. There is no glamour whatsoever to the Ford hair. It is inclined to be stringy and the coiffure casual, the kind you attend to by giving the head a sudden jerk upward or maybe by passing a hand through it. Glenn Ford is not your prattling pretty boy who breaks his neck trying to sound like Oscar Levant. Nor does he douse his lady with compliments, ply her with praise. He's more apt to volley words back and forth on impersonal subjects. The R.A.F. in which organization he has a cousin, or Henry Fonda, his favorite actor, whom he would like very much to meet some day. He doesn't like to dance — especially the rhumba. This deficiency in the rhumba Rosemary Lane, whom he admires no end, tried to iron out one night at the Mocambo by giving him a couple of lessons. They didn't take. He has never rhumbaed since. For a young man who preys upon the thoughts of our American womanhood, the Ford person can scarcely be called typical. Far from owning a smart apartment with pictures by Picasso hanging on the walls — as members of the Isn't Ford Fun Cluh of Smith College are certain he does — Columbia's pride and profit lives with his widowed mother in a modest apartment out in Santa Monica. There are no servants. Nights when he makes the long voyage home from the studio he is apt to make a small detour so as to drive by the villa of Joan Crawford in Brentwood and honk just for the heck of it. They met before the Ford fixation hit our country. Miss C. thinks his work is "sensitive, warm, and imaginative." He saw "A Woman's Face" two times. Some Ford partisans are a little sore at Hollywood for taking so long in getting around to Glenn. Not Glenn. An optimist from the word go, he thinks that Hollywood probably knows best. That is the way with Ford. Everything is for the best, he believes, in this best of all possible worlds. When he talks like this, part of Hollywood wonders aloud whether he's sincere. Another part wonders if he isn't naive. THE Ford sincerity is beyond question. ' New York reporters, notorious ribbers of young actors who come up overnight, were all prepared to give him the works when he hit town. But five minutes with Ford were the tip-off. The first thing he did was to tell the writing boys how swell he thought they were coming over to interview him. After that he launched a rhapsody on the subject of Margaret Sullavan and Fredric March who, he thought, were wonderful to put up with an unknown like him in their picture. He .was going strong on the humanitarian producers David Loew and Albert Lewin who were nice enough to put up almost a million dollars to make the picture when the reporters saw the error of their ways. They halted his talk cold and quizzed him about himself. In their articles which appeared the next day they At least you are while that wise mother of yours has anything to say about it . . . That funny white thing she just pinned around your middle was washed with Golden Fels-Naptha Soap. No wonder it feels so good and soft. It's completely, sweetly clean. No half-way washing will do where your clothes are concerned. No half-way soap is going to leave dirt in your dainty things. Fels-Naptha' s two busy cleaners — gentle naptha and richer, golden soap — help your mother every wash day. They do the hard work that really gets the dirt out. That's why mother's face is so lovely and gay. That's why her arms are never too tired to pick you up and play. You're in luck, young man. We'll bet when you get big enough for 'baby-talk', the first words you say will be 'Fels-Naptha'! OCTOBER, 1941 77