Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1943)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

S COLD? When your youngster gets a chest cold, apply ANTIPHLOGISTINE at once — comfortably hot. The Moist Heat of ANUPHLOGISTINE goes to work on those disturbing cold symptoms—relieving that cough . . . easing those sore, aching muscles . . . loosening up that tightness in the chest. Moist Heat not only does a lot of good — it feels good. Brings real comfort. You see, ANTIPHLOGISTINE is a time-tested medicated poultice. It gets valuable heat directly to the affected area without fuss or bother — maintains its warmth for many hours — works while your youngster sleeps. Antiphlogistine ASK**?* TOP*'® Minulicturint Co.. Hew York, H. Y Your Hospital and ^ Doctor Bills HOSPITALIZATION PLAN SICKNESS or ACCIDENT Insure NOW, before it's loo late! Protect your savings against Hospital expense. Here's on amazing offer of safe, dependable coverage under America's most popular Hospitalization Plan. Family or individuoleligible.When sickness or accident strikes, you may go to any Hospital in U. S. or Canoda under ony Doctor's care. YOUR EXPENSES WILL BE PAID exactly as Policy specifies. WAR coverage included. The Company is under supervision of the Insurance Dept. No agent will call. MAIL COUPON AT ONCE NORTH AMERICAN MUTUAL INSURANCE CO. Dept. MC34-2, Wilmington. Del. Please send me, without obligation, details about your "3c A Day Hospitalization Insurance Plan". Nam* Address Ci»y Stole back, he stopped off at Saks Fifth Avenue and applied for a job in the fur department. He spoke so glibly that he was hired. A few weeks later, when the department manager discovered he had been duped, he suggested that maybe the complaint department needed a person of his eloquence and cunning. Meredith took the hint, got transferred. As a soother of riled-up women he followed an all-out appeasement policy which often conflicted with the store's best interests. Exit Meredith whistling. Reading in the Times that the country was in the midst of a building boom, he turned roofing salesman. It was pretty grim all around. When he wasn't recommending the wrong materials he was falling off garage roofs. IT WAS the era of the overnight for' tunes from stock-market trading and even babes in arms lisped the magic name of Wall Street lovingly. To Burgess Meredith, momentarily at loose ends, it looked like a promising career. Willing to start at the bottom, he got a job as runner for a brokerage house, ferried millions of dollars in securities all over the financial district and got canned just about the time he had figured out a plan to make a colossal killing. He brooded about life for a month, then shipped as ordinary seaman on a tramp bound for Venezuela. Arrived in port and handed his wages, he staged a celebration the like of which would have pleased Nero, went at it so fullheartedly that he overstayed his shore leave and was brought back to America in the brig. That long voyage home in the ship's brig was the blessing in disguise. The third night out, when the long hours of confinement had made him restless and he was pacing his cramped quarters, he thought of a way to relieve the monotony. He would recite aloud everything he could remember. And recite he did — at the top of his voice. In the middle of the last scene of "Cyrano de Bergerac," that same touching scene he had done in the declamation contest at Amherst, he stopped dead. "I'm an actor," he yelled. "I'm an actor.'' I T WAS the look of urgency in the ' eyes of the bearer of the note more than anything the note had to say about the bearer, "one Burgess Meredith," that impressed Eva Le Gallienne, the then-director of the celebrated Civic Repertory Theater, a note, by the way, written by a man she only vaguely remembered. On the spot she accepted the urgent young man as an apprentice in her Student Repertory Group— without payAs a fledgling actor he cavorted with something that Miss Le Gallienne describes as more than zeal and less, than lunacy. He seemed to thrive on acting. Come spring and Miss Le Gallienne recommended that he begin stringing out leads for a summer of stock. His first tour of the straw-hat circuit was sensational. Chary of the praise of the critics and convinced that his talent was still raw, he put in another year of workshop training. And after that, another summer of stock. That winter he invaded Broadway. And the following spring he did his magnificently poignant picture of Red Barry, a reform school alumnus, in Albert Bein's play, "Little Ol' Boy." The late O. O. Mclntyre hailed him as "the most thrilling young actor of his 76 day." "She Loves Me Not" demonstrated his range; "Flowers Of The Forest," displayed his versatility; "Winterset" put him in a class by himself. After that Hollywood was inevitable. The soul of Meredith of the Movies is fashioned out of some pretty curious ingredients. With a strong base of St. George, a generous quantity of Lord Byron, a wee pinch of Puck, a snip of Hamlet and a dash of Don Juan, the concoction is not exactly out of the recipe books. In one breath he is beating his brains out trying to devise ways and means of improving the lot of his fellow man. He accepted the chairmanship of The Free Company, an organization dedicated to defeating the aim of hostile propaganda in this country via the medium of radio — without pay. He shared with Helen Hayes the co-chairmanship of the Screen and Stage Division of the Fight for Freedom, made talks on street corners, pled with his friends who were on the fence, harried the opposition. He prayed for Russia, worried over China, fretted about our downtrodden sharecroppers and lamented over America's slowness to wrath. In the next breath this same Burgess Meredith is running neck and neck with the leading Hollywood Lotharios (known in less kindly circles as "wolves") and becomes knight protector to such assorted beauties as Simone Simon, Patricia Morison, Olivia de Havilland, etc. That is, he did until Uncle Sam took him over — and Paulette Goddard. THAT Hollywood should have found ' Meredith somewhat on the baffling side is neither strange nor important, but it is something else again that his closest friends, Franchot Tone, James Stewart and Henry Fonda, have three different pictures of the same Meredith. "Sometimes I think he's right out of Mother Goose," Stewart has said, "and then again I think some surrealist painter like Dali made him up. I guess Buzz is a fellow with poetry and laughter and music in his soul, Hamlet on roller skates, Puck on a white charger. Does that help?" In close-up Burgess Meredith is little, wiry and vague-looking. If it weren't for that vagueness he'd look like a tap dancer waiting to be asked to show his stuff. No disciple of Emily Post, he is just as apt to receive morning callers in a rumpled pair of pajamas, a bath towel wrapped around his head, turban fashion, and sporting socks minus shoes. It has been rumored, but remains unverified, that he sleeps in his socks. The explanation of Burgess Meredith lies in his philosophy of life which again is a queer combination. It might be stated something like this: Gather your rosebuds while you may but leave some for the other fellow which accounts at one fell swoop for his hilarity and humanity. He likes boogie-woogie music, is an authority on colored bands and admires music-makers who can blow a hot trumpet. He has been married (and divorced) twice, first to the late Helen Berrien and then to Margaret Perry, formerly of the stage. But the proudest moment of his life was when he took his oath as a private in the U. S. Army. Add to that, the moment when he first presented himself to Paulette as Lieutenant Burgess Meredith of the U. S. Army Air Force. It did things to Miss Goddard, too — make no mistake! The End photoplay combined with movie mirror