Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1943)

CULLED Wherein someone who ought to know better breaks a lot of rules, thereby giving you some news you never knew before about Cotten Jo found Lenore as a friend, kept her as his wife. Their home is unpretentious — and strictly private Jo's predilection for acting was no secret to anyone in Petersburg. They had come to the high-school plays and seen him in all manner of roles. So it was no surprise to them when word got around that he was heading for Washington, D. C, to study in the Robert Nugent Hickman School of Expression. Of course, they were sure it would break his poor mother's heart to have him turn out this way — an actor, imagine it! Jo studied hard at the Hickman School, trained his voice over the rivets that were being driven into the building of the Mayfair Hotel across the street from the studio and then wentto New York to become an actor. He tried, long and as energetically as he knew how, to get acting jobs in New York. The people to whom he had letters had left the city years before. So nothing came of his efforts . . . nothing except a sense of futility and hopelessness. The winter was cold and there was a boom in Florida . . . maybe there'd be something doing there and besides, what did he have to lose? He borrowed some money from a dear friend and headed for Florida. He spent five years there ... all kinds of jobs . . . selling advertising on a Miami paper . . . selling vacuum cleaners . . . acting in a little theater (you might have, known it!) ... but no real spark, no burning ambition. At last Jo was twenty-five. The Florida boom was over, long since, and people were even getting used to the stock market crash, which was almost a year behind them. Then a handsome blonde showed up, named Lenore. A marriage that hadn't panned out was behind her, but there wasn't a trace of bitterness in her. She MAY, 1943 was gay and bright and understanding. And little Judy, her daughter, was enchanting. Jo was delighted with his new friends. Someday, somebody (not I) will tell you the really enchanting and dramatic love story of Jo and Lenore. Let me tell you just this: I've never seen two people who I thought belonged together as much as these two. In the summer Lenore went to New York, leaving Jo in Florida. A strange new ambition touched him. The thing to do was to go back to New York and try again. Jo set out, without hope, but with the warming prospect of seeing Lenore practically any minute. f"}F course they were married, when ^-^ the unpleasant business of the divorce had heen straightened out, and then Jo had to be a success in the theater, he absolutely had to. And he certainly was — but almost a decade later! One of the letters Jo had, when he came up North, was to Burns Mantle, even then a well-known and popular drama critic. (Today he edits an annual collection of the best plays of the year and reviews the theater for the Daily News which has the largest newspaper circulation in New York or anywhere, I guess.) Jo mailed that letter to Mantle and was invited to come and see him. Mantle said, dourly, "You know, I really wonder how anybody ever gets on the stage." And Jo answered in his forthright way, "I don't know. You're supposed to tell me." Mantle laughed and gave him letters to John Golden and David Belasco, the famous producers, but added: "Letters aren't any good." The letter to John Golden is still one of Jo's treasures. He never used it. He's saving it, he says, "just in case. . . ." However, he did send the letter to David Belasco and got an appointment. "What do you want?" Belasco asked brusquely. "I want a job in the theater," Jo told him. "All right," Belasco said unexpectedly. "Come to work Monday." Then followed a series of understudy roles — "Dancing Partner" for Lynne Overman and "Tonight Or Never" for Melvyn Douglas — and then nothing, just that same sense of futility that every hopeful actor gets used to, like a lame man to a limp. Leah Salisbury, the play and talent agent, knows about that. The story of Leah and Jo is one I like — another of those "human angles" in Jo's life. You see, an agent is a gambler, a person who decides someone is good, then gambles hours and money and endless arguments trying to put that somebody over. Leah Salisbury decided that Joseph Cotten was a good gamble. Not that much ever happened to Jo to kindle her faith in him, but she just believed in him. She arranged all manner of appointments and plenty of readings and movie tests. Today you say to Jo, "Who tested you?" And Jo answers, "Name anybody." Everybody tested him, even Howard Hughes, for the role that Ben Lyon later played in "Hell's Angels." All through these years of occasional jobs in summer stock, or as understudy, or in some minor radio role, Leah always had (Continued on page 88) 45