Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

Young Doug Learns the Answers CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16 ] or they were simply glorified romance in person, according to which way you looked at it. I do not know why or how or whether Joan had anything to do with it, but during that time Doug went arty and highbrow — he went in for "LIFE" in a big way. And in those days he never seemed quite real to me, he always seemed to be someone playing a part, an attractive, good-looking charming actor trying to be a Noel Coward character off stage and without one ounce of sincerity in him. Maybe I was wrong — but somehow I don't think I was. The more I have come to know Douglas as he is now, the more I have come to value him as a friend and a companion, the more I have seen of his integrity and his concentration and hard work, the more I think he was insincere in those days, that he hated the whole set-up and was going through a phase that probably couldn't have been avoided. Two terrific things hit him in quick succession. JOAN divorced him and I don't think that he would deny for a moment that the divorce hurt him and that for a time life didn't seem worth living. And he went to England to join his father on a trip around the world. Somewhere in those intervening years Beth Fairbanks had brought about a reconciliation between her son and his father. It had always distressed her deeply to have them parted by young Douglas' youthful disappointment. So, when he was trying to pull himself together, when he was facing life in its most stark and bitter reality perhaps for the first time, young Douglas found himself in England. Since with Marcell Hellman, a brilliant European producer, young Douglas founded the British film company called Criterion Films and announced his intention of making pictures exclusively in England, there has been a good deal printed about it and people at times seem to have formed the impression that Douglas went to England for social reasons and that he has turned his back upon America. One of the reasons I went to England, besides writing a picture for Douglas, was to see for myself. "Come over with me," Douglas said, "and take a look around, and I think you'll understand. You know Hollywood — you know what my position was there — and I'd like you to see and understand why I've done what I've done." So I picked up the whole story, partly from people in London who had watched the whole thing, and partly from putting together things I already knew. In the three years it took to make Criterion Films come true — because they existed at first only as a dream of Douglas' — the boy I had known grew up, and he grew up the hard way. Things were pretty soft for young Doug in Hollywood by that time. If you'd ever tried casting pictures and known the incredible dearth of good leading men, you'd understand that. He was getting top salary, he was in constant demand, he had proved himself a very fine actor in such pictures as "The Pawn Patrol." He could go right on doing that just as long as he wanted to, and there wasn't any question about that But suddenly, he told me, that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted a great deal more than that. It wasn't good enough. And it didn't have any real future, as far as he could see it. You hadn't, he said, anything except what was built upon the strangely shifting thing called public favor. Besides, it gave you nothing to get your teeth into. The Hollywood film industry was established, settled, it had its own ways of doing everything. It wasn't very much fun to make pictures there any more. It had become a business, with terrific investments that must be protected at any cost. You were part of a great machine, entirely controlled by other people, who pressed a button when they wanted a leading man of the Fairbanks type. You went up — and you went down — and you "Rhythm on the Range" with Bing Crosby as a crooning cowboy answers one of this month's correspondents' requests ior better Westerns came up again maybe — but you had nothing to say about it yourself. Neither your successes nor your failures were your own. The truth was that all the too-young experience Douglas had had, all his father's vital nervous energy, all his mother's intellectual grasp, had fomented in Douglas into a rebellion. He had finally digested his experiences, he had begun to think clearly instead of just feel, and he knew what he wanted. HE wanted to make motion pictures. Xot just act in them. Not just be an automaton in their creation. He wanted to start at the bottom and take chances and do new things and use this medium, which of course was in his blood, had been ever since he was a child, to express things that might in time have impuil.in. i He didn't have any connections in England and he had no money. But he saw that the British film industry was new. that new men and new blood had a chance there, and he made up his mind that here at last was his chance. To do something himself, to prove himself, to lay a future that was built upon solid foundations and that the fight would be what he calls fun. Those three years were pretty bad, some of the time. He played in a few pictures to get money enough to live on — and he lived over a mews and did a lot of close figuring, and still refused to take any money from his father. On the surface he seemed a gay young man, going about London and making himself personally popular everywhere he went. But all his energies were bent upon one goal. He wanted his own picture company — he would act still, of course, but primarily he wanted to help produce, and to have a say about stories and maybe to get out of the rut and do something really unusual. Over three years, he finally brought that to pass, and as his partner, Marcell Hellman told me, he did it alone and single-handed and he started from scratch. For after all he was simply another young American actor, as far as most people knew. He found the money to produce pictures, he formed the company, he built the new studio at Isleworth, he worked eighteen hours a day lining up stories and casts and directors. And he was a constant ambassador of good will. He made flying trips to America and used every contact he had to get a United Artists release. SO the Criterion film company became an established fact. " I did it in England," Douglas said, as we walked about the pretty, modern, marvelously equipped studio near London, "because I couldn't have done it in America, that's all. They wouldn't have let me. We've got enthusiasm over here, we're new and young, we'll make mistakes, it may take us a little while to reach the place at the top where we want to be. but we can experiment, we're free and it's fun. It's the thing I've always wanted to do and I want to do it now. while I'm young, and while I'm not afraid." He isn't afraid. If he had been, he would have gone back to Hollywood during those three years when one disappointment after another knocked him off his feet, >\ hen months went by and nothing happened. It would have been so much easier. But the thing that kept him at it, kept hanging on and getting up at the count of nine, is the thing that has made him quite another person. Right now, I would say definitely that I don't know anyone more real than Douglas. And with it he's kept all that gaiety and charm that he used to have ami that made him a popular leading man always. What will come out of this London adventure of young Fairbanks I cannot tell you. I spent six weeks watching him work, watching him prepare stories, spend hours looking at tests and pictures in search of new talent, him laid up in a London nursing home from sheer overwork. Still the results aren't vet possible to see. One thing I do know. The results ought to be good. For the effort is a good one and the ii is a big one — and I think the newDouglas Fairbanks. Jr.. who is so sincere and so ready to gamble for an artistic ideal and for freedom is going to put it over. Vs far as 1 am concerned, he certainly made a rooter out of me. and I was a tough audience. 76