Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

96 PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FOR SEPTEMBER, 1936 t* 6 ONCE there was a famous beauty with pink eyes . . . Yes there was NOT! you say instantly. And you're right. Nobody can be a famous beauty — or the best looking girl in town — or even the normally pretty, attractive person most of us hope we are — unless her eyes are clear and shining every minute. Yet all too often these days your eyes can ruin your whole appearance. Without your knowing it, they tell a tale of weariness, exertion, exposure to dust, glare, late hours or cigarette smoke. What to do about cloudy, dull or pink-edged traitor-eyes? Just one thing . . . keep your bottle of IBATH always nearby. Before you go out, tip the little silver helmet to each eye and feel this harmless physician's formula snapping them wide-awake and starry-clear . . . banishing every suggestion of ugliness. IBATH is so effective the most famous beauties use it constantly. 50c at all good drug stores . . . get your bottle and IBATH sparkle today. ibath McKESSON * ROBBINS Manufacturing Chemists sine* 1833 tion of the words that in their literal Scandinavian mean "Swedish Girl," but which when tossed off slightly, sound like " Svenskafleeka" — or, still more colloquially, "Fleck." I was first introduced to her when she was standing on her head. Not that standing on her head was one of her pet indulgences, but she was standing on her head on that particular occasion because on that particular occasion she felt like standing on her head! And that's Garbo, or the "Fletk " She usually does whatever she feels like doing at the moment. She had started playing tennis that day as I found out later to my sorrow. And after that exercise, plus an hour's vigorous swimming in the pool, plus another hour's brisk hike, she still contained so much physical exuberance that standing on her head, on a sofa pillow, seemed to be the simple and desirable thing to do. So Garbo stood on her head! At that time, I rather fancied myself as a promising tennis player. In fact, I thought I was pretty good. But with the "Fleek," it was something else again. The "Fleek" played the most unorthodox tennis you can possibly imagine. Grasping the racket well up toward the throat, she would smack the ball so heartily that there wasn't much to be done about it in the event it happened to land in the court. But, regardless of the quality of our games, we played singles for seventeen consecutive days. For sixteen days I beat her soundly. On the seventeenth she caught up to me. She just naturally wore me out and beat me on sheer vitality. Since that day we have never played singles again. Secretly I know she has my number and can beat me whenever she wants to, and the "Fleek" doesn't want another match because she maintains she accomplished an objective in beating me seventeen days after she walked on a tennis court for the first time. I NEVER knew the Dolores Del Rio, who ' upon her entrance into Hollywood, was so widely advertised as a Mexican furore. A "colossal" build-up as a sinuous, svelte, seductive, sophisticated siren was the premise of her debut. I resented that build-up. Then I met her. An olive-and-roses-skinned little figure. Very small, very naive and very anxious to be liked — a lovely child who was hardly aware of her press-agentry. That was the Dolores I first met and the Dolores it is my privilege to know today. She is a charming girl who is doing two jobs equally well — starring in pictures and personally supervising her household for the comfort of her husband, Cedric Gibbons. In her home there is nothing that Dolores does not plan and execute. It is her delight to oversee the most minute details even when she is engaged in a picture. She is an impeccable hostess. With an ample number of servants in the household it is her pleasure to wait on you when you have a buffet dinner at the Gibbons home. After a long day of tennis and parlimentary debate between athletes, Dolores rushes hither and yon to bring you a fresh bucket of spaghetti, a tilled wineglass or more cigarettes. Speaking of tennis — she herself, plays badly but whimsically. She swims like a dolphin. No sorry! I've seen dolphins swim. They haven't the Del Rio "dese, dem and doze!" She is an intense and intelligent student of music. After her first press agent blast 1 watched her career and waited somewhat dubiously. Then I saw her as Charmain in "What Price Glory." Followed in rapid succession a series of roles that consolidated her standing as a great screen personality. I said to her one night, "Dolores, you're flawless! You're the — — -" .My wife entered the room suddenly. I must admit her manner was one of curiosity rather than jealousy. "Who is flawless?" she demanded— and then looked up. "Oh, Dolores!" she said. "Of course! Excuse me!" That's praise from Sir Hubert. And that's the Dolores I know I NEVER knew the Charlie Chaplin of the little black moustache and the baggy trousers, except, of course, on the screen. I've known another Chaplin for ten years. Then he was a shy, intense and mercurial person subject to periods of loneliness which could only be loneliness of the soul, for he had many friends who would naturally glow with joy on any personal association with him. There was one night when a knock at the door, just about dinner time, turned out to be Charlie rather plaintively asking if he could have dinner with us. We three talked far into the night. Nor was there a moment when the conversation was not somber discussion of mankind and its problems. That night Charlie brought something he'd promised me for weeks. I never really believed he had any intention of keeping his promise, because the thing I wanted wa an autographed photo of him. I've seen very few autographed photos of Charlie Chaplin. I realized his agreement to give me one had been prompted by an unwillingness to seem boorish by saying, "no." It hangs in my study before me now and its inscription reflects the mood of that Chaplin on that night and many other such nights. It reads: "To dear friend Carey Wilson, from the little waif, Charlie Chaplin." Often another Chaplin appeared in an astonishing interruption of the plaintive mood. This gay, released and relaxed Charlie appeared on the screen for the first time in his latest picture, "Modern Times." That song in improvised gibberish, convincingly telling its story in a fictitious foreign language, is from the same Charlie who used to deliver an extemperaneous speech in any language you'd select — languages of which he knew not a single word. But your guests at the dinner table could accept the simulated Arabic, Chinese, or Russian, as if it had been spoken by a native — that is, if they weren't laughing too hard. He was at his best in a game he invented, called. "Chamber of Commerce." Each of the six or eight in the party would be arbitrarily designated as the leading representative of some industry, called together in a session to present his or her industrial views on some present economic crisis. One night Bebe Daniels allotted Charlie a role as the lone motion picture theater proprietor of an imaginary small town. In a dialect revealing vividly that the said theater magnet was inevitably from Poland, Charlie gave a screamingly funny analysis of what was wrong with the movies. He managed to place all the important evils affecting the business on the shoulders of those more or less prominent motion picture figures seated around our festive board, amid howls of laughter as every shrewd barb of satire struck home Then he paid off the situation magnificently by proving that the alleged comic, Charlie Chaplin, would never draw any business in "his" theater. Until then few of us had realized that the elusive Charles Spencer Chaplin, seemingly detached and remote from any part of the cinema