Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

Claudette Colbert's Climb to Stardom [ CONTIXUED FROM PAGE 51 ] began. He put his hand on her arm, and they stopped together. " You know the situation and — you know how much I love you. Claudette, let's be married before we go to England." She looked solemnly ahead. "I haven't decided whether or not I want to leave New York," she told him finally. She watched his face. "But I've decided about the rest. Long ago — " They were married (secretly and with as much melodrama as possible) the next day, and sailed for London. — at least it hurt our relationship very much. Of course they didn't realize what they were doing to themselves then. The glamor of being husband to that charming girl on the next street whom he dated every evening, casually as though she were a new acquaintance, amused and excited Norman as much as it did Claudette. He would ring and say, "Miss Colbert? — this is Mr. Foster. Do you remember me? Good. If you're free for dinner tonight we might try that new place in the Village, and then if you aren't too tired there's a doubledecker bus that goes up Fifth Avenue to The new Mr. and Mrs. Dick Powell, who were married in the Captain's quarters aboard the S. S. Santa Paula, just prior to their sailing for a honeymoon cruise through the Panama Canal. Regis Toomey was best man; Ruth Pursley, maid of honor. They received a riotous welcome in New York England was a smoky island hasily interpreted in Claudette's mind as the place where she had a good time with a new husband and where, in a small and unsuccessful play, she got her name in lights for the first time. By the time they returned to America she had learned many things and her mother had forgotten what it was she had meant to say. klORMAX felt that groom, bride and brides' 1 ^mother — be she ever so charming — could not live together in the same apartment with any especial success. Not with Tante and Grandmere disapprovingly in the offing. And Claudette agreed, remembering at the same time that sin had promised never to leave the devoted family which had sacrificed so much that she might play and learn and be as other girls. "That was the origin of my widely publicized theory about living apart from my husband in mi, |, i io be happy," Claudette remembered over her coffee. " I was very young, and this was first romance, and naturally I felt that nothing on earth C011I4 ever spoil the love Norman and I felt for eai h other, lie took a (harming apartment only a block away from ours, and we saw each other every day and every evening, and somehow it seemed an ideal arrangement. But it was the beginning of the thing that came between us. You can't live that way, no matter how much in love you are Grant's Tomb. . . ." And she would say, "I believe I'm free tonight, Mr. Foster. And I should be delighted to dine with you. About six-thirty then?" They laughed a lot over that. But somehow the great intimacy of waking together each morning, of munching placidly behind newspapers, one across from the other, of shared sorrows and triumphs — "Well, we didn't have them," Claudette concluded. " You need those things to supplement the glamor of the rest." In the meantime, her career sailed stolidly along the frantic Broadway sea. She had had a contract for one more silent picture but it was shelved and the clause settled. There were two or three plays of no importance, most of them bad, which was unfortunate from a personal standpoint since Norman's roles (in "The Racket" and others) were invariably hits. Al Woods at this time wanted her for the lead in a new show. "The Crime," but Claudette preferred "The Barker." Woods told her she was silly, that he could take an absolutely unknown girl and make a star of her, so good was the role in "The Crime." Hut somehow "The Barker" and a honeymoon with Xorman seemed more important, so she stuck to her decision. Won,!-,, 10 prove his point, sent to the Theatre Guild school and picked up a student actress, with no experience, for "The Crime." It did make her a star, too, since the girl was Sylvia Sidney. But as "The Barker" also made a hit and saw Miss Colbert being starred, Claudette felt everything was even all the way round. Woods had a new star, she had the play she wanted, and love was very much with her. It was after her own fine notices in the rather indifferent O'Neill-Theater Guild production of "Dynamo." Hollywood announced with considerable smugness that it had at last perfected sound for motion pictures — those squeaky uncertain noises which sometimes did and sometimes did not accompany the shifting screen shadows. And Paramount, remembering the latent loveliness and also the luxurious, husky voice of Claudette, asked her to make a test for them. " I'D forgotten by this time — almost — the hor rible result of my first try in motion pictures," Claudette said. So she went and spoke uncertainly, with many questions and much cynicism, into a microphone, and received with doubtful pleasure the news that her test had been successful. Walter Wanger and Monta Bell wanted to run up a little thing called "The Hole in the Wall" and asked her if she'd like to try for the feminine lead. They'd already signed Eddie Robinson. To her puzzled appeal for advice her mother shrugged eloquent shoulders and Norman spread his hands in noncommital gesture. " Oh, well, so what?" she thought — and accepted. They had a good time making the picture. Fresh from the stage, both she and Robinson talked too loudly, and Hollywood's "newly perfected" microphones exploded at every third vowel. No one could ever be sure whether the resultant sound track would give forth intelligible conversation or indignant hissing noises; and invariably Claudette, in the tenderest love sequences, would shout from the screen words and phrases meant for murmuring. Surprisingly it turned out pretty well. At any rate, when the Guild asked to sign her for a new play that autumn, she had to refuse because Paramount had already set her in "The Lady Lies." And that made her in pictures. Her studio offered a two-year contract at a proud salary and indulgently wrote in the stipulation that she could do a play whenever she wanted to. She only had time for one. Because this w as Success, you understand, with a capital. This was fame and the big dough and her picture in magazines and people to interview her and fan mail and fabulous publicity and all the unbelievable glory she had read about but never considered for herself. Home was still a cluttered, if more comfortable, apartment — the same that Papa had taken such a short time before when he had come to Xew York to make a new life for his family — and in it were still Mother and Tante and Grandmere. But if. before, small Lily had been the youngest, almost unnoticed occupant, she was now the most important. If the sticky candy she had wanted and begged for had been denied her before, she could have, now, champ and trufiles if they pleased her fancy. If. before, Mother had been a benevolent but conscientious tyrant, now Claudette headed the household. 102