Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1938)

IN HOLLYWOOD Born with a spirit of adventure and a zest for living, Ray Milland has met his match at last and finds the game worth more than the goal BY MARIAN RHEA Soldier, merchant, sailor — Ray Milland SOME twenty odd years ago, near the little village of Neath, in Wales, a handsome, alert little boy struggled toward the top of a hill. It was a steep hill, the beginning of those craggy Welch ranges so different from the gentle contours of Old England. The rocks were sharp; the yellow gorse prickly; the wind perverse and chill. Doggedly, though, he scrambled on, ignoring difficulty and discomfort as well as the anxious maneuvers of his dog, Roderick, to head him back home. Ever since he could remember, he had wanted to know what lay on the other side of that hill; had imagined there a world peopled with strange beings — fairies, maybe, and maybe dragons. At this thought, the small lad brandished his trusty sword. It was a wooden sword, but its blade was sharp, as sharp . . . yes, he'd show those ol' dragons! Then he came to the crest of the hill and fearfully, at first, looked below him . . . saw only a green valley threaded by a stream as placid as the Avon and dotted by farmhouses with thatched roofs and smoke curling from their chimneys. There were no fairies here, and no dragons; only quail scuttling to shelter; only squirrels chattering in the oak tree yonder. Almost angrily he told Roderick to "come on," and turned his steps homeward. He had braved a switching for this. He had scuffed his shoes and torn his clothes. He had exerted himself as you wouldn't believe a seven-year-old youngster could. And then, at last, having achieved the new vistas he sought, he found himself not interested at all; just bored. Someday, though, he would go a long way away, to some place that nobody ever heard of, into strange dangers that nobody ever heard of, either! He would take his sword and — WELL, the little boy has kept that vow. He is a long way, now, from Neath, in Wales. He has climbed a good many tough hills, just to see what was on the other side. He has conquered a good many dragons of one kind or another. But, until he came across a place called Hollywood, he had never touched adventure that didn't bore him once he had proved himself able to see it through. And thereby hangs this tale. It is a story about a chap who has met his match at last and who, with the stubborn zest of one to whom the game is worth more than the goal, likes this fine. It is a story about Ray Milland. . . . For a long time after he climbed the hill at Neath, young Raymond Mullane (that was) was content to stay around home riding his bicycle through the country lanes or playing cricket in the meadows with the other boys. But never was he quite like them. When they dreamed of growing up and going into business "like Father," he would awe and sometimes shock them with the accounts of what his future was going to hold. "Me — I'm going to Egypt and America and all kinds of places," he would boast. "Me — I'm going to be a soldier of fortune!" It was when he was eleven and a boardingschool student at Radyr, not far from Neath, that he had his first chance to try out these plans. Then, abetted by a bosom friend, Donald Hope, he cooked up an ingenious scheme whereby the two of them, unbeknownst to both school authorities and parents, could embark upon a five-day fishing excursion to the far-distant (well, at least forty miles distant) and therefore fabulous Lake Talyllyn. The thing looked easy. The boys had been told by the foreman of the ship-building plant owned by Don's father that he would take them on this trip whenever they could get permission to stay out of school. All they had to do, then, despite the fact they knew they could never get this permission, was to tell their schoolmasters they were going to spend a week at home and allow their parents to believe they were in school as usual. But, for all their neat plans, the Lake Talyllyn adventure more or less flopped, Ray says. There were mosquitoes. It was too cold for comfort at night. The food they took with them turned out to be pretty bad. And they caught scarcely any fish. Besides, Lake Talyllyn, although as beautiful a spot as one could wish, was, after all, just a lake and Ray had seen lakes before. Therefore, when he came home on Friday evening to a good licking (with a toasting fork, he remembers), his father having found him out, and returned to school on Monday morning to get another licking for truancy, he made a new resolve. He wouldn't waste time adventuring near home. There wasn't adventure around there, anyway. He would wait until he could go (Continued on page 89) 67