Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1938)

MOWS 'EM DOWN! If Hollywood moguls had only known what they were letting themselves in for when they signed Charlie McCarthy! They found out soon enough! BY KIRTLEY BASKETTE EDGAR BERGEN is grooming another dummy to replace Charlie McCarthy. The new little knee pal will be a goofy little guy with a silly laugh and a rustic wardrobe as contrasted to Charlie's suave innuendo and silk hat. Bergen hasn't had him sawed out yet, but he's working on the voice, mannerisms and character. Edgar Bergen may have a hunch that Charlie's rarin', tearin', rounder days are due to wane soon. He may have decided, with his quiet shrewdness, that the public demands new blood even in ventriloquist's dolls. He may have said about all he has to say with Charlie. On the other hand, the new dummy may be purely a physical precaution. Since they've gone in the movies — Edgar and Charlie — there's always the danger that a general revolt of maddened Hollywood moguls will tear Charlie limb from limb. For the woodenheaded dummy has been making a sap of Hollywood. Charlie may be fashioned from slippery elm, poison ivy, dogwood or sawdust swept from a barroom floor, as has been suggested on occasions, but his general effect, as far as Hollywood is concerned, is more like cactus — wickedly pricking the bubbles of pose, pretension and pomp that make up the sometimes phony foam of that effervescent town. Charlie plays no favorites. In his own boastful words he just "mows 'em down." Hollywood dignity tumbles and glamour washes out before the owlish gaze and smug smirk of the number one breaker-downer in movietown history. The innocent sting of his small-voiced wisecracks penetrates the armor of caste, tradition and Hollywood-holy taboos like tissue paper. The kid's a terror, and that's no pun. It's not even a joke to some people. I HE first day of shooting on the set of "Letter of Introduction" at Universal studios, a soberfaced man with an imposing mane of white hair confronted the cocky, monocled eye of Bergen's Bad Boy. He had been putting Charlie through his camera paces, ad infinitum. It was no use; Charlie was wickedly immune to direction. So the white-haired man said at last, "Oh, go ahead. Do it any way you want to!" And a voice piped back, small, but not too small, sotto voce, but loud enough for everybody to hear — "Now why'nell didn't you say so in the first place?" Edgar Bergen looked distinctly shocked. He blushed. The set hung heavy with stunned silence. The white-haired man turned gravely to his assistant, a strongjawed Irishman. "It looks like," he said quietly, "we're going to have trouble with this little fellow." 20 If he had only known! The white-haired man was John Stahl, most dignified, autocratic, aloof director in Hollywood. His relentless, painstaking set authority has worn' down and "broken" such actresses as Irene Dunne, Margaret Sullavan, Claudette Colbert. The man he spoke to was Joe McDonough, one of the most hard-bitten, iron-handed assistant directors in the business. But Joe could only nod weakly and murmur, "Yeah." Charlie had already been picking on him. In an hour the news was all over Hollywood. Charlie McCarthy had bearded the lion in his den. Hollywood knew what to expect — and it certainly was not disappointed. From then on, Charlie turned on the heat. Of course, the insult and innuendo served up by Charlie McCarthy had been sampled by the scorched tongues of Hollywood's great long before he answered the call of the cinema. On the radio, "where, one by one, the luminaries of movieland were summoned by cold cash, Charlie pulled no punches. Between derisive cackles, he drubbed them lustily in their weakest spots — usually around the head. Before the world and everybody the impudent little lap-chip called Adolphe Menjou an extra. He said he was slipping. He said the only thing he had was a pair of pressed pants and a mustache and so what? He calmly assured Alice Brady she didn't know acting from sour apples. He brazenly asked Ned Sparks how much he would charge to curdle a bottle of cream. He wheezed that Carole Lombard had teeth like pearls from a "stewed erster." He sassed Barbara Stanwyck with "honey-chile" and ran down her pretty best boy friend gleefully. He ripped right on down the line through Roz Russell, Marlene Dietrich, Lupe Velez, Walter Huston, Edward Arnold and a double-dozen more. The other day he told Spencer Tracy the Academy was certainly getting careless to hand him a gold acting award, "Oscar." But Charlie was just practicing up on the radio. It was the movies he was really laying for. From the moment Bergen hauled him inside the Studio gates, supposedly squelched inside a big black suitcase, a tirade of indignant squeals and protests rent the startled air. "What the blankety blank blank blank!" Charlie screamed. "Lemme out of this thing. Lemme at 'em. I'll show 'em. I'm a movie star — ain't I?" And when Bergen undid the clasps and popped Charlie's red thatch into the rare air of the "Goldwyn Follies" stage, the first thing Charlie did was to yell for a standin! Now, for long, the stand-in situation in Hollywood has been a standing joke. Sometimes on the set there are more stand-ins than actors. Stars have stand-ins, bit players have stand-ins, extras have them. Stand-ins have stand-ins. It's a custom that has grown into a foolish fetish. And it was ripe for a little McCarthy razz. There was about as much sense in Charlie McCarthy's needing a stand-in as there would be in Deanna Durbin's requiring a voice double. But the hot light, Charlie sighed, would melt the glue in his joints. The rays would make him lose his school-boy complexion. The heat would hand him the dry rot or something. He would gradually disintegrate. So he got "Sturdy Oak O'Sullivan," a pithy little pal, who reposed grinning while Charlie rested — in his chair? Oh no — in the star's chair or the director's chair. Because that was another set taboo that it pleased Master Charlie to pick to pieces. One of the gravest social errors you can possibly make on a Hollywood set is to plunk yourself down between scenes in the canvas-backed seat formidably tagged "Director So and So" or "Miss Gloria Greatstar." To usurp such a hallowed perch is something akin to hopping up on Emperor Hirohito's throne and dangling your legs over the arms. In "The Goldwyn Follies" Charlie had his own ILLUSTRATIONS BY REA IRVIN "Don't look now, Bergen," he whispered, "but I think picked up a splinter"