Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1949)

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JUELENE comes in 2 Forms □ Pomade □ Liquid. SEND FOR IT TODAY! C. O. D. $1.00 plos Government charges. It Is folly guaranteed. Money back if you are not delighted. Write Now! JUEL CO.. 4727 N. Damon. Do dL C-610, Chicago 25, 10* The Kid Who Never Cried ( Continued from page 41) world her first puppy. “Dare never batted an eye,” Patti says, “He never bats an eye over anything.” By “Dare,” Patti means John. “Dare,” short for Derek, his real first name. His real surname is Harris. Since he was a kid, he has managed to keep his innermost emotions to himself. He knows, however, exactly what those desires are, just as he knew, when he read “Knock on Any Door,” that the role of Nick Romano would make him a star. He is a natural born actor. His mother, who is still one of the most strikingly beautiful women you’ve ever seen, was an actress who called herself Del Orris. His father, Lawson Harris, was also an extraordinarily handsome man, originally an actor, later a director. “Neither of them got anywhere,” John says, and that’s the final word you can dig out of him. BEFORE he was five, his parents had divorced, but before he was six, he had met Russell Harlan. Russell Harlan is a cameraman, with three wonderful kids of his own. Seventeen years ago, he was one of the best cameramen and he’s still tops, having recently lensed such super-productions as “Red River” and “I Was a Male War Bride.” Tall, slim and smiling, he, too, is a much handsomer than average male. The lonely, too handsome little Derek Harris appealed to the fatherly heart and the worldly intelligence of Russ Harlan. The kid was growing up entirely surrounded by women, his mother, his grandmother, and assorted aunts and cousins. It was Russ who taught him to box, before he was six, and to ride before he was seven. The boxing was absolutely necessary, for even then, John’s looks were such that every other kid, at sight of him, took a poke at him. John learned to fight so triumphantly that by the time he was ten, his appearance and the battles he had to fight because of it were a mere matter of routine to him. By the time he was twelve, his horsemanship was earning a good living for him. He began to break horses on the various ranches, for $25 a horse. He might have broken every bone in his body except that he was too good an athlete. “Dare would never say he could, or couldn’t, do any stunt you proposed,” Russ Harlan now says. “When I first taught him to ride, he was hardly big enough to sit on the horse, but he did sit there, riding so close behind me, I’d have to turn in my saddle to be sure he was still there.” John still has that same determination to do things by himself. When he was given “Rogues of Sherwood Forest,” which originally had been intended for Cornel Wilde, he simply looked the executive in the eye and said, “Well, then I hope you’ll let me do my own stunts in the picture. They will look better if the camera stays on me all the time.” He wasn’t boasting, just stating a fact. John’s first discoverer, Russ, also was his first cameraman. He took test after test, but he couldn’t get anybody interested. Then Tom Moore, now a talent scout for Twentieth, tried to sign him. John’s father interfered that time. John had to have his parents’ consent before he could sign a contract, and his father wanted him to study to be an artist. John gave it a try and he still has the talent for it. His sketch of a cat now hangs in the famous Sportsman’s Lodge in the Valley and several of his things are framed in his living room. By the time John was seventeen, however, Selznick had spotted him and this time, his parents gave in to the inevitable. He was cast in bits in the Selznick productions, “Since You Went Away” and “I’ll Be Seeing You,” while being trained for bigger things. The draft, however, caught up with him before the public did. He left for service in the Pacific with an infantry detachment and served in the Philippines and in Japan. After he was demobilized he was signed by Twentieth, but he just sat out this contract for a year, the year during which he read the book, “Knock on Any Door,” and pursued Bogie until he got the test he wanted, and stardom. It was during this same year that he met Patti, the girl he chose over all the girls who, naturally, pursued him. He couldn’t pull into a drive-in for his favorite of all foods, a hamburger, without girls in cars pulling in next to him, giggling and swooning. In her own country, Patti is a princess. In Paris, she had been a singer. She is fluent in several languages, is sophisticated, and a dream cook, besides. The first time she and John ever dated, he took her to a burlesque show because she had never seen a strip-teaser. The strip-teaser fascinated her but she hated the burlesque and so did John. On their next date, they went out to see the Joshua trees in the desert because she had never seen anything like those, either. She loved the Joshua trees. JOHN and Patti started their married life in October, 1948, in a little house at Malibu Beach. But when summer came, and with it more fog than any previous California summer has ever seen, they moved into a section of San Fernando Valley where the sun practically never stops shining, summer or winter. “That’s for his sun tan,” says Patti, laughing. “He’s the most beautiful swimmer but he goes and sticks one toe in the water and lets it go at that.” “Oh, I can dive and fool around if somebody insists,” John said. He says Patti spoils him. She does all their own housework and cooking and she refuses to let him help, saying it is no work for a man. She gets annoyed with him that his only idea of a change of food from hamburgers is steak. She’s trying to teach him about more subtle eating. He has already done “All the King’s Men,” is studying for “The Gainesville Circus,” and had a punishing schedule on “Rogues of Sherwood Forest.” Because he understands the movie business so well, he knows that now he will be rushed from picture to picture, but he is prepared for it, just as he is preparing to fight for the best directors, the best stories, the best cameramen. Whenever he gets confused about anything, he drives over to Russ Harlan’s house. Again and again, he has listened to Russ’s stories of how Montgomery Clift studied and worked when he came into “Red River” up against a cast which knew every trick in the movie book, and from whom he stole the picture. John will study and work just as hard. Because he is so young and his success has been so swift, he’s bound to change, but the people who know him well are convinced it will be a change toward more sincerity, more subtlety, and even more artistry. Somebody once said of Richard Wagner, the composer, that he wrote his great works with a heart as hot as fire and a head as cold as ice. That’s a very apt description of John Derek, also, and it’s a very good prescription for what it takes to become a star. The End 92