Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1951)

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He raised his eyes in eloquent admiration. “Any guy would!” He laughed. “She’s everything a guy wants; beautiful, warm, gay — yet also sensitive, also poignant. . . .” When I had heard that Monty was going to do this new version of Theodore Dreiser’s novel, “An American Tragedy.” I had thought it a pity, and said as much to him. I did not see how this tragedy ever could be made into a successful movie or how Monty could fail to estrange at least his younger public. I did not reckon with the great artistry of George Stevens, the producer-director. “He got the best performances all of us were capable of giving,” Monty says quietly — the way you say a thing when you know the person you are praising to be secure without your praise. “He never tried to make any one of us say or do anything that seemed unnatural to us. “It’s time I went back to work,” Monty continued, “as soon as I’ve done all the things Paramount needs me to do for publicity on ‘Place.’ But I’ve enjoyed this long holiday. Not that I want to sound arty, but acting — especially in a picture like ‘Place’ — takes a lot out of you. Your body, after all, doesn’t know you’re pretending when you get white and emotional.” NOTHER change I noticed in Monty. When we had lunched before, he had had me arrange for him to be let out the service entrance. He was driven and harassed by the groups of boys and girls who trailed him and who, that day, waited patiently at the main door. He talks of his public now as if they were the human beings they are. On his way to see me, in fact, he had stopped to talk at length with a truck driver who had recognized him. He’s a much more relaxed, much less defensive fellow than he used to be. Ask anyone who works with Monty about him and the answer comes the same. “I like him,” they say as if they did not think you expected them to like him at all. They don’t say, “He’s a doll!” And they don’t say, “He’s wonderful to work with, so cooperative.” For he’s neither of these things. More than once he’s refused to approve a story in which the things he was quoted as saying were colored or twisted. “But,” say the publicity people in defense of Monty, “he always makes sense. He has his ideas of what he should and shouldn’t do — and he sticks to them. You can’t blame a man for that!” It takes weeks to get him to agree to go to a photographer’s studio. And, likely enough, if anything that promises to be more fun or more stimulating turns up, the first one or two appointments will be broken. But when he does appear he works like a Trojan. He’ll go down to the docks to pose. Interested in a new lens or theory with which the photographer is ex perimenting he'll spend an extra hour or two posing, in a laboratory sense, a willing guinea pig. Always, too, he wanders into the dark room to gab with the boys. A year ago, gabbing in the dark room of a New York photographer, he talked to one of the boys about a flannel shirt he had bought. “It doesn’t fit me. I’ll never wear it. But I think it might be right for you, if you’d like it.” When a few weeks passed and no shirt arrived, the dark-room boy decided he’d never see it, that Monty had changed his mind or forgotten. Monty forgets like an elephant. Months later, arriving at this studio for another sitting, he had the shirt slung over his arm. He offered it with no apology for the time lapse, simply a laconic “Hope it fits.” Monty, I suspect, thinks most of us are ridiculous slaves to time. ALWAYS when I see Monty I am reminded of Katie Hepburn. They have the same strange green-gray eyes which they direct straight at you, the same autocratic nose, the same at once casual and purposeful ways. They are alike, too, in personality. Both are determined to maintain their privacy. To this end they move like crabs or diplomats. You think they are coming towards you and they are going sidewise. You don’t think they are coming towards you and they are right in front of you. It will be fascinating if, as they plan, they do “Hamlet” together on Broadway. I hope, however, they will have a persuasive, able, firm director. Otherwise their mutual intellectual curiosity and overwhelming desire to put theories to the test is likely to bog down their production. Speaking again of the change in Monty, he has over the years been seen in public with only one girl and only this girl’s name — Myra Letts — ever has been associated with his. Miss Letts is not, in a strict sense of the word, a glamour girl. She goes about hatless, her dark hair rumpled, wearing a great sports coat. It has been said, among other things, that she is brilliant and stimulating and that she acts as Monty’s dramatic coach. Monty has confirmed or denied nothing. This past summer, however, Monty has not been seen with Miss Letts. He has been seen instead with young, attractive Judy Balaban, whose father is president of Paramount Pictures. More than once he and Judy have been seen walking up Fifth Avenue late at night, hand in hand, window-shopping. In a Sherlock Holmes mood I find it significant that Judy returned from a cruise at the same time Monty got back from crewing on that ketch. And it was Judy whom Monty took to the New York premiere of “A Place in the Sun” at which time — to make all of this more interesting and certainly more unusual — they posed together willingly for the photographers. Success, as I said before, rubs off on people. So far it has made Monty more tolerant — more tolerant, among other things, of the ways of the world. By the same token, more attractive. But I doubt success ever will become Monty’s master, drive him endlessly, as it can and does too often. Always, I think, Monty will take time out for living. Because, with his quick interest and his capacity for happiness he likely, always, will find life good. The End IS MARIO LANZA HOLLYWOOD’S BIGGEST HEADACHE? Hedda Hopper comes up with some surprising answers in January PHOTOPLAY — on sale December 12.