Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1935)

dramatic actress. Now I've done several dramatic parts, but you can't just go on forever being sad and making people cry. "The picture I just finished is a comedy. They wanted comedy and I tried to give it to them. I did everything, fell on my face even. And I liked it. In the future. I'd love to do one very heavy picture, one costume play and one comedy a year — and a stage play if I could squeeze it in." " And that would be enough?" "Oh, no," Joan's face tightened. Her eyes glistened. "I want to sing." "On the screen, Joan?" "Yes," said Joan, "until I'm ready." "Ready? For what? Grand Opera?" She nodded eagerly, almost mischievously. "Oh, it's a wild dream," she admitted, "but you never can tell. It would thrill me to pieces." It all came out. She has been taking voice lessons an hour every day when she isn't working. She has discovered that she possesses a voice with a range of three octaves — which is quite low and at the same time quite high She even started Franchot Tone singing, thereby uncovering a very impressive bassoprofundo voice. And it seems, he likes it so well that he practices at six o'clock in the morning and during lunch hours! "I'm going to sing in my next picture," she told me, "for the first time. Popular songs," she added. "So, I'm going to give them strictly a crooning voice." I wondered if I could hear the voice, and Joan said she had some records in the house. We played them. Some were the "crooning voice" and some were what "my teacher said I had courage to even try," smiled Joan. T 'M no vocal critic, but I thought her voice was lovely — a low, rich mezzo-soprano, not fully trained, but clear and promising. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if, some day, she made that wild dream of opera come true. In fact, I wasn't surprised when she told me that besides wanting from the future a screen star's continued glory, a stage star's self-con fident poise, and an opera singer's career, shi also wanted to dance, really dance. Classi cally. Ballet. You can tell by her eager, restless face tha she still wants many things. I wondered if she wanted marriage again. "What about marriage?" I asked her. " What a shame," Joan said, pointing to thi back of my coat. "All white. It's off the lawi chairs I'm so sorry." It was disconcerting, because the suit wa new and also dark. I dusted furiously, bu rallied. " What a — " " What a pity," said Joan, "that you have t< leave. I'll get your hat." I waited grimly at the door. She returned, smiling sweetly. "What about marriage?" I repeated, "I'vi got to say something about it." "Why don't you say," suggested Joan handing me my hat, "that you asked me abou marriage and I changed the subject." What I Like and Hate About Myself CONTINUED FROM PAGE 69 fortable, or bored part of the time. See what 1 mean?" From the eager, vital, impetuous Lee Tracy I went to see the beautiful Anna May Wong on the "Limehouse Blues" set. Rehearsing for the part of the dancer in the noisy, smoky den, she stood with an immense dignity on the dingy platform ... a thousand, slanting, Chinese years back of her unshakeable poise. "I never like people who like themselves," she told me. "There are traits and emotions, however, which certainly create likes and dislikes within a person. I probably have generations of self-disciplined ancestors to thank for what I like most about myself: the ability to face situations calmly. That is a Chinese trait which has not been difficult for me to develop. In fact, I think little of it until I see others go to pieces, so to speak. I am so hard to rile that sometimes I get provoked with myself for not flaring up once in a while. Some people seem to go through life looking for fights. I shrink from them. It certainly is not cowardliness, for nothing I have encountered so far has frightened me. I am simply thoroughly convinced that temper and anger are against all standards of right living, and I do not count them among my emotions. Certainly, Hollywood is a difficult place in which to keep calm. But, I have and like that ability. Yet I take little credit for it. I was born with it." Alice White likes the impression she gives on the screen of being the fresh little kid next door. She told me that old ladies would come back stage during her recent personal appearance tour and call her "Alice," explaining that they couldn't help it. They felt they really knew her! She dislikes the parts she plays, however. " Nothing annoys me more than the little wisecracking, gaga snips I play, but I look so young when I get a good cameraman that nobody will cast me as a girl with any brains." As a person, she likes the fact that she's learned not to take herself too seriously. "I've travelled around the country a bit and I've seen that other people have lives, too. "But what I can't stand about myself is my eternal procrastination. A friend of mine re cently had a baby, and I kept telling myself to send her a telegram. I've told myself for a long time now, but when I do send it the baby will be grown up." Francis Lederer disposed of the whole matter in a few positive, well-chosen words: "I do not like anything about myself either personally or on the screen. My performance on the screen is like the picture a painter would paint — and he is never satisfied. That is why I am not satisfied. I am striving for a fine performance, and I always feel that I have fallen short of what I had hoped to achieve. Although you will not believe me, there is nothing about myself off the screen that I like, either. In fact, of all the people I know, I like myself the least." T7"AREN MORLEY, I'm afraid, waxed a little facetious when she chose her new false eye-lashes as the thing she likes best about herself on the screen. "They are beautiful," she said earnestly, "just the kind of lashes I've always longed to have, and they look as if they grew on me. "The thing I like least about myself on the screen is my walk. I really can walk nicely if I think of it, but when I'm playing a part, I'm too mentally occupied with it to watch my walk. And then when I see myself — whew!" As an individual, she voted for her ability to give an imitation of the great Garbo. That is her pet like. The quality she most dislikes in herself is her absentmindedness. One morning, she even forgot to bring her treasured eyelashes to the studio! No mother ever told her little girl that she couldn't play with Madge Evans. Practically any mother would be happy to leave her children with Madge when she went shopping. "And that," says Miss Evans, "is what I dislike about myself on the screen. I dislike my extreme reliability. I'm always cheering someone on to win a football game or to make a man of himself. I'm always safe. I always do the right thing. I'd like to be just a little less reliable. But I do like the way I wear my sports clothes on the screen. "I have a major fault as a person that I would like to correct. I'm always imaginin: that I have hurt someone. I'm not demon strative. I'm lacking in even the most com mon social graces. It's impossible for me ti go up to a close friend and say, 'Hi — youlike you!' I'd love to be utterly and devastat ingly charming, but it's impossible. And si I'm always wondering whether so and so i: hurt. There is one thing, and one thing only that I like about myself. I'm not afraid o anything." Neil Hamilton flatly refused to give me a like So he made up for it by giving me four dis likes. He dislikes his smile on the screen. "I looks," he says, "just like a scared rabbit look ing up at a mad elephant." He also thinks hi uses too many gestures. He dislikes, off thi! screen, his total inability to follow anythin; to its logical conclusion, and his lack of matun judgment of people. And now I'll fool him. What I like abou him is his vitality, his tremendous enthusiasms He goes whole-heartedly at everything, am nothing lasts very long. When he was buildin; his home, he couldn't think of anything else Then it was finished and you couldn't get hin off his boat. Then he built a swimming poo and practically lived in it, until it was sup planted by a tennis court. Then he took u] bicycling, then hiking. Then he discovered : hermit living in the hills and went up ther and stayed a week, eating nothing but rav vegetables. Then he decided to study French Next came a period devoted solely to health with trainers and everything. Then he tool up, in rapid succession, music, art and hor ticulture. His latest enthusiasm is a cav which he discovered near his house. He prac tically lives in it, cooking his own meals, an<the family has to send messages out to him. Neil wouldn't tell his likes. Douglas Montgomery wouldn't tell his dislikes. "My mother told me when I was a chih 'For goodness' sake, don't tell your faults t people. They might miss some of them.' S I refuse to tell any of my faults, becaus people would immediately flock around thet like bees around a pot of honey if I drew a: tention to them. But Lordy! how I can tal 102