Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

Roundup of Children (Continued from page 31) lessons. And does. Can rope like a miniature Buck Jones on the loose. The Weidler family, with three boys, twelve, fourteen and fifteen, and two girls, beside Virginia, aged seventeen and nineteen (from what I could gather from Virginia, now practically lost in Cal York), sounds not unlike a family from a current screen farce. "I guess it doesn't make much difference to your brothers and sisters that you're a movie star," we suggested. Reluctantly she tore her eyes from the magazine. "Make it no," she said scornfully, and marched off with the magazine still clutched in her hand. MARCIA MAE JONES: AGE THIRTEEN I HE two M's in her name are far from accidental. It seems the other Jones children are M's, too. There are brothers Marvin and Macom and sister Margaret. So when the curly-headed new baby entered the family they M-ed her in great style — hence the Marcia Mae. The famous Jones' family of the screen is not too unlike the famous Jones family of Hollywood. Except the real-life Daddy Jones is a newspaper correspondent. Marcia rouges her round cheeks a bit and sprinkles powder rather generously over her round countenance. Her nails wear a rosy-hued polish. "I think it's all right for girls my age to wear a bit of make-up," she explains. Or alibis. Take your choice. Special classes at a local public school (Junior High) are especially arranged so Marcia Mae can be dismissed each day from school at noon. She refuses to attend professional school, but she seldom misses a Sunday at Baptist Sunday School. "It teaches me to be kind instead of mean," she explains. At nine each evening Mrs. Jones trots off the youngest of the Jones family to bed. At 9: 45 Mrs. Jones usually finds Marcia Mae in bed — with the telephone going full blast. Comes the revolution. Clothes, pretty clothes, are her passion. "I can't wear that dress to Deanna's party," she'll cry, "all the kids have seen it." Comes still another revolution. Her money (a sum nicely supplemented by her check for her work in "Mad About Music") is placed in the bank by her mother in Marcia Mae's name. Saved just for her. How to get some of it out to take a trip back East is now Marcia Mae's greatest problem. Disheveled, and hiding soiled hands behind her back, Marcia Mae approached Director William Wyler one day about two years ago, after a hard day's work at another studio, for an interview. They were casting for "These Three" and Marcia was the last child in. "I'm sorry the way I look," she apologized trying to hide smudgy hands from his view. It only won her the role in which she wept her way to fame. EDITH FELLOWS: AGED THIRTEEN WELL, Edith, next Sunday is the day," the choir leader will say, and the following Sunday Edith Fellows of the movies will take her place in the Episcopal choir and in a clear, sweet voice sing her solo. With her grandmother she lives alone out at Toluca Lake in North Hollywood but has to come into Columbia Studio to school every morning. Edith is A-9 and quite perturbed over her looks. Everything has to be right if she's going to pose for a picture as she was the day we saw her. Two carefully tied pink bows adorned her hair. Her hat sat just beyond the ribbons. Rouge tinged her cheeks and lips. Polish gleamed from her nails. Smocking set off her frock. "Think it's all right?" she asked anxiously and one could vision a rather lovely little girl selecting for herself because she had no one in all the world but an old lady called "Mama." BOBBY JORDAN: FIFTEEN A "DEAD END" kid who has so far fooled the public into believing him a regular old toughie. Bobby is as tough as skimmed milk. But much cuter. From out the line-up of those unforgettable young East-siders, Bobby has been selected for bigger and better roles all by himself. He slayed the customers as the locked-in-the-cellar young thing in "A Slight Case of Murder," and as Kay Francis' son in "My Bill." Young Billy Lee, sitting between Jackie Coogan and his wife Betty Grable, tried some of his pranks on the Yacht Club Boys but he doesn't take their warning seriously " 'Hiawatha' is just too too beautiful," she said. But she hadn't the faintest idea Longfellow wrote it. Can look back on long years of moviemaking and sigh at the memories. "Hollywood is a funny place," she says. "I've found that out." She and "Mama" like to work in their rock gardens in her time off from the "City Streets" set. Loves to eat spinach, steak, spaghetti and chop suey. There's an uncanny shrewdness about her and a something that brings a lump to the throat in her little schemings, all by herself, for various roles. "Once I went to see Director Al Rogell about a part all dressed up. Something just told me I was wrong, so I wrapped up an old shabby dress and took it along. When Mr. Rogell said no, I wouldn't do, I went out, changed into the old dress and walked in like I'd never been there before. "Now here's the little girl we've been looking for," he said. Her shoe is a size three. She wears bobby socks. His voice is changing. And goes up and three blocks to the right when it should go down and toward the left. He blushes. Living with his mother, two brothers and a sister, he's the only theatrical member of the family. They put up with it nobly. He began as a boy model back in New York. And then turned to radio and finally the stage as Angel in "Dead End," the role he played in movies. A real, normal, manly young lad, he's about as angelic as your old Aunt Emma on a spree. He wouldn't any more think of taking a girl out before asking his mother than he'd fly. Mom's the boss. He gets to his feet, a bit hesitatingly, but nevertheless he gets there, when a woman approaches him. To be a good actor— that's his ambition. Sad pictures on the screen just like to kill him. Choking him all up. He goes to Sunday School every Sunday because he thinks a fellow needs the training. His shoes squeak. BONITA GRANVILLE: AGE FIFTEEl DUNNY" is the pet name and "Bnl the movie one. "Although I've playl other roles than old meanies, I'm alwa remembered as the brat of 'Th«| Three,' " Bonita sighs. Like so many other children in p:| tures, Bonita is a veteran at the ganl having played as a wee mite in A\ Harding's picture, "Westward Passagil Her hair is her crowning glory. SI brushes it "like the dickens" two hu| dred times every night. In her third year in high school, Bol ita grabs her education on the run frcl one studio lot to another. Once passJ an I.Q. test that sent a local collet professor dithering all over the placl She has laughing blue eyes and pe1 feet white teeth. She brushes her ey[ brows every night and rolls on the flocl The rolling is to keep that schoolgi] figure. Clothes — lots and lots of new ones! she's mad for. She likes too many sho«| too. "Kissing games at fifteen are plal silly," she says. "At twelve or thirteei I thought they were swell, but no mof — I'm too old for that nonsense." She drinks three glasses of milk day; her greatest hobby, if you pleasl is collecting perfume; her favorii school subject is algebra; her movl interests, right now, are centered i| "For Lovers Only." She's a whiz at French. And alwaj makes a wish when she sees a ha. wagon. Never ask her to pass the sa| at the table. She'll pretend she doesr hear. It's sure to break up home| hearts, nations, careers and what not. GEORGE ERNEST: SIXTEEN I RIDE and Joy of the screen's Jone| Family. A manly, well brought up, norma active boy, with a wave in his foreloc and a couple of adolescent pimples o his friendly pan, George typifies thl boys who work in movies with little cj the actor or exhibitionist about them To coin a pun, life is real and life i Ernest to young George whose nam isn't Ernest at all but Hjorth. As th very small son of a Danish restauran owner in Hollywood, George grew usee to the adulation of the customers whi kept exclaiming over his blond cuteness Showman Sid Grauman persuadet George's parents to register the boy a Central Casting and so began his movii career that eventually landed him as ; permanent member of the now renowne Jones, whose latest exploits will be relayed in "Safety in Numbers." Home photography is his passion. Ha; a dark room all of his own for developing his pictures. Uses his three-yearold niece and his collie dog as models. When George grows up he's eithei going to be a cameraman, an aeronaut! cal engineer or have his own photog' raphy store. One thing he's sure of — he won't be an actor. He aquaplanes like a South Sea Islander. His best friend is Marvin Stephens the villain of the Jones family. "Well good night, Marvin," he'll say at the enc of a day's work on the set. "See you tomorrow," and for a mo ment the two friends will stand in the center of a huge movie lot, hands raised in salute, and then go. Two American lads off for home. 70 PHOTOPLAY