Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

Hedy Wine (Continued from page 23) "I'd have draped banners over the building and ordered dancing in the street." There are two things that set apart this woman from the other overnight sensations of the screen. First, she knows the secret behind her magnetic charm and how to govern it. She knows the value of combining feminine beauty with an air of brooding mystery. She knows it's more than just sheer physical loveliness that will keep her before a camera and what to do about it, thereby controlling her own screen destiny instead of being controlled by it. Secondly, she is outstanding because she has already, in her own life story, played a part so thrilling that anything that may now happen to her on the screen is just so much aftermath. As one producer puts it, "Hedy's is one life story I should love to film, but wouldn't dare. "Audiences wouldn't believe it. No one, they would contend, would renounce wealth for uncertainty, as this girl did. Critics would boo." I HE words "Ecstasy Girl" has become an almost actual part of Hedy Lamarr's being and one she fights in vain to lose. Tactfully or perhaps stupidly, Hedy's studio biography ignores the picture, "Ecstasy," which is, in rea'.ity, only a would-be bugaboo that, concealed, becomes a nasty monster and dragged to the light becomes a silly nothing. To begin with, Hedy is just about as much an Ecstasy Girl as I am a moll from St. Paul. As Hedy puts it, "It's so ridiculous — I'm too anxious for hard work, too determined to work and succeed to be an Ecstasy Girl. It's so silly." Nevertheless, during our afternoon chat, a messenger boy brought to Hedy's home a beautiful picture which had decorated the entire page of a magazine. Her hazel eyes lighted with pleasure and then as quickly clouded with unhappiness. "There it is," she said. "Again they call me 'The Ecstasy Girl.' " Recently "Ecstasy" showed at a local Hollywood theater and Hedy, who made the picture eight years ago when a very young girl in her early teens, decided to see for herself this Frankenstein. Wearing no make-up, putting on her companion's glasses and tying a handkerchief over her head, she set out with a friend for the theater. The theater was packed and she waited among the jostling throng for a seat. No one recognized her or gave her a second glance. Presently she found a seat next to a young lad who kindly retrieved her fallen purse without one glimmer of recognition. The picture came on, and, instead of the horror she expected, she found only amusement at the old-fashioned setting, pace and clothes. "Gee, that girl has a gorgeous mouth." the young man next to her murmured. And that was all. There were no titters or "ohs" and "ahs" at the nude scene. And presently the matter-of-fact audience filed out and with it most of the fright from Hedy's heart. But not the humility for a mistake made so long ago. HEDY LAMARR is Cinderella after she achieved her palace and wealth. But not her happiness. One night, some years ago, a man of wealth and power who ruled the destiny, not of peoples but of nations, sat in a Vienna theater and watched a beautiful woman on the stage. "I shall marry her," said Fritz Mandl, munitions manufacturer, and promptly laid siege to Hedy's heart. Her father, Emil Kiesler, well-to-do banker in Vienna, was finally won over and Hedy became the wife of the fabulously wealthy Mandl. Furs, jewels, clothes were showered on the Viennese beauty but all pleas to be allowed to do something creative —clothes, designing, painting, acting, anything to express herself — were denied. A plain, down to earth businessman, Mandl had no sympathy with a world of theater or art. "I was his wife," Hedy said, "and I dressed as he dictated, traveled where he dictated and did as he wished." A young banker and his wife were her closest friends and to them Hedy clung through the years. "Oh, please buy her something nice, too," Hedy would urge her husband when he returned with a gift for her. The day came when Hedy Mandl, denied all opportunity to follow her career, could endure marriage to her older husband no longer. The joy, the freedom of youth were gone. "When he left Vienna," Hedy said, "I would be sent to our country home to wait his return. I felt chained. "I could bear it no longer and carefully, day by day, I planned my escape. I knew to ask for my freedom would be fatal. So I watched and waited my chance. It came. My husband suggested we visit Antibes and, with my plan worked out, I agreed. My husband was called away on urgent business and I said to the friends left to watch over me, 'Let's go to St. Wolfgang. It's much too warm here.' I was really longing for Salzburg, and to see again Max Reinhardt, but I knew better than to mention it or I would arouse suspicion. So my friends agreed, and, as Salzburg was only two hours' drive from St. Wolfgang, I was happy. "One day I suggested, quite casually, we drive over to Salzburg. I didn't try then to contact Reinhardt but waited my chance. Two days later it came. Countess A., who had a castle just out of Salzburg, asked me to visit her. My husband won't mind — she is a family friend, I insisted, and, at last, I was there as I had planned. "The next night we were invited to Reinhardt's to dinner. After the other guests had gone, we sat before the log fire and talked. I told him I had to get away, to get back to work." "My dear," said this great director kindly, "you never will. It's all talk." "But it wasn't. I did get away. I went back to Vienna more determined than ever. Nothing would stop me. The first thing I did was go to my friends, the ones for whom we had done so much. 'Help me,' I begged. 'Let me have just a little money and I will give you a note. I swear I can pay it back to you. Look,' I pleaded, 'I will give you these jewels for just enough money to get away." "Your husband will find out. He will be very angry at us," the banker said. "He will never know. Never. I promise." Hedy begged. "And at last he was persuaded. 'Let me talk to my wife,' he said and went into the next room. I could hear her voice, quick and sharp and on her arms and hands I glimpsed the jewels I had begged my husband to buy for this very dear friend of mine. And then came the answer sharp and clear. " 'No, don't be a fool. Certainly don't lend her the money.' " It was no Yuma elopement for Claire Trevor and radio producer Clark Andrews. After an elaborate wedding at All Saints' Church in Beverly Hills, they sailed for a Honolulu honeymoon liODAY, sitting securely in her Hollywood home, Hedy can look back across these last few months to a changed Austria, exactly as though a giant's hand had reached out and upset the world. "Had she loaned me that money," Hedy said, "it would have meant safety and security today. How selfishly we dig our own graves. I would not help her now no matter how she begged." Having no money of her own, except a small sum saved from household expenses, she packed her luxurious clothes and with her tiny nest egg made ready for flight. With anxious eyes her mother watched, knowing in her heart the thing Hedy was planning and yet not daring to speak. Wanting to be free when Mandl reproached her with, "Why didn't you tell me?" to say, "She never told me." And then quietly one night during her husband's absence, with the aid of a faithful maid she crept to the depot and caught the train. As it pulled out from the station leaving Vienna behind, she glimpsed in the crowd below her mother's face, wet with tears, not daring to say "Good-by." "It was torture to leave my mother behind," she said. "I hurt my parents so deeply when I left our lovely home for the stage and screen. I saw my father's heart almost break, before his death, over the mistake I was persuaded to make in 'Ecstasy.' And yet I had to go." She walked over to the desk and picked up her mother's picture and gazed at it a long time. "She's coming here to be with me as soon as she sells our home there." She came back to her story. "I went to London and there met Bob Ritchie, an American agent in Europe. He took me immediately to Mr. Mayer who was sailing that day to New York. "Let me think," I said to myself. "Shall I go to see Mr. Mayer in the things I wear about the house — sport clothes — or shall I be glamorous?" Glamour won and, in her lovely furs and jewels, Hedy visited the producer who, in the midst of his busy last day, shoved a paper under her nose and said' "Sign." It was a contract and Hedy was on her way to America. To Hollywood. To freedom. To happiness. To hard work and thrilling success. B UT it wasn't so easy as it sounds. Hours of English lessons came first. Days of sitting in movie theaters listening to English-spoken dialogue. Hours pouring over American records. With the basic knowledge in English she had acquired in school, plus determination and hard work, it was no time until the words flowed out. And then came the camera tests. They tried blonde wigs, tight curls, fancy hairdresses. "You know how it is when you wear an unbecoming hat?" she said, "and you try to hide your head? It was that way with me. 'Please,' I begged, 'no wigs. Let me wear my hair as it is. It expresses me best. And please no artificial mouth. Let it be my mouth and eyebrows.' " So in all her natural beauty she finally came to the screen. Without any exception she lives in the smallest (five rooms), most unpretentious bungalow in town with only her companion, Ericha Menthey, an English f teacher. There is no servant. No country home. No shooting lodge. But happiness is written in her wide, open smile. "Certainly I love to live in nice homes. I am no different than anyone else. I like lovely places, but always when 1 1 look I know I can't afford it, so I wait until I can," she says. And yet I know that $3,000, practically all the savings of this small salaried actress, went to a friend in London who was in need. Warm and impulsively generous, she demands only good use of friends. Hollywood is having no end of fun at M-G-M's expense for permitting Hedy to begin her career at another studio. At a dinner party Joan Bennett gave for Walter Wanger, Hedy's place card was a glamorous beauty with Leo the Lion in top hat kneeling at Hedy's feet, looking up with a killing, imploring glance. And under it was written METRO-GOLDWYN-GLAMAYER. Words intrigue her. "That's how it strikes me," she said during our conversation, and stopped in amazement. "Strikes me," she repeated. "Well, I never said that before. How do you like it. I have a new word — strikes me!" She was as pleased as Punch. Back in the mind of this woman who always gets what she wants is an ideashe intends to become, one day, a director. "With a cast who want to play the roles more than anything in the world," she said, her eyes glowing. A staunch Catholic, she has already appealed to the Holy Rota for an annulment of her marriage. Reginald Gardiner, English actor, has been her constant companion in Hollywood. After the preview of "Algiers," friends passed by and consoled Reggie with, "Too bad, old man. You won't have a chance now." "And how about marriage to Mr. Gardiner in the future?" we asked. "Oh, no. To no one. I want only to work. I am growing impatient with my studio now because they do not find me a picture. If they do not I— well, I'll tell Jimmie Fidler," she threatened. Hedy, who has applied for her first papers, is rapidly becoming a fullfledged American with Continental "umph." 74 PHOTOPLAY