Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1940)

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Mentholatum quickly cools and soothes the irritation and assists Nature to more quickly heal the injury. Mentholatum is a pleasant, effective application for minor skin irritations. Jars or tubes only 30c. MENTHQLATUM Gives COMFORT Daily wall, annoy her. She loathes gossip and loves doing those series with the Lane sisters. Her latest is "Four Wives." Her dog, Smoky, adores her and follows her about like Mary's lamb. Her uncle is Senator Miles Poindexter, former U. S. Ambassador to Peru. None of her family was the least theatrical and even Gale doesn't know just how it all came about for her. She's done something recently that she's sure is significant. A letter hoarder for years, she recently went through the pile and destroyed them all. Her diaries, too. Everything that linked her to the past. And now she feels a new sense of freedom to go on with the present pictures and radio (she's doing both) to an even more glorious future. More power to her. say we. In Love "I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love." Her beautiful voice carols it, her laughing eyes reveal it, her being radiates it. For the first time in her whole life, Helen Gilbert is in love. In love and stardom beckoning just ahead. It happened in the strangest way. "When one door closes, another opens," the saying goes, and so it was with Helen. Helen and her husband, Bakaleinikoff, the musician, were about to be divorced. She had asked a studio friend to recommend a good lawyer. So a meeting was arranged. But the night before the appointed meeting, another friend prevailed upon Helen to change lawyers. "Try mine," she urged. "I know you'll like him." So Helen switched lawyers at the last minute, and next morning when she walked into his office they looked at each other — just once — and knew they were in love. Speaking of her marriage, she told me, "Mr. Bakaleinikoff and I had never been in love. We had our music in common and both were lonely. He was, as you know, much older than I, but we both reasoned companionship would be enough. It wasn't. We both knew it and both knew divorce was the only answer." And through that united understanding came love to Helen. So much has happened to this Cinderella girl in Hollywood this year. Only a short while ago she was playing the cello in the M-G-M studio orchestra. She'd been there two years before anyone noticed the petite loveliness of her, heard the melodious tones of her voice, and noticed the twinkle in her grey eyes. All this noticing brought about a test that resulted in the role of the dramatic teacher in "Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever." Helen was a hit. From "The Secret of Dr. Kildare" she went into the lead of "Florian," where her flaxen pigtails and Viennese costumes set off her fairness in grand style. It was inevitable she should be a musician. Her father, Vaughn Gilbert, was a music publisher, and from her earliest childhood Helen was surrounded with musicians and composers. At six she played the piano like a maestro. A wee blonde of a lady maestro. But inspired by a concert given by Pablo Casals, Helen turned from the piano to the cello. After extensive traveling about from her birthplace in Warren, Ohio, the family settled down in Philadelphia where, at twelve, Helen was awarded a scholarship at the Curtis Institute for her cello playing. Years later, after a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, Helen stayed in cinematown for radio work. Never once did movies enter her mind. Even when she was a part of them, she still wasn't a part of them in her mind. I mean, after she'd joined the symphonic organization of M-G-M and would sit there on the great sound stages, the only woman musician in the group, and play for the various stars, she didn't have a single yen to be an actress. Her life was her music. It was quaint to see her. So small, so dainty, among all those men, playing her heart out. Strange how things happen, isn't it? So many girls yearning for picture careers. And one coming to Helen. But Helen is different because none of her is eaten by ambition. The most noticable thing about her is her un-actressy, un-moviestruck attitude toward life, people, love, everything. As yet, it hasn't touched her. She lives, since her divorce, in a Hollywood apartment with her cousin. She loves to shop, and buys too many hats which she never wears. She speaks Russian fluently and even reads it. She has no one to converse with in her acquired Russian language now, but her two dogs, her cat, three birds and the aquarium. She walks pidgeon-toed, has a pet freckle under her left eye, adores combing her hair and does under moments of excitement, regardless of place. Is amused at herself for sleeping with her script under her pillow. She knows her lines won't really soak in that way. But — . Try to get her inside a movie without a bag of popcorn; just try. She'll chase up and down the boulevard like mad until she finds a popcorn wagon. She's moody like most Cancer people and is still friends with Miss Bakaleinikoff, step-daughter of her former husband, who is two years older and much taller than her step-mama. On the set of "Florian" she lost the skirt of her riding suit, just two minutes after Fate had warned her to go back and put on the breeches. With Fate taking a hand that way, Helen is going to go places. I'm for her. Mad Dogs and Englishmen Mr. Sanders, pronounced Saunders, always plays his hunches and sits on the exact middle of his spine. It leaves a great deal of Mr. Sanders unemployed while sitting. He's six feet three, and the proportion of Mr. Sanders that doesn't hit the chair is, I should say roughly, about six feet. He's amazing and I may as well say first as last I think him marvelous. My dear George Sanders To you my heart wanders! For one thing, he's notoriously unenergetic. People come down from off the hills in droves to marvel over Mr. Sanders' unstimulated inactivity, especially in the midst of a vital scene where Mr. Sanders is about to be stuck up with two guns and Donald MacBride. We sat on the set of "The Saint's Double Trouble" (he's The Samt, bless his heart) and witnessed something the likes of which we have never seen in all our travels about Hollywood. The scene called for Mr. Sanders to open a peep hole when he hears a rap and see who rappeth on his chamber door. Well, the lights always went wrong, or Donald MacBride slipped or something happened. But here's the point. Instead of waiting tense and poised for the knock as any actor would, Mr. Sanders, who was out of camera range, sank down on his neck on a chair and slept till the rap came. Slept, I tell you, and never missed a cue. Aren't the English wonderful? So undisturbed amidst life's turmoil. They tell me that even as a lad, when he fled Russia with the Bolsheviki snapping at his heels, he remained calm and collected. He and his father — an English capitalist in Russia — escaped across a river, leaping from one cake of ice to another, like Liza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." George was born of English parentage in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1906. His father was a rope manufacturer there, and during the Revolution, darned if he didn't almost get hung by his own product. George's English mother, now considered one of the world's finest horticulturists, had forsaken her avocation to be with her husband. He wasn't brought up to be an actor. He had gone home to London from South America (Georgie gets around) after a tobacco venture to find the world in a slump. His uncle, an opera singer, urged George to cultivate his voice and he turned out to be a pretty good baritone. One night, a producer heard George singing at a party and signed him up for a revue, "Ballyhoo." It was a good little spot. Besides his solo George was part of a three-piece piano act. He was not the piano. But he plays one. And a guitar and a saxophone. After "Ballyhoo" he went on to more shows and then English movies, and then California — here he came. The way he came simply kills me. He acted on a hunch. Right after one picture was finished, with several assignments ahead, he had a feeling he should go to Hollywood. He left next day, met Darryl F. Zanuck (I've #been here fifteen years and can't even bow to him) got a fat role in "Lloyds of London" as the husband of Madeleine Carroll and was sensational. But here's the comic part. With no agent he persuaded Mr. Zanuck to buy up his English contract or what was left of it and give him a new one over here. And that, people tell me, accounts for the puzzled look Mr. Zanuck sometimes affects. He's trying to figure out what happened and who got the best of it — he or Sanders. George has a swell theory about the way life should be lived. We all work too hard, he believes. Why race and tear and wear ourselves out? Competition is good, he believes, only if it's measured by law. Like a race. A hundred foot sprint is exciting to watch. The distance is fixed. But if it's stretched out longer and longer it gets to be a bore. So can it be with worktoo much of it in too big doses. And then that "life of contrast" idea of his. It's good. He wants to make enough money to live comfortably — not elaborately, remember — and then devote his life to living by contrast. For example, for three months he'd go to a ranch far off and go to bed at sunset, rise at sunrise, neither smoke nor drink, ride for hours, and revel in a superabundance of health. Then back to town he'd come, climb into white tie and tails, get tighter than two boiled owls and take in night clubs for weeks on end. When it palled, he'd go back to the ranch. He's unmarried and you tell me how that handsome one escaped and I'll tell you Garbo's middle name. His eyes are grey-green-hazel-blue. It depends on you and your mood. He's physically lazy and mentally he's ten minutes ahead of the parade. His humor is sly, his smile droll, his bearing well bred. He was a meanie in "Nurse Edith Cavell" and a meanie in "Rebecca." He made "The Saint in London" last winter in England. With one shock he practically plunged me from full bloom into middle years (the sudden transition isn't so good — ask any doctor) when the director on the set said: "Come on, Sanders. We're ready for the scene." "Sorry old man, but I'm busy," came back Sanders. One doesn't say that to directors. One doesn't hold up productions. I shut my eyes and waited for the deluge. Nothing happened. Isn't life wonderful? £0 PHOTOPLAY