Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1940)

Not one seat in the opera house was unoccupied. In the back they were standing. One little group in that great theater had fear in their eyes and hope in their hearts. . . Mr. and Mrs. Hajmassey, Ilona's sister, Dodo, and her husband who owned a beauty shop, and Maria Komka. . . . Said Mrs. Hajmassey to Mr. Hajmassey, "I have always said what Ilona would do she could do. Now I am afraid because this always has been so, she has been spoiled — and she reaches too far. . . ." The lights went out. She stepped forward. The conductor raised his baton. In the split fraction of time that came before her cue she wondered if Niklos could know about this, even if he wasn't right there . . . And she thought he could . . . And her voice rose in clear beauty to exalt her song. Women tore roses and orchids and gardenias from their corsages and threw them to the stage. And lying among these flowers at her feet were the single maroon and white carnations that men had pulled from their buttonholes. And the next morning the papers said, "Not in fifty years has there been such a performance of 'Empress Josephine.' " It was the summer of 1937. Swiftly the S. S. Normandie cut through the deep water that lay flat under a hazy July sky. Ilona and her sister, Dodo, walked the deck. So many times around equalled a mile and so many miles equalled their day's exercise. Quietly Ilona and her sister dined at a preferred table. Like two schoolgirls on a holiday they marveled that everything on this ship had been so perfectly arranged for them and that although they had the best it cost them nothing; M-G-M paid all the bills. But, while Ilona was on the sea and while she was journeying across the continent from New York to California, there was consternation at the M-G-M studios. There were many who didn't relish the idea of having an Hungarian prima donna on their hands. "One good thing about it," they said to one another, "foreign celebrities usually don't last long. . . Too grand for their own good, that's the trouble! Besides, they can't take the rigorous working schedules we have out here." Then Ilona arrived. She didn't accept the American Beauties that were presented to her with a shrug. She took them in her arms and her eyes broke into blue stars. At the hotel she did not find fault with the suite that had been reserved for her. She assured them, a little solemnly, that it was very beautiful. "Rosalie" went into production and she did not have a tantrum when they asked her to record her first song a dozen times and more, because her accent reproduced with a little lisping sound. It was with annoyance at herself that she shook her golden head, then started from the beginning again — miraculously sustaining warm joy in her voice. She and Dodo took a little house. Someone called her attention to the fact that it wasn't in the fashionable part of town. They thought she might like to know. "But it's pretty, my house," she said, surprised. "I like the way the palm trees grow around it. You mean only that it isn't the right number on the right street ... Oh, that's all right. Such things I do not worry about!" One day, however, she reached the studios with eyes blazing. "This morning," she announced, "a girl comes to see me about being a maid in my house. I never heard of such a girl before! She tells me, 'I am studying singing and I would like to use your piano in the afternoon.' I say to her, 'Just a minute, do you wash floors, do you clean windows?' And she says, 'No! No!' Then I say to her, 'Thank you. I can't use you! Good-day!' " It was explained that there was a serious servant problem in California, that maids were difficult to get, that she might have to make compromises. Her laughter rose triumphantly. "Well, I won't have a maid. I can cook. And I'll find some woman who'll be glad to come to my house in the morning and clean up and add to her husband's little money and buy her children shoes." "But," it was protested, "when your sister goes home to her husband and her little Francois, you'll be lonely." "Do not worry!" she said, "I am never lonely. I have a little cat. And I have a Scotch terrier. We are very good friends." They were prepared to withstand any temperament she might display and reserve judgment until they saw her on the screen. But her complete simplicity so impressed them that long before "Rosalie" was released they were willing to grant she was as great as "Balalaika" later convinced them she would be. Once again the simple Hungarian peasant blood that also is part of her helped her keep her bearings when she easily could have grown confused and lost her way. "Watch Massey!" says Woody Van Dyke, the most hard-boiled director at Metro, or any other studio. "It's not hard to do. And I have an idea she'll be around for a long time. She's got a lot of what it takes!" And he could have added: "This woman has lived. And loved. And had her heart broken. And found her way back to a full, warm life again. And that never did anyone any harm as an artist or a woman!" MY SON, MY SON PHOTOPLAY is indeed proud to present the next of its great Movie Books, condensed for busy readers and published complete in one issue — the poignant best-selling novel by Howard Spring which is being brought to the screen by Edward Small, with a brilliant cast headed by Brian Aherne, Louis Hayward and Madeleine Carroll. Be sure to read "My Son. My Son!" May PHOTOPLAY m / She's nobody's April Fool! wTth her transparent "bumbershoot" this Remember, too, all the other advantages Kotex has to offer . . . '/* Many a time -you'll be thankful for the flat (patented) ends of Kotex ... so different from napkins with bunchy ends! Thankful, too, that Kotex is made in soit folds (with more absorbent material where needed . . . less in the non-effective portions of the pad). 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