Picture-Play Magazine (1933)

56 Continued from page 33 "Do you think that actors really enjoy the glad-hand life?" Her brows puckered. "1 don't. Manycultivate people for business reasons. I've never played politics, nor found en advisable to do so. It's a matinof dollars and cents. If you have something for the screen, the producers will buy it." Hers is the thin strength of steel. With her willowy slimness, you expecf her to sway with each breeze, until you notice the firmness of her chiseled jaw, the clearness of her gaze. There is a fine brain beneath that long bob with its auburn lights. I asked if her own growth had affected her ideal in men. *'I can't answer that question." she said. "It might hurt some one. No, I can't." While she mused, my own thoughts went back to Barry Norton, to those hectic two or three years when they were believed to be engaged. The Mending of Myrna Charming but troublesome Barry, with his romantic flash and his gift for getting into scrapes ! His constant need of understanding and encouragement, of sympathy and advice, must have drained her energies. Their idyl verged abruptly from ecstatic moments into turmoil. Finally her mother forbade her to see him again. Myrna obeyed. That decision, cutting out of her life one so brilliantly interesting, so boyishly lovable, was a wrench. Since then her name has not been linked with any man's until the Novarro rumors, which she terms "absurd," sprang into circulation. "Love?" She shrugged airily. "I have no time for it now. I am not ready to settle down. I long so to travel, to see how the world lives. While I love children, as yet I haven't felt a deep yearning for them. Some day, perhaps " No other can be bizarre as effec tively as Myrna, so we may have more pictures like "The Barbarian," in which she and Ramon whipped each other over the desert to an emotional fade-out. But those half-savage roles and the slithery sirens will be mere interludes, if she has her way. "I loved playing the young author in 'When Ladies Meet.' I curved my eyebrows, had photographs taken in sensible clothes, and begged the powers until they listened. Young women's lives to-day are so interesting. I want to do dramas about their experiences, with occasionally a light comedy." So, having completed her part in "Penthouse," Myrna is enjoying a brief vacation. She rides, preferablyalone. She reads biography and fiction. At twenty-eight, she looks back and finds that these past eight years of struggle have been well worth while. Continm (1 from page 42 Tracy isn't interested in kindly chivalry. His brand of flattery is to pretend that he needs all his wits to protect himself. "I hope I'm detaining you from something important," I offered, choking again. "Then maybe I won't have to do it. whatever it is." If you know what the opposite of patronizing is. you know the exact word to describe Lee Tracy. He is not making a study of the lower classes when he portrays a roustabout reporter or a crafty politician or a wily lawyer. They're the sort of guys he pals around with from choice. lie is what you might call an inverted snob. While his mind prowls around alertly digging into the factors behind the big news of the day, his body likes short distances. I lis perfect year in New York was the one when he was playing in a theater on Fortyfifth Street just a few steps from his favorite speakeasy and the Piccadilly Say It Isn't So Hotel, where he lives even in these plutocratic days. Legend has it that he never went outside that brief area for months at a stretch. He does not drink nowadays, but just let his employers ask him to make any promises about it. He is one of those blithe people who think that rules were made to be broken. Lee Tracy's friends throw a few high lights on any picture of him. The very fact that Dick Maney, veteran theatrical press agent and one of Broadway's favorite wits, is a friend of his proclaims him a grand companion. Maney reveals him as one of those inveterate telegram and long-distance phone fiends. He gets all wrought up over the state of governmental affairs and wires Maney — usually so that the telegram comes in the middle of the night — "What do you think of the Boulder Dam project?" Or he will call up at some ghastly hour and, shut off, call again every five minutes, giving a different name each time, and alwavs an im portant one so as to be sure that the call will be put through. Once Tracy bought a movie camera and got so engrossed in it that he went around taking pictures of strangers and couldn't understand why they were so unfeeling as to object to his innocent pastime. When James Cagney was understudy for Tracy in the New York production of "Broadway," it amused him to come to the theater late, dragging himself along as if he were just about to die from anaemia. But he never missed a performance. So, you see, he is not handsome or gracious, considerate, or kind. He is not chivalrous, nor sentimental, nor sleek, nor dashing. If you conclude from all this that he is not the type for a matinee idol, he will agree with you from the bottom of his heart. And you will both be wrong. Because he is, as it happens, the current idol. And I'd be the last to raise so much as a whisper of objection. STRONG POINTS. Many a ^tar has relied on her eves. Others are known for their lips; Many have figures to thank for their rise — A couple, at least, thank their hips. Many a hero resembles Apollo, Some have the voice that commands; Lee Tracy leads on and his heroines follow Because of his eloquent hands. Brock Milton.