Picture-Play Magazine (1937)

Continued from page 39 the little dog, her only friend, hod been run over. It was darned good. Then he rehearsed scenes from several plays, each pupil getting a chance. One newcomer suffered terribly from self-consciousness, a bad enemy to a player until it is overcome. A bad enemy to any one even in the business world. "You've got to learn to use your personality," Mr. Goods said. "Even in everyday life it is valuable." How's he going to lick that selfconscious one, I thought. I soon found out. The girl could hardly speak above a whisper and her face was crimson. "Speok up. You're addressing ten thousand people ond they all want to hear what you have to soy." No good. She couldn't do it. hfe went over to her, and as one would to a child, tousled her hair to break up her stiffness, shook her by the shoulders and told her to stick her tongue out at the class. "Be ridiculous," he said. After a tremendous effort her tongue oppeared — perhaps a quarter of an inch. "I said stick your tongue out! If you don't do that I'll give you something much harder to do. No one can do a good job of acting until they have first learned how to be ridiculous." Finally her tongue come half way out, and he let it go at that. "I was so embarrassed," she told me later. "I simply couldn't force my mouth open." I was present at the next lesson to see the result of that treatment. This girl was in dead earnest, you see, and worked hard at home to overcome her difficulty. She was like a different person. Her voice hod three times its former volume and she spoke her lines with astonishing poise. Doris thought the end of the rainbow hod come when she signed her movie contract, but through one of those inexplicable things she didn't work a day. It began to gnaw at her morale ond to keep from getting despondent she asked permission to appear in a stage play given at a try-out theater in Hollywood. Al Woods happened to be in fhe audience and decided that Doris wos just the gal he wanted to ploy the lead in his forthcoming production "The .Night of January 16th." By an arrangement with Fox he signed Doris to a contract ond told her to post with all speed to New York. "What a lough that was," said Doris. "Mary and Gladys and I had about seventy dollars between us after every Starting at the Top thing in Hollywood was settled up and we started out across country in our old Ford. We got here, too." Mary is her mother. Outside of several difficulties in cold-shouldering the boys — it was Mary who insisted upon that, I suspect — who stopped at the some tourist camps along the way and were dying to be friendly, the trip was uneventful. "We didn't even get a flat," said Doris. "A good thing, too," said Gladys, chuckling. "I don't think there was o spore fifty-cent piece on us when we landed home." "With a contract you put up with all that?" I asked. "Oh, I could hove asked for on advance," said Doris, "but you know how 63 it Is. You don't like to ond we didn't want to wire dad. We had enough and we knew he would meet us In New York. It was great fun." She has her admirers trained as to her taste in flowers, but once a newcomer sent orchids. She wore one but remarked to him afterword, "Now do I look like on orchidaceous woman?" "I'll bet she was on imp when she was little," I sold to Mrs. Nolan. "No," she replied. "As o matter of fact, she was the best child I had. She was seldom ill and always happy and sunny-tempered." That's It. The potent feature of her success. Every one wonts to rub e'bows with luck and happiness, and Doris hos both. Guess who this is! Look twice and still you'll never know. It's none other than our old friend, Kay Francis, wigged for warbling in her latest — and perhaps her best — picture, "Confession." '