Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1927 - Feb 1928)

43 A Lucky Break for Adolphe t is as much a lucky break for Menjou to play opposite Shirley O'Hara in "A Gentleman of Paris," as it is for her, an unknown, to get a role that any recognized beauty would give a week's salary to play. By Malcolm H. Oettinger THE gentleman in evening dress flicked an invisible speck from his immaculate coat sleeve. Wearily he turned again to contemplate the girl on the screen. She was in Spanish costume, somber, tragic looking. "No," said the tired watcher. "She won't do." He climbed from the depths of the lounge chair in the projection room. "All right," he called. "Let's not " He interrupted himself abruptly. There was a new girl on the screen — fresh, demure, roguish, inviting. No, it was the same one. But how different she looked in smart clothes — how piquant, how beguiling, how fetching ! He resumed his seat, watching the test with renewed interest. He smiled to himself. This was something like it. Here was a girl who could convey the atmosphere of Long Island perfectly. The quest was at an end. When the reel was unwound, Adolphe Menjou strolled to the front office and requested that the girl be signed forthwith for his next picture. Her name? He frowned, hesitated, smoothed his mustache impatiently. The projection room reported : Shirlev O'Hara. No one had ever heard of her, no one vouched for her, but in her various tests— -standing, sitting, smiling, coquetting — one had caught Menjou's eye, and that was enough. Shirley O'Hara had a job — a job that any leading woman in Califilmia would have given her first week's salary to get. Sometimes that is how things happen in Hollywood, where romance is supposed to flourish, but where you are far more likely to come upon despair. That is how one unheard-of girl, who had been haunting the studios for a year, finally came upon her chance. That, as a matter of fact, is how Shirley O'Hara happened to be on the Menjou set when cameras began grinding on "A Gentleman of Paris." Pert, pretty, Park Avenue in a genuine way, smart looking, she attracts the eye. Intelligent, witty, impudent, original, she holds the ear. The combination is rare in fabulous, gossiping Hollywood. There aren't many conversationalists there to take you beyond the confines of the lot, the director's temper, the next still, the last retake. There are inordinately beautiful dummies, lovely hatracks, shapely cloak models, but there are precious few who hold up their end of the incidental chatter. Shirley O'Hara Nolan is her real name, and why she ever decided to chop off the Nolan is a mystery. ' She said that she felt it was open season for O'Neils and O'Days and O'Dawns, so O'Hara it was. It doesn't fit her. It doesn't suggest her. She resembles* Florence Vidor; she might be her younger sister. She is a sophisticated version of Betty Bronson, with a trim, perfect little figure, wide eyes that are not too ingenuous, and crisp brown hair. She is a distinctly aristocratic child, possibly eighteen, perhaps all of twenty. Asked how she broke into pictures, she replied, "By yessing people, lying profusely, and listening to poor jokes with a polite smile." When asked what pictures she had played in, she said, "Hoss opera. Rancher's daughter, bandit, hero, kidnaping, race, rescue, clinch. We made the same picture over and over, using the same Mexican-village set. In each picture we'd change the locale in the subtitles. One story would use it as a Cuban rancho, an • other as a Philippine village, another as a Mexican town. The hero always managed to rescue me from a fate worse than death, and we usually worked day and night. Sometimes we received seventy-five a week. Sometimes. I think the pictures were shown somewhere, but I've never heard of any one actually seeing them." And if you think that is an exaggerated exposition of how quickies are made, you are vastly mistaken. Sometimes they do a five-reel feature, so-called, in five days and nights. When they decide to splurge, they take as long as a week, occasionally ten days. Considering the O'Hara beauty and charm, it seemed strange that it had required over a "year for the more regal potentates of picturedom to discover her. Why had she not walked up to the casting office and into a job? "That," said Shirley, "is one of those quirks of fate. Casting men and directors and scouts would see me, strike their thighs and say, 'Egad, a find !' and that's about all I would ever hear of them. "They would take the well-known test, of course. Which meant nothing. If we wanted statistics to enter this quiet conversation I would tell you that I have probably had more tests taken than any one in Hollywood. Not that I think that any one ever bothered looking them over. Most of them are on some one's desk with the unopened mail." The Nolans came to Hollywood from Mexico City where Nolan, pere, was a doctor with a large following in diplomatic circles. This background went far, no doubt, in equipping Shirley with poise. She is as completely possessed as any one in Hollywood. Yet not at any time does she give the impression of affectation or polite ennui. Looking like the lovely Vidor, she sounds like the brilliant Pringle. Little more could be said of any child. She is one of those keen-witted moderns who allows you to start talking along the lines that please you, immediately after which she picks up the cue and becomes mistress of the situation. You are flippant? She matches quip with quip. You are cynical? She is as steely as a Damascus blade. You are critical? She takes up the cudgels without ado. We lunched at Madame Helene's, hard by the gleaming towers of Paramount. As we left the room, madame herself stopped me with a regal gesture. "Your pardon, m'sieu, but the little lady? Who is she, please? Ah, Shirley O'Hara, I did not know. But many of the patrons here to-day have asked me her identit}^ She is an extraordinarily fine-looking young lady." And madame is accustomed to gazing upon Greta Nissen and Evelyn Brent and Pola Negri and Esther Ralston and Louise Brooks and Florence Vidor — rich diet for any eyes. "Pictures are fine," said Shirley, as we walked toward the lot, "if you don't lose all' sense of perspective and take them too seriously. You know as well as I do Continued on page 111