The Picture Show Annual (1933)

CRAFTY CHARLES I T was New England craftiness that won for Charles Starrett his first film part. He was then a member of Dartmouth College football team, and, with several others, applied for work in Richard Dix s picture, “ The Quarter-back,” which was being made in New York. Their services, they were informed, were not required. The rest of the team departed, but Charles was canny. He found out the name of the casting director, then, going up to him, addressed him by name, clapped him on the back, asked after his family, and finally suggested that he might be given a part in the film “ for the fun of the thing.” And the director, trying in vain to remember the boy, issued an invi- tation to him to go on location with the company. Those few days sent Charles back to college with the determination to become an actor. So when he graduated, with honours, after winning glory in the swimming and track teams, in addition to his football laurels, he took up stage work. Two successive “ flops ” left him broke, and to swell his exchequer he made two pictures for independent companies ; one was “ The Viking,” the fine film of the sealing industry made in Labrador by the ill-fated Varick Frissell. This brought him the offer of the leading masculine role in " The Best People, and then came a contract. Born in Athol, Massachusetts, Charles Starrett is well over six feet in height, dark-haired and brown-eyed. His tastes are outdoor. His idea of real holiday is a hunting and fishing trip in the mountains, where he can write poetry when the spirit moves him. He tears it up as soon as it is written, but he gets a lot of enjoyment out of it, and he is satisfied. TALLULAH—“LOVE MAIDEN” A LTHOUCH Tallulah Bankhead was born in Alabama, where for five ^ ^ generations her family had been social and political leaders, it was in England that she made her name famous. She is a glamorous, colourful, exciting personality, with her strange, heavy- lidded grey eyes and famously husky voice—as unusual and beautiful as her musical Indian name she inherited from her grandmother, and which means “ love maiden.” Her lovely mother Tallulah Bankhead never knew ; she died when Tallulah was born, and she and her sister Jean were brought up m the big white house of the Bankheads and thor- oughly spoiled by their father and grandparents. She was only seventeen when she overrode the Southern tradition of a social life for a Southern lady of good birth and upbringing, and set out to carve a niche for herself in the halls of stage fame. A born gambler, she left the security of her life at home for the uncertain liberty of the stage. Later, she gambled on success when she sailed for England, her wealth a thousand borrowed dollars, to take a part that a cable had informed her was already given to another actress. With true gambler's instinct she lived lavishly at the Ritz. Sir Gerald du Maurier gave her her first opportunity on the English stage at thirty pounds a week. It was not enough for her to live on, but she did not alter her mode of living ; she gambled on making a hit—and won. As her fame spread, her salary rose. Yet she did not save a penny ; her house in Mayfair, her magnificent car, her staff of servants, her extravagance, ate up her income. Tallulah had no regrets ; she was flinging her money to the winds, and enjoying it. Then she gambled again. She left her assured success over here to try her luck in talkies in Hollywood. What her next gamble will he is still in the future, but she will gamble till the end of her life.