Radio and television mirror (Nov 1939-Apr 1940)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CAROLYN HOYT Above, the executives of the Motion Picture Relief Fund — Lucille Gleason, Conrad Nogel, President Jean Hersholt and Ralph Morgan. Right, Lew Ayres and Ronald Colman get down to real work for one of the rehearsals. ome of the Motion Picture Relief Fund. X not long ago, blazoned the way it was on billboards, newspapers and the screens of the nation. He made you roar at his antics and your throat throb with some tenderly done bit of pathos. You loved him because he entertained you. Producers loved the vast sums of money he made for them. His friends loved his unspoiled charm and fawners his generosity in a touch for five or fifty. Suddenly his fine world crashed. No one knew how or why it hap pened, only that it did. Here was an actor as competent as ever, whose private life was scrupulously lived. Yet almost overnight the movie-going public turned from him. His studio soon followed suit. His contract was not renewed. Bad news, when it is bad boxoffice news, travels fast in flicker town. Incredibly, no other studio sought him out. Before many months his former friends and employers were saying, "Wonder whatever happened to X?" There followed a three year nightmare. It also is called Keeping Up a Front. Unfortunately this is particularly true of Hollywood: if you have — or appear to have — you can get; if you have not, you get not. The quickest route to professional suicide is the public admission by act or word that saving a few pennies and cutting a few corners might not be a bad idea. You are valued at the face value you place upon yourself. It is stupid but true. Knowing this, X frantically poured fruitless thousands after thousands of dollars of his savings in keeping up the conventional front of success. Expensive home, servants, big cars, lavish entertaining. Desperately he piled mortgage upon mortgage to stave off admission of his plight. Everything going out. Nothing coming in. Still he could get no work. He wasn't seeking stardom or even featured roles. He wanted work, any kind of work. Bit parts, a sequence or two, even extra work. Each time he asked he received the same ironic answer: "Why man, you can't afford to be seen in such a role. It would ruin your career!" (Confd on page 84) i order that suffering may disappear and Hollywood's great charity continue