Screen and Radio Weekly (Apr 4, 1937)

ON pp OR 0 IE DOTS BEE OSL B20 —_ ae SCREEN & RADIO % h OR a long time, Dear Star, I have watched you on the screen and admired you, and for all that time I have wanted to write and tell you how much you mean to me. I have not written. partly because I am the sort of person who never seems to get around to writing letters—you know. wh» doesn’t finish writing Christmas thank-you letters before the Fourth of July—and partly because I did not just know how to go about writing to a famous and glamorous person like you. But ever since seeing your last picture, the feeling of your divine personality has brought such a—I don’t. know just what to call it—into my life that I could not wait any longer. .I know you wil] not mind my writing to you this way. Because I did not know just how to write it, I and Agnes started asking other people who had already written fan letters how we should go about it. Agnes wanted to help so she could write a letter to Rebert Taylor. And now that we have found out, I am very glad to be able to write a proper kind of letter to you. N O DOUBT you will want to know about I and Agnes so that you will be able to know what kind of a person is writing to you. Agnes is 18 years of age and is five feet four inches tall with brown hair and blue eyes and weighs 115 lbs. and is a good dancer. Her friends are always telling her that she looks like Joan Crawford but that is only partly true because nobody could really look like Joan. But I often tell Agnes that she ought to be in pictures and that if she could eve: get a chance she could probably be a star as big as anybody. That is one of the reasons this letter is being written because we know that it would be easy for you to help a person like Agnes get into pictures. A picture 1s enclosed so that you can see for yourself. Agnes could be your secretary while she is waiting for a suitable part to begin her career because she has studied at Business Schoo] and would probably be a lot better secretary than the kind you can get in Hollywood just through an employment agency. So if you will send her $200 so that she can get to Hollywood I am sure you wil) be glad to get such a good secretary and be able to give the screen another great star. About me, I am 22 years of age and for five years I have worked in the Elite Department Store in the stock room, ladies’ coats and suits. But I am not going to work there always, because Agnes and the other friends that I go on parties with say that my voice ought to be on the radio or-in pictures and that I look like Robert Montgomery. Usm just the other day I almost had enough money to go io radio school, but I had signed a note for a former friend for a $200 loan and he left town and is probably in Hollywood by now on my money because the ftoan company said he had not made any payments and I had to pay back “the $200. So you see why I had to write this letter, Dear Star, because of what you mean to me on the screen and on account of I and Agnes. I only need $250 to go to the radio school and be a star like Bing Crosby and then probably I will go into pictures too. : Just think, I might be in a picture with you and I could sing right to you the way I sing when I am practicing and happen to think of you. I wanted to tell you how wunderful you were in your last picture, “Maid for Love.” You were so beautiful and the part you played was the way I always think you must. be in real life—sweet and kind but willing to fight or to give up anything for the man you love. But I was disappointed in your picture before that, “Romance in Rangoon.” You did not seem to be yourself and when you gave up your real love for money I could not believe that it was you. Of course, I know that your father in the picture was making you do things against your will, but I stil’ do not think you ought to let them put you in any more pictures like that. Atso I think you ought to do some thing to stop the stories the column writers are telling about you and Lionel La King. Of course. I know that you are kind and that pictures of you holding nands with him at a table in the Trocadero do not mean anything, but everybody knows his reputation and that he has been married five times and a lot of people might not understand. I am sure that you will see how this is. It makes it look as though you are always going to night clubs and places, instead of spending most of your evenings at home with your mother or reading by the fireplace. People who have not read everything about you like I have may not know. So just to keep people from getting wrong ideas. I think you should stop the column writers from saying such things about you. I hope you will understand that I write all this because I admire you so much and that you mean more to me than anybody else on the screen. _ Of course. I have asked you a favor for I and Agnes, but I know that a little money like $450 does not mean anything to a picture star. This is something more important, something that I will cherish always. Will you send send me an autographed picture of yourself—and with it a lock of your lovely hair? Yours truly, Your Greatest Fan. WEEKLY Carole Lombard, along with four other film stars, got a request for $300 to get the fan’s brother through dental school. By Light of the Stars Is Hatched Fantastic Fanmail Soe a letter as that shown at the left may conceivably appear to be the product of a disordered fancy, and it is, of course, hypothetical. But included in it are excerpts or paraphrases of excerpts from some dozens of letters culled from the grist that pours into Hollywood’s mail. Such letters are not at all uncommon. Robert Taylor got 12,000 fan letters in one week, and if he had accepted every proposal of marriage or something therein contained, he would have had the greatest harem the world has ever known. He would have had to collect the European war debts to grant all the requests for material aid. Literally millions of fan letters come to Hollywood in a year—admiring letters, pitiful letters, amatory letters and insolent letters. Most of them are notes of admiration or advice and requests for autographed photographs. But thousands of them are amazing. One Great Lover of the screen received from an English barmaid a detailed history of her amatory exploits and an urgent invitation to visit her for a few weeks. He was to bring along another well known actor for her gir] friend. She listed places they could go together, added the encouraging note that it would not be very expensive and suggested that of course he would not be missed from Hollywood because his double could stay behind and do his work-——which was the way she assumed most of his pictures were made anyway. A GIRL in Montana sent Nelson Eddy. a phonograph record in which her proposal was set to music from one of his pictures. It concluded: “And dear Nelson Eddy, if you marry me you will not regret it. I have a large farm and am. an excellent seamstress.” Picture of A. Fan and some of the things his heart desires. Including the Demand for Nelson Eddy’sH and and a Discarded Mae West Diamond By Clarke Wales She listed many other admirable qualities, and though: she did not explain specifically why a young woman so blessed had been able to stay single, there was an intimation that she had made up her mind to have Eddy or nobody. Many proposals are carefully devised, indicating that the enamored fan has endeavored to select a mate from the sereen who would bring congenial! interests to the marriage. A Texas girl picked Robert Montgomery, explaining that their mutual love of good horseflesh would undoubtedly insure them of a successful marriage And when Franehot Tone was working in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” @ girl who described herself as a debutante wrote saying that she was sure she would be an ideal wife for him because for generations her family had been expert sailors and she would be able to give him reliable advice on sea pictures. Men, too, fall in love with the glamorous personalities of the screen and write fevered protestations of affection. One gentleman in Missouri sought the hand of Jeanette MacDonald by mail, and to prove that he was a substantial citizen not interested in her money, sent along his bank statement. Mosr numerous of the odd letters written to the stars are requests for clothes, money or personal knick-knacks. Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, Kay Francis and other feminine stars known for their screen wardrobes get letters after each picture asking for gowns or hats or shoes. Miss Crawford had an urgent: request from a college girl who asked that an evening gown be sent to her immediately; she was going to a fraternity party and explained that she wanted to be the best dressed girl on the dance floor. A young man making his theatrical debut in a church play asked Fred Keating to send the entire wardrobe he had worn in a_ picture—‘“including neckties.” Every year in February and June, Ginger Rogers gets letters from high school girls asking for graduation dresses. The bulk of Ginger’s mail is from girls of this age—and from their boy friends. Usually the girls ask for advice, how to become the belle of the ballroom, and the boys are adulatory; however, one young man asked for money to buy a prize heifer which he wanted to enter in a county fair. Both Ginger and Fred Astaire receive numerous requests for their old dancing shoes. And Ginger is asked for so many locks of hair that all the queues in old China would not fill the need. One girl picked on her male ido} to provide a wardrobe. Randolph Scott received a letter to which was attached a mail order. All she asked him to do was to write a check for $200 and airmail it, with the order blank, to the mail order house. Carole Lombard also got a mail order blank, from a couple in Texas. The order was for furniture and furnishings for a living room. They had just read how big her income tax was and were trying to help her cut it down. : grey, vee eo meal 6G eS Cage i #3 bhi: tah, ere SCREEN & RADIO WE Thousands of marriage pro posals by .mail swamp Taylor. Carole also received a plea from a girl for $300 to help her brother finish his dental course and get a degree. The same letter was sent to. Fred MacMurray, George Raft, Claudette Colbert and Bing Crosby. Maybe the girl had five brothers. Ever since John Quaien first was pre-: sented on the screen as the father of the famous quintuplets, he has been going around in a perpetual blush. A number of romantically-mindec ladies have taken his performance without the needed grain of salt and have been writing him epistles—-not letters—which an innate modesty forbids him from showing to Mrs. Qualen. Under ordinary circumstances Mr. Qualen, being normally human, might welcome such tribute to his cinematic powers, but he thinks things have gone a bit too far.. He can’t look Mrs. Qualen and his two children in the eye, he adamits, and as for showing her his letters —never. Anp SC the letters go, requests to Clark Gable for the skin of a cougar he has shot, to Mae West for “an old diamcnd if you have one lying around that you are tired of,” to Joe E. Brown for help in getting into big league baseball; advice, to Joan Blondell on how to raise her baby; to Dick Powell on how to take care of his voice, to Katharine Hepburn on how she should play screen characters; proposals. to every star in pictures, single or not, trom all kinds of people; William Powell got one from a Swedish cook. But these letters are—except for the obvious efforts of semi-professiona) chiselers and racketeers—-merely another manifestation of the strange madness that the light of the stars creates. No letter has ever been written which was more amazing than the conduct of nurses in a Midwest hospital where a then great star was operated on. They fought over his appendix. EKLY Ginger Rogers fights to keep her lovely hair from fans.