Screenland (Nov 1931-Mar 1932)

100 SCREEN LAND Stop Wondering What's Become of Sally! Continued from page 66 the rest of the family had begun to feel that it was all a mistake, too. Only George wasn't bothered. 'That's the way it always is,' he just said, and kept on digging up more directors." Then, one day, came an interview with Marshall ("Micky") Neilan, the young director who already had made a considerable name for himself. Neilan gave new hope by pointing out something that had unaccountably escaped the aspiring young manager and his potential star — namely, a marked resemblance between her and Mabel Normand. On the strength of this he rushed her over to the office of Louis B. Mayer, who had to be convinced that she really wasn't Miss Normand. And with that as a starting-point, almost before she knew what was happening Sally had been given a part in "Sally, Irene and Mary," then in process of casting. "Well, maybe there wasn't rejoicing then among us embattled Noonans ! George 'I-told-you-so'd' us all over the place — and as for me, I didn't merely walk on air, I just sailed about as if in a dream. Nothing like months of disappointment and defeat to make you appreciate a break when you finally get it. "And then, when my first part was followed with others, the road to success seemed to stretch out straight ahead of me, all smooth and pleasant, with no traffic lights. I played parts in 'Slide, Kelly, Slide,' D. W. Griffith's 'The Battle of the Sexes,' and a lot of other pictures of increasing importance ; and it seemed perfectly plain that I had clicked." But Fate, or Chance, or whatever it is that manipulates the strings in the human puppet-show, had other plans for Sally. Her fortunes, apparently so firmly on the upgrade, began to slide. She doesn't know yet just exactly what it was all about, but for a year and a half the O'Neil stock just about hit a "new low for all time." For one thing, there was the talkie earthquake, which came along at about that time — that upheaval that threatened for a time to turn Hollywood completely topsy-turvy, with the lightning journeys, sometimes roundtrip and sometimes one-way, that it afforded between the spotlight and oblivion. Then, again, there was the restive brother Ed, who more than once has seemed bent on "stealing the show" from Sally and becoming the most prominent member of the family, but in ways that are no great help to any struggling young sister's movie career. Upon that sister's none too hefty shoulders fell the burden of the assorted family difficulties, as well as her own; but Sally saw it through, and waited for the skies to clear. They did begin to clear at last, and then, in a business where the changes of eighteen months are equal to the changes of generations in the outside world, she realized that she had her way to make all over again. "The thought of repeating that terrible, dreary siege outside the gates was almost too much ; but I gritted my teeth and went at it. I began to get small parts again ; some of them made me feel almost like an extra. You can't give moving, gripping or hilarious performances as a chorus girl or a housemaid. But my gaze was fixed on the future, and I took what I could get and liked it. Besides, while they weren't much, each was a little better than the last." At all events, Sally was being seen in pictures again. There was "The Girl on the Barge," and "On With the Show," and "The Sophomore," "Jazz Heaven," and the comparatively recent "Murder By the Clock." Progress of a sort ; but the break that she needed had yet to come. Then Sally had a bright idea. She had been offered an opportunity to appear on the stage in Los Angeles in "The Brat." In a pecuniary sense it meant little, but Sally felt that if she could give a really notable performance of the role on the stage, some producer would -want her to make a picture of it. Moreover, "The Brat" had always been a play after her own heart, and one of her early dreams had been of herself capering through its title role on the screen. So she accepted gladly, and began feverishly to study the part. "And how I loved that play!" says Sally. "I felt that it had been written with me in mind — that I could take hold of it and be it, without even having to think about it. I memorized the lines quickly, and rehearsed from morning to night, going through the scenes, improvising bits of business, having one perfectly grand time. And behind it all were visions of a smashing hit on the stage, and a still bigger success with it on the screen. "And then along came the pin to prick that bubble. Before I had a chance to open in the play, I heard that Fox had already decided to go ahead and make "The Brat," and that another girl had been chosen for the part ! Ouch ! Love and kisses — with just a dash of poison ivy! Congratulations to the little gal — a. nice kid and a good actress— but did they, oh, did they have to give her just that part? It was too much For a while, anyway." It was, indeed, almost a knockout blow. One can't quite imagine Sally being downed permanently, even by a thing like that — but for a while, at any rate, there didn't seem much point in going on playing small bits in other people's pictures. So she did a little quiet moping, meanwhile trying to gather strength for the next round with Kid Destiny of the brass knuckles. And. thus moping, she received a call from Father Mack, a genial cleric who had been her fast friend for years. He inquired the reason for her doldrums, and was told. Succor at last ! For it happened that Father Mack numbered among his very good friends Mr. John Ford, and it happened also that Mr. Ford was the director preparing to make "The Brat." So the good padre seized his hat, told Sally not to worry, and went off to make another social call. Result: forty-eight hours later Miss O'Neil received a summons to appear on the Fox lot for a screen test. And when she arrived there, by some queer coincidence the role they wanted to test her in was the title part in "The Brat." "That was just too tough," grins Sally. "There I was, asked to take a test in a part that I was primed for as I'd never been for any other. So I started in being 'The Brat,' and for hours I 'Bratted' all over the place, acting the scenes I'd been studying for days and days and days. Mr. Ford and everyone else present caught the spirit of the thing, and before we knew it we were going through whole scenes, stopping to write bits of dialogue and business — in short, we were shooting the picture. And we kept on shooting the picture until it was finished. And that, dear kiddies, is how it happened." And it certainly had happened, this time. For the Fox people followed up the preview of the picture with a five-year contract, which Sally, easy-going girl that she is, just let herself be bludgeoned into signing! "So I won that round after all, and now it looks as if there'll be a five-year armistice, anyway. And who knows — maybe I've really won the war this time!" Why Helen Married Again and all ! Quite a relief to Helen, too. Her long list of experiences runs the gamut of high courage and the depths of deep despair. They have left untouched the surface loveliness of Helen's features — but the undercurrents of character have been greatly moved and profoundly touched, and as a result she is an infinitely better actress — and a more understanding human being, which, to her great credit, she considers quite important. Helen, as an instance, is genuinely, keenly proud of her mother's and father's long-lived romance. The strong bond of affection between the two parents, whom she whole-heartedly adores, is very real to her. And in her pride and interest in her young brother there is a sincerity of Continued from page 51 feeling that transcends the usual taken-forgranted affections. Helen loves a home, yearns for children and harbors the self-same virtues which repose in the breasts of less glamorous suburban hausfraus from Patchogue to Fresno. She wants most avidly a little girl, and very nearly adopted one recently. She is intensely proud of "her man's" war record, a brilliant one (you know, of course, that Jack won the war). She is ecstatic over his golf championships and vitally interested in his real estate business. She confesses to frailties, quite freely, too. She says she "adores" clothes and lovely things — admits that she finds it necessary to retain a business manager who collects her income and doles out platinum pin money with unrelenting austerity — or there would be nothing left of her generous salary. She and Jack, however, give themselves over to the "free hand" by running off to Auga Caliente for week-ends on a sort of perpetual honeymoon, where they gambol to their hearts' content, and where, as Jack laughingly puts it, "My wife becomes the beautiful Helen who has launched a thousand chips !" But don't be deceived. Helen, who, at fourteen, played poker surreptitiously with her two lovely cousins on the back porch of her Flatbush home, and who, if the need became urgent, cheated to win ( ! ) has evolved into one of Hollywood's crack (and honest) bridge players, who, with al