Screenland (Nov 1931-Mar 1932)

for December 19 3 1 The Low Down on Lew and Lola Continued from page 33 109 was a frost, so with only forty cents to her name she quit, bought a two-bit sundae and went back to the employment office. ... ,. , This time she got a job in a little notions store at seventeen a week. Four weeks were enough of that. She tried her hand as a bookkeeper to a secondhand clothes dealer, as a stenographer, a nursemaid, and as a governess. Then she met Mabel Wagner Schank, a well-known Chautauqua entertainer, who offered the first opportunity to become associated with things theatrical, a childhood desire of Lola's. But first there was the problem of ending her Simpson College days. The j oiliest way was to cut up until the dean would urge her departure. Gay, independent Lola chose that way. Touring the Chautauqua circuit, playing the piano and singing, she got her introduction to voice culture and stage deportment to the tune of forty dollars a week. She was not satisfied with the sticks, however, being Broadway bent. Gus Edwards is known for his theatrical discoveries, so Lola, a perfect stranger, wrote him that she was coming to New York to be his next protegee. She borrowed two hundred dollars, informed her sister Leota that henceforth they were The Lane Sisters, dancing and singing team, and proceeded under full steam to the Big City. There is nothing like the luck of the Irish, and it was no time at all before The Lane Sisters were doing their stuff in Gus Edwards' "RitzCarlton Revue." They next decorated the chorus of the "Greenwich Village Follies," danced in Helen Morgan's night club, and then toured the Orpheum circuit as the featured performers in Gus Edwards' act. Lola was always the business manager for the team. "I meant business when I went into the offices of the booking agents and managers," she says, "and they knew it wasn't monkey business. I had perfect trust in our ability and evidently that gave them confidence in us." She worked their vaudeville salary up to nine hundred dollars a week. A Broadway show was her next step, and she became leading lady for George Jessel in "The War Song." The Shuberts had a show slated for her to follow that, but Ben Stoloff, Fox director, happened to be searching for a leading lady for the first Fox talkie, "Speakeasy." He saw Lola in "The War Song," realized that she had a voice as well as grand looks, and so she was given a Fox contract. She was featured in the first "Fox-Movietone Follies," and her haunting blues voice put her over in musicals with a bang. For the past year she has been free-lancing. When she was making only fifteen dollars a week, she saved five, lived on five, and sent five home to her mother. She is now educating two of her younger sisters. Last year she made her first visit back to Indianola, going via plane to give a benefit performance to pay off the mortgage on the Methodist Church. She recalls with a chuckle how she once danced the Charleston in front of the church to express her independence, and claims that she was the only female child ever to be whipped in an Indianola school with a rubber hose! Lew's Hollywood hit came with much more of a bang than did Lola's. He was never on the stage and got into pictures by dancing with a pretty lady at a Roosevelt tea dance! He did not know that she was Lily Damita or that Ivan Kahn, actors' agent, was watching them. A six months' contract at Pathe was engineered by Kahn. There Lew, along with Carole Lombard, Marian Marsh, Jeanette Loff, and Stanley Smith, was overlooked. All of them, diamonds in the rough, were given walking papers. But Paul Bern saw possibilities in Lew and got him the role of the adolescent lover in Garbo's "The Kiss," his first real screen part. "I never had a cent until recently," Lew told me as we talked over his past and his plans for the future. He was born in Minneapolis, but when his parents were divorced he moved to San Diego, where his mother and step-father now live. His own father, a court reporter, still resides in Minneapolis and proudly treasures all clippings of Lew. This domestic upheaval had a profound effect upon Lew's childhood. He finally entered the University of Arizona, and was pledged to one of the best fraternities, Kappa Sigma. "But I hate even to mention that I went there," he says, "because it was for so short a time." Like Lola he could not stand the restraints of conventional, small-town life, so he utilized his skill as a banjo player and his crooning voice to get jobs in various Mexican resorts just across the border, where a handsome young American is a prime orchestra attraction. Thrown in with all sorts, the kind who haunt these drinking and gambling places, Lew led a care-free, merry existence. The tawdriness palled and he came to Los Angeles, much in the mood of Merton. "I dreamt continually of being discovered by some famous movie beauty," he admits. "Preferably by Garbo." (With whom, strangely enough, he did play his first role!) "It is not true that I met picture people in Mexico who promised me film jobs. When I came to Hollywood I didn't know a soul in the studios, no one on the inside at all." Because Mertons must eat, Lew strummed his banjo at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel, The Plantation, and the Cocoanut Grove. Seeing the stars dance by only intensified his desire to be one of them. But even the opportunity of getting near them gave him no entree. He quit orchestra work, intending to try as an extra so long as no one cared to discover him. He was reduced to living on peanuts for a few days. Fortnuately, Ivan Kahn chose to wave the magic wand. "But social contacts and pull have never gotten me a thing," Lew says today. "Mr. Bern was wonderful to me in getting me some good roles, but strictly in a detached business way. Why, I've never so much as been to his home or had dinner with him." Neither Lola nor Lew cares a rap about playing the social game in Hollywood. When I asked him where he went of an evening for his amusement he replied, "I never go out ! I worked in night clubs and hotels for three or four years and got my fill of dancing. I'll bet you don't go around interviewing actors on your day off, do you?" Lola loves to dance, however, so if the two of them are seen much in society you'll know who's boss in the Ayres family. "I've only been to two premieres in my life," Lew says, "and I have no intention of bucking the crowds to go to any more !" The newlyweds will not follow, one gathers, in the social footsteps of Joan and Doug and other young couples. 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