Screenland (Nov 1934-Apr 1935)

for January 19 3 5 73 strom, that the rule of life is: you can't have everything! For every successful hour there has to be one of struggle. For the peaks — the depths of disappointment. Life for me has resolved itself into a question of choice." We had finished lunch and gone out into the garden. In her analysis Loretta ^ had failed to mention love. Which wouldn't do at all, for love is an integral part of Hollywood success. And Loretta hasn't escaped its entanglements. I asked her how her simile of the glass cage tied up with love. Resting in the swing, she did a bit of confessing on the subject closest to every woman's heart. "I dread to think that I'll never have a fine husband and a fine family. I want them. I want them while I am young, too ! "But," she mused, "right now I have chosen to put love in the background and concentrate on career for a couple of years longer. As to marriage in Hollywood — I don't know what the answer is. I tried it once and fizzled. However, it may have been just the individuals. I'll tell you frankly, I can't take love lightly." All of us who adore Loretta in Hollywood have been sorry that she has been unfortunate in love. There was handsome Grant Withers, for whom she impetuously left her family and her religion. He was too happy-go-lucky. There was the man whom she loved too dearly even to share his name with the public. That was not to be. But— "Why talk about it?" said Loretta. "You'd guess," she continued, "that I've acted in so many film romances that emo white flannels, he is essentially a man's man ; yet underneath his masculinity there is a gentleness and a gleam of fine sentiment. He's so thoroughly likable, so friendly, with an innate gallantry, charming manners, a soft voice, and an engaging boyish earnestness. Yet there is a tinge of mystery in his personality, a peculiar detachment that piques the interest. I think he has built a hedge around his emotions. Perhaps experience has taught him not to take anything too seriously, not to care too much. After all, emotions do hamper one's freedom, and George Raft loves his freedom more than anything in all the world. He says he has had a few near-fatal moments when he felt Death's fingers on his sleeve, adding with a grin : "But I never dreamed these were forming my college course to help build my career." His first bump into real danger came when he was just a kid and made an indelible impression. He lived on Forty-first Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues in New York City. In the same block was a row of tenements. One day the neighborhood gang of boys scrapped with a pretty girl and to get even with her they smashed every window in the apartment where she lived. While George was merely an innocent by-stander in the excitement, the patrolman singled out this dark-eyed lad and, pressing a gun against his heart, demanded to know the trouble. "Believe it or not," said Raft, "that patrolman was so nervous that his hand shook, and I was certain my end had come. I let out a lusty yell and one of the big boys gave the gun an upward smack and it went off. "I ran. And how I ran ! I was afraid to stay in the neighborhood for fear they'd find me, so I crawled through several cel tionally I'm very old for my age. Strangely, it's the opposite. I'm becoming more and more naive — emotionally." In a low tone she added, "The more you know of love the more you want to idealize and trust !" We talked for a few minutes of the progress of her career before I departed. Ready to give her acting her undivided attention, she is not too satisfied with her status. "I was fortunate in getting on the screen before stage experience was required to impress the studios," she admitted. "But two things disturb me now : the desire of some casting directors to put me in 'hot' roles and the fact that I've been so slow in making the final step to major stardom." During the summer absence of Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century czar to whom Loretta is under contract, she was asked to portray a role originally written for Jean Harlow. "I have sense enough to realize I can't play a part tailored for Jean," Loretta explained to me. She had to put up a fight to elude it. "My other complaint is this: I've been on the fringe of stardom for seven whole years. If I'm really good, why don't they give me really appropriate stories ?" Zanuck asserts that her years of leading ladyhood have not been wasted, that they have served as preparation for the excellent vehicles he is going to assign her. After all, she's only twenty-one ! If he doesn't give you the proper break, Loretta, we'll flood him with letters of burning indignation ! Those seven years of yours in a glass cage have pushed you into a "dream life" — but you've been dreaming with your eyes wide open ! "Dying" for a Living Continued from page 59 lars until I found a stairway that led to a roof — and there I spent the night. It was during those hours that in some miraculous way I lost all fear of death. How ? Why ? I don't know. I only know that all my childish fear was gone and it has never come back. "My next peep into the Beyond was when I was nine. A bunch of us boys were playing at building docks in the Hudson River and I fell in. They pulled me out just as I was going down the last time. It was a close shave — I was all but gone. Yet to this day I have never learned to swim. "I didn't play much as a kid. I was always out to make a dollar and used to sell newspapers at the baseball park after school to earn enough money to buy an ice cream soda, a bag of candy, and go to a movie. That was my idea of a swell time. "Another escape was while I was dancing in London. A friend and I rented an automobile to spend Sunday at a nearby resort. When we started home that night he was taken ill and I had to drive. It was a left-gear car, I didn't know the road, and it was pitch-dark. When we came to a narrow bridge with a sharp turn I was so confused that I backed the car and we hung within a few perilous inches over the steep cliff. "How I managed to reach the road again I'll never know, but we decided to wait until daylight before venturing on. "Once, coming home from Europe, we plunged into a terrific fog and in the middle of the night the signal was given for everyone to put on life-preservers. As I stood at the deck-railing looking down into the lashing black waters there didn't seem a chance that I'd ever see the sunshine again. "Then, the first time I ever went up in an airplane we struck a death-dealing storm David Holt greeted Max Baer on his return to Hollywood. David will have an important part in Max's new film. and even the pilot didn't think we would ever land. I was in a night-club once, when it was raided and bullets raged all around me. "While dancing in Richmond, Virginia, I slipped and stumbled over the footlights into the orchestra pit. I was badly hurt. They told me even if I lived I would never walk or dance again. So, you see, my college course in the art of dying has been pretty thorough!" Besides "Scarface," there were several other times during his meteoric career that George has met death on the screen, and each time he has made it grippingly real through the power of his imagination. His thoughts are visual, expressed by his lithe body, the result of his training as a dancer. "You'll recall I went crazy and then died in 'If I Had a Million.' " He checked off his experiences. "I jumped through a window to my death in 'All of Me' — gee, I was keyed up to the scene the day we made that ! In 'Bolero,' I kept thinking of Maurice, the great dancer, whose life story it was. It seemed so tragic that he had to go when life meant so much to him and he was in my thoughts continually during the death scene. "To top it all, in my last picture, 'Limehouse Blues,' I died again, shot by a cop, this time, while saving the girl. But — I nobly bring the lovers together before I pass out." George says he likes these tense scenes but wants to work them out by himself ; wants time to touch the lower mood and not be bothered with a lot of useless dialogue. "One doesn't spout a lot of words at such supreme moments," he quietly explained. Raft is very direct. He's modest and frank. He hasn't lost his head in the least with all his sudden fame and adulation.