Screenland (Nov 1934-Apr 1935)

for Mar c h 19 3 5 93 The only present I've ever given Mary was a clock for her drawing-room mantel. "I'm still unused to earning a lot of money. A few years ago, I never dreamed that some day I might be earning a thousand dollars a week." "A thousand?" I exploded. "I'm not a tax collector; you can tell me the truth. You're paid at least three times that, please stick to facts." "Most of it comes from radio," Powell explained. "I draw a measly salary as a moving picture actor. In fact, if it weren't for radio, I'd be just about the lowest-paid star in Hollywood. I signed a contract when I was unknown. My contract specifies that I can't appear on the radio, but I'm on. Radio pays me much more, so if the studio doesn't like my being on the air, they can pay me enough to cover the radio salary, and I'll quit radio. Until the studio comes across, I'll stick with the air-lanes. "People have the idea that I have a lot of money. I haven't. Every cent I own is tied up in this new house. And most of the money I put in this house was money I saved back in Pittsburgh — not from my movie salary. "I'm far from having money. My divorce cost me puh-lenty." (Let me pause to interject a thought that occurred to me when Dick mentioned the cost of his divorce. Some day Mary Brian and Dick Powell will marry ; I think this is as inevitable as night and day. But in my opinion, the reason their romance has progressed so slowly is simply that both Mary and Dick are afraid of marriage. Dick's one experience left him half bitter and afraid of the cost of marriage. Mary is fearful of divorce; she wants to be absolutely certain that her one marriage will endure. Since it is most difficult to be sure of the lasting success of a marriage, particularly in Hollywood, Mary has remained single. Still, I know both Mary and Dick intimately, and I see countless mutual traits in them. When they have discovered for themselves all these mutualities, Miss Brian will become Mrs. Powell; of that I feel satisfied.) More silence, during which Dick and I stared thoughtfully into the flames of the open fireplace. "I like to watch fires and dream," Dick finally said. "I've always been a dreamer. Funny enough, all my dreams are coming true. I mean, I've always dreamed that some day I would be an actor." "You call yourself an actor?" "Silence, upstart! I may not be an actor, but I'll do until one comes along-. I dreamed of the day when I'd have a home with a swimming pool, and maybe a horse or two, and a tennis court. Well, I have everything but the horses, and I'll have them before long. Hey, what about another drink, Jim ?" "Mr. Arliss" Continued from page 26 before a movie camera to> make what later proved to be both an artistic and a boxoffice failure — the screen version of Molnar's "The Devil." I had to recall that uneventful, and certainly uninteresting, patch of the past, because Mr. Arliss, advancing with rapid and trippy strides to shake hands and say howdy-doo, looked younger, I give you my word, than he did in 1920. It was not that I had expected to see an old man, but it seems to me legitimate grounds for surprise to see a man look younger by at least ten years than he did fifteen years ago. "My story is very simple," he insisted as, settling down on a sofa near a fireplace with a "prop" glow emanating from its grate, Mr. Arliss started to talk. "I don't have any adventures to report. No romance outside what I do on the screen," he continued. Frankly, this last caused no panic in this quarter. One knows that George Arliss has been held up as at least half of the most frequently cited example of how a marriage can be successful even for a famous actor and his actress wife, over a period covering more than thirty years on Broadway, the road, and even Hollywood. Things got a little unusual, if not adventurous, when I asked his opinion of what progress had been made at the English studios. "I can't say about progress," he replied, just a trifle wide-eyed himself at the thought, "because I don't know what the English studios were like before I did my picture 'The Iron Duke' over there this summer." The curious fact is that George Arliss, to whom England points with justifiable pride as a home-bred and home-trained actor, has made most of his reputation as one of the foremost character actors of all time, in America, and until a few months ago— thirty-four years after he left London as a somewhat obscure player in Mrs. Pat Campbell's company — had never appeared in a film made outside of the United States. "But," Arliss added, after remarking that he himself thought it strange he had never before made a film in England, "I can only say that at my studio over there, everything was the same as it might have been had I been acting the same part in a Hollywood plant. "Of course, there isn't the drive, the rush and pressure behind everything, as there is in Hollywood. We didn't work far _ into the night, and Saturdays Mrs. Arliss and I would drive to our cottage, which is located on the East Coast between Deal and Dover, and remain, there until Monday morning." Thus rather suddenly, and unexpectedly, Mr. Arliss found himself on the subject about which he and the Hollywood moguls used to come to grips. The one contribution to the lore of temperament in Hollywood which Mr. Arliss has made concerns his refusal to work more than a certain number of hours, studio schedules, orders of the high command to the contrary notwithstanding. "There's no sense to working all night," he continued. "I have made no bones about saying that there is but one reason for working long hours in a picture studio, and that is bad management." Incidentally George Arliss' method of overcoming "bad management" is to rehearse his picture roles just as he would rehearse a play, with the entire troupe practiced in their parts before camera work is started. Always a stickler for detail, he is almost a crank when it comes to precision with respect to properties, costuming, make-up and acting detail faithful to the play. On the stage it was his practice to inspect the set and check up on all properties before going on for a performance— a practice, by the way, which offered the _ one opportunity for pranks on Mr. Arliss when he toured with an all-star cast, whose members got the only fun they could derive at his expense by slipping into the theatre and disarranging his "props." 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