Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

69 Acme Stars by the score attended the opening of the new Hollywood beauty salon of Max Factor, seen above with Paul Muni and Claudette Colbert. for February 1936 ly: "I looked for something in Chicago to bring you, granny, and I saw a very pretty darning basket, but it cost eight dollars. And I began thinking how many stockings eight dollars would buy. So here, granny — " she thrust a moist, crumpled bill into the other's hand — "here's a dollar and you go buy what you want." Not the sort of child, was she, you'd expect to see grow into a singing, dancing star of stage and screen? But the girl of today is that sensitive child grown up, while the romp of the films is an actress's disguise. Ginger herself never expected to sing and dance for a living. "I was lacking in ambition of any kind," she said with rare self-knowledge. "I marvel when I talk to the children of today. They all have ideas about what they intend to do. I had none. I was just enjoying myself. I danced for my family's amusement and amazement, and that was all. Then I entered a Charleston contest, because all the other neighborhood kids were entering, and they said I was a good Charleston dancer. And I won. The prize was four weeks in vaudeville, and it went so well that I just kept on. Sheer inertia, I guess — and my mother. She had everything I lacked — foresight, determination. I had nothing but an inferiority complex, while she had a complex or whatever you like to call it that overrode mine. I was always willing to let the tide carry me — still am. She fought upstream. When I said: T can't,' she said, 'You can' — and I did. And I'll never stop being grateful. "It was mother who was forever telling me I'd eventually be in pictures, and I'd scoff. Why? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? I knew I wasn't a beauty. I knew I wasn't any of the things that the movie industry calls glamorous or dramatic. I'd made several tests, but it always ended there, and I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me was being signed to play Puff Randolph in 'Young Man of Manhattan.' And what surprised me still more was suddenly finding myself with a five-year contract in my hand. "I didn't come in as a dancer, you know, and I didn't advertise the fact that I was one, because I had no particular yearning to dance on the screen. Dancers, I thought, don't last very long in the films, and I wasn't especially interested in fading right out when I saw that comedians and dra matic players could go on for years. So I was kind of happy that they didn't know I could dance. But," she added, carefully pencilling a line along the edge of her upper lip, "they found out somehow. And here I am. "Please," she said, wholly serious for a moment, "because I'm telling you all this, don't run away with the idea that I don't enjoy my dancing roles. I do. And I love working with Fred. Who wouldn't? But I'm glad to be doing comedies in between. And some day — if I don't have to fight too hard," she qualified with a comical tilt of her brows, "I want to do a straight serious role. In fact, I've got it all picked out, but I'm not telling, because you'd probably give me the horse laugh, and the old gag about the clown playing Hamlet. Just the same — " the demure little smile hovered again for a moment, "you can't really tell about the clown till you've tried him out. "There." She was ready now — curls and lips, trousers and stock and little tight jacket. With the tip of her finger, she dabbed at one of her eyes that had been bothering her. "Must be the lights, Miss Ginger," said the maid anxiously. "No," replied Ginger, all lightness again, her secret hope tucked back where it belonged. "Just a sorry eye. One side of me's sad, I guess." I watched her again as she joined Astaire on the set, as the "play-back" blared, as she whirled, smiling, into the maze of the dance — a figure of airy grace, casual, breezy, ultra-modern, with all the pep and exuberance her name implies and never a thought that lay beyond the moment — the Ginger I knew on the screen. But behind her I saw, and shall always see, another figure — that of an old-fashioned little girl who worried at seven about a gift for her granny, and set her teeth hard over an agonizing pain because she didn't want to make someone she loved feel "dreadfuller." Is Hollywood Going Hayseed? Hollywood folk. It will be near Cheyenne, Wyoming. Joel has sixty-five hundred acres of mountain land optioned and he intends to have some of his guest cabins ready to receive paying visitors next summer. There will be deer and bear to shoot, trout to catch, and cowboys to add color to living amidst the pines. Our active list emphatically includes Ann Dvorak and Leslie Fenton. They have sunk their picture earnings in a fortyacre walnut grove, in the San Fernando Valley. This is just across the hills from Hollywood, an easy run from town. They personally pick and sack a generous share of their crop and spurn such help as a gardener. They planted their lawn and flowers and they tend what they have sown. I find them proud of their chickens, horses. And cow. In fact, Ann pulled the same stunt as Frances Dee McCrea. She hired the itinerant milk-man who "services" them to teach her to milk. Which job she Continued from page 31 undertakes more frequently than you'd suppose ! Ann's study of bacteriology continues out there, and her knowledge of botany is coming into practical use at last. The Fentons have a greenhouse in which she tries her skill at nursing rare plants. Once mad about travel, they now hate to leave their ranch. They live in what was intended to be a guest-house. When they found they were having so much fun without importing company they shoved out a few walls and called it their little nest. Paul Muni is right across the road on a ten-acre walnut ranch. The main idea with him is to have a quiet residence in a bit of pleasant rural atmosphere. He has his study, an ex-set dressing-room, parked out beneath the trees. Louise Fazenda is more energetic. She's on a walnut grove twice the size of Muni's, and she bosses all the details. The expensive Spanish farmhouse she is com pleting is beautifully furnished with the fine furniture she has long been collecting. But she knows her walnuts as well as her antiques ! Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler are being publicized as farm-dwellers. They have taken a crack at it in the way that appeals to most movie stars. First they lavishly remodelled the house, their ten acres of oranges being chiefly landscape. Al asserts that he'll be jubilant if they come out even. The one thing he demands is enough fruit and flowers so he can pick a basketful for a sick friend — at a moment's notice ! There isn't a busier actor in Hollywood than Edward Everett Horton, who resides near Al and Ruby on an eight-acre plot. When he put down his hard-earned cash they told him very particularly that he could grow anything but cherrie That was a red flag. Mr. Horton promptly planted hundreds of cherry trees. After half-a-dozen years they're quite large,