Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

72 for a quarter, and yours will cost me a couple of thousand!" "I used to think the hardest work a singer could b^ asked to do was opera," said Gladys Swarthout, recounting her experiences in Hollywood making two pictures for Paramount. "But now I know that acting in pictures is even more exacting. You work all day and are so tired at night the only thing to do is rest up for tomorrow." At the time the Chapman apartment that is the New York home of Frank Chapman, Jr., and his wife Gladys Swarthout was being turned into a work shop, it seemed to me. A photographer was popping away with the last several of several dozen flash bulbs on poses of Miss Swarthout wearing various examples of the latest in millinery, Hollywood in New York Continued from page 65 even better support have suffered permanent injury to their potential progress in films. That the public accepted Miss Swarthout so warmly and that the reaction is a whetted appetite for more of this strikingly attractive and gifted lady in pictures, is proof that Gladys Swarthout is destined to enjoy tremendous popularity as a screen star. We said that, and Miss Swarthout then made it plain she thought any credit should go to the technicians of the sound machines and the cameras, the director and all the actors and actresses of the cast, all who "were so patient, so untiring and courteous in their efforts to work with me and help me in every possible way." Modest lady ! One of the most versatile women the Guests at Pickfair! Delmar Daves, Jan Kiepura, Marta Eggerth, Kay Francis, Leslie Howard, and Gene Raymond, form the group, above, seen at Mary Pickford's recent reception in honor of Lady Mendl. as your correspondent was ushered into a large and very attractively furnished livingroom, with a cheery glow coming from the crackling logs in the fireplace. No wonder Miss Swarthout spoke with more enthusiasm about her impending vacation in the South than she was able to give to other subjects during the interview. The vacation was to be followed by a concert tour tracing a devious pattern across the map from Florida to Detroit. After that some performances at the Metropolitan, and then a return to Hollywood to play in the screen version of "The Count of Luxemburg." It is not merely a personal opinion of this particular corner, but the view of many authoritative observers, that Gladys Swarthout's success in "Rose of the Rancho" is a great personal triumph for the American mezzo-soprano whose popularity as a result of her operatic achievements and radio work built up a very high expectation for her first picture. "Rose of the Rancho," despite the sincerity behind its production, the contribution of the popular John Boles, and other factors in its favor, was not screen entertainment of the quality requisite for an auspicious screen debut. Many stars from other fields with theatre has ever known perhaps, is more familiar to screen patrons as the wife of an actor than as a dramatic actress who, after attaining the greatest heights in her stage profession, turned to the study of vocal culture and later won distinction as an operatic star. Helen Gahagan, who in private life is Mrs. Melvyn Douglas and the mother of Peter Gahagan Douglas, aged two, has made but one picture, "She," and that only after producers tried for years to interest her in screen acting. But Miss Gahagan is to make more pictures. Two have been contracted for, the next offering her a singing role, and that to be followed by a production photographed in color. The tall, dark-haired and blue-eyed Miss Gahagan, whose extraordinarily beautiful face reveals such definiteness and vitality of character, and is so mobile, so delicately adjusted to express emotion, submitted herself to questioning at the hotel apartment she and Melvyn Douglas occupy while Douglas fills his engagement in a New York play, in which Elissa Landi also appears, and Helen Gahagan puts in hours of vocal practice under a musical coach. She was then preparing for some concert SCREENLAND work — "I hadn't previously devoted much time to the study of Liedcr," she explained. In case you don't recall, Miss Gahagan's personal history records the fact that at the time she was the highest paid actress in the theatre and an acknowledged popular favorite as well as a recognized artist of the highest dramatic attainments, she suddenly left the stage to devote herself to singing, and went off to Europe to study, and later sing operatic roles in Germany, Austria, and other Middle European lands. She had won acclaim in Molnar's "Fashions for Men," "Leah Kleshna," "Enchanted April," "Young Woodley" and other plays. Why, we wanted to know, did she drop all that to become a singer? "Oh that's a long story," Miss Gahagan replied. "But it was not because I thought singing would be a better way to earn a living. I have the utmost admiration for those people who can say, 'being an actress, or a singer, that's a good thing to do — I guess I'll be that.' To succeed on the stage, dramatic or operatic, one faces such discouragements. I don't understand how, unless you have the patience of the very devil himself, you can do it if you have not the feeling that you want to do it whether it means a living or starvation. I have done all my work in the theatre because since I was five years old I knew I just had to be in the theatre." The story of how Helen Gahagan got interested in singing, briefly, is this. Her mother loved to sing, "She had the most beautiful natural voice I think I've ever heard," Miss Gahagan said, and wanted her daughter to study voice culture. But Helen was not interested until a conductor at the Metropolitan overheard Miss Gahagan sing a few bars, something Helen did by way of personal amusement or emotional outlet. He advised her to study voice, but she said she never met a teacher she thought she could be interested in. Several days later the conductor phoned and said he would like Miss Gahagan to see a certain woman teacher he had just learned was in New York. "She was such a remarkable woman," Miss Gahagan narrated, "I'd have taken up floor-scrubbing if she had advised me to do that." And there's the way it happened. Helen Gahagan made her American operatic debut with the San Francisco Opera Company last Fall, singing "Aida," one of the several operatic roles she sang in Europe. She is very much interested in picture work. Frankly she admitted that her first picture, "She," was not all that she had expected. "I did not like the way the story was treated. But," she added, "in the theatre and in opera you find yourself in disagreement with the way works are treated and produced." Singing opera, Miss Gahagan says, is a wonderful experience. "You feel as though you are flying. I really believe the artist has a much better time than the audience," she added. Do you wonder that every singer, male or female, who has sung opera, wouldn't give it up for the world ! "I'm going back to Hollywood and work like the very dickens to acquire a new type of speaking voice, and you just watch and see if I don't get ahead playing 'sympathetic' roles," said Adrienne Ames, two days before she ended a month's vacation in New York. A vacation, by the way, that was such a social success that Adrienne admitted she would need a rest and so decided to travel back to California by boat. "I've been to the theatre every night,