Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

80 SCREENLAND THE STORY UP TO NOW Tom Kildare bitterly faces the reality that his voice test proves he cannot succeed in talkies, despite his years of stage training, his overwhelming popularity as a star of silent film comedies. He magnifies his failure, decides he will be a handicap now to Karen Kent. He had picked Karen as an unknown, inexperienced girl to play opposite him, and she, though she had a decided foreign accent, would be an even greater success in dialogue films. He determines to retire and take a trip around the world. To make even more definite his break with Karen, whom he loves, and whom he knows loves him, Kildare marries Mary Kennedy, the switchboard operator at his studio. second-hand car, to Hollywood. He hadn't much more cash than he needed for gas. He hadn't many more illusions than he had dollars, either. Tom Kildare knew, being an old trouper, that it's hard to make the grade in pictures. And he knew that making the grade was a simple matter indeed as compared to the effecting of a come-back. Karen Kent was discussing the business of cast (not spelled with an "e") with her director. She was very different now from the shy, anxious-to-please girl who had gladly accepted every suggestion — who had fairly leaned backwards in her effort to comply. The years that had turned Tom from film favorite to wanderer, from wanderer to outcast, had torn the cocoon of Karen's reserve ; she was imperious, and had a right to be ! As she rested against aquamarine satin cushions, her eyes were veiled by insolent lashes and her straight ivory gown was as saintly as a nun's and as devilish as Montmartre is supposed to be. She said flatly, in answer to her director's best suggestion : "No, no, no ! I do not want that one. As a leading man he leaves me cold. He hasn't got anything." Her director countered, "But the fans like him. He's English — and you know how they're going for men marked 'British.' Of course, if you have other ideas—" he hesitated — "how about that blond importation? He's pretty hot." Karen was intensely bored ; one wondered how she managed to survive. She said, "That sex-mad snake — good God, no ! And besides, I'm never at my ease opposite fair men. I'm too colorless, myself." The director sighed and echoed, "colorless," derisively. He murmured : "Well, I've given you a list of the best sellers in the industry — angels can do no more. It isn't as if we have time to wait for Freddy Bartholomew to come of age. We're beginning production next week, at the latest !" Karen said, "Oh, for heaven's sake, don't try so hard. Be more casual — and you'll get there." The director said, "Casual, my eye! I've forgotten how to be casual, Miss Kent, since we've worked together." Karen said unsympathetically : "It's too, too bad. How long have we worked together ?" The director said, "Ever since Monte Feinberg talked me into slavery. That was about a month after Feinberg left Tom Kildare— or did Kildare leave him? — and went Forever Yours Continued from page 33 with you. By the way, I saw Tom yesterday— or imagined I did." The languid lines of Karen's beautiful long body had become quick-silver. Her insolent lashes had flown apart. She gasped : "Seen Tom? Where? Answer me, you idiot!" The director said, "I can't be sure, but I thought I saw him in a mob scene — in that French Revolution thing they're shooting on stage six. If it weren't Tom — of course, the chap was plastered with fifty shades of grease paint — it was his twin brother. You know that queer trick he had of raising his left eyebrow — " Karen said, "I know." Suddenly she was blazing with indignation. "It deedn't occur to you that you should speak with heem," she half sobbed, fumbling for words, her accent growing thick, as it always did when she was swayed by anger — or some other emotion — "I had no idea he was in thees country. And as an extra — what could have happened! Go to stage seex at once and find the man. If it's Tom, and if he's met reverses and needs work — offer him the lead opposite me in my new picture." "But," the director's eyes were wide and so was his rather generous mouth, "but, Karen, the chap was a bust in the one sound test he made. He knew it himself — that's why he got out of pictures. Besides, he's a comedian, a low comedian at that. And you're a dramatic actress." Karen said, "It weel be Tom Kildare — if he's available — or nobody. Do you onderstand?" After less than five minutes the director went hysterically from Karen's presence to search for a practically forgotten man. And believe it or not, he understood. Or told himself that he did! The meeting between Karen and Tom Kildare was so commonplace that it would have been funny if it hadn't been acutely tragic. Karen said, ignoring the hollows in the man's face and the gray at his temples, ignoring his obviously shiny shoes : "Well, Tommy, you beeg bum ! You came to town and never let me know. And when I needed help so desperately, too." Tom kept up the pretense. They might have dined together the evening before. He said : "You're looking tops today, Karen. What do you mean — help? Isn't Hollywood crowded with men who are ready to die for you?" Karen shrugged. If she hadn't shrugged Eastern cities danced attention on Ginger Rogers when the dancing star visited them on vacation. she would have fallen into a fit of trembling. "To die for me, yes," she answered, "but not to be my leading man, Tom. They don't love me enough to keep from trying to steal my scenes." Tom Kildare said, and his tone was unsteady: "What if my voice is as lousy as it was?" Karen answered, "It won't be." It wasn't, either. Hardship had added more than hollows to Tom's face, more than gray to his hair. It had added a depth, a resignation, a sense of power to his every spoken word. When he signed an agreement for the picture (it wasn't a contract — even Karen couldn't sell a pig in a poke), Tom Kildare wired money to the sanitarium and sweetheart roses to his wife. She wrote back — ( the letter was done in a strange hand; it had been dictated to a nurse) — and raved about her new room and her flowers and her — husband. The letter ended like this : "I am actually living, Tom dear, until I hear that your picture is recognized as the success that I know it will be. Remember my faith in you — and my pride !" Tom received and read that letter a split second before he went on the set to make his first love scene with Karen Kent. He tucked it into his pocket with fingers that were a shade unsteady, and hurried to meet the star. When he took her into his arms, with the camera grinding and the director standing tense and the lights fixed so that his gray-tinged hair was a question of artistic shading, he was visibly shaken and his face was the face of a man who has known the ultimate grief. When Karen said huskily, "Dear — I have waited so long — " he clutched at her as a drowning man might clutch at his hope of rescue and salvation. When he answered, "I love you," his voice broke. Women, lined up across the country, were to sob openly at that moment. Karen, raising her lips for his kiss, nearly sobbed. She wasn't aware, as he held her close, that the wee crackling sound only she heard was the rustle of a crisp letter in his pocket. Everyone knows the success of the initial picture that was made by Tom Kildare in support of Karen Kent. People who had gone to the theatre to mock at the serious efforts of an ex-slap-sticker, left in silence and were strangely awed. "The guy's there," a man — echoing the sentiments of masculine America — said to his girl friend. But the g. f., forgetful of face powder, was blowing her nose. As for Karen and Tom — they repeated history and sat in a projection room and watched the run-off of the first reels. Later they saw the entire preview together. After seeing the whole film, Tom wrote to his wife. "I think," he told her, "that it's slickKaren has given me a genuine break. But I won't know if it is sure-fire — or if I'm merely prejudiced — until the big opening. The opening will be in a week, and I'm having a radio sent to you so that you can listen in on the excitement. I'll spend the week-end after the opening with you, in the san. It's been a long time between drinks, Mary — we'll have a lot to talk about." Tom's wife didn't dictate an answer to the letter. She merely sent a wire. It read, "I'm waiting. Love." Tom Kildare, so self-satisfied in the past — surrounded through his comedy days by a throng of satellites — was the cat who walked by himself during the week between