Screenland (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

80 SCREENLAND taken this matronly turn. For, slender and supple, she was like a glowing, fair-skinned girl who, a few moments before, had breezed into the room for all the world as though just bicycling out of an English country lane. Her short-skirted gray suit bore out this impression. Blue-green eyes smiled from under sunny hair topped by a tilted beret which evidently had weathered rain and shine. Plain only as to clothes, she struck me as quite the smartest thing since women wore brains. "But the trouble with babies is you never know what they're going to do in pictures," pointed out Miss Allan. "Remember the scene with the baby in 'David Coppertield' where both of us were in bed? Well, there I was in the best scene of the best part I'd had since coming to Hollywood and I'd looked forward to it with high hopes. It was short, but so human that I'd counted on it as meaning everything to me. All I had to do was turn and say, 'David.' Nothing could be simpler — or so it seemed. .The only thing to keep in mind was time. That was of first importance because the baby was only four days old and was allowed but thirty seconds under the lights. The instant they were turned on we started the scene. I turned and was saying 'David' when the baby jerked up its tiny hand and clapped it right over my mouth. You can imagine the result — far from 'Okay for sound.' So we had to wait, with the lights off, then do it over again. No hand came up the second time, but something else did. The baby hiccupped. I was about to make a third attempt when Mr. Cukor, the director, said: 'Never mind, we'll keep 'em in. Those hiccups are good stuff.' That precious infant had stolen my scene !" Miss Allan threw back her head and laughed at the precocious robbery. "That was your first experience with a baby," I supposed. "With a four-days-old one, yes." she granted, "but not with babies in general and particularly babies-in-arms. Many's the scene they've stolen from me in the theatre. That happened when I was touring England with a stock company. We played melodrama. Our main stand-by was 'The Coast Guard's Daughter.' I was the daughter, and although the coast guard could save others from a watery grave in no time at all it took him five acts to save me from an even worse fate. To keeo up the suspense I had to do a frightful lot of screaming. The babies in the audience were always pretty good at it, too. I'll never forget the night we played Chesterfield, a small coal-mining town. The audience was very interesting, with the blackened men coming straight from the mines without washing up and their wives carrying babies wrapped in shawls. A more sympathetic audience couldn't be imagined. The men and the women were all for me and their babies all with me. The moment I turned on my screams those youngsters whooped it up and when I went into my shrieks they went me one better. Nothing could stop them. After that highly competitive performance a woman with a crying baby under her shawl was waiting for me at the stage door. 'Please, miss,' she said, 'you've got my kid bawlin' so orful that I've brought 'im 'round to let 'im see you ain't really takin' on. An' there's a favor I'd like to ask you, for the good Lor' knows it's the on'y way me an' my man will be able to get a wink o' sleep this 'ole blessed night. Jus' to shut 'im up, would you min', miss, kissin' Joey?' I kissed Joey." Babies and Earthquakes Continued fr.om page 27 "Then you learned about babies before coming to Hollywood?" "Long before — at any rate, about children. You see," explained Miss Allan, "at sixteen I was a kindergarten teacher. That was at my home in Skegness, a small place on the east coast of England. And it was from those children I learned about acting. I mean they gave me the idea, put it into my head. It's said, you know, that all actors are children, but I think it would be truer to say that all good actors are children. Those in the kindergarten certainly acted instinctively, and after teaching them elocution for three or four months I discovered I'd never know as much as they did. But I wanted desperately to learn something about acting, so I decided to go Billie de la Volta, a blonde lovely you'll see in English films, is very proud of her pet rabbit. to the Old Vic in London. At first my father, a doctor, was determined I shouldn't go on the stage, but finally I won him over by saying I merely wanted to study elocution. I really began as an understudy, then had a year and a half in Shakespeare. It was well worth going that hundred and fifty miles to London." Meanwhile I wondered what brings English actresses six thousand miles to Hollywood, whether it is the lure of fame or fortune. "I wasn't intrigued by money," replied Miss Allan, "because I knew in coming here I'd have to pay two income taxes, so in the end I'd be no better oft financially. But I would be better off professionally if I made a success and then went back to England, for there they appreciate people coming from Hollywood. What I wanted was a build-up. You can't get that in England. After being in pictures there for three years I was called a star, but it didn't mean anything. There had been no build-up, and I realized I could get no further without breaking away. In Hollywood I would be learning from the start. It is good to learn here how people are made from nothing. In England it is an entirely different experience, for nearly all the film people are taken from the stage. It is necessary to be famous on the stage first of all. otherwise a person is quite unknown to cinema audiences. This, of course, is not true of Hollywood stars, who are enormously popular there. With British people taken from the stage there is still another difference. First the film producers look for acting ability, then for a pretty face. Here in Hollywood if a girl is very pretty they sign her up, and nine times out of ten it works out." "Do you think American girls are prettier than English girls?*' I dared to ask. "American girls are more finished, better groomed in the matter of hair, style, and the like." Miss Allan decided. "But English girls are naturally prettier — that is, without cosmetics and other artificial aids. When it comes to these things American girls make a better job of it. Girls on the street here take much more trouble with themselves. Stenographers and waitresses will spend two dollars a week on their looks, where in England girls spend a like amount on holidays, bicycling into the country and that sort of thing. In America it all comes down to film stars. Clever copies of their dresses may be bought in the shops for ten or twenty dollars. But English shops don't study the dresses of film stars. British screen actresses are not so well-dressed as Hollywood stars, and for this reason their clothes do not stir the imagination, or at any rate excite the imitation, of English girls. Nor is there the same keen, lively interest in the screen generally. Our girls are not quite sure what it's all about." "How did you feel about it?" "I was just excited about coming to Hollywood," she glowed, "and interested in seeing what to do — have my hair dyed, my teeth out, or my face lifted. From what I'd heard I expected to be entirely made over. But I was disappointed in that, for they took me just as I was. However, I do take more pains with my personal appearance here than I did at home. But not off the screen. I can't be bothered. I'm a very easy-going person." A very genuine person, I should say. She's so real you'd never take her for an actress, not to mention the very good actress she is. "Anyway," she added, "Hollywood has given me the build-up I needed and broadened my outlook." "But meant nothing eventful?" "Indeed it has," she protested, "the most terribly eventful experience I've ever known. It came with my first visit, when I'd been here only three weeks — the earthquake. I was working with Lionel Barrymore in 'Looking Forward' when it struck. Far from looking forward to anything, I believed it to be the end of the world. It wasn't fright that seized me, but something a thousand times worse, a vast, overwhelming sense of utter destruction. It seemed to paralyze me. Then I noticed a little child who had been playing about the stage and was tumbled over by the first shock. As I snatched her up, she gazed at the huge, swaying building and smilingly lisped, 'Rockabye.' " Miss Allan passed her hand over her eyes, then reflected: "Children have always figured in my life, from teaching to acting. They have an unerring instinct for dramatizing everything, including themselves. Even to this day I never pass a schoolyard at recess time without stopping to watch them at play. L^nconsciously they turn their games into drama, acting as naturally as a young bird flies. Somehow. I feel that whatever I have done in the way of acting I owe to children. So I don't mind having babies. But I don't want to have any more earthquakes !"