Screenland (Nov 1937-Apr 1938)

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"Mr. Mayer said my voice made a newgirl of me," reported Eleanor. "When they ran the picture in the projection room and it got to that number another important executive said, 'How does it feel, Eleanor, having a picture in which just one set cost a hundred thousand dollars, the biggest ever, even bigger than anything in 'Hen Hur,' and knowing it was all made for you?' 'I don't feel any different,' I told him, 'than when I was working for seven dollars a night in a small night club.' " "What a thing to say !" marvelled Grandma. "In those days," recalled Eleanor, "it wasn't because I wanted to make money, but because I loved dancing and having something of my own that I was willing to give up everything else. It isn't that I've made any sacrifices. But sometimes when I was starting off to work at seven in the evening and saw children of my age — I was twelve then — playing in the street, I wanted awfully to join them. It was just that wrork came before everything else." "But we had a good time at home on Sundays," Grandma was happy to say. "Eleanor would get up at noon and have her breakfast. After that we'd turn on the radio and hear a continued play about a little boy who ran away with the circus. At four o'clock we'd have dinner. Then Eleanor would read a story by O. O. McIntyre — she'd cut it out of a magazine — about falling leaves that always made her cry. In the evening we'd sing old songs like 'Down By the Old Cherry Orchard' and 'Kiss Me Again.' "And Grandma," added Eleanor, "always had a solo, the same one." What, I wondered, could it have been? " 'Isle d' Amour,' " replied Grandma, letting her eyes rest upon the folded hands in her lap. Simple words told the story of Eleanor Powell better than any highfalutin' language could have told it. Then, as today, she was unspoiled. "I never thought then," she said, "that singing would ever mean so much to me as it does now. It means more than my dancing because it is a new field for me. Dancing was always second nature to me. My father was an expert ballroom dancer, and my grandfather danced till he was eighty-two." "And once," related Grandma, "after Thanksgiving dinner in Northampton, if the old fellow didn't get up and do his stuff!" Proud of her father, that's what she was, a man after Henry Ford's own heart. Mrs. Torrey, like her famous granddaughter, had come a long way since her early Massachusetts day, first to Springfield, then New York, and now at last to Hollywood. "Up to now it has been move, move, move." said Eleanor. "That's why I'm so grateful for having this home. I first realized what I'd lost when I started knocking around the country. I missed going to high school, and I'd never gone on sleigh rides or to parties. But that's what has kept me so young, for now everything's new to me and I get a tremendous kick out of it. Not that I ever do much of anything SCREENLAND but work here. I've never been to a Hollywood party. If I did go I wouldn't knowhow to act. I have a terrible inferiority complex. I'm shy, and wouldn't know how to enter into the spirit of the thing. I couldn't sit on the floor and play games because I've never learned any. And I don't drink or smoke. There are so many things I've never done that I hardly know where to start. For example, I've never been on a boat. But I'm going to take one just for the fun of it when I go to NewYork in January. That will be my first vacation in ten years. I've never seen a football game or been up in an airplane. I'm just terribly old-fashioned. But I suppose when people see me dancing on the screen in black tights they say, 'She's probably the hottest girl in Hollywood.' " "Bless mv soul !" murmured Grandma, shocked to the depths of it. "Do you know what I get most out of in all the world ?" asked Eleanor. "Children. That started in a strange way. At thirteen I was in Baltimore with a vaudeville unit, doing ten shows a day. As if that weren't enough, the press agent said it would be a grand idea for me to give free dancing lessons to children, beginning at seven in the morning. I didn't think there would be any around at that hour. But, to my surprise, the theater was packed. That pepped me up, and I gave those kids lessons till nine o'clock. In Washington, Cincinnati, Kansas City, all over the country. I did the same thing. Clubs were formed, and today there are seventy-five Eleanor Powell clubs. I've sent photographs and written greetings to all of them. It makes me feel like the president of a huge class, and it also makes me very happy. I don't ever want to do anything to disillusion them. There's no thrill in the world like having children look up to you. I thought of this the other day on the 'Rosalie' set. When we were ready for the wedding scene I said to my twelve little flower girls. 'Now if you do this "good" we'll all have some ice cream afterward.' We danced and told stories the whole afternoon." It crossed my mind that Eleanor might be celebrating her own wedding one of these days. "Maybe," she admitted. "But, anyway, not for two years. Then I'd like to give up pictures, be happily married and have children. But I'd want to marry a man who was in this business, so that we would be able to talk pictures and I could keep up my interest in them." "He's got to be pretty darned quiet," emphasized Grandma. "That's the trouble," agreed Eleanor. "I'm very romantic, but I couldn't marry anyone who wanted to be on the go all the time. I had a birthday last Sunday, my twenty-fifth — and that's pretty old not to have met anybody who could be taken seriously. I've really never been in love. I've had lots of boy friends and men on the 'phone saying, 'You're just for me.' But I'm not. They always want me to go tearing around with them, while I'm perfectly satisfied to stay home and read. Wayne Morris is a darling boy. But he insists he won't go out without me. I tell him to be like Bob Taylor, who goes out with other girls besides Barbara Stanwyck and enjoys himself. But Wayne says no, it's me or nobody. When my birthday came along he went out and bought a beautiful engagement ring, but I had to refuse it. That made me feel terribly, Wayne's such a dear, but I couldn't help it. It's just another of the things I've lost. For two years, anyway, I'll have to leave things as they are." The doorbell rang. Leaving, I spoke of how pleasant it had been seeing them all. "I've had a real good time," said Grandma.