Screenland (May-Oct 1938)

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Send only 3 cent stamp <g& pi r ,nA\aa* Model with your ring size (strip W LJ LiMlieB UOOei of paper wound round A □ Men a Model finger will do) . Make two monthly $2 payments. WE A NAME TRUST YOU — your ^ A ~ Eackage comes AT ONCE A ADDRESS y Return mail. — O OQ OO but a part nevertheless. How it happened goes something like this : After Goldwyn signed Gurie, the screen tests she made for him were shown to other producers by Goldwyn himself. There were several .offers to put her in this picture and that, and finally Goldwyn agreed to lend his new find to Universal for the James Whale production of "The Road Back." However, it was strictly a part of the arrangement that she would work under a different name. Thus, one Hedvig Ibsen, a slight, brown-haired, skyblue-eyed girl did the part of Marie in a brief sequence in the film version of Erich Maria Remarque's novel of Germany after the war. The scene was a brief flash in which Adolf Bethke, played by Henry Hunter, returns to find that his wife Marie is the subject of gossip because of her romance with another man during Adolf's absence. Immediately he had made the loan-out of his new actress, Goldwyn regretted the move and, had it been possible, would have recalled his newcomer from Norway to complete seclusion until the filming of "Marco Polo." Luck stepped in for Goldwyn when the producers, acting as censors of their own creations in celluloid, decided to delete the sequence and avoid possible hue and cry over a scene in which a soldier separated for more than a year from his young wife returns to find that she is soon to become a mother. So, onto the cutting room floor went the brief scene acted by Hedvig Ibsen, nee Sigrid Gurie, in "The Road Back," and Mr. Goldwyn enjoyed the complete fruits of his shrewd showmanship by offering Sigrid Gurie for the first time to any public in his "Marco Polo." "I have told you I was _ not unduly nervous acting the role of Princess Kukuchin," continued Miss Gurie. "But I must in fairness add that it was a great help to have one so considerate, so pleasant and helpful to work with as Gary Cooper. He was not the least bit like I had been given to understand a star actor is when you play with him in a picture." Just what she had been given to understand an actor is like when you work with him in a picture, she didn't say — but we can imagine. At this writing there is no final conclusion as to whether a favorable, unfavorable or indifferent attitude by the public generally will result from the socalled "great deception." Up to now, the American public has given the Brooklynborn Norwegian beauty a cheer. Natural enough. It is certainly no part of unpleasant to discover that a lady_ of such vital charm, capability and inspiring determination to make come true the most understandable dream of being a Hollywood star, is one born on the home lots of the U.S.A. And, as a matter of fact, how much "deception" was* there? After all, a girl looking for a job as an office assistant or a movie actress has small chance of getting even an interview without a claim upon some "experience" in the job sought. So the office assistant says she's had "experience," and the candidate for a movie acting contract, if she's smart, says she's had "experience." Further than that one remark, Sigrid Gurie claims, there was no effort on her part to add color to her own past. She says nobody was more surprised than herself that there would be a hot news angle to the fact that she was born in Brooklyn. She zvas born there, of Norwegian parents ; who took her and her twin brother to visit her grandmother in Oslo when the babies were eleven months' old. Back in the United States for a few years, and at three Sigrid and her brother were again living in Norway. There Sigrid remained until sent to schools in Belgium and France. When she was six she saw her first picture ; star : Charlie Chaplin. Then, there, sitting in a theatre in Oslo, Sigrid made up her mind she would be a screen actress. She never changed her suddenly arrived at idea of her destiny. Returning to Oslo from finishing school in France, Sigrid tried her best to persuade her parents she wanted to be an actress. They, she says, seemed to feel a bit sorry for her, Sympathizing in her youthful dream — but giving no encouragement to an idea they felt would bring her great disappointment someday if she persisted in it. "I couldn't run away from home," she said. "You see, I had an allowance. But I knew my parents would stop that if I went to America to try to become an actress, in order to bring me back to them. The only thing I could think of was to have them send me to London to study art. At Oslo there was an academy at which I could get an adequate elemental and finally thorough training in art, and I had no convincing argument when I was sent there instead of London. However, 1 insisted London would be better for me, and after studying some time I took some of my work to magazine editors in Oslo. One of them offered me a manuscript to illustrate ; but I didn't want that, only a good criticism on my work — to use as evidence that my parents should send me to London to study. So I went to London. While I lived at a good address, my room was small and very inexpensive, and I saved enough from my allowance to bring me to America — and Hollywood. "I had the idea that I would do extra work, and, as the dreams have it, be 'discovered' by some director or producer. But in Hollywood I soon found that it is not so easy that way. So I studied with a dramatic coach and signed with an agent. He agreed with me that I would do well to sign with Samuel Goldwyn — it would be great if I could do it, he said. Anyway, he finally was able to interest Mr. Goldwyn in looking at some portraits I had made ; and to his surprise Mr. Goldwyn said he would like to see me. I was given the screen test, and signed. "If this 'hoax' about my being a former actress of the Norwegian stage is taken very seriously, I am sorry. But to be truthful with you I felt it was fair enough — and I still believe all's fair in war and getting into the movies ; it's so hard to get into the movies." Hard? That's what we all used to think. We wondered how long Miss Gurie would have let the vague, but all-inclusive description "former Norwegian stage actress" stand had not the whole business burst into headlines as a result of her divorce action against Thomas Stuart — whom she had met in London, and married in 1936 when he followed her to Hollywood. "I hadn't intended to talk about myself much, hadn't thought there would be any demand for me to do so by newspapers, until after I had appeared in two, perhaps three pictures, and had demonstrated that I was capable of standing on what reputation I could gain by my screen work. But now it's all out, and I hope the public will not react unfavorably. I didn't mean to do any harm, and I don't think any harm has been done. Mr. Goldwyn wasn't displeased. All he said was 'if you have any more clever showmanship ideas, I wish you would tell me about them.' " All of which still leaves in the air the question whether Sam Goldwyn knew he had signed an actress who had never before acted on the stage or screen. You can guess for yourself. For my part I think Goldwyn didn't care a hoot one way or the other. Why should he? Isn't he the man Sigrid Gurie made up her mind she was going to work for because in Norway — and elsewhere— he's known as the "star maker"? 90 SCREENLAND