Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

Joan Fontaine, who has fully recovered from her recenf illness, visited her husband, Brian Aherne, on the set of "Hired Wife," and posed with him and his co-star, Rosalind Russell. Joan, at right above, is starring in "Back Street. A Girl With Principles! Continued from page 34 when Miss Russell was twenty it was determination that forced her on, kept her working steadily. As a matter of fact she had to, to keep herself. Determination to succeed stopped her from using that far too often heard line : "My dear, I wouldn t take that part for anything— what about my prestige"? She took any and every kind of part she could get, and that versatile background has made her today one of the few top-notch stars who aren't "typed." Just think, from a demure English school mistress in "The Citadel" to a hard New York society dame in "The Women,^ and who could imagine "Craig's Wife" making such a quick speed reporter in "His Girl Friday"— or an efficient secretary in "Hired Wife." "It's against my principles to try and get to the top by what I call short cuts and angles," says Rosalind. "Anyway, I don't think it can be done. There's only one way to reach the heights and that's through that dreary old thing called 'hard work.' It doesn't do you a bit of good being nice to a lot of important picture executives, because if they really want you for a part, believe you me you'll get it, whether you are friendly with them or not. And if you don't fit the part, or they don't want you in it, no amount of wrangling or short ' cuts can help you one little bit. Another of my principles which today people are apt to call strange is — not owing a thing to anybody. Even in the old days I'd walk or bus from place to place till the time came when I could buy outright my own automobile." I happen to know as well that when she was over in Paris, the smartest dress designers fell over each other to try and give Rosalind their clothes, because that grand knack she has of wearing them would be the best advertising in the world. But no, not Rosalind ; what she gets she pays for. By accepting those clothes she'd be in constant debt to the designers and that's not in the R. R. make-up. She adores clothes, and if she weren't such a successful actress she could and probably would design and own a dress shop. "It's always been my theory that one or two really good well-made dresses are a far better proposition than a whole lot of cheap ones that may look fine for a while but lose their shape so much sooner," says Roz. Smart women are the smartest shoppers, too, as a rule, she thinks. Russell takes care of her clothes, won't wear a favorite Paris import to a party if it's one of those bigcharity affairs where you are pretty sure to have soup and ice cream spilled down your front and back. She gives her maid some money to go out and hire a costume, which is a bit risky, as the maid is only too likely to come back with anything from a Russian peasant to a Hawaiian princess dress for her mistress to put on. One of the stock questions you have to ask when interviewing an actress is — Would you like to play in a costume picture? To which they nearly all reply, with a far-away dreamy look in their eyes, "Oh, of course, if only I could play Juliet or Camilla !" Well, here's the exception that proves the rule, because Rosalind Russell wouldn't want to. "It's my theory that in this day and age when speed is the password, when children read gangster stories and we accept herds of people rushing about in gas-masks as calmly as we accept the daily milkman, it doesn't make sense to go to the movies and sit through a lot of fan-fluttering and sword-play. Some day soon, I hope, when the world calms down again, polite tea-time conversation will ring true once more, but just now I feel the public wants a bomb of terrific action to explode in the first minute and it's one of my principles to try always to give the public what it wants !" One of the cardinal sins for a Hollywood actress is to go to her own preview. The studios hate it. It's apt to lead to trouble in that the star is sure everyone else in the picture is better photographed than she is, that her clothes aren't becoming, and that she's been cheated out of some lovely close-ups. Well, all M-G-M needs to do to have Russell fly to a preview is tell her not to go. Now they're wiser and don't say a word about when and where the picture is to be shown. But our Rosalind can smell a preview "even if it's four hundred miles off in San Francisco, and it's one of the mysteries how she finds out. Once David Selznick did a sneak preview in a tiny theatre way downtown among the markets, but sure enough R. R. was there, and when he asked her how she found out and who told her she replied, knowing that the informer would be fired if she gave away his name, "Why, Mr. Selznick, I always come down here to buy my meat, and being very tired I just stopped in to rest, and imagine my surprise when MY picture was previewed !" Another time when instructions had been given to the box office girl, the theater manager and the ticket attendant not to let Miss Russell into the place on pain of death, she not only went disguised in gray wig and old lady's black clothes, but when the picture was through stood next to Mr. Louis Mayer and the director listening to what they said about her and the picture. Then when they'd finished she pulled off the mangy wig, laughed in their surprised faces and flew off to where her pale tan Buick was hidden up a dark alley. If her mind's made up to see the preview nothing short of an earthquake will stop her from getting there. When a picture is completed, the stars and directors nearly always exchange presents. Champagne — Scotch — perfume or i flogs — but Rosalind's always determined to be original. The first part of George Cukor's present, delivered in a large truck, was a fully grown tree for his beautiful hillside garden, and then a small truck took around a table-cloth embroidered with a picture of that tree, so that George could sit in the shade and have his meals out in the California sun! So if she can think up brilliant things like that, far be it from me to force fish and meat on my children ! Miss Russell thinks Cole Porter must have had Hollywood in view when he wrote Get Out of Town Before It's Too Late. "After ten weeks or so on a picture of strict daily routine it's essential that you take a complete change. I mean in 'The Women' I got physically tired out, falling flat on my face out of a quickly opened door twenty or more times, plunging headlong into that moving bin for a couple of days, having my hair UP so tight with lacquer it nearly drove me mad. In 'His Girl Friday' it was the mental strain that nearly got me. I believe no picture before moved so fast or had so many words per minute, and getting those words out so quickly hardly gave me time to take a breath. I mean it. The monotony of never seeing anything but the same drive to and from the studio night and morning, of just going home dog tired to have dinner on a tray in bed and look over next: day's lines before you turn the lights off — well, it gets you down if you don't get out of town and relax. In pictures you can't have nearly the fun you can on the road with a big musical comedy. That's because in a show you get to know the crowd so well, whereas in pictures just as you are beginning to know people and have those funny gags that make life fun, their work is through, and off they go onto another film and you probably don't see them again for six months. Then again, Hollywood spoils you and you begin to think you are the most important thing in the world. That's another reason I have to go East and visit my large family, to be made 'small' by my brothers and sisters who talk just as much as I do, about everything but pictures. I just can't get a word in edgeways back there about movies. That takes the gilt off my Hollywood gingerbread, all right." Of course even some of the Russell principles fall by the wayside. When she came out West first, to make a picture for Universal, she was determined not to buy or own a single thing that couldn't be put right on the Chief with her heading back Eastward. Well, she's going to have a tough time getting that Beverly Hills home, half Victorian, half modern, onto the Chief. And I'm afraid that the brand new swimming-pool won't be too easy a job, either. 78