Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

H 11 : The combination playroom-sitting room in the home of Marjorie Rambeao, who'll soon make another "Tugboat Annie" film, is the room she likes better than any other one in the house. Woman with a Wallop Continued from page 51 physical side that I wondered if she could really throw a punch. "Maybe I don't know my own strength," she modestly reflected. "Anyway, .a dreadful thing once happened. Even thinking of it now makes me think of going to the dentist's. We were making a picture at Fox's called 'Grand Canary.' I had a grand time as the canary. But George Regos had a terrible time. What made it worse was that he had gone to a lot of expense getting ready for the picture. He'd had his front teeth capped so he'd look nice when he smiled in the close-ups. You know how actors do it." She pulled a set grin. "Well, in one scene I had to hit George. Usually they count before a blow is struck — one, two, three — so that everything's timed and no damage is done. But for once they forgot to count. I swung on George— wham ! Suddenly the air was filled with flyingteeth. Poor George! All his beautiful dentistry work was gone with the big blow. My fist was bleeding, and so was my heart. But to console me, when the picture was finished, the crew on it presented me with a gold bracelet in the shape of a boxing glove and the inscription on it read: 'To Kid Rambeau.' " Cautiously moving out of range, I inquired as to whether Miss Rambeau now was doing much slugging. "Just enough to keep my hand in," she sweetly replied. "We don't want Tugboat Annie — she's really a dear kind soul — to be too physical. But there's a fight in every picture, and how she does enjoy it !" It was pleasant to hear this good news, bringing as it did its assurance of knockdown-and-drag-out vigor, together with the joy of youthful zest. "Out here in pictures," came the enlightening information, "when you are over fifteen you're an old hag. They expect you to sit around and talk of the good old days like an old ham. Still, it has its compensations. They give me a chair to sit on evidently to make sure I won't fall down. You're sure of having your innings if you wait long enough here, though at one time I thought I'd never have mine. But it's all right, now that I'm a mother. Yes," she spoke with deep feeling, "I believe I am safe in saying that I'm the only mother who ever gave birth to a tunnel." When I came up for air she was calmly explaining : "That unique experience resulted from my being in 'Under Pressure.' Indeed, in that tunnel picture I was under pressure all the time. It was like fighting for my life. It's far more fun fighting now, for as Tugboat Annie I can do it with a twinkle in my eye. That's natural, as I'm part Irish. The other part's French. Do you wonder I'm crazy? You don't have to be crazy in pictures, but it helps." Was this also true of the stage? Miss Rambeau answered: "Sometimes the stage is enough to drive you crazy. That's because you may find yourself relying on things that aren't there. For example, while playing Rosalind in New York — you remember— I put my foot on what I thought was \ real log only to find it was a painted one. When my foot slipped I nearly fell on my stomach. And you can't be a romantic heroine, even in the Forest of Arden, when you're flat on your Vitamin-A container. It's different in pictures. Everything you touch is real. If you want the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia, they go and get it for you. The only thing you can't get in pictures is fat. Not if you want to stay in them. I'd been in them, on and off, for ten years when my husband took me out of them. I then took to needlepoint. Also poundage. When I decided to go back to pictures the first thing in my mind was, 'I must get thin.' I lost fifty-two pounds in eleven weeks. I looked all right from the back, but from the front I looked like an abandoned folding-bed. To get into shape for Tugboat Annie, perhaps shipshape is the word, I had to put on twentytwo pounds. Annie needed 'em to give her a wallop." What about the streamlined girl ? Did she need the same thing for the same purpose? Miss Rambeau came right back with another question : "How can the streamlined girl have a wallop when she looks like a plate of milk? You can't beat nature. If the present feminine attempt to do it keeps up we'll soon have a generation of weak, flat-chested, spindle-legged girls. In a way, the screen's to blame. Of course, the camera does increase a person's size to a degree and therefore demands a certain reduction. But this can be carried too far. Surely, it doesn't attract men ; it's done for women. These thin young things you see on the screen are bound to come to the realization that if they're to put over something fine and strong they must have more than a stalk of celery under their chest. And this goes for similar physical types off the screen. If one of the sturdy pioneer women of America could see the deliberately skinny specimens of the present day she would probably turn in her covered wagon. And if reducing keeps on going the way it is now we'll soon be eating one another. That's why I'm getting some meat on my bones — I want tj be good picking!" Through the humorous twists given her opinions it could readily be seen Miss Rambeau was in deadly earnest. Her forthrightness stamped her as Hollywood's foursquare actress. "It's all well enough to be streamlined, but we're surfeited with downright skinniness. As one result we've already had too long an era of the masculine type of woman, the woman who looks, dresses, talks and behaves like a man. First of all, girls and women, if they value their charm, should have the sense and the courage not to diet themselves to the point of emaciation. See what it's doing to our actresses. From the looks of a lot of them, what they need most of all is a square meal. Heaven knows I needed to be thin when I started, for I was a leading woman at twelve in Portland, Oregon, and at that time played Camille, who can't look chunky and get away with it in anything but grand opera." As I marvelled at the early beginning of Miss Rambeau's brilliant career, she smiled and related : "Yet one Hollywood executive once asked me if I'd had any stage experience. At learning I'd been on the stage for thirty-five years, he exclaimed, 'Why, then you're famous!' 'After all that time,' I told him, 'I must be either famous or notorious.' Here's the pay-off : 'Oh, Miss Rambeau,' he protested, 'I know you are a good woman !' Well, in this business you have to take the bad with tht Marjorie Rambeau likes to keep house and does many housekeeper's chores herself, such as arranging the linen shelves, as above. 74