Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

You remember Aladdin ? The poor tailor's son who found the magic lamp, and every time he rubbed it a Genie appeared and granted Aladdin's every wish. One day at lunch . . . presto! Genie appeared. "Hey," said Aladdin, "why are you here? I didn't rub the lamp." "I know it," replied Genie, "but it rubs me the wrong way to see you eating all soft food. Take this Dentyne and chew some often. Its extra chewiness gives your teeth needed exercise and helps protect them from tartar and decay. And that richly satisfying taste is real flavor magic." "That's fine!" said Aladdin. "Don't forget," answered Genie. "Dentyne adds lustre to your smile." "Genie," said Aladdin, "you're really a genius." Moral: You too should take the Genie's advice. Try Dentyne for distinctive flavor and to help brighten your teeth . . . And don't overlook its handy, flat, flavoriite package-so easy to share. 6 INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED STICKS IN EVERY PACKAGE This love scene shows singing star Tony Martin and glamorous Hedy Lamarr in the musical, "Ziegfeld Girl," a story which traces the lives of three Follies beauties, played by Hedy, Judy Garland and Lana Turner. James Stewart is also one of the picture's stars. HELPS KEEP TEETH WHITE. . . MOUTH HEALTHY good. That's what goes to make up experience. I'm sorry for a lot of girls in pictures today because they haven't had the gorgeous experience that has been such a great help to me. And one trouble with them is that they won't listen to advice. They know it all. Perhaps this isn't their fault. Things have been too easy for them. You don't wonder at their attitude when you stop to think that today an unknown is made a star after one picture. Why, when I came to Hollywood I saw so many stars that I thought the whole set-up must be an astronomical proposition. Picture producers just reach up into the air and pull down stars. In the Vendome one day I overheard a group at the next table discussing the need of a certain type of actor for a part. 'Leo Ditrichstein would be just the man for it,' said one of the bunch. 'Get him!' promptly ordered a dynamic magnate. 'If you can do it,' I remarked, leaning over, 'you'll be performing a miracle.' 'Watch me,' I was haughtily advised. He didn't know that Ditrichstein had been dead for years, probably didn't know he'd ever been alive!" Miss Rambeau drowned her smile in a cup of coffee. "All that some girls need to become picture stars today is to be alive. But girls generally, no matter what their walk in life, have a great advantage in living in this grand day of realism. Reality develops a greater sincerity and a finer tolerance. We're not quibbling with facts these times, we're meeting them. When I was a 'kid, girls were hypocritical. They knew about things, all right, but they pretended not to know and would blush becomingly at what they heard. Nowadays girls won't be annoyed with such silly pretense. It isn't worth the bother, doesn't mean anything. Yet, strangely enough, the screen apparently feels constrained to hide far less intimate things than those openly displayed in the drugstore windows. To me, this seems to be hypocrisy for which there is no valid excuse. What's more, it undermines the honesty of the screen. But pictures now are giving me the right, I'm grateful to say, to use my own brain in developing a characterization. And, aside from any professional view of the situation, the era of the middle-aged woman is coming in strong. You go into a dress shop and find it is showing 38's and 40's among its models because of a general consciousness that the middle-aged woman of today is not as extinct as the dodo. Then, too, there are women who, by wearing slacks, assume to be broad-minded, though perhaps you may have noticed with a possible eye to the rounding out of detail that sometimes the implication is not essentially mental. Yes, we women are rapidly broadening out, but we've still got a long way to go — and I don't mean sideways !" So far, Miss Rambeau had seemed to cover the matter by and large, as it were, yet it remained for her to say in particulars "Both in life and in pictures the glamor girl has got to be bolstered up by the middle-aged woman who has intestinal fortitude — in other words, guts. She needs this sustaining aid to help her over the rough spots of existence as well as the tough ones in a film play. The screen has long since passed the point of just making faces, glamorous or otherwise. It has reached the stage where it must express emotions and, more and more, inner emotions. To do this requires something more than mere glamor, calls for the understanding, the sympathy, the feeling that can come only out of experience. Movie audiences now sense this emotional quality, look for it, recognize it when it is there. They can't be fooled by sham. They demand the real thing. This all comes down to the matter of thought transference. For this reason the best actor or the best actress today is the one who underplays, rather than overplays, a part, so that the underlying thought goes straight home to those people out in front. The male mind, I think, catches that thought more quickly than the female mind because it lets nothing get in the way. A lot of things clutter up the female mind and become obstacles blocking that thought. For one thing, a woman may look around to see how Mrs. Jones is taking the idea. If she sees that Mrs. Jones is for it, she's for it, too. But by this time her male neighbor is 'way ahead of her. He already has got that idea into his mind and is ready for another to come along. Mental acting, accordingly, is the kind that can project a thought and make it stick. This makes it more effective, more lasting, than physical acting. However, the same may be true of acting a part like that of Tugboat Annie. It is what she thinks, not what she does, that comes first with me. Her strength of character means more to me than her physical strength. At the same time, of course, I realize she's a woman with a wallop. After all, I'm really a Dempsey at heart !" 76 SCREENLAND