Screenland (May-Oct 1941)

Ray Milland's Romantic Real Life Story Continued from page 55 reckoned it to his credit that he murdered none of them. One morning a desperate voice reached Connie over the phone. "You've got to get me a job or book me at the nearest madhouse." She called him next day. Gaumont needed someone to play an American juvenile. Ray hobbled down, and faked the accent well enough to get the part only because they could find no one else to do it better. What followed sounds like an old Mack Sennett gag. He had long since resolved, once he got hold of some money, to return to America. He missed the orange juice. Better to starve in California, where at least he'd be warm. Better to take his meager chances over there than ask Mai to share chances equally meager in London. The picture netted him twelve hundred and fifty dollars. The day after it was finished, he packed his trunk and sailed, neglecting to inform Connie lest she try to stop him. Halfway across the Atlantic, he received a cable. "WHERE IN THUNDER ARE YOU HAVE SIGNED YOU WITH BRITISH LINE." "WILL RETURN IF THEY PAY MY FARE BACK," he replied. "FARE OK PASSAGE ARRANGED ON LACONIA LEAVING NEW YORK MAY 13." He docked at four on the 13th, caught the Laconia at five, worked for three weeks and set sail again, forgetting that he'd given British Lion an option for another picture. A second cable met him in mid-Atlantic, a second time he turned back at the docks. This time, a thought chastened, he waited a week after the picture's completion for official permission to depart. He landed in New York, his months of labor a delusion. Living expenses had bitten so deeply into his capital that he still had only twelve hundred and fifty dollars ! It was then that one of his glittering impulses hit our hero. He'd never been through the Panama Canal. Not to have been through the Panama Canal was deplorable. He booked passage to California The pride of possession must be great when the Ray Millands dine tete-a-tete in their bright and cheerful dining room, right. that way, stopped off at Cuba and lost the lion's share of his fortune, arriving in Hollywood with a hundred and seventy dollars — exactly the sum, if you remember that far back, which had stood between him and starvation when he got to London. Thus the full circle had been rounded. But Ray was only moderately cast down. True, he and Mai would have to postpone housekeeping arrangements, but that was all right, honey, he'd have a job snagged, say in a week, ten days. Mai buoyed less easily. With the dolorous days of their breakup etched in acid on her memory, she suggested that they ought to have five thousand dollars to start with, and maybe he'd better give up the idea of acting for steadier, if more pedestrian, employment. Ray agreed to the first, and flouted the second suggestion. He took a room at a cheap hotel, but the time soon came when a dollar and a half a day loomed like Everest compared with his cash on hand. So he rented a twentyfive dollar apartment. He fenegled a jaloppy out of a dealer by pledging a down payment of twenty-eight dollars. For lack of garage money, he parked this wreck in an empty lot. One morning he found the lot empty even of his car. The dealer had, in the genteel phrase, repossessed it. To Ray this was money in the bank, since he hadn't made the down payment. _ His powers of persuasion never showed more brilliant than in the feat of getting himself an agent, agents being coyer than jobs in Hollywood. The agent got him interviews, the interviews got him nowhere. 70