Screenland (May-Oct 1941)

If scooting can make Constance Moore so pretty we're all for it. She even makes the scooter look prettier. Her latest pictures, "Las Vegas Nights" and "I Wanted Wings." day's work on "Shining Victory," Bette borrowed a nurse's uniform from the wardrobe department. Unobserved either by Stephenson or by Irving Rapper whose first directorial assignment this was, Bette waited until it was the nurse's turn to go on. There was a twinkle of merriment in everyone's eye. But both Stephenson and Rapper were too engrossed in the scene to understand the reason for all the surreptitious giggling around them. Bette was going through her little ruse completely unobserved. Suddenly both actor and director were aware that something unscheduled was happening. They scrutinized the nurse more closely — and then burst out laughing. Bette kissed them both and wished them luck. For she was deeply interested in their individual successes. James Stephenson is definitely no glamor guy. He doesn't want to be one. But still there is about him that quality which causes a feminine fluttering of pulses whenever a woman gives him one of her inventorial glances. A bit over six feet tall, lanky and hard-muscled, with a thin, typically British face, he is very much the matinee idol. But he himself doesn't think so. Even today he scarcely thinks of himself as an actor. For despite the fact that he is thirty-seven, Stephenson didn't set foot on the stage until seven years ago. Born in the village of Selby in Yorkshire, he had a completely different sort of heroworship — his particular idol being, of all things, the town's dentist ! Nothing else interested him. He, too, was determined to devote his life prying around ailing bicuspids and molars. However, he soon learned there wasn't enough money in it to justify 98 the long training and the work involved. At the time, he decided to "go toddling about" the jungles of India and the upper Sudan in Africa. Soon he was attracting attention as a big game hunter and a naturalist. "I still can't figure out how I ever became an actor," he candidly confessed. "I never studied for a career on the stage. Never even gave it a second thought. I'd been in the cotton business for years and I was quite satisfied with my prospects. I had to do considerable traveling and I even lived in Shanghai for a year. So you see, it wasn't wanderlust. I had been a captain with the East Lancashire regiment, 66th Division, in service in France during the war, so it wasn't excitement or a quest for thrills that led me into acting. It was simply an accident. "One day a friend asked me to help him out by taking a part with the Burnley Drama Guild. I told him I couldn't act — that I had never done anything like it in all my life. But he insisted. And I took the role of John Tanner in Shaw's 'Man and Superman,' and if you recall, it's one of the longest parts in any modern play. When it was over, I thought my career as an actor would end then and there. But no. The play was a success. And to my surprise so was my role. That was the beginning." It wasn't that the acting bug actually took hold of Jimmy after his first taste of success. Nor was it his ideals about art and the theater either. It was simply that actingpaid better money than the cotton business. From three pounds a week, he skyrocketed to fifty. And being a clear-headed, practical person, he realized it was mighty difficult to make that kind of money in any other field. So during the next four years, he kept close to the theater. While honeymooning in London, he received an offer to appear in "Storm in a Teacup." By that time, he was known throughout England. Warners sent for him to play in "The Perfect Crime" and he remained at their British studios to do four other films. "So you see," he concluded with a shrug of his shoulder, "that's what I meant when I said I was an actor only by accident. I never spent years of struggling and studying and slaving to achieve it. It simply just happened. That's all." Today, none of the Hollywood directors call this six-foot, brown-eyed, resonant voiced Englishman an "accidental actor." Anyone who can even threaten to steal a picture from Bette Davis or Thomas Mitchell must be gifted with an amount of talent equal to that of this outstanding pair. Even after three years of wandering about the Warner studio here in Hollywood doing infinitesimal parts and never once voicing an objection, Stephenson is still naive and unschooled in the ways of the film colony. The other day, Director Irving Rapper noted that between scenes in "Shining Victory," Stephenson continued to look grim and sour. Several other people on the set also noticed it and said — "Just like Muni — he doesn't , relax between scenes." And they were greatly impressed. But Rapper wasn't satisfied. At last he asked about it. Stephenson broke into a painful grin. "I'm glad you asked about it," he said. "I'd made up my mind not to complain. But the reason I'm so sour and glum is that the starched collar on this doctor's gown is too small and cutting my neck. It hurts quite badly!" Simple little incidents such as these have gone a long way in endearing this droll, unaffected Englishman to everyone who meets him. They still cannot understand his utter simplicity and his refusal to make a fuss over anything. And by degrees, his modest manner and naive actions are becoming legendary not only at his own studio but throughout entire Hollywood. He is getting to be just as incredible to the movie colony as the movie colony is to him. Even after being proclaimed in "The Letter," Jimmy didn't want to just sit around and wait. Breaking all precedents, this handsome smiling Britisher graciously accepted a one-day acting job in "South of Suez," and a twoday part in "Trial and Error." Nowhere else in Hollywood, nor on the recent records, has a star like Jimmy asked for and been given some bit parts to play while waiting for his next assignment to come along. "In 'Shining Victory,'" he told me, "I'm a doctor again. But this time, a research doctor. It's from the A. J. Cronin play, you know, 'Jupiter Laughs.' " Before he realized what he was doing, he had given me a private performance of the entire thing. Judging by that little preview, even the condensed one-man interpretation is equal to his performance in "The Letter." Meanwhile, James Stephenson wanders around his little Palisade cottage wondering what has really happened to him within the past few months. Whenever the haze rises up out of the Pacific and rests languidly on the mountain tops, he relaxes a trifle. "When I see that," he explained, "I really am convinced that I'm walking around in a fog. After all, it seems only yesterday I was in the cotton goods business. It's hard to believe what can happen to one in a short time. And it's even a trifle harder to get accustomed to such a change." Even the family maid has had her routine completely disrupted. Talking to Mrs. Stephenson the other day, she said, "You know, ma'am, now that the Mister is important, and so many people always callin" him, he done better leave messages wherever he's goin'." PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY THE CUNEO PRESS, INC.