Screenland (Nov 1941-Apr 1942)

SECRETS of Stars' ELOPEMENTS LOVE MAKES NEWS — and when it's breathtak4 ingly sudden love, news is most fascinating. Behind Hollywood's sudden loves lie untold stories — facts shushed or overlooked in the rush of headlines. Read in November Screen Guide why some of these had to be; why others led to disillusionment, to just-as-sudden divorce. Remember: Screen Guide for facts! Other Scoops in November Screen Guide: Why Gable Is a "Great Lover." Read the actual script of his greatest love scene — and see it in pictures! Tyrone Power Is Still a "Killer"— in more ways than one! Gene Tierney— Sorry She Married? See through the lawsuits and the rumors to the truth about the marriage that became a front-page scandal overnight! Joan Blondell: How to Live in Hollywood. Candid photos. George Raft's New Racket: Photo-facts from off-screen. "Our Marriage Is a Romance." Lucille Ball shows how! It Pays to Be a Gentleman. Just ask Herbert Marshall! COLOR PORTRAITS of Clark Gable, Ann Sheridan, Joan Blondell, Gene Tierney, Linda Darnell. Also pages of intimate gossip, fashion news, beauty hints, movie reviews! Screen Guide NOVEMBER ISSUE Now on Sale at ALL NEWSSTANDS Franchot Tone and all those guys. She won't go with an unknown punk like me. Gee, but ask her anyway, huh?" And three times during the day Bob, who rarely ever makes phone calls, called Helen to inquire, "What did she say? Have you gotten her yet?" By the time Miss de Havilland was finalIv reached at the studio — and said she would be most delighted to go with Mr. Stack — that voung man was in such a state of collapse that he had to be revived with a double coke. Out at Universal studio in the Valley they will tell you that the person who gets the most fan mail on the lot is Deanna Durbin. And the person who gets the second most fan mail is Robert Stack. This is indeed remarkable, considering the fact that Bob has been in so few pictures. "Judging from the mail," said someone in charge, "all the young girls think of him as the ideal boy friend, and all the mothers think of him as the ideal son." And at a luncheon the other day I was interested in hearing a woman star, who can think back further than the day before yesterday, say, "Bob Stack's great charm on the screen is that he is so typically American. He has all the traits that Wallace Reid once had." Well, whatever it is, the girls certainly go for tall, blond and handsome Mr. Stack. When Bob first was signed by Universal on a long term contract in 1939, following his appearance in the Henry Duffy drama school's production of "Personal Appearance" at the El Capitan in Hollywood, the gossip columnists played him up big as a socially and financially prominent young sportsman. Socially prominent he is indeed. When his family first arrived in the West, Los Angeles was an Indian pueblo with only five white families. His grandfather was Modini Wood, renowned opera singer. His grandmother, Mamie Perry, made her debut at La Scala in Milan. The charming and attractive _ Betzi Stack, long a popular social leader in the West, is his mother. But "financially prominent" is something else again. Bob doesn't inherit any money until he is 35 (left in a trust fund for him by his father who died in 1928) and as he is only 22 now, and as the Government has a way of taking things, Bob is probably just as poor as you and me and the rest of us. But when the columnists' "socially and financially prominent" Robert Stack appeared at the studio you can be quite sure that there was a lot of feeling against him. The boys who had come up the hard way simply assumed that they wouldn't like Robert, without giving the kid a chance, and they put themselves out to razz him whenever possible. I was on the "First Love" set one day when Bob was starting the picture. "Mercy," minced one of the gaffers with the puss of a Maxie Rosenbloom, "is that attractive Mr. Stack working today! Dear, dear, we must get our best tea-cups." Bob, who keeps himself in perfect physical condition, could have torn the guy into bits. But he just smiled awfully hard and tried to cover up that he was terribly young and terribly hurt. Deanna, on the other hand, took a great liking to him at once, and today hers is the only girl's picture in his room. It's autographed, "To Bob, my friend, and 'First Love,' Deanna." The razzing of Mr. Stack reached a new high when he was starred in "Badlands of Dakota," a hard-riding, hardfighting, shoot-'em-up picture. This type of Western was like old home week to the other guys in the cast, so they decided to gang up on Robert who, they were certain, didn't know one end of a horse from the other. But before the picture was finished Bob in his casual, happy-go-lucky way, had shown them that he knew more SCREENLAND about riding, fighting, and shooting than they would ever know. "Say," said Andy Devine to one of the stunt men, "that guy you're kidding about not knowing -how to hold a gun, Robert Stack? Well, go easy, buddy, you might just like to know that he was a member of the Ail-American Skeet Team in 1936 and 1937. He won the Del Monte pistol championship in 1937, and the San Joaquin Open 20-gauge championship in 1938." Al Green, the director, told me that Bob was really the "patsy" of the picture, until the boys saw how well he could ride. Then one by one the hecklers drifted away. "That blond polo fellow," one of the old-timers informed Broderick Crawford, "brother, he kin ride!" "Through all the heckling," said Al Green, "Bob didn't once lose his temper. I never saw a guy so willing to work. Honestly, he was the hardest worker on the picture." "Didn't it infuriate you, Bob," I asked one day, "when those smarty pants were razzing the daylights out of you? Why didn't vou push their face in?" To which Air. Stack replied, "I thought it was damn swell of those guys who had had all that experience to bother to razz me. I don't think they would have spent all that time making fun of me if 'they hadn't liked me." See, what I mean about Robert Stack? You can't help but like him. Universal's newest star was born in Los Angeles on January 13, 1919. When he was five his family moved to Paris. When he returned to the United States at the age of 11 he could not talk to his older brother Jim, who had remained in America, without the aid of an interpreter. But it didn't take Bob long to learn English again, and it didn't take him long to realize that what he wanted to be when he grew up was an actor. But he was so busy being a number one sportsman that he didn't get around to giving it a serious thought until 77