Screenland (Nov 1941-Apr 1942)

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SC Bridgeport, Conu. — YOU GIRLS! — Who Suffer From DYSMENORRHEA which makes you WEAK, NERVOUS— If you suffer headache, cramps, backache, feel "dragged out," blue, cranky— due to,functional monthly disturbances—try Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound! Pinkham's Compound is made especially to relieve such female distressit helps build up resistance against such tired, nervous feelings. Hundreds of thousands of women remarkably helped. Follow label directions. Try it! Martha says Carl took her in his arms and said, "You have done a swell job, I'm proud of you!" She told me that with more pride than when she showed me some of her press notices. They are terrified for fear something will happen to the pale blue walls and the gray rug. When, recently, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz stopped by to see them, Desi in muddy jeans and boots, "We kept suggesting that we go out on the porch," laughed Martha, "but it didn't work." Carl said, "And they had a little purp with them, he must have thought we were hawks, the way we kepi our eyes on him — funny how you sweat gumdrops for six months over something new; and then relax." Martha "adores" Lin Yutang and Rupert Brooke . . . French and German lieder . . . her favorite dinner is spare-ribs, fried bananas, romaine with wonderful garlic Roquefort cheese dressing, and corn . . . the Alsops also go for chili . . . her favorite flower is the camellia . . . her favorite radio programme, the Quiz Kids . . . her pet hates the previously mentioned toothbrushes and mannerisms of speech . . . people who keep saying little, pat phrases, like ending every sentence with "you know" . . . she once dropped a beau like a hot cake because he began every sentence with "For cri' eye!" She dropped another swain because he constantly blew on a cigarette ... she collects play-bills from the New York theaters . . . She can't cook . . . says she is one of whom it is said "She can boil water" . . . she can get breakfast, too . . . but not for Carl. Carl says she scrambles eggs and peanut butter and he doesn't even like to think about it . . . she's not athletic, but she is a pretty good marksman, and pretty good at paddle tennis . . . "she has," Carl told me, "the same determination at games as she has in the theater. She's one of the kind of people who does what she does superbly or not at all." _ She would have got along capably as a pioneer woman . . . when the dog gets hurt, says Carl, she'll go right out there and operate on him, lay him open and go to work ... a Florence Nightingale at heart . . . the only time she takes a lickingis when she can't face something ... as soon as she faces it, she's all right . . . She has a beautiful voice . . . this was told me by Carl, as a "secret" . . . "but if you ask her to sing," he says, "she dies . . . she sings for Grandma and me, a soprano voice, and a lovely one ... but it's one of her shynesses." Martha usually sleeps as late as she can in the mornings, when she is not working . . . "that usually takes me to 9.30" . . . Carl gets up at the most amazing hours, 5.30 to 6, usually . . . they spend their evenings very quietly, especially since they have been in the new house ... a new piece of furniture comes and it takes hours to "oh" and "ah" over that, to try it here, then there ... or they sit and listen to the radio_ ... or they play gin rummy . . . or they just sit and talk and laugh while Grandmother knits and "listens to our idle prattle" . . . Martha says "we have fun together, Carl and I, fun just doing nothing, which is real fun . . ." they don't know, or see, many people in the picture business . . . Lucille and Desi, Mary Martin and Richard Halliday, the Hank Potters, Margaret Sullavan and Leland Hayward are the ones they know best. Martha isn't, or wasn't, clothes-conscious. She said, "I never really cared about having a big wardrobe. But I must say that when I'd get an invitation to a big producer's house and my "other dress" was at the dry-cleaner's and / was in a quandry, I'd kick myself for not shopping more. But I have a lovely wardrobe now. Carl has seen to that. He likes to see me in I lovely things, he knows lovely things, he's ' seen women all over the world. I wouldn't dream of buying anything without him." Playing "Our Town" gave her, she says, an interesting complex. Living life after death as she did for so long, first in the play and then in the picture, "made me realize I ought to be living my life for everything there is in .it right now . . ." she added, "and I am — every minute." Martha likes to! be alone with her thoughts ; as some women sort over their souvenirs, old love letters, odds and ends, Martha sorts over her favorite memories. She showed me some of them: the little country schoolhouse near Jamesport, Missouri, where she learned the Three R's, sixteen pupils in eight grades, one young teacher "with a shining mind so that she made us think of learning as something lovely" . . . Miss Ida Lilly, who taught American history in Westport High School and taught Martha something even more important than history — faith in herself, faith in the generous goodness of others ... for it was Miss Lilly who, believing in Martha, insisted that she go to college and financed her while she was there . . . the day she signed her contract with Sol Lesser to make the film version of "Our Town" . . . asking for an advance of $100 and when asked "Why? for what?" said, "to finish paying a debt" . . . putting that check in an envelope and mailing it, knowing that the debt could never be paid in cash alone, because faith had been banked for her, as well as money, and that, too, she must pay back, and keep paying . . . the day she heard that the Bonstelle Theatre in Detroit was recruiting a winter company, took a bus to the city and the theater management gave her a bit and walk-ons . . . other stock companies, each one contributing to her a new tool to use in her craft ... the Globe Theatre in Chicago, the two years there, when she was a member of the company and played ab f breviated versions of Shakespeare ... the day she arrived in New York with $50.00 in her purse . . . the two weeks of summer stock . . . the long summer without work when she rubbed out-at-elbow elbows with her fellow-men . . . that bit in a radio show with another youngster, name of Orson Welles, a nightly presentation of ghost stories, they gave . . . Martha still shivers when she thinks of that, so goose-fleshing j a "ghost" was Orson . . . and then "Our Town" on Broadway . . . and "Spring I time for Henry," with Edward Everett i Horton, and a brief run in Lonsdale's "The | Foreigners" . . . the Hollywood producer who saw a test she had made and said, I shaking his head, "I'm sorry. I want to 1 compliment you on a very fine performance f in your test, but — I don't think you are a screen type !" . . . she likes this memory because, in less than nine months after that, she had made "Our Town," "The Howards of Virginia," "Cheers for Miss Bishop," was starting "They Dare Not Love," was under a three-year contract to Director Frank Lloyd, scheduled to make one picture a year, for five years, for Producer Lesser . . . being told how incredibly she resembled her Grandmother McKinley in "Cheers for Miss Bishop." These are among the thoughts Martha turns over in her mind, like bright-colored wools in a basket, when she is alone. Around Hollywood they are saying, "She is the Helen Hayes of pictures." Her husband says of her, sort of summing up, "Her only drawback is that she is too honest and too sweet for this modern world." So now, by one means or another, by detours and a somewhat circuitous route, you have it, I think— Martha Scott, the Private Life Of: 70 SCREENLAND