Screenland (Nov 1941-Apr 1942)

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Write name & address in margin NOW and mail to HARVEST HOUSE, 70 Fifth Ave., Dept. P-316, New York Song of an Actress Continued from page 5! may, in that goofy coop of a coast Montmartre, have eaten quite as little, even less, she has, thank heaven, Sam Goldwyn and Darryl Zanuck, kept her health and strength. Heaven (not to be too biological) made her what she is, Sam put her into training, and Darryl put her to work. And altogether it's a swell job. Now that things have got started, they're going at a mighty fast clip. From "Western Union" the speedy Virginia went into "Tall, Dark and Handsome" and now she's being rather sensational in "Swamp Water." No time for anything else? Oh yes, she had. In her spare moments she wrote poetry for magazines. And so you see on this page the poem she graciously consented to write for Screenland. One of the first things about Miss Gilmore to strike me was that her face had brains in it. An oval tendency added charm, while the lips were just full enough for warmth — you know. Her clear eyes had a sunny way of smiling, her fair hair was like a flag in the breeze. Looking further was to find a profile that meant something. Strength fortified softness. A musical voice, not unlike the 'cello she plays so well, matched all this, rich-throated and flowing, with no uncertain high notes shrilling to exclamation. It spoke of poise and the disciplined mind of a young woman of 24 who looked 21. At a far earlier age, long before Bohemia ranged above her horizon, Virginia, I was amazed to hear, became an actress to keep from going to bed. I could hardly believe my ears. In their time they had heard many reasons for choosing the same calling, among them, if memory served, "career." But "bed" was something else again, something that knocked understanding flat as a mattress. Miss Gilmore smiled indulgently. "When I was five I'd take my stand in the living room every evening after dinner and defiantly announce, 'I'm going to do a play.' It wasn't that I wanted to act, but that I didn't want to go to bed. To stay up, I'd do anything, even if I didn't know how to do it. Not knowing any plays, I had to make them up as I went along. That was a great strain on me, but a still greater one on the helpless members of the family. They'd sit resigned to their fate while I desperately performed. The wonder was they didn't all become victims of .chronic indigestion. From time to time they would try to stop me, but I'd always hurry to say, 'There's one more scene.' " Virginia was 11 when the way led to Bohemia. Born in Del Monte, Calif., she presently lived in Carmel and then went to school in Burlingame. By now the acting bee in her bonnet was buzzing busily. So one day her aunt, herself with a sympathetic leaning toward the stage, took her up to San Francisco on a Toonerville trolley for a reading at the Group Theater. There and at the Green Room Theater her training continued for eight years, with time off for the University of California at Berkeley, until the call to Hollywood came like a cry out of the wilderness. How it happened to come is still a mystery. "If it had been a wee bit stranger, a shade more mysterious, I might now be in New York," she reflected, "for I had never thought of going into pictures." Meanwhile, that schoolgirl with her hair in braids had gone into a life so strange to her, so utterly unlike any existence she had ever imagined, that at first its unreality had all the quality of a fantastic dream. "We lived," considered Miss Gilmore, "what is called the Bohemian life. This does not mean it is a gay life. In a sense, it is the outgrowth of poverty. Its aim is to keep faith with itself, to try individually to meet the requirements of living on little — and they try so desperately, those kids who have no money. It is a very pathetic attempt to be brave. I think this is true of youth all over the world, youth struggling to rise." Her deep sympathy with that youth, as these words came from her free of sentimentality and self-consciousness, was felt in her sincerity and understanding, based alike on her own actual experience. "Yes, we got fun out of it," she willingly admitted, "but I think we learned a great deal, too. Mainly, we learned selfdependence. This is something probably of more importance today than ever before in the world. For youth, boys and girls alike, now faces a world such as never has been known. None of us know what tomorrow may bring, but all of us know we should be ready to face whatever comes. To do this we must have, first of all, self-reliance. In its way, acting is largely a matter of self-reliance, since the actor must stand or fall by himself. He lives, too, much by himself. Indeed, it was wholly so with the Group to which I belonged." There was a characteristic pause, then: "There were fifteen of us altogether. We lived in a strange, eerie house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. It was an earthquake house. That is, it had been shaken out of shape and never put right again. It leaned at a perilous angle. Its stairs swung drunkenly, its doors wobbled to one side, its floors staggered across lurching rooms. The whole place had the feeling of an awful hangover. Everything was on the bias, and that's the way we walked — we had to, or fall flat on our faces. Downstairs, by the front door, was a bulletin board with a piece of white chalk hanging by a string. On it we would write messages, such as : 'Toots — If you're going to the drug-store, bring back toothpaste. Sally.' The girls were all on one floor, the boys on another. Three other girls were in the room with me. We'd share the work of it, and do our own washing, or most of it, to save laundry bills. We each got $16.50 a week — some weeks. But we drew only about $10 after our household expenses were taken out. By that time we had borrowed about $5 apiece, so we had to get through the week with what little was left. There was the strictest economy in food, all of it chosen by the management with that one idea in mind. We had stewed apricots every morning and pancakes every other Wednesday morning. The apricots gagged us, but the pancakes were a great treat. When we had roast lamb for dinner we'd have it for three more nights, the last time as soup made out of the bones. At meals the talk was always of acting and clothes. We girls were always borrowing one another's clothes. But I sold a lot of mine." A bit of business on the side? "N-no,"; and she mused reminiscently. "That's another story. You see, a boy at home seemed to be interested in me, and my mother hoped he was. Mother had a charge account in a San Francisco store, and told me to stock up with clothes for the boy's 76 Screenland