Screenland (Nov 1941-Apr 1942)

'T'URN the tables on "regular" pain ! Make the pain give in, while you carry on in active comfort. It's easy to do, as Midol has proved to millions of women ! Midol is offered for this one purpose — to relieve the needless functional pain of menstruation. Use it confidently; Midol contains no opiates. One ingredient is widely prescribed for headache and muscular suffering. Another exclusive ingredient increases relief by reducing spasmodic pain peculiar to the time. Among thousands of women recently interviewed, more reported using Midol for functional periodic pain than all other preparations combined, and 96% of these Midol users said they found it effective. If you have no organic disorder calling for special medical or surgical treatment, Midol should give you comfort. Try it ! All drugstores— large size, only 40^; small size, 20fL IDOL Relieves Functional Periodic Pain Men, Women Over 40 Don't Be Weak, Old Feel Peppy, New, Years Younger Take Ostrex. Contains general tonics, stimulants often needed after 40 — by bodies lacking iron, calcium, phosphorus, iodine, Vitamin Bi. A 73-year-old doctor writes: "It did so much for patients, I took it myself. Results fine." Special introductory size Ostrex Tonic Tablets costs only 35c. Start feeling peppier and younger this very day. For sale at all good drug stores everywhere. FALSE TEETH As Low As $7.95 Per Plate. DENTAL PLATES made in our own laboratory from YOUR Personal impression. WORKM ANSHIPand MATERIAL GUARANTEED or PURCHASE PRICE refunded. We take this risk on our 60-day trial offer. Do Not Send Any Money SSsSI onr LOW PRICES. DON'T PUT IT OFF— Write us today! BRIGHTON-THOMAS Dental Laboratory Dept. 1013 6217 S. Halsted Street, Chicago, III. WAKE UP YOUR LIVER BILE Without Calomel— And You'll Jump Out of Bed in the Morning Rarin' to Go The liver should pour 2 pints of bile juice into your bowels every day. If this bile is not flowing freely, your food may not digest. It may just decay in the bowels. Then gas bloats "up your stomach. You get constipated. You feel sour, sunk and the world looks punk. It takes those good, old Carter's Little Liver Pills to get these 2 pints of bile flowing freely to make you feel "up and up." Get a package today. Take as directed. Effective in making bile flow freely. Ask for Carter's Little Liver Pills. 10d and 256. At fourteen Maureen was accepted as a student. At sixteen she was playing bits At seventeen she was cast in her first lead, and quit. She had no intention of quitting. A lead with The Abbey marked the dazzling goal of her ambitions. She'd never looked beyond it. But she went to her first dance, and at her first dance she met Mr. Harry Richman. He said howdyado, she said howdyado, they shook hands and parted. That was the first and last she ever saw of him. But he went back to London and told a movie producer he'd seen a young goddess with red hair and hazel eyes — because Fatser was no longer Fatser, the Lord having been good and having answered her prayers and then some. A letter, addressed to her at The Abbey, asked for some pictures, which she sent. What could she lose? A more urgent letter followed, suggesting that she come right down for a test. She felt that was overdoing it. But a valued old friend — an actress at the Gate Theatre (rivals of The Abbey) — talked her into going, on the principle that if you pass any door held open, you may live to regret it. She'd be gone only a few days. The Abbey, distinctly annoyed, agreed to put off the play till she got back. BIP tested her and offered her a sevenyear-contract. She wired her father and sighed with relief when he wired back, "Come right home," taking the onus of decision off her shoulders and making it her duty to do exactly what she wanted to do. Meantime a member of the fastworking tribe of agents had tracked her down. "It's no use," she said. "I'm going home tomorrow night." "Do me a personal favor. There's one person I want you to meet before you go." He steered her to an office and opened a door. Sensation. Charles Laughton and Erich Pommer. They seemed to think she wasn't bad either and after some talk, Pommer handed her a script. "We'd like you to read the part now." "Now! How on earth can I give an intelligent reading when I don't even know what the girl's about? If you like, I'll take it home and come back and read it." Not that she meant to be cocky. Trained to Abbey methods, she was merely pointing out the reasonable procedure. The gentlemen made their goodbyes polite, and she went home to Ireland. Next day Laughton sneaked off by himself to see the BIP test, and decided he'd been crazy ever to consider the girl. They'd daubed her with makeup, slicked back her hair and poured her seventeen-year-old body into gold lame. Knowing it was all wrong, Maureen had been too timid to protest. What did it matter anyway, she was going back. But her face, as he'd seen it, continued to haunt Laughton till he got mad and told Pommer to go see the test. The director phoned him in a rage. "What do you mean, wasting my time on that drivel ? I hate the test and I hate the girl, and I don't want to hear any more about either." Their meeting next morning was moody and silent. Till Pommer turned on his friend. "Is it her fault if they made her up like a gargoyle? Let's send for that kid." So The Abbey washed its hands of her in disgust, and she made "Jamaica Inn" with Laughtoa Word got around that a baby was being brought in to play the lead, which so touched the kind hearts of the cast that they all vowed to help her. After the first day's rushes, they decided she didn't need any help. Her parents came down for the premiere and, like most players seeing themselves for the first time, Maureen thought she was awful. Except — . "It's a terrible thing to admit," she admits, "but there was one shot, in a beaver bonnet and little curls, where I thought I looked pretty. Don't hold it against me." Don't hold it against her. Back to Dublin, but not for long. One Saturday night came a phone call. "Be in London Monday morning, ready to sail for America Wednesday. Hollywood's going to test you for a picture with Charles Laughton." The next few days were bedlam. Packing all night, goodbye to the whole tribe except her mother who was going along — the only condition her father made. Dashing from office to office in London, getting visas and passports, a million people saying do this, do that, Maureen in a daze doing it, a single thought clear in her head, she was going to Hollywood. Only a movie montage could do it justice. A whirling montage in which a boy appeared, pleading with her to marry him before she left. He was one of several with whom she'd gone out in London. He kept saying, you've got to marry me, if you marry me, I can stand your going away, if not — never mind, you've got to marry me, Maureen. Why she did it she still can't explain. She liked him, she felt sorry for him, she was too tired to fight, she was caught in a kind of hypnosis, doing what people told her to do. On Tuesday afternoon she stood in a registry office and was married to him. On the Queen Mary Wednesday she woke with dismay to what she'd done and wept out the story on her mother's shoulder. Mrs. O'Hara tried to suppress her own consternation. This wasn't like Maureen, who had always been a romanticist about marriage— the one man, orange blossoms, bridal veils, Lohengrin, forever and ever. She tried to comfort her daughter. "We'll have it annulled." Which brought a fresh flood of tears. "But I never wanted to be married and have it annulled. It all sounds so wrong." As a member of Laughton's party, she was feted in New York. She and her mother went on to Hollywood alone but, having read stories, she looked for at least one executive to meet the train with at least one bouquet of flowers. They were met by a boy from the publicity department without flowers, whisked to a hotel and told to appear at the studio at three. Maureen didn't know where the studio was. She called a taxi, was deposited at the gate and could get no farther. She'd forgotten the name of the man she'd been told to ask for. "But I tell you they're waiting for me inside." The cop grew weary. "Look, lady, you ain't the first gatecrasher pulled that gag. Who's waitin'? All I'm askin's the name an' I'll give him a ring." Pan Berman happened to come by, rescued her and took her to Dieterle, who shook a dubious head, decided she was pretty tall, measured her against the doorpost, and turned her over to a hairdresser with injunctions to leave her hair as it was, just brush it up. "I know exactly what to do," said the hairdresser firmly. Maureen was scared — of Dieterle who thought she was too tall, of the hairdresser who knew her business. She wondered if hairdressers ever boxed players' ears. "My hair's terribly curly," she ventured weakly. "Would you please wind it loose, else it'll fuzz." The girl wound it tight, and presented Dieterle with a finished golliwog. "Take her back," he stormed. "Stick her under the shower." "There goes the part," thought Maureen. At six they tested. At ten she crawled into bed, too tired to care. Next morning they told her it was just a hair test, she'd been cast as Esmeralda in "The Hunchback" before she left England. If her professional life was arid between "The Hunchback" and "Valley," her personal life wasn't. She met Will Price, a young stage director brought up from the 74 SCRE ENL AND