Screenland (Nov 1942-Apr 1943)

Biggest scene was when an airplane swooped upon the guerrillas at the horizon and blew off the mountain peak. It didn't really, and the job was done by Jimmy Rowe, our powder man, who blasted it up with dynamite. But it was exciting, nevertheless. That done, we trooped down and consumed twenty-two gallons of ice cream. Then more fighting, and the gunfire could be heard at Dardanelles, twelve miles away. The old-timers thought it was thunder. August 3 — This is the last time I'll keep a diary! It's a lot of work. But Akim is good for a daily item. He gets sunburned through his make-up, so he goes around in a sheet, with holes cut to look through. "Chief Kleagle," everyone calls him. Another tank had to roll down to the creek and break into pieces. They'll be good for scrap. The explosions started brush fires, and all hands beat them out with wet sacks. Blackest crowd you ever saw — smoked up, and full of gas and powder fumes. We ran out of soap, and when a case of it came in tonight, everybody cheered, and went for a bath at the creek. The crew is a bunch of "tough monkeys." They were all baseball players, prizefighters or sailors or dock wallopers once, and just eat up rough and dangerous work. What gets their goat is the wind, for it blows a hurricane, and it takes four men to hang on to a tarpaulin and shield off noise from the microphone. Try that atop a cliff ! August 4 — Everybody has a secret ambition, it would seem. Cooper rode in from Sonora this morning, and he had spent half the night in a newspaper office, just watching the printers. He confided to me he would sooner be a small-town editor than anything else. "You can be important in your community," he explained. "You can write what you darn please, almost. And if you get some county printing jobs, you can be sure of an income. You can be looked up to, as if you were a judge or a clergyman. "And do you know how long that paper in Sonora has been running? Ever since the gold rush in 1850 ! It's older than any studio in Hollywood." Cooper is serious about it, too. I didn't know he ever gave newspapering a thought. I told him that everybody thinks the other guy's job is pretty good, and then he owned up and said he guessed I was right. August 5 — We're close to a lot of history here. This Is the Stanislaus National Forest, and the river flowing th rough _ it was named after an Indian chief baptized by the Spaniards under the name of Estanislao. In 1826 he was defeated right here by another tribe. In 1827 this region was explored by Jedediah Smith, the first white man to visit it. Fremont, in 1847, called this river the Stanislaus, and as such it figures in Bret Harte's tales. Fifty miles away are the foothills, known as the Bret Harte and Mark Twain country. When Ingrid visited it last week, the citizens of Sonora, and the oldest Chinaman, Lum Yat, who is 87, gave her a Western welcome and dinner. Ingrid opened her valise to give Lum a signed photograph, but he beat her to it — giving her one already framed and signed. No charge, either! Horace Greeley once rode along this precipice in a stage, and the driver sent the horses ahead on a gallop, frightening Horace almost to death. When he got home, weighing ten pounds less, he wrote an editorial denouncing that driver as the leading menace on the planet. August 8 — -Bears are a nuisance. One of them crawled through the screen into Akim's shack, prowled around a few minutes then crashed out again. Akim paid no attention to it, thinking it was only a would-be robber, and went back to sleep. He said he didn't know what the robber could find there at night, when he himself could find nothing of interest in it by day. The bears like to raid the bread box where the rye bread is kept that we must eat in the cave scenes. The loaves are wrapped in wet cloths to soften a bit their granite hardness. Last night the watchman got mad, and hurled a loaf at a bear. Beaned, the critter galumphed off, yelping like mad, and seeing a lot of stars. August 10 — We said good-bye to Eric Feldary, who is to act with Lunt and Fontanne on Broadway. Then we shot a battle on a bridge over the Tuolumne canyon. It was higher than the Empire State Building, and made a huge racket when it was blown up. The cast had to jump fast. It was a job to find this bridge, and this location. Menzies travelled some 8000 miles before he could find just the site we needed, and just the right hue for Technicolor. August 12 — The battle finished up today, using all the gunpowder we had left, a cupful. That was playing in luck. Funny incident tonight. Bill Nelson who owns these tourists shacks we have moved into can't abide the gypsy fortune-tellers that Bill Terry was rewarded with a movie contract after playing the typical American soldier in "Private Smith of the U. S. A.," two-reeler in "This Is America" series. roam through these hills now and then. He chases them off. Going into the kitchen tonight he saw a blackened female with ear-hoops and a gun making a dicker with the chef. "Here's where I give her the bum's rush," he said to his wife. He tried to, and there were fireworks. It was Paxinou, in the makeup of Pilar, trying to borrow some fixings from the chef to cook a fish dinner for Ingrid, Cooper and myself. And if Ingrid, hearing the argument, hadn't come in, Paxinou would have been tossed out. August 14 — Cloudbursts. Thunderstorms, and lightning on the big scale. The rainy season in the mountains has begun. Not an umbrella, a pair of overshoes or a slicker in the outfit. Mud pours down the slope in torrents. We lay doggo under tarpaulins. We crawled inside wagons and under them. We left the rye bread outside to soften a trifle. Paramount has sent up two circus tents for an emergency stable, and we hope the animals won't mind us doubling up with them. I'm a little upset over Ingrid losing weight in climbing up and down peaks, so I make her eat a double portion of potatoes, spaghetti, hot biscuits and ice cream with chocolate sauce, to make up for it. Works like a charm, too. The creek has filled up again, and she swims in it. Her coach in English makes her read aloud all the comic strips to get the jist of everyday talk. Ingrid can't see anything funny in the strips, but she is studious, and reads the words aloud at top voice. Big scare today. The rumor went about that we'd be here for months and months to come, and the crew sadly began to stake out young Christmas trees to take home « for the holidays — if they could get any holidays. Forest Service gave its okay, and the gang is saving up five-gallon cans to take the trees home in. I let it build a little while and then dispelled the rumor by telling everyone we'd all be back at i the studio Labor Day. September 1 — -This makes a blank space; in my diary. Well, for two weeks we did nothing but work from morning until dusk Ingrid is making a movie record of her doings in these hills. We all take turns j cranking the camera on her. She must be the only star with a complete film record I of her life, for her father, a Stockholm artist, began filming the lass when she was I a day old, and kept it up until she came to this country. First shot was of her reading "Foi Whom The Bell Tolls," the copy giver her by Hemingway. He wrote in it, three years ago, "For Ingrid Bergman — the: Maria of this story." Her English is getting quite Native Son: For a course in slang she has been sitting in at the teamsters' poker game, which rum] 'round the clock. She now knows whai "raise the ante" and "sitting pretty" mean September 2 — Great strike ! Not gold, bu an old tire dug out of a snow bank up th( hills. There's no more rubber soling to b< got at Sonora for our shoes, but the coh* bier will cut up the tire and fix us up wit! some real rubber soles and heels. Everybody is hoping that we'll be pull ing for home Labor Day! Nobody is hop ing harder than Paxinou, who will maki a bee-line for the nearest manicure parlor Her fingernails are long and broken anc they just about drive her crazy. She want to wash off her dark makeup, too. She say all she needs now to play Othello is a big ger pair of ear-rings. We said good-bye to five actors who ar gleefully setting home for Hollywood They're "killed," so they mustn't be seei any more. Akim was the man who sho them with a tommy-gun in the battle oi the bridge. Well, there's been a lot of com ing and going, what with technical expert leaving for the Army, and substitutes com ing up. Do you know what's become of most c the actors who played with the Moscov Art Theatre on Broadway years ago. They're right here with us in the Siem Oldest alumnus of all is Vladimir Sokolofi who plays the guide Ansehno. Akim, Bui gakoff, Snegoff, Chaliapin, Jr., and other' were all his colleagues. The creek, which had been milky whit hitherto, all of a sudden ran coffee-coloi So we have to trek to another backgrounc We did a retake of a post-battle scene. A of us galloping on horses, and Paxino first, riding hell-for-leather on a cayusi with shells bursting about her. Half the cast are down with flu, but ar recovering one by one. A nip in the ai Winter's coming. Another month, and tl: Pass will be as snowbound as the Caucasu where Akim comes from. "You let ffi stay here," he says, "and I'll be at home. September 4 — Ingrid gave a birthda party. Then we went to Kurzi's Camp fc a Saturday night dance. I celebrated, to* I have been married 34 years. "I've got a gift for everybody!" I sai' standing on a chair. "We'll be home fc! Labor Day. Two more days, and we aj pack up. Everybody had a good time in tl Sierra ?" And everybody shouted: "You bet!" 90 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY THE CUNEO PRESS, IN