Screenland (May 1943-Oct 1944)

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Price 10 and 25^ — or send for a FREE SAMPLE: Golden Clint Co., Seattle, Wash., Box 336B-A-38 Please send color No. as listed above. Name Address GOLDEN GLINT Meet Claudia Continued from page 25 scoring her stage victory much of the publicity projected the idea that Dorothy actually was Claudia — a veritable counterpart of the giddy, gabby childwife with a whimsical turn of mind whose funny remarks kept the audience in stitches. Doubtless you know this Claudia, for she is a popular and piquant figure in current literature. In the play she was quite an order to portray. Besides being a kind of dipsydoodle she had to meet tragedy courageously. Dorothy, in interpreting her, had to register poignant drama and comedy. With considerable decisiveness Dorothy torpedoes the Claudia resemblance rumor. "Someone called Claudia a 'brilliant nincompoop,' " she told me on our first meeting, "and I think it's a swell description. But heavens, if I had to do and think as Claudia does at times I'd Vonder if I were in my right mind. Claudia's fun but she's frequently screwball. "Over all, though, she's a perfectly exhilarating girl to portray because she is forever experimenting with life, especially where men are concerned. She's always putting them in a test tube to find out what makes them so attractive 'chemically' or otherwise. Then, too, there's her other, serious side — devotion to her mother." It wasn't a case of love at first sight between Dorothy and Claudia, however. She wasn't "sold" on the role, and her acceptance of the part, the way she came to get it and all, were a happy accident. "The play that I was really interested in about the time 'Claudia' was coming to life was a dramatic one titled 'Liberty Jones,' written, you know, by Philip Barry," declared Dorothy. "I just lived for the opportunity of appearing in that. While it only lasted two weeks when it was produced in New York, I felt then and still feel it was divine — nothing less! But I lost out on even playing it for that long. When I received word that another actress had been chosen for 'Liberty Jones,' it was as if .my whole career had been shattered because I wanted it so much. Therefore, when the 'Claudia' opportunity came along, I was more or less numbed. "I didn't react to the character at all. I read the 'Claudia' part for John Golden, the producer, and Miss Franken, but I didn't think my reading even made sense. I felt all unhinged. I was in a mood by this time to quit the theater for good. "It was at my moment of deepest uncertainty that Miss Franken suggested: T think you had better plan on going up country to my house for the week-end. We'll visit, get better acquainted with each other, and with Claudia. "I had the strangest set of emotions.To hear from Miss Franken gave me a lift. It sort of half restored my confidence. Yet at the same time I was so completely indifferent about the whole thing. I couldn't believe I was fitted for the part. I knew that Miss Franken and Mr. Golden had interviewed some two hundred actresses. "That was all the more reason why I couldn't even conceive that Miss Franken wanted me. Still — and this is very strange, indeed — I felt down deep inside me that 'Claudia' somehow was my destiny ! And even stranger, I had only one impulse and that was to run away from the character and the play at that very moment. When you're finally at the threshold of good fortune it often scares you away. "Maybe all this sounds terribly mixed up, but frankly I was going through just such a set of scrambled reactions. I think now I can explain the reason for all my great confusion at that time. I couldn't then. "Actually, I believe I just hadn't dared entertain the hope of getting the 'Claudia' break. So often I had missed chances to undertake the leading role in an important play, and had to settle for an understudy or some rather insignificant part. You see, I understudied Martha Scott in 'Our Town' and Julie Haydn in 'Time Of Your Life.' "I must^have had the subconscious fear that I might be handed another understudy in 'Claudia.' Undoubtedly, I was trying to protect myself against that. I'm sure now I just couldn't have faced being 'second choice' once more !" That trip up country settled many things for Dorothy. She just about quit "fighting fate" thereafter. Incidentally, her detachment toward the "Claudia" role helped give it the enormous sincerity and vitality that distinguished it on the stage. She didn't attempt to be funny. She was lackadaisical and perfectly natural. The public right then and there concluded that she was Claudia . . . born to the part. It was one of those spontaneous happenings which occur once, perhaps, in a dozen years. The thing that amazed me when I met Dorothy, above all else, was that in spite of her remarkable stage conquest, she had apparently retained clear and undefiled her true sense of values. There was nothing about her that suggested the "star." When I lunched with her at the Cafe de Paris at Twentieth Century-Fox studio her attire even fit the description, "plain and simple," for it consisted of brown slacks and a beige-toned mannish tweed jacket. She wore no nail polish, and her hair had a windblown air about it, and a great way of flopping into her blue eyes as she grew animated in the conversation. Dorothy definitely takes her place as a personality different from any that is known to filmgoers. She doesn't conform to the Hollywood pattern nor, for that maater, to any other pattern. She doesn't chatter with that assurance typical of most stars, even young ones, who are "giving out" with an interview. Dorothy McGuire considers the answer to any serious question you put to her as if the weight of the world depended upon it. If it's the least bit off the beam or if she isn't quite sure of the answer, her fingers unconsciously reach for a lock of her hair and she clings to it like an anchor while she mentally decides what form the response is to take. And she'll agonize until she is sure that she is stating what she means with honesty and exactitude. It may only be part of a sentence that expresses what she feels but it reaches you with a dynamic impact. Much of the time Dorothy sails along in her conversation blithely, especially when she is talking about the theater. She almost sobbed when she told me of why she loved going on tour with plays. She practically shed tears of reverence during the telling of traveling over the same roadbeds leading to towns that the great ones of the past in the theater had visited. "I used to sit with my face pressed to the train window," she said with whimsy and tenderness, "repeating to myself : 'Here are the scenes they too saw as they traversed this road bringing the magic of their art to the workaday world — the world of reality.' "Sometimes I'd hardly go to sleep at night. I still wanted to keep on _ gazing even into the blackness trying to imagine myself among the company of the artists who have written the history of acting and entertainment in this country. There is something so wonderful about knowing that in your very small way you too may 74 SCREENLAND