Screenland (Nov 1945-Oct 1946)

Forever Audrey Continued from page 33 to her daughter's baby tears and enrolled her in a dancing class for infants, the child was removed with haste and dispatch when Audrey's Swedish-born grandparents got wind of it. No grandchild of theirs was going to absorb such an atmosphere of sin and debauchery! Chicago is only forty miles from Joliet and when the time came for Audrey to go there to try for a job on the stage, she simply went. She was eighteen, fresh out of high school and very, very eager. Wasn't she perfectly familiar with such masters as Ibsen and Shakespeare, and hadn't she even played a season of Summer stock, doing "Stage Door," "Night Must Fall" and "The Late Christopher Bean"? Nothing could stop her— and nothing did. She got a part very quickly with Ian Keith in "The Copperhead" and when the show's run was over, she gravitated naturally to radio. "But here I walked right into something on the first audition," Audrey said. "The director of the show, an awfully nice little man, took me aside and told me, with all the kindness in the world, to go back to Joliet. 'You have nothing, dear,' he said, patting me gently, 'just nothing to offer radio.' " But Audrey thought perhaps she did have something to offer, riot perhaps the round, pear-shaped enunciation she'd been hearing in Mr. Keith's "Copperhead" company, but something else more modern and colloquial. And she proved it by getting a job in "My Sister Eileen" in the road show touring the middle west. The first night they played Chicago, Audrey saw a little man down in front making signs, gestures, and grimaces at. her. He bowed, smiled, wiggled his fingers as the astonished Audrey eyed him in bewildered fascination. "And then I remembered!" she laughed. "It was the same little man who'd advised me to go home to Joliet because I had nothing to offer as an actress! Now he was trying to tell me how wrong he'd been. When he and his wife came backstage after the performance, he insisted that he was going to send me a big bunch of roses just to show how sorry he was for trying to discourage me. But his nice wife said that wasn't practical; the roses would wither and be thrown away. And the next day a big, red purse came from them. I still have it and value it, not only because it's so beautiful, but because it tells that even an umpire can be big enough to reverse a decision." Another gift she values from that time is a makeup case given her by members of the "My Sister Eileen" company. It never was a very elegant article and it's pretty battered now, but she still carries it as an emblem of good luck— even into the makeup department of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is possibly the best equipped in the whole industry— "just in case they might need something." After "My Sister Eileen" closed, her marvelous voice and gift of mimicry made radio a natural field for her. She's worked in almost all the soap operas coming out of Chicago, among them "Ma Perkins," "Road of Life," and "Bright Horizons." "I went to New York for no reason at all except that I wanted to go," Audrey continued, "and all the radio contacts I'd made in Chicago were simply continued there. So it was easy to get jobs on the Readers' Digest Show, 'Inner Sanctum,' 'Lower Basin Street' and lots of others." A part of Audrey's chameleon personality is an ability to appear as if she didn't quite know the score. She's such an attractive small bit of five-foot-three girl that the look in those big blue eyes might easily be mistaken for guilelessness. At least, one big butter-and-egg man from up State thought so when he saw her going in and out of her hotel. Audrey pretended she didn't see him following her; she made believe his signals and wig-wags and meaning looks were for someone else, but when he trailed her to the broadcasting station where she was working and tried to wangle an introduction, she got mad. "Look," she hissed to an actor on the program, "something's got to be done to teach this character a lesson!" So they put their heads together and evolved a scheme, which resulted in the amorous yokel getting his date all right, but it was for luncheon with Audrey's friend along, not only as chaperon but as interpreter. For it seemed that suddenly Audrey, the minx, spoke nothing but Swedish, understood no English and only a leetle French. "I'll never know how we kept our faces straight during that silly meal!" Audrey giggled. "To see that character pointing to a glass and mouthing 'Wa— ter' to teach me English and then having my friend explain in what passed for French and me answering in Swedish, was almost too much. But when he finally gave me up as hopeless and made a lame excuse to leave, the sight of his face when I said, in very definite American, 'Well, so long, Joe!' was when we really exploded!" When talent scouts for motion pictures discovered there was a great untried field in radio, Audrey was tested by Twentieth Century-Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She saw both tests, described them as "un Audrey Totter in a scene with Snowball, the white cockatoo in "The Sailor Takes a Wife." believably bad" and dismissed a picture career from her mind. Not long afterward, she was about to sign a new thirteen-week contract for a radio show when she contacted her agent to settle about money. "Where have you been?" he shrieked. "The scout from Metro's been looking all over town for you ! They want you on the coast right away to start a picture ! " Everybody concerned was wildly excited and practically threw the poor girl onto a westbound plane. She had only a few necessary things in a small satchel; her books, the rest of her clothes, her collection of elephants (she gathers them in all sizes, from a huge silver one almost too heavy to lift to the tiniest carved out of ivory, just because she wanted to run away and join a circus when she was a little girl), her big library of recordsswing, rhumba, concerto, symphony— were all to follow later. There was no time to discover that her ration books had been tossed out and burned up with the trash ; there was scarcely time to apologize for a colossal muff on her last broadcast when, instead of saying, "Use So-and-So's cream, tissue it off, and leave a light film of cream on your face overnight," she said, "Use So-and-So's cream, tissue it off and leave a light film of skin on your face overnight!" Audrey must get to the coast right away. She got to the coast all right— on the fifteenth of May— and sat around until the middle of August, when her first picture, "Main Street After Dark," finally started. Her mother came out for a short visit not long ago and returned to the apprehensive Totters in Joliet with the glowing report that Hollywood in spite of all their worry, was a perfectly safe place for their little Audrey. Why, everybody there worked like dogs, from dawn until long after dark. Their child got up every morning at half-past five and went to the studio on the bus. She wore slacks, an old topcoat and had a kerchief round her head. Indeed, she looked just like a manual laborer, even to the "My Sister Eileen" makeup case that anyone might take, for a lunch box. No, the Totters have nothing to worry about. Audrey and another girl, who also works at the studio, have just found a new apartment after months of hotel life. It's done in Chinese motif, reds, black and gold, very modern and smart, and it's out near the Los Angeles Country Club on the edge of wooded hills and fields where she can hike to her heart's content. Audrey plays the piano and bass fiddle and— of all things— is an expert taxidermist! She cares little about clothes, to the distress of her room-mate who, at the sight of a very big star who's notorious fqr her sloopy dressing in public, exclaimed, "There, but for the grace of heaven, goes Audrey Totter!" Audrey's no spun-sugar Powers model for prettiness, but she has two qualities that lift her far above the realm of simple, senseless beauty. These two qualities are intelligence and humor. Through them the studio intends to push her forward faster and further than they've pushed many players before, so that very soon people may point to a star and say, "There, by tl-e grace of her own ability, goes Audrey Totter!" 64 Screen la n d