Screenland (Nov 1945-Oct 1946)

a producer. "You can't have certain stages or space for certain times. Other days you can't shoot exteriors — even the outdoors is budgeted. Sometimes this is because an actor will be under contract just for the length of the picture. That means you have to shoot every scene in which that actor appears, regardless of sequence. Otherwise, you'd be paying him just for sitting around." Hedy has learned some of the headaches of production, too. The waste of money has always appalled her. Now it's her money— at least some of it — and every gigantic or small thing that holds up production hits her right in the pocketbook. "The Strange Woman" had no more hard luck than most big productions, but this time Hedy has been more keenly conscious of the hard luck. First there was the flu. Almost everyone had to stay home a few days with it. Then there was the strike. The picture is now finished, but some additional scenes are vitally needed, and Louis Hay ward, who figures in some of them, is in London. Things like that. All these details Hedy now partly shoulders. Even so, she finds being a producer very satisfying. You'll see a new Hedy Lamarr when "The Strange Woman" comes to town. You'll like her, despite the fact that the role is unsympathetic and similar to Gene Tierney's in "Leave Her to Heaven." Around Hollywood, 'old-timers are seeing" a new Hedy Lamarr, too. She learned long ago not to let tears show, but today she realizes she has really licked heartbreak. "Awful things that are said about me," she confesses today, "just roll right off of me. Before, I couldn't explain I didn't have a chance to do better work. Today, I know if I don't do a good job, I'll have no one to blame but myself. So I intend to do a good job. That's a satisfying feeling: Again, I have always felt pictures should have a message, whether good or bad. This picture is based on the thought that evil destroys itself. I like that. I believe pictures should be thought about, too, not just slapped together. And I think people should learn by the mistakes of themselves and others. It's a criminal fact that too often pictures repeat the same errors over and over again. You have to make mistakes — how else can you learn? But you haven't learned if you don't correct errors when you know about them." One of Hedy's peculiar charms is her honest and direct way of expressing herself. Her thoughts don't follow conventional patterns. Of a drab fabric she'll say: "It's like old age — indefinite." Of Hollywood, she'll remark: "It's like a small town where little flames of gossip become giant conflagrations." And of the possibility that her children might want picture careers, she says determinedly, "Never will I allow it! If they want to have technical careers in the motion picture industry, yes. But to be an actor or an actress, no. I might have cried and had my heart broken. I might have had to learn that here it is dog eat dog, but for my children — no." Yes, this is a new, exciting, disturbing, determined Hedy Lamarr. You'll see in "The Strange Woman" a Hedy who is a fine actress. The old Hedy is dead. And the new Hedy has just begun to live. What You Mean in My Life Continued from page 40 "listen!" Mr. Warner listened. And heard. And understood. I, too, understood — that your voices were more important in my career, because more impressive to Mr. Warner, than even laudatory letters from managers and exhibitors, or rave reviews by the critics or sales talks by agents could be. For you are the Voice of the motion picture industry. The Referee. The Ultima Thule. You, not Mr. Zanuck or Mr. Goldwyn or Mr. Warner or Mr. Mayer make stars or break stars. The producers introduce us to you, that is true, give us our opportunity. But not until they hear your Voice (which, since the adult is silent in approval or in disapproval whereas youth makes its Voice heard, is the only Voice signifying that you are for us, or against us) do they build us to stardom or permit our options to lapse. You, the fans, are the starmakers! That personal appearance of mine at the Strand was my first meeting, face to face, with the American public, with you — and what you have meant in my life, in my career, I must now try my best to tell you that you may fully realize what you have done for me and how it is, in my heart, appreciated. To begin with the beginning, which is where my thanks to you begins when first I came, a stranger from Vienna, to Hollywood, I played — in "Mrs. Miniver," "Northern Pursuit," "Hotel Berlin," "Edge of Darkness" — four Nazis in a row! In "Mrs. Miniver" I, as the wounded Nazi flyer, had not only an ugly role but a comparatively small one. Mind you, it was a stunning part. With everyone in the cast so noble, so good, a dastard like the Nazi flyer stood out like a very throbbing sore thumb. Still, he was not an endearing fellow, that one. Moreover, the picture starred Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, in whose lustre a newcomer might well have been overlooked to the point of invisibility. You did not overlook! In "Northern Pursuit," as an escaping Nazi officer; in "Edge of Darkness" as the Nazi commandant; in "Hotel Berlin," again a Nazi, more insidious because more ingratiating and, later, in "Escape in the Desert" in which I, a sadist, twisted the heroine's arm and kicked poor Mr. Samuel Hinds in the ribs, I continued my naztiness. Feeling, as I did, that the job of interpreting the enemy to America was a job to be done, my job (I knew the enemy) and glad I was capable of doing it I did not, at the same time, have hopes that I would soon, if ever, be accepted in romantic roles. 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