Screenland (Jul–Dec 1946)

"AIRTAINERS* keep your own individual hairstyle smartly in place. They grip the hair — won't fall out On sale at leading beauty salons and notion counters everywhere. ■ -■■ y yr ORIGINAL HAVI NO EQUAL Jeanne Crain's Future Plans Continued from page 45 put another one in. Another time. I was in the play 'Romance' and I sang. You know, that is the story of a clergyman who was in love with a famous actress. There was a scene in which I sat on a settee and sang, and she was supposed to stand behind me, deeply moved as she listened, with tears in her eyes. And then she had to say, 'It was so beautiful, so beautiful!' Every time she said it was beautiful, the audience roared, because of course it was really dreadful! I would know how to do it better now — I would sing more softly, and then it wouldn't sound so bad. But you know how it is when you are very young — the harder you try, the louder you sing. It. must have been terrible." Jean Pierre's next picture will be "The Kissing Bandit" at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, to whom he is under contract, though no starting date has been set. But you can be sure that time never hangs heavy on his hands between pictures. He has recently finished writing a play called ''On the Balconies of Heaven" — which ' le, he says, is a quotation from a rrench poem. "I think it is going to be produced in Paris this fall," he said. "There is some interest in it, and my agent expects to place it before very long. No. I will not be in it. There is no part in it for me. It's the story of a family, covering the last twenty years, all told by flashbacks. The main part is for a woman like Katharine Cornell, and the play will show her at different periods of her life. Katharine Cornell was the first woman I worked with in America, and I admire her very greatly. I think she symbolizes the American woman. She loves her work and has a deep respect for it, and for everybody else's work. She's a tremendously inspiring woman." "With your fondness for music, why don't you study some instrument seriously?" "I would like very much to keep on .studying music if I had time," he replied. "But I have three more plays that I want to write. Also I am taking lessons in film cutting and camera technique at the University of Southern California, because I want to learn to direct and produce, so I must understand about those things. I go to night classes, twice a week. While working on this picture, I have not been able to put in as much time as I would like, but I will put in seme extra time to make up what I've missed, as soon as we finish shooting." That directing-producing ambition of Jean Pierre's sounds like bad news for bis fans, but he may have a hard time rinding a studio that will allow him to hide his handsome self behind the camera — we hope! There is no doubt that he would be an excellent director or producer, for whatever he does, he does well. But it seems only fair that for every picture he makes from behind the camera, he should be required to make another in front of it. Brcause with all loyalty to our own countrymen, and with full appreciation of Jean Pierre's compliments to Americans, the fact still remains that those Frenchmen have a way — and none more winning than Jean Pierre Aumont. dress she wore, with its lace yoke, which left the top of her shoulders bare, revealing a glimpse of beautifully white shoulders. As for Paul — be has been compared, you know% to Errol Flynn. but he is about ten years younger. There is none of the weary sophistication about his face that sometimes greets you from Errol's eyes. Those who have made the comparison haven't really looked at Paul. Jeanne, incidentally, thinks the entire comparison is absurd. "Paul," she breathed, "is much better-looking." Perhaps you remember Paul vaguely. He tried tbe movies for a while, found that he wasn't happy as an actor. He is an engineer by trade, and was very successful when he turned to tine manufacture of aluminum and later plastics during the war. Now he's head of his own radio company. This calls for a knowledge of electronics, metallurgy, a^d other phases of radio manufacture. His first wedding gift to Jeanne was a bleached mahoganv radio, trimmed with pigskin leather. The grill is a mirror with B -sharp notes sandblasted through it to permit the sound to come out. This attractive set, a combination of radio, phonograph and recording machine, is better-looking than anything now on the market, and Jeanne looks forward happily to the day when she'll be able to place it in their home of the future. For the present they're living in a small apartment at Santa Monica, but they own several acres in the Outpost up above Hollywood in the hills about 1100 feet above sea level. "Our home," Jeanne told me, "will be Cape Cod style on the outside. The outside will be fieldstone or flagstone. The inside will be very modern. Our architect, Walter Wurdeman, is the same man who constructed the model house at Wilshire Boulevard and Highland Avenue, to show what post-war homes are going to b° like. Our home will be differently, individually constructed, but the insid~ will have all those breathless, wonderful conveniences now being exhibited in that mcdel house. It will have the very latest in electrical equipment. "Walter Wurdeman has a wonderful knack of combining modern pieces with antiques. I like that, since it mears we can have a modern dining room table, sofas and chairs and still have a s'nnll antique desk. The drawings for the Inuse are now being completed. Paul ma'le the scale drawings of our ideas, and Walter Wurdeman is using these as a basis for the design." Paul explained, "Jeanne and I made various sketches for the house. I laid out the grounds, planned the road which is carved into the side of the mountain. We hired a man on a bulldozer to do SCREENLAND 7:")