Screenland (July–Dec 1947)

First scene still on the Ginger Rogers-Cornel Wilde comedy romance for Columbia, "It Had to Be You," is a tip-off to the hilarity you can expect when you see the picture. could make the patchwork quilt under which I sleep then I can learn to wallpaper." His individuality can be estimated by his news he'll use yachting pictures and maps as said wallpaper! "I would rather live alone. I think a fellow should as soon as he is able. I'm the only child who's never regretted being brought up alone. To realize your own assets and liabilities, to express yourself thoroughly, you have to decide everything for yourself. So depend on yourself! I'm used to that because I had to as a kid, when my folks lost all their money through business reverses. Youth has obligations to his family as well as to himself, there's a time for everything and now I owe my mother and grandparents reasonable comforts. When I can go out on my own I'll leave this place to mom and she'll have the income from our tenants. And I'm not," he asserted, laughing, "stingy! 1 bought us a super electric cooking range, and spent a hundred and seventy-five dollars just for the wiring it requires. But delivery on it has been delayed by the store. Poor mom and grandma have had to sweat out six months so far on their stove! But you've tasted what they cook on just an electric plate meanwhile. Aren't they wonders? "Just because you work with people who have a great deal more money than you it shouldn't throw you or make you envious. Why, Edward G. Robinson owns a collection of modern paintings valued at $1,250,000; imagine them right in your own house as he has his! I buy inexpensive copies of good art and maps and frame them for my walls. Now I am working with Walter Brennan, who owns a 12,000-acre cattle ranch. I am not in their class financially, so why not face it? Why pose? How muc'h a person earns or owns is not the sum of his or her qualities in my book. What he or she is and does, not what he has, matters to me. "I still haven't obtained the one luxury that appeals to me the most," Lon confessed. "I've been dying for a boat ever since I was a child. I want one about forty feet long, a Diesel-powered, seaworthy little yacht that can cruise up and down the entire Coast. I wouldn't want it to accommodate more than four, on my list enough of a crowd to go to sea. I drive to the harbor and gape in my spare time. I'm not a good sailor yet, but as you can guess from those books over there I am studying navigation in preparation for a wonderful day." On the bookshelves on the other side of the fireplace I spotted a gold cup and a gold trophy. He's never mentioned them in interviews. The cup was awarded him, I learned, when he was voted the most popular boy in his high school's graduating class. You can judge he won it by integrity, brightness, and unaffected friendliness, can't you? The trophy was given him by his fellow students at the same time because he was the Valedictorian. His grades throughout high school averaged 95.5, were the highest in his class. So you can see some brains do enter into movie star success. He wasn't the handsomest, the richest, or the guy who was on all the teams or handed the girls the cleverest compliments. "I think every boy and girl out of high school ought to make a determined effort to go on to college," Lon said. He worked his way through high school and then through two years of college in Los Angeles while rising from lowly movie extra to bit player to lead. "How can you possibly understand the world around you, or yourself, if you've no basis for valid comparisons? You never can know too much! I think our school teachers are terribly underpaid," he added while on the subject. "We should vote pay raises for them. "One of the things I like about working in movies is the new things I am continually learning. I've learned about farm life from the rural roles I've been cast in. I'm glad they chose not to use a milking scene in 'The Red House,' for I was bad trying to milk a cow! Two mules are my pets now in 'Summer Lightning,' the picture I'm making right now with June Haver. I'd never so much as spoken to a mule before — isn't there a lot of irony in life? I'm not at all excited by horse races, have never even wanted to go to Santa Anita. Ahead of me there's a script wherein I'm the jockey who wins the first Kentucky Derby. I have to learn to make like such a character! "For 'Bob, Son of Battle,' I had to learn to play five melodies on the violin, or at least all the proper fingering and bowing for all the closeups; I don't know who does my actual playing for the sound track — they never told me. I also had to acquire a brogue to be the Scotch shepherd boy — me, who's no whiz at dialects and who's never even counted one sheep to get to sleep! I stay up so late I can't help falling asleep the minute I hit the bed. I even went swimming on the Utah location for 'Bob,' happily unaware I was in a bottomless lake," he smiled. "For a poor swimmer I certainly get in the deep end of things! "But whatever your job is, you can broaden your outlook tremendously by reading worthwhile books," Lon said earnestly. "I spend much more on books than on dates. I never read mysteries, though I like supernatural tales and the funnies. Aldous Huxley's one of my favorite authors; I very much want to meet him someday. I have met James Hilton and he's offered to write a film story for me. I believe one of the main reasons Edison became such a great man was because of his passionate self -education. Did you ever know that he had less than one term of regular schooling? That he was taught to read and write and his arithmetic, too, by his mother? An undiscerning school teacher told him he was too dumb to learn anything! The first time he entered a public library he took out the first book he saw. After finishing it he took the one next to it. One day the curious librarian questioned him as to how many books he'd read. Edison answered, 'I've read fifteen feet of them.' How could that librarian resist helping him to a plan of reading? She gave him one, and any librarian will do the same to the person who wants knowledge. I think it's swell that today's high school students are doing much of their home work in public libraries. Those here in Los Angeles are jammed with kids taking advantage of all the news SCREENLAND 61