Screenland (July–Dec 1947)

Rory Calhoun, current femme rave, in his best role to date — Pine-Thomas' Technicolor production, "Adventure Island," for Paramount. Rhonda Fleming and Paul Kelly are in scene with him above. when she talked of their Paris trip, and she quotes any bright saying of his with more pride than one of her own. That's one-man Maria! Before he came to America and left again to join the Free French, Jean Pierre had served in the regular French Army— enlisting as a private — from August '39 to August '40, two months past the fall of France. To do that Army stint, he gave up a theatrical and movie career already brilliantly established. He had played on the stage in French versions of "Design for Living," "White Cargo." "Outward Bound," "As You Like It," "Pelleas and Melisande" and in works of the French dramatists, Sascha Guitry and Henri Bernstein. The play that put him at the top as a French star, however, was Jean Cocteau's "The Infernal Machine," in 1935, and French movie fans elevated him to top stardom for"Lac Aux Dames," in which he costarred with the vivacious French girl well-known in the United States., Simone Simon. Crossing the Atlantic the first time in July '41, Jean Pierre, his reputation as a fine actor having preceded him, played a season on the road with Katherine Cornell— an honor for a newcomer or any actor — in "Rose Burke." MGM soon signed him to a seven-year contract and starred him in "Assignment in Brittainy" and "Cross of Lorraine." News of Free French African activity acted like a nettle under the young Parisian's skin and, restless, he enlisted and waited for his call. Jean Pierre was in Club 21, in New York, with a party. Probably Gallic energy, plus being the self-reliant sort of man he is, made him enjoy loping downstairs on his own small errands — happening this time to be for cigarettes. Maria, who had met the debonair Frenchman in Hollywood, at the type of party where forty guests are invited and 200 come, was definitely not impressed, because of her cosmopolitan background, by any of that hodge-podge influx. She was so busy that even the debonair Frenchman failed to register, except perhaps in the lively Montez subconscious. But at Club 21, New York, the luncheon time when Jean Pierre cascaded downstairs, topped by what Maria still calls his "mop of blond hair," she did what she herself calls "clicked." "I just saw him square those shoulders," she says, "and I told a couple of people with me — newspapermen, of course — 'Boys, that's for me!' " Hollywoodians in New York have a camaraderie, and speak whenever they meet in the "Far East." Maria confesses she noticed that Jean Pierre picked up his cigarettes but left his matches oh the counter. '"Alio," Maria offered. "Want a light?" The meeting clicked with Jean Pierre, too, and she was waiting for the call, although she had an engagement with a very prominent director. Maria says, "I was staying at the Sherry Netherland. I had a gold-looking silk dress I had been saving for something special. I put it on, with the thinnest girdle. I had. Then I took the girdle off and pretended the gold dress was my w ardrobe. We went to 21, of course, and 72 from that evening forward we haven't been apart a single day except when he was on foreign duty." That gold-silk, sheathlike dress and the combined flash and potentiality for sweetness that are Maria did something permanent to Jean Pierre. They had the good luck to be ordered back from New York to Hollywood at the same time, and the courtship was Latin and fast, except that Jean Pierre, out of that shyness he has, hesitated to pop the actual question. Beaux to Maria are as automatic as feminine admirers' plaudits to Jean Pierre, and a crack English flyer planed to Hollywood to see her. Jean Pierre, who had been waiting in his deceptively careful-appearing way to propose as a Frenchman formally would, learned about this fast-coming follower and he strode into Romanoff's, where the two were lunching, with much the same bearing he strode up the beachhead near Marseilles. He didn't get any knee wound this time. He merely seized Maria by the elbow, and propelled her out. "If you think you are not engaged to me," he told her in a gay but unmistakable tone, "you are crazier than I thought even you could be." Maria went. (She had had a taste of authority from Jean Pierre once in awhile before, but had complied merely because of her natural attraction toward him.) She still feels badly about the ■ British flyer! Besides "Atlantis," which soon will be on screens, Jean Pierre and Maria have plans that could be carried out by top stars only. Jean Pierre felt that he would always be a typed player at Metro. He will have gone to England, before this article reaches print, and will have starred there in a picture as yet untitled. He has agreed — a sort of gentleman's agreement— to do three pictures for Seymour Nebenzal, the very brilliant producer who conceived and brought to life, "Atlantis." One of those three pictures will be "Mayerling," in which Charles Boyer co-starred with Danielle Darrieux — the most dramatic story in all royal history. When Jean Pierre returns, he and Maria will co-star again — in "The Scarlet Feather." This is still in preparation but will be keyed to the dash and fast love-making that suits the Aumonts. The film will fulfill an old promise the two made to Producer Charles Rogers. Jean Pierre also has a commitment to do a picture in Paris for Jean Cocteau, a young French modern, whose work both he and Maria admire. Jean Pierre's acting in a play of Cocteau's was a major jump in his (Jean Pierre's) leap to fame. As for Maria, her commitments and partial commitments are so many and varied that it is impossible to select which will become fact. She is very happy — having escaped the Technicolor walk-arounds, though Hollywood legend puts the earnings of the poorest at $2,500,000 and says the best have hit as high as $5,000,000. One fact is certain. It is a modest guess that Maria now rates $100,000 a picture. Maria's immediate screening, in "Pirates of Monterey," which should be already out by the time you read this, is a story of Old California, and her role has dramatic values. In "Atlantis" she plays perhaps the wickedest of all screen roles — every actress' ambition. She has not set her heart on playing the tender and heart-moving royal sweetheart of Jean Pierre in "Mayerling"; she wants Producer Nebenzal to choose the feminine star he thinks will be best for the picture — and Jean Pierre. This pair is the star couple in Hollywood to watch — the most brilliantly promising and the most intensely romantic husband-and-wife team on the screen. SCREENLAND