Screenland (Jul-Dec 1948)

I would like to say here that I am terribly disappointed her studio hasn't used her talent for comedy. She has such talent for comedy. That delicate sort of whimsical thing that, in my opinion, is the beautiful comedy. And she has courage. She has really tremendous courage. And determination. Tremendous, unswerving, unbreakable determination. When Angela was fourteen we came to America, as — perhaps you know — refugees from war-time England. We hadn't much money. We hadn't any money at all. The twins managed a scholarship at Choate School, which set us at ease about them. Eventually I got a job touring the Canadian provinces with Producer Herbert Wilcox's War Charities Show. Meantime, however, Angela set about the business of starting her career by auditioning as a chanteuse for the Hotel One Fifth Avenue in New York. For her audition, she did a turn, an imitation of Bea Lillie singing "I Went To A Marvelous Party." But in spite of the fact that we got all our friends over there to applaud, "Too young," she was told, and did not get the job. After she had studied, for a time, at the Fagin Dramatic School (where she was coached by that inimitable and unforgettable singer of songs, Fritzi Sheff) she did get a job, singing at the very de luxe nightclub, Samovar, in Montreal, Canada. (/ had brought over a lot of my old evening dresses and, all over spangles as they were, we made them down for her.) It took courage for Angela to take the singing job. She didn't want to sing. She can sing. She could have been a singer, if she had bothered to get her voice trained. She didn't bother. Won't bother now. Doesn't like to sing. (Except in the garden, kitchen, shower!) But, at the time, it was the way to make some money. And, at the time, any way to make some money . . . Immediately I finished my Canadian tour with Herbert Wilcox, Anna Neagle & Co., I left for Hollywood where, I hoped, there might be the chance of a part in the films. If there were a chance, I didn't get it. But Angela — Angela, I thought, would be certain to get a movie job. I wired her to come West. She came to Hollywood. Three months passed. She didn't get a movie job. Or even a foot in. We now hadn't any money at all. We lived in one room, the two of us. When the boys came home for weekends, from the Ojai Valley School, to which Choate had recommended them, they used to sleep on the floor! Yet we were, in this period that might have been so grim, SO gay. Angela has always been a terrifically good companion. A good sport. With a sense of humor that is as inexhaustible as it is sensitive and kindly. She was a good companion then. She said, we said together, "If only we can keep our end up, we have faith that we will get there!" Desperate financially, however, we finally decided we had to get jobs in a department store. So we both went into Bullock'sWilshire. We both got jobs. But Angela wanted to be an actress. WAS, she knew— but how to make others know? — an actress. And so, at last, at many-months-long-last, the contract! The MGM contract! Will I ever forget it? Will Angela ever forget it? Will the the twins ever forget it? Times were so bad for us, so lean, so thin, Angela had made her test — her first "in" in any studio — for the part she later played in "Dorian Gray." The studio had said, "Too young." Then I heard, through our good friend, the late Dame May Whitty, that Director George Cukor and Producer Arthur Hornblow were looking for a girl to play the Cockney maid in "Gaslight." Now, if only her studio will use her talent for comedy ... if only she need play no more of the sordid character parts she has done so often. Too often. As a peace-loving and amenable-to-reason girl as you could hope to find in the Hollywoods, when she first signed her contract with MGM, Angela resolved never to worry about, never to fight against any role the studio might assign her but to hold fast to the belief that Studio Knows Best. And so she did, until— until she was cast as the horrible small-souled woman in "If Winter Comes." She was thrilled, of course, to be playing opposite Walter Pidgeon, but was appalled by the part of the wife, who is not only inwardly warped and wicked, but also physically unattractive— dreadfully unattractive. After the picture was previewed, she was completely heartsick. She was positive that, after producers saw her as this repulsive woman, they would never want her for a young attractive part. As a matter of fact, she became so ill over it that she asked for a month's vacation, got it and drove across country, from Hollywood to New York, seeking to escape, to forget . . . ( the fact that her favorite date, Peter Shaw, was also in New York at the time made the "escape" gayer, I am sure, than it might otherwise have been!) Just one week after she arrived in New York, however, MGM wired her to come back— and for the very finest role of her career, a role for which many fine actresses had tested — that of Kay Thorndyke, the newspaper publisher, in "State Of The Union!]' Angela didn't wait to re-wire MGM. She telephoned. Half a breath after she'd told the studio she would be back at once, she asked, "But how did I get the role? How come? I don't even know Frank Capra, the director-producer . . ." "He saw you as the embittered wife in Tf Winter Comes,' " a complacent voice told her; adding, "That's how." Angela is really a deeply religious person, in a fundamental, non-sectarian way. 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