Screenland (Feb-Oct 1949)

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Y ACTUAL PHOTOS OF THE FAVORITE MOVIE STARS Including such favorites as June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Alan Ladd, Rita Hayworth, Cornel Wilde, Lana Turner, Greer Garson, Gregory Peck, and many others. Complete set of 64 50c Beautiful 32-page catalog with order. Includes over 400 actual pictures of movie stars, westerns, pinups. STEWftRT.CROXTON STUDIOS P O Bo* 2390. Dept. SU-7 HOLLYWOOD 28. CALIFORNIA FREE "Fighf Cancer" . . Trite words? Not when you know the trogic facts of which these words ore sum and substance. Last year more than 188,000 Americans died of cancer Research and education are our most potent weapons in the war on cancer. Your contribution is needed to carry on the fight. Guard yourself and your loved ones from this dread disease. Give to Conquer Cancer AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY brushed Princeton when, in deference to my father's wish, I looked into entrance requirements and, weak as I was in math, quickly looked away again! "If I could have majored in Tarziana, I might," Lex looked amused, "have matriculated, because — this is going to sound like a whole field of the old corn — I was a walking encyclopedia on Tarzan. I'd read all the Tarzan books so many times I could recite them. I'd seen all the 'Tarzan' films, reissues as well as current attractions, and the Tarzans, from Elmo Lincoln on, were my heroes and my models. I learned the Call. During Summer vacations in the country, I built tree-houses. During visits to the Zoo, I talked to lions, leopards, tigers, black panthers and to the various kith and kin of the charming Cheetah and they talked, you could never have told me otherwise, to me. "So hungover is my idolatry of the early Tarzans that when I discovered Elmo Lincoln playing a part in 'Tarzan's Magic Fountain,' which is my first 'Tarzan' film. I felt a kid again. When Elmo flexed his still mighty muscles for me, I gawked. And when he sat in on one of my interviews I, unable to say more than two words, said about two words — and the complete interview fell to Elmo! "In spite of my idolatry, however, I used to look at the Tarzans on the screen and say, with the arrogance of the teenage, or younger, 'My gosh, / can do better than that!" I used to look at actors in pictures, period, and say 'My gosh, I can do better than that!' Whereupon, I would walk home from a movie being the character I'd most admired — Laurence Olivier in 'Wuthering Heights,' Fredric March in 'A Star Is Born' — and much better, of course, much more effectively than the Messers. Olivier and March had managed to be! Even now, grown up and in the movies, my poor wife has to put up with me being a character I've just seen on stage or screen. I must say, however, that she gets this break — I'm never such a character as, say, Mario Brandon in 'Streetcar Named Desire' or Bogart ia 'Treasure Of The Sierra Madre.' Much more likely to be David Niven in 'Enchantment' — I'm one who believes," Lex laughed, "in the beautiful things! "Since it never actually occurred to me that my dream of playing Tarzan in the movies might really come true, I can't say that Tarzan was my target. But acting was. . . Following my graduation from Exeter, at eighteen, I went, with never a glance to right nor left, into Summer stock — Mt. Kiseo, Westport, Ridgefield, all the stops, large and small, on the strawhat circuit. In the Winter, I appeared on Broadway, in ( VER V minor parts) 'Window Shopping' and 'The Merry Wives Of Windsor.' "In shock as the result of my choice of a profession, my mother, being a mother, composed her features and said, bravely, 'Do anything you want to do.' But after one Winter of watching me walk the boards, my father yelped. With pain. "The Summer I was nineteen, a talent 70 scout for 20th Century-Fox, travelling in the train to Westport with me, offered me a screen test in New York. I made the test. It was okay. But before Hollywood became more than a gleam in my eye, my father made a request of me. 'Quit the theatre for one year, go into business with me and if, at the end of that time, you still want the theatre,' said my father, managing a sickly smile, 'why, all right, all right. . .' "I went to work for Dad in a hot steel mill — and loathed it. Blast furnaces in the Summer, frozen to the scaffolding in the Winter, Tarzans jungle is, by comparison," Lex laughed, "a Garden of Eden." Lex made his escape from the blast furnace, not into the arms of 20th Century-Fox (not then, not yet!) but into another blast furnace. In January 1041, he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a buck private in the Infantry. He emerged from the War a major, the rank with which, invalided out of the Service, he was retired. Of the fact that he was seriously wounded in the War, Lex says nothing and you see nothing. Meantime, in the privy purlieus of The Stork Club, Tarzan had found his mate. . . "We met here, at The Stork," Lex told us, "at a debutante cocktail party. We were introduced, 'Miss Constance Thurlow, Mr. Alexander Barker'— and that did it! We went out every night after that, for two years. . ." "No escaping it," laughed young Mrs. Lex. "Know what he did? He managed to get hold of my date-pad and wrote his name on it, every day. . . !" "You want to get a girl, to cut out competition is," Lex laughed, "is the only way! In fact, I wanted to cut it out altogether by getting married right then and there. But, our families against it, no dough and a war on. . ." Lex shrugged, said, "then I went to Officers Candidate School in Ft. Benning. Three days after I got my commission, my pay went up a little and — we got married. Got married in the Church of the Resurrection on 74th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues in New York. Got married in white satin and tails and relatives and rice— the Works! On our honeymoon, we went to the Laurentians in Canada, because ..." "... because Lex likes to ski," Connie contributed, "and DID ski. He skiied all day long. I didn't see him, and this our honeymoon, mind, from dawn to dusk. . ." Said Lex, with a meaning grin, "but dusk always comes, honey!" Then Lex was sent overseas. As he tells it, "Time passed. Sitting in a slit trench one day, rain pouring down my back, comes a cablegram which reads, 'Having baby hope you're satisfied Connie'." "Lex was so set on having a baby," said Connie, decoding the message. "I was, too, but I wanted to wait until the War was over and Lex at home again. As it was, as I had feared it would be, Lynne was eleven months old before Lex saw her and, for me, every day of her first eleven months was marred by the realization that Lex was missing them, and hating to miss them. Now," Con