Screenland (Feb-Oct 1949)

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Not a drying liquid, but a soothing, smoothing color base that assures thrilling new lip-beauty all day. PROVE IT TO YOURSELF! Send for generous trial size ! Specify "R" for red tone, * Guaranteed by *2\ Good Housekeeping, "B" for blue tone. Please enclose 10c for postage & packing $1.00 at better drug and department stores. NATONE COMPANY, INC. Dept. 465. 1207 W. 6th Street, Los Angeles M, Calif. 60 stakes and left Hollywood Dehmd. A friend of mine got me a job in a bank up there and my brother and I started on our way. We got as far as Kings City when the car broke down. During our five hour wait while it was being repaired, my brother spent the time telling me I was silly to leave Hollywood, that he'd try to get me more work as an extra, and that I should keep trying for a break. Well, I didn't need much of a nudge and the first thing I knew I was heading back to Hollywood. "Without my knowing it, an agent, Nat Goldstone, had been trying to locate me while I was on my way to Carmel. He had called my house and my mother had told him where I'd gone but said she didn't know where I'd be staying. So he sent a wire to the Western Union office up there for me, telling me to come back. The wire was returned since I couldn't be located. I'd been back home five days before Nat thought of calling the house to check on me further. When he did call I answered the phone and he told me to come to his office at once. "I couldn't understand why he should be so interested in me. He finally told me the whole story. He'd taken Morris Ankrum, who was a character actor, to a studio on an interview. On the way back he asked Morry if he knew of a likely young juvenile at the Playhouse who might be picture material. Morry told me later that my name just suddenly came to his mind and he really gave the old pitch to Nat about me. Hence Nat's interest. "The first thing Nat asked me to do was to sign a contract. Well, I'd been trying for months just to get into an agent's office and to have one asking me to sign up was too much. I'd have signed anything. I am still with him, by the way. "Nat took me to Fox first where I was given a silent photographic test, one of those things where you're wheeled about on a stool while the camera catches your profile and what-not. They are abominable things that are not fair to the hopeful young person at all and I think they ought to be abolished. Then Nat took me to Paramount and with the help of Felix Young, who was a producer there, rushed me down at five o'clock in the afternoon for a test. It was obvious the test director didn't relish my coming in at that late hour and I got the brush-off treatment. I recited a speech from the play, 'Young Sinners,' and I know I sounded like 'The Boy Stood On The Burning Deck.' It was elocution at its deadliest. "My next stop was at MGM where Nat introduced me to Benny Thau, who was casting director at the time. I certainly couldn't have been an impressive sight when Benny met me. I was all neck and ears and I was about as much at ease as a giraffe in a nursery. Benny told us he'd like to give me a test but he couldn't authorize one. However, he did have an idea. A couple of girls — Ann Dvorak and Karen Morley — were being tested for a contract and no one could be found to play the scene with them, so test director Felix Feist had reluctantly agreed to make the test with them. Benny told me to go down to the stage and see if Felix would let me do the test with the girls instead. This was also at five in the afternoon, by the way. Felix was more than glad to be relieved of the job. Well, he had to shoot Ann and Karen so about all you could see of me was a good-sized view of my ears and the back of my neck. Felix apologized for having to do the test that way and then asked me if I'd remain and do a test later in the evening with a Santa Barbara socialite who was coming to town. I told him I'd be glad to since all I had was time. She was due at eight and arrived at ten. Felix was really boiling by then, so he threw the whole test, all good angles, at me. "By now I was on Cloud 12. Here I was in a movie studio actually getting a real test. When the thing was shown in a projection room, someone in that dark room said quietly, 'Who's that kid?' A little ripple of interest began to stir faintly. Benny Thau then had his chance to ask for a more extensive test of me. I made two, the latter being the Tiffany treatment with lights, full sets, and what-not. "It was here that Nat went to work. At the time, he was handling Frank Albertson, who was supposed to go into a good part in the first of the Charlie Chan pictures at Fox. The company was to leave for location in Honolulu on a certain date. Nat knew Frank couldn't finish his current commitment at another studio in time to leave for location, so he called Fox and told them that MGM had a young actor under contract who would be perfect for the part. I was under no contract at all then, of course. Nat then called Benny and asked him to tell Fox that I was an MGM player. This Benny did. Nat, thereupon, went to work on MGM. He told them they should sign me to a year's contract with two six months' options. It was a good deal, he pointed out. If they didn't want me after Fox had used me in the picture, at least the loan-out salary Fox would pay MGM for me would pay off my contract. MGM agreed. "That's the story of my break in pictures. You can see how Fate played a big role. Whenever I recall that story, as I do often, I can't get unduly impressed by any luck I may have had in pictures. The element of chance was too strong then." One of the big things that has helped Bob to keep on an even keel has been his reaction to his career. He has never regarded it purely as a means of gaining attention and importance. "I've always been so awed and impressed by pictures that I never went off the beam," Bob said sincerely. "I felt in the beginning that I had a long way to go and that I had no time to get any illusions of grandeur. For that matter I still think I have a lot to learn. My whole career has seemed too much like a piece of freak luck for me to go off into a tizzy about it. I keep seeing, in my mind's eye, a picture of a man walking