Screenland (Feb-Oct 1949)

Family-man Craig has two children and is still married to his one and only wife. "You can safely say of Mary and me," he says, "that we are not, not ever, going to get a divorce." Jim, with two of his four dogs, has enough animals on his ranch to stock a small zoo. a time," said James, joyfully. "I kill four people, two girls and two men — with my bare hands, too! Just call me Craig, the Killer," he counselled us, ''and say for me that this is the kind of part I've been wanting to do for years!" Big Jim Craig's happiness in the homicidal gangster role he plays in "Side Street" stems from his unhappiness over the nice guys, the good guys he has played in practically every one of the thirty-odd pictures in which he has appeared since he bowed in, in 1938, in ' The Buccaneers." "I've played such awful nice guys," James lamented, "that I don't even like to remember them. In fact, I CANT remember them. Can you?" James shot it at us, "can anybody? I doubt it. The shock treatment is, let's face it, the success treatment. For instance, you know very well that if you were to advertise that at four this afternoon, a happy couple accompanied by their five happy children would be standing at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, they would be standing there, albeit happily, alone. Whereas if you were to advertise that at four this afternoon, a person would be bumped off at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, you wouldn't be able to get near the place for the crowd. We're a bloodthirsty lot, us 'umans," said James, "we're not head-hunters as are certain tribes in Darkest Africa, or wherever — but we are headline hunters! "It was not, you will recall," Jim reflected aloud, "until after Gable played a gangster that his brilliant star rose. In one of his early films, James Cagney pushed a grapefruit in a girl's face and he was made. Humphrey Bogart never portrays what you'd call a Mania's Boy. Bob Montgomery's laurels were greenest after the foul murder he committed in 'Night Must Fall.' Take Richard vVidmark, Dan Duryea. the saturnine George Sanders, Richard Basehart; then," said James morosely, "take me — a good guy, just a nice good guy. In Kitty Foyle,' in 'Lost Angel,' 'The Human Comedy,' 'Our Vines Have Tender Grapes,' Little Mr. Jim,' I never kicked a girl's teeth in," James deplored, "or slapped her around. Why, even in 'The Devil And Daniel Webster,' in which I played a character who sells his soul to the devil, I repented in the end. But not this time," said Craig, the Killer, fondling his horns, "not in this picture and not, I hope and pray, in many a chiller-diller to come!" James really has a mad on the paragons of virtue, the "Worthy Willies" that have been his film fare. He has as much of a mad as so easy-going and amiable a guy can have, on the studios which have been responsible for keeping actor Craig to the path of virtue. He describes himself, with a wry smile, as "one of MGM's stepsons." He added, "Mind you, I get along all right. Actually, I'm a very fortunate person. Born outside the theatre, with no burning ambition to be an actor — having intended to be a doctor — and no experience, I work steadily. In fact no one in the town of Hollywood works harder than I do. I must also admit," he added, grinning, "that my one big ambition on the screen is to make money, honey. At the same time, no one enjoys making a good scene more than I do. It's like standing off and looking at a painting. But you don't want to look, year after year, at a canvas on which you see yourself depicted in, unvaryingly, the pastel colors called Sweetness and Light!" We sympathize with Jim in his laudable desire to sin on the screen. We also sympathize with MGM and the other studios which, in casting Jim as a healthy, wholesome, nice good guy do so because, we feel sure, they feel sure it is perfect type casting. And so (don't shoot, Jim. until you see the whites of our eyesl) it is. And we can prove it. True, there is The Woman in his life. The Woman is two years old. Her name , is Diane. She is Jim's daughter. She is also his "femme fatale." Every other sentence Jim {Please turn to page 59) Though he may clutch a gunon the screen, James Craig's forte is wielding a curry comb.