Screenland (Nov 1949-Oct 1950)

QUICK RELIEF FOR SUMMER TEETHING When I hear of women building fearfully on lies, on pretenses they are forced to maintain, I once more thank my mother for the conditioning she gave me. My mother taught me to fiee from fraud by being fair with me, always. I recall an incident when I was ten that cinched this streak in me. I had been laughing in class. The teacher ordered the guilty one to stand up. Before I could, someone squealed on me. I had my hands slapped fiercely thirty times by that mean teacher. They were so swollen my mother was enraged and hurried to school the following morning to protest such cruelty. However, I'm glad for that episode, glad I discovered early that the slightest hesitance with the truth only brings suffering. Ever since, when anyone asks me what I did I get right up and state all pertinent details. Then — I relax! I'm not preaching bluntness. Tact is one form of charm we all can employ daily. And I recognize that circumstances may produce a pressure that temporarily will warp one's judgment, so I don't condemn. But I don't stay with people to whom I'd have to lie. Their vanity ruins respect. Until I can escape, I'm entertained watching them make idiots of themselves. If they're fooling others for awhile, they're also kidding themselves that they can get away with the pose. That's dumb in my opinion, for no one has been clever enough to invent the perfect, lasting he yet. When they're fabricating their false front they are ill at ease underneath their surface flair. They never can be sure whether or not the listener knows better. Listeners sometimes are maliciously tactful on the outside, while laughing hysterically inwardly. On my first date with a man I frequently tell him I was married and divorced in my midteens. This isn't pubhcized, because I don't want to be advertised in that manner. But I've never denied it when asked. I believe any man I date should be correctly informed, so he will be conscious I'm not full of nothing more than girlish theories about what love means to me I explain it was one of those adolescent things that didn't pan out, back in my home town of Boston. I don't claim I descended from aristocratic Beacon Hill, either. I tell everyone the truth, that I was born and grew up in the tough West End. My father was a carnival barker, and after he died we were really poor. I have gaps in my education that are funny to people, because I hated school and played hookey oftener than anyone else on my block. I was a terrific tomboy until I got into plays at neighborhood settlement houses. That led to bits in little theatres and a scholarship at a dramatic school. The other day I heard my name was up in lights on Broadway, for the first time. I instantly wrote a pal in New York to take a snapshot of the marquee for me. I haven't been able to go back on a vacation. But in my past is the memory of gaily going alone to New York from Boston, at seventeen. I proceeded to fail during the three years I devoted to getting on the Broadway stage. Many Hollywood actresses can boast of an illustrious prelude in the theatre. I can't, and I told the powers-that-be in Hollywood so when they asked for references. In Manhattan I earned an average of nine dollars a week, and lived on that. 1 had jobs as a waitress, soda jerk, candy salesgirl in a theatre lobby, and as a night club photographer. When I finally saved two hundred dollars, by modeling for the gruesome covers of detective magazines, I spent ninety-six dollars for my ticket to Hollywood, and four dollars on food en route. I had no contract, no agent, no connections. But when I arrived I did have three outfits in my pasteboard suitcase, one hundred dollars in cash, and a determination to rise. I've seen a studio biography which states: "Only a few times in motion picture history has a young actress won herself so much attention and such important roles on such short notice." They're not kidding me. I clerked in a store here at first. I walked to the studios. I didn't have bus fare. But I like walking, freakish as that makes me here. I was here more than three years before I got before the cameras, and then I barged into an office so I could be "noticed" unmistakably. I've no finishing school past. Rather, ours was a swell gang of ambitious girls in the Hollywood boarding house that I stayed in my first three-and-a-half years. I still see those girls, and talk to Marie Cote, the wonderful woman who runs that haven, nearly every day by phone. They all recall my getting a contract at Selznick, where for a year-and-a-half I was assigned nothing. And then I was at Paramount for an idle six months. To be precise, I was interviewed for sixtythree roles before I landed my first one. Hollywood saw me and swooned? It dynamites the traditional struggle story to say I was never sorry for myself. But I must say it. My career — when it was nonexistent to the human ej/e and now — is like a chess game to me. I'm thankful mine isn't a lavish past, for getting somewhere is what excites me. I've always shrugged off disappointments, sensing it just wasn't the right move. I always felt I couldn't lose forever. Anybody can figure out that if you keep trying one day you'll win. It's also a blowo to Hollywood hooey to say you don't have to put on airs here. But I know this is so. If a date complimented me on a dress I'd borrowed from another girl, I'd say, "Thanks, but it really isn't mine, you know!" I don't have to assume absurd elegance with today's dates, with Stewart Granger or Ronald Reagan, for example. They're distressed by false pride. Maybe some men must date fragile females to feel dominant. They're not for me. My dates must be brilliant and ultra-virile, must truly be able to intrigue me. I don't go into a clinging-vine routine. I never tire, have the constitution of a rhinoceros. At tennis, I wallop with my racket. If I can't do something. Lady, I learn how. When I was signed for my first Western, I'd never been on a horse except a wooden one on a merry-goround. The picture started in two days. I took a concentrated, two-day course in horsemanship and could jump on and off EXPERIENCED Mothers know that Slimmer teething must not be trifled with — that summer upsets due to teething may seriously interfere with Baby's progress. Relieve your Baby's teething pains this summer by rubbing on Dr. Hand's Teething Lotion — the actual prescription of a 'famous Baby Specialist. It is effective and economical, and has been used and recommended by millions of Mothers. Your druggist has it. DR. 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