Screen Mirror (Jun 1930 - Mar 1931)

Dancing Damsel Who Relaxes as She Rushes Is Our Gorgeous Joan wesreij \io\ the theatre tonight. You know, I believe that we work as hard between pictures as we do when we’re actually in production. Maybe harder. After we finish one, we start right in preparing for the next. “I’m really sorry that we’re all through with ‘Dance; Fools, Dance.’ I enjoyed every minute of that picture. It had everything and each sequence was different. “The first of it contained all the youth and gaiety and daring of ‘Dancing Daughters’ and those ultra-modern pictures. Then it went into the real, honest-togoodness drama of pictures like ‘Paid.’ I had the opportunity to dance,” she touched the metal cloth of the costume which she was wearing and which she had worn in the cabaret scenes of the picture, “to laugh and to flirt and to be very modernly sophisticated as well as to face a few dramatic issues. It was great.” Joan jumped up to her maid and told her to gather up all the paraphernalia of portrait making. She wrapped the blue satin robe around the short silver costume. “I don’t want to be branded as a definite type,” she added, standing in the doorway which led out onto the roof toward the three flights of stairs, “I want even my portraits to be different. I don’t believe there is anything more tiring than seeing the same thing over and over again. “I was afraid that I’d be forced to go on being a dancing daughter all my life. But I don’t want to be a Mary Turner either. In ‘Dance, Fools, Dance,’ I can be all of them. But you don’t find pictures like that every day.” Then she glanced at her wrist watch and started for the stairs, flinging a gay good-bye over her shoulder. Joan Crawford was starting for an hour of strenuous dancing with undiminished energy. • “DANCE, FOOLS, DANCE,” Joan Crawford’s latest vehicle, will mark the return of the beautiful star to a story that featured her initial picture efforts. The offering will be graced by some clever dancing by the talented Crawford feet. • “WHAT about stopping a few minutes for a cup of coffee?” Joan Crawford asked, without changing the expression of her face or the pose of her body. “Just a moment, Joan, please, I want to get a few more shots in that outfit.” The portrait photographer changed a light a fraction of an inch and disappeared under the black velvet hood which covered the camera. So Joan smiled and looked sad and turned her head this way and that, leaning against a gray and black enameled table, a tapestry behind her auburn-brown head. “Isn’t that enough?” she begged after the twelfth shot. The photographer being young and a man agreed that it was. Almost any man would agree with Joan when she smiles that flashing smile. Joan slipped out of the black velvet dress she was wearing and into a blue satin negligee. A boy in a white coat came up the three flights of stairs from the commissary to the portrait studio on the roof of a three-story building, carrying a tray with pots of coffee and cream and a plate of little cookies. Sipping her coffee, Joan stretched out in a big chair and relaxed. The late afternoon sunshine came in through the high windows. Joan had been making portraits since ten that morning, with a brief hour for lunch. She and George Hurrell, the photographer, and three or four other people who had climbed to the roof to talk to Joan, drank coffee and looked at the sunlight and chatted. Joan has learned the secret of relaxation. When she rests, she rests, and is ready for renewed activities. “We’re all through except the dancing costume pictures, aren’t we?” she asked finally, when she had finished her third cup of coffee. “Remember, I’ve got to take a dancing lesson this afternoon before I can go home to dinner.” The blue satin negligee disappeared into the little dressing room, screened from the studio by vivid cretonne curtains. Three boys, under Hurrell’s directions, took away the black and silver table and the tapestry background and brought in new tables and new backgrounds. Then Joan returned wearing a cloth of silver dancing costume, daringly abbreviated, glittering under the glare of the lights. Someone turned on the victrola so that soft, tingling melody filled the little studio. Joan drifted from one graceful, natural dancing posture into another while the camera clicked and an electrician moved the battery of lights this way and that. At last it was finished and Joan sat down for a minute’s rest before going down the three flights of stairs to her dancing lesson. “Four-thirty,” she said, half to herself and half to George Hurrell, “Lesson from five to six, shower and dress and home by seven. I guess ‘Doug’ and I can make Photo by Hurrell