Silver Screen (Apr-Sep 1936)

53 THE film "Lost Horizon" marks the finding of her own horizon for Isabel Jewell. Coincident with her being selected for one of the important roles in this unusual screen story, Isabel found within herself the peace and fulfillment of purpose she eternally seeks in the picture. As though Fate itself, following four long bitter years of disappointment and struggle, elected to lend a guiding hand, she finally is achieving the realization of her dreams. Life has not been easy for the little actress who trekked out to Hollywood four years ago from the Broadway stage, to enact in the screen version of "Blessed Event" the part she created on the stage in its original form. She has had to undergo setbacks such as few Hollywood actresses are called upon to endure, and still emerge with their heads erect and a smile on their lips. Hollywood has treated her shabbily, no mistaking that, but never once has she been tempted to quit and give up the screen as a bad job. Isabel's not that kind, she's not the "quitter" type. She knew exactly what she wanted, and was willing to make sacrifices to gain her end. When she arrived in the film capital, she realized she had a hard road to travel. Hollywood fairly teemed with beautiful girls, and Isabel had never considered herself any more than passably pretty. To compete with such loveliness meant buckling down to the most laborious back-breaking toil, but Isabel possessed the courage of youth and the enthusiasm of a born artist. Circumstances, however, played against her from the first. Summoned from the east to step into her showgirl part in "Blessed Event," the studio did not even accord her a screen test. She knew nothing about film make-up. The make-up department, never having seen her before, merely slapped greasepaint on her face as they would any extra girl, and Isabel walked onto the set without the vaguest knowledge of anything pertaining even remotely to screen-craft. The outcome, of course, was disastrous. The beauty that naturally is hers was hidden as though behind a mask. Few of her friends recognized her as she trouped with Lee Tracy in the latter sequences of that film. That she displayed an unmistakable talent for dramatic acting was entirely beside the point. She did not photograph well— how could she, when she did not understand make-up technique and the studio had evinced no inclination of remedying this unfortunate situation? And that made her undesirable screen timber. The picture ended in May and Isabel did not work again until February. Hollywood seemed to have forgotten her. "Nobody would believe I had the ghost of a chance," Isabel now says, looking back on those gloomy days, "and producers were afraid to cast me in a picture. They remembered how I appeared in my first film and judged me accordingly. Talk as I would, I couldn't convince anybody that the reason I hadn't looked well was because I hadn't been properly made up." Even in those months of cheerlessness, Isabel was scanning the far horizon, beyond which lay fame and success. Through discouragement and disillusionment she kept her eyes ever on her objective, ever onward, until today . . . But I'm getting ahead of my story. Since the screen would have none of her, Isabel turned again to the stage . . . but in Hollywood. Otto Kruger was to star in "Counsellor-At-Law" at the El Capitan Theatre, and the actress won the part of the fast-talking telephone operator. Immediately, Hollywood sat up and took notice of her work. Even John Barrymore nodded his head sagely, in approval of this petite actress, and when he made the screen version of "Counsellor-At-Law" he insisted that Isabel enact her role in the picture. "Now . . ." thought Jewell, "here's where I finally go to town." She did, in the film. She stood out in gemlike clarity. And, for a time, the future beckoned with alluring promise. She played the leading feminine role opposite Otto Kruger in that actor's initial starring picture, "The Women in His Life," and appeared prominently in several more productions. MetroGoldwyn placed her under contract. Instead of continuing to cast her in sizable roles, she was relegated— with one exception, that of the girl in "Evelyn Prentice"— to unimportant parts that decidedly did not further her career. Once more, she appeared to be forgotten. Whenever any small part would be up for casting in a film , the executives [Continued on page 76] Only A "Bit77 Girl But Isabel Jewell Sees Utopia Just y\Kea J By WKitney Williams