Silver Screen (Apr-Sep 1936)

64 Silver Screen for September 1936 her favorite joke was the time she planted her girl friend in his bedroom and pretended to be very angry when she found them together. That was months ago but the very thought of it still sends her iiuo screams of joy. I've never seen anyone get more laughter out of a practical joke than Bette. One night she was invited to a party where she knew a famous columnist would be one of the guests. So our Bess fixes up a pillow inside of her dress and gets herself introduced to the expert on "blessed events." When she thinks of his face as he noticed her "condition" she rolls on the floor in hysterics. She's simply crazy about calling her friends up over the 'phone and giving them amazing bits of information in a Cockney, Irish, Chinese or Southern dialect k— and she's so good at it that they never suspect her until she begins to laugh. You just can't mistake Bette's laugh. It's very startling, very loud, and so thorough that it turns her neck and face a crimson red. She doesn't enjoy games unless she wins. A lot of us are like that except that we put up a pretense, but not Bette. "I'll play Monopoly with you," Bette will say, "but if I don't win I'll be awfully mad." She plays a good game of bridge if she has the cards, but if she has a run of bad luck she immediately loses interest and begins to pout, or just throws down her hand and won't play at all. After a certain little episode of a year ago "Ham" has definitely refused to play bridge with her any more. Next to his music "Ham" loves golf so Bette has recently decided to take up golf so she can be with her husband more— 'tis only a rumor but they do say that the divot situation at the club is something awful. Bette regrets being a poor sport, she wishes she wasn't, but there just seems to be nothing she can do about it. But you have to admire her for being honest about it. Another thing she is honest about, and she wishes she wasn't, is meeting people. If she doesn't like you she simply can't disguise her feelings. She'll be coolly polite and then she will freeze. You always know exactly where you stand with Bette Davis. None of this "darling" stuff as she sticks a knife in your back. In Hollywood Bette lives, not as a movie star with a four-figure salary, but as Mrs. Harmon O. Nelson, wife of a composer and orchestra leader. The Nelsons have a small home "on the wrong side of the tracks" Alice Faye gives us an eyeful of the "body beautiful" before going into her dive. She has been so good in her last few pictures that you will be seeing more and more of her in the future. Her next is "Sing Baby Sing," in which she plays opposite Adolphe Menjou and Michael Whalen. with a white picket fence around it and a border of rose bushes leading up to the door. There is room for only one car in the small garage so "Ham's" car usually sits in the driveway. There is no swimming pool, no tennis court, no ping pong table. The tourists don't believe their eyes. Outside of the Nelsons, Cedric Woggs, M.P., and Tabitha (a sealyham and a scottie) live in the little house with the picket fence. Bette did what a lot of us intended to do, but never did— she married her first sweetheart. When she was fifteen and a student in the Newton High School, she and a long, gangling youth, whom she nicknamed "Ham" (and he called her "Spuds" because she ate so many potatoes) used to walk home from school together every day, and while he dangled her books Bette would tell him her theories on life. "Ham" didn't talk much then, and talks even less now, and was the ideal mate for Bette from the very start. When Bette came to Hollvwood it was understood that they would have a long distance engagement and that just as soon as he made enough money they would get married. "Ham" got himself a good orchestra job and came immediately to Hollywood to take Bette back East with him, but when he arrived he found that his "Spuds" had become very important, that she was a success, and, far worse, that she was a movie star. "Ham" quietly packed his bags and was on his way back to New York when Bette demanded a showdown. "It was my impression," she remarked one day quite apropos of nothing, "that it was agreed that we would get married as soon as vou got a job. Well, you've got a job, haven't you?" The next day they were married in Yuma, Arizona, Hollywood's Gretna Green. After a year in a San Francisco night club, Ham now sings and plays his compositions nightly in Hollywood's famous Cinegrill. Bette very rarely goes there. "The girls like it better if I don't pop in," she says. While "Ham" was singing in San Francisco he lived in an auto camp to be near the night club, which was on the outskirts of the city, and here, every week-end, Miss Bette Davis of Hollywood arrived, swept the rugs, mopped the floor and did a complete job of tidying up. (That's another of Bette's faults, by the way, she can sniff a speck of dirt a mile away.) The tourists, here today and gone tomorrow, never suspected the identity of that quiet Mr. Nelson's wife and Bette had the time of her life being the efficient housewife. When her career is over she and "Ham" expect to travel all over the world on a tramp steamer and live in auto camps. But I wouldn't be too sure— remember how she turned on the second balcony and the subway. "It's Fun To Be In Love!" \Continued from page 59] my mother, who was a concert singer, and with whom I travelled all over the Middle West. Mother naturally supposed I would be a musician, especially when I won first prize for three successive years for the best original piano composition." She became a dancing girl when she visited her mother, who was in Hollywood teaching players how to talk before the mike— and subsequently was three times discovered! She's had an interesting young life playing in shows around the country, growing up in the business and loving it as much during those first lean years, when a dollar had to stretch from Kansas City to Denver, as today when a silver fox cape is just a little throw-around. "I'll never forget the old days," Ann said, her voice animated in recollection. "I was with a travelling show that used to pay off in cash. It was something of a worry for us girls toting our great big salary on sleeper jumps. We used to sit up half the night thinking up new places to bunk it. "One night I said to myself, 'I'll sleep on it like a wedding cake— maybe I'll dream of my good fortune. Next morning I awakened just before we got to our stop and I had to rush dressing. And then, when I was all dressed and we were pulling in I thought of my money— but I just couldn't remember in the excitement where I had put it. I cried 'I've been robbed!' They kept the train at the station and the plainclothes men came in and turned the car upside-down. Then one of the detectives said disgustedly, 'Maybe you just dreamed you had that money!' "That made me think of the dream I'd had. I'd been a famous star with a huge car and my name in lights, and the ap plause that was still ringing in my ears when I awoke proved to be the train's bell. I suddenly recalled about sleeping on my money like the wedding cake— and there it was, right where I had put it, my whole enormous salary!" R-K-O is preparing to make her a "famous star" with all that goes with it. And she won't have to be discovered again— she's arrived. But she didn't look any more than a child in her demure black dress, with violets at her throat, and a certain languid innocence that passes for any adjective you have handy. Ann may be done over, all the way from John Ford to Lubitsch, from a blonde beauty to a dusky darling, from Garbo to Kelly, which is beside the point. The thing that's really important is that Ann— whichever way you like her— is with us to stay. To paraphrase Hollywood, she'll be "just the type!"