Silver Screen (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

62 Silver Screen for January 1937 They Broke The Apron Strings about Russia under the Soviet regime. When someone on the ship between London and New York thought that she should make a test for pictures, Frances was amused. She was a journalist . . . not an actress. When Talent Scout Oscar Serlin (of Paramount) invited her to the studio tor the test, she was still amused. It would be an amusing lark . . . and something to write about when she returned to Seattle. So she wasn't frightened ^vhen the make-up men went to work on her or when she eventually faced the lights and cameras. ^Vhy should she be? She had nothing to lose. Ah, but she had something to gain! The test was viewed and before she could say, "Jack Robinson" or even, "Dear me!" here she i\'as in Hollywood, facing more make-up men and more cameras and with the dotted line of a contract under her pretty and incredulous nose. But, what if she hadn't written the essay? ^Vhat if she had listened to sage advice and declined to go to Moscow? What if her initiative had not led her on to those further travels which brought her, at last, to Ne^v York and the screen test? What if she had not broken those home ties? Errol Flynn's path to Hollywood was even more erratic, more unplanned and more astonishing. It led him from green Ireland, where he was born, through jungles, along turgid rivers, through steaming swamps and it included pauses in some of the most colorful of South Sea ports. It furnished him ^vith some vivid adventures . . . and also with some grim and drab days and weeks in London, looking for a job. The urge to wander was an important part of the general make-up of the Flynn family— and Errol's father took him to far parts of the world while Errol was a mere boy. Small wonder then, and no surprise to the family, that he ran away to sea at an early age, earning his way on tramp steamers and freighters to still farther, unexplored ports. Before he was twenty he o\vned his own schooner and was plying here and there about the South Seas. An amateur motion picture company hired the schooner (Mr. Flynn's services as skipper were included in the deal) to cruise about those far parts for the purpose of obtaining "background shots." Since the company had almost no cast and very little money, Errol consented to act as something or other against the backgrounds of palm trees and lagoons. He does not know where, if ever, the picture was released. Later on, under a similar arrangement, he pla\ed (of all things!) the role of Fletcher Christian in "Mutiny on the Bounty," which stoiy a small, fly-by-night company was filming near Tahiti. He doesn't know uhat became of that picture, either. Bin perhaps it ^vas those experiences before the cameras which impelled him to return to England and nearly starve to death in the effort to find work on stage or screen. He didn't, you see, return to Ireland. Those ties had long been severed. The luck o' the Irish eventually won him an almost invisible part in "Murder at Monte Carlo." Irving Ascher noticed him and sent him, forthwith, to Hollywood where he waited nine months without iloing anything at all before he was cast, lo everyone's surprise except his own, for the role in "Captain Blood." That, of course, (lid the trick and made him famous. If adventure is in ihcir blood, no amount ol movie fame and adulation can remove !t. As this is \vritten, Errol is olf for Borneo and other remote parts to spend his vacation in the pmsuit of fish, new ex [Continued from page 33] periences and several thousand feet of film. Fate and a devious path may ha\e brought him to Holly\\'ood. Nothing can keep him here ... so long as that thing is in him which made him leave the comfortable home, the fireside, and set forth after . . . well, I'm convinced that he didn't know what he was after! I don't think that he knows what he is after, now, as he sets forth for Borneo. But I'll wager that it will be the beginning of something or other! Simone Simon was born in Marseilles, France. When she was ten her family moved to Madagascar, on the East coast of Africa. From that time on her life was filled with drama and change. She lived and went to school in Budapest, Turin, Berlin and Paris. She was studying designing in Paris when the Russian director, Tourjanski, saw her sipping coffee at a sidewalk cafe, introduced himself and asked ANNOUNCEyMENT npHE February issue of Silver Screen will have a long "Projection" of Loretta Young's interesting career, as told to Elizabeth Wilson. . . . Ben Maddox digs into the doings of the players who are aviation conscious. . . .An exclusive feature of this next issue will be the fictionization of the picture, "Captains Courageous," in which Freddie Bartholomew stars. . . . Ed Sullivan, the Broadway Columnist, tells how Hollywood fixes the stage favorites. On sale January yth. The Editor her to make a test. She slapped his face. But she must not have slapped it very hard, for the next day she went to his studio and made the test. Now, this was exciting, but rather frightening. Success came to her swiftly in European pictures . . . but Simone was accustomed to swift, colorful experiences, with a European backgroimd. The success did not astonish her as much as it might have a less experienced young ^\'oman. Her first really important adventure came, I think, when she left the familiar European haunts to come to Hollywood . . . when she left behind her the friends, the associations, her family, the gay hodgepodge of Continental capitals, to come to a land which Avas strange to her, indeed! She came alone. She hadn't a friend, knew not one soul in this bewildering Hollywood. She did not understand the language and she was prepared . . . nay, determined ... to be annoyed at practically everything. She must, she thought desperately, make her presence known, convince people that she was a Personage. And this she tried to accomplish in the only way she could think of. She stormed. She shouted. She sulked. She demanded of her producer that he help her find a panther lor a pet. She was appalled when the people around her merely smiled and allowecl her to have her own way or lo think that she was lining it . . . even to the panther. That amused tolerance made her think that she had failed lo register as a Personality. Actually, she was a very homesick, forlorn little object. Each week she told herself, "Next week I shall go home to Europe where they know me and mulerstand me— and where I can understand them and ^vhat they are doing. They understand, over there, what I mean ^vhen I get into a temper! " But she did not go home. Not even •when she was obliged to retire from the coveted role of "Cigaret" in "Under Two Flags." That hurt. But she didn't go home. She -^vaited long months before another part came her way. And she became more cheerful, less tempestuous, during that trying ^vait. There was in her, you see, that streak of stubborn determination which is characteristic of all these young things— that something which gives them the courage to break those home ties, to make them, see the job through, no matter how lonely they may be, no matter how discouraged, how stranger-in-a-strange-land they may feel. After the preview of "Girls' Dormitory," Simone commented, "For months no one called to ask me to go somewhere. Since that picture is previewed, everyone calls to ask me to go everywhere. Is this success?" Yes, Simone, we are afraid it is. But . . . Simone has bought a house in Beverly Hills. She is making friends, she is learning to speak English. She no longer feels that people are unfriendly or critical of her. The loneliness and homesickness are forgotten now in the flush of success. But what if she had been afraid to break those ties? Randolph Scott did not travel quite so far as these others to get here. But it took hiiri nearly as long to arrive as it did these others. When Randie, born and bred in a small, Southern town, inherited a bit of money, of course the old family friends advised, "Now, son, you just invest it here ivhere you know everyone and can trust everyone . . . where everyone knew your grandfather and your Uncle. . . ." And when Randie placed that money, firmly, in his pants' pocket and annoimced his intention of setting forth for Hollywood, people, naturally, raised their hands and gave him up as a bad job. "^Ve'll look after you here," they averred. "I don't want to be looked after," quoth Mr. Scott. First thing you knew, here he ^vas. The Paramount publicity department sent him to call upon me, whether he liked it or not, I enjoyed it ^ery much. He didn't tell me . . . and I probably never shoidd have knoisn it if a casting director hadn't grown confidential one afternoon, that Randie had a long, determined struggle to go through before anvone gave him a chance in pictiues. There wasn't anvone in Hollywood to "look after him" ^^hen he was discotnaged and imhappy. He had cut those protecting, family ties. He had coinage and belief in himsell to add to the breeding and the background which were his heritage. You don't think of Scott, somehow, as a fighting man. He is too gentle, too courteous, too slow of speech. But he waded through a swamp of inferior rt)les, waited and worked and tried . . . before he ■\\as linally recognized as a potential star. The courage, I repeat, of these young ]icople must inspire you. The vision, howc\er unformed it mav be, of their own potentialities is something to consider. They . . . each and every one of them . . . went out alone to conquer the world. Most of them had to travel a long, long way. They are still young, still a bit breathless. But here they are!