Silver Screen (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

lingocd in my mind all ihi'out;!! the years. I wanted to poiLiay that role more than anything else— it was ni\ fa\(niie wish, the thing nearest my heart. And, 1 believe my next biggest moment was the time Winfieid Sheehan told me 1 was to play the part. I couldn't sleep for nights, I was JO happy. And when I actually began work on the picture, directed by Frank Borzage, it was like a dream come true. "But that night at the Carthay Circle will remain forever the highlight in niy life. There I ^vas— an unknown player— and to feel that I had really won a niche for myself on the screen, at last, was an experience that comes but once in a lifetime. AVhile I felt the greatest exultation, I also felt very thankful and extremely grateful to everyone concerned in the work— and I still do!" Janet, you perhaps don't kno-\v, was assigned to the role of Diane without ever having had a test for the part. Frank Borzage ^vent on the set of "The Return of Peter Grimm one day when Janet was making a scene under the direction of Victor Schertzinger. As Kathie, she was seated at the piano playing a conrposition for Peter in a sequence where he is ill, and as she played and smiled, the tears were in her eyes. Borzage was so impressed he spoke to producer Sheehan about the little Gaynor girl. Incidentally, tor the records, this was one of the first times in pictures that a girl had smiled through tears, and so famous did it become that for months afterwards they referred to the performance at the studios as "doing a Gaynor." Later on, when the great director Murnau came to Hollywood to direct "Sunrise" for Fox, he ran off "Peter Grimm," among other productions, with a view to selecting his feminine lead, and believe it or not, he too was so impressed with Janet's "smiling through tears" scene that he immediately deirianded her for his picture. "Sunrise" was six months in the making and Borzage waited nearly a year before Janet was available for "Seventh Heaven"— just to show you how much he wanted her. "Seventh Heaven" was released before "Sunrise," so many people have thought "Seventh Heaven" was made first. Janet came to "Seventh Heaven" with' all the priceless knowledge of screen acting which she had gained through her long association with Murnau, whom Death claimed about five years ago in an automobile accident on the Malibu road, en route to Santa Barbara. Getting fired is rather an emotional experience. But getting asked back by the same company that fired you with a big raise in salary is exen a more emotional experience. Few girls have the chance to feel this excruciatingly pleasant sensation either in Hollywood or in the outside world, an:l I didn't need those Eastern people at the racetrack to tell me that. It's been a pet ambition of many of us, alas. But Jean Arthur actually experienced it, and she admits that it was a grand and glorious feeling, in fact she's selected it for her big moment. .\s you probably know, some five years or so ago fean Arthur was under contract to Paramount but the only kind of roles she ever got to play were sweet little ingenue. "I was nothing but a prop ingenue," said Jean with contempt. "I either had to register fright, very prettily of course, while Mr. William Powell uncovered the murder, or else I had to smile sweetly in the background while Clara Bok, Dick Arlen, Gary Cooper and everybody else on the lot did things. And they laughed at me Avhen I suggested that I might like to act sometimes too." When her contract expired Paramount failed to show the slightest in\ terest (this is the equivalent of being fired in Hollywood), so Jean, pretty sore about the whole thing, packed her bags and left for New York with a nuts-toyou to the cinema. Despite Ne^v York's objection to movie trained ingenues from Hollywood, Jean, after she had had time to nurse her wounds, had no trouble at all in getting herself cast in "Foreign Affairs" with Osgood Perkins and Dorothy Gish. The play Avas \vell recei\ed by the critics, and so was Joan After that she pla)ed in "The Man \Vho Reclaimed His Head," "Txvcnty-fne Dollars a \Veek," and "The Curtain Rises. " Her hurt with Hollywood son of appeased by then, she decided to lake herself a \acation with her familv on the roast, ^\'hile here Columbia induced her to sign a contract with them, and afier lier appearance in "The \\'hole Town's "I alking" with I'.ddic Robinson. Hollv\\ood. sat up straight and took notice of the little Arthur girl who used to smile so sweetly while Mr. Powell \C())il. on paf^c 72] (In oval) J.inct Gaynor, the girl for whom the tide has never receded since her great moment. (Left) Life has been very thrilling for Jean Arthur, ever since the day when her dream came true. 17