Silver Screen (May-Oct 1939)

64 Silver Screen for October 1939 Career Girls Don't Cry [Continued from page 17] "You learn from all these things if you really have what it takes," she told me. "After a while the setbacks don't hurt quite so much. You learn how to ride over them. . . ." Lucky, if you can learn while you are still young! There was Greer Garson who thought that all her lucky breaks were "miracles" and who didn't learn how to take the hurdles of disappointment at the beginning. Greer, of course, since the success of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," is considered a miracle, herself, in Hollywood. But. . . . In her girlhood in England, she knew what she wanted, but never hoped to achieve it. She wanted to act. Her family simply "never heard of such a thing" and l hey ignored this strange whim much as you would that of a child who pines to spend her life walking to and fro on trestles. She was nearly grown and studying to be a school teacher when she had a serious bout with the flu and a sympathetic doctor discovered she did not convalesce successfully. He made Greer's mother understand how deep rooted and important this obsession really was. The mere permission to try to make her way on the stage seemed the first major miracle to Greer. But it was none too easy after that. She didn't know the "right people." She had no entree. But each opportunity seemed as miraculous to her as that first permission to try. She never was conscious of having fought for and won her chances. At last, she found herself in Hollywood, under contract to M-G-M. The greatest miracle yet. There was a story waiting for her and a crew stood in readiness for her first tests. She collapsed with appendicitis. She was trundled off to a hospital for an operation and another girl played the part she had come all the way from England to play. She convalesced and learned to love California sunshine and all the kind people who told her that there would be another role, "just as good" waiting for her. At_ last, the test crew stood waiting again. Perhaps, it was nerves — the long waitin? and anxiety. The doctors called it "flu." Greer was helpless and miserable and fretting for months. And the nice kind people seemed to forget all about her. White-faced, tired, tense, she set sail for England. Hollywood didn't know she had gone. Didn't know she had been here. "I thought about it all on the boat," she said. "The sea, somehow, lets you think. All the other chances had been miracles. But this miracle had flopped. Fate thought it was up to me to do somethin? for myself now. My turn to fight. An illness had helped me in the beginning I wouldn't let one stop me now!" Back in London, there didn't seem to be much to fight for. There was a round of theatrical engagements which bored her and experimental television performances which didn't seem to be getting anywhere. She thought she'd like to go to Scotland for a short rest. Just as she was about to take off, Gilbert Miller called her for a role in the London stage production of "Old Music." Came another miracle. Louis B. Mayer saw her in that play and felt that he couldn't bear it if he couldn't get her for "Goodbye, Mr." Chips," which M-G-M was to make in England. Greer had spent months under contract to M-G-M in Hollywood. She'd never laid eyes on Louis B. Mayer. Apparently, he'd never heard of her, either. All she had to show for her time in Hollywood was the loss of an appendix and a lot of weight. And here was Louis B. Mayer, in person, begging her to sign for one of the plummiest picture roles in years. Greer must have laughed and laughed. She doesn't say she did — but, back in Hollywood with a terrific contract, she concluded, looking rather wide-eyed, "I know now that it's silly to get down in the dumps over bad breaks, no matter how bad they look. The chief thing you have to remember is to believe in yourself. The rest sort of — develops. But you can't afford to weep and wail. I'm sure that fright and nervousness caused my second illness when I was in Hollywood. Fear lost me a good chance. Anyhow— worrying is bad for your looks!" Not all the setbacks in the lives of our career girls are professional ones. Some are acutely and intensely personal. When Wendy Barrie was first in Hollywood she was desperately homesick and lonely. She simply didn't understand the people around her. She found it difficult to make friends and she didn't understand the workings of the studios. She might have been alone in Timbuktu. Then — she met a girl about her own age — a girl who knew Hollywood, knew her way about the studios, a girl who was gay and who knew other gay people whom Wendy would like to meet. Wendy was enchanted. She began to feel at home at last, to feel that she belonged, that people were not queer and unapproachable. She met amusing young men. And her gratitude to her new friend was terrific. She felt young and eager again and the studios no longer frightened her. There is bitter and unadulterated hurt even now in Wendy's eyes when she tries to tell you a little of what happened. "One day I called on her and they told me she was out. I knew that wasn't true. I called again . . . and again. I wrote her a note. She had dropped me completely and without an explanation. If she'd been angry and had told me why and I could have understood, it would have been different. ... But she wouldn't talk to me at all. "All my happiness at being here evaporated. I didn't care whether I worked or not and when I did work I didn't make a very good job of it. I had to jerk myself up one day and say, 'You can't let one person do this to you. You've been too dependent on other people for your fun and for advice. You've got to learn to make your own friends and make your own decisions. You can't lean on anyone— ever again. You don't need anyone. ... "I thought that I'd never want a close woman friend again. That, of course, was Marsha Hunt with Richard Carlson talking things over between scenes of "Winter Carnival." silly. I think I still trust men a little more than women, have a bit more fun with them than I do with girls. But I like some women very much." She paused and qualified that. "Older women," she stipulated. One gathers that there is still some bitterness here. "I'll never be dependent on any one person again. Experience hardens you and takes some of the sweetness away from you. But it strengthens you, too. You can't have everything!" A sad conclusion for anyone to reach. But Wendy is pretty young and I fancy that these scars aren't permanent. But she has learned from the knocks! Lots of people would be surprised, I fancy, if they could know how many heartaches are suffered by girls (and men, too, of course!) who seem to be having everything pretty much their own way. Olivia de Havilland was doing well and felt happy enough about it when someone handed her the script of "You Can't Take It With You" and told her that she was being considered very favorably for the leading role. That opened a whole new vista for her. The script, of course, was superb and the thought that she might play in an important picture under the direction of the wizard, Frank Capra, left her breathless at a startled glimpse of the heights which might be scaled in a few short months. It was simply too good to be true. When her doctor shook his head and told her that she must have at least two months rest before she thought of facing a camera again, she screamed defiance at him. (Continued on page 69)