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Ways to Film Success 221
given the leading part. He showed them bits from my previous films ; he dared them to deny that I was capable of playing an emotional role. Eventually he persuaded them. And Capra cast me as lead in Ladies of Leisure.
It was that part which gave me my first taste of success and determined me to remain in Hollywood. It was that part which secured for me more and more roles and, now, a starring contract with Warner Bros. And it was my husba,nd, Frank Fay, whom I have to thank for the chance. It is Frank to whom I owe all the success that has come my way.
''I WAS SIGHT-SEEING"
—by HAROLD HUTH
{Gainsborough and British Lion Player)
\ NYONE who, reading this, hopes to get into films by copying my ■**■ example, would be well advised to make up his mind a little sooner in life than I did. I had spent eighteen years in the motor trade before I even thought of facing the camera. In fact, I didn't think about it at all until one afternoon, when I was taken to look over the Gainsborough Studios on a sight-seeing tour.
It may seem strange to those who know me now as a stage and film actor to think that I spent aU those years doing something quite different. It will seem even more strange when I tell you how closely I have always been in touch with the acting profession. I have an aunt, Miss Eva Moore, an uncle, H. V. Esmond, a cousin, JUl Esmond, and another cousin, Roland Pertwee, who are all well known in the theatre.
It was Roland, novelist and playwright, who was finally responsible for my side-step into films. He came along one day and asked if I would like to see a film studio, an invitation which I eagerly accepted. We drove out to Islington where T. Hayes Hunter was making One of the Best.
At first I was not particularly interested in the acting or the production. What fascinated my mechanical mind was aU the complicated mechanism and electric paraphernalia which was used for lighting the studio. It was quite by chance, during a break in his work, that Hayes Hunter strolled across, looked me up and down, and asked if I would like to play a small part. He thought, apparently, that I looked rather military and he wanted someone to wear a uniform. I remember thinking that it was rather a joke at first but, by the end of the day, my imagination was caught by it all. I determined to let someone else carry on motor engineering for the future. My time should be given to the cinema.
As things turned out in those first years, most of my time was given to the stage and it was here that I first attained any prominence, playing with Fay Compton in Dishonoured Lady. Later I had a part in the stage production of The Outsider, when it was revived at the Apollo Theatre in 1930. It was this part that brought me back full circle into films again. Harry Lachman was to direct the screen version of the play, and I suppose he found it pretty obvious to cast me in the same part that I had so recently filled in the West End.