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Job Hunting in Hollywood
BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
AS a girl working in pictures time to fall in love? If she has the time and the inclination, what effect will it have upon her screen career?
She has to make so many weary journeys in the movies in search of love, romance and adventure, does the canned variety queer her taste for the real product?
In six months any girl in pictures travels all over the world for her love affairs. She is wooed in the shadows of the Pyramids by the most daring of sheiks but the hot tropical love doesn’t keep her from catching cold when the lights go off and the prop man can’t locate her coat. In a log cabin on the frontier she knows love that means sacrifice, drudgery, toil for others. She thrills, if she wants to keep her job, to the love in the honest eyes of Jerry of the Royal Mounted Police. She knows how weary you get loving the husband of another through five long reels. She has to be sweet and uncomplaining when the vamp flickers away her millionaire Milwaukee lover and she only gets in again on the last scene and then fails to get a close up. Love in a gondola in Venice might heal her broken heart if the big light that is the moon didn’t hurt her eyes and the director hadn’t cussed so when they got out of camera range. Love is seldom what it screens, as any hard working movie actress can tell you. In fact it is a welcome relief to be able to step out of it, check your Oriental garb, your gingham dress, your wool sweater, your simple white gown or your spangles and diamonds and taxi home to your own apartment and live it down all by your lonesome.
I have been trying to find out what the girls really thought on the always interesting subject of love and marriage. I asked Madeline Hurlock, whom I think is the prettiest vamp on the screen and even more beautiful off.
“Would you marry, Madeline, give up all you have accomplished so far, if you fell in love?” Madeline crawfished, it is a habit snaky women adopt to slide out of things.
“Yes, indeed. I certainly would marry if I found the ideal man but, of course, I never intend to find him.” Wasn’t that just like a vamp to leave two ways open? “How about you, Lorraine? You know men so well off and on the screen that you must have nice bold ideas on the subject? Would you exchange your screen lovers that you meet under ideal surroundings that last but for a day or an hour, for the same man across the table 365 days in the year?”
“I certainly would not, for I like a variety too well. It is stupid to look at the same person all the time. They get wise to all your cute little tricks and let you see that they are bored. They also take up too much of your time and your thoughts. I have been married but I am not now, thank goodness. I don’t like to darn socks and I never can remember the different brands of breakfast food. Most men are disappointing off and on the screen. They are so afraid you are going to cop the scene … I don’t care to be disappointed again.”
Dorothy looked up from where she was lying on the dressing room bench with her cape under her head for a pillow.
“It isn’t fair to ask me a question like that on Saturday night when I have worked all the week every day and four nights. I am so tired right now that I would marry any man who would ask me-if he would promise to let me sleep mornings until 10. Of course, I would regret it on Monday after a day’s rest but I would have a good time the rest of my life telling him how he ruined my career.”
“How about you, Phil? You have only been married two months and should be able to give us some good dope on how long romance lasts in everyday life?” Phil’s eyes filled with tears.
“It is hell, girls, to marry if you get the kind of husband I did. I love my work. I just cannot be happy away from the studios and Ken hates to hear one mentioned. He even refused the other night to take me to a preview of a picture I was in. I don’t honestly think he is jealous of other men but what he resents is my being able to earn more money than he can. Every night for a week he has insisted, stormed, commanded that I give up my work. Last night we had it out and he packed to go. I just can’t tell you how I felt when he had his trunk all packed and started in on his suitcase. You remember what a hard time Cruze had with me in that picture where I was a heartless old woman who left her good confiding husband without a backward glance? It was a blessing I had had that training or I could never have appeared so unconcerned. I thought every moment I was going to cry and give in-shove myoid makeup box up on the shelf and settle down to bridge and Saturday marketing but I didn’t; I just dug my fingernails into my palms and stood it until he got to the door and then I asked him to come back and kiss me goodbye. He did and we made up, but I know the same thing will happen again until I either have to give up my husband or my career, and I can’t be happy without either.”
Phil began to cry hysterically and Mary, who is kind hearted but up-stage since she has been playing first leads, gave her the cunningest little gold smelling salts bottle to use the next time husband walks out on her. Things quieted down and the conversation continued. “I think I want to marry more than anything else in the world,” Elsie said, which was not a surprise for you could tell that by the way she powders her nose when a man comes in sight. “Just to be married is career enough for any girl, I think.” Elsie is a nice girl, but she, tries so hard to live up to that mid-Victorian stuff that she considers her type that she has about as much backbone left as a jellyfish.
Adele, who has just recently had a tiny gold star put up on her dressing room door, looked up with a soft light in her great blue eyes. “Would I marry? It is Spring and I am in love and you ask me that? It happened last Winter when I was in New Orleans for two months on location. It was almost what you would call a case of love at first sight. He is just the sort of man I have always dreamed of marrying, but he is a Southerner and thinks a woman’s place is in her home. That would suit me all right but there is mother. I could never, never tell her that now, when I am beginning to make good, I want to chuck it all and marry. There is just mother and me and she had such a hard time working all day and coming home to coach me at night or sitting up ‘tit all hours making me a dress so that I would look as nice as the other girls. When I was 16 we came to Hollywood and at first the discouragement was terrible. Time and time again when jt seemed useless to try any longer, I pleaded with mother to let me do some other kind of work where I could earn regular money. She refused to give up and kept drumming it into my head that some day I would land. Why she wore the same dress for three years, Winter and Summer, so that I could look presentable when I went to the studios looking for work. How happy she was when I got my first little part at $15.00 a day. I just can’t marry. The disappointment would kill her coming now when I am started on the road.”
“But does she know that you are in love?”
“No, she doesn’t, and I wouldn’t have her know it for the world. She would want me to go ahead and marry and she would laugh and make the best of it. I am never going to tell her. I suppose he will forget me in time and marry some one else. Life is hard for the beautiful but poor.”
Everyone was quiet, thinking what they would do under such conditions and it was a relief when Beth said: “I am married and I seem to be able to mix career and matrimony pretty well. I have been off the screen for three years but now that the baby is nearly two, I am staging a comeback. Marriage hasn’t hurt either my figure or my illusions, I still have both and am going to make a success of being a wife, mother and actress.”
Paula, a tall red haired girl who plays small vamp parts, added her version of love vs. a career.
“There are plenty of men who can play the role of husband on the stage or screen but in everyday life it is impossible to find someone who fits the part as you would like to have it played. Men may be different but husbands are all alike. They lie to you, neglect you and embarrass you with suspicions. I married my first husband about the time the sheik stuff was going big.
He was the type. Honestly, any director would have signed him to double for Rudy on long shots. After the first week he fell down on the role. His idea of sheiking was to stand on the street corner and vamp the girls who passed. His taste ran to blondes and Pall Mall cigs but he never had enough money to afford either. As a provider he was more than generous; he would sometimes give me as much as 15 cents if I used it for carfare looking for work. The next time I entered the matrimonial arena I looked for a different sparring opponent. He was a cave man, the kind that is guaranteed to drag you around by the hair every morning for his daily dozen and slam a few brickbats at you by way of farewell when he is leaving for the office. My dears, he was the bunk. I found out when it was too late that he had been a shoe clerk in Clinton, Iowa, where he learned to use some sort of awful toilet water. It was too much for even my sweet disposition. I have been married three times in all, and am only 22. It’s an early age to. know all there is to know about husbands.” We didn’t doubt but that she knew a lot about matrimony but the age at which the knowledge was acquired could be run up about five years.
Wanda, who plays ultra smart society roles in movie circles and looks so at home in them that the audience recognizes her at once as one of those inner circle heiresses who had gone into the movies for a lark, but whose father and mother run the studio cafe, had something to say for herself:
“I am going to marry, of course. It takes too much hard work to get anywhere in movies and I am naturally lazy. I am keeping my eyes open for a good chance and when it comes I will put away grease paint without a single heartache. The man will have to have money for I have acquired a taste for good looking clothes and will have to have them.”
Elsa, an English girl, who has come from across the pond to show us up in pictures, was coldly matter of fact.
“I shall marry but not until I get to the top. Then when I know what success is like I will settle down and be content. I shall return to England to marry, that will be best, as I do not like the way American men spit.” I ended the discussion by saying that I don’t think I would be keen on marriage but I’d like to run Constance Talmadge a close second on engagements.
