Killer Tomatoes

by Ray Hagen

  You were there for two years. If your attitude was that cavalier, running around and laughing, having fun, why were you held that long?

  I think it was because I got a small part in a picture called Behold My Wife. Sylvia Sidney was the star, Gene Raymond was the male lead. Mitchell Leisen, the director, was a very good friend of mine, and he went to the front office and got this part for me. I think it was two scenes, but one scene was very, very dramatic. She commits suicide. He fought to get the bit for me and then took it up and showed it to the front office. And that was after I had wept my way through a scene in the front office with one of the executives, saying, “But I do take my career seriously. Certainly I love to laugh, but when I laugh in a dramatic class or something it doesn’t mean I’m not taking it seriously.” But I think that bit, and Mitch taking it up for me, helped me stay that long. Committing suicide was the great thing, you know, to have in a picture. It’s something that draws your eye to the girl.

  Then Car 99, your first lead, was filmed after that?

  Oh God, I’d forgotten that, really I had. Yes, that was after that. It certainly wasn’t an A picture, though. Fred MacMurray was in it. And then there was a Western with Randy Scott…

  You mean Rocky Mountain Mystery?

  Yes! I remember that. Mr. Scott cast an eye on me. He was fond of me and of course ended up by kissing the horse, but at least it was the lead. I ran around in a pair of riding britches and a pair of boots and they’d say, “Which way’d they go?” and I’d say, “That way.” Or screaming at the heavy. Nothing to do, no acting, it was just playing a lead, that’s all.

  And then your one-line bit in The Crusades.

  Oh “The cross, the cross, let me kiss the cross.” With a Texas accent.

  And a great weepy close-up.

  Oh, tears streaming, my wig slipping—I always wanted to look like Dietrich, she was so glamorous, and I thought, “Oh, how wonderful to wear a black wig.” Well, I didn’t know they took ’em out of stock and they slam ’em on your head and it doesn’t fit and the hair lace comes loose and they come up and glue it on just before the take and it falls off again—I was so horrible-looking! Really, it was awful, I didn’t look at all glamourous.

  So Paramount didn’t take up your option?

  No, they had no use for me. They dropped me right after I returned from doing a Western called Red Blood of Courage. It’s the only loan-out I did while I was at Paramount. We did it at Talisman Studios. Then I did one picture at Universal. Originally it was called Off Side. I played a very wealthy Communist in it. I can’t remember what it was released under…

  Fighting Youth?

  Fighting Youth, that’s right. Charlie Farrell was in it.

  And then Warners. Was there a fairly long period between Paramount and Warners?

  Oh yes there was! An extremely long and drought-ridden period, I would say. Let’s see, just after I finished that Talisman thing I was let go, and that was the beginning of 1935. Then I was very free until the agent got this Off Side-Fighting Youth thing for me. I think I made $125 a week on it, I’m not sure. Something like that. Amazing for me. From 50? That’s all right..

  What were you making when you left Paramount?

  Seventy-five or a hundred dollars. I can’t remember. But it was such a shock after I’d done that great thing, Red Blood of Courage, I thought I’d be there ’til today. But I’m sure they dropped me merely because the option did call for another 25 or 50 buck raise and they had other people at $50 they could use for the same things, so why bother with me? Anyway, I was on Fighting Youth for three weeks at $125 a week. And from early in 1935 until August of 1936 I had to live off that $375. My agent at that time, Bill Miklejohn, said they’d get me extra jobs, but somebody else told me, “Don’t ever start as an extra. It’s all right in stock if the studios put you in it, but don’t ever start that when you’re not under contract, because you’ll remain an extra.” So I wouldn’t take extra jobs. And I dropped that agent and went with another one, Dick Pollimer. Somebody who was with him said, “Why don’t you take Ann Sheridan? She looks promising.” He had Tom Brown, Anita Louise, I think Ida Lupino, a list of young people, and he was nice enough to take me on. And through Max Arnow, the casting director at Warner Bros., he got me a test. Pollimer walked in and said. “Look, here are the pictures, this is the girl, and I think she may be right for this part,” and Max Arnow said, “All right, we’ll test her.” And if you’ll tell me the name of the first picture I did at Warners….

  The first Warner release I have listed is Sing Me a Love Song.

  Sing Me a Love Song, that would be it.

  What was the screen test you had to make for them?

  It was a scene from Sing Me a Love Song. Ray Enright directed it.

  Playing the character you wound up playing in the film?

  Yup. It was a bit part, the other girl. They started it off as Always Leave Them Laughing and then they got scared of that title, as who wouldn’t, and changed it. They always passed titles around. Always Leave Them Laughing might have been on half a dozen pictures out there. You make it as one thing and the powers-that-be change it and you don’t know what you’ve made, unless you go back and look, which you seldom have time to do.

  Do you know what it was about your test that impressed Warners and made them decide to sign you?

  I have no idea. I just did the test and on the strength of that I got the part in the picture, and Mr. Pollimer told me that Max Arnow was thinking about trying to get me a contract. Which he did, at $75 a week, here we go again. But this one ran into 12 years, so I guess I can’t beef about that.

  There was an incredible seesaw of billing at Warners. There was Black Legion with Bogart—you were the sweet young thing who warns the hero against evildoers, right?

  Oh, yes. Always. “Oh, that man is evil, they went that way.” This is what I always played. Just reactions.

  And The Great O’Malley…

  That was just a schoolteacher who said, “He’s an evil man, they went that way.” These were just feminine leads and I was stuck into them. I mean She Loved a Fireman—God, wouldn’t you know I’d do that. I did almost every B picture that was made on the Warner lot. For instance, the Mignon Eberhart series. I did those for Brynie Foy. I did The Patient in Room 18, The Mystery of Hunting’s End—it was filmed under that title but it might have been released as Mystery House. I’m not sure.

  You had a song in San Quentin.

  That’s right, “How Could You?” It was the first time I sang in a picture.

  Did you ever study singing?

  Well, no. I went to quite a few voice coaches, but that was through the studio. Nobody can teach me to sing, I haven’t got that kind of a voice. It’s kind of an odd voice.

  I really like your singing.

  Do you? Well, you’re very nice. It’s just somebody teaching you how to sell a song, it’s really not singing. As far as vocalizing, to loosen up the voice, that’s one thing, but to make me a singer would be absolutely impossible. I haven’t got the range or anything else, and I know it. But I went to many voice coaches.

  How about San Quentin? You had third billing.

  Well, it was all right. A nightclub singer with a heart of gold who was stuck on Pat O’Brien. He’d sent my brother to prison and I finally realized that he was right and my brother was wrong, and instead of saying, “They went that-a-way,” I changed direction and said “They went that-a-way.”

  During ’38 there was a fantastic amount of films. Just stock stuff?

  Only stock stuff. Maybe a line here and there, like in The Glass Key back at Paramount. I did a scene as a nurse to George Raft, giving him some medicine or putting a patch on him in a hospital with a couple of lines like, “Lie still, I don’t want to hurt you.” Brilliant scene.

  You did a couple of films with Dick Powell back then.

  Yes, there was.. .uh…

  Naughty But Nice…

  Oh, you dirty man. Naughty but Ni
ce. You know, it’s funny, the other night I was humming a number from that picture. Gale Page, my favorite Cherokee girl friend, was in it too. She finally just quit. Five kids.

  Was your loanout for Letter of Introduction on the request of Universal, or did Warners farm you out?

  It was on request, an interview with John Stahl, God love him. I went over all dressed up fit to kill. Warners had fitted me out with a wardrobe, they gave me the fox furs and the hat and all that stuff and sent me over to Mr. Stahl. I actually had five scenes in that picture. Not very big scenes, either. I played the bitch, Adolphe Menjou’s girlfriend, the secret affair he was hiding from Andrea Leeds. The broad he was supporting. Me, I mean, not her.

  Oh, nobody ever treated Andrea Leeds that way in her movies.

  No, she was a sweet and darling girl. A very, very nice girl, too.

  Did that picture have anything to do with Warners changing their opinion of you after you came back?

  It did later, because I think John Stahl was responsible for getting me the part in Angels With Dirty Faces, which was the first A picture I’d been in there. All those others were Warner B’s.

  Was it after you did Angels that you did those incredible George Hurrell photographs, which I still love?

  Oh, well, bless you, I love ’em too, He was the greatest. He and Scotty Welbourne and—oh, there were wonderful photographers at Warner Bros. Any time you weren’t working in a picture, you were posing for stills. They kept you busy.

  Was that a deliberate attempt at doing something different, or was it just a sitting that happened to turn out that way?

  I would say that everything Hurrell did he tried to do differently. There was a lot of competition around there. Oh, once in a while you’d just get cheesecake—I mean, how much can you do? You go to the beach and stand in the wind and hold up a towel and it blows in the breeze, and so what. But I think in a portrait sitting, most of them tried to be very different. I know they worked awfully hard. I think possibly Hurrell was the best one. I think he was more sophisticated.

  Did that series of glamour photos influence Warners in any way to start the Oomph thing?

  Well, they might have, yes. The outfit I wore in the pictures for the Oomph Girl contest that somebody dreamed up,…

  Bob Taplinger?

  That’s right. It had a roll-back collar and long sleeves. It was a crepe negligee, covered all the way up. Nothing on underneath, of course. On a leopard skin. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if these pictures didn’t give someone the idea. Don’t forget, they’d read it in Winchell’s column a while before, except he spelled it u-m-p-h. He said Ann Sheridan in—something or other, I can’t even remember the name of the picture—has plenty of umph. All they did was steal it and spell it differently.

  So Taplinger arranged the dinner at the Los Angeles Town House?

  That’s right.

  How were the 13 men who were supposedly the judges of this contest prevailed upon to get into this, to lend their names to the stunt?

  I really don’t know, I guess the publicity department just called them and said, “You’re one of the men named on the list and we want you to participate,” and they turned up at the dinner.

  Can you recall who the 13 men were ?

  Well, I can’t remember all of them. Let’s see, Orry-Kelly was there. I remember Earl Carroll and I remember Dudley Field Malone because he made some sort of crack in his cups and Rudy Vallee was going to punch him in the nose. Buz Berkeley, George Hurrell—I can’t remember that evening too well, it was one of those nerve-wracking things and I actually can’t remember very much of it. But anyway, it was purely a publicity stunt to get their name, Warner Pictures, and my name into the papers.

  Had they decided by then, after Angels with Dirty Faces, that it was possible to be doing more with you, or was it simply another publicity stunt?

  Simply another publicity stunt. Nothing special. My Lord, they took the back of Hedy Lamarr’s head and the backs of whoever else’s heads they entered in the contest, the 12 pictures of the other actresses they supposedly sent to these guys to find out who was the most glamourous. Of course it was all a set-up to pick me. They could never have had a good picture of Hedy Lamarr and said I was more glamourous than she was. The next day Jack Kelly, one of the publicists, told me that somebody had walked up to Jack Warner at lunch and showed him this shot in the paper and the publicity on it, and Warner looked at it and said, “Aw, she’ll be dead in six months,” and threw the paper back at him. Well, it snowballed on them, they just didn’t know where to go. There was nothing but publicity, publicity, publicity.

  And you’ve had it for the rest of your life.

  Well, most of it. I think I’ve more or less lived it down by now. I’m old enough, I should have. But that ran away from them. The guy who got out the most publicity on a person at a certain lot was the one most looked up to, and I think this was just a silly name that caught on. Even Harvard got into it, naming me the actress least likely to succeed. More publicity.

  Did you really say, or was it a press agent’s invention, that “Oomph is the sound a fat man makes when he bends over to tie his shoelace in a telephone booth?”

  I did not say it. It was a press agent’s invention, but I adopted it wholeheartedly. Interviews were made up for me like mad by publicity people. Most of those things you read are not true, they weren’t said by the people at all. Especially in those days.

  It was after the Oomph thing that you did Dodge City and They Made Me a Criminal?

  Yes, it was after that, after the Oomph campaign. I came to New York to play the Strand Theatre after opening in Washington. I played five weeks on personal appearance tours, doing a medley of old songs and publicizing some picture. And when I went back I started working on the other things like Dodge City. But that was a bit part too.

  A bit, but you were now being prominently featured in the ads.

  Yes, and don’t forget billing. And Dodge City was the first color picture I had made, so that was important. Almost made me blind, that incredible color lighting.

  You weren’t in very much of They Made Me a Criminal either, but you were given billing over Gloria Dickson, the real female lead, because of all the publicity.

  I just had, I think, one scene with Garfield. Busby Berkeley, who I loved, directed it. I once did a musical test for Desert Song that Buz directed, with John Boles. Anyway, John Garfield was a dear man. He was like the little guy who brought the apple for the teacher, and here I was, this hussy with the fuzzy hair and the décolletage dress. I was supposed to kiss John, but Buz said, “Hold it until I say cut, just keep kissing him.” Well of course he wouldn’t say it, and I had John around the neck and on the floor—he was absolutely red.

  Garfield didn’t come on like the hip young rebel he seemed on the screen?

  Oh no, not at all. I didn’t think so, anyway.

  It was in 1940 that you really started working a lot in sizable roles.

  Yes, I worked constantly. Everybody did. It was from one picture right into another. I read so many scripts, everybody on the Warner lot did, I don’t think anybody can remember the names of them. But the parts were getting better, and more publicity. Paul Muni found me in the commissary one day screaming about this dreadful Oomph Girl thing, and he said, “Don’t be silly. Be smart, use it. Use it to get parts.” And I did. I think that’s the one purpose it served, because the publicity itself was ghastly. If it hadn’t given me a foot in the door, I probably would have never gotten the good parts. But everybody was saying, “Well all right, let’s try.” Including me. “Try me in an A picture, try me in good parts.” And fortunately, with good directors, it started working better for me.

  Did you have to battle for the good parts, or did they come easily?

  Oh no. Battle, battle, battle.

  Every picture a new battle ?

  Almost, yes.

  At this point, didn’t Warners pay Louis Bromfield $50,000 for It All Came True a
s a vehicle for you? Your first vehicle as such?

  Yes. I did that after I came back from that New York personal appearance tour. I’m quite sure that I was chosen because Mark Hellinger, the producer, wanted me in the picture, and because Bette Davis didn’t want it.

  I didn’t know she was even up for it.

  I don’t know that she was either, but Bette got access every time, to everything on the lot. And there were quite a few others around as competition. I remember making a test for the picture, but I don’t remember battling for it. Hellinger, who carried a lot of weight, saw the test and said, “I want her.” But it was after that—I’m trying to straighten this out. My first suspension at Warners was some time after this. It was an eight-month suspension. Actually it was three months lay-off and five months suspension, but it came to eight months with no salary. The fight started as a salary raise, and then it got into the thing of getting the part of Randy Monaghan in Kings Row. Finally, all the fighting and clawing and scratching and screeching was settled. I didn’t get the salary I asked for, naturally, but I did get a raise and I got retroactive pay. And I got the part in Kings Row. But before they’d let me do that, I had to do Navy Blues. Always worked out the same for me—one good one, two bad ones.

  Next came Torrid Zone. So many people I know are absolutely mad about Torrid Zone.

  I liked Torrid Zone, I enjoyed doing it. A good part and another song, “Mi Caballero.” I’d worked in several with O’Brien before we did Torrid Zone, Cagney too. I assume Mr. Cagney had a great deal to do with choosing his leading lady.

  Had you always gotten on well with Cagney and O’Brien?

  Oh, yes! They raised me. I was a brat running around who they could pick on. I was certainly fond of them and they seemed pretty fond of me. All the people on the lot were pretty wonderful, we all got along. Then I did more B’s like Honeymoon for Three, and City for Conquest, which I loved.

  That was a good part for you. It gave you a lot of opportunities.

  It was a very good part, and of course it was Cagney again. He sold like wildfire. To be in a picture with him was just the greatest.