College of One

by Sheilah Graham

Mickey Rooney is practically the same in real life as he is in the movies—except that he doesn’t cry as much in real life as he does in the movies. And he’s rather serious in real life, except where girls are concerned. Master Rooney appreciates the fair sex. They used to say at one time that it was slightly dangerous for any woman—even a columnist—to be left alone with Mickey. But apart from referring to me as “that dame”—and calling me “honey”—his attitude and behavior has always been very respectful. I’m not his type, I guess.

  And now for Ann Sheridan. I feel rather sorry for the “Oomph” girl of the screen. (Pause.) Ann is one of the nicest girls out there. She’ll do anything they want her to. So when they came to her about a year ago, and said they were going to glorify her via an “Oomph” label, Ann said, “Swell, go ahead.” She naturally thought that as the fame of her “Oomph” spread, her picture roles would swell in equal proportion. But they didn’t. (Pause.) Recently a California gasoline company renamed its product—“Oomph” gasoline. This was the final straw for Ann, and she told her studio, that unless they withdrew the “Oomph” from her name, she’d withdraw from pictures.

  I’m going to get very serious, and probably just at the moment when I should be telling a funny story. (Pause.)

  You remember the Greek orator who was trying to prepare the defense of his city? He kept saying, “Fortify the Acropolis. The Persians are upon us.” But everyone yawned. Finally he paused, looked out at his audience, and said (Pause): “Once there was a man who fell in love with a frog.” Immediately everybody was listening. “That’s all,” he told them, “but now that you’re with me, how about those defense plans?” (Pause. Smile.)

  I feel like this when I start to talk about education in pictures. Please bear with me. (Confidential tone.)

  Some years ago, two little friends of mine—they were twelve years old—asked me to take them to a moving picture, to a movie I’d already seen. They won me over by saying that the picture was considered very educational. It was The Story of Louis Pasteur.

  We went and enjoyed it enormously, but coming out of the theater I looked at the faces of the two little girls and failed to recognize the tired look that usually goes with education. I wondered how much of the picture they’d remember.

  They spent the night with me, but before they went to bed I asked one of them to look up Louis Pasteur in the encyclopedia. She put up quite a struggle—said she knew all about him, hadn’t she just seen the picture? But she finally agreed. Meanwhile, the other little girl had gone to bed.

  A month passed. The girls asked again to be taken to a picture. Again they mowed me down by telling me it was an educational and historical subject. Here was a chance to prove my theory. I asked the little girl who had not read about Pasteur to tell me something of his life.

  She hesitated, then she said: “Well, he went around kinda—well, there was something about some sheep and a mad dog (Quickly) and Anita Louise married the young man at the end.” Then I asked the little girl—the one I’d coerced into reading up on Pasteur. She frowned and felt she was being put on the spot, but in the end she gave me a fairly good summary of Pasteur’s life. The reading had reinforced the picture; the picture had made the reading vivid. (Pause—lighter expression.) But even she will always think, Pasteur was lucky to look like Paul Muni. (Pause.)

  But I’d found out something. Because of the extra effort she had put in, Hollywood had contributed something to her education.

  My conviction is that if anyone invented a system to educate without effort—merely by giving a sugar-coated pill—that would be closer to Huxley’s dream of a “Brave New World” than to present-day motion picture realities. So many sorts of pictures loosely called “educational,” are really “informative” or “propaganda” pictures. Education is a privilege that cannot be got without effort.

  But let’s see what the movie can do towards education in a legitimate field, the classroom. The classroom is something you approach in the morning when you’re fresh. While the picture house is something we turn to in the evening when we’re tired. The Rockefeller Foundation financed a study of human relations as exemplified in motion pictures. It’s believed that 175 different situations confront the average adult, and that showing them in the classroom will help the student to take care of himself with the least possible harm when the time comes.

  A typical thing would be to show that little bit from A Star Is Born where a popular actor is drunk in public—to show how the sympathy of the crowd withdraws from him.

  Another example would be from the picture San Francisco, when Gable hits a man of God—and the ineffable reproach on Spencer Tracy’s face as he sinks down before the fists of his friend. No boy who would see that bit from San Francisco—see it in the morning, detached from the flow of the film—would ever again take a delight in being a bully.

  The so-called educational shorts that are shown in the theaters are really just informative. We’re interested, but what we’ve come to the theater for is to see the feature picture, and we’re inclined to put the short out of our mind and save our memories for Clark Gable or Myrna Loy. (Pause.)

  What about the newsreel in screen education? My idea is that a newsreel is neither more nor less educational than a daily paper.

  You pick up a newspaper. The first column is about the war; the second, the escape of a criminal; the third, a speech by the President—and so forth. Each headline drives out what you read in the preceding column. We don’t drag along the memory of what was in the first column through our reading of the second. The headline about the crime makes us forget the column about war—to a great extent. As a newspaperwoman, I admit reluctantly that my chief concern is to entertain you first—instruct you only if I can. And this is true of the newsreel.

  If you go to a newsreel to look for something—for instance, what a bombardment does—you’ll find it. Just as you’d turn to the real-estate section of a newspaper if you want to buy a house. But in general, the voice of the newsreel commentator drives out of mind whatever has passed before our eyes a second before. (Pause.) This is as it should be. If we remembered everything we saw, our minds would be like a log jam on the Columbia river. Our machinery for forgetting is as important as our machinery for remembering.

  What I’m shooting at is not a disparagement of the newsreel or the program short. I’m merely groping for a better definition of screen education than the present one, which throws everything that doesn’t say Boy Meets Girl, or Man Meets Bullet, into a huge bag labeled “Educational.”

  I’ll tell you a story which doesn’t exactly illustrate this but has a sort of moral of its own.

  Ernest Hemingway visited Hollywood a few years ago. He and two producers were walking across the lot of a certain studio. Both producers were praising his works. Hemingway was naturally pleased and asked one of them which of his books he admired most. The producer looked a little blank, so Hemingway tried to help him out.

  “A Farewell to Arms?” “Yes,” said the producer so eagerly that Ernest grew a little suspicious and asked (Pause): “Do you mean the play or the book?” (Pause.)

  “I mean the movie,” the producer said. (Pause.)

  Hemingway was somewhat disappointed and turning to the producer on his left he asked, “Is that what you admire—the movie?”

  “No,” said the producer. “I never got around to seeing the movie—but I heard the song.” (Pause.)

  While I’m sure that the youth of the nation has more intellectual curiosity than these two producers, I still maintain that when you go towards education, you’ve got to take your book with you.

  One type of picture that wavers on the border of the instructive is the propaganda film. The first propaganda films were issued by the British during the last war. They took a picture of the Battle of Loos that was so horrible it was finally put back in the files of the War Department. The first successful propaganda pictures were made by Eisenstein and other Russian directors in the middle 1920s (Pause
)—among them The Cruiser Potemkin, and The Last Days of St. Petersburg.

  Once in Paris I saw these pictures behind closed doors—after showing my British passport to prove I wasn’t a member of the French police. (Pause.) These Russian pictures certainly had an emotional sway. And this was due to the recognition that the moving picture can convey an emotion more easily than a thought. Pictures are an emotional rather than an intellectual medium.

  That is the reason for the success of Merian Cooper’s fine film, Grass, which showed the migration of an Asiatic tribe in quest of new pastures. Anyone who’s ever felt hunger couldn’t help but feel in sympathy with that picture. (Pause.)

  But it’s in the world of fashions and manners that movies have spread their most effective propaganda. It’s a commonplace to say that Hollywood has become the style center of the world. The up hairdo was popularized by Danielle Darrieux in her first picture here. Remembering all the untidy necks with straggling wisps of hair that followed, I’m not so sure we have anything for which to thank Miss Darrieux.

  Joan Crawford was responsible for those heavy, thickly made-up lips that swept the country from coast to coast a few years ago.

  Greta Garbo wore a pillbox hat in a picture several years ago. We’re still wearing a version of that very same hat.

  Hedy Lamarr parted her black hair in the middle and wore an off-the-face turban in Algiers. Ever since, the country has swarmed with girls who’ve worn off-the-face turbans, parted their black hair in the middle, and wishfully believed they looked like Hedy Lamarr.

  And American films have acted as a common denominator of customs and even speech in other countries. They are largely responsible for the emancipation of the Japanese woman, who rebelled against her age-long subjection by demanding the delicious freedom enjoyed by American women—as reflected in American movies. (Pause.) And American slang, such as “Oh yeah” and “Bump off” and “Scram,” is now heard in the best London drawing rooms—and I don’t mean maybe. (Pause.)

  The uneven quality of Hollywood’s product, the question of why some pictures were ever made at all—all this is usually blamed on the producer. It isn’t quite fair. In the long run, people get the sort of entertainment they demand. But the producer has been the scapegoat for so long that perhaps he can stand one more story about himself—of which I was a firsthand witness.

  One of the producers at a big studio wanted to change the tragic ending of Three Comrades—he wanted Margaret Sullavan to live. He said the picture would make more money if Margaret Sullavan lived. (Pause.) He was reminded [by Scott, who wrote the script] that Camille had also coughed her life away and had made many fortunes doing it. He pondered this for a minute; then he said, “Camille would have made twice as much if Garbo had lived.” (Pause.) “What about the greatest love story of all?” he was asked. “How about Romeo and Juliet—you wouldn’t have wanted Juliet to live, would you?” “That’s just it,” said the producer. “Romeo and Juliet didn’t make a cent.” (Pause.)

  I’d like to drop the production side of the industry and take you, directly and intimately, into Hollywood for a few minutes.

  Of course I know that women here have no difficulty in finding husbands—the right sort of husband, I mean. Or in keeping them. And it may seem a little remote to you, and I almost apologize for bringing it up at all, but out in Hollywood (Pause) we’re up against it. (Pause.)

  In most frontier towns, the proportion of men to women is such that almost any girl—so I’m told—is overwhelmed with golden nuggets and offers of marriage. But not in Hollywood, where two-thirds of the mining population wear skirts. (Pause.)

  But if ever a woman needs a husband it’s in Hollywood. It’s a lonely place for the woman without her own man. And believe me, he’s exclusively hers—when and if she can find him. As Lana Turner told me emotionally, “When you do find a good man—hang on to him, sister.” (Pause.)

  Norma Shearer is only just beginning to adjust herself to her loneliness since the death of her husband, Irving Thalberg, in 1936. Not long ago she told me how much she envied couples like Gable and Lombard, and Taylor and Stanwyck. “They have someone they can trust,” she said very sadly. Norma still has found no one she can turn to, no one she can quite trust as she trusted Irving Thalberg.

  What chance has the average film actress of finding a husband in Hollywood? In the old days she could hope to marry her leading men and directors—alternately. (Pause.) But nowadays all the leading men and directors are very much married—with the exception of a minority.

  There’s Jimmy Stewart, who doesn’t want to marry an actress; Cary Grant, who’s bespoken for Phyllis Brooks; and a few young actors—among them Richard Greene, who recently stated that he wasn’t going to marry anyone for two years. Rather discouraging, isn’t it? Stay East, young woman, stay East.

  Take the case of Olivia de Havilland, who’s twenty-four, very pretty, utterly charming, and wants to marry. Olivia is in love—or rather she was when I left Hollywood. (Pause.) She’s in love with Howard Hughes. But then, so are a lot of other girls. Mr. Hughes is perfectly aware of this pleasant condition. And he wants to enjoy it as long as it lasts.

  The normal girl in a normal city does her work by day and sees her beaus in the evening. But the movie actress, when she’s making a picture, is usually too tired in the evening to do anything except have dinner in bed and go to sleep at nine. And when she does go out she wants to go home early. That’s why in Hollywood you’ll see Howard Hughes and Olivia de Havilland having dinner together, but by late suppertime Howard has to find another girl. Which doesn’t help Olivia to get the proposal she wants. (Pause.)

  In other cities, girl meets boy at parties. We have our parties in Hollywood too, and sometimes girl meets boy there. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are supposed to have fallen in love at a big Hollywood party—but they’re the exception, not the rule.

  My first party in Hollywood is typical of most of them. It was at Marion Davies’ modest shack on the beach (Look up)—the cloakroom is about the size of this hall. (Pause.) It was on a Saturday night, the only night all Hollywood can stay up late. Of course, I knew I was up against pretty stiff competition. I couldn’t hope to compete with the richest, most glamorous girls in the world. So, when my escort vanished immediately we were inside the door, I was disappointed but not surprised.

  But I was surprised to find glamour girls like Loretta Young and Ginger Rogers without the dozens of adoring men I’d expected. Every other girl at that party was a celebrity, but there were three girls to every man, which means that there were times when even the film stars were wallflowers! At the long supper table there were usually two women, then one man, then two women. I, being a newcomer, was placed between two women. (Smile.) My escort was up to his neck in film stars about a mile down the table. And if I wanted to talk to a man I had to do a bit of shouting. Somehow I didn’t enjoy that party. (Smile.) So you see parties are not awfully helpful to the Hollywood girl who wants to marry.

  Rosalind Russell has been in Hollywood five years without finding a man that would do for a husband. Rosalind’s motto is “Live alone (Pause, look up)—and don’t look it.”

  Mind you, she’d prefer to be married—if she could find the right man. But the right man will have a hard time getting to know Rosalind. She’s too particular. She earns more money than the President of the United States. She wants the best man her golden nuggets can buy.

  Meanwhile, she’s lonely, complains that she doesn’t want to marry a producer, a director, a writer, or anyone connected with the movies. She’ll probably end up by marrying an actor—to get away from it all. (Pause.) Anyhow, we can say without hesitation that if the earning capacity of movie stars suddenly vanished, they’d be infinitely less choosy. (Pause.)

  Let’s presume that the loneliness of the solitary life in Hollywood is finally too much even for the successful film actress, and we’ll presume that she’s been lucky in getting one of the few available free men. What chance has
she of “living happily ever after”?

  Contrary to popular belief, the number of divorces in Hollywood is not as big as the [number of] happy marriages. I could name you a hundred actors and actresses whose home-life is as satisfactory and even as blissful as anyone could ask for. Seeing Dick Powell and Joan Blondell together is even a little fatiguing—like watching a three-year honeymoon. But one must admit that Hollywood has its divorces like any other big city—they seem to be more because every Hollywood divorce is headlined.

  Usually, it’s the old story of career versus marriage. Bette Davis decided to put her work before her home. She has since discovered her mistake—and I’ll place a bet with anyone that she remarries within the next six months.

  Joan Fontaine recently insisted on an unusual clause in her contract with Selznick—that even though she’s in the middle of a picture she’ll accompany her husband if he leaves town, no matter for what reason. But I can’t help remembering that in 1930 Joan Crawford said, “There comes into a life only one man (Pause, say solemnly) and that’s Douglas Fairbanks.” (Smile.)

  One cause of divorce in Hollywood is the intense spotlight in which we demand that these people live. We permit them no private life. This spotlight has made Hollywood’s social life very much like that of a village. Everywhere the star turns he finds himself on Main Street.

  The gossips had a field day recently when Tony Martin left town on a long personal-appearance tour. They fastened their claws on his wife, little inoffensive Alice Faye. Hardly a day passed without amateur reporters calling me up to tell me—in strictest confidence—that Alice was going to divorce Tony.

  Sometimes they’d vary the story by saying that Alice was going around with other men or that Tony had fallen in love with a rich Easterner. For additional seasoning, they threw in the erroneous guess that Alice was going to have a baby and wasn’t it terrible that the poor child had to be brought into the world under such circumstances!

  They almost had me believing them. But time and experience have made me cautious, and I thought it better to wait for something more concrete. (Pause.) Alice and Tony are still living together happily in spite of this pyramid of malicious rumor. But it was a narrow squeak. If they hadn’t had such faith in each other it would have been another Hollywood divorce. But in this case, they have the last laugh.