Marjorie Is "Discovered"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 308, 28 December 1940, Page 5 (Supplement)

Marjorie Is "Discovered"

By Ted Ransom

OCCASIONALLY comes out of Hollywood news to make one aware that there are wise men at large in what Sam and Bella Spewack called the land of sunshine and psyllium seed. To-day's item for the increased-admiration-for-producers' department concerns Marjorie Rambeau. Miss Rambeau, a dispatch from the Warner Brothers' Burbank studio announces, has been discovered as star material. Having completed "Tugboat Annie Sails Again," she has one of the big parts in "Kast of the River." The dispatch should have placed the word "again"' after "discovered." Since "Min and Bill,", or maybe it was "Her Man," talent scouts have bce-n stumbling over Miss Rainbean's acting talent. There was a ffood deal of talking about it, but until Warners came along no one thought of making her a star. So, to the boys at Warners, a low bow. No Mad Scenes For Her In a measure Miss Rambeau is to blame for being overlooked a-s a box ofiieo l>et. She has consistently refused to "chew scenery," and out West that — not. the refusal but the talent for seteating—is often confused with «reat. acting. If she had been handed a mad scene to play, her name might have, been on the star list long ago. Mad scenes are sure-fire star makers. But she never got a chance to go mad, so she has moved along in her quiet- way, turning in beautiful jobs of under-state-ment, getting good notices' arid, therefore, raising the-blood'pressure of producers not one whit. Not that 'Miss Ra..il>ea.ti has been kicked around by the picture makers. Far from it. One can't say that what's •happeninor to her at Warners is in the nature- of an oldtimcr's comeback. She

always has had plenty of picture money a-t fine pay, but until now slie wasn't recognise*! for what she is—real star material. Ever since this correspondent first saw her from the. second balcony of the old Bclnsco Theatre in Los Angeles he has been a Ram-bean fan. One had to be a fan to put up with: (a) The rate that foraged in the peanut shells and pop bottles in the 1 second balcony aisles; and (b) some of Miss Rambeau's vehicles. Tt would have taken far worse plays and a pood many more rats to keep this writer away from Miss Rambeau. She was a stage veteran then, though she was just out of her teens, a lovely blonde jrirl who attracted hordes of stage-door Johnnies. Days In Alaska Miss Rambeau is one of those rarities —a native Californian. She was born in San Francisco in 1892. the daughter of Marcel Bur:ictte Ranihoau and Lillian Rambeau. Mrs. Rambeau was a doctor, and a sood one. Just before the turn of the century, there was a scurvy dysentery epidemic in Alaska. Mrs. Rambeau loaded her daughter, her clinical apparatus and hundreds of vials of scrum on a steamer and headed north. But the expedition was a failure. The sourdoughs refused to take a woman doctor seriously and wouldn't let her treat them. Marjorio and her mother stayed two years in Alaska. The child wore boys' clothes, went harpooning with the sealers and learned to skin seals and salt down the meat. Finally Mrs. Rambeau decided she should go to school, so they went l>aek to San Francisco. A slide down a banister got Miss Ramfheau ljer first bit on the stage.

"One day I slid down the banister at dancing school," she remembers. "I landed all asprawl in front of 6ome visitors. A grey-haired man said. 'Why, there's the girl I want.' He was the manager of the Alcazar and put me in the stock company there. I was 11 years old." At 12 she was a leading woman, playing "Camille" from one end of the Pacific Coast to the other. She remembers how she used to drag out the death scene interminably. Died At Length "The people loved it," she says, "and I loved it. The more they wept the harder I acted. The company manager used to whisper froni the wings: 'For Pete's sake, Margie, hurry up and die. The company wants its dinner.' But I always died for at leaet 20 minutes." March 10, 1913, Miss Rambeau made her first Xew York appearance at Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theatre. She was Xelly in Willard Mack's "Kick In."

She promptly married Mr. Mack. From then on, the record of her successes fills more than 100 lines in "Who's Who in the Theatre." Mis* Ram-beau divorced Mack and married Hugh Dillman. She divorced him and married Francis A. Giidger, then vice-president of the Goldwyu Company. That was nine years ago. They live on a farm in the San Fernando Valley and own 5000 chickens. For the last decade she has been knocking around Hollywood, deserting the place occasionally to appear in a play, getting good notices and plenty of money, but ltytle real recognition. She has it finally and she's pretty happy about it. This correspondent is happy, too . . . and he's.also happy because the Warner Press department has shown such admirable restraint. Miss Rambeau carries on as "Tugboat Annie" where the late Marie Dressier left off. So far no attempt has been made to put her over as a new Marie Dressier. Which is just as well; there was only one Marie Dressier; there is only one Marjorie Rambeau. la a recent issue "Spring Parade," starring Deanna Durbin, was credited to Paramount. The picture was made by Universal. *