NEIL HAMILTON AND HIS EXPERIENCES IN HOLLYWOOD

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 207, 29 May 1936, Page 16

NEIL HAMILTON AND HIS EXPERIENCES IN HOLLYWOOD

With eighteen years’ Hollywood experience behind him. Nei Hamilton has a large fund of good stories to tell. Just hefore he left for Africa to make location scenes for the ond Must Get Married,” he was asked to relate some ol Ins Holly w 0 1 experience. Here is the result. It is entertaining, intimate and tcvcaling!

“T HAVE been asked to talk about A some of the highlights in my screen life,” Neil says, in an interview with th.e British "Film Weekly.” "I’m not goill" to try to sort them out and put then? into order; but I am going to start with the time I was posing for advertisements in New York —before I had even thought about the screen. I was about seventeen.

A girl I met who wa« doing the same thing was a youngster named Norma Shearer. We were quite friendly for a time, then I lost, sight of her. She went to Hollywood before I did. aud I saw a few of her pictures. One was “He Who Gets Slapped.” I thought she did such a grand job of work in it that I wrote to her and told her so. But she didn’t reply.

A number of years wont by. I had gone to Hollywood, too. One day I went to the M.G.M. place to make a test for a picture, and got a contract instead. It so happened that my first job under this contract was that of leading man to Norma Shearer in “Strangers May Kiss.”

I couldn't help wondering what she would be like. It was at least eight years since I had met her in New York. Now she was a big star, married to one of the most important producers in Hollywood. Irving Thalberg. I was a bit nervous when I went along to the first rehearsal. But when Norma came on to the set the first thing she did was to rush over to me with her hands out.

“For heaven's sake. Neil.” she exclaimed, “I haven’t seen you for years —and I owe you a letter, too!” She told me that she had put my letter away, intending to write a long one in return, but one thing and another had delayed her, until she hadn’t liked to answer, after all.

Only a little thing, maybe, but typical of Norma. I loved working with her. She takes her career more seriouslv than anyone else in the whole of Hollywood—with the possible exception of Joan Crawford. I acted with Joan in "Laughing Sinners” and “This Modern Age.” but I can’t say that I got to know her at'all well. She was wrapped up entirely in her work all the lime. No one could possibly work harder than she doos. She taught me the value of concentration.

I owe a tremendous lot to Constance Bennett, too. I played opposite her in two pictures in succession, “What Price Hollywood?” and “Two Against the World,” and doing so did me a world of good.

Up till this time I had always suffered from an inferiority complex—and, believe me. this is not only a drawback but is actually very painful. Then, when I saw this sjim strip of a girl ordering people about and getting her own way whenever she liked. I realised, for the first time in my life, that I was just crazy to be nervous about myself.' I think Connie actually gave me a lot of her self-confidence. I found her tremendously exciting to work with, and I’d like to appear with her again. She is such an extraordinary "mass of contradictions. Her demeanour changes every few minutes,

and without any warning. She was in a very sweet mood one day on the “What Price Hollywood” set. We had just been doing a scene which required her to hang on to my arm, and she kept in the same position at the end of the scene.

“You know,” I said, “at times you can he the sweetest person in the world, and at other times ...” . the strangest!” she finished for me, and laughed. This candour, even about herself, is one of the things I like most about her. It was she, incidentally, who got me the part opposite her for the second time in “Two Against the World.’

One of my very foremost favourites ou the screen—irrespective of the fact I have acted with her several times is Maureen O’Sullivan. She is a delightful person, and an extremely clever actress I went along to see her in “Hide Out,” with Robert Montgomery, and there were two love scenes in that which I thought were the best I had even seen on tiie screen —particularly the one in which she and Bob Montgomery dried themselves in front of a fire after coming in from tiie rain. Maureen's handling of tlrnt sequence was simply brilliant. I was in one picture with her in which I wasn’t seen on the screen at all! The film was “Paramount Deferred,” starring Charles Laughton. It was a grim, melancholy subject, and Laughton had the part of an undetected murderer whose crime preyed on liis mind. The studio thought it was so sombre that it ought to have some lighter scenes, so I was brought in as a shorthorn} teacher with whom Maureen (playing Laughton’s daughter) fell in love. I did a week’s work, and when the picture was completed I was asked to do a number of extra scenes. The story was still too sombre. So I did some more work, and figured quite prominently in the finished picture. After this, the film was previewed—and the producers decided that light romance didn't fit in with the rest of the story. So out went all my scenes. I wasn’t on the screen for a split second in the picture which finally reached the cinemas.

The amusing part of it all was that my name had gone out in the publicity sheets, and Maureen and I had been photographed together several times. The result was that quite a number of cinemas advertised the film with my name among the cast, and they had “stills” of me outside. I had quite a number of letters from mystified flltngoers about it! I have been amazed at the number of people who have come up to me in the street while I have been in London and have asked me: “Are you Neil Hamilton?” And when I have admitted it they have said they remembered me in “Beau Geste.” “Beau Geste” was one of the best pictures I ever played in. And I think you will agree that it provided me with one of my best stories. Now I am off to Africa to make scones for a British picture. It sounds a very likely place for more funny incidents to happen. I hope to be able to tell you about them when I get back.