THE ROAD TO FAME

Southland Times, Issue 23389, 22 December 1937, Page 8

THE ROAD TO FAME

Hollywood Contracts For English Actors

LOUIS B. MAYER FINDS NEW TALENT

Reporting for work at Metro-Gold-wyn’s Hollywood studios during the next few months will be five young people who have been under the noses of British producers for seasons—Greer Garson, Vai Rosing, Carl Esmond, Don Etannard, and an unknown girl whose name I am asked not to mention —signed up as potential stars by Louis B. Mayer during his recent visit to London, writes C. A. Lejeune in The Observer, London. According to rumours there may be others. But these five people, at least, in the eyes of their fellow actors, are now well-set on the road to fame and glory. A contract with Louis B. Mayer is like a contract with Croesus. During the whole of his stay in London the film world beleaguered Mayer. Young maidens eyed him coyly in restaurants. Young men squared their shoulders and presented their profiles as he passed by them. Forgotten friends were recalled to effect miraculous introductions. A whisper in the studio that he had seen, actually seen, a test, set the testees mutually eyeing one another with hope and suspicion. “A YANK AT OXFORD”

When it was learnt that English girls and boys would be needed for Mr Mayer’s first British picture, “A Yank at Oxford,” applications came, in by the ton-load. A few were obviously inspired by the maidenly dream of acting with Mr Robert Taylor. The majority were from actors and actresses who knew very well the implications of the picture. Two Hollywood stars were to play in it. A Hollywood director was to make it. A Hollywood comera-man would shoot it. A Hollywood publicity man would “handle” it. Best of all, Mr Mayer would undoubtedly see it. Who knows what enthusiasm might not inspire him to seize a pen and sign a contract on the dotted line?

This zeal for a Hollywood contract is possibly an un-British, but certainly a reasonable passion. Even a star has got to live, and the better he can learn his job the better he will earn his living. It is unfortunate, but true, that a star’s job is better learnt in Hollywood than elsewhere. It always has been, and always will be, so long as we go on making films in our present dunderheaded way. A young star, in Hollywood, is submitted to a rigorous course of training. She is photographed from every angle, in every conceivable make-up. She is costumed, coiffured, and groomed in a hundred ways. Her photographic faults are corrected. She diets. She rests. She is tried out in small parts of different types until her “personality” is established. It will be months, maybe years before she is given a big chance in a big picture. But when the time comes she is ready for it. She is as finely trained as a boxer for his big fight. Hollywood is the perfect trainingground for stars, and so long as we have a star system at all in the cinema we can’t blame English actors and actresses for wanting to go to Hollywood. We can, though, blame the British producers for taking no pains to stop them. In an industry that lives by what are known as “marquee names,” it would seem to be worth a good deal of expense and effort to find new stars in the first place and in the second, to make it worth their while to work at home. NEGLECTED PLAYERS

I know, of course, that our studios are frequently testing and signing up new talent, and that sometimes the new talent is reasonably well exploited. More often, though, it isn’t. There are young contract players whose only value to their company is to be loaned out to other studios at an immense profit. There are others _ who are signed up, used for one picture, and simply forgotten. One actor I know, under long contract, having cooled his heels for eight months without a picture, went off to Cornwell for the week-end. Summoned back by telegram, he rushed to report at the studio. Two days later he managed to see the producer. “Hallo, So-and-so” was the great man’s greeting. “What are ypu doing here? Why not take a little holiday?” He has been taking a holiday ever since that day. This sort of thing is both wasteful to the studios and disheartening to the stars. It is at once false economy and bad psychology. No wonder our young players jump at the chance of a Hollywood contract. No wonder we have lost to Hollywood from the time of Ronald Colman onwards, as many firstrank stars as would have built up an entire industry. Well, the past’s past. We can’t rediscover the Flynns and the Colmans. What we can do, though, is to discover new ones. England today must be full of star material, in the film studios, the theatres, the colleges, the offices, the factories. Let our film producers go out and find these people, train them, and use them with intelligence and foresight. If English film stars are worth an effort to take to Hollywood, it seems clear that they are worth a greater effort to keen.