"DOWN AND OUT"

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3449, 28 April 1936, Page 3

"DOWN AND OUT"

FAMOUS FILM STARS

STRANDED AND STAVING.

MOTION PICTURE CELEBRITIES

Have you ever counted the last few coppers in your pocket, wondering where, when and how you could ever earn another shilling? Have you ever experienced the feeling, of being abso-| lutely penniless, homeless? Don't let it alarm you, if you haven't. The condition known as "being flat broke" is often the stepping-stone to better and brighter days, to say nothing of larger and more permanent banking accounts, writes Margaret Chute in a London journal. In talking to dozens of film stars, I have been surprised to learn how many of them have been down-and-out.

Gary Cooper told me how he starved for two days. This was in 1925; since then Gary has earned a fortune inside the studios where once nobody wanted him. He had tramped the streets until he had only ten cents left in his pocket. Determined not to become literally penniless, he did not eat for two days—but he drank a lot of water, free—and then on the third day he met a man who told him a studio on Western Avenue was engaging a lot of extras for a westeern drama.

On went Gary, on his tired feet; and as he passed a baker's shop in he dived to buy a loaf of bread with his last ten cents. Hiding behind a huge board that displayed advertisements, he got through the loaf of bread at astonishing speed—the best meal of his life, he says—and then tramped on to the studio, where he was hired as a cowboy, because he could ride a horse and looked the type. And that was the beginning of his rise to fame. Norma Shearer went hunting for jobs in New York until her purse was empty and her heart was heavy as lead. In the end, when she had practically decided to give up the terrible struggle and own herself beaten by returning to her home town in Canada, she heard that girls were being engaged by the New York studio of Universal Pictures.

So, holding her thin handbag- as though it contained hundreds of dollars, off she went to the office, to find about a hundred girls applying for the 12 jobs that were going. Norma's heart descended into her shoes; but she stuck her ground, and watched carefully to see if she could attract the. attention of the man who was

picking out girls as though they were so many cabbages. On a sudden inspiration she coughed loudly. The man who was picking out girls looked round quickly and saw her. She smiled, and he returned the smile. "You'll do; go over there!" he said. Which is the story of the way Norma crashed into the movies. Mr and Mrs James Cagney lived in one room in an unfashionable street on the wrong side of Broadway. They had been rehearsing a new music-hall act, but when it went on at a suburban hall it did not click. Things were desperate. A stale loaf was all that remained in the larder! Up came the landlady for her rent; but Jimmy turned on that charming Irish-American persuasiveness of his, and got her to say she would wait another week for the money.

He heard that a theatre wanted an assistant property man. What did he care? A job was a job, so why not? He applied, was taken on, and worked for two days. Then a truculent stagemanager ordered him to be back in the theatre at seven o'clock, and he arrived three minutes late. The stagemanager barked at him that when seven was the hour stated, seven was meant, and not three minutes past seven. "Take that broom and sweep the stage; and get going pronte!" he roared.

Jimmy could stand just so much—but not too much. He presented the broom to the stage-manager in the same way he presented half a grapefruit to Mae Clark's nose in his first film hit, "Public Enemy," and then walked out. When be got home his wife handed him a letter from an agent offering him 18 weeks on the famous Keith Orpheum circuit, to start the following Monday. Clark Gable was with a theatrical company which left its players stranded at a toAvn in Montana. Clark had 20 cents, a nickel (which is five cents), and an American penny, or cent, equivalent to an English half-penny. Not much of a fortune for a hungry man.

He pawned the only suit in his light suitcase, and took a ticket to Portland, Oregon, where he knew he had some friends.

He got to the house of his friends just at the time, he pictured them sitting down to lunch —and himself, starving, joining them. He rang. There was no answer. Rang again. Still nothing happened. Clark turned and walked back to Portland, having eaten nothing for 36 hours. At a cheap cafe he bought a cup of coffee and borrowed a newspaper to see what jobs were going. He saw that a small touring company was advertising for tall young men as actors; he found the office and got a job.