But Judy, of Course, Has a Real Keen Mind

Miss Holliday's 'Born Yesterday' Girl Takes Intelligence in an Actress

By Jay Carmody Miss Judy Holliday soon should be the toast of alf the towns

between Kennebunk in Maine and San Diego in California. This will be no more than Miss Holliday and the towns deserve.

The date of this rapprochement will be after the release and exhibition of the film version of “Born Yesterday.”

A foretaste of the impact Miss Holliday will have upon the country has been given in the years she has played "Bom Yesterday” on the stage, and in her single previous film venture, “Adam’s Rib.”

The fullest realization of what a treasure she is must wait, however, for the screen triumph of Qarson Kanin's politically flavored comedy.

In the light of all this, there are several things the public should know about Miss Holliday before it is finally engulfed in admiration for her.

Judy's Own Mind Is Razor Keen It would be a shame, for instance, for every one mot to know

that ahe is one of the most intelligent actresses any one ever met. Certainly, she is not to be judged by her portrait of Billy Dawn, the feather-brained blond-with-a-heflrt-of-gold who is one of the century’s funniest characters. Such a judgment, of course, would be all right if based upon a knowledge that only a terribly smart comedienne could make Billy THAT naive.

Another equally winning thing about Miss Holliday is that in her keen way, she exhibits the same kind of humorous and ruthless honestly that she gets into her performance of Billy Dawn.

This enables her to think of it as an ironic joke on Broadway that Hollywood is where she will be untyped.

“Every one in New York,” she says, “seems to keep wanting me to play another version of Billy. Nine out of 10 play scripts I see are variations of the character. Naturally, I would like to prove that I am more of an actress than this ene type. What is

_ more, I intend to; prove it.

She'll Do a Reversal in Next Film “Who is helping me? Harry Cohn and Columbia Pictures,

that’s who. Cohn is having a script written for me—by Kanin, by the way—in which I shall be quite a normal, or conventional, young American woman. I won’t be repeating myself, or Billy. I think that is wonderful. And, after all the things we have heard about Hollywood, I hope you think it is wonderful, too.”

Miss Holliday, who almost did not play Billy in the movie— Hollywood was rather obtuse on this score—is delighted with the film and she Is especially delighted with how well those cameramen out there know their jobs.

“They made me ever so attractive,” Miss Holliday says. “Frankly, I could not believe my eyes when I saw the first screening of the film. I never did quite get the feeling that it was the same girl. As a matter of fact, when the notion did occur to me, it upset me. There were a lot of people looking at the film with me and I had a feeling that when it was all over, they would all wonder if I hadn’t made it 10 years ago, when I looked much younger. If they did think this, however, they were too polite to say so.”

Story Is Expended on the Screen Miss Holliday, who is having a last fling at the stage version

of "Born Yesterday” at the Gayety, likes the additional scope that has been given the film. A number of the new scenes were made here, one at the National Gallery of Art, and she thinks they came out rather well,

Credit for this, she thinks, is to be shared between Washington, a photogenic city, and Director George Cukor, who knows how to bring out the best in glamorous cities.

Miss Holliday was rather surprised to And herself again in the Billy Dawn role on a stage. After three and one-half seasons on Broadway, she had become a bit exhausted by the character and was glad to escape to Hollywood and the more expanded version. She would have left it at that except she is a girl who likes to be doing something and had always wanted to do the play in Washington, more or less its native habitat.

Was she nervous? *

“I certainly was,” Miss Holliday admits. "With the movie version, I had acquired a double set of lines, at least to some extent, and I was sure one set would get in the way of the otner. I found a way out of that, however. What I did was

simply to get my mind out of the problem altogether and just drop back into fixed habit of saying the original Kanin lines. After all. I had said them for years and they came back rather easily when I stopped trying so hard to remember them.”

One pleasant thing about a fortnight's revival of "Bom Yesterday” in Washington—at least Miss Holliday thought it would be a pleasant thing—is that it brought her back East where her husband, David Openheim, is a busy and high-caliber musician.

"I went to see him last week end in Philadelphia where he was

recording a symphony under Ormandy,” Miss Holliday says. "I did see him, too, for five hours looking through the glass partition of a control room. He looked fine, and very busy, and after the five hours were up, I waved good-by and got on the train for Washington.”

She likes it here.

Dull Entry Is the Opener Of a Busy Broadway Week

By Mark Barron NEW YORK.

Some years ago Broadway had 12 new shows open on a single night, and last week the boom season was on again with a new

show opening every night. The week started with a dull

entry called “Pride’s Crossing,” a

new play by Victor Wolfson which has an eerie quality but a fine cast of players headed by Mildred Dunnock, Tamara Geva and Katharine Bard.

After “Pride’s Crossing” Broad- way faced a week of continuous premieres. On Tuesday night ar- rived "Edwina Black,” a British mystery melodrama which had a

long run in London and arrived here with Signe Hasso and Robert Harris in the leading roles.

Wednesday night brought an Item known modestly as “The Re- lapse, or Virtue in Danger,” a Restoration comedy of John Van- burgh which tells of how Charles the First Tvas knocked off his throne and the theater was ban- ned from England by the Puritan commonwealth.

Not Logicial. On Thursday night the new

Jean Anouilh comedy, “Ring Round the Moon,” arrived; on

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As a starter for this bustling week of Broadway shows, “Pride’s Crossing” didn’t begin too well for such an auspicious occasion. This Victor Wolfson play is a far from logical story and it concerns an inbred, conservative family who seem to be the New England ver- sion of a “Tobacco Road” family.

Lathrop Goodale is a New Eng- land aristocrat who regards his mother as if she were the Queen of England and looks upon him- self as if he were a crown prince.

A Murder Try. In their home in Pride’s Cross-

ing, Mass., there is Zilla, a peasant maid from Central Europe, who has been the lover of the elder Goodale, a man who happily has gone on to his grave. Zilla wants to get rid of Mother Goodale and all other members of the family, including a couple of teen-agers, so she can inherit the property. jShe even attempts to murder one of the youngsters to clear her path to win all the property.

With Mildred Dunnock, Tamara Geva and Katharine Bard playing the leading roles, “Pride’s Cross- ing” has splendid help from the players but little assistance from the playwright.

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THEY GROW TALL IN AFRICA—Among the other things to be seen in the forthcoming “King Solomon’s Mines" are these proud members of the Watussi tribe of 7-foot natives, descend- ants of the ancient Pharaohs. The Watussis here are on guard at the royal palace of the tribe, before which are seated Belgian

Resident Officer Sandreard and his wife, visiting with Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger, stars of the photoplay. The movie, 90 per cent of which was made on a four-month safari across 25,000 miles of Equatorial Africa, is next on the Palace schedule, following “American Guerrilla in the Philippines.”

Films Must Get Aroun d To Beat TV

By Jack Quigg HOLLYWOOD.

If Hollywood Is to survive the competition of television it must make pictures in places a TV cam- era can’t go. says Director Andrew Marton. who specializes in visit- ing such spots.

Marton. for instance, is prob- ably the only person to write a movie script on an iceberg, or lug a camera 27,000 feet up a moun- tain for a scene. In 20 years he has made films on every conti- nent. Most recently he traveled 25,000 miles through Africa pho- tographing wild beasts and natives for “King Solomon’s Mines.”

“Television can duplicate al- most any movie made on a sound stage.” Marton said. “In order to stay in business the motion pic- ture industry will have to get out of the studios and get the feel of the land, the weather, and ani- mals and people out of doors.”

Marton has done just that. Budapest-born, reared in the Ty- rolean Alps, he came to Hollywood and learned the movie business under the late Ernst Lubitsch.

He did his iceberg perching in Northern Greenland in 1934. He recalls that the producer’s only instructions were, “Go make a picture in Greenland.” He had no script and picked up actors in Europe. “We spent six months | there,” Marton said. “I wrote* the story as we went along. When we saw a polar bear I’d write a comedy sequence and shoot it.”

The finished picture, “North Pole Ahoy,” turned out to be a

satire of “SOS Iceberg,” a serious film being shot in Greenland at the same time.

Two years later Marton was high in the mountains of Asia making “Demon of Tibet.” He: accompanied a Swiss scientific ex- j pedition that covered 7,000 miles on foot and horseback and re- calls it was rough on actors. “We’d wait until the weather got bad and then send them out.” Some of his spectacular footage was used in “Lost Horizon.”

He was just as hard on actors in making "King Solomon’s Mines.” In one scene Stewart Granger was supposed to kill a cobra. “In Hollywood the snake would have been behind a glass panel,” Mr. Marton said. “We used one with full venom sacs. Granger waded in and swatted it himself—no double.”

Marton can do the conventional stuff, too. He directed Rex Har- rison in his first starring role and “the entire action took place on a drawing room couch.”

But he prefers outdoor stuff. His next: “White Madness,” a tale of the Canadian Mounted Police.

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No Welcome for Peggy Girls Even Try to Stop Filming of Her Sorority Book

HOLLYWOOD. California sororities certainly

haven't put out the welcome mat for Peggy Goodin, author of “Take Care of My Little Girl,” during her stay in these parts. Not only has the sisterhood blackballed pretty Peggy so far as things social go, but they’ve tried to put the hex on production of her book in the studio.

Several thousand letters threat- ening box-office death to the film have not ruffled 20th Century-Pox. where a cast of about 50 starlets headed by Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters are hard at work filming the Goodin attack on the undem- ocratic Greek letter sororities and their abuses in our institutions of learning.

Peggy Goodin’s expose of soror- ity snobbism netted her a neat $35,000—a sum which can become effective balm to a bruised spirit. She has, moreover, been signed as

technical adviser on the piece— which adds a tempting bit of financial parsley to an already sub- stantial dish.

So, while protests pile up at the studio and sorority heads are try- ing desperately to get the story softened, without avail, 20th is pushing the film through in record time so the public can decide for itself if such caste groups are a healthy adjunct to education.

Writers Sit Down. A Kansas City-born beauty, Miss

Goodin looks more like a candi- date for the chorus line than a member of the intelligentsia. In fact, spurred on by what she saw in the mirror, she started out to be an actress. After a brief fling in schobl plays at Bluffton (Ind.) High, she took a year off from col- lege to attend the Powers School of Theater and Radio in Boston and came out of it convinced that a writer’s life had more to offer.

“You write sitting down,” is her terse explanation, “but you can’t always act sitting down.”

Writing is about the only thing she does take sitting down. When she wrote her paper, titled “A Critical Evaluation of Social So- rorities,” which later became the basis of her novel, she knew she was cutting her throat so far as her particular college group was concerned.

“I wrote the paper to submit in a contest staged by the sociol- ogy department of the University of Michigan,” said Peggy. “In it I indicated clearly there was no valid reason for the existence of such groups since their function was outmoded. I won the $25

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By Harold Heffernan prize—which became embarrassing when I learned the money for it was put up by my own sorority. Our president suggested there was some mistake, but the sociology department stood firm in their choice and I was lust as firm In refusing to turn back the money to be used as advance dues. In- stead I threw a party with it at a campus joint called the Pretzel Bell.”

Sold First Novel. This initial success spurred

Peggy into writing her first novel, “Clementine," which she authored in the basement of her sorority house at night. 8he managed to turn out a chapter every two

weeks by utilizing the privacy and quiet of the cellar—but even this

did not change her point of view.

“Clementine” won the Avery Hop- wood Award and was published a

year later. In due time it was

bought for movies. “I read various stories about

the purchase, each one naming 'a different fantastic price,” she said. “It was all very gay. mad and confusing and only vaguely true, and so was the picture which I finally saw to my horror under the title, ‘Mickey.’”

With the money from "Clem- entine” or “Mickey” clutched tight in her hand, Peggy took a

year’s leave from slavery as as-

sistant editor on a New York woman’s magazine and went to McGill University in Canada, where she learned one may turn out a novel as required creative work for a master’s degree.

Second Won M. A. “I’d learned the value of con-

troversial themes so had decided to fictionalize my paper on soror- ities. The first step was to trim my sails to the winds of disap- proval I knew would follow any publication of this fact. I re- signed from my sorority before they had a chance to throw me out—turned in my pin, as we call it—and said good-by to all that. I pitched into the work with such a vengeance that I ended up in a private sanatorium at Saranac in an effort to recover from what had been mistakenly diagnosed as tuberculosis. It was actually severe pleurisy.”

Title for her book she credits to her Saranac physician, Dr. William Stern. 1“—~~

"I was telling him about it: and how a lot of girls entered sororities as ‘legacies’—like Liz in my book—because their mothers had been in the same house. Dr. Stern laughed, said the mothers probably wrote college house- mothers, ‘Take care of my little girl’—and that's how the title came about.”

Peggy got not only a title at Saranac, but a cure also and 1 e- turned to McGill four months later. to finish her book on a more gradual routine and to win her M. A. Producer Julian Blaustein read the book in galley form and persuaded Darryl P. Zanuck to buy it. 'J

The final ironic touch to her ex- perience came when she wrote the national president-of her sorority, which she prefers not to name, resigning from the group.

False Values. ‘‘I received three letters in all of

which she tried to change my mind about resigning,” she said. “Finally she wrote implying I was either badly maladjusted or a

Communist!” Asked what her object was in

writing such a book, Peggy re- plies:

“I saw so many kids arrive at the university with the same pre- conveived notions I had, that a

sorority was absolutely essential to their happiness. I think that is very bad and if the book and the picture do any good at all, they will show’ that sororities, ih their present form, are undemocratic and stress false values.

“Neither my book nor the pic- ture say we should outlaw them. We simply point out some serious imperfections. Incidentally, the sorority caricatured in the bqok is definitely a combination of all those I’ve seen or heard of, and doesn’t portray any single one.”

Peggy Goodin will live in Holly- wood for a year during which time she will write her third book—a study of evangelical customs as practiced in the Middle West.

(Released by North American Newspaper Alliance.)

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His Nose Gave Cyrano A Look of Grandeur

He Was Great Because of Handicap, Not in Spite of It, Says Ferrer

By Shcilah Graham HOLLYWOOD.

“There is no proof that Don Juan was a handsome man,” says Jose Ferrer, discussing his "Cy- rano de Bergerac” role. I had jU3t asked' him whether, in his opinion, brilliant but homely men made more of a hit with women than handsome dumbbells.

“In the first place, I don’t think Cyrano was homely,” said Jose. “In fact, his long nose gave a cer- tain grandeur to his face.” Maybe if Cyrano had had the courage to reveal himself as the writer of the love letters and the speaker of the beautiful speeches to Rox- anne, before it was too late to do him any good, she might have fallen for his prose and over- looked the nose.

“You can Ignore a physical de- fect,” continued Jose. “And this will prove what I mean: <1 put on my Cyrano nose and walked down Hollywood boulevard. Very few people even stared at me, and those who did looked away quickly with compassion and not wanting to embarrass me. Every one ac- cepted it as normal—until I, feel- ing very embarrassed myself, hopped into a taxi.

“‘Hello, Mr. Ferrer,’ said the taxi driver.

“‘How did you know me?’ I asked him.

‘I lived in New York until two weeks ago,’ he said.”

Has to Have Charm. To get back to homely versus

handsome men. “It’s like the bright boys at school,” said Jose. “Learning comes too easy for them. And very often the dull, plodding student is a much big- ger success later in life, because he has to exercise his thinking muscles and learns to concen- trate. Well, the homely man has to develop charm. And most in- telligent women would prefer his company. At least, that is what I like to believe.

“And the same goes for women.” Jose reminded me. “Mme. du Barry was a homely woman. But she had such personality, she was so radiant, no one noticed what she looked like. Eleanora Duse at 60 and 70 could play a 16-year-

Coming Attractions Stage.

NEW GAYETY—“The Con- sul," with Patricia Neway.

ARENA—‘Pygmalion," with Zelda Fichandley.

Scren. AMBASSADOR — “Let’s

Dance," with Betty Hutton. CAPITOL—“Two Weeks With

Love.” with Jane Powell, starting Thursday.

DUPONT — "The Seventh Veil,” with James Mason.

KEITH’S—"Mad Wednesday,” with Harold Lloyd, starting Wednesday.

LITTLE — “Grand Illusion,” with Jean Gabin, starting Tuesday.

NATIONAL—“Bedtime Story.” with Maurice Chevalier, starting Sunday.

PALACE — “King Solomon’s Mines,” with Deborah Kerr.

WARNER — “Let’s Dance,” with Betty Hutton.

old girl. These women, lik* Cyrano, were great—not in spit* of physical handicap, but be- cause of it.”

To play the very exacting role of Cyrano, Ferrer went into train- ing much as a boxer does for a prize fight. “I gave up smoking cigarettes, I played one hour of tennis every day, I fenced for hours, I went to bed early—every- thing I did in my private life was directed toward making my Cyrano as credible and good as I knew how. I started training last March.”

No Resentment. Jose, who has a percentage of

the picture, has been on a non- stop p.-a. junket in the past two months, appearing on radio, tele- vision, schools, universities, every- where, to talk about Cyrano. “I don’t suppose I’d have done so much if I hadn’t had a percentage of the picture,” he smiles.

“I’m old enough now not to resent the younger men,” says Mr. Ferrer.

“How old are you?” I ask. “Thirty-eight,” he replies, then

adds: “How old are you? “Don’t tell me,” he went on

quickly. "I don’t believe that women should tell their ages. If she can think young, she looks young. It’s different for a man. Sex appeal is so much more im- portant for a woman. That is the reason so many million dollars worth of cosmetics are sold each year.”

Jose was to have attended the premiere of “Cyrano” in his native Puerto Rico, but that was called off when the revolutionaries started shooting. That is too bad. because a percentage of the Cyrano profits is going to government- sponsored Puerto Rican projects.

The movie could very easily win Jose an Academy Award. He does a wonderful job. And he’s a great actor—as I don’t have to tell any one who saw his Iago in "Othello” and “Charley’s Aunt” and “Tha Silver Whistle.”

Would Sing Opera. But like all tragedians who want

to play clowns. Straight Actor Ferrer wants to sing in opera! “When I tell people that I fully intend to become an opera singer, they just smile,” said Jose—cut- ting me off in the middle of a

! smile! i “I have singing lessons every day. And actually I consider op- eratic singing a form of acting. The success of Pinza is not be- cause he has a great voice: it is based of the fact that he is a

; great actor. I used to go to the Met just to watch him act, and to learn from him.”

Now I know why Pinza wants to do a play or a movie without any

| singing at all. In fact, he had told me, “I want to prove I can act without having to sing."

Jose wants to take a fling at 1 directing pictures. And he is now

talking a deal with Wald and Krasna. But I'll take bets he will always return to acting,^especially in the theater, where he is so firmly established as a great clas- sical actor.

I (Released by North American Newspaper 1 Alliance.)

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