PARK Magazine

ICON
forget I’m a man and not just an actor.” You know in
back of this is a very big truth. Rather odd people
become actors and they are vain; they are much
vainer than women.
I smell smoke. Where’s the fire? Tell me everything,
all about the co-stars that you didn’t
like, like Robert Montgomery.
Well, we had an unfortunate experience . . . yes,
some stories. . . I feel it’s our private family business;
we did not get along, no. But I think that Mr. Montgomery
had a smashing career and I’m not going to
sit here and say what I think.
I hear you didn’t get along with Alec Guinness
in THE SCAPEGOAT.
Where do you get all these stories? I don’t think it’s
a very interesting story. It was a very bad film, he was
never meant to play a straight part, Mr. Guinness.
This was in, what was it called, The Scapegoat. The
whole situation was just unfortunate, he wasn’t very
pleasant to me; he made it difficult for me. And who
knows why he did, often actors are going through
something difficult and they’re just not in a very good
mood and with me he was not in a very good mood.
You say you consider William Wyler your passion.
Yes, my passion, the greatest director for an actor,
at least he certainly was in my mind, and I think that
his record in Hollywood is extraordinary.
Yet you feel that your performance in THE
LITTLE FOXES is not your best and you blame
Mr. Wyler for it and then there was Miss Bankhead.
The real argument was, you see Miss Bankhead in
The Little Foxes was absolutely sensational in the
New York theater, as a matter of fact, I begged Mr.
Goldman, I said, “Please let Miss Bankhead record
this on the screen.” It didn’t work - he wanted me to
do it. And Mr. Wyler did not want me to play it the way
Miss Bankhead did. Miss Bankhead played it the way
Miss Hellman wrote the play, and there is only one
way to play Regina, which is the way Miss Bankhead
played it and Mr. Wyler fought me very much on this,
to play it in a different way and I couldn’t see it in a
different way. So, it made it an unpleasant experience.
In OF HUMAN BONDAGE, we find you playing
a slut, a girl of the streets, a mean, bitchy waitress.
Well, you see that was the only reason I was given
this part. On that day in California, this was actually
the first leading woman’s part in a film. That was a
totally unpleasant ugly, bitchy woman. And I was
given this because none of the established women of
that day would play this part. It was the first time; it
was a first. And naturally, this was the beginning of
my career because it was such a marvelous part, and
it was the kind of part that fascinated me. I have to
tell you that I was a Yankee girl, I never really understood
Mildred at all, I really don’t understand any
man who would put up with her for five minutes. I
used to go to male friends of mine and say, “If you ever
kept on going out with a woman who treated you like
this,” and it was very interesting. With every human
being I now know in my own life, there has been one
situation when a male or a female has been involved
with another human being even though they knew
that it was no good but couldn’t get away. And that’s
what Mr. Marr wrote about. But at that age, I didn’t
understand it entirely.
You had leading ladies as co-stars.
You are going right into Miriam Hopkins. I’ve never