Evening Star Newspaper, January 8, 1933, Page 67

STRANGE PATHS TO GLORY IN THE MOVIES Norma Shearer, who started as a piano player—and THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY & 193 NormaShearer’sFirst Work Was as a Piano Player, Ann Harding Started as a Filing Clerk—and a Roll Call of the Stars Shows That 80 Per Cent of Them Came to Pictures From held her job only three days. BY DAN THOM ASs. HERE are a lot of strange quirks to the motion picture industry—but none stranger than the highways and byways traveled to attain a place in it Unlike almost every other existing profession. there is no blazed trail which leads to acting. Regardless of what other vocation is chosen, a person usually spends a certain amount of time studving and preparing for it. Not so with acting, however. Men and women study to become engineers. salesmen, lawyers, school teachers, ministers, bookkeepers, stenographers —and end up as actors and aclresses. At least 80 per cent of the players you see an the silver screen today were engaged in some other type of work before coming into pictures. And back in the days of silent pictures the percentage was even higher. Talkies have brought to the screen a certain number of stage players who never have known anything but acting. Imagine, for example, the beautiful Ann Harding being told that she should brighten up her appecrance, Ann used to work as a filing clerk in the New York office of an insurance company. She was proud of that job—so proud, in fact, that she almost lost it. 11T was an important phase of my life,” Miss Harding declares. “And I had many ex- periences there which I never shall forget. “There was one in particular which now seems very amusing. I was earning the splendid salary of $12.50 a week and strove to impress my employer with my briskness and efficiency. I succeeded in a siyle beyond my fondest hopes. “One morning he took me to task, saying, ‘Miss Catley (my real name) . . . er . . . couldn't you contrive somehow to brighten up your appearance a bit? Don't be so plain. You know you would be quite good-looking if you made a point of it."” Robert Mo wgamery and his brother started out in life as seamen on board a freighter. Neither of them knew the first thing about seamanship, but decided that wandering around the giobe would be a grand profession. So they attempted to hide their ignorance under a surface of boastfulness. “I'll never forget the time we started to boast about the experiences we never had had,” Montgomery recalls. “One night in a geheral discussion in the crew’s mess we talked glibly about our experiences as firemen and the records we held for speed with the coal shovel. “The next day we were transferred to the engine room and told to prove what we could do. We tried to make good, but finally had to yell for mercy and admit that we were greenhorns. Then we were transferred back to our jobs on deck again” ! JOAN CRAWFORD'S firsl joou was as a stock girl in a ready-to-wear department of a large store. The pay was small and the work tedious, but the visions of some day becoming a salesgir] kept her at it. “For two months my life was spent in putting away one box after another,” Joan explains. “Durinz the entire time I thought I would be promoted to salesgirl any day—only I never was, somehow. “But finally I gave up hope and decided to take a job as a chorus girl with a road show which was about to leave town. I got the job, quit the store and started cut’ on ‘what I thought would he a brilliant career. Two weeks Iater the company broke up, and with much humiliaticn 1 went back and acked for my old Job of putting away boxes.” Richard Arlen held all sorts of jobs before he finally crashed into pictures, his career taking him all the way from Duluth, Minn., to Texas and then to Los Angeles. However, . ome which seemed to hold the most promus® him was that of a newspaper advertising 3 —that is, it did until he pulled an¢ sngor@gttable “boner.” T on the verge of closing my first big Most Prosaic Jobs. Anita Page set out to be an artist, but gave up in dis- couragement when she found out nobody wanted to buy. Rosco Ates was a soda jerker, until he served the mayor the wrong kind of drink and the mayor helped him decide on a new occupation. contract, so lo create a good impression I invited my prospect and his wife to accompany me to the theater one evening,” he says. “We had seats well down in front. I removed my overcoat and placed it carefully under the seat. 1" THEN I saw I had taken off my suit coat with it. I was sitting next to my well groomed prospect and his wife with only my vest on. And everyone around us was laughing. I never went back to ciose the deal.” Charles Ruggles should have known that he never was cut out for the serious job of a pharmacist. But he didn't. He studied phar- macy in college and then went to work in his father's drug store. “I got along fine for the first week,” Charlie declares. “Then I-made a mistake in mixing up some medicine for a customer. I never waited for dad to fire me, but left home and went to San Francisco to look for another job.” Norma Shearer's first job, that of a piano player in a large department store, came to a sudden end three days after it started. And she didn't even get paid for those three days. “When I finished school I knew that I couldn’t go to college, so I set out to find a job in Toronto,” says Norma, “About the only thing I could do was play a piano, so I started making the rounds of all the stores with music departments. I landed a job and worked for three days without telling my family what I was doing. touched on his talents. You should hear him lecture on life at the bottom of the sea and other such startling subjects. That's the way he got his start. “After graduating from the Highland Park College in Des Moines, Iowa, with a bachelor or oratory degree I suddenly discovered that few people had any desire to hear what I had to say,” Nagel declares, “Pinally, however, I managed to get a job as a lecturer for the Redpath Lyceum Bureau. From the lyceum stage I spouted on foreign relations, art in Tibet, life at the bottom of the sea and other similar subjects. But the job blew up when the management discovered that I spent most of my time talking to myseif.” Anita Page w~5 stopped from. becoming an illustrator cnly L cause nobody would buy her sketches, Had she experienced any luck in her first atiempts to sell her “art,” she probably would be using a drawing board instead of a make-up box today. sketching, so a few years ago I decided to capitalize on this talent,” Anita confides. logue for the screen, Roscoe Ates earned his living as a soda jerker. But that job, like many others, had a disastrous finish. “I was working in a drug store in Okmulgee, Okla., during the early days of the oil boom,” Roscoe declares. “I had been in the habit of serving a bottle of citrate of magnesia to one of the leading oil promoters. He came in one morning, accom- panied by a rather pompous-looking old duck. Without being told, I gave him his usual drink and asked his companion what he would have., ““The same,” he said. ‘I like lemon soda.’ “Well, you know me. I gave it to him. How in heck did I know he was the mayor?” The career of a soldier of fortune almost captured Lewis Stone after he was discharged from the Army at the close of the Spanish- American War. “Gen. Homer Lee was looking for officers to go to China and train troops there,” Stone says. “It looked like a good job and I accepted. For a month or so I was a colonel in the Chinese army—ready to sail. “Then the Boxer rebellion broke out and I quit. I couldn’t see the idea of going over there and possibly having to fight against my own people, cr any other white army. “So I turned in my nice parchment commis- sion, as did all of the other boys who had signed up to go over.” Dorothy Jordan's first job consisted in teach- ing a dancing class for her younger sister’s friends at 5 cents a lesson. She was 14 at the time; and the venture ended when the girls, after a few lessons, decided they knew as much as their teacher. Bird Artist Continued from Fourth Page smile that the few people who know him some- times see. “That is all right. ITl make my seis by hand.” H! went home, back to the little house in Connecticut where he has lived for more than 20 years. Every morning he arose at dawn and worked until dusk. He wished that Summer would linger. The sun rose earlier and the days were longer. He could put in more hours of work. R He had decided that be would make a 500 . edition, in 12 volumes each, of the 900 plates. A simple arithmetic process showed him that it couldn’t be done. He decided that 100 would be enough. By October, in 1929, he had received sub- scriptions for 95 of the sets. The price was $2,400 a set. Then the economic condition changed. Sixty cancellations followed. Rex Brasher kept right on working. There was nothing romantic- about the task. Just hard, dull routine. After a while enough sub- scriptions were renewed to raise the total to 75. This task, which had started in 1928, was finished in 1932. he looked at his work—and this time he called it good—and complete. He had