Andrea Leeds — The Star with a Film-Story Life (1937) 🇬🇧
Some day Andrea Leeds may star in a motion picture dramatisation of her own life story. When, and if, that picture is produced, it should be done in colour, with brown and gold and the bright red of courage as its predominant hues.
For brown hills, bare under a burning copper sun; brown-faced men with fierce brown eyes, golden light glinting from burnished rifle barrels and blood flowing in scarlet streams are the fabrics from which Miss Leeds' memories are woven.
With such a background, it is small wonder that Miss Leeds to-day ranks as one of the screen's most promising young actresses, although she has been seen in only two pictures, and is currently playing her third role as the feminine lead of Samuel Goldwyn's "The Goldwyn Follies."
Long before she ever faced a motion picture camera, before she had even seen or heard of one, Andrea Leeds had lived through grim drama, had watched sardonic comedy unfold before her startled young eyes.
For those experiences, so rare in the life of a modern American girl. Miss Leeds can thank the calling of her father, Charles Edward Lees, a mining engineer.
Until a year ago, his work kept him in Mexico, where his interests still centre. Except for the winters, during which she attended grade and high schools and later the University of California at Los Angeles in the United States, Miss Leeds lived in the southern Republic with her parents. And during her residence in mining camps below the border, Mexico went through some of the most troublous years of the nation's history.
The future actress was born in Butte, Montana, on an August 18. She has no memories of that American mining city as her parents moved to Globe, Arizona, when she was a baby. There she attended school. And there, too, her earliest memories focus on the colour brown — brown sugar on golden brown bread, a brown burro on which she rode to and from her father's mine.
From Globe, the family moved to Cineguilla, in the Mexican state of Durango. Yaqui Indians in the district were warring with rebel soldiers who ravaged the countryside in periodic raids. As a dual matter of precaution and recreation, American members of the mining camp indulged in daily rifle target practice.
One day a deputation of Yaquis delivered an ultimatum. There was to be no more target practice. It made them nervous, wondering whether or not the shots heralded a rebel attack.
The Americans stood it a week, then enjoyed another brisk round of target practice. That night Miss Leeds was awakened by the soft patter of bare feet outside her window. She looked out to see the place surrounded by brown Yaquis, naked except for loin cloths. They were armed and apparently Bent on mischief.
Charles Lees went to the door, demanded the reason for the midnight invasion and was politely told that the Yaquis wanted no trouble. They merely wanted the camp's rifles as insurance there would be no more target practice. They got them, except for a few the miners were able to hide under their bed mattresses.
Rebel raids were rather a commonplace. Marauding bands would swoop down on the camp, demand that all the chickens and turkeys be killed and cooked for them. After eating and drinking their fill they would depart with all the canned goods and ammunition they could find. They did not, however, attempt to molest the few women of the camp.
Life below the border was not all raids, scares and nightmares. On the whole, it was so peaceful that Miss Leeds would not consider spending her summer vacations in the States, away from her parents. Except for her sophomore year, when she lived with an aunt in Chicago and studied piano at the Conservatory of Music as a sideline to her regular studies, Miss Leeds received her high school education in Long Beach, California.
Following her graduation from Long Beach High School, she enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she won honours in philosophy and English literature, with the idea of preparing for a writing career. She was also interested in amateur theatricals and appeared in several college productions, including a motion picture photographed with a 16 millimetre camera. This film was later to play an important part in her career.
There was, however, more practical training in drama in store for her. Following her junior year in college, she left for Mexico, and her annual vacation with her parents.
At three o'clock on a very dark morning, she was to change trains at the little town of Jimenez on a train packed with soldiers and officers, she was the only woman.
When she arrived at Jimenez, she realised the reason for the soldiers. Rebels had raided and razed Jimenez that very day. She stepped from her railroad coach to a chaos of smouldering ruins, wounded soldiers and fear and hunger-crazed civilians.
Besieged for food, besought for money, she endured three quarters of an hour of terror. Her bags were ripped open and her coat torn from her shoulders by the importunate beggars, but except for the fright, which she tried desperately not to show, she was unharmed.
The arrival of her father, who had heard of the trouble at Jimenez and driven there at mad speed, put an end to the second worst scare of her adventurous life.
The worst fright was to come later that summer. Her father was then superintendent of a mine in Parral. Trouble developed in the mill and there was an enforced shut-down. The labourers demanded full pay, instead of the customary three quarters, during the lay-off period.
While the Lees' family was dining at the home of another mine executive, more than 100 drink-crazed labourers came to their house seeking the superintendent. They trussed up the maid, ransacked the house, then went to the mill. There they tortured the mill superintendent by holding lighted matches beneath his bare feet, trying to worm from him Mr. Lees' whereabouts.
They finally got the information they sought, from another source, and surrounded the house where Andrea and her parents were dining. Their first salute was to break all of the windows with rocks. All were armed, but Lees went to face them and by sheer courage talked them to a faint semblance of reason. Not, however, until several of the men had been wounded by shots fired by drunken companions.
Lees was borne away by the motley crew for a conference. Andrea admits that she never expected to see her father again. He returned at four o'clock in the morning. And he had not given in to the demands made upon him.
After she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from U.C.L.A., Miss Leeds went once more to Mexico, expecting to do some writing there. Her father was again at Cineguilla and unrest prevailed in the district. She had been there seven months when her father received several threats that she was to be kidnapped.
If, he told her, she wanted to write, she could do it just as well in the United States. She was hustled aboard an aeroplane and flown to Los Angeles.
For some weeks Andrea Leeds made the rounds of newspaper offices and motion picture studios, trying to get some sort of writing work, without success. Then that amateur picture she had made in college bobbed up again and changed the course of her career. Howard Hawks, the director, saw it and believed Miss Leeds had possibilities. He showed it to Samuel Goldwyn, who agreed to the extent of placing the girl under long term contract.
Even then, Miss Leeds tried to convince the producer that she would make a better writer than actress.
As her first screen role, and her initial professional acting experience, the former co-ed played Edward Arnold's daughter in Come and Get It. Her next opportunity was in the current success Stage Door and she emerged from that production with critical laurels equal to those bestowed upon Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Incidentally, her first day's work in the studio was an experience that might have shaken the resolution of any young actress. Three young men were being tested for the juvenile lead opposite her in Come and Get It, and, as the test included a kissing scene, Andrea was kissed 467 times.
Before she bad even been loaned to Radio for Stage Door, Andrea had received her first tests for the romantic lead in Goldwyn's Technicolour musical "The Goldwyn Follies." When she returned to her home studio she stepped immediately into the £500,000 production, an outstanding personality among such "big names" as Adolphe Menjou, the Ritz Brothers, Helen Jepson, Kenny Baker, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Phil Baker, Bobby Clark and Ella Logan.
In The Goldwyn Follies Miss Leeds plays a romantic role, spiced with comedy. It is the direct antithesis of the part that brought her such renown in Stage Door. This opportunity of demonstrating versatility delighted her, as she has no desire of being typed as a heavy dramatic actress. She wants first to prove that she is a competent work-woman who knows the technique of her profession, and not a one-role "morning glory."
Miss Leeds is five feet, four inches tall, weighs 112 pounds. Her eyes are brown and she has brown hair, which has been given a golden blonde tint for her role in the Technicolour Goldwyn Follies.
She lives with her parents, who left Mexico a year ago to be with her in the film capital, is unmarried, and says that to date the only romance in which she is interested is the absorbing one of succeeding as a screen actress.
Above: A recent studio portrait of the star and right, with Francis X. Shields in her first picture Come and Get It.
Andrea Leeds plays an important role in Stage Door, the new Rogers-Hepburn vehicle. She is seen with Lucille Ball who is also featured.
Glamorous enough to please the most fastidious! This is how Andrea Leeds appears in her first starring role in "The Goldwyn Follies."
Collection: Picturegoer Magazine, December 1937