I Was Never So Embarrassed (1932) 🇺🇸

For even the movie stars’ faces get red — according to Dick Mook and Jack Jamison

Did you ever go to a party? And happen to say. “Who is that funny-looking woman over there?” And have the gentleman to whom you addressed the remark reply, “Oh, that’s my wife.”

Did you ever put on your best clothes, go downtown and then, When you arrived there, suddenly discover that one of your socks was brown and the other black? Well, a lot of these embarrassing moments happen in Hollywood, too! So, cheer up. We of the multitude ire not the only one- that make bad breaks. For the movie stars, with all their savoir faire, make them too! And how!

Some of the stories of the stars’ social blunders have become classics in Hollywood. For example, the first time Monte Blue went to New York and was invited to tea by a famous newspaper woman who wanted to interview him. Monte has hands the size of hams, and at the table he got his finger stuck in the handle of his teacup. Sweating and inwardly cursing, he tried to work the darned thing loose, meanwhile keeping up a chatty, gay conversation. At length, all the tea was gone, and he could no longer fake lifting the cup to his mouth. He had to slide the thing down under the table, and break the handle off! And then, looking around the room innocently, ask, “My, my, my! Where on earth did my cup get to?”

Not that you have to go that far back to get some tales. Take Neil Hamilton’s first appearance on the stage, before he was in pictures. He was playing with Grace George in an opus called The Ruined Lady. At the end of the first act, he was supposed to offer Miss George his manly arm and ask, “May I take you in to dinner?” Simple? Sure! But so was Neil! He had heard, you see, of the fun actors have ad-libbing on the stage. Unfortunately for him, he had not heard of Miss George’s temper. So one night, when the moment came for him to speak the fateful words, he inquired, in the most casual tone imaginable — “May I show you the goldfish?”

Wham!

That slap Neil got on the cheek echoed through the house and made people outside in the street think that someone had dropped a piano. Instead of the curtain falling upon the pair marching sedately in to dinner, it fell on an astonished Neil rubbing his jaw.

Or take the evening Clark Gable had his first date with his best girl of the moment. It was some years ago, before he was married, so there’s no sense in telling who she was. But Clark was nerts, goofy, ga-ga, that-way and haywire about her. He had been trying to meet her for a long time, and finally he had been introduced, had asked her for a date, and she had told him to come out and spend an evening at her apartment. Clark devoted two hours to brushing his hair and getting his black tie to set just right, and showed up promptly on the tick of eight. The evening went off in perfect style. It was all he could have dreamed, in the way of perfection, and more.

That is, it was until he got home, somewhere around midnight. As he took off his dinner-jacket, he happened to glance into a mirror over his shoulder. His eye was caught by a large and resplendent patch of glistening white. He gasped and whirled around for a better look at his back. Was it imagination? It was not! It was his shirt-tail! In dressing so carefully, he had forgotten to shove his dress shirt far down into his trousers, and it had been hanging out all evening. And what a blow that was to love’s young dream! Clark still gets cold shivers when he tells about it.

There’s another story of love’s young dream. It’s about Joan Blondell and James Cagney. In the days before Jimmie was married. (All the new crop of young actors in Hollywood seem to be married.) He and Joan used to go places together. They gazed on each other in a big way.

Well, it seems that Jimmie once had to go out of town, and when he came back Joan was down at the station to meet the train. The only trouble was that she didn’t know which car he was on. So when the passengers began piling out of the train, she was twisting her head around like a corkscrew, trying to watch all the cars at once.

Suddenly, far down the tracks, she spied Jimmie’s well-known back. Slipping quietly up behind him, while he waited for the porter to drag out his luggage, she gave a spring and jumped on his back — well, practically. Anyhow, she hugged him tightly from behind, and clasped her hands over his eyes, giving him one of those “Guess who?” greetings.

But as the words, “I give up,” fell on her ears, she froze with horror.

For — from behind her — she heard a voice that she knew well. Jimmie’s! And he was asking, with the patient tone of a mother for an erring child, “Joan, what in the world are you doing to that man?”

The gentleman on whom Joan had wasted so much enthusiasm was a perfect stranger. Joan will never trust a back again.

Joan Crawford, although in her pictures she plays the part of a modern maiden who knows how to take care of herself in any and all precarious situations, has had her troubles, too. And when we say troubles we mean troubles.

Joan was driving on Beverly Boulevard at a good fast clip one dark night a week or so ago, on her way home from work. The speedometer was climbing nicely.

“Whee-ee!” It was a siren, but not the kind of siren that attracted Ulysses. A gruff voice rose above it. “Hey, youse! Pull over to the curb.”

Joan pulled over and, in turning the ignition switch to shut off her motor, happened also to cut off her lights. The traffic officer, who had meanwhile parked his motorcycle, strode alongside.

“Say, where do you think you’re going so —?” he started. Los Angeles cops think of themselves as being witty men. But Joan was ready for him. With her most alluring smile — although it was so dark that he could not see it — she began to out-talk him. “Now don’t be like that,” she pleaded coquettishly. “You’re a nice policeman. You won’t arrest me, will you? That big fat policeman that was on duty here last week, he gave me a ticket. But you’re nice. You’re not a big cheese like him! —”

The cop cleared his throat, and switched on his flashlight. “Oh, yes, I am!” he said, as the glow revealed the face of the big fat cheese. “I was on duty here last week.... It’s sure a shame your headlights aren’t on, lady. Just think, I’ll have to put ‘Driving Without Lights’ on the ticket, along with ‘Insulting An Officer.’”

Doug, Jr., the other half of the happy pair, knows what it is to have an embarrassing moment, too. Once when he and Joan made a trip to New York, he was greeted one evening by a gentleman whom he recalled having met and whom he remembered as a writer, although for the life of him he couldn’t think of the man’s name. While they were chatting, Joan came up. “Dear,” said Doug to Joan, “you remember Mr. Mm-mm-mm, of course. Remember, we read his book together?”

When Doug was all through with his rhapsody, the stranger smiled pleasantly. “I’m so glad you liked that book,” he said. “Mr. Blank, who wrote it, would be delighted. My name is Carl Van Vechten.”

“He was perfectly swell about it,” says Doug. “But imagine my embarrassment when I found out later that he and this Mr. Blank hate each other so much that they’d like to sprinkle ground glass in each other’s beds.”

Richard Cromwell, who showed so much promise in “Tol’able David” and who is appearing in two pictures now being released, has the sense of humor of a child of two. Going to Henry’s restaurant one evening with a girl friend, the two of them stopped at a nearby “gag” store. Richard bought two sets of the most horrible-looking, snaggled teeth, and he and the girl slipped them on.

Entering Henry’s, they attracted all the attention they had expected — and more. Particularly when, sitting down, they nonchalantly removed the tusks and parked them in a glass of water!

Finally, there is the famous Buddy Rogers-Mary Brian-Claire Windsor story. Shortly after Buddy came to Hollywood, he was running around with Claire. Something happened, and he switched over to Mary Brian. One evening Buddy and Mary went to a party together. They descended from Buddy’s car, and he turned to lock it. Mary stepped back to give him room. Where she stood, it was quite dark.

Another car drove up to the scene of the battle, as parties are called in Hollywood, and one of the boys who climbed out of it recognized Buddy. He introduced the smiling Mr. Rogers to the others, and then turned to Mary, who was all but invisible in the shadow. “And this, ladies and gents,” he bellowed, in the tone of a train announcer, indicating Mary with his arm — “is the lovely Claire Windsor!”

“I nearly died,” Mary says, in telling it. “But I think Buddy died several times over and then turned in his grave like a whirling dervish!”

[AAA]

Did Joan Blondell blush when she hugged that stranger? Well, did she!

Photo by: Elmer Fryer (1898–1944)

“I nearly died,” says Mary Brian (above), “but I think Buddy died several times.”

Photo by: Eugene Robert Richee (1896–1972)

And can you imagine Neil Hamilton’s embarrassment when Grace George slapped him — on the stage!

Photo by: George Hurrell (1904–1992)

Collection: The New Movie Magazine, July 1932