Aline MacMahon — Strong-Minded Woman (1934) 🇺🇸

Dear Editor:

Well, I've just come in from doing that interview with Aline MacMahon, like I said I would, and as soon as I change into dry stockings and wring out my coat, I'll tell you how it was.

by Dorothy Spensley

They were doing a rain scene for While the Patient Slept and I haven't seen such wet weather since the Brothers Warner made Noah’s Ark. They had an entire sound stage devoted to the vagaries of the equinox, and mighty moist the whole thing was, with the carpenters drilling holes in the floor to let the excess water escape, and me drilling Miss MacMahon with questions, and her trying to escape.

The press agent was very obliging, although he might have provided galoshes and umbrellas, inasmuch as everyone was scurrying around, busy as beavers (and as wet), in sou'westers and rubber boots, and the thunder (artificial) was clapping merrily, just like life. About every two minutes there would be a reverberating crash, like a heavenly cannonade, and then a blinding flash of lightning (also artificial). It made interviewing just dandy.

"What do you want from life?" I shouted at Miss MacMahon, right off, because there's nothing like being vital about such things.

"Why — er — I don't know," she shrieked back, with a giggle, and dodged as a clap of thunder broke over her head. "What does one want from life?"

"Well... security?" I said as a starter. And just then a streak of green-blue lightning bolted toward me.

"Oh, not that," she said, with a low laugh that started way down in her throat. "I've always had that. It's nothing new. I'm an only child. My parents didn't mind that I went on the stage. I never had to pinch and starve to become an actress. I've always had everything I wanted, and I never wanted a great deal. My life has been very normal, ordinary, with plenty of ease."

Her answer rolled off in a clap of thunder, and the wind machines started their deadly work of whipping the fast-falling rain into a hurricane.

"Excuse me a moment, please,” MacMahon said, if that girl is going to walk into that rain, she will need my rubbers and a couple of towels, and this umbrella." She pushed her way through the glistening sou' westers, and left me to my thought. There was only one thought, Editor, and that was "Will my lungs hold out if I have to veil above this tropical storm?" because by that time wind machines (huge 'plane propellers, they are), cymbal-like thunder, and flashing lightning were united in one huge Reinhardtian finale. Back came MacMahon, smiling, the ankle-length blue serge of her nurse's uniform, with its fitted bodice, whipping about her sensible black Oxfords. She plays a nurse, a cross between Philo Vance and Florence Nightingale, who solves this mystery drama.

"I understand, Miss MacMahon," I yelled, lustily, "that you are a strong-minded woman. Are you a strong-minded woman?

"Perhaps. Am I?" she answered with a smile. It was a quizzical smile, Editor, MacMahon is past mistress of the quizzical smile, full of unspoken query, amusement, doubt. "I mean, Miss MacMahon, that you are one player who dictates the terms of her contract. That is, certain parts of it. And the studio says 'Yes, ma'am.' Is that right? No little, dribbling vacations of a week-end, but weeks on end, and the privilege of spending them all, consecutively, in New York. That's the way your contract reads, isn't it?"

"Yes," she answered, through a clap of thunder. "Six months here and six months in New York. I do four pictures a year, and when they are done, I hurry to New York. But four are really too many. I'd like to do one or two, and do them awfully well. I think the arrangement of my time is quite nice, don't you?"

"But this time arrangement is novel, isn't it?" I asked as a mock Jupiter Pluvius knocked his storm clouds together. "No other actress has quite the same provision in her contract, has she?" I continued.

"I don't believe so," answered MacMahon. "You see I insisted upon it when my contract was signed. I made eleven pictures in Hollywood before I finally signed with Warner Brothers, ten of them for that company and one for Universal. Each time I came West because Mervyn LeRoy, the director, for some reason or other, liked my work. Each time I would be invited to sign a contract and each time I said, 'No, the distance is too far from New York, and New York is my home.'

"All of my interests are in New York. My husband, my family, my friends, my activities. As much as I like Hollywood, I could never utterly abandon New York and work out here. That was why we arranged this contract."

"If you are so fond of New York, Miss MacMahon," said I, gossiping like a fish wife, "what do you do for diversion in Hollywood?"

"Ride horses, and walk. There are nice hills in Brentwood, where I have a house. And I read."

"And in New York, how do you live?" I pried, shamelessly, editor, because I knew you'd be curious, too. I was, and I wanted to know all about her.

"In New York, I... well, I do about the same things. I walk, and read, and see my friends, and go to concerts and the theatre. And shop! I love to shop," MacMahon said with a rush of girlish enthusiasm.

"I love to buy things. Not clothes, but bits of embroidered linens, things like that. Our apartment in New York is full of discoveries I've made, and bought. I don't keep to period. That's too dull. But I am fond of Early American things, and some of the modern art. Not all of the latter."

You can see, editor, that life, and the shops, are full of infinite variety for MacMahon. The secret of this (and it is no secret at all, because like all well-married women her contentedness is a shining armor), is that MacMahon as Mrs. Clarence Stein, wife of a New York architect, is entirely happy.

Her life (and that may explain the smooth brilliance of her performance) is completely wrapped up in the brown-haired, pleasant-faced, forty-ish man, with glasses, to whom she has been married for a number of years. You ask about this man and whether she, with her flare for decorating, works with him in his craft, planning suitable interiors for his exteriors, and a warmth, a radiance, creeps into her tones (which are correctly Eastern, not Iowan, not Western). "No," she says, with a shake of her seal-brown head, and a little wall, invisible, but protective, arises. Behind this wall is her happiness, guarded carefully from prying outsiders. "He's very clever," she says. "And I am terribly proud of him."

MacMahon is a strange blend of types. She is at once cool and distant; vivacious, with a giggle as infectious as a schoolgirl's; profoundly moved at the name of an excellent book; radiantly lovely at the mention of her husband. I have seen her walk, mink-clad and alone, into the studio's Green Room Cafe, and she looked as frostily poised as a duchess at a boat christening. On the set, this day, she was far from frosty. She was, at will, amused, a little bored, faintly embarrassed, even slightly shy. She samples all the human moods, and that's probably why she is forever turning in competent performances.

For four years she has been pursuing the even, uneventful life of a film actress who works in Hollywood and lives in New York. She does not bother much about local night spots, premieres, gossip, but within the closely-knit community that is professional Hollywood, she manages to find a few congenial souls with whom to visit and dine.

She has travelled little and would like to travel more, and just because it seemed the correct thing to do, I asked her what was the most dramatic occurrence in her life. With amusement she gazed into the hurricane of the set, trees whipped almost to the ground in the intensity of the gale, thunder crashing. With that a bolt of artificial lightning spun down toward her and instinctively she threw her long, slim, expressive hands to her face. In a moment, they were down and she was laughing:

"That was, I think!" she said, as the rain continued in torrents. So you can see, editor, that strong-minded as she may be in some things, there are moments when MacMahon is just a weak woman.

The next moment she was on her sensible Oxford-clad feet, her right hand extended toward mine. Just thirty-five minutes had elapsed in the equinoxal display. "Good-bye," she said with a firm smile, and handclasp. "I hope I have given you a good story and that you have enough information about me." With these words she turned abruptly, decisively, and walked toward the rioting weather. And I stood in a puddle and watched her.

Aline wants what she wants when she wants it. She's firm against doing too many pictures.

The MacMahon-Kibbee team in a thrilling mystery drama, "While the Patient Slept."

Collection: Modern Screen Magazine, April 1935