Anita Louise — Beautiful Veteran (1936) 🇺🇸

Have you ever seen a Midsummer Night’s Dream walking? Well I have!

by Helen Harrison

Not only walking, but talking, laughing and sneezing — just a little — to prove that a dream can be human, especially when cursed with a midsummer cold, which, we agreed, is nothing short of a nightmare!

At the moment Anita Louise was on her way to Europe after a busy two years of having tossed off fourteen pictures! And if you don’t think that’s a lot of tossing you ought to talk with the two-pictures-a-year boys and girls who tire out all the horses while they’re “resting” at Caliente, or who recuperate at Palm Springs between reels. Santa Anita — pardon me I’m getting off on the wrong track — Anita Louise had just completed the role of Maria, mother of Fredric March in the much-heralded “Anthony Adverse.” But if you happen to drop in on her informally some evening don’t ask if she enjoyed playing with Freddy because she’s a bit fed up explaining her role was that of Freddy’s mother when he’s born! (“It’s not a large part,” she’ll tell you, “but a favorite.”)

For her fourteen pictures Anita has what she chooses to call her “achievement bracelets,” each gadget of which stands as a diminutive milepost on the road to ultimate success, and which her mother, a small, attractive blonde, augments with each role. One, a series of gold discs, bears on each the title of a picture, and on the reverse side, the date. Another pictorially depicts her most recent roles.

There is a replica of Titania herself, with a diamond in the hair; for “Red Apples,” a golden ball of red enamel and appended to the chain is the book Anthony Adverse. opening like a locket, all forming an amusing and interesting collection to which, when she returns from her European jaunt and her grandparents’ home in Wissembourg, will be added still another for “Gentleman from Kimberly,” the picture she is immediately scheduled to do.

“How,” I asked, “did you enjoy your visit to your native New York?”

“It was fine,” she laughed, “in spots… and a relief to finally get started at all. Mother and I both have a mania for getting things out of the way — and very successfully disposed of our train and steamer tickets in the incinerator, and were we burned up! From the moment we learned of our predicament there wasn’t a dull moment, but we succeeded in getting duplicates in time to meet the worst storm they’ve ever had in New York!”

Anita, it’s my guess, could meet a sandstorm — and a lot of other things — without turning a hair on her pretty golden head or shifting the calm gaze of her serene blue eyes.

Anyway I decided to find out. (All rascals aren’t screen stars!)

“What,” I inquired in the off-hand manner that Groucho Marx would ask for Garbo [Greta Garbo] as his leading lady, “what about this romance with Tommy Beck [Thomas Beck]? And love — what about love?”

“No fair!” she cried. “Why I hardly ever have time to step out, though the minute I do go dancing at the Troc, or occasionally at the Cocoanut Grove, it seems that everyone has me engaged or in love and no one will believe I’m not!”

“Now don’t go telling an ol’ debbil Cupid like me, with just a slight touch of the roué, that you’re going to dedicate your last few declining years to teaching Ethiopians the gentle art of badminton!” (Badminton is Anita’s special delight. She has a fine court at her home where Elizabeth Ryan, former woman’s tennis champion, gives her lessons.)

“I won’t,” she assured me, “because I fully expect to marry when the ‘right time’ comes — but I hope that won’t be for years — well at least two — I’ve so much I want to accomplish. Nevertheless I won’t say I’m not going to marry because if I met someone who’d sweep me off my feet I’d probably do that very thing tomorrow, and then I’d have to spend years making alibis!”

Smart girl.

“Precisely what are the awfully important things you want to accomplish?”

“I’d like to stand for the sort of thing in Hollywood that Katherine Cornell docs on the New York stage!”

Such goings on!

“At the moment each picture I do is only a step in the direction of achievement — but,” she insisted, “it isn’t really accomplishment!”

“I’d like most to do Juliet,” she said, in a burst of confidence, “I’ve wanted to do the role long before Norma Shearer ever thought of doing it, but I’d like that opportunity now, when I’m just the age!” And I do hope for Anita’s sake that some studio gets around to making Romeo and Juliet again before Shirley Temple becomes the pride of the Capulets.

For a girl who works as hard as Anita one would think she’d find relaxation on the scenic railway at Venice (California) or chuting-the-chutes at Coney Island — anything mildly insane. (As for me I’d collect star-sapphires like Carole Lombard, I’m that looney!) But Anita? Well, this’ll give you an idea:

Five years ago, when she was given her first big contract, her mother told her she might have anything she wanted… well, anything within reason, as long as you bring that up. It could be a car, a new and beautiful wardrobe, jewelry… Do you think Anita reached across and picked the Eiffel Tower or the Warner Frères or even Robert Young (ah, there, that’s a thought!) No, ma’am, she picked a harp! I said a Harp!

“Is that all you want, darling?” her mother asked in a voice which, to my sensitive ear, carried a note of alarm. Anita solemnly insisted a harp would make life complete.

And she’s done right well by it! Just before Christmas she gave a concert at the Pacific Institute and that, I’ll have you know, is the cultural equivalent of living in the Garden of Allah apartments, having Leslie Howard’s horse kick you, plus an Academy Award!

But don’t go over in a corner and mope, because there’s nothing pedantic about little Miss Louise. She has a book and she likes interpretive dancing — but she likes, Fun, too, I’m happy to report.

Her crowd includes such regular youngsters as Patricia Ellis, Paula Stone, daughter of the famous Fred [Fred Stone], and “Jimmy” Lloyd. However, now that she’s growing up she likes the “older” crowd too — insists they’re every bit as silly, and implying such senile playboys and girls as Jeanette MacDonald, Gene Raymond, Johnny Mack Brown and his wife and Pat [Pat O’Brien] and Eloise O’Brien!

Just before sailing Anita took a test for color pictures, with “gratifying results,” so, before long, all her lovely coloring will be right there before you on the prismatic screen!

“Right now I’m going to have the grandest time,” she told me, “my first real holiday in nine years! I shall forget all about pictures and studios

“— and interviews.”

“And interviews,” she laughed in agreement.

“But what would happen if Sir Elstree were to draft you for a picture?”

There was just a second’s hesitation.

“I’d love to do a picture in England,’ she admitted, realizing, as she smiled, that she’ll never forget pictures or studios or interviews.

“Please.” I cautioned her as I left, “be sure to come home. Of course we simply couldn’t part with Merle Oberon, but that doesn’t mean we intend to trade you down the river!”

“You forget my contract and The Man from Kimberly. I’ll be back!”

And when she does there’ll be serious competition for the Claudette Colberts, the Bette Davises and the Janet Gaynors [Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Janet Gaynor], because Anita, you may have discovered, is more than the stuff of which dreams are made. She’s a realist, and for her the only real reality is the very top!

As the beautiful young mother of Anthony Adverse.

At Palm Springs, Anita Louise (always in blue) enjoys her honestly earned days of case.

Joan Bennett with her husband, Gene Markey, and their two children, Diana, eight, and Melinda, two, arriving in New York by plane en route to England on the Queen Mary.

Photo: Wide World

Collection: Silverscreen Magazine, August 1936