Are You Up-To-Date about Lois Moran? (1932) 🇺🇸

Are You Up-To-Date bout Lois Moran? (1932) | www.vintoz.com

September 29, 2024

Leslie Howard has just left Hollywood because it was boring him to death. Kent — Douglass has deserted it because he felt that it was not the place for his full development as an actor. And now Lois Moran, the only girl ever voluntarily to quit the film hamlet while at the top of the heap, has shaken its dust from her dainty heels for reasons which you are about to learn.

by Terrence Costello

Without question, when Lois stepped out, she was the fair-haired child with the film moguls. In the five months just before leaving, she made four successful pictures — “The Spider,” “Transatlantic,” “The Men in Her Life,” and “West of Broadway.” In all of these she gave such consistently fine performances that option-day found her stock higher than ever at Fox. And don’t forget, either, that Lois was receiving no less than a thousand a week — which is big pay these days in Hollywood, where even money talks.

But no more pictures — for the present — and no more Hollywood. There is too much ahead of her, too much that wants doing, for her to give any more of her present time to the West Coast village.

“I hold no brief against the place,” she told me. “I like it — especially in the summer. And I’m sure it is a grand place in which to die. But I’m not ready to die, just yet. There are things to be done!”

On her toes even then

And recalling Lois’ life-story — perhaps the most colorful story of any American girl now on the screen — it is evident that this is no new-born urge which caused her to relinquish a gilt-edged movie contract in favor gf the precarious chances of the New York stage. Her stage ambitions started early — so early that at eleven, a little blonde American girl attending school in France, she made up her mind to be a dancer… and forthwith, with the bravery of extreme youth, presented herself at the celebrated Paris Opera.

Luck was with her. No sooner was she inside the door than she attracted the attention of the mistress of ballet. Questioned, she admitted her hopes, and at once, with that strange good luck which has marked her whole progress, she was admitted to the ballet school.

For six months she studied, working as hard as any workhouse child ever worked. And to such good purpose that she was admitted to the Opera ballet — with the opportunity of working even harder. But this was what she wanted, and she did not protest at the grueling three hours a day of practice under the guidance of the sternest ballet masters in the whole dance world. Rather, so intense was her determination that she increased her stint to five hours, in order to squeeze in two hours a day of singing!

A French movie star at 14

This was her life for more than two years — appearances at night in the Opera and hours of practice a day, interspersed with formal studies supplied by tutors. And then, when she was fourteen, it all suddenly ended because of a square screen upon which shadows appeared and faded, changing from one romantic, adventurous shape to another. The great French film star, Jacques Catelain, needed a leading lady — and the little American girl from the Opera ballet got the job. At fourteen, mind you.

The picture was one of the successes of those early days, “Gallery of the Monsters.” One of the bright young men who helped with it in a minor capacity was Rene Clair, now the foremost of French directors. The assistant was Albert Conti, who subsequently came to America to establish himself as an actor of distinction and charm in American films.

But the real hit of the piece was Lois. She was an immediate sensation. Frenchmen, too, prefer blondes, and her Nordic loveliness showed up so well among the Latin types that within two years “Loise Morann” was one of the brightest luminaries of the French cinema.

During these two years, however, Lois was not living only the life of a popular actress. Under the guidance of a young American artist, she was being introduced to the cultural heritage of the old world. Michael Knox did much for his pupil, bringing her avid mind into contact with the treasures with which Paris is so bountifully supplied, giving her daily lessons in history, languages and the arts, impressing upon her that only the best should be termed the best.

An American hit at 16

This coincided with Lois’ own instinctive opinion; and presently she was entertaining grave doubts as to whether the French was the best form of motion pictures. Thus when Sam Goldwyn advertised in the London newspapers that he was searching for a girl to play opposite Ronald Colman in “Romeo and Juliet,” Lois wrote to him at once. The producer made an appointment with her in Paris, and kept it — to inform her that while he had abandoned the idea of Romeo and Juliet, he thought that she was the girl for the role of the daughter in the forthcoming “Stella Dallas.”

Stella Dallas made screen history, and Lois along with it. Fox signed her on a long-term contract that insured the financial independence she to-day enjoys — and Lois settled down to the business of being an American movie star. And at this she remained not only two years, but six, until —

Until the old unrest, the feeling that she wasn’t progressing, that there was more to life than she was getting, assailed her once more. Whereupon she went to New York last winter, during her four-months’ vacation, and played the lead in Robert Sherwood’s bitter, witty hit, This is New York.

This was a taste of new blood. The dazzle of a first night, the warmth of first-hand applause, the praise of important critics, the feel of an actual audience — overlaid with the tremendous elation of knowing that she had made good in the world’s hardest city to conquer, Manhattan, — these were new thrills.

Not after big money

Contract obligations caused her to return to Hollywood, and in five brief months to turn out those four smash performances. But with these completed, she wanted to be off to the stage again. The movie moguls raised the ante, but Lois didn’t want money — she wanted New York. She was determined to return. And return she did… and once again to something new — musical comedy.

A show written by the nimble-witted George S. Kaufman (co-author of “Once in a Lifetime”) and with music by George (“Rhapsody in Blue”) Gershwin requires a leading lady of talent, distinction and plenty of other things. These obviously were summed up in the little girl who began her dancing at eleven and her singing shortly afterwards. Lois was chosen — and from the critical raves she won in the part, it is a certainty that the producers of Of Thee I Sing aren’t sorry that she was.

And by raves I don’t mean that the critics called the show a good one or an excellent one (which is high praise these days). They called it such things as “the greatest comic operetta ever produced in America.” The witty Robert Garland said, “I must remember to tell my grandchildren I saw the opening.” The setting of the piece is Washington, and its theme a satire of high politics, with Lois playing the role of First Lady of the Land.

Yet Lois’ success in this piece isn’t half so revealing as the remarks she made one afternoon during a lull in rehearsal. Here was a girl in the midst of one of the most trying roles in show business, and at a time when the usual performer apparently is giving an imitation of Junior Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Jr.] imitating John Barrymore in a take-off of Jack Gilbert [John Gilbert]. In other words, anything but peaceful.

What next for Lois? Opera!

But Lois, far from being alarmed, already was looking ahead. With a blithe disregard for the present, she was taking for granted that she would score and was saying calmly, “Next, I want to do light opera. I’d like to start with La Bohème. It’s suited to my voice. And then —

“Well, there’s painting, sculpture and writing.

“I’m no good with my hands. It will be writing when I’m fifty — but that’s not for twenty-eight years yet. Just now it will have to be the theater. Oh, I know that in this business one is apt to get the mental quirk that there is nothing else in all the world but this one little profession. And how utterly absurd that is!

“As a matter of fact, there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t be a better player for a period away from the business — a time in which we might get a proper perspective on ourselves and our work; say, once a year. But we don’t take that time out — and suffer, somehow, because we don’t. There are some individuals in this business who, I suppose, might be termed great. But if we all allowed ourselves to get closer to ourselves, there might be more.

“After all, progress grows out of mental force — directing intelligence. To me, great women are intelligent before they are anything else. Not intellectual, understand — but intelligent. Not that I’m underestimating the importance of physical appeal! The course of history will bear me out in the importance of that.

“But the brain comes first — it is the director of the rest of a woman’s forces. And these in order of importance I should place as charm, humor, wit, beauty and physical attraction. If a woman properly uses these forces, there is nothing — nothing! — that can keep her from achieving whatever she desires!”

All of which may indicate why young Lois Moran — who has been variously successful at eleven, fourteen, sixteen and twenty-two — now is looking about for bigger and better worlds to conquer!

And romance? She and Douglass Montgomery (known on the screen as Kent Douglass) are reported to be something more than friends — but Lois claims that she isn’t thinking of diamond rings. Not right now.