Dolores del Río — What Price Stardom? (1932) 🇺🇸

Being stamped as “a million dollar baby” has almost cost Dolores Del Río her career

by Evaline Lieber

“Dolores Del Río’s contract was not renewed by Radio Pictures!”

That simple news item appeared in a Los Angeles paper recently. Behind the brief sentence lies a tragic and poignant story.

Dolores is the epitome of natural beauty and is the type of woman about whom poets have raved for generations.

She has never attempted to be anything but what nature intended her to be; has imitated no one; used no artifices to enhance her native charms.

Her raven hair has never known curling-iron or finger-wave. She has always (and still does!) pulled her hair back from her forehead and parted it in the middle, in the straight, severe lines typical of the high-class Spanish Señorita. It has never been cut.

Her eyebrows are natural, too. She plucks only a few stray ones near the eyelid. She has never arched or shaped them, and they are fully one-half inch thick. Her long lashes are likewise her own. No stuck-on-with-glue additions.

She uses neither powder nor rouge on the screen or off. Once in a while, she reddens her lips. But the color is applied on the natural curve of her mouth. Of course, only a woman as radiantly beautiful as Dolores can get away with all that. It’s all right for Dolores, but not for girls less richly endowed with good looks.

In other words, her dark beauty is one hundred per cent her own. The artificialities of our new “Shady Dames” (we told you about them last month) are completely foreign to her.

Two years ago Photoplay conducted a search for the most perfect feminine figure in Hollywood. Our judges were medical men, artists, designers. Their unanimous choice was Dolores Del Río.

Dolores still has her lovely figure. She still has the beauty. But she is without a contract.

Dolores is the outstanding and tragic example of what happens when producers take an unknown girl and launch her as a star immediately. She is the living proof that girls must grow to stardom through shrewd, careful and intelligent training. They must learn to crawl before they walk; walk before they run. They cannot be skyrocketed to lasting fame, even though they possess the greatest beauty and talent.

Her case is also an example of what happens to stars who play exclusively in million dollar productions. Million dollar spectacles seldom make money. Although the star is not to blame for the extravagances of these productions, she automatically receives the censure. “Oh yes, Dolores is a grand actress; she’s a great beauty — but her pictures never make money.”

Her last picture for Radio, “Bird of Paradise,” is a perfect example. She does splendid work and reaches the same heights she did in Ramona. The picture is good entertainment. But it cost more than a million dollars! It can’t possibly make that money back.

A cast of forty-five was taken to Hawaii on location and lodged at the ultra-expensive Royal Hotel for a month and a half. When the company returned to the United States, the production costs were already $450,000 and not one scene of the first half of the picture had been taken.

Not Dolores’ fault, certainly, but it was her picture. Another Del Río picture would not make money, they said.

If Dolores had not been starred, but built to popularity little by little instead, she would not have been blamed.

Of course, her first three million dollar productions did make money. That was the root of the trouble. They stamped her as a million dollar actress.

What Price Glory? cost a million, but it netted between four and five. Together with Janet Gaynor’s 7th Heaven it brought the Fox company into the limelight as a large production organization — lifted it from a firm that had been known largely for Tom Mix Westerns.

“Loves of Carmen” and Ramona also showed profits.

With these three successes, what chance did Dolores have of playing in small, simple, human-interest productions of the type that had brought Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and others to stardom?

Dolores’ gorgeous beauty must have gorgeous settings.

She was definitely typed as Hollywood’s million dollar production baby.

Dolores knew what was coming. She felt it. She begged for simple roles in simple pictures. It was a waste of breath.

She wasn’t surprised at what followed. “The Trial of ‘98,” “Revenge,” “Evangeline” were all ultra-expensive flops.

“The Bad One” was her first talkie. It would have made a nice little program picture and should have been made and billed as such. But no! Del Río was the star. That meant a super-production. It cost $650,000 when it should have cost less than $250,000.

With four poor pictures to her credit, it was decided she should have a super-super-super. Something more pretentious than What Price Glory?, Loves of Carmen and Ramona combined. An extravaganza which had never been equalled.

The Dove was chosen. There was to be no end to the millions expended. And on the fourth day after they started work, Dolores was carried to the hospital with what threatened to be a fatal kidney ailment. According to the sick clause in all contracts, the studio had to wait thirty days for her return. United Artists waited four months before they cancelled Dolores’ contract and shelved The Dove.

She was ill for a year and a half and lost exactly $700,000. She was receiving $125,000 a picture at the time.

Dolores believes this illness to have been the “worst break of all.” She often says, “If it hadn’t been for my getting ill —” But I think she is wrong.

The Dove was as well-known as is Bird of Paradise. Radio bought it later from United Artists for $100,000 and played Dolores Del Río in it. It was a flop and only further stamped her as the million dollar star whose pictures did not make money.

In a way, that illness and the stopping of The Dove may have been a blessing. Just as the severance of her relations with Radio Pictures will probably prove one. Now, she is definitely through with million dollar productions. She doesn’t even care whether she is starred. She’s going to free lance. She wants a sophisticated, drawing-room drama in which she can wear modern, smart clothes. With the most perfect figure of them all she has never had an opportunity to wear modern clothes.

Harry Edington, who manages Greta Garbo, has taken over Dolores’ career. His first move is an attempt to break this million dollar jinx. He’s going to start her where she should have started in the first place.

And the saddest point of all is — Dolores’ story is typical of so many others. Lila Lee started with a million dollars worth of publicity and stardom and it was not until she had lived it down that she found an uncertain footing in the business.

Carman Barnes was ballyhooed as the new-star-of-all-time by Paramount. Fabulous sums were spent on her publicity. She was thrown into stardom without preparation or training. And her first — and last — picture was shelved.

Marian Marsh was starred before she had even learned camera angles. Now she is on the outside trying to get a peep back in.

Radio Pictures is, today, holding back publicity on Gwili Andre. “Let’s see what she can do before we talk about her,” is their slogan. Paramount has sent Randolph Scott to school to learn the technique of camera acting. The studios are learning. Too bad they didn’t learn sooner before they almost ruined the most natural beauty of them all.

We’re rooting for Dolores Del Río’s comeback — no, that’s the wrong word. It’s not a comeback when one has not had a fair start. We’re rooting for the success of this girl who is really just now beginning. We’re hoping that her story will be a lesson to producers and newcomers now and forever.

But it won’t.

Dolores Del Río is one of the few absolutely natural beauties in Hollywood. She is also a fine actress, yet upon the recent completion of “Bird of Paradise,” her contract was not renewed

Frances Dee is not only heartbroken, but in the worst quandary of her life. Her boyfriend, French-actor Charles Boyier [Charles Boyer], has returned to Paris for at least six months.

This is really one of the lovely love-stories of pictures. Frances was the second Mary Brian of the city. Popular with all the men. So many dates she had nervous breakdowns from keeping them. The college girl type of popularity.

Then she met the Frenchman. Love at first sight. He was leaving for France in a week. He begged her to marry and return with him. But she couldn’t believe that real love comes that quickly. Letters; cablegrams; across-the-water telephone calls.

Then Boyier returned for “The Man from Yesterday” at Paramount and the love deepened. But Boyier’s English (for pictures, not love-making) needs improvement. He must make a living. He had a splendid six-months’ offer from Paris. He took it. He begged Frances to go with him as Mrs. Boyier. She wanted to — how she wanted! But Frances has a career, too. She has a family. She has a future. To give it all up to go to a strange land — perhaps forever?

She speaks no French. She’s a one-hundred per cent American gal with one-hundred per cent personal ambition.

The old, old problem. Career versus love. Neither has won. She admits she may join him any moment. Or he may return.

In the meantime, she’s turning to work as the panacea!

—

Jackie Cooper Cute-Saying for September —

On the day that Jackie commenced work on “Father and Son,” he walked up to Chuck Reisner, his new director, held out his hand and announced, “I think this is going to develop into a beautiful friendship between us two.”

—

There’s a scene in Red-Headed Woman where Chester Morris knocks Jean Harlow down.

“Give us the real stuff,” Director Conway [Jack Conway] instructed. “Don’t pull your punches, Chester!”

He didn’t! In between each take, the prop boy rushed in with ice and poulticed Jean’s face so the punches would not leave a swelling.

—

Joan Bennett celebrated the first anniversary of her broken-hip accident by taking up tennis again.

Of all the things which Joan was forced to forego because of that tumble from a horse, she missed tennis most! Incidentally, she is a cracker-jack player.

—

Those two handsome boys of Charlie Chaplin’s are going into the movies, in spite of Charlie’s opposition. A contract has been drawn up with Fox Studios and, according to report, a photostatic copy of one page from Lita Grey Chaplin’s divorce decree is attached to the contract. It’s the page wherein Mrs. Chaplin is named sole and legal guardian of the boys.

So it looks as though some opposition from Charles Chaplin was expected.

The boys’ contract calls for five pictures, at $35,000 per picture.

—

Good old Catalina Island! It never rains but it floods, over there! The minute Joan Crawford and Walter Huston finished work on Rain at Catalina, another company sent an outfit to the same location to shoot a film called “After the Rain.”

—

At the Biltmore Theater here, the cast of The Barretts of Wimpole Street was thick with English accents.

Harrison Carroll, the Hollywood columnist, tells the story of a certain Hollywood producer who came out into the lobby shaking his head.

“What’s the matter?” asked a friend. “Don’t you like the show?’’

“Do I like it?” said the producer. “I can’t understand it.”

“Smatter? Seat bad.”

“Vunderful seats,” he said. “Second row.”

“Well, then, what is it?”

“I ask you,” groaned the producer, “who can understand such a dialect?”

—

Guess what those South Sea natives called Doug Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.], who’s been busy making a picture on the island of Tahiti?

“Man Whom Devil Fears.” And this, if you please, because the mosquitoes never bit Mr. Fairbanks’ anatomy.

The natives simply figured if the skeeters were afraid of Doug, so was the devil. And there you are!

—

Whenever a fire truck goes screeching down Hollywood Boulevard the natives look for Marion Davies’ limousine in its wake. Marion’s passion for fires amounts to a mania. Her chauffeur no longer needs to be told to follow the trucks. When he hears a siren, he automatically swings into line.

All of our best fires find Marion among those present. She attended both Malibu holocausts — had a front row seat. In fact there hasn’t been an important conflagration in years that hasn’t boasted her presence.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, September 1932

—

You couldn't ask any better proof than this that Dolores is all over the illness that kept her off the screen for a year. And Lupe Vélez had better hurry home or she'll find that her rival has a sun-tan she can never equal. Now that she has finished “Bird of Paradise,” Dolores is out to become as brown as the make-up man made her for the rôle of the love-tossed Hawaiian heroine

Photo by: Robert Coburn

Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, September 1932