Evelyn Brent — The Melting of Evelyn (1930) 🇺🇸
is becoming to people. They expand under it, somehow, and grow more attractive. Success is good for them, if they are intelligent enough to cope with it. It gives them poise and assurance and a friendly attitude toward a world which has been kind to them.
These sage reflections are occasioned by the fact that I have been talking with Evelyn Brent.
Evelyn has changed a great deal since I first met her soon after her success in Underworld. Then she seemed a little sullen, and there was a shrewd cynicism in her face that was almost hard. She seemed a girl who was emphatically able to take care of herself — and she seemed a girl who had grown to be like that through grim necessity. One sensed that life had taught Evelyn to be hard, and that experience had been none too gentle with her. She had learned, one fancied, to fight for what she wanted, and to take disappointment with a smile.
Her initial success in Underworld, after a long period of mediocre crook roles, appeared to impress her very little — which was unusual. Ordinarily a hit like that convinces an actress that now, at last, she has arrived, and she rides the crest for a while. Evelyn, one gathered, had shrewdly concluded that one hit does not constitute a success, nor does one picture make a star. She knew that it must be followed with other hits — good stories well directed, roles which suited her, and consistently good performances before she could claim any permanent place in pictures.
She was too self-contained, too experienced, too level-headed, to be stampeded into any vast enthusiasms, or even a whole-hearted satisfaction over one successful picture. She viewed these matters with scepticism, and set determinedly about seeing to it that the initial triumph bore fruit.
I fancy that the executives who deal with her have found that she is a person to be considered with respect in any matter which affects her career. There is a characteristic story told of her in conference with a group of studio heads over the renewal of her contract.
It is the custom of most studios to treat a player with elaborate coolness during the weeks preceding the termination of his contract, and the question of whether or not it shall be renewed must be discussed. No one talks with him. He receives little publicity. He is the recipient of reproachful glances. All of which tends, you see, to break down confidence in himself, to make him fear for his job, and to make him tractable when the question of salary is broached. It is an old ruse, but it frequently has amazing effects.
Evelyn went through all this disciplinary ostracism without seeming to notice it. When the big day came, she was ushered into the presence of a grave group of business men.
"Now, Miss Brent," they began, "you know we want to do all we can for you. But your pictures haven't gone as well as we had hoped "
Evelyn laughed that short, ironic laugh. "Come! Come!" she said. "Don't pull that with me! I've been married to an executive! Let's talk business. Now, here's what I want "
She got it. And her success has been a steady, gradual rise to a secure position. She has just been made a star.
Shortly after Underworld she divorced Bernie Fineman, accomplishing the matter with a sophisticated lack of dramatics.
But despite this cool ability to deal with life and people, despite the fact that I never heard of Evelyn seeming to pity herself, or moan about her art, or discuss her temperament, there was always a hint of discontent, of restlessness. Some bitterness — something you couldn't put your finger on.
I lunched with her recently. She had just finished her first starring picture, and was going to Europe for a belated honeymoon with her new husband, Harry Edwards. I watched Evelyn — and listened to her — with as much astonishment as I am capable of producing at lunch time. The girl was chattering and — good heavens! — blushing!
She rambled on about her new clothes, giggling because her modiste was trying to stage a fall showing, and had had to drop everything to attend to Evelyn's "trousseau." She raved over the new hats, moaned over an appointment with the dentist, and broke off to be ecstatic over the tricky little sitting room she would have on the train.
She interrupted herself to tell me that Harry was "the handsomest man in Hollywood — bar none!" and insisted that others at the table should corroborate her. She expanded at length on the advantages of waiting several months after marriage, before taking a honeymoon.
"It's much nicer,", she averred. "You have had time to adjust yourselves to each other — to become really acquainted."
Later we talked alone for a time, and I asked her what stardom meant to her.
"Not much," was her reply. "I feel just the same as I did before. The fame, the publicity, people watching you and being curious about you — those things don't really affect you, you know. Except, perhaps, to make life a little more difficult on the surface. But at home — with the few people you really know and for whom you really care — you are just the same.
"All stardom means to me is a harder job.
"I should much prefer to play in all-star productions than to be a star myself. Your responsibility is so great. If the film is bad, you are the one who is blamed. And no one can possibly have good pictures all the time.
"If a picture is to have a cast of featured players' much more attention is paid to getting a good story. And it is easier to get a good story for that sort of picture than for one which must be built around a star's personality. And every one in the picture does better work, if the honors are divided evenly.
"I hope they will let me alternate, and I rather think they will. One starring picture, you know, and then one with an all-star cast. It makes for much better productions.
"I think talking pictures are tending that way. Acting is becoming more important and less stress is laid on personality. It will be more difficult to center all the interest upon one person when you have dialogue. And it almost does away with close-ups entirely — which is a blessing!
"I don't want to play straight leads. At least not of the ingénue variety. I want roles with some meat in them. Characters.
"I am not, of course, anxious to go on playing crook roles, although they are interesting. But I want to play women who are a little worldly, and who have real, human reasons for being like that. Just because you are a star, I see no reason why you should have to be sweet and girlish."
She broke off. "I am going away on a vacation and will not even think about pictures for six whole weeks!" She fairly hugged herself. And in a few moments she bustled away to attend to a score of frivolous, last-minute errands.
Yes, indeed. Evelyn has changed. Success — a solid one in which she can believe — and a happy marriage have made a different person of her. The sullen look is gone. And the discontented pucker between her eyebrows. She smiles and chats easily and amiably, instead of wrapping herself in that somber reserve. I haven't heard her short, sardonic laugh in months — not, in fact, since she was so unhappily at work on "Broadway." When Evelyn laughs now, it is because she is amused. And it is an infectious laugh.
Not that she has "gone ga-ga." Her remarks about her work and her newly acquired position will show you that. She is still shrewd. She still knows what it is all about. Life has not fooled her. Success has not overinflated her. What I am trying to tell you is, after all, one of the simplest of human facts. She is happy.
And, dear me! It is very becoming to her.
Happy and changed though Evelyn Brent is, solitude and introspection will always be essential to her.
Photo by: Otto Dyar (1892–1988)
A change has come over Evelyn Brent— and a great change it is, too. Gone is her sardonic laugh, and gone also is her sullen expression. The story opposite describes both Evelyns, old and new. and tells what caused the transformation.
Photo by: Preston Duncan (1899–1958)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, February 1930