George Brent — Saying “No!” to Hollywood (1932) 🇺🇸

October 31, 2022

George Brent doesn’t even look like Clark Gable! That is the first point of interest when you see him, for the gossips and writers all have stamped him “The New Clark Gable.” True, he has the same ruggedness... the same virility... the same “something-as-gets-the-gals” — but George Brent will never be a second Clark Gable; he will no doubt be the first George Brent.

by Walter Ramsey

Brent is barely twenty-seven, but his hard life makes him appear about thirty-two. (Gable is older than Brent looks.) Brent says he hopes he gets good enough to “earn as many potatoes a week as my friend Clark!”

And if he does, he’ll be a millionaire pronto because he is a savin’ type of an Irishman. Yes, George was first shown the light of morning in Dublin, Ireland.

During a rather hectic childhood, he learned to like stew and detest kings, like all good Irishers. His father owned and edited one of the larger newspapers in Dublin. He attended the National University in Dublin. Here he added his six feet and one-hundred-and-seventy pounds to the football team and did the family name proud.

After that the real fun started. George liked adventure and hated routine jobs. Since all his ancestors had been army officers, he decided that nothing would do but that he should don the armor and do likewise. His opportunity came sooner than he expected.

It seems that a very famous Irishman, Michael Collins, decided to overthrow the English rule and place De Valera in office as president of the Irish Republic. Civil war! George was a good friend of Collins... and since he could pass for an American tourist (which is not meant as a slam), he was chosen to run dispatches for the rebel forces. This was right up George’s alley, since he had a craving for adventure. He got it!

The King of England sent forty thousand English soldiers and prepared to maintain order at all costs. Someone had to get through to the various headquarters of the Collins’ forces so that communication could be continued. George Brent! Posing as a sightseer from America, George would rush from headquarters to headquarters with important news and dispatches. It was only after he had been in the service a month that he learned he was in a class with the spies! That if he were caught he would be sent before a firing squad without a moment’s hesitation.

On several occasions he was stopped and questioned, but he always wore out the guards with so many inane questions typical of the tourist trade that they let him go his way just to get rid of him. But with all the adventure and close scrapes he had, there is only one thing that stands out in his memory as a beacon light of that particular period of his life: he had an unlimited expense account! He often finds himself startled out of a sound sleep (.even now in Hollywood) to discover that he has been dreaming about the marvelous advantages of an unlimited expense account.

Then Collins, his friend and employer, was shot. This should have given George a cue to fold up his activities, but he went blithely on until he returned one day to his hotel room to find that all of his luggage had been examined and the entire suite searched! Rebel papers which had been carried in the false bottoms of the bags were missing — and so was George within the hour. The red coats almost caught up with him in Scotland so he fled to England. He figured that the last place they would think to look for an Irish spy would be in England... which is like a gangster hiding in the police station. Finally he shipped on a cattle boat for America.

Immediately upon arriving in America, he was faced with the terrific problem of getting money without doing routine work... which field is so overcrowded that he is lucky to have landed a job at all! He had a bright idea: why not go on the stage? He had done a couple of parts in the college dramatic class and no one had ever told him he was terrible. So that’s just what he did — got a job with a stock company and went to work the following Tuesday. The first performance he became paralyzed with fright in the middle of the stage. The leading man ad-libbed for fifteen minutes and then merely shrugged his shoulders and walked off with this line: “I shall leave you to reflect!” This, however, woke our friend up and he finally got his legs working enough to get off the stage and into the sheltering wings.

George worked for the next five years in stock companies all over the United States. He had ripe tomatoes thrown at him from all angles... rehearsed one play while he was playing in another... fell in love and got married for one month... fell in love again and stayed single... stayed up all night with a cold towel around his head learning lines for the next play... and every Saturday night played poker with his salary.’

After five long years of this he obtained the role of Abie in Abie’s Irish Rose. After he had played it for a year he found it hard to convince the folks that he wasn’t born in Palestine.

We forgot one thing that happened just before Abie. George made his Broadway debut in a little number starring Alice Brady. In the same company was another young stock leading man by the name of Clark Gable! You see? There is room for both of them... even in the same play! George says: “I like the fellow, too! He’s a good actor and a smart business man. And furthermore, he knows his place... at the top!” However, let’s not give Gable too much of a break in this story. Brent’s stay on Broadway was studded with great performances and he became well known as a fine actor. This is said to be the reason why the movie moguls asked him to come to Hollywood (but, of course, it is only hearsay). Anyway, at last he was on his way. And he was here one solid year without working in a single picture! This sort of treatment made George rather discouraged. And well it might, after the spy job and the tomatoes and all that! But suddenly Warner Brothers placed him under contract, and now all seems to be well with George Brent.

He went into a huddle with the bosses at the studio and told them all about his experiences — and nothing, happened. But when he happened to mention that he liked polo — he was immediately placed on the roster as a potential star. He was to be built into another he-man of the screen. You see, the bosses at Warner’ Brothers all play polo (at least they all bought a lot of horses and mallets and belong to the Club), and so when George mentioned polo, everything was jake. They probably figured that if he turned out to be a bad actor they could get him to teach them polo until his contract ran out.

But that’s where George fooled ‘em. He didn’t know a darn thing about polo. And in the meantime he turned out to be such a good actor — in So Big with Barbara Stanwyck, and in The Rich Are Always With Us with Ruth Chatterton — that they all forgave him, and he is going to stay with them anyway! His next role will be that of Joan Blondell’s leading man in Miss Pinkerton.

In order to make this a really complete story on Mr. Brent, I suppose we should have his views on love and marriage... just so the girls won’t feel slighted.

“I have been married,” he said with a smile, “and I shall think twice before I marry again. If I do, I shall marry a woman older than myself... just like my old friend C. G., I believe,” he continued, “that too little stress is placed on the idea of finding a person who is mentally companionable.”

There! How do you like the chap?