Lois Moran — As The Twig Is Bent (1930) 🇺🇸
In Hollywood, where stars are classified and labeled like things in a mail-order catalogue, Lois Moran remains as distinctive as a Lalique vase in a five-and-ten-cent store.
by Radie Harris
I came to this conclusion riding along the sea in the early hours of the morning, after having spent the evening with her at her Malibu Beach house. We had had dinner in a remote, little farmhouse, high on a mountain-top, where the stars above and the ocean below were our only companions. I'm sure that the little old lady who served us would have been astounded had I told her that the pretty little girl in the jaunty beret and flapper socks was a celebrity. But knowing that if Lois were "discovered." she would never come back again, I said nothing.
After dinner we returned to Malibu and spent the rest of the evening in front of an open fireplace, and talked, "of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings."
It was Pope, I believe, who said, "in youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare." Pope, unfortunate man, had never met Lois Moran. For Lois, although only twenty years voting, with that sort of beauty that Masefield has described as a "white violet of a woman, with the April in her face," has no patience with the credo that ignorance is bliss. Hers is an avid search for knowledge. Not through the mechanical processes of the "five-foot shelf" and the book clubs, but through her own natural taste and liking for literature.
When Lois talks of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Voltaire, it is with no effort to be highbrow. She discusses them with the same familiarity that other girls of her age discuss Lelong, Patou, and Poiret. When she says that eating isn't any fun, without being able to read, and adds that whenever she is alone she always sits in a big chair with a book and has her meals served on a tray, it is no pose. To Lois, whose hours are regulated by schedule, leisure is a precious gift that can be spent much more profitably in reading than gossiping over the teacups.
If all this sounds as if she lives through and gets her value of life from books, I am guilty of misinterpretation. For, before books, Lois has gained her knowledge from that most proficient of all teachers — experience.
At the age of thirteen Lois was allowed to remain up all night so that she could ride across to the Left Bank just as dawn was coming up over the Seine and the Champs Elysées was clothed in unforgettable beauty. She has watched the fog enwrap London, like a mother putting her child to bed. She has nibbled kuglhuhf in the brasseries of Vienna, while the lights of the Prater glimmered in the distance. She has sat spellbound at the shrine of Duse in Milan. And she has walked down Fifth Avenue at dusk, just after a shower. Blotterlike, she has absorbed from each until now, at twenty, she bears the stamp of culture, loveliness, and grace.
It is impossible to write of Lois, without mentioning her mother. I don't think I am exposing any secret when I tell you that movie mammas, as a rule, are more annoying than the hives. Gladys Moran is the exception that proves the rule. I can't think of a better example to illustrate this than the following incident:
One evening Lois was working late at the studio, so Gladys and I hied ourselves into Los Angeles to see one of her pictures. It was bad, but I had seen worse, so I didn't squirm, or look for the nearest exit. Imagine my surprise, however, when Gladys turned to me and said, "There really is no excuse for sitting through this. Let's go!"
I reached for my smelling salts. It was my first encounter with a fond parent who didn't think her offspring's performance the ten best of the year.
It is this sanity that makes their relationship so sincere and admirable. Lois adores her mother and yet I have never seen her gush over her, or indulge in lavish terms of endearment. Gladys dotes on Lois, but doesn't exploit the fact for a mother-love theme. She shows it in other ways. For instance, there was the time that Lois was away on location for Behind That Curtain. Gladys knew that Lois wanted a car of her own, but she had never nagged or teased for it. So when she came home from Death Valley, there at the station was a shiny, green runabout, with Lois' initials on the door.
Somehow or other, people have got the idea that Lois has led a very sheltered life, and that it is only within recent months that she has been allowed to go about unchaperoned. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, if any parent has imbued her child with a laissez-faire independence, that parent is Gladys Moran. Perhaps it is just because she has never said "No!" that Lois has never taken advantage of it. Recently Lois was seen dancing in public with a man whose reputation is not up to scratch. Immediately all the rocking-chairs began to creak and the tongues to wag. How could Mrs. Moran permit such a thing? It wasn't a rhetorical question, so the next evening I asked her. And this was her answer.
"Lois has known Mr. Blank for many years. During all that time, in his attitude toward her, he has been a gentleman. He is a brilliant conversationalist, and Lois always finds him a mental stimulant. Why should I deprive her of that enjoyment, just because a lot of gossips, with nothing else to do, may talk about it?
"I have only one ambition for Lois, and that is her happiness, and I have discovered that if one stops to listen to the admonitions of the world, it is like a bad detour on an otherwise open road. I have tried to imbue Lois with that idea."
Just how sane a psychology this is, was proved to me by Lois the evening of our fireside conversation.
"I used to worry and fret about what other people thought of my work," she confided. "It made me sensitive, and consequently unhappy. Now, through mother's intelligent guidance, I have reached the viewpoint that as long as I know that I have made every honest effort to succeed, I need only account to myself.
"I act because I love it. Fame, electric lights, a page spread, are not bound up in it. Were I to give a performance that was hailed by every critic in the country and I, myself, didn't sincerely feel that I had given it my best, my success would mean little to me. And yet, on the other hand, were I to give a performance that was little noticed by the press or public, and I felt that in it I had attained my own inner striving for perfection, that outward failure would be my success alone."
Such sentiments are typical of Lois. I know of no other actress, with the possible exception of Janet Gaynor, to whom fame and its embellishments mean so little. Her own philosophy coincides too well with that of the Greek scholar who said, "All is ephemeral — fame and the famous as well."
When she leaves the studio at the end of a day's work, she leaves her screen personality in her dressing room, along with her make-up box. In her social life she is Lois Moran, twenty-year-old daughter of Gladys Moran and the late Doctor Moran of Pittsburgh — not Lois Moran, movie star of Hollywood.
She has heard other stars complain about being molested by fans in public and bewail the martyrdom of renown, but Lois has never experienced it. The reason is very simple. She doesn't occupy a ringside table at the Roosevelt on "celebrity night," or parade the lobby of the Montmartre on "tourist day." In her rare excursions into the limelight, it is amusing to see how amazed she is when she is spotted by some discerning fan.
There are so many facets to Lois' personality, and so many diversified interests in her make-up, that were she ever to abandon her screen career, there would be countless activities to take its place.
Lois has inherited her mother's business acumen. She can discuss stocks and bonds as glibly as a Jesse Livermore. She takes a keen interest in her mother's sports shop in Beverly Hills, an interest which has only served to intensify her own ambition to have a shop of her own some day — a bookshop and bakery combined.
In that nebulous "some day" time must also be reserved for a stage play on Broadway. And there is that trip around the world that must be attended to.
But where, you ask, does love enter Lois' scheme of things? And because I was prepared for the question, I have the answer from the lips of the young lady herself. Hear! Hear!
"All men are so charming" — the Michael Arlen influence— "that I could never choose any one," was her retort. "Now if you were to ask me about the amorous instincts of the red ant, or feeding habits of the wheel bug, I could enlighten you more intelligently."
Darn clever, these Pittsburgh Morans! But Lois' evasion of the issue didn't fool me a bit — pas du tout! You see, Lois had once confided to me that she adored sleeping with the moon shining in her face, and floating on the ocean at six in the evening when the water and sky are the same shimmering gray-blue, so you could not blame me, could you, if I suspected that such a romanticist could hardly remain immune to this thing called love?
Lois Moran is free of any mother complex, because suffocating affection has never been lavished upon her.
Photo by: Alexander Kahle (1886–1968)
Often you have heard that Lois Moran is an exceptional girl, but never before have you read a more logical explanation of the causes that have made her so than Radie Harris submits for your information in the story opposite.
Photo by: Alexander Kahle (1886–1968)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1930