Miriam Hopkins — The So-Illusive Lady (1936) 🇺🇸
Miriam Hopkins is one of the few people in pictures of whom a true pen portrait will never be drawn. You may put down on paper her outstanding characteristics, her dominant traits, her likes and dislikes. You may describe her appearance, preferences in food, sports and clothes and you still haven’t got Miriam. That elusive spark and sparkle that is Miriam cannot be translated into words.
by Edmund Douglas
Only a person who really knows her has any idea of what she is really like. I’ve seen her at parties and around Hollywood and the studios for several years and I’m still trying to figure out what it is that attracts men to her, for attract them she does.
Despite her fragile appearance she is probably the most elemental woman in pictures. When a man attracts her that man soon becomes her devoted admirer without any conscious effort on her part and often, I suspect, without quite realizing how it happened.
She is the type of girl to whom one sends books instead of candy or flowers. On the one occasion I was in her home I noticed her library table was full of autographed copies of books, most of the autographs assuring her she was the only person who could successfully translate their heroine into celluloid.
I would rather go hungry than attempt to interview her. Although she answers all questions intelligently she contributes nothing of her own volition to an interview — unless she happens to know the person. She gives the impression of being scatter-brained — but she isn’t. You may be in the midst of a discussion of Freud or Proust and she will suddenly drag you into the garden to show you a new rosebush. You may be in the swimming pool and she will rush you into the house to show you a new edition of H. G. Wells or an antique she has picked up at an auction.
She is hard to pin down to an interview. My own feeling is she loathes them. Recognizing them as an unpleasant but necessary adjunct to her business she puts them off as long as possible and then, after giving in, tries to get them over as soon as possible and make them seem as little like interviews — to herself — as she can.
The first time I talked to her the interview lasted perhaps twenty minutes. At the end of that time she said, “I’m afraid you haven’t got much for your story.” Then she smiled engagingly and added, “I’ll tell you: you just make up something nice about me.”
This current interview was scheduled to take place on the set of “These Three.” When I appeared she said, “It’s a shame to work against time like this. Why don’t you come for lunch some time?” We settled on the next day. Miriam heaved a sigh of relief. The ordeal had been postponed for twenty-four hours anyhow.
Actors working in pictures with her do not always like her. Elliott Nugent, who has directed her in several pictures, once explained it to me: “I’ve never known another actress who so thoroughly knew what she was supposed to do, and just how it should be done, as Miriam. Before she goes into a scene she has thought the whole thing out. She knows exactly the effect she wants and how she’s going to get it. Sometimes it would be necessary to say ‘I like your idea but I don’t believe we can do it exactly that way. We’ll have to do it this way.’ Probably we’d have to change the whole set-up — lights, camera, everything. But it would be worth it. Most actors are perfectly willing to do whatever you tell them but they don’t think for themselves. They’ll say, ‘Where do I stand? Is there any business you want me to do in this shot?’ There’s none of that with Miriam. When she has those conferences with herself before she goes into a scene it’s for the purpose of developing her part — building her performance to top-notch. Naturally she’s not giving herself any the worst of it and actors not so quick-witted are pretty apt to come out at the short end of the horn.”
There have been no stories of “temperament” during the filming of These Three. Joel McCrea has made four pictures with her. But Joel never has trouble with anyone. Curiously enough. Miriam and Merle Oberon have got on famously. It was startling to watch them make a close-up of Miriam and to watch the reactions and encouragement Merle gave her.
Despite her slight appearance, her vitality is amazing. Joel once remarked to me, “Her vitality is so remarkable everything she says or does is done with such force it is bound to compel attention. You have to listen intently to anything she says.”
She has less real beauty than many extra girls but she has a sparkle that is far more fascinating than mere physical beauty. One of her mottoes is “Live Dangerously.” Fear of over-taxing her strength is never a deterrent — either in her work or anything she wants to do in her private life.
Notwithstanding the intensity with which she works, she has learned the trick of relaxing and can fall asleep on the set when she has as little as fifteen minutes between shots.
The thoroughness with which she prepares for her roles is demonstrated by the fact that, before she started work on Barbary Coast, she spent two hours a day for weeks learning to manipulate a roulette wheel and cards so she could make the audience believe she could do it as crookedly as it was clone in the days of the old West, and still do it so skillfully that they’d believe the customers wouldn’t detect it.
When she made The Richest Girl in the World she had the world’s champion billiard player coaching her.
Her intelligence is illustrated by her feeling as she approaches an unpleasant part: “I have never been worried that the public would confuse me, as a person, with the characters I have played on the screen. I have never hesitated about playing unsympathetic roles — as long as they were good roles.
“I have never been able to understand the attitude of fans who rush around with a flaming sword, attacking anyone who said anything at variance with their preconceived impression of a star — an impression gained solely from watching her on the screen.
“No player lives his life on the screen. Yet, knowing that cinema audiences identify screen personalities with their real lives, many stars demand sympathetic roles merely for that reason. I have little sympathy with this ridiculous attitude.
“I am sure the thinking public does not believe simply because she portrays a sexy girl on the screen that Jean Harlow, in the privacy of her home, spends her time on a sofa with a bottle of gin in one hand and the head of a male star in the other. Or that Janet Gaynor, just because she plays goody-two-shoes’ parts in movies, still believes in storks and Santa Claus.
“Would you accuse me of being a golddigger in real life because, in ‘Becky Sharp,’ I used everybody who crossed my path as a means to an end? Surely no one would be so foolish as to assume that Becky Sharp and Miriam Hopkins were one and the same person!
“Actors are merely players. They submerge their own personalities — or should — into those created by the author. Perhaps it is because in these days villains are not so black nor heroes so spotlessly pure it is possible to make them more human and, consequently, more easily confused with real people.
“Most people are like Becky — good and bad. Among my own circle of friends there are very, very few who are either wholly admirable or wholly detestable — and I’m glad of it. There is bad in the best of us and good in the worst.”
She has a keen sense of humor. She tells that when she first went to New York to break into theatricals she heard they were casting for the chorus of the first “Music Box Revue.” She marched up to the dance director and said, “Mr. Hassard Short told me to see you about a job.”
The man was a trifle amazed. He merely said, “I am Hassard Short!”
There was another time when she was scheduled to do a picture with Clark Gable. The studio called for love-making tests. She and Clark were introduced and immediately fell into heavy clinches all over the room. When it was over Gable stood up, bowed politely and said, “Good-bye, Miss Hopkins.”
“Goodbye,” Miriam responded, and they have never seen each other from that day to this.
Her powers of fascination are intangible but potent. At the house-warming the Elliott Nugents gave, Miriam was attired in a pair of pleated shorts and a middy blouse. She was surrounded by men. Most of the other women were dressed within an inch of their lives. They played bridge with each other.
Society is the breath of life to her. She goes out very little while she is on a picture but between pictures — whether she is in Hollywood or at her home in New York — she is in the center of all sorts of social activities. Usually she is surrounded by authors, artists (in any branch of endeavor) and critics.
She is one of the most generous people imaginable. Her home, her swimming pool, tennis court, garden and ice-box are open to her friends whether she is there or not. But she cannot abide bores and prigs.
She’s… Nuts! I’ve told you practically everything I know of Miriam and I still haven’t shown her to you as she is. You can’t put her into words any more than you can describe the sparkle of champagne.
She’s Miriam Hopkins — The Illusive Lady.
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Joan Marsh in “Dancing Feet,” a Republic Picture
Winx Eye Beautifiers
Collection: Silverscreen Magazine, April 1936