Ona Munson — The Munson Line (1931) 🇺🇸
Should you ever find yourself in Hollywood, New York, Havana or Vienna with an irresistible yen to exchange words, syllables, or even interjections with Ona Munson, don’t use the telephone. Forewarned is forearmed, you know! Don’t telephone, we caution, and in case the idea has not as yet sufficiently filtered through from the sensory apparatus of the ear into the cells of the brain, we’ll repeat the injunction: on pain of losing her interest, her friendship, or whatever it is you have to offer, refrain (and we mean refrain) from utilizing the phone as a means of communication.
by Brian Herbert
For Ona at the mere mention of the word will rise to the full height — using her toes if necessary — of her diminutive five feet two inches, and tell you what (read the last word, please, with a rising inflection) she thinks of telephones. And particularly what she thinks of telephoners. Telephone calls she hates in general, but particularly does she hold in detestation the persons who on the other side ask you, coyly, flirtatiously, pleadingly — well, anyway, they ask you, to guess who they are!
Outside of this phobia Ona is a pretty normal person with more likes than dislikes to her credit. The lady of the very blue eyes is very positive about either. For instance, a conversation with her would disclose that she adores caviar but hates being a week-end guest; that she loves all sorts of intricate solutions to solitaire, but can’t stand being fitted for clothes; that she is keen on parties — nice parties, she qualifies — but is bored with beauty parlors.
She likes a smart canter on a polo pony, but just try to lure her into a circus. Her friends can only persuade her to go on a shopping expedition through the de luxe stores of Fifth Avenue by describing to her something in jewelry that would suit her type. She can’t abide persons who, when inviting her to a party, ask her to bring her dancing shoes along. And she prefers seeing people to being seen.
Ona has two runaways to her credit: one from home at the age of fourteen which means that the flight from the burning home-fires occurred just eight years ago. The other exodus is from the movies. The first escape succeeded; the second was a flat failure, for she has now an established cinematic niche, thanks to her personality and talents in the First National pictures “Going Wild” and “The Hot Heiress.”
It happened in this way: After she became known to Broadway as a fine comedienne who could both sing and dance, and after appearing in No, No, Nanette, Tip-Toes, Twinkle, Twinkle, and Manhattan Mary, Ona gave an outstanding performance in the stage version of Hold Everything.
One of the rewards, or shall we call it by-products, was a commission to appear in a Vitaphone one-reeler, “College Model.” Ona made that picture but deferred as long as she could the inspection of it. This took place at the Winter Garden.
Ona came, saw, was vanquished. For as she tells her friends: “There was I, and wasn’t I just awful! Yes, I was. Why, I slunk down in my seat, and even tried to cover my features with my foxes. I was ashamed, my mother was sympathetic and patted me on the back. I saw mannerisms in that short picture that humiliated me. The make-up was wrong, the picture was wrong, and in short, it was a flat bust.” In short, she was through with pictures and would turn down all movie offers whatsoever!
Ona. resourceful creature, proceeded to alibi herself. She wired her friends at the West Coast that she had made a dreadful fiasco of a short. She would never dream of accepting an offer from the movies — never, never, never! “Tell them a ghastly mistake took place, and that yours truly remains on the Broadway musical stage.” The friends dutifully complied. In due time, whenever that is, J. L. Warner, the producing overlord of the Warner and First National studios, was apprized of the fact of her failure. He expressed curiosity. He came, saw, and exclaimed. “Why, the girl’s marvelous! Get her on the ‘phone and have her catch the next train to Hollywood.”
Now, Ona, a typical New Yorker whose nights, when she is not on the stage, are a mild whirl of pleasure-seeking, was not at home when the call came. They tried the night clubs, every one of them, without result, till someone thought of the Central Park Casino. There she was, and to the question, “Can you leave for Hollywood tomorrow?” she countered with a no, but expressed her willingness to leave the day after.
Her first film work was in Going Wild. Joe E. Brown constituted the picture, and Ona was thrust into it to provide a modicum of love interest. Of this first venture, she remarks:
“If you look away from the picture a second, you’re liable to miss me.” But if it was unimportant in other respects, it served to establish her in Hollywood. Soon better and bigger roles followed.
As for the runaway from home when Ona was fourteen years of age, the episode should really be prefaced with a description of what was in Ona’s girlish life from the time she learned to toddle onwards. It would be pleasant and romantic, wouldn’t it, to have Ona tell us that instead of learning to walk, as a child, she learned to dance? But it would be a fib, and anyway who would believe it?
Dancing came soon enough, and at the age of eight years, Ona felt herself ripe for Broadway. She penned a letter to the firm of Klaw and Erlanger, and in the neatest and the most impressive scrawl at her command, informed these gentlemen that at a word from them she was ready, there and then, to leave Portland, Oregon, and home, come East and replace Ruth Chatterton in Daddy Long Legs. P. S. She didn’t get the job.
During her school days, she continued to practice dancing. Her parents — the family name is Wolcott and Ona is a direct descendant of Oliver Wolcott, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence — refused to let her perform publicly, feeling that it was in bad taste to show off their child. Little Ona by this time felt that the Ziegfeld Roof was the most desirable spot in the world, and New York the place she must storm.
It was hard for her mother to consent to let her only child come to New York to spend the summer studying dancing under a dancing virtuoso. But the consent was given; mother felt she would have Ona back by Fall. Ona had her own ideas. Never, she told herself, would she return to Portland before she — and millions of others — had seen her name incandescent on the marquees of Broadway’s popular theaters.
While she was gaining terpsichorean proficiency under Tarasoft, in his ballet school, a visitor approached her after class work. It was none other than Gus Edwards, discoverer of child prodigies for the stage and screen. She appeared in his revue in two specialty dances. George White saw her and was so impressed that he asked her to understudy Ann Pennington and do several dances with him in his show. A few years later she was given the title role in his first musical comedy, Manhattan Mary. The electric lights were hers, and she was free to return for a visit to the home folks in Portland.
Ona likes Hollywood. She can be seen, while there, enjoying herself at the Mayfair and the Embassy, just as in New York she is a frequenter of the smart Casino. Both in New York and in Hollywood she has a reputation as a considerate and tactful hostess, a girl who doesn’t look like an actress, whose principal asset is her natural charm. But to her, New York is home, and she will probably be flitting between these far-flung outposts as long as she remains in pictures.
Ona is the author of two, as yet unproduced plays, which she feels will have to be translated into a foreign language and then re-translated into English before producers will look at them. Since coming to New York seven years ago, she has taken a dancing lesson every day of her life. She is a past mistress of ballroom, toe, tap, acrobatic and musical comedy dancing; only the Harlem ‘snakehips’ dance stumps her and she is resigned to her limitation in this form of serpentine shimmy.
She is overjoyed with her picture work. It doesn’t seem likely she will ever grow blasé at having a chair bearing her name on the studio set. She has no intention to buy a home or an apartment; her reason is that there are too many beautiful ones to be leased, and a stage or screen star never knows when her plans will take her elsewhere. There is always the possibility that she may take it into her head to go globe-trotting. Havana — not because of its wild night life, but despite it — she adores. She spent a year with her mother bicycling through Europe, and likes Switzerland on the strength of its cheeses, England on the strength of its weak tea, France on the strength of its impossible coffee, and Italy on the strength of never having been there.
She has done many things, you see, been places, and hasn’t yet stopped experimenting with the adventure of living. She admits to one secret ambition, and is resolved to consummate it: sometime she must referee a professional prize fight!
Kay Francis, as she appeared one night recently when Los Angeles had a brief season of grand opera.
Anita Page in tricky sweater and cap, all ready for a vacation trip to the mountains.
With just two pictures to her credit: “Going Wild” and “The Hot Heiress,” Ona Munson has made such a hit that she has been sewed up for a series of First National films. Meet Ona in the story on the opposite page.
Collection: Screenland Magazine, February 1931