When They Were Job-Hunting… (Part II) (1935) 🇺🇸

"Katharine Hepburn came to me in New York, with an introductory letter from a mutual friend, looking for a career on the stage. That was six or seven years ago, and what I know now, I expected then. It was her first visit to a producer's office. She had all the ear-marks of an amateur." Edwin Knopf, writer, producer, director and actor, now at M-G-M, leaned back and smiled as he reminisced.

by Kay Osborn

"I dislike amateurs," he went on. "I always have disliked them, and there was no doubt about her being one the minute she walked into my office. She really looked about as unimportant as a schoolgirl can be. She was very serious and very intense about wanting to be an actress, but even that didn't impress me. I had seen that kind before! She didn't look as though she had anything and I very quickly told her so. I told her to go back to Bryn Mawr and finish her schooling, and then to marry some nice man and forget about the stage. She said that she would go back and finish her schooling, but she wouldn't forget about the stage. And as for marrying some nice young man! Well, she was very scornful on that subject."

"'I'll come back to see you after graduation,' she said, undaunted. I told her not to bother. I'd be in Baltimore by then, preparing for my summer stock company.

"But that didn't seem to discourage her and she went away with the same spirit that brought her in. I shook my head in despair. Why did untalented little things like that always want to go on the stage! That was the trouble with the stage. There were too many of them on it already.

"I had forgotten about her completely until she showed up again in Baltimore. I was rehearsing Mary Boland in The Czarina.

"'Well, here I am!' she said.

"I could not even remember her name. I just looked at her.

"I came down to work for you,' she said, with confidence.

"I told her to run along like a good girl. My company was complete. And I couldn't turn it into a school of acting. It was, after all, a professional stock company.

"Then she asked me if she could stay and just watch me rehearse. I told her that I never let anybody watch a rehearsal... that it disturbed my direction and it annoyed the actors. But she didn't seem to understand English, for she took off her hat and made herself comfortable. Finally, because I thought she would annoy me less on the stage than she did sitting right there on my elbow, I told her she could be one of the Czarina's ladies-in-waiting...

"She was on the stage before I had even finished my sentence. I told her where and how to stand. Then came the dress rehearsal and I knew that something had to be done!

You see, even in an atmosphere part, Katharine Hepburn stood out like a bright star in an indigo firmament. She wore the identical costume that the rest of the ladies-in-waiting wore and was supposed to act and be just like them. But she wasn't! She wasn't, at all. For this reason she spoiled my entire set-up. She made the other ladies-in-waiting look unimportant, colorless. Katie had something about her that you just couldn't miss. I didn't know what it was then. I scarcely know what it is now... but I knew I had to either throw her out of the company altogether, or give her a better part. I decided to do the latter.

"Mary Boland was also responsible, in a way, for my giving Katharine Hepburn a chance at a good role. You see, Katie adored Mary — but not from afar. She would follow her around, watching her every gesture, listening to her every intonation, getting in her way and under her feet wherever she turned, until poor Mary could stand it no longer.

"'For heaven's sake!' she would say, 'Why don't you give this girl a big part and keep her busy and out of my way?' So you might say that Mary, too, helped Katharine to get started in her career.

"It's foolish, in a way, for anybody to say that they discovered Katharine Hepburn. She discovered herself! She knew she had something to offer before anyone else knew it. And she knew that she had to get on the stage for that something to be seen and appreciated. She arranged that through her own will and determination... the rest was easy. When a girl like Katie hangs around the footlights, you just have to put her back of them.

"Here is something interesting about her that I don't believe has ever been told before. Following two summer seasons at Baltimore, I decided to produce a play on Broadway. That play was The Big Pond and I gave Katharine a chance at the leading role. She worked like a Trojan on that part. We rehearsed for several weeks, and opened out of town, at Great Neck. By that time we were all certain that Katie was promising material. But she wasn't ready yet. She hadn't the necessary training and experience. And after a week in Great Neck, I had to tell her so. I felt like the devil about it, but I had to tell her that she just wasn't ready for Broadway.

"Well, she took it beautifully. There were no tears. There were no angry outbursts. In fact she said and did something, the like of which I had never heard before in the theatre. 'All right,' she said. 'I understand. But if I can't do the part on Broadway, I'd at least like to understudy it.'

"And so Katharine Hepburn understudied the role she had just been playing.

It was one of the most amazing indications of good sportsmanship that I have ever witnessed. And she stuck with us, too, during the length of the show's run on Broadway."

But Mr. Knopf was introduced to even other examples of good sportsmanship, right in his own Baltimore stock company. Most stock companies at that time were operated on the star system. Each company usually boasts one or two well known actors, or actresses who had been well known on the Broadway stage. These actors received six or seven hundred dollars a week and the rest of the company received practically nothing, in comparison. So, also, did the producers. For this reason, Mr. Knopf decided that there would be no stars in his company. Even well known players, who might like to come down to Baltimore for the fun of the thing, would never receive more than two hundred dollars a week, his top salary. Supporting players would, on the other hand, receive better-than-average wages. There would be no names in lights. There would be no favoritism shown in any way. It was just to be one big happy family.

Strangely enough that is exactly what it turned out to be. Even Mr. Knopf was surprised. It didn't seem that so much talent and so much temperament could be thrown together and still live to tell the tale. In addition to Mary Boland and Katharine Hepburn, Douglass Montgomery and Bob Montgomery were also members of that company. If one of them played a leading role one week, he played a bit part the next. The dressing-room question was handled a bit more simply. The biggest and best dressing-room, which was the one always nearest the stage, was occupied each week by the person having the most costume changes. In the two years that this Baltimore company existed not one actor asked for a raise. Not one actor complained about his quarters. Not one insisted on more publicity. Not one seemed jealous of anyone else — and there were no nasty outbursts of temperament.

"Of course, of the four people mentioned, three of them were comparatively unknown then. Mary Boland was the exception. It's interesting that in spite of the warning 'you can't be stars here!' that's exactly what they all turned out to be! Which is just another way of proving that you can't keep a good man down.

Douglass Montgomery was one of the first to open with this Baltimore stock company early in its first season— and the whole town went mad about Douglass. At least, the ladies did. He played juvenile parts and hearts both young and old went pitty-pat every time he appeared on the stage.

After the end of the third or fourth week, a few of the more enterprising matinee hounds got together and formed the "Douglass Montgomery Club." What was its purpose? What is the purpose of any club? They wanted to meet their Douglass. They wanted to shake his hand. They wanted to twist the buttonhole in his lapel. And, since they had organized a club in his honor, it was only polite that he should invite them to tea, or at least come out into the audience to greet them after the performance was over. They had special stationery printed. They sent Douglass the joyful announcement of their organization and, of course,

Doug responded as they expected him to. Even in those days he had plenty to talk about and so his worshipers found him even more delightful in person than they did on the stage. His popularity grew by leaps and bounds and it looked as though Mr. Knopf's "no-star system" was doomed, because of Douglass.

Did it turn his head? Did it turn the heads of the other members of the company away from him? Quite the contrary. They laughed and kidded him about it but no one seemed jealous. Everything went along just as smoothly as before.

"At the end of our first stock season in Baltimore," Mr. Knopf went on, "Douglass Montgomery received an offer to appear in a New York play, and left us. Which meant that I had to look around for another juvenile. It was about that time that Bob Montgomery came to see me. I liked him, in spite of myself — you see, he, too, was, at that time, little more than an amateur.

"From the beginning Bob worked against tremendous odds. Remember that Baltimore had been crazy about his predecessor, Douglass Montgomery. So, though they liked Bob, they were always wishing that they had their little 'Dougie' back. The newspaper critics were always comparing the two — an always odious procedure. Patrons wrote us letters, asking about Douglass. Why hadn't he come back? Where was he playing at the moment? and so forth. A few even insinuated that I had purposely hired Bob because he had the same last name that Douglass had. Insinuating, too, that in this way I had hoped to entice Douglass Montgomery fans into the theatre — under false pretenses.

"Bob was a bit discouraged at first, but as time went on he saw that he was gaining a foothold himself. The strain of trying to take Douglass Montgomery's place lessened. By the end of the season, Bob had won over many of his predecessor's fans and had gained hundreds of new ones for himself.

"It was at about this time that the play 'Broadway' closed on Broadway and came to Baltimore. They opened in a theatre next door to ours. A girl, by the name of Elizabeth Allen, had the lead in that play. Bob Montgomery came to me one day and said, 'There's a swell little actress playing right next door. I want you to meet her. Maybe we could have her here in the company with us.' Accordingly, Bob took me next door to meet Elizabeth Allen. He had not known her very long, then, himself, but it was easy to see that he was all for her! I liked her, too, and told her to come and see me when she finished her run in 'Broadway.'

So, several weeks later, Bob Montgomery and his future wife, Betty Allen, appeared together in one of our plays. They were married, I believe, before the year was over. Incidentally, that play in which they acted together was Clarence, with Bob playing the juvenile role.

"Bob, too, showed what kind of stuff he was made of during my early association with him. After The Big Pond I signed to direct another play on the road with the hope of bringing it into town later. The producer, Arch Selwyn, wanted Douglass Montgomery for the leading role. But Douglass wouldn't be free for several weeks. So I made Bob a proposition to play the role during the road try-outs with the understanding that he would give it up, as soon as Douglass Montgomery was free. Bob, as usual, was swell about it and he had so thoroughly proved himself a fine actor that when the time came Selywn hated to see him give up the role.

"Following the production of the play, The Big Pond was bought for Maurice Chevalier to do in the movies and, since I was sent out to Hollywood to do the adaptation, I lost track of most of the people with whom I had worked. But to prove to you that there is such a thing as a grateful actor I want to tell you that when I did meet Bob Montgomery again, I needed his help — and badly. Let it be written in the book, if those who deny to actors the quality of gratitude — he came through, and generously."

These people have all gone a long way since those early days. When we hear today that Katie Hepburn fights with her director we surely cannot blame it all on her disposition — after what Mr. Knopf has told us. No real trouper is naturally belligerent. The word "trouping" means quite the opposite. Some people are born good troupers. They get to the top eventually even though they may have to play all the backwoods towns... sleep in small, cheap hotels... eat bad food and live on a few dollars a week. They get to the top even though they have been told that they can't be stars! At least, that is what happened to these four people, and we admire them all the more because of it!

• Edwin Knopf, writer, producer and director, now at M-G-M.
• Above, Hepburn, who he said would never, never be a star!
• Douglass Montgomery. matinee idol of Knopf's stock troupe.
• Above, Mary Boland; below. Bob Montgomery, once in stock.

Collection: Modern Screen Magazine, July 1935

—

see also When They Were Job-Hunting (Part I)