Stardom in Their Eyes

 

1940 Statement on What It Takes to Make Good in Movies

Films were written in vacuums no more than books or poetry, ideas coming always from someone’s heart or history. Star Dust as known, if known, was Linda Darnell’s Hollywood rise but slightly fictionalized, true in small part, but what the modest programmer really does is give account of other folks toiling at Fox and trying to stay ahead of backbites and gentle (or not) pushes out the door. Vets going back “long, long ago” like Roland Young’s scout for youth talent have seen it all and done most of it. Young in customarily low-key performance is “Thomas Brooke,” erstwhile “silk hat comedian” of silent days, faint honor now for most at Fox have service stripes as old, except kids recruited to be “stars” if such miracle can be managed. Brooke as former road company head of “Brooke Players” knows all aspects of performing and people who aspire to it. Others tease his age but realize it is the Brookes who best understand talent and how best to season it. Brooke is in short Raymond Griffith, parallel that eluded me over years seeing Star Dust and focusing on Darnell. Griffith had retired from cameras nearly a decade before, prior to that had been selfsame starring silk hat comedian, and who knows might have been kidded for it in his capacity as behind-scenes Fox operative since. Griffith had success as a producer at TCF and was getting single card credits. He produced Linda Darnell’s first two films. Think she ever saw a silent comedy Raymond Griffith starred in? How could she? Griffith began on stage as a child, lost his voice through combination of circumstance, became a writer and mute performer to survive, had too much ability for a single handicap to stall. People years later at Cinecons and such found out he was great, as in really, truly funny to us now rather than just folks then (as in silent era then). Him in signature topper was more bon vivant than mere clown, situational humor rather than slapstick. Downer is fact over half Griffith’s starring silent features are gone. Undercrank lately released two, Paths to Paradise and You’d Be Surprised. One or both would make a splendid evening beside Star Dust, a then-and-then for a forgot funny man who I’m sure called in favors to land himself at Fox and lend knowledge of industry past toward fantasy woven round industry of 1940's present.

We know Zanuck wrote for comedy in the twenties. Did he scribe too for Griffith? Star Dust director Walter Lang had married a girl who’d been at Sennett and became Carole Lombard’s best friend. Those who worked steady in the business shared links that were miles long. Star Dust gets at this in ways both subtle and direct. Raymond Griffith’s bow-out would be grimly appropriate, choking to death on food served at the Masquers’ Club in Los Angeles. That was in 1957 when the only people who’d remember Raymond Griffith were diners as old sitting near him. At least he died among friends and confreres. Star Dust was about youth, for youth, Linda Darnell sixteen at the time. She had played Tyrone Power’s wife the year before when she was fifteen. Guys would go to jail if they staged a deal like that today. Linda was from Texas. Dad was a postal worker, Mom nuts or enough so to drive her family nuts. Ronald Davis wrote a nice book on Darnell which I have but can’t seem to locate. Linda and brood entrained to Hollywood and took a pet rooster with them. The rooster was banned from the Fox lot after causing strife there. Imagine Zanuck being told about this. All in a day’s work at the freak house he probably thought. Linda was lovely in an almost unearthly way. She would have needed a mother with sense to keep her safe from predators. In fact, a team of mothers with sense. Linda Darnell in 1965 was visiting friends in Chicago and they stayed up to watch Star Dust. A fire broke out in the house from which the others got out but not Linda. It’s said she stayed behind because she thought the friend’s daughter was inside and in danger. Turns out everyone was safe but Linda. Took her several days to die. By then Linda Darnell was faded but from eyes of older fans and some TV stay-uppers. Carol Burnett said on talk shows how she loved Linda, to which Burt Reynolds on a same panel said he once did Tea and Sympathy with her. Imagine seeing that. Enough of sadness. Star Dust is adorable for not just Darnell, but others hopeful of stardom at Fox. I noted George Montgomery at the Grauman’s Chinese forecourt opening, him given ticket home after proving not good enough for cameras. Let go too is Robert Lowery who ends up a bellhop. What did it take to succeed? Star Dust suggests mostly luck, though Darnell gets hers more by cunning, writers saying plain that if you want it, use guile to go after it.

Sneaky way is as good a way as any, says Star Dust. Did hopeful youth see this as instructional? If football players and soda jerkers could become stars, why not any of us? Carolyn Sayres (Darnell) and Bud Borden (John Payne) have looks but nothing else to suggest they can act. Most newcomers to film had at least experience of stage, radio, vaudeville. Think Judy Garland or Deanna Durbin got in just being cute? “Deb” stars were discovered doing all sorts of things, but some potential at least was always preferred. Janet Gaynor’s character in A Star is Born wants entry for reading fan magazines, and makes it, but how likely was that to happen in film’s real world? The one-in-a-thousand rule did definitely apply. More like one in ten thousand. A book I wish had been written could be called “What I Really Had to Do to Become a Star,” for which I’d bet entries would stun. Did Linda Darnell simply walk through Fox doors and fifteen minutes later kiss Tyrone Power? There were Raymond Chandler stories where a murder victim “used to dance in Busby Berkeley pictures.” So, what did become of all those Busby Berkeley dancers? Star Dust says neophytes were protected from train arrival to being put back aboard in event their dreams didn’t work out. Dear Hollywood, you gentle, nurturing town. Who took Star Dust for truth? They could hardly do Day of the Locust, yet Nathaniel West’s novel was published but a year before Star Dust came out, and I wonder how many dreamers got wise reading it instead of buying bromides Fox sold. But Fox never claimed Star Dust for truth. Too many believed it, however, for being so desperate to believe it, some sure enough ending up like those ex-Busby Berkeley girls. One of them might have been the Black Dahlia. One became Barbara Payton, who was thirteen when Star Dust came out. I bet she saw it and said why not me?

Everyone’s intentions in Star Dust are so good, except for Donald Meek. He is a sour and bitter little man, and a schemer. Donald did not look like John Payne and never would. He knows that and it makes him mean. There are more Donald Meeks in the real world than John Paynes, but the Donald Meeks are necessary to make the John Paynes shine by comparison. Meek is sneaky like Linda but she is pretty and appealing so that is OK. Beautiful people can do a lot of damage and get away with it, in fact be rewarded for it. A rat face like Donald does the same and bam, you’re fired and get hell off the lot. Charlotte Greenwood as acting coach for newcomers is gleeful, gangly, and Greenwood-familiar from a million musicals, so where she schemes to give Darnell a leg up, well that’s OK too. Charlotte knows everyone working at Fox and has known them since trod-board days. She and lab drone Paul Hurst date to Sennett times, and he owes her plenty or so she pressures him to that effect. Veterans in the biz helped each other, and if it’s truth you seek from Star Dust, watch this exchange plus wistful earlier visit of R. Young as Thomas Brooke to a dilapidated opera house where he once performed. All this is where Star Dust most moves me over times I’ve watched, the past mentoring a young and naïve present, torches transferred, youth to lead the way as elders give ground. There’s truth in this, for despite grim outcomes for many, there was effort to boost old-timers and give them work past primes. Look far enough down any IMDB cast list from the Classic Era and there are charity cases galore. Hollywood, you tender beating heart and tent for all that served you. What if Carolyn Sayres and Bud Borden were real people and lasted twenty-forty-more years in films? Might they have expected helping hands and gotten them? Look at Linda Darnell and John Payne for the answer. She did Burke’s Law and Black Spurs towards the end, support in both. He did a Columbo and a Hunter. She lived to 40, him to 77. Would either or both say the industry looked out for them?