Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 75

SUEEN 4 RADIO WEEKLY Astrid Allwyn Xhild of the Stars' Now She's Stardom Herself but She Earned It By Edith Dietz ASTRID ALLWYN is a down to earth person, although her name means "child oi the stars." She might have kept her head in the clouds it she hadn't Deen pushed around so much in the Holly Xk dAmmm -v. wood studios. Hers has been no sine-cure, but a desperate battle against deadly odds. She came to see me this afternoon tnd my living room is still alive and vibrant with her vigorous personality. She looks like a college girl, but she is as brittle as an icicle although not nearly cold.

When you look at her photographs, you think butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but when you talk with her you wonder how one so young can possess such poise and wisdom. She came to me straight from Having been given the most important role of her career that of "Gentle Julia." in the KtJ. a1 Tnrlfinntnt-'a etAru rt that name. Luck has descended on her like sunlight after a storm and she seems breathless from its unexpectedness. "Touch me." she said.

"Touch me and wish. I bear good fortune in my leeve. i am still touching my elephant with its trunk up, knocking on tyood and repeating mantrarns under my breath. I actually get a (fading part after three years of kicking1, around in minor roles. If I haven't a telephone call when I get home telling rrie someone else has got it, after all, i shall begin to believe that my lucky star has at last noticed my feeble efforts.

blood. She has been with Astrid through all her difficulties in Hollywood and has the same sort of defiant, go-to-the-devil attitude. In the end it will probably Asuid AUywn, who says she's as Swedish as Garbo, is finally, getting a break after three years of minor roles in pic-iures. She has the title role in take her places, )ust as it has her mistress. When I said something about not ha' ing seen her around town, Astrid grinned mischievously.

"I haven't had much of the screen version of Booth an opportunity to show off," she de Tarkington's "Gentle Julia." confesses. "No girl of 13 or 20 caa stand having the world asking for her autograph. She is bound to get an attack of big head, unless she has had to struggle with discouragement. That is what is the matter with some of th girls who have a quick success. They can't take it; they are too young.

Gent erally, they are a flash in the pan anyway. Life isn't that easy. Everything has to be paid for, either before one gets it or afterward. I'm glad I have paid in advance." Out at Twentieth Century-Fox, tha new bosses are genuinely interested in Astrid Allwyn. They have discovered quite suddenly that she is a "find." Now A.

-STRID ALLWYN looks about 18, with her blond hair, twinkling dark eyes, delicate contours and smilina mouth. She is slightly more that, but declares she is an old, old 1 1 clared. "From the time I got my first and last roUrlat M-G-M until now, when Twentieth Century-Fox is just beginning to know I'm alive, I have had all I could do to keep on living, without trying to wear ermine at premiers and such things. "I have been so broke I have wondered what to do about the rent, but I had to keep the place for Miss Gretchen. I couldn't put her into an apartment.

Always at the crucial moment a part would turp up and I would know the joy of being booked as a second lead again. Some day I shall write a book about the joys of being second lead. You have no idea what fun it is to work with a star who doesn't like to have anyone get so much as a look-in in her picture. I have decorated some of the best cutting room floors in the business. I am not bitter or disgruntled; it's all in fun.

But just the same I shall always remember those who have, given me a leg up and those who, have seen to it that the lighting was placed to do me the least good. Fortunately all stars are not selfish, but some of them are, and when they the second lead soon finds it out." they are wondering why she has been "hidden under a bushel" and are making; amends by scheduling several important pictures for her. It looks as if her lucky-star were indeed in the ascendancy. But nothing is lost While she has been cast in small parts, she has learned a great deal of technique. Incidentally, she has set the styles for more varieties of hair dress than any other young woman in the film colony.

Wherever you go, you see Miss 'Allwyn photo- i "And the ioke to that one is that thev 'Once in a after which I had a chance to come to Hollywood. If I had my life to live over again, I certainly wouldn't accept the first picture offer to fly West, but it has been good for me to be disciplined. Anyway, I believe we do the thing we are destined to do and apparently it was good for my soul to have a series of disappointments and be cast in indifferent parts so small nobody could see me." Astrid allwyn points out that she has appeared in 31 pictures and is thoroughly "camera-broke," although not until she got a chance in "Accent on Youth" in a Paramount picture did her own studio notice her. They cast her immediately in "Way-' Down East" and "Charlie Chan's Secret," and have now taken her case seriously in hand and given her the lead in "Gentle Julia." Before that, however, she appeared in another Paramount picture. "Hands Across the Table," with Carole Lombard.

Miss Allwyn has four sisters and a brother back Springfield and unless she is in the midst of a picture, she will spend Christmas with them this year. "I love the holidays in our Swedish home," she said. "We make a great fuss and do everything just as our ancestors did in Sweden. We follow the old customs at this time of year, speak the language and serve Swedish dishes and drinks exclusively." I remarked, on her slight resemblance to Claudette Colbert and Astrid Allwyn laughed, brightly. "Oh, yes, I have been 'told that before," she said.

"Also when I first came here, I was supposed to look like Greta Garbo. This nearly ruined my chances. I knew I didn't look like her, but somebody started it and 1 tried tc live up to it, without success. I have since learned there is only one thing to do. That is to be oneself and try to figure out original things to do to accentuate one's personality if any." Mi ISS ALLWYN tures.

There is a freshness and vivacity about her that causes one to feel glad to be. alive and a part of the stirring scenesXof the present. She belongs to today and is as modern as tomorrow She is nonchalant, spontaneous, impulsive, unstudied and vivacious. She says what she thinks and lets the chips fall where they may. More often than not they have fallen in thewrong places.

"I dtfn't mind that I have had a few hard knocks," she says. "It's much better to have them, while we are young than later. I'd rather take them on the chin now than to have them after I have got somewhete." Astrid Allwyn says she is a Swede and she makes no bones about it. Born in Connecticut, she moved to Springfield, at the age of 3. Her mother tongue is Swedish and she -would have no trouble conversing with Garbo in her own language, provided she knew her, which she doesn t.

Unlike most Swedish girls she left home at a very early age and bounced into New York with enough money to last her a month or two. She actually ran away from home and landed in the big city on a rainy afternoon. "I shall never forget it," she laughs. "I must have been a sketch, wearing a coonskin coat that swallowed a hat that sat over one eye and an air of bravado that I didn't feel in the least. I was defiant, but New York didn't care.

I went to a couple of friends of mine from Springfield and they helped me get a job in the financial district. Later I became a model, but most of the time we spent laughing at each other and at our own jokes. I loved the freedom and felt very much of a feminist1 until my money got low. Then 1 wished for someone to look after me, but I didn't confess to such weakness. I never wired home for money." Out in her roadster a plaintive bark signified that "Miss Gretchen" considered herself left alone long enough, but Miss Allwyn told her firmly that she might as well prepare her mind for a wait.

"Miss Gretchen" is a Schnauzer, with a slight touch of foreign are always making me wear a wig," she confessed. "I have the most versatile hair in the United States, but when I am cast in a picture they invariably paste a wig over it Just as I have grown accustomed to seeing myself a blond, behold! I come out a full-fledged bra-net. They like wicked women dark and I have been the menace so long that I don't know how I shall be as the lady who gets her man." As we strolled out to her car, "Miss Gretchen" went all to pieces with joy. After she had been properly fussed over, Astrid Allwyn said: "If I ever have enough money, I shall have a chauffeur. I should love to be very ritzy and say, 'Home, instead of having to drive my own car.

I always envy film stars who get out of sleek limousines and remark idly: 'Come back for me in half an bmr, As for me, I must look out for pedestrians and try to memorize atfew lines of script at the same time." Astrid Allwyn, "child of the stars I'll bet sherhas a gold horseshoe in her lap and that very shortly she will be paying a large income tax. if they ever want her to sing or play the piano, she can do it. She is a finished musician and turned down a scholarship in the Boston Conservatory when she was 13. She wanted to stay at home, so she could run away to New York. That's the sort of paradoxical life Miss Allwyn leads.

Right now she is learning to make pottery, in earnest just In case her film career should crack op. has a disconcerting habit of reading one's mind, apparently. Just as I wondered whether she had ever been married, she remarked: "It's a wonder I haven't married in the three years I have been here trying to get "a foothold. I have been pretty lonely, but I have always said I would have a career, then marriage. The career has been pretty slow in developing, but I have been true to it.

After have satisfied my ambitiorrto do interesting parts in pictures. I shall marry and my astrologer told me last night I shalt have three children. ,1 love children, so that will be all right with At present I have no idea 'where to 'look for a husband, but I suppose he will appear out of the clouds at the right time." She displayed some books she had just bought to celebrate her first important part. "Now that I look back on it, I don't see how I ever had the nerve to come to Hollywood, after appearing in so. few plays on Broadway," sWf'declared.

"I played in Elmer Rice's 'Street Scene. He cast me for it himself, after seeing me in some stock company bits. After-" ward 1 appeared in 'Young Sinners' and At T.TCAST tli. Allwyn girl has a keen jsense of humor. She laughs at her failures and just now she is laughing at her might have made a fool oil myself it I hadn't had a bout with Old Man, Gloom," she.