Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 80

12 SCREEN ft RADIO WEEKLY t-the Ordeal ismian ereen Hollywood's Own Unique Torture Awaits Actors Who Aspire to Screen Tes of By Jon Slott CREEN TEST! of the small town boy who made good. Like Gary Cooper, Kent Taylor was born on a ranch. When he was seven years old. his parents moved from Nashua. to Waterloo.

la. After high school, Taylor was Waterloo's champion jack-of-a'l-trades. First a window-trimmer in a ladies' ready-to-wear establishment, then successively a snip ing approached Taylor and asked him if he would mind posing for a few minutes in front of the camera. He explained that he was testing out a new color process. It would be a silent shot, he informed Taylor; they were only anxious to see the effect of the process in daylight.

Taylor, case in hand, went through his sales talk on awnings. When he finished. Magic words to the gasping secretary. "I promised some girl friends to go hiking with By some peculiar quirk, the secretary called again. The novelty of finding someone who would rather go hiking than take a screen test aroused her curiosity.

Yes, Jean could come to the studios this day. So the fifteen-year-old schoolgirl went out, still failing to comprehend the whole situation. It was sheer innocence. They led her onto the test sound stage. The director sat back listlessly, waiting.

The camera stood ready, focused on the stage. The director, seeing Jean standing awkwardly, got up and took her to the stage, where the following conversation took place: the uninitiated words that shatter the inner composure oi the aspiring actor. The source of caricature and the subject of jest to the wiseacres in Hollywood, but nevertheless, a mighty cog in filmland's intricate system. The screen test takes place on a studio sound stage, no different from the actual shooting stages. Here, through a darkened passageway that leads to oblivion, is one of Hollywood's own "wailing and dealing walls." You can see the nervous pacing 'actor or actress mumbling lines, the prop and An awning salesman gets a break.

Kent Taylor started out to sell some awnings to Paramount, but landed in front of a camera instead. camera crew indulging in a little good-natured horseplay (for it is an old story to them), the stage all set and the hot white light of the burning kleigs glaring down Director; Now, Miss ah ah Will you stand right there." Jean: "Here?" Director: "Yes, right there. Now; when I nod to you, start on your dialog." Jean (terrified): "Dialog? I haven't any lialog," Director (annoyed: "Well, say anything; talk naturally about your dolls (hastily correcting himself) or your cat or dog. Anything." in readiness. "Take it smiles the veteran director of a thousand screen tests.

"Relax take it natural." "Relax 1 Be groans the pacing actor. "That's all I've been hearing for days." "Camera! shouts the director. "Ready, boys?" "Okay. Turn 'em over." A screen test Is being made. A few minutes elapse.

The director cries "Cut," and the wilted actor slides into his seat murmuring "Terrible Lord! I was terrible." "You're tellin' me!" snaps the director. "C'mbn, you can do it better than that." Then reassuringly, "Let's try it again." And so they do, always again. "Give them a break" is Hollywood's motto. can (timidly): "I have a mm assi at rqtssssw 1 is- hi mi ij i i aog. rector (encouraginely Swell; tell us about your ill ill i I i a fine Hi EAD bent UT not all of our slightly fdrward, Jean waited for the director to give her the signal to begin.

There was a silence and suddenly the sharp command to "roll 'em over." In the magnified seconds before the director's nod, Jean tried to think of what to say about Peter, her dog. The director was nodding vigorously. "My dog Peter," began the i ghtened girl, "is a K' funny little g. His right eye is famous screen personalities have traveled hat identical route. Gary Cooper's screen test never really took place.

First of all, he didn't want to be an actor. Even the slightest desire that he might have had was thoroughly stamped out in his college days at Grmnell, Ia. Gary appeared at the rehearsal of the College Drama Society and timidly asked for a tryout, fm AM l---; I hey locked over, he said, gave eak and then (much mannerybt a- sophomore idea At producer would act) informed trie that I couldn't even black and his left is One day Peter fol-me to school. Of I couldn't take him make the off-stage footfalls, let alone white, lowed course carry a spear." Years later Gary tried to get a job as a cartoonist on a Los Angeles Instead he got work as a movie extra, and on one of the two days that he worked, Hans Ties-ler, an independent producer, saw him and picked him out of the mob. The result was the lead in a two-reel Western.

Gary kept his fingers crossed and his feet firmly in his stirrups which saved him, for he could ride a horse. ff ping clerk in a meat-packing ping clerk in a meat-p'acking house, a concrete-mixer, a hod- he continued on his way to the purchasing department. The camera experiment was almost a failure for the inventor, because the producers were more interested in the antics of the unidentified actor. Two days later they located Taylor and gave him a screen test, this time minus the sample case and plus many lines of dialog. A very bewildered youth was handed a long term contract a few days later by" the Paramount Studios.

Since that day, Kent Taylor has appeared in more than 26 pictures, steadily moving toward back home, it would make me late for school, so I said: 'Now, Peter! You just go home right now. Shoo! Go But Peter wouldn't budge. He just looked at me and barked as if to say, 'Oh, shucks, Jean, let's play hookey from school and take a long hike in the The girl faced the director in an explanatory aside: "You see, Peter and I always talk that way to each other." She continued: "Then 1 said: "Why Peter, you know very well that it is wrong to play hookey from The girl standing there, sure of herself now, naively talking, oblivious of camera and director, seemed lost for the instant in the inner problem of rightfully bestowing the blame on Peter. Someone snickered. It brought the girl back to her surroundings and then in an appealing effort to end it all, she concluded: "and so Peter and I went for a walk In the hills." Silence, save for the snap of a camera, seemed to hold everything in place.

The simplicity, th fascinating bewilderment of the schoolgirl held the studio crew speechless. Then the electrician switched off the kleigs and the test was over, Peter had done well by his mistress. Jean Parker, the little girl whose cherished ambition was to be a dancer, became one of filmland's best -loved ingenues. Karen Modey's" resonant voice spoke its way to fame. Karen, an extra, was given a few lines in Garbo's "Mata Hari." Clarence Brown, director, was so impressed that he gave her a screen test.

Such is Hollywood, stamping ground of hope, despair. fortune and failure. And the "open sesame" to all these is contained in two words "Screen Test." carrier and finally a gas-burner attendant in a nut and bolt factory. Going to Los Angeles four years ago, tie went to work as an awning salesman, making house-to-house calls. In odd moments, to keep up his courage, he sang to himself.

A friend working at the studios mentioned that there was I singing part in Director Henry King's new production, "Hell Harbor." Taylor somehow got to King and talked him into giving him a tryout for the part. Then Taylor waited. For four weeks he waited and then was told that the studio had decided to have a string orchestra record the jtheme song without a singer. Enough was enough; Taylor went back to selling awnings. UST about the time he had saved enough money to go back to Helena, in some style, B.

P. Shulberg, then managing director of Paramount productions, saw a "rush" of Gary Cooper in the picture "The Win-ning of Barbara and decided to give him a screen test. When Gary was ushered into Shulberg's office, he found a score of directors and executives sitting around the conference table. He waited on the threshold. No one said a word; they iust sat back, chewed their cigars and looked him over.

Cooper smiled', embarrassed. Self-consciously, he. hung his head and shuffled a little nearer. The tension grew unbearable. "He felt like letting out a thunderous "Wa-hoo" to see if that would budge them.

Fortunately he was ushered out, completely bewildered. Shulberg rose and said. "Well, what do you think?" "Sign him up," was the 1 unanimous reply, "he won't need a test." Since that day, Gary Cooper has been a part of he Paramount studios. The story of Kent Taylor's screen test and subsequent film success is one that all. Hollywood I loves to tell.

It fits the pattern made famous by Horatio Alger. It is the story EAN PARKER'S ND THEN it screen test was similar in that chance in a most' capricious mood fairly catapulted this Cinderella out of a drab back street flat in Pasadena into a most enviable place in Hollywood. Jean posed as a flower girl on one of the many floats in the "Tournament of Roses Parade." Her picture, among many others, was seen in the newspapers by Ida Koverman, Louis B. Mayer's assistant. The following day the studio called Jean on the phone and asked her to come out for a screen test.

"Sorry, but I can't make it" she told happened! while he was "crossing the Paramount lot, sample case in hand, bent on selling the purchasing department a fancy assortment of fringed awnings, somebody shouted: "Hey, you just a minute!" Taylor stopped short, a bit fearful that he had violated some studio regulation. The dark-haired man who did the shout-.