Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 59

SCREEN RADIO WEEKLY 4 arrrisriQ ances i happened to me. I was born here, in Los Angeles, i But, before I was old enough to remember much about it, my family moved to1 Chicago. It was a long time later, so long that I'd5 had years in which to go to school, before I saw California again. 1 I'd even had time to spend several semesters at the University of Chicago and get-into the campus dramatic activities, in the interval. "Then, one summer, my mother, my older sister and I drove out to the Coast for a vacation.

We expected, without a doubt, to return to Chicago in the autumn. Through some college pals I heard thefe. was a demand for girls, with what was described as the "collegiate air?" at the Fox studio, for a story of campus life. 'Why not try for a part in the picture, my friends said. 'Why not, I thought and that was the beginning." That was only a few years ajjo.

But it marked the place where Frances Dee left off being a school girl and set herself seriously to learn the business of acting. She studied unremittingly, singing, dancing, dramatics. "I was so busy I fairly hummed," she says. And all this time she was working. Picture followed picture, with little or no breathing space between assignments.

No great interval out for a honeymoon, By Emilie Rowers A SLIGHT. urc a figure nebulously reminiscent of that much-painted Burne-Jones maid, 1 who represented the apotheosis of pulchritude I to our grandparents swayed, rather than walked, toward me. The re-. semblance to the Blessed Damozel stop ped short, however, at the face, which was distinctly of the present. The huge, encircling bonnet, as well as the clothes the willowy one wore, represented a third period one antedating: both the others.

Frances Dee. in the character and clothes of Amelia Sedley ender, trusting! shrinking i 'Amelia was coming off I the "Becky Sharp." set, to have tea and accord me an interview. She ap- -peared the perfect counterpart of the shy English! young person of 1815. The sort who murmured "Yes, mamma," and "No, papa," with automaton-like precision; and had a gift for swooning 4n white muslin "an a blue sash. .1 say appeared" advisedly.

Frances Dee was still in character, when we began to chat, still under the spell of Thackeray's immortal tale of satire and sentiment.5 All a-thrilL too, at the new i technicolor process in which the classic I is being filmed. Gradually, as we sipped and exchanged amenities and generalities, Im.Hi f-AoA- i 1 i-I I' 7l(l' 1 IsMsws ffvf Wir-; 1 gently into the' enveloping half-dusk of 5 1 chairming girl who is Frances Dee came to Even she was still wearing the -quaintly clumsy garments of the Regency, Frances! Dee's luminous beauty was not obscured. Enhanced, rather, in the identical tiVii rn thAt.flAnnv nnHanHUh Hra- FRANCES DEE peries ecome a Dresden figurine, "It my second day of you know," 'she volunteered, with- an irresistible half -shy smile, "since "Since the son and heir of great and famous partnts arrived," I finished for -her. As all the world knows all the movie-minded world, at least Frances Dee is i in private-life Mrs. Joel McCrea.

in. i Meg of 'Little Women Becomes Shy Amelia in Becky Sharp Her First Picture Since McCrea Heir Was Born OEL McCREAS' ier deeply blue eyes wereall tenderness and pride "is still so young. I hated the thought of leaving him, all day, for weeks, as I must. "But I Wouldn't resist the role i the films is one, his loyal fans: I -i ASKED -Miss 4 It I rl 5 I I will tell you, that merits a whole chapter in the annals of the screen. Mention need only be made here that, from the 'beginning 'of his career, the handsome Joel apparently, fostered the legend of He was, some millions of impressionable maidens were assured by chatter-writers and fan-magazine mail-coated to ward" off Cupid's! darts.

He never went to parties. He eschewed tables for two in the places where Hollywood congregates. Then more than three years ago, Frances Dee, diffidently alluring, a faintly pink rose swaying on a slender I stem, into the cast of "The Silver Cord," in which the unsusceptible Mr. McCrea had been given the lead. And a few months later, wires from the East announced the McCrea-Dee marriage.

The "Silver Cord, incidentally, which served a binding purpose, matrimonially speaking, also tied the bride to a highly advantageous contract with RKO, which resulted in one of Frances Dee's most successful roles, as; the lead a full-length feature in "Becky Sharp." -'I believe shooting pictures in color," she said, "will unquestionably affect screen technique. For one thing, it re- acts upon one's feelings, and the feelings, are, after all, the seat of the power to act. "To me' it is glorious the floods of amber and rose and violet that seem to wrap about you when that magic camera comes into action. In a few years, I suppose, well' accept color films as calmly as we. do sound pictures at present.

But, at the beginning, we who are working ix the new medium feel like adventurers off on a journey of where anything may happen." The dusk had rapidly 'grown still duskier. Ominous activity across the room, on the set itself, argued a speedy termination of our interview. And I still had much to learn about the personal and professional history of lovely Miss Dee. It was her little game, I suspected, to keep the conversation on such safely subjects as -color photography, the love life of Amelia Sedley, and such, with a mere niggardly' mention' of Joel McCrea, Jr, which maternal pride could not suppress. Reticence, I had already discovered, died hard in this young actress.

I begged her for some facts. "You'd be surprised," she countered, "to hear the very little I have to tell." I was surprised, in truth, that she was telling anything, so greatly had her reserve impressed me. "When I read or hear all the extraordinary and exciting events in the lives of most film actresses, I feel apedogetic for my simply storv. So little seems to have Dee if she found it difficult to turn back the clock 100 years, emotionally, in transposing herself into Amelia ciedley. "Yes and ho," she answered.

"No, because I've a conviction that even a century hasn't altered, fundamentally, the heart-stages of a girl in the throes of first love. It's entirely possible to understand to interpret with sympathetic feeling her adoration of George Osborne. SAnd yes. because it's trite to say our outlook has been turned so completely topsy turvy, not once but half a dozen times, since Amelia's day that there's simply no mental meeting ground. Amelia's thought processes or, did she have any? are as remote fro yours" and mine as Queen.

Elizabeth's; more so. When think of what a girl of today do to a George Osborne! I smile." Personally, I was thankful that the dusk covered my blushes when Frances bracketed me in the viewpoint of her own generation. An' embarrassingly good memory prompted me to recall my own emotional past, my first reading, long ago, of "Vanity Pictured again the gallons of tears I had shed over the description of George lying dead on the -muddy field o. Waterloo, while Amelia, in England, prayed for him, and the (false Becky, in Brussels, sought with her green eyes foe fresh victims to enslave. We spoke briefly of the marvel of the new color process, used for the first time Locwly Frances Dec mnJ her An.

band, Joel McCrea photographed 4 on It heir ranch near the film colony. These yoang stare are in Hollywood only tvhen working on a picture the rest of the time they're "farmers." even, when she married Joel McCrea. -But the honeymoon went on intermittently. Every moment the McCreas can steal from the studios is spent on their glorified ranch which spreads out for hundreds of acres amid the rolling hills of the Chatsworth country. There is an apartment in town, but it is a mere stopping place.

The ranch is the real home. In the list of films she has made "Becky Sharp" will tally as the twenty-seventh Frances Dee's performance as "Meg" in "Little Women" will, perhaps, be longest remembered- at least, until she is seen as Amelia Sedley. in -neaoune snooter. When I met her on the "Becky. Sharp" "set, the young actress was so thrilled and excited by the istory, the cast and the marvel of the medium, technicolor, that it was difficult to talk of another subject.

She had just finished rehearsing a scene with blond Miriam Hopkins, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Allen Mowbray, Sir Cecil Hard-wicke and others. "If it had been a less wonderful pro-. ductionj, I scarcely think I'd have begun work just now," she explained, with what, for. the diffident Frances, seemed almost gushing enthusiasm.

"The baby".