Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 82

SCREEN RADIO WEEKLY 5 Gertrude Michael Brings Something of the Small Town to Filmland ing lady on the stage was going through the motions of playing Chopin's Funeral March. The audience roared, and I couldn't help laughing even though I was standing there waiting to be fired." ThAT was the be-ginning of Gertrude Michael's acting career. She had gone to Cincinnati to study music at the conservatory. But one night she watched a performance of Stuart Walker's stock company. "That is what I want to do," she said.

And she got a job supplying off-stage music. The combination of theatrical ambition and her father's death interrupted her musical career. She said: "We had always had as much money as we needed. But after father died, who has everything it takes to be a big star talent, looks, one of the best figures on the screen and a picture personality." But she has played in one Class picture after another eight of them so far since the first of the year. Studios to which she Mas not been under contract have sought her for first class pictures, but she has not been available.

She has been busy giving good performances in not-too-good films. A couple of years ago, when she started in "The Notorious Sophie Lang," she was hailed as the new adventure girl of the screen, a successor to Bebe Daniels. But not much came of that. Now, however, she has a new contract at a new studio. She is, if one can believe anything in Hollywood, about to i 4 ft A I I I A i -1 A I I 5 5 i ERTRUDE MICHAEL I is a bit of an enigma I A Miss Michael and Walter Abel in their new film for RKO-Radio, "Daddy and She is now under contract to RKO.

As this Character she is still a part of Talladega, although she has not been back there for five years. She still impinges on the lives of the 7,596 persons who did not go away, even more than would be true had she stayed at home and married and had two children and lived in a new stucco house. By the same token Talladega is still a part of her, and so she is a paradox. On the one side she is a girl who often wishes that she had stayed in Talladega and married and had children. On the other she is a talented and lovely actress.

TALKED to her in her dressing 100m at RKO-Radio the day she finished her most recent picture. "Daddy and She had worked through the night, until 3 o'clock that morning. After noon she had driven in from her home near Toluca Lake to keep our appointment. She was probably still tired but she was animated and charming-essential characteristics of a Southern lady. And she told me about Talladega, and admitted that she sometimes wishes she had stayed there; she talked about the fire chief, about teaching school, about playing the organ, about starting on the stage in Cincinnati and nearly starving in New York.

"I'm writing a story about the fire chief," she said. "It should be a good story, with an amazing ending." There is still an ingratiating touch of Alabama in her speech which is not apparent on the screen. "There are dozens of stories in Talladega which I want to write. I think I can; I don't know. I'll find out when I try to get them published, because I'm not going to submit anything under my own name.

I don't want people saying: 'Huh! Another movie actress who thinks she can If the stories are good, they'll get by on their own merit." She does not, you see, take herself too seriously. She likes to tell stories on herself, such as the one of the time she was playing offstage music for a stage production. "I was late for my cue," she said, "and a stage manager who could pick out a few notes with two fingers tried to fill in. But while he was playing a silly little melody up in the treble, the lead- emerge, jijst as Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy and many another star has emerged from the world of pictures and second leads. to Hollywood, but that is because Hollywood does not know Talladega, Ala.

She comes from Talladega, and to know her it is necessary to know something of her home town. That is simple if you have ever known a typical American county 'seat; it is, perhaps, difficult if you are entirely city-bred. But it should not be impossible. Talladega is a quiet Southern town, made from the same general mold as Anniston, the next county seat, or Jackson, or Clarksdale, Miss. Growth is slow (1,050 in the decade between the last two census years) and life is tuned to a quiet beat which quickens only occasionally in an ebbing crescendo.

It is a town in which things last, whether they be houses or marriages or impressions of people and events. Talladega has a population of 7,596. Going to Birmingham, about 50 miles away, is an event in the life of its citizens. Their daily ventures take them to the square, to the bank, the movie theater and grocery stores which are part of nation-wide chains. There is also the courthouse, a square structure whose practical and solid homeliness is softened by the gentility pf years and the shade of old trees.

This, like other towns of its size and kind, is a town of Characters. A book of stories could be written about them, like Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio." For example, there is the former Prominent Citizen who left his family and is now ostracized, or the fire chief who was a pyromaniac and committed suicide when he was caught at arson. Gertrude michael is the girl who gave piano recitals when she was 12, who played pipe organ in church and once even preached a sermon, who taught music and dramatics in the high school, established Little Theater movements in Anniston and as far away as Mobile, ownd and operated a radio station. She is the girl who went away and here Talladegans drop their voices as though they were entering a church vestibule, with a touch of awe the girl who went away and became an actress. Wi HEN I talked mother took a trip to Europe and when she came back, she said: 'Why, we haven't any And I said: 'I and I have worked ever since except when I was starving in New York trying to get on the stage." As she talked, Miss Michael sat tailor fashion on a davenport.

"When I was 17 I was teaching in the Talladega high school. Now, every once in a while, I will hear of some of my old pupils getting married and having children, and I feel ancient. I forget that they were about as old as I was." In this period, too, she founded and operated radio station WFDA. It was almost a one-woman station. She announced, played piano, gave household lectures and ran the business.

And she found time to do other musical work. ThEN came a year in Cincinnati, playing in stock with Stuart Walker, and then Gertrude Michael went to New York. About three years ago she came to Hollywood. Here her career has been as much an enigma as her personality. Almost anyone connected with the motion picture industry will say of her: "There is a girl to her she was getting ready for a trip to England to make a picture.

"I don't know how much of a picture it will be." she said, "but after working in eight pictures in a little more than eight months, I want a trip. And when I come back I want a part I can get my teeth into. Just one good picture, that's all." It will not matter much what kind of picture it is. In "Forgotten Faces," with Herbert Marshall, she proved that she could give a superb performance in a strong dramatic role. And she has a tremendous flair for light comedy.

It necessary only that the picture be good. But whatever happens, Gertrude Michael will continue to be, for my money, one of the most interesting stars on screen and one of the most charming off. For in spite of success which is sufficient even now to be envied, and in spite of glamour and the prerequisites of fame, she has not left Talladega. She has merely brought part of it from Alabama to Hollywood,.