Joan Leslie...Symbol of Young America? Here's an intimate interview with an attractive star, in which our Hollywood correspondent, H.M. Mooring reveals some of Joan's ambitions Eighteen pictures in five years plus several hours a day for at least four years studying ballet is apt to take a slice out of anybody's time. With Joan it was a case, through most of this time, of trying to wedge in a little education also. For Joan started her screen career in a fairly big way while still in her teens. She is now around 20 and it is quite clear that her next big role, the name part in Warners' musical screen biography of the late Marilyn Miller, is going to decide whether she is to become one the screen's big stars, or merely coasts along as a moderately successful ingenue. Although not in the least superstitious, Joan has all her fingers crossed. When I came upon her she had her toes crossed too, or so it seemed. She was on the shiny dance rehearsal floor, in black stockinette tights and ballet skirt, being put through the paces by Robert Eson, Warner's ballet coach. For the past four years she has scarcely missed a day of it, except when she was actually wanted on the set for filming. It is an interesting indication of how long-range planning plays its part in the star building system of Hollywood, for Joan Leslie has been concentrating on ballet through four years, "with this Marilyn Miller story in mind." Warners didn't say she would get the part. They didn't even announce they were having her trained for it. They just went ahead anyway, casting her here and now in a sort of pot-boiler role to justify her salary, and waiting to see how she shaped up for the big chance. According to Robert Eson -- and he is Joan's most helpful critic as well as her instructor -- she ought to walk away with it. "Joan is a ballerina now although the public doesn't know it as yet," he told me, while Joan was out of earshot dressing for our lunch date. "If she were starred in the ballet, the public would accept her just as certainly as they have accepted Markov...just as surely as they accepted Pavlova." He was not, of course, suggesting that Joan Leslie is another Pavlova, but that her claims to be considered a ballerina are quite reasonable and that the public will recognize this fact, perhaps with some surprise, when they see the Marilyn Miller film shortly to go into production. Joan herself could not be induced to make any claims. She just rehearses and rehearses and works and works, because she loves it. Her whole mental attitude to her film work is however coloured with her natural reserve. She thinks and speak objectively but never says, "I can do this or that." "I hope I can," or "I think I can," is Joan's limit. It usually is characteristic of a young, upcoming star to adopt in self protection an attitude of complete self-assurance. She has been told again and again by this tutor or that to cultivate self-confidence and invariably she overdoes it. Not Joan Leslie. She has an analytical mind a robust sense of humour. She enjoys criticism and can both give and take it. For instance, as we sat chatting in her dressing room she made no secret of the fact that she didn't care for her part in the Gershwin film, "Rhapsody in Blue." She knew, as I did, that the public had already acclaimed it throughout the U.S.A as one of the best films of 1945. She admitted, as I did, that musically it is quite something, but she had her own strong views about the story and the way it had been treated, and as far as she is personally concerned, nobody is going to persuade her that it had no flaws. "It was interesting to work in 'Rhapsody,'" she told me, "but I thought the dresses they gave me were unnecessarily ugly and Julie Adams (she played Julie) didn't get much of a chance in the romantic sense." I had said that my chief complaint against the treatment of the Gershwin tale was that it over-stressed the man's burning idealism to serve his country by writing music. It was suggested that Gershwin was so pressed on by inspiration that he hadn't even time to marry Julie Adams although he loved her. When a man gets into a flurry like that he's pretty near egomania. Any fellow who couldn't find time to marry a girl as lovely as Joan Leslie's Julie Adams ought to see a doctor. A mutual friend who knew Gershwin assured me that he was not a likeable fellow; that he was a ruthless and conceited type but that he couldn't help himself because he simply had to keep on writing music, music and more music. Joan Leslie felt certain that no one could have given a better performance in the Gershwin role than Robert Alda and most people will agree with her, but she did wish that they hadn't made him so hard on the girl, then he would have a less stilted part. Very frank, you must admit. Of course, "Rhapsody in Blue" was filmed at least two years ago, and held by Warners for release at a time when had estimated there might be a famine in raw stock and a corresponding shortage in major feature films. Long before the public saw Joan as Julie Adams, they had seen her in films of more recent vintage, including "Hollywood Canteen," which for all its vanity, gave her (I thought) her best screen role to date. Maybe I liked it best because she played herself, and that meant she played a very fine character. Maybe I preferred it because for once Warners did not make her go chasing after men, but left the young soldier (Robert Hutton) to run after her. Joan has strong ideas on this subject, too. "I am always begging them to spare me this chasing after men," she says. "I think it is unnecessary in my screen play. Who on earth can feel any respect for a girl who chases?" That certainly puts a finger on one of the most frequent and glaring psychological flaws in Hollywood films. It is a reflection of the modern American woman's reversal of the old order. Man, in America, is the weaker sex and in modern social circles it is no novelty for a woman to propose. Joan Leslie, however, belongs essentially to the conservative American set. She was educated mainly by nuns until her film work finally took up so much of her time that she had to complete her pre-graduation courses in the Warner studio school. She left the Immaculate Heart High School in Hollywood before she graduated but earlier education stuck and Joan has what many young Americans would call "old fashioned ideas." She believes, for instance, that it is bad to try to popularize herself with the public by sensational appearances at night clubs and so forth. She lives with her parents and sisters (there are three of them, Mary, who is married, Betty and Joan) in North Hollywood. The family name is Brodel. She is home early, especially when she is working. Work comes first and home second with Joan Leslie. The charm of this young star probably lies in her entire naturalness. Her reddish hair is really reddish and not henna rinsed. Her rosy cheeks are really pink; the colour doesn't come out of a rouge pot. The first impression one gets on meeting her is that she is radiantly healthy and one quickly learns that this fascinating vitality is a thing of the mind as well as of the body. Joan Leslie, like many other upcoming actresses, wishes most for "big dramatic roles." But when Joan talks of big dramatic roles she doesn't mean showy stuff, as so many do. She recognizes there is a sense of the morbid in most of us and that it is comparatively easy for any actress to attract public attention as, say, a woman of the streets, a drunkard, a dope fiend, or a social eccentric. Yet when a Hollywood actress begs for big dramatic roles she usually means something of that sort. Joan Leslie does not. "I'd like to play nothing but good characters," she said. She did not mean goody-goody ones either. Joan Leslie knows that showy characterization often is used as camouflage for poor story material. She want to appeal in good dramatic screen plays and let the character be fundamentally sound and normal like the majority of people who will pay their money at the box office. For a young women of her age and experience she is remarkably shrewd. She thinks that bad characters always "kick back" at those who portray them. She thinks Too Young to Know is the worst film she has made in this sense. It's entertaining," she says, "but it is about two misguided youngsters who get into a runaway marriage. They do nothing particularly wrong, but they are not a very good example to post-war youth. Now is the time for movies to refresh and re-fortify people whose illusions have been threatened by the effects of the war," she says. I mentioned the Janie series in which Warners plans to star her. She has finished Janie Gets Married. This series could be developed as a wonderfully entertaining and enlightening screen representation of modern American youth. The danger is, however, that only a certain fast-moving set will be portrayed in these films, for their antics, being more ridiculous than those of sober youngsters, make for more forceful screen comedy. Joan Leslie, if given the chance, could emerge in this Janie series as a happy symbol of young America as many of us who live in U.S.A know it. Not all the youngsters are crazy, indulgent, sophisticated and sex mad. Not all are shallow, dishonest and self-seeking. Not all are headed for speedy domestic disillusionment the first time they come up against a problem in life. Thousands are, but millions are not. It would be nice if Warners' Janie pictures could show us the better side of American home life. Joan Leslie is exactly the girl to play the real honest-to-goodness American girl who loves fun but has ideals every bit as high as those her of great grandmamma ancestor who came over on the Mayflower Will Warners give her a chance? |
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