Growing Pains of Joan Leslie Hollywood's "Sweetest Sixteen" tells how she is meeting those problems that perplex all teen-age girls By Gladys Hill "I'm a very unusual Sixteen," was the opening Leslie line -- "know why?" she added, with a giggle, "because I appreciate being Sixteen so much. I enjoy it. I don't want to be older than I am. I don't want to smoke cigarettes or take drinks or have dates or fall in love. I don't want to be a Sixteen-Year-Old Glamour Girl. I don't want to be slinky. I think they are monstrosities, girls like that. I think it's good sense to keep saying to yourself, 'I'm young! It's wonderful to know how wonderful it is!' I do know," she added, flashing a smile. "Of course," now Joan was serious, "there are problems or what our elders call 'Growing Pains.' For instance, my waistline. It's really a pain, trying to grow out of that gracefully. Trying to grow into a waistline, I should say. I look at Katharine Hepburn and Loretta Young and I get bluer than robins' eggs. "I go swimming every morning of my life because they say swimming trims down the waistline. I do those up-and-down exercises, every morning, too, up-and-down, up-and-down. I knock myself out. I probably don't do them right, though, because -- still the same old waistline! Then there's my teeth -- these braces!" Joan flashed me a rueful smile, all golden and metallic -- "of course I take them out when I'm working," she explained, "but at all other times, here they are! They're necessary, of course -- the cameramen have to shoot around one side of my mouth on account of how this side has a very long tooth and a little baby tooth right next to it, showing, which looks very funny -- and I can't expect cameramen to be crouching on all fours, shooting up at one side of my mouth forever! "I'm trying to get rid of bad habits, too, like being late all the time (for school) and, mostly, biting my nails. I notice the stars in pictures with their long, long nails and I die of envy. It makes them look so artistic,I think I have discovered the cure for myself now, though -- look!" -- and Joan extended two still childish-looking hands, the nails of which were painted a really painful pinkish-purple, quite sick-making, as I made bold to remark -- and she laughed, "That's just it! When I use this awful color nail polish it makes me so sick I don't bite them!" "But these are very little problems, really, I don't make too much of them. I think Sixteen usually makes the mistake of making its problems bigger than they really are. So many people say, 'when I was Sixteen, I wanted to kill myself,' -- they talk and write about the pains of adolesence -- well, there are some pains, of course, but they are 'growing pains' which means, doesn't it, that we will outgrow them! "Growing pains come mostly, I think, from (a) we try to force ourselves to be older or wiser and smarter than we can be at our age and this distorts us; or (b) we can't decide what we want to do or to be and so we are confused and confusion always means unhappiness; or (c) we are so self-conscious with everyone, especially with boys, that just want to annihilate ourselves. I think," said young Miss Leslie, looking pleased with her crisp classifications, "that that's about the sum and substance of it." I said I thought it was. "I think," Joan was continuing, "that almost the most painful pain is when we try to grow -- unnaturally. When we try to act sophisticated, smart and wise. When we smoke and drink and make a great to-do about dates. Nothing aggravates me more than a girl trying to act older than her age. There's no sense to it, anyway, because people can see right through you. They know you're just showing off. "Like a sixteen-year-old girl trying to dress and behave like Marlene Dietrich, for example, or like Joan Crawford -- why, it's pitiful! I don't mean we shouldn't try to copy some of the things they do, things that will improve us and that are right for us. I do that myself. The last star I tried to copy was Ingrid Bergman -- the way she walks, for instance. I practiced in front of my mirror for hours! And her absolute naturalness -- I tried to copy that because unnaturalness is one of the problems of Sixteen. I tried to sort of absorb the something-quiet about her, the way you know what she's feeling because you can see her thinking it. Garbo does the same thing, too -- not any unnecessary movements. I don't think there's any harm in that, taking things that help you as an actress and as a person, from older women -- after all, when I was doing impersonations in vaudeville I did that, and more -- I just tried to take over a whole personality at a time. "It's only when you begin to act not your age that it's silly. I know it's a temptation. I've succumbed to it myself. Like when I had a bad spell of dashing around at breakneck speed, running, always running, like I was very important, giving people the 'Hulloa how ARE you?' routine, talking very brightly (I thought) telling very fast stories -- know who cured me of that? Mr. Cooper. "It was like this: we were in the art gallery at the studio one day, having some pictures made. And I was all over the place at once. Well, he just sat there, very passively, watching me flutter about, and after awhile, still very quietly, he said, "I can see you are working very hard right now -- what for? "Well, I couldn't be honest -- that's one of the pains of Sixteen, we almost never dare to be honest -- and say, 'to make an impression.' But I did say it to myself and I added his 'what for?' And there wasn't any answer to that except how silly I was being. "He helped me to outgrow that pain, Mr. Cooper did. Now when I'm with Bette Davis or James Cagney or some older star and I say something dumb or do something dumb, I don't try to cover up. I just say, 'Oh, now that's stupid of me, I won't do that again!' It's much more comfortable. So, thanks to Mr. Cooper, I never flutter or run around anymore. "Of course, one of the most painful g.p.'s of all is trying to act natural and unsilly with men. Gosh, you really have to train yourself NOT to put on acts with men! Every girl wants like anything to make an impression on a man, especially on a man she admires. If I do say so, I think my g.p.'s in that way have been more accute than for most girls, because most girls, when they get crushes on movie stars or any kind of celebrities, usually never get to meet them. And goodness know, they don't get to playing love scenes with them, even on the screen! "If any girl my age is reading this, now, and says she has a crush on Tyrone Power or Errol Flynn or anyone, just let me ask her to stop and think how she would feel if, suddenly, she was called upon to play a love scene with her crush! Boy, I bet the mere idea gives her goose pimples!" "Take me -- when my sisters and I were working in vaudeville, oh, years ago, three or four, I had a terrific crush on Mr. Cooper, also one on Eddie Albert and one on Don Ameche. But the most terrific was on Mr. C. Why, I remember when we playing in Orange, New Jersey, I think it was, 'The Plainsman' was playing there. I used to dash out and watch it between shows. I got it all figured out so I could see it all through twice a day. I'd catch the end of it between the afternoon shows, get in at the beginning between the evening shows. "Well, you don't suppose I ever thought I'd meet him, do you? I didn't even wish I could be playing his leading lady, it would have seemed such a silly, fantastic thing to be wishing. So, when it happened, when I was cast in 'Sergeant York' to play the girl he marries, I found it awfully hard to behave naturally. It's all very fine for a girl to feel embarassed with a man she has a crush on, but I repeat that when that man is Gary Cooper, it's almost too much! "I tried to duck meeting him for as long as I could, even after the picture started. I'd sort of hide around on the sets and watch him. Then one day, Mr. Hawks, our director, said to me, 'Oh, come on, now, Joan, I want you to meet Gary Cooper.' I just thought, well, here it is! And before I knew it, we were introduced. I said, 'How do you do' and sounded like I had a dozen apples in my throat. Mr. Cooper gave me a great big handshake, like this --" and Joan clasped both her hands over mine, warmly and strongly, "like you ought to shake hands," she said, "but almost no one does, any more. Then I managed to say, 'I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time' and I felt my face getting red as paint and I hate it because my hair is so red and the two reds don't match -- and then he said 'Oh, thank you' and sort of kept his head ducked down. He is so completely NOT the Great Mr. Cooper. "And that taught me something else," Joan said, ernestly, "that helped me to outgrow a pain, too -- it taught me that the greater the person is, the simpler he is, the more childlike and shy. So that now I believe I could behave naturally with anyone because I know we'd just be two shy people, not one. "But then there came the first love sceen I had to do with Mr. Cooper -- when he was going away to war, in 'Sergeant York,' you know, and I say, 'I just hate to see you go, Alvin' and put my arms about him and kiss him -- oh, I don't know how I had the NERVE! I felt like running out of the studio and keeping on running -- all girls feel shy about their first lover, I guess, about how they will behave when they have their first kiss -- well, you may imagine, I hope, how I felt about having my first love scene with Gary Cooper, of all people! "Even now," Joan said, laughing at herself, "after all the time we were together on that picture, I don't think I could ever call Mr. Cooper, Gary! I used to get around that by always calling him 'Alvin.' And he'd always say 'Good morning, Miss Gracie.' We sort of kept in character all through the making of the picture. That was a great help to me. It made me forget I was just one of the Brodel Kiddies (that's what my sisters and I used to be billed in vaudeville) doing scenes with one of Hollywood's very greatest stars. It made me forget about me. If all of us girls of sixteen could just forget about me for ten seconds, our pains would be more painless. "I should have outgrown being self-conscious long ago, having been on stage since I was three. But somehow, come the ages of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, you just get that way, no matter what your training has been. It's particularly hard for me, for any girl in pictures, because we're constantly required to meet people, very important people, like Mayors and Governors and all -- and what to say to them is one of the problems. I used to be so dumb. I'd just say, 'Oh!' and 'Really!' and 'How nice!' And that was all. Then I'm afraid I got a regular routine. When visitors came on the set, the routine went like this: 'Are you visiting the set?' (they should have answered, 'We're not visiting Mars, sister!') and they'd say, 'why, yes, we are -- isn't it thrilling? Don't you find it thrilling?' and I'd say, 'Oh, yes, I do!' And by that time someone would usually rescue them -- and me. "Well, that's a pain that I'm growing out of. That tongue-tied thing when intelligent people are around. I'm curing myself by reading as much as I can. Like when I have to read a script and references are made to stories or operas, or to historical events, I get books of summaries and read up on them. So that I can think of something adult and intelligent to talk about when people visit. It's a great help. "Then there's the problem of dates for us Sixteen-Year-Olders. As I said, I don't smoke and I don't drink and, for that matter, I don't have dates. I have only had two so far. That's all. I dont miss not having dates, you can't miss what you haven't had. But the two I have had makes me feel sympathetic with others girls of my age who probably have to go through what I did -- like the first date I had, I went to a dance at Loyola College with a boy. And if Daddy didn't drive me there and then he waited for hours until the dance was over and drove me home again. It embarassed the boy to death. Me, too. I just had to keep telling myself, 'Well, it won't always be like this!' "I really have a more complicated problem, about dates, than girls who are not in the movies. It is just as well for me that I don't care about having them because -- who would I have dates with? The men I work with in pictures, like Humphrey Bogart and Mr. Cooper and Henry Fonda, are ether married or so much older than me that they have a hard time even making believe they are making love to me. The only other boys I meet are the brothers of my sister Betty's beaus or the borthers of the girls I went to school with at Immaculate Heart. And they'd get teased something terrible if they took me out. They've said so, and it's come back to me. "It's a funny thing -- I bet you think that being a movie star makes a girl awfully popular with boys, makes boys want to take you out a lot. But it doesn't. If they're young boys, it embarasses them, like I said. Like the other date I had, when I went to a dance at a class reunion of the 8th Grade, the boy I went with stumbled over my name when he introduced me, something fierce. 'Meet Miss Bro-el, Miss Les-er-' he said, all in a lather. He half didn't want the others to realize I was Joan Leslie and he half did -- that's one of our pains, you see, we're halfway people, neither children nor grown-ups. And if they're older men, it would embarass them, too, in a different way. Or bore them. "Another Growing Pain is, I think, the fear that we won't be popular, that if we go to a dance we'll be wall-flowers, that the stag line won't cut in on us often and all that. We're afraid of the older girls, the more sophisticated girls, the ones who are the belles of the ball -- well, imagine living in Hollywood where you'd only have to compete with the Linda Darnells, Lana Turners, Sheila Ryans, Carole Landis, girls like that -- enough to give anyone growing pains all over! "And when I go to parties with girls I knew before I was in pictures, I have to be awfully careful. I want to look good because if I don't look as good as I did before I went in the movies, they'd think it hadn't done anything for me. And if I look too good, they'd say I was trying to show off. I have to be very careful of what I say, too. If I should happen to mention my dressing room or make some unfortunate remark about people waiting on me, like bringing me a chair on the set, they'd think I was being a movie star all over the place!" "So I just keep pretty much to myself, have a few boys and girls over to the house to play ping-pong or badminton now and then and let it go at that -- for the time being. "I don't give much thought to falling in love, either, I really don't. I'm not either afraid or anxious for it. If I have any fear about it, it's a fear of losing it, afraid that all the qualities I want won't be there. That's kind of silly, though, because I really don't know what the qualities I want really are. Except I'm sure I couldn't stand it if 'he' were too too good-looking. I know I want 'him' to be more real than good-looking. And I think I'd like 'him' to be an actor because then we'd have the same tastes, the same interests. But to be honest, I'm not thinking much about 'him.' I've got an awful lot of work to do before 'he' comes along. 'He' can wait." I said, breaking in, practically by main force -- no one can say that young Miss Leslie lacks an active brain or articulate tongue. "You don't have to worry about what you're going to do or be, Joan -- you are spared that g.p." But she said: "In a way, I'm spared that one, of course, but in another way -- I often lie in bed at nights and think how different things will be if I'm a huge success in motion pictures -- it frightens me a little. I think of what we've got now, Mom and Daddy and Betty and Mary and I -- and how I want to keep it, have it stay the same, and how success sort of moves in on you and changes things around; and then I immediately clear that fear out. I don't think I need to worry for quite a while yet. And then I think of NOT being a success, of how people all say 'Hulloa, how are you?" to me now, and really seem to mean it -- and I think of the stories I've heard of people who don't stay with you after you're not a success, and it all sort of worries me, makes me think this is one way where being halfway is best, makes me think I don't want anything to change from the way it is right now, where we have so many things we didn't have before we came to Hollywood, but don't have so much that it really changes us any -- so that although I can get, now, what I want in clothes, I still have the fun of having to shop around, picking them out, still get a kick out of getting a new suit at a wholesalers, for one-third the price I'd have to pay at a department store, still haven't had a big splurge, except for my car, still go to the dime store and get little things so I can change things around at home, like I get some kind of Happy Birthday paper table-cloths for the dining room and paper favors, whether it's anyone's birthday or not, just to sort of brighten it up in there. "Well, it all comes down to what I said at first, I think," Joan told me, "that I like being Sixteen and acting Sixteen. I don't want to be older, I like like being halfway, pains and all. I'll outgrow being young soon and fast enough -- too soon and too fast -- I wish other girls would write me and tell me how they feel about it!" Favorite Joan Leslie Film Select your favorite Joan Leslie film here. High Sierra The Great Mr. Nobody The Wagons Roll at Night Sergeant York The Male Animal Yankee Doodle Dandy The Hard Way This Is the Army The Sky's the Limit Thank Your Lucky Stars Hollywood Canteen Where Do We Go From Here? Rhapsody in Blue Too Young to Know Cinderella Jones Two Guys from Milwaukee Repeat Performance Northwest Stampede The Skipper Surprised His Wife Man in the Saddle The Woman They Almost Lynched Flight Nurse Jubilee Trail Hell's Outpost Other Current Results [Sign My Guestbook] [View My Guestbook]