drumsticks like a pro.
The picture wrapped at the end of May, and Joan and Douglas left immediately for New York where, on the morning of June 3, they were married at Saint Malachy’s Church, beloved of actors because of its location in the theater district. As promised, Anna Beth was present with Jack, who apparently found the happiness contagious: three weeks and three days later, they, too, were married.
Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. quickly returned to work in Los Angeles, where reporters met their train in crushing numbers. The newlyweds were then invited to a very warm reception at Pickfair, where “Billie cried with relief” as Doug recalled.
On September 14, he accompanied Joan to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, where, according to the hallowed movie-star tradition, she embedded her hand-and footprints in the stone court. “May this cement our friendship,” she inscribed above her dated signature.
Douglas was not asked to do the same. “I had no particular desire to be a personality like my father,” he said, “nor was I equipped to be one. I was determined to be my own man.” So saying, he began rehearsals for a revival of Philip Barry’s play The Youngest. Joan made herself a sort of volunteer theater attaché, carrying out the duties of box-office cashier for every evening performance, selling tickets and helping Douglas with his makeup. When word ofher presence circulated, the play sold out, and the engagement at the Vine Street Theater had to be extended.
“NEITHER BILLIE NOR I had much opportunity to settle down in the conventional sense,” Fairbanks recalled, “we both worked too hard and hectically … [and she] let nothing stop her admirable though humorless dedication to professional advancement. Never, before or since, have I known any other professional who expended more personal energy on self-improvement courses and on her relations with her fans and the press as did the girl known as Joan Crawford. She went to dance classes once or twice a week, took swimming lessons and daily exercises and massage. Her powers of concentration were immense.”
For Joan, everything related to her career. “But I was interested in a wider variety of other people and things,” said Doug—and this caused considerable tension between them—as did, for him, the fact that his salary was half of hers.
“He wasn’t as ambitious as I was,” according to Joan. “He had a dozen talents and indulged them all in his easygoing way, but he’d never had to fight his way up the way I had, and he had no taste for it. I wanted Douglas, but I wanted work, too, and the rest of the time with him. I took my work with deadly seriousness.”
Joan certainly had to do just that for her next picture, Untamed, her first talkie. Because many film actors had poor diction, or voices that were too high or too low, or had accents they could not lose, a large number of them could not negotiate the new sound barrier and lost their jobs. At that anxious time, Metro engaged the noted Italian voice professor Mario Marafioti to help those with real or imagined problems. Having coached Enrico Caruso, Marafioti was in a good position to do the same for screen actors.
“I didn’t know enough to be afraid,” Joan said years later, but she did as instructed and made an appointment to see the professor.
When she told him that she wanted to learn how to speak for the movies,he handed her a copy of his book, Caruso’s Method of Voice Production: The Scientific Culture of the Voice. “Read it, child,” said the professor. “Study it.”
Joan was puzzled. “Learn to talk from a book?”
“Study the book. Then we begin.”
“But Dr. Marafioti—I start a talking picture tomorrow!”
He shrugged.
She politely said good-bye and never saw him again.
“So I just went and did Untamed, with Bob Montgomery"—the first of six films in which the pair costarred. (Coincidentally, Robert Montgomery was a great
The picture wrapped at the end of May, and Joan and Douglas left immediately for New York where, on the morning of June 3, they were married at Saint Malachy’s Church, beloved of actors because of its location in the theater district. As promised, Anna Beth was present with Jack, who apparently found the happiness contagious: three weeks and three days later, they, too, were married.
Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. quickly returned to work in Los Angeles, where reporters met their train in crushing numbers. The newlyweds were then invited to a very warm reception at Pickfair, where “Billie cried with relief” as Doug recalled.
On September 14, he accompanied Joan to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, where, according to the hallowed movie-star tradition, she embedded her hand-and footprints in the stone court. “May this cement our friendship,” she inscribed above her dated signature.
Douglas was not asked to do the same. “I had no particular desire to be a personality like my father,” he said, “nor was I equipped to be one. I was determined to be my own man.” So saying, he began rehearsals for a revival of Philip Barry’s play The Youngest. Joan made herself a sort of volunteer theater attaché, carrying out the duties of box-office cashier for every evening performance, selling tickets and helping Douglas with his makeup. When word ofher presence circulated, the play sold out, and the engagement at the Vine Street Theater had to be extended.
“NEITHER BILLIE NOR I had much opportunity to settle down in the conventional sense,” Fairbanks recalled, “we both worked too hard and hectically … [and she] let nothing stop her admirable though humorless dedication to professional advancement. Never, before or since, have I known any other professional who expended more personal energy on self-improvement courses and on her relations with her fans and the press as did the girl known as Joan Crawford. She went to dance classes once or twice a week, took swimming lessons and daily exercises and massage. Her powers of concentration were immense.”
For Joan, everything related to her career. “But I was interested in a wider variety of other people and things,” said Doug—and this caused considerable tension between them—as did, for him, the fact that his salary was half of hers.
“He wasn’t as ambitious as I was,” according to Joan. “He had a dozen talents and indulged them all in his easygoing way, but he’d never had to fight his way up the way I had, and he had no taste for it. I wanted Douglas, but I wanted work, too, and the rest of the time with him. I took my work with deadly seriousness.”
Joan certainly had to do just that for her next picture, Untamed, her first talkie. Because many film actors had poor diction, or voices that were too high or too low, or had accents they could not lose, a large number of them could not negotiate the new sound barrier and lost their jobs. At that anxious time, Metro engaged the noted Italian voice professor Mario Marafioti to help those with real or imagined problems. Having coached Enrico Caruso, Marafioti was in a good position to do the same for screen actors.
“I didn’t know enough to be afraid,” Joan said years later, but she did as instructed and made an appointment to see the professor.
When she told him that she wanted to learn how to speak for the movies,he handed her a copy of his book, Caruso’s Method of Voice Production: The Scientific Culture of the Voice. “Read it, child,” said the professor. “Study it.”
Joan was puzzled. “Learn to talk from a book?”
“Study the book. Then we begin.”
“But Dr. Marafioti—I start a talking picture tomorrow!”
He shrugged.
She politely said good-bye and never saw him again.
“So I just went and did Untamed, with Bob Montgomery"—the first of six films in which the pair costarred. (Coincidentally, Robert Montgomery was a great
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