Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1941-10-13

And We went on from there alOn
that is good to know right now-that
make any difference what's against
sion, revolution, Hitler and all the
wild violences of war were in there
against, but luck kept right on doing
business Just the same.
Along in October last year. Mr.,
Hampstead said, the studio r.
K-O) brought in 2-year-old girl
from Paris who had done we'll in
French pictures under the name OF
Michele Morgan. They had taken
her away from the Germans, al
though l don't want to give the i'm
preston that the Germans came on
down through Belgium and Holland
in order 70 get Michele Now the
studio said she was star material
and I was to present her as such to
the people who buy the tickets.
so I started talking to Michele.
trying to find out what she had l
let her talk her heart out here in
my office and at lunch and dinner
and at parties, and l found out that
what she had most of all was the
quality of enigma, sort of internal
shvness She reacts rather than
acts. She expresses herself through
underStatement Her spirit is the
kind that says a word and means a
paragraph.
Then the problem became how
to get that on the screen so an
audience could feel this quality IN
her. too. BY the time I found out
what it was We were going to have
to capture, it was February Just
about that time. a fellow named
Georges Kessel-Who is another guy
that was thrown up and out by the
war in Europeans toWed into my
Office by Jacques Thiery. who has
been around here while. KeSsel
had an idea for a story about an
R. A. F. flyer who had to bail out
over France and was struggled back
TO England by kind of modern
jean Of Arc The idea was every
thing We needed to get across what
Michele had and so We bought it"
Now we have two people who had
their lives blown up by the war,
but were put down on velvet by
luck. There is one more to go.
while still looking around for a
leading man 10 play the flyer Mi
Hampstead said, u had TO 60 to New
York. That was in March and l
went to see Elmer Rice'S Flight to
the West There was a fellow In
there named Paul Henried, who was
known a little to movie fans because
of the Nazi he played in that Eng
lish film, Night Train He was
playing a Nazi in the Rice play and
I said. There's the guy for my flyer.
And as l sat there watching the
play and thinking how PaulS accent
was going to sound in an r. A. F.
mouth, got another idea-that the
FLYER should be a Free Frenchman,
condemned to death in abSentia by
Vichy for going over to De Gaulle.
This wakes up sympathy for the guy
because everybody expects an Eng
lishman to be in there plugging
away at the Nazis. but a F'renchman
doing it is a special kind of case.
so that's the way it happened
from our end. I thought it would
be better to give out picture with
new faces all along the line, help
create an impression of reality that
is hard to get when you're dealing
with an actor that the audience has
seen before in all kinds of situations.
So we're going ahead, taking flyer,
a free French flyer, taking a s750,000
flyer and hoping for good picture
out of it."
Well, that's the way the fates all
got together at the same time under
the manipulations of luck and
/ joined hands on the set of Joan
of Paris" We went downstairs and
/ talked to Paul Henried, Who agreed
/ he had to be lucky where he was
now because he didn't start to get
/ moving OH Ills CAREER ullIIl llle VIII
ter of 1930-31-a time, you will re-
member. when the world and its
people were starting to come apart
at the seams.
If Mr.. Henried didn't happen to
get born in his mothers vacation
cottage in Trieste, instead of vi
emma, where his home was, he would
be in an internment camp in Eng
land now, waiting a few years for
his visa to the United States. The
Austrian quota is damned to the
gunwales but the Italian quota is all
empty.
If he hadn't happened to be bit by
the acting bug, he'd be an ex-book
publisher in Vienna now chats
what he threw away to become an
actor and would be bankrupt or in
Jail or in the army or dead, If he
hadn't felt so strongly about the
Nazis in 1888, when he was offered
a contract by Ufa. German film
company, which he rejected, he'd
be one of Joe Goebbels stooges now
Che is highly Aryan.
If Henry Shereck hadn't Offered
him an acting Job in London in 1885
he might have heen In Vienna vhAr