Talent Hunts

If the dream of the American male---as some have said, only half in jest--is to grow up and marry a beautiful, nymphomaniacal heiress who runs a liquor store, the American female's dream is that someday, somewhere, she will be tapped on the shoulder and a gentleman will present his engraved card identifying him as a talent scout associated with a major motion picture studio or an independent producer. He will bow, tip his hat, and say, "Excuse me, but I think you're just the girl we've been looking for to play the lead in our new twelve-million-dollar production of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. At that instant (in the fantasies of every female, from high school sophomore to harried house-frau), a star is born.

Hollywood has fed this girlish aspiration since the earliest days of flickering pictures on a bedsheet tacked up in a Main Street store transformed into a nickelodeon. And, indeed, cutie-pie unknowns have been plucked off soda-fountain stools, from behind the controls of department store elevators or off the cheerleading squad of a local high school, and turned into love goddesses. In addition to feeding the dreams of uncountable impressionable females, the talent-discovery gimmick has often--but not always--served Hollywood well where it counts the most: at the box office. It gives the public a rooting interest in a new movie, results in Himalayas of free publicity and--in one or two rare instances--has even succeeded in finding, developing and creating a new star. No generation, since the days of The Great Train Robbery, has failed to succumb to the ineffable lure of this oldest of publicity dodges.

"It's a basic gimmick," one of Hollywood's elder statesmen of publicity told me. "If the snake had been a press agent instead of an apple salesman, Eve would have wound up as the first talent-hunt winner in recorded history as 'Miss Garden of Eden.' And what the hell is the story of Cinderella? It's just a talent-hunt gimmick with a twist."

To the serious student of motion-picture history, talent hunts have a strange and bizarre cast of characters. Take, (continued on page 82) Talent Hunts(Continued from page 72) for instance, the Los Angeles milkman, Roy Neville, who made his appointed rounds with his milk bottles, egg cartons and cottage cheese and made a movie star of his eleven-month-old daughter Sandy. Mr. Neville's milk route just happened to include the homes of some of Hollywood's top-level executives. Universal Pictures had launched a search to find a baby boy to play in East Side of Heaven, with Bing Crosby. Mr. Neville went into action. Along with the milk, eggs and cottage cheese, he dropped off an 8 x 10 glossy of Baby Sandy. One of he pictures turned, up with the milk at the door Charles Previn, musical director of the studio. He showed it to David Butler, who was directing the Crosby picture, and Baby Sandy was cent for, tested and at the part. Nobody seemed to mind that the role called for a male baby and Baby Sandy was female. Sex, as we all know, is relatively unimportant in Hollywood. At eleven months, that is. After beating out four thousand applicants for the part, Baby Sandy made two subsequent pictures (Sandy Is a Lady and Sandy Gets Her Man) before old age caught up with her at four and she was retired.

The hero of another talent hunt was a Catholic priest in the Bronx. David Selznick, about to film Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, sent his scouts far and wide to find a typical freckle-encrusted youngster to play the lead. Two of his scouts, Oscar, Serlin and John Darrow, were at St. Raymond's school in the Bronx casing a boy soprano of some local repute. Father Madden, the head of the school, said, "You should have been here sooner. We have nothing but Tom Sawyers in this school. Why, the first boy to open a classroom door for you at St. Raymond's would be perfect." To please the cleric, Serlin and Darrow headed for class 6B, the natural habitat of twelve-year-olds at St. Raymond's. The first boy to open the classroom door was Tommy Kelly, the son of a WPA worker. Father Madden was absolutely right. Tommy was tested, sent to the Coast and given the part. Like Baby sandy before him, Tommy Kelly never quite made the jump from discovery to star, and, after the release of Tom Sawyer, drifted back into obscurity.

One talent-hunt winner had the part handed to her on a silver platter, lost it and then battled hundreds of other contestants to win it all over again. When Herman Wouk sold his novel Marjorie Morningstar to Warner Brother, the studio was sure they had the perfect girl for the lead, Natalie Wood. Miss Wood, who had been a motion picture actress since she was seven, was a veteran of forty or fifty pictures. She had a name, a reputation and a following. The studioset up a luncheon date for Wouk and Natalie Wood at "21" Mr. Wouk was something less than enchanted at the self-assured young lady in, the tight fitting dress who sat across from him at the table. "My Marjorie," he said, "would have been stammering and feeble-talking to novelist twenty years older than herself. She would have said the wrong things. She would have spilled coffee or dropped a fork. Miss Wood is o f the question of the role of Marjorie." Since Audrey Hepburn was unavailable and Elizabeth Taylor had announced her retirement from the screen the part was thrown open to the full talent-hunt treatment. Agents paraded girls through the studio, scouts beat the bushes, local contests to from a Marjorie Morningstar were set up. Finally Mr. Wouk was called to Hollywood to see a test that the studio thought was a lulu. Mr. Wouk sat through it, applauded when it was over and asked the name of the girl who was, undoubtedly, his Marjorie. "Natalie Wood," he was told, and the actress who had lost the part by not spilling coffee or dropping a fork at lunch at "21" had won it back.

When George Stevens was signed to direct the movie version of the Pulitzer Prize winning lay The Diary of Anne Frank, he sent pictures of the real-life Anne Frank to New York Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. He wanted to find a young girl, preferably with no acting experience, who could reflect the pathos and heartbreak of the thirteen-year-old girl who had been exterminated by the Nazis. More than ten thousand candidates were interviewed and heard before a New York fashion model named Millie Perkins was tentatively chosen. Her final, and perhaps most difficult test, was when she was taken to Hollywood and seated at a dinner table next to the real father of Anne Frank, Otto Frank. After dinner Mr. Frank took Millie into the library and talked to her. He emerged two hours later wiping his eyes and quietly nodded his head. The role a been cast.

These are only a few examples of the Hollywood Talent Hunt in action. Four of Hollywood's classic cases of talent-hunt madness merit looking into at some length, for they are perhaps the most interesting of the entire syndrome.

Who would have believed, for instance, that a Chicago dental assistant with an allergy to animals would have beaten out sixty thousand contestants to become "The Panther Woman"?

When Twentieth Century-Fox started an international search to find the perfect woman to play a Restoration trollop named Amber St. Clair, what do you suppose the odds would have been on a demure blonde who was currently employed as a lisping adolescent in the London production of Junior Miss?

What would the odds have been on a tousle-haired teenager hustling sodas behind the counter of her father's pharmacy in Marshall town, Iowa, being tapped 4o play one of the great roles in dramatic literature, Shaw's St. Joan?

Or how about a hazel-eyed English girl who went to watch a spectacular fire on a studio back lot being chosen to play a Southern belle in one of the most successful motion pictures ever made?

The search for The Panther Woman is a classic example of gimmick that was dreamed up as a last resort to hypo a picture that had too little an came too late.

In 1932, monster pictures were making box-office history across the country. Frankenstein (the first of the spare-parts monsters) started a cycle that included walking mummies, giant squids with superhuman intelligence and a fondness for cuddlesome starlets, and one-eyed horrors with the sex appetites of Casanova. Paramount leaped on this already overcrowded bandwagon with an H. G. Wells short story called The Island of Dr. Moreau. The title was changed to The Island of Lost Souls and an up-and-coming character actor named Charles Laughton was engaged to play, a mad scientist on a deserted tropical island who amused himself by turning animals into human beings. The love interest in the picture was to be a young lady he had whipped up out of a convenient panther who had a disconcerting habit of growing back a set of claws in the middle of a love scene an clamping them into her lover's neck -- with fatal results. As horror pictures go, it figured to be a mild entry, so the brass at Paramount decided to pull out the stops, give the publicity department the go-ahead and come up with some kind of a campaign that would turn it into a low-budget gold mine. The nation's press was alerted. Paramount was going to find A Panther Woman and star her in the picture.

"She is part animal ... part woman! She has everything but a soul!" screamed the ads. To any buff of feminine beauty looking at the artist's concept of what a panther woman should look like, the soul seemed like a reasonably expendable piece of equipment. Theatre lobbies, high school drama classes and dime-store counters were flooded with entry blanks and more than six thousand American women, presumably normal in other respects, rushed forward tolay, claim to the title. Paramount milked the contest running a series of elimination tests in key cities across the country. In the final s for The Panther Woman of the Middle West, two contestants arrived at the theatre dressed in identical (continued on page 110)Talent Hunts(continued from page 82) tiger-skin panties and bras and promptly got into a hair-tugging match. During the search for The Panther Woman of Dixie, one contestant tried to aid her case by growling at the judges. One of the losers in The Panther Woman of New England contest turned up onstage gnawing a huge bone. The press responded. In addition to pictures of all contestants, they ran learned article by local authorities on their conceptions of how a panther woman should behave, and all over the country zoo officials announced (with, we can assume, some persuasion by Paramount press agents) that attendance at the panther cages was up two hundred percent. Finally, the winners of each of the regional contests were shipped off to Hollywood to be screen-tested. The screen test consisted of having each of them run around barefooted through a studio jungle on an unheated sound stage wearing an abbreviated sarong. Two of the contestants came down with pneumonia and one cut her foot on a broken light bulb. After viewing the result of the tests, Paramount announced the winner. The laurel wreath was planted on the brow of Kathleen Burke a sometime dental assistant sometime soap-opera heroine, sometime model and now full-time Panther Woman. Before the actual shooting on the picture began, the press agents were able to squeeze one more drop out of the ballyhoo. They decided that their Panther Woman must always be seen in public clutching a panther to her breast. The first snag developed when they were unable o buy or rent a panther. Zoos, pet sops and wild animal farms were no help at all. Hollywood, at that crucial moment in its history, was pantherless. "What the hell," said a member of the publicity department. "Why be so damned literal? Hollywood is crawling with leopards. Outside of another leopard who's going to know the difference?"

Miss Burke adopted a baby leopard and was told to keep within flashbulb distance of herself at all times. She took it home. The next morning she arrived for the shooting covered with a rash. The studio doctor diagnosed it as an allergy to leopards. Miss Burke laid in a stock of antiseptic powder and bravely carried on as the adopted mother of the little beast. During the course of the shooting of the picture, another snag developed. The leopard cub began to grow up and how a natural tendency (Hollywood being what it is, even to leopards) to take playful little nips at Miss Burke's anatomy. Since Miss Burke had literally taken to cradling it to her bosom, a ordered, close observers of the rushes were able to find the evidence of the nips, since Miss Burke was wearing what the studio proudly claimed to be the lowest-cut sarong in the history of jungle pictures.

The Island of Lost Souls was finally finished and released and laid a large egg at the box office. After getting rid of the leopard and the allergy. Miss Burke went on to a minor career in Hollywood with roles in The Zoo Murder Story and Lives of a Bengal Lancer. She stuck around Hollywood until 1938. Cast in a picture called Boy of he Streets, Miss Burke, feeling she had come a long way from her Panther Woman beginnings left Hollywood. She married the son of a former Spanish minister to Mexico who made his living as a heel-clicking dancer. When last heard of professionally, Miss Burke was back in radio paying leads in religious dramas.

In 1944, Twentieth Century-Fox bought a novel called Forever Amber that had been riding the best-seller lists for months. Most literary experts agreed that it had at least one distinction: its heroine was involved with more beds than a hotel chambemaid. Forever Amber became the tagline in a thousand smoking-car jokes, radio comics re-christened it Forever At It and at least one Army public relations officer released a communiqué that told the world that Amber St. Clair had been elected the girl his division most wanted on a beach-head landing. Twentieth Century had what is known in the trade as a hot property. To make it even hotter, the studio announced that it was engaging in an international search for the girl best equipped to play Kathleen Winsor's round-heeled heroine. Every female star in Hollywood put in a bid for the role. Several had sober second thoughts after they'd seen the script and announced chastely that they weren't interested after all because their fans wouldn't want them to play such a bad girl. Twentieth Century kept the casting problem alive by coming up with new names on an almost daily basis. At one point, somebody even suggested that the author. Miss Winsor (certainly one of the most attractive members of the Authors' League) be drafted lore part. Eventually (when the last ounce of public interest in the search had been rung out) the studio announced, with proper fanfare that they had cast an unknown. Peggy Cummins, who was currently employed as the lead in the London production of Junior Miss. Miss Cummins, a baby-laced blonde with the kind of mouth that used to be called cupid's bow, was rushed to Hollywood and given the full treatment. The press agents were in for at least one peasant surprise: newspapers kept spelling her name wrong as Peggy Cummings. That, of course, gave them an excuse to send out stories pointing out the there was no g in Miss Cummins' name and to mention in passing that she was starring in Forever Amber.

Shooting on the picture started in early 1946. Three hundred thousand dollars and four thousand feet of film later, they discovered that, whatever her other talents, Miss Cummins, with or without a g, was not Amber. One executive, who didn't see any rushes until the picture was half finished weighed in with the opinion that she looked and acted like a little girl dressed up in her mother's clothes. Miss Cummins was retired from the picture and put into lower-budgeted items more suited to her special talents. At this point, Miss Cummins, according to the Hollywood wisecrackers, was known as "Temporarily Amber." The three hundred thousand dollars and the four thousand feet of film went down the drain and an old pro who had been considered the likeliest candidate to play the role from the start, Linda Darnell, was rushed into the picture. As has often happened in the past, the publicity operation was a success but the patient died -- at the box office, that is.

But in terms of national interest and importance the searches for Amber and The Panther Woman were bush-league stuff. The real champion was the search for Scarlett O'Hara. It was planned with the precision and know-how of an invasion, and, even as respected an authority as The New York Times' movie critic Bosley Crowther contended it was on the level. To fill in he background on the search for the female lead in the movie that eventually became the number-two box-office leader of all times (to date it has grossed in excess of thirty-three-and-a-half million dollars, just a shade behind The Ten Commandments; it is, however, due for rerelease this month, and may well climb to the number-one spot), let us be in with the novel by Margaret Mitchell.

Publishers, like baseball teams, send scouts out through the hinterlands at least once a year to flush out some new talent. On one such trip, the man from Macmillan worked his way to Atlanta and found Miss Margaret Mitchell, who showed him the draft of first novel she thought she'd call Gone with the Wind Like millions of subsequent readers the man from Macmillan was impressed, took the manuscript back to New York with him, and several weeks later Miss Mitchell signed a contract. Before publication the book's future was assured by Book-of-the-Month-Club selection. Miss Mitchell, by this time, had a literary agent, Annie Laurie Williams, who sent advance copies of the book around to the movie companies and got very few nibbles. They considered her asking price of one hundred thousand dollars too high and they felt that the cycle of Civil War pictures had pretty much run its course. They pointed to a recent Miriam Hopkins vehicle, So Red the Rose, which, was a box-office disaster, as proof. Hollywood story editors also complained that the heroine was an unmitigated bitch and felt that was a major drawback to a screen translation David O. Selznick, who had left MGM a year earlier to forms his own independent company was shopping around for properties and on the advice of his story editor, decided to take a flyer on Miss Mitchell and her book. Because of the lack of competition he was able to pick it up for fifty thousand dollars one of the biggest bargains of that or any other year, gone with the Wind became a runaway best seller and the public spontaneously bombarded the publishers and Mr. Selznick with suggestions for the casting of the movie. It was obvious from the first flood of letters that Clark Gable was the overwhelming choice for the role of Rhett Butler, a conclusion Mr. Selznick had come to on his own. Suggestions for Scarlett included virtually every actress on the membership rolls of the Screen Actors Guild. Mr. Selznick belatedly realized the potential of the word-of-mouth advertising he had, and began to feed this ground swell by dropping frequent rumors of his plans for casting. Selznick hired Sydney Howard, a first-rate playwright, to write the screenplay, and engage George Cukor, Garbo's old director, to direct. Word was leaked to the columnists that Selznick was considering Tallulah Bankhead for Scarlett. Miss Bankhead said she wasn't interested. "Personally," she was rumored to have said, "I'd love to play Rhett Butler" The following week a usually reliable Hollywood source was quoted as saying that the only actress who could play the role, in Mr. Selznick's opinion, was Miriam Hopkins. Warner Brothers came to him and offered to finance the production in full and let him have Bette Davis for Scarlett. Errol Flynn for Rhett and Olivia de Havilland for Melanie--for twenty-five percent of the profits. Mr. Selznick declined the offer and sat tight. He knew that in order to get Gable, who was under contract to MGM, he would have to come to some sort of distribution agreement with them.

He eventually did, and just about the time a copy of Gone with the Wind was standard equipment on American coffee tables he announced that he was going to start a nationwide search to find his Scarlett O'Hara. After spending ninety-two thousand dollars and interviewing fourteen hundred candidates (ninety of whom received a black-and-white screen test) he still hadn't cast the part. Two years after he had bought the screen rights, not a camera had turned on the picture. Katharine Hepburn laid siege to Selznick for the role. Margaret Sullavan and Miriam Hopkins wanted the part but were scratched as possibilities. The hysteria mounted to a point where Selznick was routed out of bed one morning to sign for a huge box. It was wrapped in scarlet ribbons and had a note attached saying "Open at once." When he opened it a young lady stepped out, bow ed and its lipsed. "My name is Scarlett O'Hara and I'm here to play the role." She was promptly ushered out of the house.

Among the ninety tested were Susan Hayward (then working as a mode in New York) Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine. Margaret Tallichet and Evelyn Keyes. Among those who didn't receive tests was Lucille Ball, who refused to take seriously the Selznick scout who suggested it. A well-endowed teenager named Judy Turner tested (in a tight-fitting bathing suit) and was turned down. Mervyn Le Roy, producing a picture for Warner Brothers called They Won't Forget, saw her test and was enchanted. He changed her first name to Lana, had his publicity department release a story saying that she had been discovered sitting on a stool at a soda fountain, and the rest, as they say around Schwa's Drug Store is movie history.

In early 1938 the deal with MGM for Gable was signed and it was announced that Norma Shearer had been signed to play Scarlett. At the time, Miss Shearer had been turned into MGM's workhorse, having played every thing from Juliet to Marie Antoinette. She also happened to be married to living Thalberg, the Metro genius-in-residence. A month later, Miss Shearer withdrew from the role with the announcement that her fans objected to her playing a bad woman. It was rumored that Carole Lombard, who was then involved in a romance with Clark Gable, would play Scarlett opposite him. Selznick neither confirmed nor denied the rumor, and it stopped as suddenly as it started.

By late 1938, with the female lead still uncast, Selznick began shooting preliminary scenes. Then, in as dramatic and colorful a fashion as possible, he found his Scarlett O'Hara.

In order to clear the back lot of Selznick's studio (the old Pathé studio in Culver City) to build the O'Hara plantation, Tara, a mountain scenery had to be burned. It was decided that a huge bonfire made of the old sets would serve a purpose: They would film the fire, use he footage as the burning of Atlanta, and thus get some use out of the necessary housecleaning. The sets were repainted to resemble the fronts of houses in Civil War Atlanta, the Culver City Fire Department was ordered to stand by, and two stunt men, dressed as Scarlett and Rhett, were ready to drive by the blazing sets in an old wagon.

Invitation to the burning of Atlanta were sent out to Hollywood's celebrity list, and among those receiving an invite was David Selznick's brother, Myron, one of Hollywood's top agents. When the appointed time arrived on the night of December 18, 1938, David Selznick struck the first match and stood watching as dozen of cameras recorded the scene from a variety of angles. As the lames shot toward the sky, casting bright yellow and red reflections on the faces of the onlookers, Selznick felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned. "David," said brother Myron. "I want you to meet Scarlett O'Hara. Outlined against the flames was a beautiful woman who just happened to be wearing a crinoline and large sunflower hat. The reflection of the flames lit her hazel eyes and her dark-brown hair. David Selznick looked at her for one long moment and then nodded. "I'm delighted," he said. "She is Scarlett O'Hara."

And she was.

The greatest talent hunt of them all was over as brother Myron exposed brother David to a masterpiece of showmanship.

The girl in the large that was, of course, Vivien Leigh, an English actress whose only previous exposure to American audiences was in a Robert Taylor made-in-England picture called A Yank at Oxford.

After the excitement over Scarlett O'Hara, the talent-hunt gimmick remained relatively dormant for several years. Then Otto Preminger revived it with rather astonishing results. Mr. Preminger reckoned most experts as the most publicity-hip producer in the indus, was no stranger to contrversy and getting the last inch of type out of a publicity campaign. After announcing that he planned to film George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan, he held a press conference and kicked oil a gigantic talent hunt for the heroine, of Mr. Shaw's drama. Unlike the search for Scarl ett O'Hara, Mr. Preminger's contest would be limited to unknown actresses. Mr. Preminger made a strong point of the tact that he was looking for a new face combined with little or no acting experience. Cynics felt that looking for a girl like that to tackle one of the most taxing dramatic roles in history was like asking little League southpaw to pitch the seventh game of the World Series. Others thought Mr. Preminger was again demonstrating his savvy and know-how. His reasoning, as they saw it, was that with a property like St. Joan, he had a ready-made but small audience who would go to see it even if he cast Marjorie Main in the role. But a well -publicized talent hunt might send a couple of million filmgoers to the box office to see the film out of curiosity. With Hollywood's usual downgrading of acting talent, the word around Romanoff's was that, Otto could get a performance out of anybody anyway, or make anythm look like a performance after he finished in the cutting room, so why shouldn't he get his kicks and build box office with a publicity stunt?

In the twenty years since Selznick had started hi s Scarlett search, talent hunting had gone up in price. Mr. Preminger's campaign cost slightly more than $150,000 -- but that was hay measured against the value of the publicity he garnered in the process. In an initial burst of optimism, five million entry blanks were sent out to movie theatres, schools and colleges across the land. The requirements were simple. In order to compete you had to be a girl, be between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two and he able to speak English. Out of the five million entry blanks distributed, eighteen thousand were returned. These were weeded clown to three thousand and Mr. Preminger went to work. Hollywood hipsters assert it was a labor of love, knowing Mr. Preminger's reputation as an appreciator of girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two who can speak English. In forty days he flew thirty thousand miles to personally audition candidates.

Meanwhile, back at the soda fountain, a seventeen-year-old high school girl named Jean Seberg was working at her lather's pharmacy in Marshalltown, Iowa. Miss Seberg had been in two high school plays and had a summer in stock under her belt. Miss Carol Houghton, her high school dramatic teacher, entered her name in the contest, and when a letter with Mr. Preminger's return address came to her in care of the Seberg Pharmacy ("The suburban store with the uptown service"), she almost tossed it away on the assumption that it was an ad. When she did open it and discover ed that it was an invitation to come to Chicago and compete against her Midwestern peers, she had no intention of accepting. Her grandmother (who, according to the Preminger press agents. always wanted to be a circus bareback rider) talked her in to it and provided the transportation money. In Chicago, Miss Seberg found herself one of a hundred and fifty candidates read ing the speech from scene six of St. Joan: "Perpetual imprisonment! Am I not then to be set free? Go light your fire!" Miss Seberg lit the fire all right, and in short order was one of three finalists Down to New York for a screen test. Her competitors came from Stockholm and New York.

Each of the three finalists in addition to reading the Perpetual Imprisonment speech, were told to face the camera head on tell their names addresses, ages and their overpowering ambitions. Miss Seberg said, "I'm Jean Seberg. I'm seventeen years old, going on eighteen. I come from Marshalltown, Iowa, and I want to be a very good actress." Shortly after the Three tests were made, Preminger looked at the rushs. His enuing conversation with Jean Seberg went like this:

"What Kind of* Flowers do you like? " he asked.

"Violets. Why?"

"I just want to be sure you have the kind you like the day we start shooting the picture."

The picture was to be made in England, but before the actual filming-started Miss Seberg had a few preliminaries to get out of the way. The publicity department was turned loose and she was exposed to the press. She was amazed to discover that they printed everything she said.

I "My parents wanted a boy. They were going lo call me Oscar. I hope I get to be good enough to give them an Oscar."

"I want to be an actress because I see it as a way to be constructive and help people."

"Marriage and a career are not a problem unless you make them one."

"I read all the latest books. I like progressive jazz."

"I like an extra-large bed. If I'm in a hotel I push the two single beds to gether with the mattresses place d side ways."

"I like Hollywood. Hollywood has a nice smell."

"I don't think I'll study acting. You learn to act by acting . I'd like to go to a dramatic school but just to observe."

She went home to Marshalltown, Iowa, in triumph. The governor of Iowa met her at the airport. The town lathers gave her a wristwatch.

She went back to New York, had her hair clipped like a fashionable poodle and was put aboard a plane for London. In London she was exposed to the press again, was sent to France to pose in the doorway of Joan's Domremy home, went to Paris an got a Dior gown an met the other members of the cast: Sir John Gielgud, Richard Todd, Anton Walbrook and Barry Jones. Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier invited her to dinner and she shared the American candy bars she'd brought with her with Sir John Gielgud, who returned the favor by inviting her to his home dinner to meet Dame Peggy Ashcroft. The little girl from the drugstore in Marshalltown was having a ball. But they had to spoil it by starting to shoot the movie.

Mr. Preminger, however, shad not gotten last headline. The day they filmed the scene of the burning at the stake, a press invitation went out. It was routine public relations. There were to be twelve hundred extras, the largest number ever gathered on a sound stage in England. The press responded in large numbers and by the time Jean Seberg was led out of her dressing room to be chained to the stake, the gallery was filed. She was understandably nervous, not only because of the large crowd watching, but because she'd been nervous about the mechanics of setting aflame the wood piled around her feet. Preminger and his aides reassured her. It was foolproof and, after all, they had spent two days rehearsing it. Nothing could go wrong. But something did. The two extras playing the executioners helped chin her to the stake, the cameras started rolling and the gas jets were lit. Suddenly, the flames roared around her. It was discovered later that too much gas had accumulated in the jet just beneath her feet. It was a horrifying moment. Preminger, who was in a tower above the execution platform, had no way of getting to her. Her hair caught fire and she dropped the prop cross she was carrying and managed to work her arms free from the chains and cover her face. Studio firemen turned a fire extinguisher on her and the executioners manged to release her from the chins and carry her to her dressing room. She had burns on her hands, knees and stomach, but there were no serious after effects. Mr. Preminger's picture wound up on the front page again, though nobody suggested for a moment that the accident was anything but that. It was, however, nice, once Mr. Preminger was assured that his star had survived and that he had managed to supply something more than just a routine story for the assembled newsmen.

The picture was finally finished without further incident and opened in key cities across the United States in July of 1957.

It would be pleasant to report that Mr. Preminger was as fortunate with his discovery as Mr. Selznick was with his. It would be pleasant, but untrue.

A look at the Variety listings of three weeks' grosses in the major cities across the country pretty much sums up the story of the picture's financial fate:

Week of July 3:

Boston: Fair $8,000

Chicago: Sock $10,000

New York: Fair $10,000

Los Angeles: Small $4,200

Week of July 10:

Boston: Thin $3,500

Buffalo: Disappointing $2,500

Chicago: Slight $6,500

New York: Mild $5,500

Los Angeles: Lagging $3,800

Week of July 17:

Buffalo: Closed with dismal $1,000

Chicago: Closed wit slight $4,000

New York: Wound up third and final week with sad $,3500

Los Angeles: Closed with slow $2,600

Miss Seberg's reviews were almost as disastrous as the grosses. The New York Times' Abe Weiller said: "Miss Seberg, for all of her evident sincerity, is callow and unconvincing." Paul Beckley in the New York Herald Tribune said: St. Joan against which many an actress has shattered a lance, seems to have left limp-eyed little Jean Seberg with a handful of spr1inters." John McCarten in The New Yorker said: "The poor youngster, Jean Seberg, had none of the equipment needed to handle a part as difficult as this one." Hollis Alpert in The Saturday Review said: "Jean Seberg, to put it mildly, turns in a performance that is not up to professional standards. Miss Seberg is nineteen, has a sweet face and has Mr. Preminger to thank for having so much to live down at such an early age." Time magazine has the nastiest thins to say. Its anonymous movie critic put it this way: "Actress Seberg, with the advantage of youth, the disadvantage of inexperience, is drastically miscast. Shaw's St. Joan is a chunk of hard brown bread dipped in the red wine of battle and devoured by ravenous angels. Actress Seberg, by physique and disposition is the sort of honeybun that drugstore desperadoes like to nibble with their milk shakes."

Let it be said that time has soothed these wounds and that Miss Seberg has not returned to the drugstore, but has gone on perhaps less gloriously to other film assignments in The Mouse That Roared for instance.

Failures are as much a part of the talent-hunt game as successes. And even as spectacular a failure as St. Joan has done nothing to dim the lustre of the idea of reaching into the crowd and finding a potential star. A long as there are audiences, press agents and unknowns, the talent hunt will still be Hollywood's favorite method of getting the biggest bang for the publicity buck.