MARCIA
MAE JONES: Hollywood Child Star
By Michael Gartside
In the summer of 1998,
I was privileged to meet one of Hollywood's most charming personalities.
The wonderful Marcia Mae Jones. My son and I were warmly welcomed at
her home in Sherman Oaks, California and treated to cold sodas, very
welcome in the searing heat. My son took a liking to the cookies Marcia
offered, a fact she always reminds us of when she writes.
Marcia
started by saying a bit about her life now: "I am a member of the Academy,
and I spend a lot of my weekends watching films we have to vote on.
I go down there, and I have a good time. There's a lot of interest in
my career now."
I asked
Marcia how she got started in films.
"I lived
on Curzon in Hollywood. The house is still there. I have two brothers
and a sister, and they were all in the movies as children. My mother
had been an actress, Freda Jones. My father worked for the Western Union
and later for the Los Angeles Times, and he travelled. Mother wanted
us all to be in pictures.
ãBut I
was just a baby, and one day the baby sitter didn't arrive so she had
to take me in a baby carriage when she brought the rest of the family
to the studio for their day's work. And the director, James Cruze, walked
by and saw me in the baby carriage, and he said, 'That's the baby!'
And there I was with ZaSu Pitts and Dolores Costello in a film called
Mannequin in 1926. I was just two years old when it came out. That's
really how I started.
ãFrom there
I did all kinds of movies as a toddler and a little girl, not billed,
of course. I was in the famous The King of Jazz which was one of the
first big musicals, and that was in 1929. And I was in Street Scene
with Sylvia Sidney in 1931 where I had to say grace at the dinner table,
and with Jane Withers in one of her early films. But the one I love
was with Jackie Cooper, The Champ.
ãMy first
big part was in Night Nurse with Clark Gable in 1931. The little girls
don't come into the movie until about half way through. There is some
sort of maltreatment going on. If you watch it, I'm sitting in this
milk bath, and I kept standing up, and they kept telling me to sit down.
Well, finally they found out that they had the heater heating the milk
bath turned too high, and so no wonder I kept getting up. I was being
boiled in milk.
ãWhat I
do remember is that I had a nose bleed. Betty Jane Graham was in Night
Nurse with me, and she was Judy Garland's best friend and lived next
door to me. That's how I knew Judy.
ãI've never
forgotten Jean Harlow. I don't know how old I was but I played a flower
girl at her wedding to Franchot Tone. She was all in white furs; her
hair was white, and I was supposed to be throwing flowers, but she was
so beautiful that all I could do was to stare at her, and they were
getting mad at me. Bombshell [1933], I think it was.
ãIn The
Garden of Allah, I was lent by Goldwyn to Selznick. Bonita Granville
and I never forgot it. We were upstairs in a convent looking down on
Charles Boyer and Marlene Dietrich, and we were all so thrilled. She
was so beautiful, and he was so handsome.
ãLater
on after These Three when I became really famous, I was starred in most
of my movies. Margaret, Macon, and Marvin, my sister and my brothers,
didn't continue beyond being young. My mother loved me a lot, and because
I was the one always going out to work in the movies, it was very hard
on the others, and it must have caused some jealousy."
In These
Three (1936) for Sam Goldwyn, and based on Lillian Hellman's play The
Children's Hour, Bonita Granville tells her grandmother that one of
the two women who run her school (Merle Oberon and Miriam Hopkins) is
having an affair with the fiancee of the other. Bonita is called upon
to bully and threaten Marcia, in the role of Rosalie, to such an extent
that cinema goers were horrified at the intensity of the cruel treatment,
and Marcia's pitiful face was etched on their hearts.
"These
Three made me a star," said Marcia. "We were out on the back lot at
Twentieth, where I was, before Goldwyn, and my hands were dirty. I was
dirty. And when I went in to meet William Wyler, I kept apologizing
that my hands were dirty, and he said, ÎThat's Rosalie.â And I turned
round to see who Rosalie was. It was me! That was what put me up there,
that movie, and it did Bonita too.
ãI would
have given anything to have worked with William Wyler as an adult. However,
he scared me as a child because he would just sit and look at you, and
you would know you didn't do it right. And you'd have to do it over
and over again. But I loved him, and I loved Merle Oberon, and I even
liked Miriam Hopkins even though she wasn't generally liked, but she
was always very nice to me. Marvellous actress. Joel McCrea was nice
to work with. He was a very quiet man.
ãThat was
my favorite film. We did it on C.B. de Mille's Lux Radio Theatre and
on Louella Parson's Hollywood Hotel, but Miriam Hopkins really didn't
want the little girls to have as much on the radio as they did on the
movie, and so she walked off. Of course, only being eleven years old,
I was a nervous wreck especially when Louella Parsons said, 'Bring on
the stand in.' But then they pulled the drapes, and Miriam Hopkins walked
out. That really impressed me.
ãDo
you know, after the film somebody from England sent Bonita a Bible and
told her if she read a chapter every day, she would become a good girl.
She always wanted to ride a bicycle, but her mother wouldn't let her
in case she fell off. But we lived near each other, and when we were
filming, she would come home with me for lunch, and she would ride my
bicycle out front, and her mother didn't know it. I am the only one
[still] alive from that movie. It makes me feel so strange. Everyone
has gone.
ãSo many
people I grew up with have died of alcoholism, drugs. Freddie Bartholomew
hated Hollywood, but a year and a half before he died he came back,
and we all met and had a reunion, and he was very glad of that visit.
He was a wonderful person."
In 1937
Marcia was in Lady Behave as Sally Eilers' daughter, and in Two Wise
Maids where she played a tough girl.
"I was
under contract first to Sam Goldwyn and then with David Selznick, and
then with the Temple movies it was Twentieth Century again and with
the Deanna Durbin movies it was Universal. I was also under contract
for a while with Warner Bros. The rest was freelance.
ãSchooling
brought me a lot of confusion when I was very small because I was still
in public school. When I was in school I wanted to be back acting, and
when I was acting I wanted to be back in public school.
ãLater
on we had schooling on the lot. For Shirley Temple it worked great;
for Jane Withers it worked great, but I was one of those kids who didn't
like school. So I was always glad when we were called on the set. But
looking back on it, it wasn't really too good because you kept on being
called. Well, I graduated when I was about seventeen, and I knew exactly
nothing. Also, freelancing disrupted things for me so much. You are
not too well liked when you are famous. It makes it very difficult.
You are either called spoiled or a brat or conceited or something. So
I developed an attitude at a very early age -- I don't care. But I did
care way down deep."
I next
asked Marcia if she had much free time or if acting took up her free
time.
"Pretty
much so. Pretty much so. I wasn't allowed to do what most kids were
allowed to do. My mother pushed me, but my father was kind of in awe
of me. He really didn't know quite what to do with it all. But my mother
was definitely a motion picture mother. She loved the motion picture.
In fact before she died she was acting. She was doing very well. The
last thing she was in was The Money Changers with Kirk Douglas."
I asked
Marcia about Mountain Justice (1937) with George Brent and Josephine
Hutchinson, a true story about a teacher in the Ozarks who accidentally
kills her mean and brutal father. The townspeople won't believe her,
and they almost lynch her, but she is rescued by the authorities. The
director was Michael Curtiz.
"He always
called me Garcia because he couldn't say Marcia. It didn't turn out
as well as it should have. Josephine Hutchinson was a marvellous actress
though.
ãI was
back at Twentieth Century for Heidi with Shirley Temple in 1937. I played
the crippled girl Clara Sesemann, and Heidi is sent to be my companion
in Frankfurt but misses her grandpa in the mountains. My mother was
on the set most of the time as were the mothers of the other child actors,
including Shirley's. Mrs Temple would take Mother and me into Shirley's
dressing room in the afternoon and give us tea. Our two mothers got
along fine.
ãThe movie
was made in the summer, and it was very hot. My bit was all done in
a huge tent. They had a street scene and everything and machines to
make the snow, but it was very, very hot in that tent. The artificial
snow was awful for our throats, and Jean Hersholt, Heidi's grandpa,
collapsed from the heat.
ãI had
to do all the acting, like when I was struggling to walk, on my own
or with Mother's advice because the director, Allan Dwan, didn't direct
me at all. I was quite tall even for my age, and when I was trying to
get out of the wheelchair, leaning on Shirley, I seemed to get bigger
and bigger, watching the film, and as we watched it years later, my
husband at the time bellowed out, 'It's a giraffe!'
ãI got
along well with Shirley, and we laughed a lot although she was rather
protected because they didn't want her injured at all. There were a
lot of bodyguards even when we were playing miniature golf together
on location at Lake Arrowhead. I was thirteen by then and madly in love
with Tyrone Power so I would persuade Mother we should eat in the commissary
so I could see him.
ãWith The
Life Of Emile Zola, in 1937, the director, the dialogue man, the assistant
director, my mother were all at me with, 'You must not miss your line.'
Well, if you see it today, I'm carrying this tray and all these dishes
were rattling because I was so nervous, and I go in, and guess who blew
their line? Paul Muni. And from then on I liked him so very much. I
just wanted to tell everyone off, but I was just a little girl, and
I couldn't.
ãMad About
Music was Deanna Durbin's third film, in 1938. Later on I made First
Love with her too. Deanna lives in Paris now. I hear from her.
ãDeanna
was lovely and I liked working in those films. She was treated very
badly though. She was already in love with someone, and they broke it
up because they didn't want her to be married. And then she married
Felix Jackson, and he took her for everything, and she had a daughter
by him, and then [another person] took a lot of money from her. So,
she just got on a plane for Paris, and that's where she married Charles
David. And she does not want come back here.
ãIn The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer, for Selznick, I was originally signed to play Becky, but I had
my height that I have now at a very early age. They had already signed
Tommy Kelly for Tom Sawyer and Jackie Moran for Huck Finn, so Anne Gillis
played Becky, and I played Mary Sawyer. We had a lot of fun making that.
We were three months on the back lot. A cave and everything was built.
When shooting was over we were allowed to play on the sets we had been
working on, and this was great fun and something we looked forward to.
I felt so awful when they tore it down. It was really like another family.
It was great."
In 1939,
Marcia made Meet Dr Christian with Jean Hersholt for RKO.
"It was
one of a series done for RKO by an independent company. Jackie Moran
was in it, and he was in a series I did called Barefoot Boy around this
time. Gale Storm was in it too. They and other films I made for Monogram
and PRC in the Forties got [me] in a very bad habit of doing a scene
in one take.
ãMuch later
on, Bette Davis brought me up on this. I was in the movie The Star with
her, and I played a waitress serving her coffee, and they didn't have
the cup and saucer so I was faking it. But then the cup and saucer came,
and I was still faking it because that's what we did in those cheap
movies to save time, and she looked up at me and she said, 'Would you
mind very much giving me the cup and saucer?' because it was very important
for her for timing. And I told her later I was so embarrassed, but these
cheap movies had gotten me in the most terrible habit.
ãThose
films with Jackie Moran were very popular movies. We were top starred.
It was harder to do because we were in practically every scene, and
you were learning lines as fast as you could. They were made in eight
or ten days. My mother used to sit on the edge of the bed, and I would
learn lines at night time so I would go to sleep, and they'd sink in,
and we would go over them on the way to work."
The
Little Princess with Shirley again. 1939.
"They
made a double of the outfits we wore so that if the scene wasn't right
we could change into the spare set quickly. Shirley has to throw ashes
over me. I play a mean girl. The ashes were made out of corn flakes
and flour. Horrible stuff. Shirley dumped the ashes on me, and then
she went out the door and then when the director, Walter Lang, said,
'Cut,' she came back in and looked at me and went over to him and said,
'Can we do that again?' I wanted to kill her and run, but that's with
a child's eye view. I was a mean girl in that film, and I didn't like
it at all, having played the nice girl in Heidi. I felt as if I were
on the outside looking in. But Shirley's mother did request me for The
Little Princess despite me receiving as much fan mail as Shirley for
Heidi.
ãThere
was The Haunted House in 1940 and then Anne of Windy Poplars with Ann
Shirley. I enjoyed playing a mean girl this time. I do good as a mean
girl."
The Old
Swimmin' Hole, Tomboy, Dr Kildare's Strange Case and The Gang's All
Here were Marciaâs 1940 movies. In the Forties Marcia was in a number
of teen films. She was growing up.
"Letâs
Go Collegiate, Nice Girl?, Secrets of a Co-Ed ...I don't talk much about
that movie. That was one of those cheapos, but it was very popular.
These sort of films were very popular in those days."
Nobody's
Darling in 1943 was followed by The Youngest Profession, was about autograph
seekers with Virginia Weidler.
"It was
really a very funny story because I played a bitch with a B, and they
say Robert Taylor's coming and I say, 'I bet!'
ãWe had
to rehearse before Robert arrived in the studio for his guest appearance.
When I go to the door and I open it and there he stands, I am supposed
to be speechless, and I really was speechless. He was so handsome and
so nice.
ãIn 1943
I was in Top Man with Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan. Donald's terrific.
He really is. Susanna Foster was in it. It was a kind of college movie.
Donald and Peggy were so popular at that time. I see Donald often now.
I had finished schooling by then, but I had very strict parents. No
romances at all.
ãAnd the
next year for Columbia I made Nine Girls. I had scarlet fever throughout
the whole movie. The studio was in a panic and didn't want to be in
quarantine so they kept it quiet, and I was isolated in a dressing room
and brought on when I was needed. But if you really look at my eyes
you can tell I was sick. I peeled from the top of my head to my feet.
Ann Harding and Anita Louise were in that. I liked them all. Shirley
Mills was in it, and I see her. Jeff Donnell was in it too. She was
well known at the time, and then she was on General Hospital.
ãA few
years ago they asked all of us child actors to come to the Academy on
the Oscar night, and I was to represent The Life of Emile Zola, and
Jeff called me and offered to lend me her mink stole, but I never got
her message until the next day, and she died that night. In the end
none of us went on because of the traffic near the Shrine. We got there,
but it was too late. I felt awful about her dying. It's very difficult
to get into the Oscars. You practically need your birth certificate."
Lady In The Deathhouse (1944).
"I
had a very big part in that, with Jean Parker. I play Jean Parker's
sister, and I save her from the gas chamber. And I had a starring role
in Snafu (1945) as an Australian girl. Street Corner... that's the one
I don't want to talk about. (1948). I starred as a girl who gets in
trouble and has to have an abortion, and they had me leaning against
a lamp post looking like a hooker. The script was very good, but they
just added these other bits I didn't agree to.
ãI deliberately
married to get away from home. And I never left because it was in the
War. He was a lieutenant commander, Robert Chic. Out of it came two
beautiful sons which I am very grateful for, but he couldn't assume
responsibility so I sought a divorce. I don't believe in divorce although
I have had two, but at the time I hoped it would get us back together
again but it didn't. Denny was born in '45 and Tim in '47. From Denny
I have a grandson Matthew and a granddaughter Alison. Denny's the stage
manager of The Price Is Right. Tim is studying to be an actor.
ãI lived
at home with my babies. Now, that's when I went to work for Greg Bautzer.
He was a great big famous attorney. In fact, he went with Joan Crawford
for years. I knew Christina Crawford, and she didn't tell half what
happened. Joan Crawford was a terrible woman, but only when she drank.
Not many people know, but Christina gave her brother Christopher half
of the money she got. I've always admired Christina. I spent a week
with them at their ranch, and I'm here to tell you, it's true.
ãHoward
Hughes often called Bautzer's office, and he never could understand
why I always recognized his voice, but he wore a hearing aid and on
the phone it [made] an echo. One day he came in. I had never seen him,
and he was in a white shirt, white pants, and white tennis shoes. I
thought he was the milkman. I was extremely busy, and I was just about
to tell him he had to go when he cleared his throat and said, ÎMarcia,
will you tell Mr Bautzer it's Mr Hughes.â Well, I nearly died."
At the
end of the Forties and the beginning of the Fifties, Marcia had a few
roles in films, usually as a young housewife in Tucson (1949), Trouble
Preferred (1949), Arson, Inc., (1950), and for Warners, The Daughter
of Rosie O'Grady, also 1950. This film, with June Haver and Gordon MacRae,
was almost the first movie for Debbie Reynolds.
"I played
one of three sisters, and I was the oldest who had the triplets. Debbie
Reynolds drove us all crazy selling Girl Scout cookies. I was in the
midst of a divorce. It was a crazy set. The doctor that June was going
with was dying. Gordon was in love with some actress."
In 1952
Marcia was in The Yellow Haired Kid, and in 1973 she was in The Spectre
of Allan Poe and The Way We Were.
"We moved
from Curzon down to Downsmere on Wilshire, and then when I went to the
Crawford ranch I met my second husband, Bill Davenport. He wrote [scripts
for] Ozzie And Harriet, All In The Family, Mr Ed, The Brothers, and
so many more. Gilligan's Island was the last one he wrote. But he had
a problem with alcohol and drugs so that marriage didn't last. I married
him in 1955. Then I started to do a lot of television. My second husband
committed suicide, and that was a great sorrow to me because we had
a happy life.
ãI did
a whole series of Wild Bill Hickock and The Cisco Kid and The Life of
Riley and many of the Buster Keaton series. I did Peyton Place, Burns
and Allen, The Joan Davis Show, and I wound up on General Hospital.
I thought I was making a comeback, but my character left. It disheartened
me.
ãIn 1980
I did the Bill Bixby Show. That was funny because I was playing a hooker,
and Bixby came on and he hadn't spoken to me, and I began to panic and
thought, 'What's the matter?' And he came closer and whispered, 'Could
you tell me where you are?' And I said, 'I'm right in front of you,'
because he didn't have his glasses. It was so funny. I did Marcus Welby,
but not with Robert Young, I was the head of the nurses. My agent would
call me or I would go on an interview. The last thing I did was The
Shirley Temple Tribute. But I don't do anything anymore. I've kind of
retired.
ãNow I
see Jane Withers a lot, and I'm a member of the Academy, and I'm very
busy with that. I have to vote on the foreign films and the student
films. We go every Saturday and Sunday. And that's quite an honor. You
can't just become a member. You have to work and earn it. And you have
to have so many major parts. They can't be bits. We must see all five
foreign films and all five documentaries or we can't vote.
ãMy philosophy
of life is a day at a time. You finally learn to live a day at a time
and not make big plans and to enjoy what time you have left. I see Jane
and Donald O'Connor and Lon McAllister. I see friends and read a lot
and fool around during the week. I love Tom Hanks and George Clooney
and Helen Hunt of the current actors."ð
