IT would take a telephone directory to list all of the pictures in which Ronald played in those first years. But it was with the making of 'The Dark Angel' that there came the next landmark in Ronald's career. And a landmark, too, in the 'career' of the cinema. For Vilma Banky and Ronald Colman, starring in this Goldwyn production of still-blessed memory, were the precursers of the teaming idea which was later to become so popular in Hollywood. They so stormed the box office, the dark handsome man and the blonde beautiful woman, that they continued to team in some six or eight pictures, including 'The Winning of Barbara Worth' (which also served to introduce Gary Cooper to the screen), 'The Night of Love,' 'The Magic Flame', 'Two Lovers.'
They were finally separated for the reason which still 'divorces' most screen teamings .. ie ... the studio can make more money by splitting a successful team, putting a less well-known player with each member of the star-team, thus doubling their profits from the divided merchandise.
"I made my first personal apearance with the opening of 'Bulldog Drummond' in San Francisco and in New York," Ronald told me. "It was the first time, excepting in Hollywood on occasions and when I made my first return trip to England after we did 'The Rescue' that I had really met the picture fans face to face.
"It was a gratifying experience, professionally. But I was terribly, horribly ill-at-ease personally. I had to stand before them, denuded of Drummond as myself. I knew then that I would never be any good at that sort of thing. I have never tried 'that sort of thing' again."
PICTURE followed picture in such rapid succession that the young man began to feel suffocated. "The theatre is like Life," says Ronnie. "There is feast or famine, there is no work at all or there is nothing but work ... "
He played in 'Raffles' with Kay Francis to whom he was promptly reported "engaged." This was Ronald's first experience with 'publicity' romances. He did not know then that a suggested romance between a young man and a young woman starring together in a picture helps to 'sell' that picture. Ronald and his wife were separated by this time, but not yet divorced. But this slight obstacle did not prevent the Press from carrying 'rumours' of his engagement, first to Kay Francis, then to other girls with whom he worked in pictures, ocassionally to young women he had not met at all.
Superimposed upon his natural reticence, this sort of publicity created in him a sharp aversion to any 'meddling', either factual or fictitious, with his private life.
And he discovered that he was not alone in his revulsion. Kay Francis detested 'revelations' about her private life and said so, trenchantly.
Ronald had, by this time, taken a small house behind a high wall in an outpost of Hollywood. He began, then, his habit of entertaining his friends at home or going to small private parties in their homes. As he began to retreat further and further from the spotlight and the limelight where, most prolifically, the 'cultures' of publicity were brewed and grew apace, the legends began to grow around his name. In murmurous undertones and sometimes in headlined overtones Hollywood called Mr. Colman a 'hermit,' a 'recluse,' an 'anti-social' mystery man with something 'very strange' about his habit of seclusion.
Ronald began to feel the need of getting away from it all. He went abroad again. He went to London to see his people, to Paris, to Rome. He found that no matter where he was he could not get away from Ronald Colman, the movie actor. He had become a trademark, his face was a poster. He boarded ship again and went around the world, stopping off at remote ports. This was a little better. But even in the most unlikely places he found that the long, prehensile finger of Hollywood publicity had preceded him and that the trademark called Ronald Colman was recognised.
"I felt," he tells you, "exactly as I used to feel as a boy when I stumbled into the drawing room at home to find that there was 'company' for tea, only now it was not so easy to stumble out again. For now the 'company' was everywhere ...."
"There are some demonstrations of public interest in a star which are gratifying. If, at any time, for instance, a stranger speaks to me, whether flatteringly or critically, of some picture of mine, I am pleased and interested. But this is not the kind of attention we attract, we who are on the screen. The more restrained demonstrations of interest accorded celebrities in other walks of life are not for the likes of us! Certain incidents are representative: dancing at a club one evening I was poked in the ribs by a jovial fellow who circled about my partner and me, screaming into our ears, "Say, I heard you talking to the lady just now and you talked just the same way to Frances Dee in "If I were King"; d'ya always talk to women the same way? Boyoh-boy, some line!"
"On another occasion I was dining with a lady in an hotel restaurant when a bibulous stranger wove his way to our table and demanded that I dance with his wife. It was, he said, a 'command performance from the Little Woman'. When I explained, rather unnecessarily, one would thinkk, that I was already engaged he became very beligerent, very, very noisy and wanted to know whether I thought I was 'too good' to dance with his wife!
"I remember well the occasion of Bill Powell's first trip to England when I tried to show my my London. We started out for a day of sight-seeing. And in the hope that we might not be 'sights' ourselves we took one of of those deep-seated taxis into which you sink so low that only your eyebrows are visible. We hadn't gone more than half a mile before we realised that we were being watched, eyes were peering down on us from the tops of buses, from the windows of office buildings and private homes. We visited one or two of the old landmarks and then gave it up. When we had to sign autographs while standing on the stone in Westminster marked 'O, rare Ben Jonson!' we knew we were licked.
"The glitter surrounding a screen star has robbed me of many of the pleasures and privileges I value, however peculiar my sense of values may seem to be. I am the sort of person who perhaps unfortunately, does not care for the rewards so-called Fame brings. And though a gift may be rate and costly, if you give it to a man who has no use for it, it is not precious to him.
"The glitter called Fame has robbed me of friendships, both old and new. Some of my old friends who have not been so fortunate with this world's goods, as I have been, naturally feel reluctance about accepting hospitality they cannot return 'in kind'. On the other hand, I often meet men with whom I feel congenial and have reason to believe the congeniality mutual. Nothing develops from these meetings. Because, though it is nice to hope that they may say to themselves, 'Colman seems a pretty good sort,' it is certain that they add, 'but - a movie star! I can't keep up with that!' I don't blame them. But such experiences do make me all the more anxious to behave myself as a private citizen when I am not at work.
"And so, eventually," said Mr. Colman, "I decided to become a free-lance player, to sign no more contracts for more than one picture at a time. I made up my mind to do not more than one picture a year, two at the outside. This plan would give me more time to myself and less publicity. And this is what I do. I read scripts when they are submitted to me. If the script and the part interest me, and all other terms are agreeable, I make the picture. Otherwise, I reject it."
"I did such pictures as 'Tale of Two Cities', 'Under Two Flags,' 'Prisoner of Zenda,' 'If I were King' because I wanted to do them. I may make another picture this year. I may not make another picture for five years. Perhaps I may never make another picture again. I like the feeling of 'perhaps never again.' It is an elastic phrase. It gives me a sense of time and space and freedom. In the intervals between pictures of my own choosing I can travel or stay at home, seeing our friends, following, though, amateurishly, in y father's horticultural footsteps. I have my home in Beverly Hills, which is now our home. I have bought acreage on the Big Sur in the northern part of the state and some day we may build a permanent home there, a ranch. There is sufficient money for our needs which are on the modest side.
"I do believe that my childhood and early youth, my war experiences, my early days in Brooklyn and New York, all of the pieces which have gone to make my particular pattern, have given me a taste for living quietly. I still feel, as I felt in my childhood, that the more obscure I make myself, the happier I will be.
"I may sound ungrateful about a state of affairs which yields so many tangible rewards as does this business of being a star. In these difficult times, especially, a man should thank God that people want to see him and are willing to pay money to see him. I should like to make it very clear that I am grateful for the opportunities Hollywood has given me to do my work. And very grateful, indeed, for the comfortable rewards these opportunities bring. But if I could step off a sound stage and become invisible, I would be that much the happier."
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1. 'Romantic Recluse, The Private Life of a Public Hero' by Gladys Hall, Photoplay pp. 66-67, 77-78, February, 1939.
