Elissa Landi
Photo The New Movie
magazine February 1934
Gallery of Stars
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Elissa Landi
ELISSA LANDI — Daughter of nobility, born in Italy and
reared in London luxury. This blond damsel started acting career merely to
furnish local color for one of four novels she's written. Grew to love the
profession and stayed with it — following London and Broadway stage triumphs
with screen work abroad and in Hollywood. Still writes between picture scenes.
Her latest novel is "House for Sale."
Newest film
is Universale "By Candlelight" with Paul Lukas. Separated from
British attorney husband.
Prefers home
life to cafes and parties. Is excellent horsewoman. Adores big dogs. Considers
health exercises most important investment in the world. Favorite hobby is
walking miles at a time. Leads a quiet life and one of few film stars who save
their money. Is impulsive and positive. Versatile actress.
Her mother,
Countess Zanardi Landi, shares Elissa's Hollywood home which, incidentally, is
next door to Will Rogers.
The New Movie magazine, February 1934.
( Gallery of
Stars )
Part II.
Elissa Landi
The New Movie magazine, December 1933.
“Elissa Landi’s
Romance of Two Worlds”
by Elsie Janis
WHEN the
lovely Elissa Landi landed in Hollywood, the publicity departments got her book
of press notices mixed up with a copy of ‘“Who’s Who!” Instead of telling the
public about her stage successes in London, they concentrated on her mother’s
relationship to some royal house. That was her introduction to us.
I don’t know
yet the real connection, because I never read the many articles about Elissa’s
background. I saw so many headlines and heard so much chatter about her being a
countess or her mother’s being one, and of how we had at last a bit of real
royalty who was not visiting Mary and Doug at Pickfair, that I began rehearsing
my curtsy, now gone a trifle creaky since I ceased bowing on the stage or in
“the presence.”
I remembered
having seen her in London and liking her, but the barrage of baronial blah annoyed
me. Has she come out here to act or sell family heirlooms? I thought. I’m
afraid I even said to kindred cats, “We've got princesses and marquises already
on the screen, but Mickey Mouse still remains the most popular star. No one
asks about his antecedents.”
WHEN I met
Elissa. She was a young Christian on the DeMille set; I was just a visiting
fireman. We shook hands. She twinkled. I twinkled right back at her. Mr.
DeMille beamed: ‘‘You two should be great friends. You have a lot in common.”
He may have
meant our mutual affection for him. Mr. DeMille, as is his habit, said a
mammoth mouthful.
They were
shooting night scenes. It was nearly one A. M., and they were going to continue
all night. They had been doing the same thing for about a week. The Christians
in ‘The Sign of the Cross,’’ who were fearless under attacks of ruthless
Romans, were all trembling in the throes of what California realtors label
“pleasantly cool nights.”
I watched
Elissa find her white-bearded old father shot unto death about seven times.
Never a sign of fatigue or resentment on her part, though she, as Mercia, was
quite perfect the first time.
Due to arrow
trouble, beard slipping, fake blood not flowing freely enough and father’s
death stance not being up to the DeMille standard, they were still killing the
distinguished old Christian when I had to leave or send for my sleeping bag.
I left, but
not without having several snatches of conversation with Elissa between deaths.
The things we found in common on that first meeting were America and DeMille. I
asked how she liked both. She had nothing but praise for each one. I found out
that though, as Mercia, she was every inch a young Christian, as Elissa she was
every half inch a cosmopolitan.
We said au
revoir, auf wiedersehen, hasta manana and au revedercit. The Landi, like
myself, being linguistic, we signed off with “T’ll be seein’ you!”
C. B. DEMILLE
and sunny California are a lot alike in a way. Anyone who has ever felt the
charm of them inevitably returns to bask and sometimes burn under their
magnetic rays.
C. B.’s sets
always look like Old Home Week. Those of his faithful standbys who are not in
the picture can be found hanging around watching and waiting for that moment
when he catches sight of them and greets them as if he had been waiting for
their O.K. on some scene he has been directing.
Extra or
star, the “hello!” retains the same note of pleasant surprise. This, I may add,
is if he has been satisfied with the scene himself. If not, there is apt to be
more hell than o.
Old-timers
who hadn’t worked for years were called for “The Sign of the Cross.” Christian
martyrs suffered; and lots of those players needed no make-up to look the part.
DeMille was a veritable saviour and, though they finished by being fed to the
lions, he saw to it that they had many good meals enroute to the arena.
I saw a lot
of Elissa during those days when I, like the other confirmed DeMillites, was
hanging around. I must admit I did more sitting than hanging, and right beside
the Master. He was very keen about her acting; directed her very little. She
seemed to know instinctively whether the scene had been right or not. Even
before he could speak she would say, “May I do that again?”
Between
scenes Elissa was more like Peter Pan than Mercia. She has a decided boyish
quality which would manifest itself immediately after a scene was O.K.’d. The
martyred Mercia’s virginal Christian robes had to cling tenaciously as she
would stride, leap or run from the range of the camera, kidding the property
man, tossing a line to an extra, or landing a slap on the back of Fredric
Marcus Superbus March.
HERE is quite
a resemblance between Elissa and Katharine Hepburn. One would never suspect it
from the way the former was tied down on the screen prior to “The Warrior’s
Husband.” Elissa was labeled “Royal” on arrival and got sunk in the deep
purple. The Hepburn wouldn’t light long enough for them to stick a label on
her. She wrote her own publicity ticket.
Katharine
Hepburn originated the role of Antiope in the stage version of “The Warrior’s
Husband.” I never saw it, but when they were searching for a screen star to
play the part, I suggested Elissa Landi and got a good laugh.
“She’s too
blank-blank lady-like,” was the first reaction. Antiope had to be like a boy;
she had to fight; and, above all, she had to show her legs and more. Elissa
Landi would never do that.
“I’m not
saying she would,’ I answered, “but I’m telling you as one who has been leg
conscious for years, she could and no one would be disappointed.”
The director
was the first to agree. I think he must have seen Elissa riding bareheaded,
through the passes and over the hills, as she does every morning. That “gal”
astride a horse, chin up, eyes shining, bronze bob flying, could make the
Greeks retreat in embarrassment, admitting that they had no word for it!
I’d like to
see her do Bernard Shaw’s “Joan of Arc,” but then I’d like to see so many
things which are not considered “Box Office Stuff’ by the studios that I have
not worked in one of them for over a year. Perhaps it’s just as well. I didn’t
have to take a cut and the only conferences I attend are the birds’ bathing
beauty contests held daily on the rim of my swimming pool.
Walter Lang,
being one of the younger directors, has no crowd of “Langsters” when he is
shooting a picture, but I was in at the birth of “The Warrior’s Husband” and
got a great kick out of watching others watch what they called “the new Landi” wearing
her armour as if she had been born in it, or handling a shield and sword with
all the ease of Saint George.
After the
first preview of the picture, everyone was saying, “What has happened to Landi?
Walter Lang certainly brought her out. I wouldn’t believe she was the same
person. Boy! What a chassis!” Headlines above criticisms read, “Landi drops her
reserve!”
ELISSA LANDI is not
a girl who drops anything; she throws things. And what she threw to the wind or
the publicity department (they’re somewhat synonymous) was at least six of the
seven veils of bunk she had been swathed in. Coldness, aloofness, classiness,
sexlessness, literary-ness. Maybe I’m making up some nesses, but, anyway, she
saved that seventh veil to throw when the studio wanted her to play a poor
English girl named Smith who marries a royal Italian duke.
I’m afraid
her background gave the foreground a decided shove. You see she happened to
know that such a thing couldn’t happen in Italy even with the Facisti in power.
I know how fatal it is to say a thing couldn’t happen in a studio. The answer
is “It’s going to happen,” and it does.
The royal
Italian duke will marry plain Miss Smith with the approval of Czar Will Hayes.
The Pope is not consulted, but the picture will not depend on the Italian
market. It won’t even pass by it. They have plenty of vegetables in their
markets.
Elissa
refused to take part in the Smith-ducal marriage which could only be a
morganatic one outside of the talkies; and the fight was on.
Naturally she
was said to have lost her head over the success of “The Warrior’s Husband”; in
reality, she had simply regained her self-confidence on seeing and hearing that
the public liked her without the veils.
I WATCHED her
become herself more and more each day during the filming of the picture. By the
time it was finished I knew that any studio attempting to slap Elissa Antiope
back down from the heights of emancipation was in for a battle.
The result
was a draw. Elissa disappeared. I don’t know what became of Miss Smith and her
duke, but when I read that Fox Studios had released Elissa I was happy for all
concerned. Refusing to play a role was not good. Playing it would probably have
been worse. It will be interesting to see where Elissa builds her new nest.
WITH this
article in mind I asked her to come to swim and lunch. If you have, by chance,
followed me through the many free meals I have eaten since starting to write
these friend’s-eye views of the stars, you will be relieved to know that there
is some food available chez moi. ;
She arrived
spick and span in a chic white ensemble. The golden tan of her face in the
bronze frame of her hair formed an attractive setting for the “twinklers” which
alternate between turquoise and jade, according to the light, not sunlight,
moonlight or even arcs, the lights from within.
When Elissa Antiope is talking about music or books
or her garden, the eyes are blue. When she talks pictures, executives, or press
agents they are green. I imagine they have their gray days, and I saw them go
violet the other night when she was talking to Caroline (the countess-mother to
the publicity readers; Caroline to Elissa and her friends). It will be a tough
day for Technicolor when they try to photograph the Landi lamps.
Elissa likes
my little garden, perhaps because she has such a big one. She eyed the pool
which is a “quickie compared to others in Beverly Hills.
“May I go in without a top?” she said. See
“You may go
in any way you like, I substituted, and we compromised on trunks. Please be
assured that I have the smallest pool, but the highest hedge in these parts. If
anyone can see what I wear or don’t wear, I at least am unaware of scrutiny.
Modesty is a form of self-consciousness anyway, sez me!
Well, we
olive-oiled, and sunned and exercised and smoked and talked about everything
but Elissa Antiope’s emancipation.
With lunch came the realization that I was actually feeding the wench and
getting no information on the vital subject. I couldn’t remember what it was.
In the midst of the salad, I snapped into activity.
“Miss Landi, what do you think of talking pictures?”
“I try not to!” said my guest, taking the last radish.
I can’t give you our conversation verbatim, for several reasons, the most
important being that this is an article, not a serial. We sat at lunch until
tea time.
Here are a
few facts that might interest you if you are a Landi fan. And if you’re not,
they may rouse enthusiasm.
Although she
is a composite of as many nationalities as the average Peace Pact and just
about as pacific, Elissa feels that she belongs in America. From the moment she
landed she has said, “This is my country.” Not Austria, where Caroline came
from, not England, where she was raised, not Italy, where the Landi name belongs—
America, where she feels at home.
No sending
back American dollars for her. She has bought a lovely estate, seven acres, up
in the hills. It is among California roses that she spends at least an hour a
day, snipping. Her house is filled with every sort of flower, all from her
garden.
One’s first
visit is a sort of Cook’s tour from vase to vase, for she cuts them and
arranges them herself.
She will
mention her horse as soon as permissible, but she won’t tell you that she has a
stable full of equine dependents. You see, she had horses in her other life. It
does not occur to her that half the joy of possessions in her adopted country
lies in being able to talk about them.
WHEN she did
her disappearing act, she was very thorough. I don’t believe anyone but
Caroline knew where she was, and I would say that Caroline might give the
sphinx lessons in the obsolete art of keeping secrets.
Elissa was
seeing America. Incognito and alone, she braved the wilds of Iowa, Colorado,
Ohio and other states whose names attracted her. Via plane and hired
automobile, she leapt from state to state very much in the same manner that Antiope leapt over the gate on her first
entrance in “The Warrior’s Husband.” But Elissa had no billing. Only once in
six weeks was she recognized, and then she talked the village spy out of it.
She stopped
when she felt like it, renting the front room in some grateful housewife’s
abode. She knows more about real American folks than the folks themselves know.
One thing you
may have read about her is authentic. She is a novelist, and good enough to
have had four books published. The first one she wrote when very young; she
tabulates it as a rather heavy effort. The second, she says, was a bit mad. The
third has done surprisingly well, and the fourth she really has some hope for.
Elissa writes
songs and she can sing them, but she doesn’t insist. Elissa reads palms for
fun, but it’s mostly her fun when she starts telling you home truths which you
wish would remain at home.
Elissa Landi
married a young Englishman several years ago, a very attractive one. He comes
over to visit her, but, so far, she has not returned the call. She says he is a
darling. I’m sure he is, but I can’t visualize her as a married woman. I can’t
see her tied down to anything yet.
The minute I
start giving opinions about the love life of my friends, however, they
immediately do something which causes me to eat my words. Very bad for the
digestion and not too helpful for the disposition; so I’ll stick to the Landi’s
own advice. The best way to keep the marriage knot from slipping is not to talk
about it too much.
I went to
dinner with Caroline, Elissa and a group of their friends the other night. I
didn’t know many of the guests—they were mostly non-professionals—but I saw for
the first time a friendship between mother and daughter that reminded me of the
Janis girls (as my mother and I were always referred to by intimate friends),
and I told Elissa so.
“You could
pay me no higher compliment!” she said.
“I’m not
trying to compliment you, my sweet,” I answered. “I’m just telling you the
truth. Will you do as much for me?”
Elissa Antiope twinkled. “Have you a filter
system in your swimming pool? I’m building one, you know, and I’m not sure
whether I want – ”
“Good-night,
Mrs. Sphinx’s daughter,” I said, cutting her off in the middle of the filtering
system. “I hope you get snails in your rose garden!”
Try to pin her
down! Try to stop Lindbergh from flying. You try, but work out your
hundred-year plan first!
Elissa Landi’s Romance of Two Worlds
by Elsie Janis
The New Movie magazine, December 1933.
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Elissa Landi
Photo The New Movie
magazine February 1934
Gallery of Stars
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Θεάματα
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