Mary Brian was one of the most beautiful actresses of the 1930s. She often played charming ingenues in college-themed romances, but it seems these roles were not her cup of tea. Evelyn Warmoll shares with us in this 1938 article from Hollywood magazine, that Mary Brian was looking for more dramatic "grown-up" roles while Hollywood while trying to keep her young and innocent: While most movie stars are sadly
bemoaning the fact that they are
growing old all too fast on the screen,
Mary Brian, fresh from a season of personal appearances, is back in Hollywood
to try again to gain recognition as a grown
up, mature, young woman.
Mary has been Hollywood's perpetual
"little girl" for ten years. She's frankly tired of it. She wants to prove to producers and a loyal following of movie fans
that she has outgrown co-eds and fairy princesses and younger sisters. She wants to play dramatic feminine leads. She wants to emote. She wants to be recognized as a dramatic actress. She is tired
of playing pretty young things who flit
hither and thither and seldom have a
dominant scene in the story which goes
on around them.
It doesn't seem so very long ago that
Paramount announced that it was
starting a worldwide search for a novice
to play the title role of its silent production, Peter Pan. Mary Brian, just out from
Texas, was at the Los Angeles Paramount
theatre — dancing in the chorus — when
Albert Kaufman, brother-in-law of
Adolphe Zukor, saw her, talked with her
and sent her out to the Paramount lot for
a test for Peter Pan. Mary trembled as
she made the test for it was her first movie
experience, but the next day director Herbert
Brenon phoned to say that a contract
awaited her — not for Peter Pan but for
"Wendy." When she stepped out of the
dancing lineup and became Wendy, she
began a series of young girl parts which
lasted throughout her six and a half years
as a Paramount contract player.
She was pretty much the successor to
Mary Pickford and Mary Miles Minter as
Hollywood's sweetheart. No film debutante was more sought after for party
lists than Mary.
"The sweetest kid in Hollywood" she
was called off-screen as well as on. No
college picture was quite complete without Mary Brian as the fair young co-ed
who turned the heads of the gridiron
heroes, and finally arrived at her big
romantic scene either in the booth of some
campus ice cream parlor or under the
ever-present sheltering oak in front of the
girls' dormitory.
When she wasn't decorating college
pictures, romantic dramas of Civil war
days claimed her for doll-like crinoline
girls who made exquisite pictures of
Mason-Dixon beauty, but never had much
opportunity to lead the parade when the
dramatic scenes began.
When the talkies came in Mary Brian
began intensive training for more
dramatic and dominant roles. She tucked
her collection of sunbonnets and middie
blouses gently but firmly in the garage
trunk, pinned up the curls that once hung
on the back of her neck, and tried every
way she knew to "grow up" in a hurry.
Other diminutive girls had been given
dramatic roles — Helen Hayes, Sylvia
Sydney, Elizabeth Bergner, dozens of
small girls had dominated dramatic pictures. While Mary made no comparisons,
she yearned for just one chance to show
what she could do. But to Hollywood
she was still the "young sister type." Finally, Walter Huston's The Virginian gave her a deviation from her usual cast
assignment and The Front Page offered
broader opportunities as did The Royal
Family but whenever a college picture
was being cast the first name on every
casting director's tongue was "Mary
Brian."
As often as she could afford to, Mary
shook her pretty head and announced that
she had her mind set on more dramatic
parts. During one of the waits between
pictures, Ken Murray induced her to
resume stage work and to return to her
dancing (which Hollywood never thought
of at all). For a year Mary alternated
between Broadway, road shows and pictures that offered her at least some hope
of outgrowing the "little sister" roles.
Her personal appearances were huge
successes and she found that her fans
were just as eager for her to grow up as
she was. When fans saw her dance in
local theatres they wrote letters by the
score to variolas Hollywood producers
asking them to make Mary Brian a
dancing screen star. When the co-ed and little sister offers
continued unbroken Mary Brian went
to London for a British picture and one
day Hollywood was startled to hear that
"little Mary" was the star of the 1935
Chariot's Revue and "going over like a
house afire."
After an extended London season Mary
returned to Hollywood and played a
"heavy" in Spendthrift merely to get away
from the girlish type of role previously
given her. This was followed by two independent pictures which offered more or
less straight dramatic leads and other
personal appearances in which she was
supported by a dancing trio, Gordon,
Read and King and also by Arena and
Hines. A few months ago Mary came back
to Hollywood again in search of
mature roles and was fairly successful in
Three Married Men and Killer at Large
but the recent summer season found her
at the head of the casting office lists for
co-ed roles in a half dozen football pictures and she began to wonder what she
could do to create a new "1938 model
Mary Brian."
"I'm afraid you just can't grow up in
Hollywood," says Mary. "I enjoy playing
girlish parts but I'm crossing my fingers
and hoping that the day soon comes when
I can play a dominant, dramatic part and
show them that Wendy has grown up.
I don't care whether I play a vamp, a
society girl or a French apache; I just
want a chance to assume a role that has
some depth and determination." Mary Brian lives with her mother
near Toluca Lake, a few miles north
of the Hollywood studio where she began
her screen career. At least once each year
she is reported "this-a and that-a" about
some currently popular young screen
Lochinvar but isn't taking romance too
seriously. After playing more than 50
girlish featured leads in as many feature
films Mary seems far more anxious to
play a dramatic role on the screen than
take a demure walk to the altar in a real
life romance.This article was taken from a February 1938 issue of Hollywood magazine. You can view the scans of this article, as well as the entire issue, via the Internet Archive here. To find more stories like this, check out the other posts in our series - Movie Magazine Articles. Enjoy!
