MAJOR BARBARA OUT OF UNIFORM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 118, 26 September 1941, Page 42

MAJOR BARBARA OUT OF UNIFORM

New Zealand Associations With Wendy Miller

HE very word "star" suggests a being who moves in a sphere remote from our own. The life of a screen or stage star may have points of similarity or even points of contact with the life of the ordinary person, but such similarity only serves to accentuate the essential difference. We know for instance, that Ginger Rogers has a mother. We probably hav& mothers ourselves, but that does not make us feel that

Ginger Jnogers has something in common with us. The fact that she has a mother, and the way she feels about her mother, may bear some superficial resemblance to our own emotions on the subject, but the publicity agents, by stressing the resemblance, only emphasise the fact that hers is, on the contrary, an emotion outside the range of the ordinary understanding. We learn from "Screen Titbits" that every Hollywood glamour girl has a Home Life. But when we see Rosalind Russell shaking cocktails in the ‘kitchen, we do not associate it with the mental picture of ourselves brooding over the broccoli, and when we see Carole Lombard in garden hat and slacks titivating the tulips with a long-handled fork, we do not think of ourselves groping for a garden carrot while the rain pours down and the soup boils over. Both may be typical of home life, but here again, the fact is brought home to us that we and the stars are beings essentially dissimilar. Relatives in New Zealand That is why it’s rather surprising to find that so far nobody has been able to "glamorise" Wendy Hiller, star of Pygmalion and now of Major Barbara. She is still a person just like ourselves. In fact she has, like many of us, relatives in the South Island. Her life story has a genuine ring. She makes as great a success of matrimony as she does of her stage and screen

career, Her husband is Ronald Gow, a nephew of the late James Gibson Gow, of Timaru. Her aunt, Mrs. J. G. Gow, still lives in Timaru, and there are several cousins in both islands, Ronald Gow’s claim to fame rests, however, on his plays. He converted Walter Greenwood’s novel Love on the Dole into the powerful

stage play of the same name. Wendy, as Sally Hardcastle, the heroine of the play, won instant fame in London and New York, and at the conclusion of the successful tour, she married the author. According to the latest news received by her relatives in New Zealand, she and her husband at present live a little way out of Radlett, near London, and judging by recent photographs, spend a great deal of time in the garden. While Ronald Gow is busy

writing plays for the BBC and for the films, Wendy Hiller finds time to indulge in cooking, gardening and in being an attentive mother to her little daughter Anna pretty full life for a girl whose name is_ written among the stars, She says without hesitation that the most important event in her life, more important even than playing starring roles in Pygmalion and Major Barbara, was (Continued on next page)

STARS May ALtso BE WOMEN

Le (Continued from previous page) the birth of her daughter Ann, two years ago. Until a short time ago, most of Miss Hiller’s time was taken up by Ann, so that she accepted without question, in fact with approval, the two year gap between the filming of Pygmalion and of Major Barbara. But now Ann has been sent to the comparative safety of the country near Manchester, so Wendy will not need to begrudge the time she will have to spend on the next two Shaw films The Devil’s Disciple and The Doctor's Dilemma, and her leisure time is more than filled by her husband, her house, and her A.R.P, work. Fame has not changed Wendy Hiller. She still refuses to allow anyone to convert her into a dewy-eyed beauty or a poised sophisticate. She isn’t particularly beautiful. She is taller than most screen lovelies, has’ mousy hair, grey eyes and a nose that is a nose and not a plastic poem. And she doesn’t own a swimming pool or run a private ’plane. She has had only one husband. She might conceivably have become the typical screen star if she had consented to go to Hollywood. Her success in Pygmalion brought her offers by the mail-bag full. Her reply was to sign a five-year contract with Gabriel Pascal, the producer of the two Shaw films. Much has been written about Wendy Hiller’s spectacular rise to stardom in her first film. But those who knew of the years of preparation behind that seemingly meteoric rise knew also that her success was no lucky chance, no flash across the crowded milky way of the film star’s firmament. Prior to her first legitimate stage appearance, she had studied and acted with the Manchester Repertory Company for at least

three years, specialising in character parts that called for an intensive study of dialects and languages, During this period, she undertook French, Irish, or German roles as required, or Cockney, Lancashire and Cornish dialects. Her ambition was to become a "real" actress, relying on her talent rather than the glamour which makes easy money for so many. : Then came her success in Love On the Dole, and her own real life romance. It was when she was appearing in Shaw’s Saint Joan at the Malvern Festival that Gabriel Pascal chose her for the lead as Eliza Doolittle to play oppasite Leslie Howard in Pygmalion. But she did not forget her former insistence on thoroughness and hard work. During the making of Pygmalion, she would get up unnaturally early to go to Covent Garden and study Cockney accents at first hand. So New Zealand Professor Hugginses will have the satisfaction of knowing that they were listening to the "real thing,"