"JOHN MILLS"

(Article by Brenda Cross for the Australian publication PICTUREGOER, Sept. 14, 1946)

Nothing in John Mills's background could have suggested that by the time he reached his middle thirties he would be acknowledged as one of Britain's most popular and conscientious stage and screen actors.

As in the best kind of success story, John gave up a safe but uncongenial job in the family trade of corn merchants. Young, penniless and inexperienced, he came to London - stagestruck.

Perhaps he was unsettled by the glamorous stories recounted by his elder sister and her husband, who were international exhibition dancers.

Perhaps he guessed, from amateur theatrical work at home, that he was good.

At any rate, he was not proud. To keep himself, he took a job as commercial traveller.

He made many good friends in London, among them Zelia Raye, who kept a dancing academy near the Windmill Theatre. She gave him dancing lessons, and, in 1929, two years after he left Ipswich, John went on the stage.

The show was The Five o'clock Girl, at the London Hippodrome, and John was the keenest member of the men's chorus!

After that, there was no keeping John off the stage, although in the year that followed he had plenty of grind and very little glamour.

In desperation, he toured with a company in the East, and there met two people who play a great part in his life and career. They are Noel Coward and Mary Hayley-Bell, later to be Mrs. John Mills.

Noel Coward's interest in John proved a talisman when he returned to London. His first real start was in a Cochran revue in 1930.

Three years later he made his first film, THE MIDSHIPMAN. After that, he played alternatively in films and plays.

For a season he played with the Old Vic company. That was in 1939, the year he scored a great hit in Steinbeck's play, Of Mice and Men.

Through the medium of films - TUDOR ROSE, GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, and THE YOUNG MR. PITT - his name was reaching a wider public.

But with the outbreak of war, John changed his profession overnight, and by the end of 1939 was a sapper in the Royal Engineers.

With characteristic energy and persuasiveness, he organised a concert party, which toured other sites, and at the same time did the usual army routine work.

In 1941, John was invalided out, and had the chance to resume private and professional life.

He scored brilliantly in both. By marriage to Mary Hayley-Bell; and by starring, on the stage, in his wife's first play, Men in Shadow and, on the screen, by starring in Coward's naval film, IN WHICH WE SERVE.

Later came THIS HAPPY BREED. His part in the well-loved Two Cities film THE WAY TO THE STARS, definitely put John Mills amongst the top British stars.

Today, he would be justified in feeling satisfied with his achievements.

The bedrock of his life is obviously his happy marriage and his charming daughters. As for his acting success, he declares he always does his best.

In discussing his ability, he has none of the airs and graces of the mock genius.

On the set, he is a conscientious actor. He approaches each take with the same inward feeling with which he approaches a theatrical first night.

And when a film day begins at 8:30 a.m., and ends nearly twelve hours later, that conscientious attitude to work takes a great deal out of a sensitive actor.

"They wouldn't ask a navvy to work those hours with his hands!" he protests half jokingly, wondering why film actors are supposed to have constitutions of cast iron.

Although he always makes a careful study of the film character he is portraying, he tries to shed it when he goes home.

Both he and his wife are great filmgoers, and usually visit the cinema twice a week.

Gangster films are John's especial favourites, and the more killings the better, he adds with relish! He will travel miles to see a James Cagney film.

He comes to his own films very differently. Whenever possible, he avoids their big premieres.

If he is unlucky enough to be caught, he sits in a dim haze, hardly aware of anything, and certainly not able to judge his own acting. It always seems so bad!

Later on, he creeps in somewhere at the back of the cinema during an ordinary showing, and this time he is able to take a more normal interest in it.

Oddly enough, the rushes which are shown of each day's completed work, never affect him like this.

His home provides complete relaxation for him, although not a change from hard work. For the Mills house has five acres of garden, and their solitary gardener needs a lot of extra help.

Three acres are orchard, and during the heat wave John spent days scything the grass. As evidence, he shows the palms of his hand, pointing to an array of hardened blisters on each.

And if it is not the garden demanding his attention, it is Jacqueline , alias Bunch (note: referring to Juliet Mills) - his elder daughter, aged four and three quarters.

John makes no attempt to hide his enthusiasm for, and devotion to, Bunch. Already, he says, she is determined to be a film actress, and she is photogenic, intelligent, and a natural mimic.

Adrian Scott, American director of the film which put Dick Powell back on the map, FAREWELL MY LOVELY, is directing John's new film, SO WELL REMEMBERED, and he was so taken with Bunch's talents that he suggested altering slightly one of the child characters so that Bunch could play her.

Bunch considered it all very carefully, then feared she might not be good enough, and that Adrian Scott would never give her another chance.

Also, it seemed a pity to be shut up in a film studio during the hot summer weather!

John is immensely proud of Bunch, who resembles him a good deal, especially in profile.

But while wanting the best for her, he hopes that , if she chooses film acting, the doors are not thrown open too wide for her to enter.

"You miss a lot," he says, "by having things made too easy for you."

In the autumn, Bunch will go to a little private school in the village. Just at the moment, she is much engrossed in the new baby.

John thinks that two is an ideal number for a family; and he thinks that four and three quarters is the ideal age for little girls.

Bunch spent a lot of time on the set when John was making GREAT EXPECTATIONS, the famous Dickens story, in which he plays Pip.

The film took nine months to make, chiefly because many of the shots are taken in the Kentish country, and the fickle English weather was usually against the cameramen.

John is very enthusiastic about the camera work in this film. He declares that the Dickensian atmosphere has been wonderfully caught, and that the English countryside is enchanting.

It is his first period film since THE YOUNG MR. PITT, and John revelled in the costumes he wore.

When asked his opinion on his acting in the film, he carefully touched wood, and said he thought he had done quite well.

The John Millses have been spending a few weeks in the South of France, their first holiday for six years, and a gorgeous one.

The children stayed behind in England, and their parents basked in the hot sun, took hundreds of snapshots, and ate a succession of appetizing meals.

"We didn't want to come home again and work," John reminisced with a grin. "We just wanted to live in the sun like millionaires."

John loves acting in plays, and prefers when possible to alternate films and plays. At the moment, however, he is so tied up in films that he will not be free until next year for a play.

His wife has always loved the theatre passionately, and has acted for years, understudying and playing in repertory.

She has always written, too, but was too shy to persevere until John came along to encourage her.

With his confidence in her, she has found a reputation as a playwright, and her last play, Duet for Two Hands, will have a Broadway production soon.

John has always enjoyed outdoor sports. He is a keen golfer, and can indulge in this hobby easily, as the Denham Golf Course runs along the bottom of his garden.

He has always done a lot of boxing, a skill which came in handy during the making of WATERLOO ROAD, a film which he greatly enjoyed making.

Stewart Granger is another boxing fan, and in the fight scenes of that film both men used their experience to box realistically, their punches missing by about an eighth of an inch.

That fight took a week to film, and John is proud of the fact that during that time, their punches connected only once, Granger receiving a punch in the stomach, and John a dizzy cut on the chin!

The golden rule in film fights, says John, is to keep completely calm. Paradoxically, the result is fast and exciting.

John's new film is based on a James Hilton story, SO WELL REMEMBERED.

Adrian Scott is directing, and Martha Scott has come from Hollywood to play in it.

John is called upon to appear as a young, middle-aged, and old man, and he is very pleased about it.

He has played a succession of young men, hitherto, and welcomes the opportunity for some real character acting.

One of his happiest times in film work is when the first conferences are in session and stories and parts are being discussed.

When decisions have been taken, and a binding contract is thrust under his nose, John always gets the jitters, and half way through signing, tries to back out of it, wondering if, after all, he can do justice to the part allotted him.

This mood of apprehension usually lasts about five days each film, and his wife knows it very well, and understands how to cope with it.

After this probationary period, all goes well, and he is usually very happy making the film.

SO WELL REMEMBERED is being made jointly by Mr. Rank and R-K-O-Radio, and the picture will enjoy that much-envied destiny, for a British film - a first class release in America.

It should do John's reputation in America - and in this country - a lot of good - "If I'm not dreadful in it," he says gloomily.

Needless to say, he is at the "jitters stage" for SO WELL REMEMBERED!

And it is doubtless a good omen that the "jitters stage" never lasts!

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