Winning a delicious role in a big Hollywood movie is what they all pray for. Actors trundle off to classes at dawn, spend too much money on fashions-of-the-moment, go to the right cocktail parties, and generally try to ingratiate themselves with the right people. If by some miracle a big Hollywood director comes calling, actors do not ask. . ."Now what's your name, little boy?"
That, however, is exactly what Gloria Stuart asked when Titanic director James Cameron came around. But then Gloria Stuart is not just any Hollywood actor and Titanic is not just any Hollywood movie.
Stuart plays 101-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert, the woman who claims to be a survivor of the Titanic. The movie is told through her unflinching blue eyes.
Her memories of that horrific night unfold before a group of high-tech gadget-wielding fortunehunters seeking to recover jewels on the ocean floor.
Unexpectedly, they discover something they had missed entirely in their quest for profit. They learn about courage and bravery.
More importantly, they learn about the love affair between young Rose and Jack Dawson, an Irish-American, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who won his steerage ticket in a card game. Rose Calvert has hidden the secrets of that night and this love in her heart for a lifetime.
For 87-year-old Stuart, the role of Rose was so good she scarcely believed it might be hers. It was the kind of role she had prayed for a lifetime ago.
By 1995, when she had the chance to audition, Stuart was a little old lady living in a modest house adorned by fuchsia bushes and trellised red roses.
She was known, but mostly to rare book collectors. A book printer of the old-world school, her works - typeset, designed, illustrated and printed by her in a studio at her home - are collector's items found in many museums. But once upon a time, Stuart wanted to be a serious stage actress.
A third-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Stuart at 19 married an aspiring sculptor. She and her young husband were soon so broke they lived on cornmeal mush. "When Gordon once said `oh no, not that again', I took the pot and threw it on the ceiling," says Stuart. The cornmeal mush was still on the ceiling a year later when the couple left the apartment. Theatre was not a wageearning proposition. When Universal Studios offered her a contract in 1932 for $125 a week, she leapt at the opportunity.
"Everybody said I was beautiful and talented and my screen test was wonderful. I was not." She hoped that making a name in Hollywood, however, would open doors in the New York theatre. Instead, she got stuck taking film roles she found uninteresting.
"Girl Reporter, girl detective, girl nurse, girl overboard. . . They were stupid parts with nothing to do," says Stuart. Although she made more than a dozen movies, (including such classics as 1938's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Here Comes the Navy with James Cagney and Poor Little Rich Girl with Shirley Temple) her relationship with the movies did not last. Nor did her marriage.
A new husband, (a successful screenwriter who did not want her to work), and the birth of her daughter led to Stuart's retirement from film before the second World War. What followed was adventurous world travel. The couple shipped out on a freighter to Hong Kong, crossed the Mekong Delta in a raft, and sailed back from Europe under the cover of night just as Hitler was getting serious. She played badminton with Humphrey Bogart.
It was the heyday of Hollywood and Stuart was there to see it all, serving sometimes as confidante and cook to a group of pals that included writers Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and Groucho Marx. She loved painting and found recognition for her work. But in 1972 her contented life changed.
Stuart's husband developed Alzheimer's disease. She nursed him at home for two years. Depressed and bored, she called old friends in the entertainment industry - "everybody who was still breathing or their sons and daughters" and began working again, mostly small parts in television.
The roles were not the kind, say, that Vanessa Redgrave would have killed for, but at least Stuart was "getting out of the house." In 1978, Stuart's husband died and the acting work, sporadic and unglamorous, was more important than ever.
When a call came from a casting agent about some movie called Titanic, Stuart was mildly intrigued only because the shoot was supposed to be in Poland and she still loves to travel. "Why not?" she said. The studio sent the script to her home. Stuart was shaken as she read it.
"I looked up Old Rose, all the pages. . . Old Rose. I knew it was gorgeous. Oh my God, I thought, how can this happen to me?," she said. Director James Cameron came to her house the next day with a video camera. The problem, apparently, was that other actresses, more well-known than Stuart, did not want to audition without make-up or play a 101year-old. Giddy with excitement and unconcerned with vanity, Stuart considered, jokingly, offering to read naked, but figured she should keep her mouth shut on that score.
Stuart never got to Poland, as the location was changed to Halifax and Mexico. But Old Rose has changed her life. Acclaim for her performance has been unanimous. She's even getting movie star treatment. . . limousines, flowers, flying on the Concorde, nights at the Dorchester in London. Now she has been nominated for an Oscar, and Hollywood betting is that she stands a good chance to win on Monday. The movie, meanwhile, has become a worldwide phenomenon. Titanic has broken all box office records.
As for Stuart. . . she's looking forward to getting back to printing. And the hoopla? "This is what I wanted many years ago and never got. It's come and that's fine. I'm very fulfilled."
