Gloria Stuart Titanic Interview
Gloria Stuart Titanic Interview
The Interview with Cinemania
Cinemania: I've been telling people you're going to win the Oscar for supporting actress.
Gloria Stuart: Oh, thank you. Winning would be wonderful, but to be nominated — I really want to be nominated. I figure it's almost the last go-around.
Cinemania: Has this film brought you more offers?
Gloria Stuart: Yes, I've turned down three. One was too violent. I now have 10 great-grandchildren — they call me "Great Gloria," they can't say "great-grandmother" — and I wouldn't want them to see it. Another one was just stupid, and in the third one I didn't have enough to do. I don't think I'll ever get a part like this [in Titanic] again. This is the part of all times, as far as I am concerned.
Cinemania: How did James Cameron cast you?
Gloria Stuart: James had seen the laser disc of The Old Dark House, with me talking over the film. And I guess he figured I was still viable. [Laughs] The casting director, Mali Finn, came to see me with a video camera and talked to me for an hour. She called back [later that day] and said, "Mr. Cameron would like you to read for him tomorrow without makeup." So he came over and I read for him without makeup and wearing a little white cap, because he didn't want to see me as a blonde. I left the next day for England, but I cut the trip short, I wanted this part desperately. I wrote him a letter: "Dear Mr. Cameron, I reread the script several times, and I think I should have given you a feistier reading, because young Rose is a very feisty kind of woman. And I don't think that my reading showed that." That was Friday afternoon, and Tuesday morning Mali Finn called to say, "Gloria, how would you like to be Old Rose?" Well, I screamed and hollered, jumped up and down, cried, called everybody.
Cinemania: Did you mind being away from films for so many years?
Gloria Stuart: Not then, because I figured I had no future, and I was looking for other things to do. I quit in '39 because I was a very disappointed, frustrated actress. I felt I was getting worse and worse parts. And less and less interest in my performances, for which I don't blame them. I was doing B pictures at Fox. And I just quit. I really had had it.
Cinemania: But you made several good films in the '30s, such as the John Ford and James Whale films.
Gloria Stuart: The first picture I made with John Ford, Air Mail — he was not a great big famous director [then]. He was hired independently at Universal. And I think the Yiddish word is potchkeh [time-wasting] — it was really a potchkeh picture, low-budget and everything. James Whale's movies were the only ones I made at Universal of quality, distinction, talent.
Cinemania: Ford's The Prisoner of Shark Island, which you made for Fox, is a superb film.
Gloria Stuart: It was a major production, but I didn't have much to do in that. In both Ford pictures I don't remember what I call directing. He was very good with the camera. I don't remember much dialogue between John and actors. He always had top scripts and top actors. It's very hard to go wrong that way.
Cinemania: What led to you becoming active in politics during the 1930s?
Gloria Stuart: The Cagney picture [Here Comes the Navy, 1934] — James Cagney was very busy helping to organize the Screen Actors Guild. Well, I didn't know from unions, but it sounded great, because I was getting up at 5 in the morning, in makeup at 6, working until 9 or 10 at night, back in the studio at 6 in the morning. For women it was murder — not so hard for men. So that got me into politics and into being a political activist. My husband was Jewish, and these horrors were happening in Germany, so I helped organize the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. Dorothy Parker was also with us in organizing the Committee to Aid the Spanish Orphans, as a result of the Spanish Civil War. All of that part of my life in Hollywood was wonderful.
Cinemania: You wrote the Los Angeles Times that "along with James Whale and John Ford," Cameron "was the most discerning, helpful and considerate director I've had in my 65 years of screen work." How do you think he resembles those other directors?
Gloria Stuart: James Whale was very fussy about the set. Props had arranged the dining-room table in The Old Dark House very carefully. He came in and took one look, rearranged the whole thing. I laughed so hard when I came on the set with Cameron for the first day's shooting on Titanic. I'm in the bed with all those photographs by my side. And he comes on the set, says "Good morning," and rearranges the whole thing. They're creative directors. Especially Cameron. He is a Renaissance man.
Cinemania: You also defended Cameron against the charge that he was too much of a "perfectionist" on Titanic.
Gloria Stuart: The only time I saw him upset was the shot where I'm watching five videos of undersea views [on the Russian research ship], and I fall apart. The videos got out of synch. To get them back in synch was very difficult — hours and hours — and he was not happy. I understand that. He got them back in synch. But that was the only time that I saw him upset. Never with the actors. Never. Very persuasive, very convincing, he was wonderful as an actor's director.
Cinemania: Old Rose has a wonderfully bawdy and irreverent sense of humor. Was that in the script or did you contribute some of it?
Gloria Stuart: The only line I contributed was when I see the nude drawing of me [as a young woman]. James wrote that I say, "Wasn't I a hot number?" I said, "James, I don't think she would say that." It sounded to me a little common, and Rose is not common. He said, "What would you like to say?" Now, you see, that's the thing about a great director — if it isn't right for the actor, it isn't right. So I came up with, "Wasn't I a dish?"
Cinemania: You had to do two hours of makeup every day to look 101.
Gloria Stuart: One reason James was looking so long for someone [to play Old Rose] was that he was concerned whether anyone in her 70s or 80s could look 101. But we had that great makeup man, Greg Cannom, and layers and layers of latex. James said to Greg, "Leave her eyes alone." I now know why he said that, because there's a shot where Kate Winslet's eyes dissolve into mine. [Cameron's screenplay describes Old Rose as having eyes "just as bright and alive as those of a young girl."] And at the first rehearsal, with the whole cast around, James said, "Gloria, I don't want an old voice. I want your voice." So he took a chance it would work, the eyes and the not-so-old voice.
Cinemania: It's fascinating how much you and Kate Winslet resemble each other on screen.
Gloria Stuart: When I heard she was coming to Hollywood, I said, "I want to meet her." I wanted to see her body language and to hear how she phrased, because that is very important for interpreting a character. So I said, "Ask her if she'd like to come for tea." We had an hour of wonderful conversation, and I called her several times in London.
Cinemania: Titanic is a very socially conscious film, a microcosm of the society of 1912 from high to low.
Gloria Stuart: Aren't those scenes wonderful of the upper classes at work and play? And you're horrified by the custom of locking people below [the third-class passengers are locked below decks while the ship is sinking]. If you were poor and underprivileged, you didn't have a chance. Not just for being saved from a shipwreck, but for getting up in the world — you stay down. I think that's one of the lessons, that class consciousness is not permissible anymore. The English, I think, are still so full of guilt. And should be. Because it's an English disaster! I will be very interested in the English notices.
