This appeared in the Sketch on 18th October 1939
Constance Cummings playing the title role in Bernard Shaw's Sant Joan in the Old Vic performance at the Streatham Hill Theatre in 1939
She admitted: "I didn't know how to read the verses. That was a sloppy thing. I should have had more sense."
Ronald Bergan writes: In 1930, the 20-year-old Cummings was brought to Hollywood by Sam Goldwyn to co-star with Ronald Colman in The Devil to Pay, but was replaced at the last minute by 17-year-old Loretta Young. However, her disappointment was allayed when Columbia Pictures snapped her up, gave her a contract and cast her as prison warden Walter Huston's naive daughter in Howard Hawks's The Criminal Code the following year.
Columbia was so impressed by this debut that they starred Cummings in 10 films in two years, even though most were modest productions. The exception was Frank Capra's New Deal fantasy, American Madness (1932)
(Source: Guardian obituary and The Sketch 18 October 1939 Image © Illustrated London News Group)
Constance Cummings playing the title role in Bernard Shaw's Sant Joan in the Old Vic performance at the Streatham Hill Theatre in 1939
She admitted: "I didn't know how to read the verses. That was a sloppy thing. I should have had more sense."
Ronald Bergan writes: In 1930, the 20-year-old Cummings was brought to Hollywood by Sam Goldwyn to co-star with Ronald Colman in The Devil to Pay, but was replaced at the last minute by 17-year-old Loretta Young. However, her disappointment was allayed when Columbia Pictures snapped her up, gave her a contract and cast her as prison warden Walter Huston's naive daughter in Howard Hawks's The Criminal Code the following year.
Columbia was so impressed by this debut that they starred Cummings in 10 films in two years, even though most were modest productions. The exception was Frank Capra's New Deal fantasy, American Madness (1932)
(Source: Guardian obituary and The Sketch 18 October 1939 Image © Illustrated London News Group)
