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“I feel I look every bit of 63,” declares Gloria DeHaven, star of TWO GIRLS AND A SAILOR, BETWEEN TWO WOMEN, and TWO TICKETS TO BROADWAY. “I planned to have a face lift as my sixtieth birthday present to myself, but I chickened out at the idea of someone carving up my face.”

She has also decided against an autobiography. “I’ve been asked – twice, but the only books that sell a lot are kiss and tell. I don’t want people flipping through the pages of my life.” Should she change her mind, DeHaven already has a title – one she uses for her lecture tour: Hollywood Be Thy Name. It derives, she explains, “from my daughter, Kathleen, who’s nicknamed Clancy (her father is John Payne), saying her prayers, when she was about three. ‘Our father, who art in heaven, Hollywood be Thy name…'”

Telling her that she doesn’t look her age depresses DeHaven. “This color hair (a newly dyed light brown) is supposed to make me look older. You don’t get to be 63 by accident; if there are gray hairs, you’ve earned them. I’ve had a hell of a time getting roles because of looking younger. Thank God, they’re now writing parts for women my age – not just mothers, but women who have guts, charm, humor, spunk, spirit-women ready to get out there and wail! If I did have a face lift, I’d never get to play the roles I want.”

The most memorable movie role for the daughter of vaudeville stars, Mr. and Mrs. Carter DeHaven, was portraying her mother in THREE LITTLE WORDS. Other highlights include her debut with Chaplin in MODERN TIMES (“I love saying that I started in silents”) and bestowing a first screen kiss on Frank Sinatra (STEP LIVELY).

Adorning a wall in DeHaven’s Central Park West apartment is a copy of the star-studded 1947 photograph commemorating MGM’s silver anniversary. It shows DeHaven seated directly in front of everyone’s favorite actress,” Katharine Hepburn – whose signature appears next to her likeness.

Since DeHaven insists that she looks 63, the question arises if she’s aware that some sources list her a year or more older. “That drives me crazy!” she exclaims, as she gets up and goes to a desk drawer. “Would you please write that I showed you my birth certificate?” The document states that Gloria Mildred DeHaven, daughter of Flora Parker, 41, and Carter DeHaven, 39, was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, California, on the 23rd of July in 1925.

In a New York World Telegram And Sun interview (8.28.51), DeHaven noted, “After 22 years of marriage my parents were divorced. They soon remarried and lived together for a year. In that year they had me.” She confirms the quote and adds, “My brother (Carter, Jr.) was 12 years older and my sister (Marjorie) 11 years older.” (Both deceased, Carter, Jr. was an assistant director and Marjorie, a dancer. His son, Carter III, is a film producer.)

DeHaven’s father (1886-1977) was born Francis O’Callaghan and later adopted his stepfather’s name, DeHaven. He and Flora Parker (1883-1950) appeared together in six silent movies, including COLLEGE ORPHAN (1915) and TWIN BEDS (1920), and made several silents separately. Following their divorce, DeHaven remarried and had another son, David; among his later film appearances were THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940) and THE NOTORIOUS LANDLADY (1962). Gloria’s mother retired and remained single.

“My mother gave me a wonderful childhood,” claimed DeHaven in the 1951 interview. “Her foresight and planning saved me from many hard knocks. We were inseparable. She was a completely unselfish person.” DeHaven regrets that her mother didn’t live to see THREE LITTLE WORDS, in which Gloria made a cameo appearance as Mrs. Carter DeHaven and sang, “Who’s Sorry Now?”, The 1950 release was a fictionalized biography of songwriters Bert Kalmar (Fred Astaire) and Harry Ruby (Red Skelton). Mrs. DeHaven did get to see the sequence being filmed. “They rolled out the red carpet for her,” recalls Gloria. “She sat in a director’s chair and Astaire and Skelton were so wonderful to her. She died about three months before it was released.” The actress disputes reports that she had friction with her mother and thinks that might have been misinterpreted from things said about the way she was raised. “I was over protected. I didn’t begin to grow up until I was 40 and I think the best years have been between 50 and 60. The children (she has four) had grown and I was totally on my own. I think I’m finally grown up.”

She recalls only fragments of her childhood and says that she never, as reported, was a classmate of Judy Garland’s. “Judy went to school on the (MGM) lot; I never did.” She has known Donald O’Connor “since we were nine. His parents were also vaudevillearis and we’ve remained dear, dear friends.”

With a friend, Gloria Delson (“who was Mrs. Sammy Cahri for many years”), DeHaven visited the set of MODERN TIMES, for which her father was an assistant director.

“We didn’t know we were going to be in the movie. Chaplin needed two kids to play Paulette Goddard’s ragamuffin sisters. He said. ‘These kids are perfect’ and sent us to Western Costume. All we had to do was wear tattered clothes, eat bananas, and do big takes. I thought, if this is show business, count me in.” (The Chaplin classic began filming in late 1934 and was released in early 1936.)

DeHaven insists that (contrary to some sources) she does not appear in Chaplin’s THE GREAT DICTATOR, although her father plays the Bacterian Ambassador.

She was signed to play Becky Thatcher in David O. Selznick’s THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (1938), “but they had a terrible time casting Tom. They didn’t find one for a year-and-a-half-and, when they finally found him (Tommy Kelly), I had outgrown the part (and was replaced by Ann Gillis). That was one of my earliest heartaches.”

Cast as Enid in Susan And God (1940), DeHaven recalls director George Cukor as “very kind” and remembers being invited to lunch by the film’s star, Joan Crawford. “We ate in her dressing room. She asked how serious I was about my career – and said that I must do something about my speaking voice, that it was too high pitched. I asked, ‘What should I do?’ and she told me to read aloud – Read anything; the phone book – and keep saying it loudly and lowering your voice.’ I did that and lowered my register. Crawford was dynamite! She was a terrific lady who gave me many tips.”

Also for George Cukor, DeHaven played a debutante in Greta Garbo’s finale, TWO FACED WOMAN (1941). Her single scene shows young Gloria and a companion entering a powder room. Just before they pass by Constance Bennett and Garbo, DeHaven checks her appearance in a compact mirror and observes: “I’m looking more and more like last year’s model.”

She had small roles in two other 1941 releases, KEEPING COMPANY and THE PENALTY.

Signed by MGM, her first picture under contract was BEST FOOT FORWARD (1943). “I had to lie about my age and say I was already 18. Otherwise, they’d have had to stop production for me to attend classes. That’s probably why there’s so much confusion about when I was born.”

The campus musical, set at Winsocki School, had been a 1941 success on Broadway with Rosemary Lane as movie star Gale Joy, who accepts the invitation of military cadet Bud Hooper (Gil Stratton, Jr.) to be his date at the junior prom. When pregnancy prevented Lana Turner from playing the star in the screen version, MGM had Lucille Ball appear as herself (her singing dubbed by Gloria Grafton).

Cast as Bud Hooper in the film was Tommy Dix, who had appeared as Chuck in the stage version. Also imported from Broadway were Kenny Bowers and Jack Jordan (whose roles were reversed for the movie), June Allyson and Nancy Walker.

Though the roles are interchangeable, the credits incorrectly list DeHaven as Ethel and Allyson as Minerva. In the film, Allyson is called Ethel several times and, at the prom, DeHaven is introduced as Minerva Pierce. (Complicating matters further, on Broadway, Allyson had played Minerva.)

DeHaven’s most prominent number was ‘The Three B’s,” wherein she sang Blues to Allyson’s Barrelhouse and Walker’s Boogie.

One morning during production, DeHaven was washing her hair. “I lathered too much, got soap in my eyes, and couldn’t find a towel. Suddenly, a very, very strong hand pushed by head down and then poured warm water over me and towel-dried my hair. I opened my eyes and it was Marlene Dietrich! She was just being a good samaritan; she had no idea who I was and didn’t care. We met years later and she remembered the incident. I still can’t get over it!”

In costume from BEST FOOT, DeHaven and Allyson went to the soundstage where THOUSANDS CHEER was being filmed and sang the introduction to Virginia O’Brien’s rendition of “in A Little Spanish Town.” They join her later in the number for some scat singing. Accompanying them was Bob Crosby and Orchestra (with whom DeHaven had sung prior to singing with MGM).

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