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Arts & Entertainment

Jane Withers Recollects Her Career in Hollywood

The actress tells a Hollywood Heritage Museum audience Thursday about her roles from childhood to adult.

At 85, Jane Withers walks a little more slowly than she used to, but her smile is as big and her eyes as bright as when she was a child star in the 1930s. Thursday night, as part of the “Evening @ The Barn” series held at the Hollywood Heritage Museum, she spoke about her remarkable career to a packed house, after a showing of a 2003 A&E Biography on her life (during which she shed copious tears, encircled by her friends).

Surrounded by memorabilia from her personal collection, she happily posed in front of big posters from her movies (including Giant, The North Star, My Best Gal and Angel’s Holiday) and reveled in the sight of one of the original Jane dolls, which she designed herself and for which her kids painted the faces, on display. “My whole family worked on those, you know,” she explained smiling. “We made 10,000 of them.”

She answered many questions from her fans about her career in the movies, which was launched in the early 1930s after the success of Shirley Temple. Withers was precocious and an adorable natural at age 4; she sang and danced like a pro, and even had her own radio show in Atlanta called “Dixie’s Dainty Dew-drop.”

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A gifted mimic, she did uncanny impersonations of all the stars she saw up on the silver screen three times a week with her mother. Soon she was getting work as an extra in the movies, and would entertain the other kids on set by becoming Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields or Marie Dressler.

When director David Butler heard one of her impersonations, he cast her as the obnoxious foil to Temple in Bright Eyes (1934), which propelled Withers down the boulevard of child stardom.

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“I looked entirely different than Shirley Temple,” she said. “Straight Dutch-boy bangs, very plain clothes, no dimples, no curls and no frilly dresses.” Butler asked whether she could imitate a machine gun, so she started saying “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah,” which he used in the movie and become one of her signatures.

Her character, which she played against type, was a terrible brat. “Oh, I was the meanest, creepiest kid God ever put on this planet! If you want a really big laugh sometime, rent Bright Eyes. It’s a hoot of a movie,” she said.

Asked whether she and Temple were friends, she said they didn’t have time to be, because they were both working constantly. “And I wasn’t permitted to speak with her unless I had to talk to her in a scene. I was so disappointed, because, of course, I adored her.”

After the success of Bright Eyes, Withers was signed to the first of three seven-year contracts, this one with Fox, and did a string of successful movies. Until she was 21, she never stopped working once.  

For the film Paddy O’Day (1935) she campaigned to get her friend Rita Hayworth a role, her debut in movies, and they remained very close friends for all of Hayworth’s life, even during her final years suffering from Alzheimer’s. “Oh, I adored her,” Withers said. “We were great buddies. She had a magnificent career and she was a magnificent lady. I miss her so much.”

At Fox, Withers received more fan mail than just about any other star except Temple. So pervasive was the public’s adoration for her that attendance at her Sunday school at the skyrocketed. “I told them I would be happy to sign autographs, but after Sunday school, so why don’t you come and join me? And they did!”

Unlike Temple and other child stars, Withers' transition into older roles succeeded, starting in 1939 when she had her first screen kiss in Boy Friend. In 1941, she became one of the first women (after Mae West) to star in a movie she wrote herself, Small Town Deb.

In 1942, she left Fox to work for Republic Studios (in Studio City, now CBS-Radford Studios), where she made such films as Johnny Doughboy (1942), and My Best Gal (1943). In 1947, she took time off from work to marry Texas oilman Bill Moss, have kids and move to Odessa, Texas, where she raised three children, animals and vegetables.

“We also had a ranch in New Mexico,” she remembered, “and I used to cook for 15 cowboys every day.”

When she returned to L.A., she studied directing at USC, where she met producer/director George Stevens who cast her in Giant (1956), now considered a classic, co-starring James Dean (who died before the movie was finished), Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. She and Dean became very close, although his unorthodox ways would often irk her.

“Once he came into my home through the window and scared me so, I found him lying on the twin bed with his hat over his eyes.

"I said, ‘Dear Gussie, Jimmy, is that you?’

"He said, ‘Yup.’

"I said, ‘How in the world did you get in here?’

"He said, ‘Through the window. I didn’t want to see all those people; I wanted to talk with you.’

"I said, ‘I’m happy to spend time with you, but please will you come in the front door instead of the window?’

"He said, ‘We’ll see.’

"I said, ‘You bet we will.’ I went and got a hammer and nails and nailed the windows shut.

"Then I told him, ‘Now you’ll have to use the front door!’ " 

She remembered that on set, Dean was quiet and distant. “He had very strange ways of doing certain things. I accepted some of them, but I do not accept tacky language, and told him that.”

She spoke about all the presidents she got to know, including her friend Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman. But it was FDR whom she loved the most, and the feeling was mutual.

“He was the biggest fan of mine,” she said. “One time somebody at the studio told me that the very first person to get any of my movies was FDR. To this day there is his collection of my films at the White House.”

Knowing of their mutual love of dolls and teddy bears, FDR left one of his own personal teddy bears to her, but insisted it not be mailed. “Eleanor [Roosevelt] delivered it to me personally after he died,” she said.

These days, at 85, she suffers from vertigo, “which isn’t good,” she said, “cause I keep falling, and every time I do, I end up in the hospital. That’s been the last four years of my life. I’ve spent so much time in the hospital.”

Of all the qualities she’s gained over the years, a sense of real gratitude permeates it all. “God was very important in everything we ever did,” she said. “We always turned to him not only for our daily needs, but also for our daily blessings he bestowed upon our family.”

She’s been famous for nearly eight decades now, and to this day loves to meet her fans. “It’s very thrilling to me,” she said with some tears, “to meet all of you, and that so many people have written to say they love me and they never miss my movies.”

After she spoke, friends and fans both lingered till nearly midnight, rejoicing in the sunny charm and good humor that has radiated from this remarkable woman for some eight decades.  

is housed in the restored Lasky-DeMille Barn (c. 1895) at 2100 North Highland Ave., and features archival photographs from the silent era, movie props, historic documents and other memorabilia. It’s open five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday, from noon until 4 p.m.  (323) 874-2276.

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