Girls' Dormitory (Twentieth Century-Fox). Although Herbert Marshall and Ruth Chatterton are billed above her, Simone Simon is the star of this picture. Producer Darryl Zanuck designed it expressly to provide a vehicle for her U. S. debut, and Screenwriter Gene Markey and Director Irving Cummings have intelligently fitted the material to her talents. As Marie Claudel, an undergraduate in a European seminary, she loves Stephen Dominik (Herbert Marshall), the head of the school. When a romantic, unsigned letter in her handwriting, addressed "My One and Only Love . . ." is fished out of a classroom wastebasket by an invidious and sex-starved school mistress (Constance Collier), the child is suspected of an outside liaison, forced to reveal the real object of her affections. Ultimately she prevails against the gentle fellowship which has for years united Stephen to his fellow teacher (Ruth Chatterton).
Girls' Dormitory is an intelligent exanimation of a first love too robust to be dissipated in the adolescent dreaming which initiated it. Skillful craftsmanship by all concerned eliminates the pitfall lurking in most stories of young girls in love with older men, i. e., that the hero will appear a prude if he rejects the heroine's advances, a lecher if he welcomes them. Helped by U. S. lighting and No. 28 makeup, Simone Simon is more embraceable than in her last French picture to reach the U. S. (Lac aux Dames), but Girls' Dormitory, as first made, ended without her being in the arms of Marshall. After the Hollywood preview, 125 suggestion cards, distributed to the audience, were filled out with requests for a new ending. Present fadeout shows them kissing.
Simone Simon, 19, was so thoroughly in dulged by her father, a French engineer, that in Madagascar, where he is running a graphite mine, he allowed her to roam the streets with two cub panthers on a leash. Back in Paris she went to art school, followed the well-worn course into musical comedy bits. One day W. Tourjansky, free-lance director, saw her in a street cafe, addressed a soft remark to her. She slapped his face. Impressed, he tested her, cast her as Pierrette in Chanteur Inconnu opposite Opera Singer Lucien Muratore. She made Le Roi des Palaces for Adolphe Osso and La Petite Chocolatière for Marc Allegret, both comedy roles, got her first serious casting as elflike Puck in Lac aux Dames. Arthur Willnetz, a man ager, introduced her to Sacha Guitry, who gave her a part in O Mon Bel Inconnu. Publicized as "La Sauvage Tendre," she was mobbed by a crowd at a personal appearance in Brussels, tested by Twentieth Century-Fox, signed by Zanuck. Smart, she learned English by reading fairy stories, listening to the radio, memorizing 25 words a day. Shy, she refuses to eat in the elaborate Cafe de Paris, official studio restaurant, dines in a counter lunch with the labor gangs. Says she: "I lived for years in Madagascar among temperamental people and I was the most temperamental of them all. . . . Women have a fine time in this country."
Originally cast as Cigarette in Under Two Flags, she wilted under 16-hour-a-day shifts, began to carry a clinical thermometer around in her mouth, produce it showing readings of 105°. She was hospitalized, replaced by Claudette Colbert. Planned for her is a revival of Seventh Heaven.