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It was the opening night of the first-grade play. Up to the theater door came skipping the prettiest little girl in the world—her golden hair in loving braids, her skin like pinks in a bowl of milk, her chin arriving at a charming little point, her eyes as wide and innocent as a china doll's. But the lobby was packed tight with squealing children and shushing mothers. How to get through? The wide eyes narrowed, the pointed chin shot forward, and daddy's darling charged. "Hey!" a five-year-old hollered as he pulled her elbow out of his ear. "Who do you think you are?" The little girl drew herself up. "I," she announced in a powerful voice, "am the leading lady!" The crowd fell back, an aisle was made, and down it the six-year-old diva swept grandly to her dressing room.
"Ach," Maria Schell recalls, her eyes misting, "it was wonderful!" And wonderful is the way it has been ever since. In the 25 years that have waltzed by since that evening in Vienna, Actress Schell has swept—and elbowed—her way to a considerable reputation in the European theater and through a remarkable series of triumphs on the European screen. For six years she has been top draw at the German box office, and she makes more money (about $85,000 a picture) than any other German actress. At 31, she is a serious professional player who takes more pride in the parts she can perform than in those she possesses. British Director John Boulting says flatly that she is "the greatest actress I have ever directed—a tremendous talent."
Last summer the leading lady swept on to what may become her greatest triumph. Wowed by the ability displayed—and the receipts shown—by some of her recent foreign pictures (The Last Bridge, The Heart of the Matter, Gervaise), the we-gotta-have-new-talent hounds at M-G-M came briskly to a point.* Actress Schell was promptly signed to a comfy contract, written to her own shrewd terms: four Hollywood pictures in seven years, $100,000 for the first picture, $175,000 for the last, script and director to be approved by Actress Schell, full freedom to make pictures for any other producer.
As Big as Bergman? Last week M-G-M was getting ready to hurl "the blonde bomb Schell," as the movie columnists like to call her, at the U.S. moviegoing public in her first Hollywood picture—a $2,500,000 adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, in which, as Hollywood would have it, the first lady of the European screen will be seen in a role (Grushenka) that was originally intended for Marilyn Monroe. Maria Schell has already burst on several preview audiences with a flash that clearly dazzled them, and last week the boys in the executive steamroom were sweating out the final decisions and the finishing touches on the film—the anxious countdown before the launching of a star that shrewd little Benny Thau, an M-G-M production boss, expects to be "as big as Bergman."