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When work began, the crew at first suspected Maria's actressy airs and star-bitrary manners. But once they saw her in front of the camera, says Brooks, "they knew they had to do with a real professional, and the whole atmosphere of the picture changed. The other actors worked like hell to keep up with her." She was into everything. She had notions for the costume people, insights for the cameraman. And most of her points, says Brooks, were well taken. Most important of all, perhaps partly because she was anxious to be liked in Hollywood, she took direction well—she fought it but she took it.
To Be Somebody. Hollywood is confident that Maria's work will please the critics. M-G-M is gambling heavily that she will also make the grade with the joe who has the entertainment dollar in his pocket. A number of big producers, having put a cautious ear to the Schell, think they hear the clink of coin, and are shipping her scripts and making her offers. Moreover, some of the biggest acting names in the business—Gary Cooper, Gary Grant and others whom she will not name—are angling and wangling for Maria to be their leading lady.
So far Maria has said yes to none of them. Last week in a Hamburg studio she finished dubbing the German version of a recent film, and then went to Munich for a little holiday with husband Horst. "I've only had three weeks' vacation since I was 18," she says, "and I need a rest. Ach! I don't know where I get the strength." In Munich she likes to lounge among the Barock madonnas that fill her pretty white villa on the fashionable Pienzenauerstrasse. She calls her husband Goldschädtzchen (Little Golden Treasure), and when people come to visit, she gazes at him adoringly, or licks her fingers, smooths his thinning hair and murmurs, "Horst, am I pretty?" But Horst plays glum. One day she gurgled: "Guess what we're having for dinner—your favorite dish!" And Horst replied: "So what? You act as if you'd cooked it." At such times, Maria murmurs soothingly, in the best tradition of the German Hausjrau: "Ach, Horst!"
In any case, Maria will not be home for long. Around the first of the year she returns to Paris to dub the dialogue for Une Vie. In the spring she hopes to make a picture in Greece. "I love it, every moment of it," she says. "It's not only the money. There's more glory in it than money. To be wonderful in front of everybody, that's the real reward. To be known. To be somebody."
* For a glimpse of some other foreign objects that Hollywood has been ogling, see color pages opposite.