Modern Screen (Dec 1940 - Nov 1941)

"Viv," his wife, studies rushes from "Caribbean Holiday" and seems to approve! 8ob was once a caddy, grew to hate the sight of a club, but plays occasionally now. find it before taking off. That's fun for us. Flying somehow makes us realize how important time is, so that we who fly learn not to squander it on things that don't really matter to us. "The fact that I am able to say 'us' about everything," Bob said gratefully, "is very significant. Only marriages based on mutual interest and understanding can work out successfully today. I was married once before, you know, to a little girl from my home town of Joplin, Missouri. She was very sweet, very young, but she'd never been far away from home and couldn't understand the theatre or its people. We had such a hard time, living in one room, no money, all that sort of thing, that in the end, with no malice on either side, she went home to her mother. "But to return to the question of our abnormality. We are not blue stockings, recluses, intellectuals or any of the popular types that shun the pastimes of the younger set. It's just that our interests and pleasures he in other directions. "I suppose the fact is I have two careers, flying and acting. And one is as important to me as the other. I love bomb-sites, controllable propellers and my blind flying instruments as well as I do scripts, cameras, sound stages, make-up boxes and the sight of my name in electric lights. Funny thing, though," mused Bob, "when you're up there, ten or fifteen thousand feet high, seeing your name in electric fights just doesn't seem very important." Bob's flying is no mere hobby. He has been at it for more than ten years and is a lieutenant in the Reserve Air Corps. He holds not only a pilot's license but one with Instructor's Rating, the only license of its kind to be held by an amateur pilot. He is, in addition, a licensed radio operator with a station in his own ship (a Cessna, four-passenger, cabin monoplane) complete with a radio transmitter and receiver. "Flying," Bob was saying, "minimizes the importance of a lot of things. For example, I could become very annoyed with Hollywood; it's not a democracy but a Took up flying right after Lindy's famous flight — when he was in his teens. dictatorship. When you realize that the $16.50 a day 'dress' extras wouldn't dream of associating with the $5.00 a day 'crowd' extras, you know we live in a rigid caste system here. "Not only that, but we are under control every second and have nothing to say about anything we do. Take my own case. If I go on the radio, I have to give 50% of what I make to the studio. If the studio doesn't want me to go on the air, I can't go on the afr! The studio dictates the whole policy of my life. It can even tell me where to go evenings! "I could work up a healthy little inferiority complex because Allan Jones, let's say, (he and Irene are good friends of ours) has a swimming pool, stables, a way of living I can't hope to compete with. This might make me miserable if greater causes and effects didn't remind me that it really doesn't matter too much. "There are other bogeymen in Hollywood; one of them is the mistaken reputation we get of having great wealth. Salesmen of lots, bonds and diamond mines waylay you at every turn, and you have to learn to say 'no' in every language! "Then there is the sure knowledge that when we're through in this business there is almost no other occupation open to us. Let me (Continued on page 78) DECEMBER, 1940 37