Modern Screen (Jan-Jun 1945)

Ponds "Lips" stay on. and on. . . and on ! 104 6 luscious shades . . . Try the newest "Lips" shade — Beau Bait, round, full crimson-red! 49»i, lOi, plus tax ing treads for the Firestone Company. Every evening Clark attended pre-medical courses at the University. . He was quite in earnest about meaning to be a doctor. "Principally," he explained to Andy, "because if I'm a doctor, I won't have to be a farmer — " Had medicine been the goal of his dearest hopes, he would have stuck to medicine. It was merely a stopgap, an excuse to escape from the farm. There was nothing he had a burning desire to be. . . . Till he saw his first play. Sunday was his one free evening. Down at the Music Hall, the Clark-Lilly Players were giving "Bird of Paradise." Andy and some of the other boys were going. Clark went along. Stepping into the theater changed the course of his life. He could never explain what happened to him that night. A farm boy, his background and heritage alien to all the stage represented, he left the theater resolved to be an actor. Forgotten the medicine, forgotten the rubber factory. Each night he sat in the gallery, each day he hung round the stage door, and finally plucked up the heart to walk in. "I want a job," he told the manager. "Any job." The manager knew how to deal with stage-struck youngsters. "We need a call boy, but we can't pay you anything. You can sleep backstage." Clark felt this was just. Why should he be paid for admission to paradise? He was a good call boy. His players were all out front on time, even if he had to sew on their buttons for them. In return for these and other small services, they took care that he ate. Back in Ravenna his father said: "The boy's gone crazy." But at such a distance, there was little he could do about it. Clark was even beginning to do walk-ons when the wire came, calling him home. His stepmother was dying. He arrived barely in time to see her. He had loved her deeply. For the first time, he knew the desolation of a loss that cannot be measured. ' The elder Gable had had enough of farming, enough of this place of sorrows. Always he had preferred the oil fields to ploughing. Now there was an oil boom in Oklahoma. He and Clark would go there. Clark said, "I want to go back to the theater." But there was no longer one who could speak for him, and this time the father had his way. The boy went to the oil fields. the cross roads . . . For two years he worked as a tool dresser, earning twelve dollars a day. Earning nothing a day in the theater, he had been happier. One night, in the shack he shared with his father, the end came. "I'm quitting," said Clark. His father's opposition broke against rock. He was nineteen now — a man, with a man's will. At length, the other recognized defeat. "If you want to throw your life away, I guess I can't stop you." They parted grimly — one to return to the oil fields, the other to start on his unknown road. Thus came the wandering years. Kansas City and a third-rate road show. Traveling through the Middle West on ten dollars a week. Stranded in Butte, Montana, and a moment that might have meant surrender. Heartsick, all but penniless, he entered a telegraph office, composed a wire asking his father for train money back to Oklahoma. For a moment he stared at it, then crumpled and tossed it into the wastebasket. Wandered through the streets, made for the depot, hopped a freight train to Portland. Portland, he'd heard, was a good show town. Her own fault — if she'd check her hat, pillow or hairbrush, she wouldn't be sitting home nights. She'd realize that the scalp perspires, too — and that the hair, particularly oily hair, quickly collects unpleasant odors. She'd use Packer's Pine Tar Shampoo regularly and never risk scalp odor again. This gentle shampoo, which contains pure medicinal pine tar, cleanses the hair and scalp thoroughly and leaves the hair fresh and fragrant. The delicate pine scent does its work — then disappears. Don't risk having scalp odor — and not know it. Let Packer's care for your hair and scalp. You can get Packer's Pine Tar Shampoo at any drug, department or ten-cent store. CRO*PHX