Modern Screen (Dec 1931 - Nov 1932 (assorted issues))

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I'M PROUD TO BE A MOTHER ♦ ♦ ♦ Says Ann Harding who, contrary to the procedure of a good many stars, has never tried to keep her marriage or child a secret By ROSA STRIDER RE1LLY IN the best movie circles — it simply isn't done!" The glamorous Ann Harding was talking about motherhood. "For a screen star to discuss her children," she continued, "is considered just as bad form in Hollywood as pulling instead of pushing your soup. But I can't help that. I'm proud to be a mother so I don't see why I shouldn't come right out in black print and say so." As I listened to Miss Harding, the thought struck me that among the many mothers of the screen with whom I had at one time or another talked — Gloria Swanson, Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich, Nancy Carroll, Joan Bennett, Dolores Costello, Eleanor Boardman, Mae Murray, Polly Morah and Irene Rich — Ann was the only one who had willingly discussed her child with me. And her willingness seemed a lovely trait. It was only a few months ago that Miss Harding made the statement that she believed no woman came into her full mental and physical heritage until she had experienced motherhood. And this in spite of the fact that her closest friends had advised her — ever since she left the New York stage to go into talking pictures — not to let it be known that she was even married — much less a mother ! MISS HARDING is such an exquisite, romantic type that many of her friends and advisers felt moviegoers would not like to think of her as being married. "But I couldn't believe that," Miss Harding said. "I felt that discriminating movie lovers had more intelligence than that. And my feelings proved right. For never since the first day I entered pictures has the fact that I'm a wife and mother stood in my way. On the contrary, hundreds of fans have written me letters to say they are glad I'm a woman first and a star second." Little Jane Bannister has influenced her mother in every role the great star has played. For nearly all of Ann's films have touched on married life. Especially "Paris Bound" and "East Lynne." And because Ann Harding is herself a wife and mother, in both of these pictures, she has introduced a quality of emotional under Jane Bannister is Ann Harding's answer to her theory that women should never let a career interfere with motherhood. standing which has brought her hundreds of new screen friends every day. We all know that the word marriage has a lovely lilt to it — if it is spoken gently. For marriage isn't just a ceremony — a matter of stepping up to a candle-shadowed altar with a bouquet of orchids and lilies-of-the-valley in your hand, and being joined to a man for better or worse by priest or parson. No, says Ann Harding, marriage is a matter of two people being welded together by years of understanding, sympathy, and, maybe, sacrifice. A long arduous process. And marriage only becomes a fact instead of a name when it makes two people happy and satisfied — able to live and work better. And when these two people in turn bring children into the world to share this warmer relationship, then, and then only, is marriage an institution. IT is because we feel that Miss Harding has sifted the values of living and caught this essence of content and happiness that we are attracted to her on the screen. It is that deep, sweet, quality in her, in addition to her beauty and talent, which fastens (Continued on page 127) 85