Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

YOU READ IT* EVERY MONTH now... LISTEN TO IT EVERY DAY Modern Romances is on the air! Everywhere people are talking about this new kind of radio program, talking about the human interest in the stories and the frankness with which they are enacted. Like MODERN ROMANCES magazine, upon which it is based, each story is about real people in situations you yourself may face. Listen to MODERN ROMANCES today on your ABC Station and we guarantee you'll listen every day. "~1 Tune in "Modern Romances" every weekday Mon. thru Fri. on the American Broadcasting Co. ABC NETWORK see your newspaper for local time R2 L, in painful English if I was not Clark Gable. When I nodded he cried, "Ah-h-h! Then it ees possible you can be of inform to me!" I said I'd be glad to be "of inform." What was it he wanted to know? "I want to know about 'skeep it'," he declared. "I have seen many of your pictures and many times you say this phrase, 'skeep it'. What does it mean, 'skeep it'?" I tried to explain. I told him that "skip it" literally meant sort of "jump over" something, but, in conversation, really meant to forget some subject or deed and go on to another. "Oui! Oui! I unnerstand!" he exclaimed. "Eeet is the same then as in the English pictures when they say ' 'op it!', no?" "Oh, no!" I said. And then I tried to explain the difference. All through Ihe meal I tried to make it clear, but it was no use. In the end I decided that the only thing to do was to skip it. So I 'opped it. Well, if I don't go to Europe this time, probably to tour the provinces of France, then I may head west again from New York for my Rogue River place in Oregon and some fishing. I'll drive up there, avoiding the bigger cities en route, Qs usual, and stopping at motels. As a matter of fact, though I have a 47-acre place on the Rogue, I generally stop at a motel near there which is owned by a friend. It's simpler that way. More mobility. I can throw my golf clubs in the car and leave at a moment's notice for deep-sea fishing at Guaymas, Mexico, for instancewhere, though I am a stubborn Dutchman, I have many times met my match, and more than my match, in marlin and sailfish. beginner's luck . . . On one of my earliest attempts to catch marlin, I was accompanied by Jack Conway, the director, and another friend, A. T. Jergens. As soon as I got a bite I started to pull in violently and they both yelled out in alarm. "You'll break the line!" Jack cried. "You've got to take it easy with marlin. Slow and easy. Play him." But, as I say, I am stubborn. I did it my way. I fought. And at the end of the day I had caught three marlin, Jack had had three on the line and lost them all, and Jergens lost two. They both claimed that no one in deep-sea fishing history had ever caught a marlin my way before and that it could be accounted for only by the fact that my unethical yanking had simply confused the unfortunate fish into giving in! But it never happened that way again. I learned to follow Jack's advice. "Just k.eeP„ a light but steady pressure on the line," he would say. "Like a woman after a man." I'm sure I don't know just what he means by this, but I did it anyway. Well, on my vacation I may fish, I'll play golf, but I won't hunt. I won't hunt because somehow I have lost my taste for it, especially for deer hunting. The last time I hunted deer was at Kanab, Utah. I had my rifle to my shoulder and a fine bead on a deer when it suddenly came over me that I couldn't pull the trigger. I let my rifle drop and the guide with me looked astonished. "What's the matter, buck fever?" he asked. "No," I replied. "I just changed my mind." The truth was that the deer looked too beautiful, standing there, for me to drop him and spoil the picture. I'm not trying to propagandize about hunting. Every that since that time, shooting a deer has become for me no more sporting than going out and shooting the old family cow. The story got around and I was kidded about it that night when I attended a square dance, my first, at the schoolhouse in Kanab. There was cornmeal on the floor, dust in the air, and a hundred people I had never met before swirling around the place. I did everything wrong, had every girl I partnered with, giggling at my ineptitude — and I ended up having one of the best times I ever had in my life. (It was also just as well that I had decided to quit hunting. The next morning I was so stiff I could hardly walk, 'et alone stalk a deer.) For hunting thrills I have substituted golfing thrills. Landing a ball on a tough green, clearing some nasty traps on the way, is as satisfying as sending a bullet under a deer's shoulder — or at least it will do for me. And a few weeks ago it more than did for me when I was playing Bel Air and couldn't find my ball after apparently hitting a spoon shot straight from the tee to the green. No, the ball wasn't lost. It had come straight down into the cup, tearing a piece of earth the size of a half dollar off the lip and jamming itself tight between the pin and the side of the cup — for a flying hole in one. Incidentally, it happened to be the 13th hole. With all this traveling that I do, and plan to do ahead, it may seem to a lot of people that mine is a restless soul. I wouldn't know. Everybody's life falls into a pattern, sooner or later, and that is the pattern of mine right now. It wasn't always like this. There certainly was a time in my life when I really came close to being quite the fireside boy. . . . Today, when I'm working in Hollywood, I'm still a homebody. Unless there is a special occasion involved I drive straight home from work, have my dinner, read and go to bed. If I go out at all it is on a weekend. Any time you read an item about my being seen in a night club you can pretty well bet it was on a Saturday night. When the picture I am working on is over and done with, I can't stay put any longer and I'm off. Why? Why not stick home? I don't know. Iron bars do not a prison make, as the old saying goes, and my trouble may be that neither does brick or wood make a home. It just makes a house. There's a difference. Oh, I know what the difference is all right. Maybe I'll meet up with her some day. Maybe that's what all this traveling is about. A man can never tell. The End SAW IT HAPPEN At a recent broadcast on the Ford Theater. I saw Ida Lupino giving many autographs directly from the stage. One smart boy kept repeating . "That's not Ida Lupino; that's her double. You don't think she would sit there and sign autographs." Miss Lupino finally turned to the boy and said, "Sonny, don't tell anyone, but I'm really Ingrid Bergman in disguise " Lillian Rudolph Richmond Hill, N. Y.