The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

The Sweetest Love Story By WHITNEY WILLIAMS Jean Parker's rise to screen fame has been truly meteoric— the fastest Hollywood has known. And for very good reasons, too! — you have ever read, is this one of little Jean Parker and the boy she loves T; HE friendship of Jean Parker and Pancho Lucus has been touched up briefly, but never before has the full force of their love been told. Indeed, it remained an unknown quantity until Jean let slip the news and revealed what undoubtedly is the sweetest love story in Hollywood. Their romance started when both were freshmen in the John Muir High School of Pasadena. Long before they spoke their first words, however, Jean had fallen in love with this Pancho from afar. Pancho, even as a firstyear student, ranked high in athletics and all campus activities ... he also had an eagle eye, and he singled Jean out from the crowd, although she didn't know this until later. Now, Jean, you must know, is the very soul of romance. She is the oldfashioned girl who dreams of story-book heroes and whose thoughts are tender and sweet. Imagination rules her world. "I have found my knight in shining armor," she told me, simply, naively, when I questioned her about her romance, "my Armand, of whom my teacher used to tell me and whom I would see in fancy." She referred You do not have to be told what picture the scene below is from — "Little Women," with Jean as Beth. to the story of "Armand and Antoinette." "I found him among those boys and girls I went to school with every day, and he lived up to every qualification my knight in fiction possessed." Her knight was Pancho, and ere long they met at parties, class meetings, on the campus. Drawn together by some subtle, mysterious force, more than two years elapsed before they finally looked into each other's eyes and confessed their love. No ordinary boy-and-girl affair of the heart, was this love of Jean's and Pancho's. Far from being flippant, momentary, it grew . . . grew, until today it is deeper, more rapturous than ever, absorbing them completely. A glowing light shines in Jean's eyes as she dwells on the subject. "We're not even engaged," she says, "but there's plenty of time for that. Each of us thinks we're much too young and inexperienced now ever to consider such an important step . . . but we've told each other of our devotion and hopes for the future. For the time being, we're content to go on as we are. "We shall not marry until we can really devote ourselves to living our own lives. We're both young — only eighteen — and there's so much each of us has to do. Pancho has his own career to think of . . . he's just starting, you know . . . and I have my own work. You can't successfully combine being a wife and actress at the same time. So we are waiting until some time later when each of us is more firmly established. "I wonder sometimes how Hollywood takes our romance. I wonder if people really understand just how deeply we feel. We love each other so devotedly, our relationship is so sweet and there is only brightness and light for the future that it may be somewhat difficult to comprehend. Neither of us, though, has' set any definite date for an understanding, for a certain course of action ... we are living the present with a very full sense of anticipation that is completely satisfying now. "Pancho and I first avowed our feelings toward each other a year ago last March, at a class dance. We slipped away into the garden to be alone, and there, in the moonlight— it was a very beautiful night, I remember, warm and balmy, and Spring filled the air — we changed from two gay children to a deadly serious boy and girl. We admitted what each of us had known for nearly two years, yet had never spoken ... we were in love. "Up until that moment, we had smiled at each other, waved across the campus, Pancho always had managed to dance at least one dance with me at every party we attended . . . but we had never permitted ourselves a confession. Why, we had never even had a date. Of course, that evening in March, both our lives changed." There is something so genuinely sincere, so trusting, so fine and sweet in this love of Jean's that it is expressive of her entire nature. Hers has not been the happy existence that most {Please turn to page 56) 26 The New Movie Magazine, January, 1935