Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1943)

Champagne and Bitters LIKE any other mortals, editors taste both the champagne of happiness and the bitters of disappointment. ' First, share your editors' happiness. Reason one: Our pride in Photoplay-Movie Mirror's readers who have bought thousands of dollars of War Bonds. In the May issue this page offered in cooperation with Warner Brothers an autographed star portrait to everyone buying a Bond. So many hundreds of you were anxious enough to buy your share of victory that it was necessary to triple the number of photographs and Bonds originally allotted the magazine. Reason two: Photoplay's cover this month of Judy Garland, which is not only decorative, as Judy always is, but which is doing a special job for our government's fight to win the food war. As a Crop Corps girl, Judy is dramatizing our country's need for millions of women volunteers this summer who will go into the fields and harvest the golden crops that are as important ammunition for the Allies as are the shells that are produced in the factories. Reason three: The first color picture of Air Cadet John Payne which Photoplay brings you with this issue. The same day John arrived in Hollywood on his motorcycle to share his short leave with friends, indefatigable Hymie Fink found him visiting at June Havoc's. John posed and the happy result: page 35. Reason four: The message written especially for Photoplay from Joseph E. Davies, former Ambassador to Russia and author of "Mission To Moscow," the best seller which has been brought to the screen. It has been a matter of discussion whether in war time escapist magazines like Photoplay should take notice of the fact that we are fighting a war for our very existence as a nation and as human beings. We have proceeded on the theory that movie magazines as well as all other publications have inescapable responsibilities to their readers and their country. The message from Davies on pages 36 and 37 is not about stars or even about Hollywood, but it is about the struggle into which we are all plunged and so Photoplay has published it in the belief that it contains information of vital importance to us, a nation at war. KJ OW share the editors' disappointments. ' It had been our intention to give readers a natural color photograph of Lana Turner and Steve Crane, again husband and wife and knowing their first measure ot jn\ after months of emotional distress. The best Photoplay could do is the dramatic — and to the editors startling — black and white candid photo of Lana and Steve on page 4. When Ann Sheridan first discovered Mexico with a vengeance, editorial minds began speculating and whispers of a love affair reached editorial ears. So Photoplay planned to tell its readers the exciting story of Ann's Mexican romance. But the whispers had been made up of the gossamer of uumor, of gossip without fact. If there was a romance, Ann had managed adroitly to keep it hidden from the sharp gaze of Hollywood's best reporters. Photoplay can report in certainty to you just one thing: there can be no question that Ann loves Mexico, its fire and color, its distaste for big business as practiced by Hollywood, its preoccupation with pleasure, and that, if we were Ann's bosses, we would worry whether some day she might not travel to Mexico and never return. "See Spencer Tracy and get a story from him," Photoplay told one of its most capable contributors, in the expectation of being able to report to you what Spencer Tracy is thinking, doing, hoping for; what his tastes, his likes and dislikes are in this year of 1943. The writer returned without a manuscript. "He told me just to go ahead and write whatever I wanted to, that I knew him as well as he did anyway. And then he left." The Tracy story Photoplay ordered hasn't been written yet. It will be, but the editors wanted it for you now. So Photoplay goes to press with the hopes, the pleasures, the disappointments of its editors bound up in the ink, the paper, the type, and soon a completed magazine will go out on the newsstands that will show none of the emotional stress you have been warned about here. cf^Lo^ /Z^Z^^^-^^^^