Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1939)

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Lackadaisical Lothario THERE is no mystery about Tampax. It is simply a kind of monthly sanitaty protection worn internally. Each individual Tampax is sealed in a hygienic container which allows you to insert the Tampax neatly and daintily. Tampax was perfected by a doctor and more than 133,000,000 have already been sold. It brings new comfort and freedom to club women, office workers, athletes, students, housewives. It does away with chafing, odor and "bulking," providing a smooth costume-profile even in swim suits or sheer evening gowns. No belts or pins. You really forget you are wearing Tampax ! Made of pure, long-fibered surgical cotton, highly compressed. Tampax is extremely absorbent and efficient. No disposal problems. Sold at drug stores and notion counters. Two sizes: Regular Tampax and Junior Tampax. Introductory package, 2Qi. An average month's supply, 35(*. As much as 25% saved by purchasing large economy package of 40. Accepted for advertising by the Journal of the American Medical Association. TAMPAX INCORPORATED New Brunswick, N. J. C Send introductory box; 20i enclosed (stamps, coins). Size checked below. I-! Regular Tampax Q Junior Tampax Q Send Tampax booklet with diagrams — free. p-ro Kame^ Address— JStatt The war in Europe, which had up until now been merely something older folks talked about at the dinner table, suddenly became an immediate, personal thing that spring. For, within a week after America joined the Allies, Alec Stewart applied for a commission and was given a captaincy in the Ordnance Department. "The war brought an early sense of responsibility to Jim," Mrs. Stewart declared. "Alec was sent to Camp Dodge in Iowa and Jim immediately became the man of the house. His concern for me was most comforting. I remember, for instance, how every night he would go around locking all the doors and windows as his father had done. It's a funny thing but, when Jim is home now, he still makes the rounds the last thing before he goes to bed. "Jim took the war very seriously. He used to wear a soldier's suit with a little trench cap and on the slightest provocation he would salute. He'd kiss me good-by, as he went off to school, and then salute. He'd salute the postman, the grocer, the baker and, I'm sure, his teachers on arrival at school. "His play took on a martial manner, too. The back yard was turned into a No Man's Land. Trenches were dug, battle lines mapped out, copied carefully from the newspaper reports from the front, and 'Doddie' and 'Ginny' (Jim's pet nicknames for his sisters) were made Red Cross nurses." nHEN Captain Stewart sailed for France in the spring of 1918, Jim's mounting spirit of patriotism found expression in the presentation of a blustering play called "The Slacker." Jim was the author, star, director and stage manager. The piece was given in the spacious basement playroom where the children had built a stage, rigged up footlights and strung a very professional curtain. Virginia recalls the dramatic debut of Indiana's favorite star. "Jim was terribly intense about that play, just as he is about everything he gets interested in. He's either wrapped up in a venture to the exclusion of all other interests or completely indifferent. There are no halfway measures with Jim. "We rehearsed and rehearsed that play. I remember I had just one line, 'War is declared,' but Jim had me practice that scene four and five times a day for the whole week before the great matinee. Each night before I went to bed, he'd say, 'Now you're sure you've got your part? Let's hear it again.' And over and over, in varying inflections, I'd recite, 'War is declared!' "At last the eventful day arrived. All mother's friends and the parents of the other children in the cast were gathered for the premiere. Jim was in a flurry of excitement, superintending the costuming of every member of the cast, testing the footlights, making sure the curtain would work right and finally, with a toot on a trumpet, starting the show. "Jim, of course, was the slacker of the story. His reception of my ringing news that war was declared established a new high in sneers. The next scene showed Jim being drafted. Then came the battle scene and our masterpiece of scenic lighting in which red paper over the footlights was supposed to establish the effect of gunfire and shells bursting. The slacker proved a hero in an emergency and the last scene found him being decorated by General Pershing. "We felt it was really a powerful {Continued from page 19) drama with a gripping message and were extremely pleased with our performance. But the audience somehow seemed to regard it as a comedy, for even the most tense moments of the play were met with howls!" The next production of the Stewart Basement Players was another war sketch, titled with simple dignity, "To Hell with the Kaiser." Then, really bitten by the bug of showmanship, Jim branched out with a series of movie matinees. In return for doing odd jobs for the proprietor of the local picture palace, Jim often was able to borrow a projection machine and a reel of the current serial for his home screenings. nHEN Captain Stewart returned from France the following spring, the house on Vinegar Hill became the favorite haunt of every boy in town with even a nodding acquaintance with Jim. For the tall, rangy Ordnance officer had brought home enough souvenirs to stock a small museum; helmets, bayonets, gas masks, rocket pistols, in fact just about everything but a mast from a German battleship scuttled at Jutland or a piece of one of the Big Berthas that had belched at Paris. New trenches were dug with spades that had actually scooped up contested ground in France. Uniforms, if not complete, now were authentic in at least one item for every warrior. And battle now had some purpose, for to the victors went the spoils of prized trophies, returnable, of course, at the end of every engagement to the Stewart attic armory. The rest of the world might be sinking contentedly into the welcome ways of peace, but the Battle of Vinegar Hill raged on through the spring and summer and, by fall, the novelty of the war trophies having worn off, Jim and Bill Neff and Hall Blair produced a bit of war equipment all their own. It was a tank, a sort of freehand adaptation of a regular army baby tank. Wheels from pushmobiles of younger, more innocent days were utilized for locomotion. The sides of the tank were built of packing boxes. A cheese box served as turret and pieces of two-inch pipe made excellent armament. The illusion of gunfire was achieved by blowing flour in bursts through a funnel. "So brave a sight did our tank make," recalls Hall Blair, "that we were invited by the mayor to head an Armistice Day parade. Everything went fine until the wheels of the tank got caught in the streetcar tracks right in front of the reviewing stand and the parade had to detour around us." "Jim was always building things in those days," his sister Mary remembers. "Most memorable was the boat he and Bill Neff and Hall Blair built at Two Lick, a little cluster of summer cottages beside a creek about four miles from town. "All through the spring the boys had worked every week end on the boat, a twenty-foot flat-bottomed scow which was to be propelled by two side paddle wheels. All through the early summer they had hammered and sawed and painted and finally, late in July, they were ready for the launching. "It was a momentous occasion and Ginny and I and some other friends accompanied the boys to Two Lick to christen the craft. Jim climbed in and grasped the handles of the peddle wheels. With a shout, Bill and Hall shoved the scow into the water. Jim began to paddle furiously but the moment the boat hit the water it started slowly to sink. There was Jim paddling away for dear life, headed toward the far shore, but instead of moving across the stream, the boat just sank lower and lower until finally Jim was up to his waist, still paddling!" The next fall brought a new interest as station KDKA in near-by Pittsburgh began the first radio broadcasts. Bill and Hall and Jim immediately turned their inventive activities to the construction of receiving sets. "For the next few years," said Blair, "most of our time was spent building radios. In fact, we were so busy those days keeping up with each new improvement of that fast-growing science that none of us had any time for dates with girls. I don't believe Jim paid much attention to girls anyway, until he went away to college." IN addition to his enthusiasm over radio, Jim acquired another hobby about this time which was to pay rich dividends a few years later. For several months Virginia had been urging her father to buy her a toy accordion that had captured her fancy in a store window. Finally, at Christmas, Alec gave her a real full-sized accordion. It was too heavy for Virginia, however, and Jim began fooling with it. Soon he could pick out a few tunes and after several lessons from an Italian barber who was the accordion virtuoso of the community, Jim was able to perform well enough to play with the Boy Scout band in their weekly concerts on the steps of the town hall. The spring of 1923 brought graduation from the Model School and with it the commencement play, an ambitious little venture into fantasy called "The Frog Prince." It would be pat to record that Jim distinguished himself in the leading role, revealing the promise of future triumphs. As a matter of fact, his part was that of the proverbial spear carrier, a spear carrier none too sure of his footwork in the mass scenes. The pictures in Mrs. Stewart's album of Jim, the spring he was fifteen, show a thin, gangling youngster in his first pair of long trousers, proudly purchased for commencement. Alec was worried at the boy's failure to fill out fast enough and arranged for Jim and Joe Davis to work that summer with the crew of a lumber camp. Jim returned from the camp, fifteen pounds heavier, tanned, swaggering a little at having held down a man-sized job for a month. He was greeted with important news. In the fall, he was to go away to school, to Mercersburg. A whole new world suddenly opened up to the boy, whose life had been bounded by ties of a closely knit family, the well-ordered routine of school days, and the safe adventures of a small town. Just ahead lay Mercersburg with all the new, unexplored opportunities of a prep school rich in prestige and the tradition of fabulous figures like Ted Meredith, of Olympic fame, and Ed Wittmer, of Ail-American football renown. And beyond, beckoning him into a bright, glorious future, gleamed the distant, romantic towers of Princeton. A gangling Galchad with a purpose. Jim Stewart found — and held tightly to — his own theme of simplicity in the discordant cacophony of the Jazz Age. Athletic laurels at Mercersburg, social success at Princeton were sweet triumphs to this Penrod from Pennsylvania, whose appealing life story continues in next month's Photoplay. 78 PHOTOPLAY