Screenland Plus TV-Land (Nov 1952 - Oct 1953)

es. And Loretta Young, and Irene Dunne, and Jane Powell, and all t lie others. Chances are, you have friends who've undergone a divorce, too . . . not in order to marry someone else, but because the marriage simply didn't hold together. Those friends were able to live down their unhappiness without publicity — but they are no different from Barbara Stanwyck, cr Joan Crawford, or Judy Garland. The smallest move, privately or professionally, of the stars is the world's concern through glaring, often exaggerated, news headlines. Hollywood stands out in any incident — glamourous or otherwise — only because its citizens are ever in the limelight, always with the eyes of the curious upon them. What any intelligent person like Dr. Kinsey can't fail to recognize is that there were 2,000,000 divorces in the United States in the last ten years, and they were not all in Hollywood! No, the only real difference Dr. Kinsey would find in Hollywood lies in the amount of publicity that is given to each occurrence. If anything, he would probably say that the thought of that inevitable publicity probably restrains the citizens of Hollywood from many acts that are common in other cities. True, Hollywood trades on sex, and the stimulus to the pulse from girls like Marilyn Monroe and Susan Hayward and Jane Russell. But that is a type of trade that is necessary to offset other competitive entertainments, such as television. The latter medium has hardly played sex down either, but television still isn't the big news that Hollywood is, and always will be. Many of the better stars on television are unknown to the world at large, and what they do has little news value. But a Hollywood star gleams and glitters all year round, and their names have become household words everywhere. If Hollywood trades on sex, look around your own hometown and think how many girls you know who look just as sexy as those in Hollywood — but would you doubt their morals because of the way they look? Think, too, of the beautiful girls — and there are far more beautiful girls to the square mile in Hollywood than anywhere else — who are happily married, have nicely brought up children, and who teach Sunday school, help in charitable and civic affairs, and tend to their home just as faithfully and normally in the movie capital as Anytown, U.S.A. For every much-married Rita Hayworth or Joan Crawford, there's an ( qually much-married woman outside of Hollywood. And if you think poorly of the so-called home wreckers — Ava Gardner, for instance — how about the Duchess of Windsor who upset a whole kingdom? No, there is not much chance that Dr. Kinsey will deal with a heavy hand on Hollywood. The sexual technique of a star, if it flames on the screen and fails at home, is not a true picture of that star's virtues or vices, or the world she lives in. It merely reflects what happens everywhere: that it takes two to make a marriage or a romance. If the other party 64 is not compatible, nothing that the woman can do is likely to help. What Dr. Kinsey 's report will show is that frigid wives and clumsy husbands exist wherever people live. It will show, too, that there is no magical formula for solving a tottering romance, a dying marriage. True, sexual expertness has a lot to do with keeping harmony in the home, but the report won't show that Hollywood women are better or worse at it. Being a star does not change a woman from being a woman. The pace is fast, but that doesn't make the woman faster! Actually, this writer who has covered the Hollywood scene for nigh on ten You'll see pert little Anne Bancroft in "Tonight We Sing" with David Wayne. years, was never aware that the girls who worked in pictures were different from girls anywhere else. It's ridiculous, for one thing, to believe that because a girl plays a role on the screen with the expertness of an Amber, or Scarlett O'Hara, she is that way in the privacy of her own home. What people don't pause to realize is that sex is, relatively, in the mind. What appeals mentally often fails physically — and no one is more aware of that than the star who manufactures a screen sensuality that she does not otherwise possess. Recently this writer heard the remark of a moviegoer sitting behind him at a Broadway movie theatre. "Boy, would I like to see that dame climb into her own bed. If that's what she wears in a movie, what she looks like in her own boudoir must be something!" He was talking about one of Hollywood's sexiest stars — but how I could have surprised him! Not only about the girl we had seen on the screen, but quite a few others, to boot. For instance, Esther Williams sleeps in a flannel nightgown, Susan Hayward uses an old-fashioned nightgown or sometimes a striped jersey shirt, and Lana Turner, who hates everything looking in, including light, has blackout curtains that fit over the permanent draperies. And none of these stars have bedrooms that look at all like the movie bedrooms in which, always, they sleep so peacefully. On the other hand, Dr. Kinsey would find that a glamourous star like Corinne Calvet never could get to bed and sleep unless her husband, John Bromfield, kissed her good night. "If we had the tiniest spat, I'd lie awake until I summoned up enough courage to ask him to kiss me goodnight." That sort of thing happens in homes throughout the country, and is typical of the normality that exists in most Hollywood marriages. Yet, in the eyes of the public, the Hollywood stars never go to bed unless they undergo some form of a bacchanal. "How else can they behave at home," is the question, "if that is the way they behave on the screen?" Dr. Kinsey 's "Sexual Behavior In The Human Female" will hardly delve seriously into that question, because chances are that, as a result of his findings, he has discovered that the women of Hollywood are no different from all the women of the world, and throughout the ages. Every woman is an Eve, and every man is an Adam. The story has been told before, and it is being told now on the Hollywood screen with exaggerated trapping's. And audiences everywhere are getting their best look at sex since the whole thing began. But take away the trappings, the story, the people in it, and the basic ingredients remain: Adam loves Eve in much the same way he ever has, and vice versa. Not even the locality of city, town, village, or hamlet can change the way they were meant to be, and Dr. Kinsey would be the first to agree that, in most respects, this is true. Hollywood has nothing to worry about when the book comes along.