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By THOMAS MINEHAN
IRLS, how would you like to be saved from drowning by a dream man? A tanned handsome life guard, romantic as a purple sunset, soul-stirring as a love song crooned over moonlight waters. A youth who, like Lindbergh, wasan aviator, like Tunney, an athlete, and best of all, a youth who was to be a famous movie actor.
That, do I hear you say, has a catch in it.
Yet it could have happened. It did, in fact, happen, although few of the girls appreciated their good luck.
Back at the municipal beach Dick could rescue a damsel single-handed and stifle a yawn with the free hand. But things are different in Hollywood and — well, meet the wife, Jobyna Ralston.
STILL, how were they to know that the young life guard who pulled them out of the water was to be Richard Arlen.' Ho-v was anybody to know that Arlen, who had already won his wings as a flyer, was to win greater renown in after years in Wrings, and — well, you know the Arlen pictures.
We, his fellow life guards at a municipal beach in St. Paul, Minnesota, never suspected the fame that was to be his. A high school athlete and dramatic star, Arlen was a superb guard, daring, fearless, and possessed of abundant strength and skill. Once I saw him dive from a boat and come up with three bathers ringed around his neck like a brace of ducks in a spaniel's mouth, and again I saw him break the surface of the lake thirty feet beyond the life-line
svith a swimmer in his arms, tow the man into shallow water and return to dive for another.
One of the fastest swimmers in the crew, Dick was always nearly first to reach a drowning bather and render aid.
BEFORE ' FAME '
steamer
-but nevertheless, she was drowning.
ERE S an incident which even Dick still laughs about :
A portly young lady, unattended, came down the beach one afternoon and walked unheedingly by warning signs and into deep water. Then she sank.
Too fat to drown in the regular way, as soon as she stepped over the pitch-off she popped up like a fisherman's bobber and lay floating face down on the surface. Her body even to her heels was half out of the water, but her head was submerged. She lay there spouting foam, her hands fanning the water like the stern wheels on a Mississippi
Long before Hollywood knew him, Richard Arlen used to be a dashing life-guard. These anecdotes of his courageous feats and delightful pranks of those early days will both enthrall and delight you with their difference
RLEN, the nearest guard, started for her in a row boat. He tried to lift her into the craft and discovered that what he needed was a steam winch and tug. Too heavy for anything smaller, the woman threatened to swamp the boat each time Arlen raised her even an inch. Back into the lake he wopld plop her, secure a new hold and begin again. Several times he stood the boat on end as he heaved and yanked at the bather. Never wa^ he able to get her half over the stern without shipping water. Never was he able to get her to hold onto the side of the boat while he balanced it.
To add to Arlen's troubles an off-shore wind was drifting him and his client out into the lake. AH the guards were swimming or rowing to help him, when he discovered a \^Conlinued on page 97]
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