Hollywood (1939)

Men Don't Need Women To Succeed 10030* yOU* TLAVOK .TOWN "Spic and span,' people say when they first visit Flavor-Town (Canajoharie, N. Y.). "Whaf flavor and quality," you'll say when yoo try a package of Beech-Nut Gum. Six varieties. Refreshing and restful. Beech -Nut Cir£CH?^M TTrrGUt* 0*4****" ..gooPtoM" GOING TO THE N. Y. WORLD'S FAIR ? We invite you to visit the Beech-Nut Building there. If you're driving, we would be delighted to have you stop at Conajoharie, in the Mohawk Valley of New York, and see how Beech-Nut products are made. [Continued jrom page 28] dinner. Up to the time the boss tastes Mrs. Doakes' pies, he hasn't quite made up his mind whether to give Joe Doakes a raise or not, but after eating Mrs. Doakes' apple pie, he goes home completely sold on Joe Doakes and promotes him over the head of Johnny Smith, who's just as smart as Joe but whose wife is a pain in the neck. To all of this, Adolphe Menjou says, stroking his moustache contemptuously, "Ridiculous! It's all a lot of foolishness, which never happens except in fiction, for social life has nothing to do with one's success or lack of it, nor has one's wife's ability as a hostess anything to do with it. Success consists 90 per cent of luck and 10 per cent in being prepared for opportunities. Now where do a wife's perfect apple pies fit into the picture? If a man is a valuable executive, he may have the most horrible wife in the world, but his firm is going to hang on to him just the same." This was not at all what I expected Adolphe Menjou to say. But I'd forgotten that Adolphe is a sophisticated man, with a sophisticated man's point of view; and although his marriage to Verree Teasdale is successful, he was a great success before his marriage to her, so he does not say "I owe it all to her!" "When I was most unhappy, I made two of my best pictures, King on Main Street, and Grand Duchess and the Waiter. Sometimes when a man is most unhappy, he does his finest work. He forgets the tragedies and tribulations of his home life in his work. Sometimes the one thing that makes a man successful is unrest." Although Adolphe Menjou never discusses his first two wives either in or out of interviews and doesn't even mention them by name, it is common knowledge that his first wife was a very brilliant, efficient newspaperwoman, Katherine Conn Tinsley; and his second, the slender, tall, blue-eyed Kathryn Carver, had a way of gazing at a man that made an irresistible appeal to his protective instincts. Obviously Adolphe didn't find perfect companionship in either of these marriages, and he himself must have forgotten trials and tribulations in his domestic life by losing himself in a world in which he played a gay, sophisticated boulevardier, a man with a perfect understanding of women! "I'm not denying," Adolphe told me, "that women have a tremendous influence — they can be a great help or a millstone around a man's neck, but they are not essential to his success." We were sitting on the set where Adolphe Menjou was making his latest picture. He sat in a chair at ease while a bootblack put finishing touches to his shoes. "Are you satisfied with both shoes, or do you think they need a little more polish?" Menjou said with a smile. Adroitly he avoided telling the bootblack that he, Adolphe Menjou, wasn't satisfied. Very clearly he implied that it was the bootblack, himself, who set up such high standards that it took a very fine job indeed to satisfy him. When the director called him to work, he said, "I'm not in the mood," then winked at me and rushed forward. One gets the impression that he is always in the mood when called, and that if he isn't, he gets himself into it. The scene over, he sat down again, said to the bootblack, "Are you through with me, or was there still one shoe with which you weren't satisfied?" The bootblack discovered that there was still one shoe with which he wasn't completely satisfied. "I thought so," said Adolphe, settling down in his chair. He looked pleased with the bootblack, who had so much discrimination; he looked pleased with the world. Then he turned his attention back to the subject under discussion. "Right here in Hollywood," he said, "I can name you a man who has been a tremendous success without the help of any woman. In spite of two miserably unhappy marriages, Charlie Chaplin has given some of the greatest performances ever screened." "Well, what about business executives?" I asked. "Is every captain of industry a liar when he gets up before an audience and says that he would have been a failure without the help of his 'best friend and severest critic?' " "Not necessarily," said Adolphe. "Some men do owe a great deal to the 'little woman.' While some men tell their wives everything about their businesses and feel that their wives, through superior intuition, are able to give them wonderful advice, other men don't tell their wives anything about business, and are equally successful. "If a woman makes a man happy in his home life, she is doing a great deal for him. If, in addition, she has the ability to advise him, then she is indeed a pearl among women. If a woman is sympathetic with your ambitions, she can do a great deal to encourage you. If she is opposed to them, what a miserable life you can lead together! Remember, I said that a woman can do a great deal to help or hinder a man. But I deny that she is essential to his success. Certainly a wife can help her husband by saving his money; a bad manager can spend it all, so that, no matter how successful he is, he will always be broke. "On the other hand, I know of one woman who deliberately kept her husband broke because she said it was the only way to make him achieve the success of which .she felt he was capable. When he was making only eighteen dollars a week, she spent twenty-five. When he worked day and night so that he could pay the twenty-five, she spent fifty. She bought expensive fur coats, dresses his salary couldn't possibly pay for, hired a maid she couldn't afford, moved into an apartment that rented for twice what she should have paid. "Apparently her plan succeeded, for the 52