Modern Screen (Dec 1938 - Nov 1939 (assorted issues))

MODERN SCREEN HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED (Continued from page 41) the pages of a Noel Coward play, except that they're much more real and alive and vital than even Noel Coward could have created them. Remember "Private Lives," the story of two people who fought like wildcats, but who couldn't be happy away from each other ? That's Humphrey Bogart and Mayo Methot. While I was talking to Humphrey, Mayo came into the Lakeside Country Club. A slim vital person with yellow hair and blue eyes, she gave the effect of sunlight dancing into a room — that's how alive she is. The blue bow which caught her hair on the left side seemed to dance, her eyes danced, and she sparkled like champagne. "Humphrey and I have had perfectly grand arguments," she said. "People who don't know us well can't understand it — sometimes they'll find us scrapping away like mad, and they'll think all's over between us, and the next day we'll be sitting across the table from each other, as calm as we are right now. "There are times when Bogey would like to kill me, and other times when I'd like to kill Bogey. One night, when his mother was present, we had a terrific discussion. We couldn't agree on anything. The next morning I called Bogey's mother and said, 'I shot Bogey this morning. The dismembered pieces of his body are in the bathroom. What does one do with a body?' She understood what I meant perfectly. From the other end of the telephone I could hear her laughing." There must have been times, too, when even Humphrey's mother must have wondered what to do about her son, who was always in hot water. She understands him so well that she was never amazed at any woman's wish to kill him or, on the other hand, at the great adoration he arouses in women. MANY years ago, before Humphrey married the auburn-haired darling of Broadway, Helen Menken, he met Mayo — and instantly they hated one another. It was a strange party at which they met — at that sophisticated club for New Yorkers— the Mayfair. "The queerest party I ever went to in my life," Humphrey assured me. "The strange thing about the party was that nearly all the men and women present at it, no matter with whom they came, were carrying the torch for someone else. "If everyone had turned around and faced someone else instead of the person with whom he came," Humphrey said, "everything would have been perfect. Then the people who loved one another would have been facing each other. And Mayo might have turned around and faced me, and all the long years in between, and all the mistakes we made might have been avoided." But Mayo didn't turn around. Just catching a glimpse of Humphrey at that party was enough for her. Immediately, she was convinced that he was the most conceited, insufferable, arrogant person she had ever in her life met. "Everyone dislikes me on sight," Humphrey explained. "There's something about my face which annoys most people — something about the cast of my head or the look in my eye which makes people think I'm conceited. At that, I guess I was a pretty arrogant person in those days. When people mentioned me, Mayo probably said, 'Why, that conceited, arrogant, stuck-up person.' " "That's exactly what I said," said Mayo smiling, but with a faintly sad tinge to her smile, as though a lump were rising in her throat. Humphrey also thought Mayo conceited. Certainly it was obvious that she would never want for masculine attention, that one. The men swarmed round her. No wonder she was so spoiled, he thought. 'We were like a couple of cats on a back fence," Humphrey explained. "I recognized in Mayo an equal opponent, one who gives no quarter and who asks none, and the hackles on the back of my neck went up in resentment." Not long afterwards Humphrey married Helen Menken. It was the marriage of dynamite to dynamite. Both were very young. Humphrey at the time still retained his little boy quality of getting into difficulties, and many were the hot arguments between the two. The real cause of trouble between the two of them, however, was that both still had their, careers to build and, caught up in the maelstrom of their careers, their marriage suffered. ''I don't like to talk about my previous EVERYBODY THOUGHT SHED BE AH OLD MA/D Mr 4* YOU RE MY BEST GIRL FRIEND, ANITA. TELL J ME WHY I'M SO UNPOPULAR. PLEASE! WELL, RUTH_ SINCE YOU \ ASKJ THINK YOU SHOULD \ USE LIFEBUOY. ITS A BIG J HANDICAP FOR s \-— ^ .BUT SHE D/SCOVERED /NT/ME WHY MEN D/DNT UKE HER... X I 1 I IMAGINEA GIRL LIKE ME GUILTY OF /B.O." BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN! IM PLAYING SAFE _ I'M USING LIFEBUOY IN MY DAILY BATH • It's the fault unforgivable. It comes between people— destroys affection— ruins romance. "B.O." makes such a bad impression—betrays the offender at once! Why not play safe the way millions do? Use Lifebuoy in your daily bath! It contains an exclusive ingredient not found in any other popular toilet soap. Lifebuoy in your daily bath stops "B.O."— assures freshness. Fine for the complexion, too. LIFEBUOY/fr^g*&^gZ& PROTECTS AGAINST 109