Modern Screen (Dec 1931 - Nov 1932 (assorted issues))

MIRIAM'S ADOPTED — HER ONLY INTERVIEW ABOUT I ♦ ♦ ♦ Miriam decided to give out only one magazine interview about her newly adopted boy. chose Modern Screen! WANT to be a good friend to him. And when he can talk I want him to call me by my first name." Miriam Hopkins was talking of the baby boy she has adopted, to whom she has given the name she has endowed with fame and wealth, and whose future she has protected with a generous trust fund. This was her answer when I asked if she had any ideas about Michael's training. You don't catch Miriam embroiled in a morass of impractical, untried theories. You don't find Miriam subscribing to anyold-fashioned ideas of maternity with its insistence upon gratitude and respect and its thwarting sentimentality. Knowing about Miriam adopting little Michael, I no longer can insist, as I have in the past, that there's no such thing as luck. When I think of the hundreds of people who might have adopted this baby, people with less money, people with much less of what the French call la joie de vivre, I know him to be lucky without a doubt. From his beautiful mother, Michael will receive understanding. And always he will be allowed the independence which is every individual's right but the lot of far too few. I saw Miriam when she was in New York arranging all of the adoption details. She was stopping at a little hotel in the East Sixties. A hotel intimate and exclusive. Her bedroom with its maple furniture and soft rose toile might have been a room in a delightful country house. She was lying in a great four poster bed, a soft throw of peach silk over her. She was wearing a bedjacket of aquamarine blue, the very color of her eyes. Her hair, the color of young wheat, was slightly disarranged and altogether charming. She had been up until very late the night before. After the theatre there had been a party at the Casino. But as she lay there, balancing her grapefruit in its silver bowl of cracked ice, she looked as fresh as a child just awakened. We talked of the baby. Naturally. He had been only three weeks old when Miriam had seen him first. Through glass. "You know how scientific hospitals are nowadays," she explained the glass, with the rush of words that warm her speech. "Quite right, too! Perfect strangers always feel they have every right to kiss a baby. Babies must hate it often enough." Talking about Michael her eyes deepened. "He'll be just two months old when I take him," she went on. "He has curly blond hair and big blue eyes. I've arranged everything so his people never will know who has him. It's much better this way. For everyone concerned. For Michael especially. Now his mother 30 quite willing to have him go. But years change things. Later, if she knew where he was, she might want him. Then he'd find himself pulled in opposite directions." I asked her about the parents. She told me very little. Who they are, what they are, all the circumstances of his birth — these things are her secret. IT'S enough," she said, "that I know beyond any doubt that And she B y W F L IS he has an excellent chance to be healthy and happy. It's my job to give him the environment and indirect guidance that will develop the best of his natural tendencies." Gaby, Miriam's French companion, is to have entire charge of the nursery. A long time ago Miriam engaged Gaby with this very post in mind. Just as she rented the house she has taken far down on the beach, an extra twenty minutes ride from the studios, because of the big room with a southern exposure — because of the boy she'd planned to adopt. I asked Miriam about Michael's training and she told me how she wanted to be a good friend to him and later have him call her by her first name. "Gaby and I are simply going to use what we hope is our common sense," she explained, "together with whatever basic knowledge we've acquired from our reading and observation. We're not going to go out and meet any problem until it arises. . r\ r r~ There'll be plenty!" A D E L E She laughed. You always feel Miriam is frightfully |-J T F I Y amused by everything, her self included. ET LI E D When Miriam gets in ■ L. H fc K terested in her subject — and she invariably does — she gesticulates with her pretty hands and brushes back her fluffy hair. And all the time she is talking her eyes darken until they become a deep, deep blue. I'm always convinced everything she says is exactly right — even after I've left her. Which, you'll admit, is the acid test. And I've never been able to determine whether this is because of Miriam having an unusually clear vision or just loads of charm. It might, of course, be both. This, incidentally, is to be the only story that will appear about Michael. The newspapers, discovering Miriam in court when she signed the final papers, carried a bare announcement regarding the adoption. Nothing more. "One story, however, I think wise." Miriam smiled meaningly. "I'm hoping it will serve to forestall some of the raised eyebrows, some of the possible unpleasant gossip. "I don't want Michael written about or photographed for publicity. I just want him to grow. I've money enough to give him the things that enrich life. Education. Travel. It will be terribly thrilling to watch him grow and develop. You know it will. "I really think publicity for (Continued on page 104)