Modern Screen (Dec 1948 - Oct 1949)

PARTING IS SUCH SORROW (Continued from page 59) a child although she is the mother of two children — Kathleen, two, and Thomas, born a few months ago. I was remembering her background. Born practically in a theater trunk, she has show business in her blood. Her father, Carter De Haven, and her mother were in the theatrical big time for years. Gloria doesn't talk much about her father but she'll launch into a paean of praise over her mother at the drop of a hat. "My mother was a big star," she told me once. "She could have gone lots farther on the stage but she quit to have children. And what did it get her? She was left behind with her babies while my father went on to hear the applause and listen to the flattery of the world. It turned his head and our family was broken up. Mother had to struggle along to get food and clothing for us. This wouldn't have happened to her if she had stuck to her own career." haunting memory . . . And this memory could very well be the key to the whole trouble between Gloria and John. In those weeks and months when she was being just a wife and having her babies, was she haunted by the thought that what happened to her mother could very well happen to her? When she and John were married in the Christmas holiday week of 1944, she was so infatuated that she thought she'd never want anything else but his love. "She told me when we were married that she didn't care any more about a career," John said. "Being older and more experienced than she, I should have realized that she didn't know what she was promising. I was amused at first when she began to talk about growing old and getting but of things. Then I discovered that this fantastic fear was a reality to her. Five weeks after our first baby was born she began to talk about going back to work. This came as a great shock to me because I thought she ought to be so happy with the new baby and our pleasant home life. "I'm not stubbornly set against the idea of a married couple having separate film careers. Some women can manage it. But I didn't think Gloria could. "Picture work is very hard. You have to be up early to get your makeup on and be on the set in time for the day's shooting. Then at night you're so tired you don't want to do anything but go home and to bed. Married couples see very little of each other when either is working. Both are nervous and irritable from the strain. They're apt to snap at each other without much cause. I wanted to avoid this in my home." But staying home was worse for Gloria than all the hard work called for in making a picture. She saw herself standing still while the kids who started at M-G-M when she did were climbing up the ladder to fame and fortune. She saw her good friend June Allyson, with whom she had worked in Two Girls And A Sailor when they were both beginning to get a foothold, being starred. It is understandable that June's success especially would affect Gloria, since in that picture it was little Miss De Haven who had? been considered by the studio bosses as having the greater starring promise. "I told John I had show business in my blood," Gloria exclaimed. "He said that was just silly, that there wasn't any such thing. He thinks that all this talk about the background and tradition of the theater is just so much conversation. 94 "Well, I can understand his attitude. He was brought up in a wonderful home in Roanoke, Virginia, and got into show business by accident. He can talk for hours about his old Virginia home with crisp waffles and white turkey meat for breakfast and a huge kitchen where there's always a spicy ham or turkey or something else cooking. But he doesn't have any memories of catching a train in the early morning or sitting up at a counter getting coffee and doughnuts while the gang around you are reading their notices written by the theatrical critics." John, who is related to the Payne who wrote "Home Sweet Home," is a lad who sets great store by having a well-ordered house and a cozy fireside to sit around. Acting to him is a serious business, but only the means to something much more important: earning a nice living so he can enjoy his home life. When he was growing up, his mother thought he would write music like his illustrious ancestor, but instead he decided he wanted to be a journalist and took a journalism course at Columbia University. Then he switched back to music, studied at the Juilliard School, and sang on the radio for a while. One summer, just to pass the time away, he did some work in a straw hat theater in Connecticut. This brought him to the attention of Hollywood and he settled down here to a job that has turned out to be exceedingly profitable for him. He is a very logical young man who does nothing he can't map out by reason. (Except falling in love — he married two actresses.) Gloria is just the opposite. It's difficult for her to apply logic to anything her emotions prompt her to do. She loves the world of make-believe and can lose herself in it completely. Not so John. He can always stand back and look at himself as an actor. He is strictly a realist. It is this tendency to cut through to what he believes to be the truth that has earned him the reputation of being hard to get along with. But on the set of El Paso, at the famous Iverson ranch where so many outdoor pictures are made, I found that the gang working in the film with him felt unanimously that he was strictly "regular." Gabby Hayes, the old-time horse opera character actor, told me he'd never worked with a nicer guy. Gloria began her married life when she was 18 with very little idea of what it was all about. She was like a little girl playing house. Household budgets, managing servants, ordering food was all a game. She didn't know much about handling finances and had never written a check until she signed her name Gloria Payne. I saw her making out a check one day for $25. She wrote it $25,000. This was very cute at first, but it must have resulted in a few family squabbles by the time their first rift occurred in September, 1946. That was when she checked in at the BeverlyWilshire Hotel with their nine-months-old baby and John stayed put in their home. With most couples it is the wife who stays in the home and the husband who goes to a hotel — but as I told you before, John loves his home, Gloria only wanted to escape it. She told me at the time that she simply had to get away and think things over. "I'm not even considering a divorce or anything. But the adult thing to do is to separate until we can straighten out our disagreements. John and I are in love, but we don't see eye-to-eye." But it wasn't long until they were back seeing eye-to-eye again. Things went along smoothly as far as the world knew until last spring, when it happened all over again. This time John moved out and took an apartment. It wasn't so easy for Gloria to move because there were two babies by that time, little Thomas having been born just four months before. Gloria said they'd been having all kinds of arguments and attributed it all to the fact that John had made three pictures without a rest between and that he was tired and upset. He was working on Larceny for Universal-International and Gloria said that when he finished the picture they would "have time to sit down and talk it out." John told reporters: "We've had a series of arguments and Gloria is distraught and nervous. I've been working steadily and rather than attempt a discussion now in an upset frame of mind we decided on a temporary separation. Later we will be able to talk rationally — and we hope then to arrive at a beneficial conclusion." When he finished the picture, he went East to play in The Voice of The Turtle at Princeton, N. J., with Joan Caulfield, who was with him in Larceny. Later, Gloria joined him in New York, where they had their rational talks. And after six weeks of separation, they were back together with seemingly a smooth path. There was gossip then that Miss Caulfield had something to do with their separation, but Gloria said this "definitely was not true." I arranged an interview with them late in August to write about their reconciliation and had a luncheon date at their home where I was to see how happy they were. But on the morning of the day we had our date, John telephoned and said the luncheon was off because Gloria and he had rifted again — "and this time it looks as if it's for keeps." really for keeps? . . . Will it really be for keeps? Gloria has filed for a divorce charging mental cruelty. But it will be a year before she is legally free and she is hoping that before that time she and John can resume their marriage on a new basis. She told me she doesn't want a divorce — that if there is any way in the world that she can persuade John that they can have a happy home life the while she furthers her career as an actress, she is going to do it. She recently signed a new long-term contract with M-G-M and, even should the divorce go through, she'll still have that year before the decree is final in which to prove to John that she can coordinate the jobs of being a mother of two babies and working in pictures. She might also be able to demonstrate to him that she could include in her design for living a contented husband. John is staying in the house and Gloria has taken an apartment. However, the place is community property, and if the divorce does take place, it will have to be sold so that each can get half the money. But John thinks he will keep the place and pay Gloria the cash. She is not asking for alimony but wants reasonable support for the babies. At this writing, their attorneys are huddling over what is "reasonable." In the meantime, John is going places with Shelley Winters and having lots of laughs. Gloria has been going out with Cy Howard, producer of the radio show, "My Friend Irma." But it's my belief that up to now, neither Gloria nor John is seriously interested in anyone else. It's my belief that they are still very much in love and, having successfully surmounted their marital difficulties twice before, might do it again. The End