Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

Love Came Too Late (Continued from, page 48) had begun. Before her marriage Joan would not get near an airplane. With her husband, she put fear aside and together they flew across the world. She gave up her movie career and devoted herself to her husband and his interests. "Ours is a husband-and-wife team," she said. "I love every minute of it. The reality of it is even more unbelievable than some of the movie parts I've portrayed." Alfred was all Joan wanted in a man ("I've never been happier," she had often said after their marriage). He was full of kindness and tenderness and warm understanding. Everyone who knew them insisted it was difficult to imagine two human beings more in love. Immediately after their marriage, Alfred had Joan's initials embossed in sterling silver on the doors, of his executive limousines and on all his office accessories. Joan, through all the days of their marriage, never permitted the cook to fix breakfast for Alfred (except once when Joan had an attack of the flu). "When you're in love," Joan said, "you just can't do enough to please the person who gives you such happiness!" Their duplex penthouse on East 70th Street, overlooking the rolling hills of Central Park, was Love House to anyone who knew them. Then, on that fateful Sunday morning of April 19th, Joan went to awaken her husband for breakfast and found him dead of a heart attack. Only the day before they had returned from a whirlwind cross-country tour in behalf of Alfred's work as Chairman of the Board of the Pepsi-Cola Corporation. They were planning a leisurely holiday in the sun of Jamaica later that week. Shocked, distraught, and trembling uncontrollably, Joan clutched at the bed where her husband lay, cried out weakly for the servants, and then collapsed. When she recovered, she went into deep mourning for the man she'd often said she "simply couldn't live without." And the world waited, wondering — could Joan face a life alone. . . ? Joan as a child The spirit with which Joan Crawford may face her widowhood — this greatest trial of her life — had its beginnings in her earliest childhood. Lucille LeSeuer (Joan's real name) had the prettiest and widest blues eyes of any six-year-old girl in the town of Lawton, Oklahoma. One day she stepped on a broken bottle, and was told she'd never walk again. For nearly two years she lay still in her bed in that modest, cramped house her parents lived in; for little Lucy grew up in poverty. Confined to her bed day after day, Lucy gave up her thrilling dream of becoming a dancer and tried to endure this trial bravely. But she had given her heart meanwhile to the neighbor who had saved her — Donald Blanding, tall and handsome and twenty years old. Donald found little Lucy bleeding on the sidewalk and carried her home. Every day he visited the bedridden youngster. He tried to encourage her to walk, but no sooner would she hobble out of bed than she'd pass out. To alleviate the pain, her mother would press an ether cone to her face, and the little girl, choked and groggy with ether, wondered if she would ever live a normal life like the other kids. But Donald, a poet, came to Lucy's bedside every day and read her religious poems and stories. And, more than that, he offered her untiring encouragement and the selfless love of a friend. And Lucille LeSeuer, from those early years, wished she could give some of the love in her heart to the world, to the people in desperate need of help: the bedridden, the sick and the needy. With Donald's comforting and friendly CRYSTAL Set curls in seeontk with, a dash, of color! \ SKY BLUE USE LADY ELLEN COLOUR KLIPPIES pin curl clips Set pin curls in seconds with Colour Klippies. Wear these same colorful clips in public to hold straying curls . . . and straying glances. Campus cuties love 'em... and so will you! Lady Ellen Colour Klippies match or blend with any hair shade, hair style or costume. Select your own personal color from six lovely pastels: Pink, Black, Shell, Amber, Crystal, Sky Blue. Glamorous Colour Klippies set curls with jet speed. They spring open at fingertip touch, glide quickly and easily onto curls. Klippies hug your curls gently, hold them securely with firm, even tension. The only clip used by 90% of all beauticians. Buy Colour Klippies — 8 for 29tf — at your variety, drug, food and department store and in beauty shops. Write today for 16-page illustrated booket, "How to Set a Pin Curl'.' Included Free is a Klippies Code that tells you how boy friends react to certain colors. Send 10$ to Lady Ellen, Dept. MS-77, Los Angeles 51, California.