Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

The Saddest Picture of the Year (Continued from page 31) had Tracy with her in London while she was working on The Grass is Greener there, Jean had arranged for the child to go horseback riding, because she loved horses so. At first Tracy hadn't been able to get used to the English saddle. "But it's not the way Daddy and I ride back home," she said. And then, after her first experience riding at the stables outside of London, Tracy'd come home with Nanny, her face dimpling. "I must tell Daddy how I rode," she'd exclaimed. "It's so funny. Oh, how Daddy will laugh when I tell him. . . ." Would he? A shadow crossed over Jean's face. She knew that she and Tracy would be coming home to Hollywood soon. But she knew what the child didn't know . . . that for a long time she'd been unhappy in her marriage; that she'd tried to save it because there was such adoration between Stewart and Tracy . . . and that she was getting very tired of living a lie, of pretending that she and Stewart had an ideal marriage when the truth was so very different. Little girls and their fathers have a special love of their own, she'd heard people say. She'd seen so many little girls' hearts broken when their mothers and daddies could no longer get along with each other. And she'd made up her mind over three years ago, when Tracy was a baby, that she wouldn't let anything deprive Tracy of her father. The only trouble was that even then there was a shadow on their marriage. Even then, while they were pretending to be so very happy together, the marriage was beginning to deterioriate. More familiar than his wife Nanny came in to take Tracy for her ride in the park. Jean knelt and took her daughter in her arms and said, "Oh, will your daddy laugh when you show him the way you ride now." She smiled to herself at the thought of Tracy's childlike assumption that her daddy knew nothing about the English customs. They were, of course, as familiar to him — even more familiar, she thought wryly — as the sight of his own wife. For he had been brought up in England, and he'd shuttled between England and other countries very often. He'd seen the shores of England almost as often as he and Jean had seen each other. They'd never dreamed when they were first married that they'd be parted quite so much. Picture work took them in separate directions all over the world. It was odd, with all their partings that the relationship between Stewart and his daughter was so close. For the child had been traveling with her. But the thing was, a little girl who had fun with her father and could ride on the same horse or side by side with her father, could always remain close to him, even if they were miles away. Tracy's Daddy was something very special to her. But a grown, warm-blooded young woman . . . how can memories of a husband who is far away be enough when she longs for his arms on a lonely night? It was so strange how on the days and nights when she needed him most, destiny had so often kept them apart. It was togetherness, they said, that cemented a marriage. But in the last four years she and Stewart had been together less than two years. When she married him almost ten years ago, she had been so sure that their marriage could survive everything. She'd adored him then . . . had been in love with him from the time she was fourteen and had first seen him walking across a studio lot. It had taken her five years to win him, for he had been afraid she was too young to know her own mind. He had been through the upheaval of one divorce . . . for a while he had known the wrenching experience of being separated from his boy and girl by his first marriage. It was after Jean's marriage to Jimmy (Jean calls him by his real name) that the two children, James and Lindsay, came to live with them, because their mother became too ill to take care of them. And being responsible for these children had brought Jimmy and Jean even closer together than they'd been before. More than ever, Jean knew then what she wanted most out of life — Jimmy's child and hers. When she first knew that she was going to become a mother, she had to break the news to him over the Transatlantic phone. It was not the way she'd dreamed. She'd always fancied herself whispering the happy news to him and being swept up in his arms. But he was in London making a film at the time. Ray Bolger once played golf with Sam Gold wyn because he wanted a part Goldwyn was casting in a picture. Goldwyn didn't mention the picture for hours. Finally he got around to it. He said, "I'm looking for a great dancer to do a wonderful role in a new picture. What would you think of Gene Kelly?" Earl Wilson in the New York Post "What's that you're saying?" he'd yelled into the phone. "A baby — when?" He flew home as soon as he could, and he stormed into the house, railing at producers and at the rat race of picture-making that had kept him away from the side of his beloved "Pot Face." Jean smiled, recalling this. Strangers wouldn't understand "Pot Face" — that was what he called her — and only he and Jean knew the tenderness, the love that went into that nickname. Strangers thought it was an odd nickname; they didn't understand the humor that was shared by these two. The whole family was Bohemian, and had customs that were odd to Hollywood. They called Stewart's boy James "Jamesbag," his daughter, Lindsay, "Lindsaybag" and the children called Jean just plain "Bag." Most people thought Stewart-Bag was just a tyrant. He was accustomed to roaring and swaggering around the studios. At home, he had his own way 100 percent. But Jean also knew that at home he had moods of wonderful tenderness when he romped with his two children. She knew that a man who was so good to them would be wonderful to their own child. Of course, they were very sophisticated people and Jean knew that Jimmy wouldn't behave like most expectant fathers. He was a man of the world, his sentimental feelings controlled. He wouldn't get excited or stumble into doors or roar if she tried to move a chair. Onl; she was wrong. Delightedly wrong. H< became absolutely unsophisticated wher he knew that they were going to have baby. Like the way he took over when Jeai was developing crazy hankerings for food She woke up one morning with an acut< longing for fried bread. "Don't I smel bread frying?" she asked wistfully. Almos from the beginning of their marriage. Jimmy, an excellent cook, had taken over th« cooking and baking chores. "No," he said. But shortly afterwards she smelled bacon grease frying in the kitchen, and knew that Jimmy was frying bread, just the wa\ she liked it. Knowing it wasn't good foi her to continue to yearn for fried bread he cunningly gave it to her for breakfast lunch and dinner — till she got so tired ol it she never wanted to taste it again. Ever the doctor agreed that he'd handled il very cleverly. She was grateful Jimmy could handle everything, just everything. Jean, on the other hand, fell that she was a complete idiot about everything. She gratefully let Jimmy take over completely. Even the baby. When the baby was born, Jean was frightened. "She's so tiny," she said. "I'm afraid if I hold her I might drop her.*' She remembered how she'd looked at Jimmy while he held his baby tenderly, his big hands gentle and sure. At the beginning he took over the care of the baby. Tracy, just as he'd already taken over the care of the whole house and everything else around. For all this and more, Jean loved him. She felt as if her heart would burst with gratitude. If later this was to give her a feeling of being stifled, she had no awareness of it then. She thought only, at that time, "Where in the world is there another man like Jimmy — so rough, so domineering on the outside, and so soft with the children? And what other man would coddle me so, make me feel like a child?" It was a perfect marriage. Even the people in Hollywood who had thought it was. a crazy marriage at first — a beautiful, ardent, flighty young girl marrying a man twenty years older than she — were now ready to admit that it was okay. They were beginning to understand that Jean, in her own gentle way. was able to handle the blustering actor whom most of Hollywood feared. But even while Hollywood was making up its mind that perhaps these two, after all, were right for each other, the seemingly wonderful fabric of their marriage was beginning to deteriorate. It had begun so quietly, so slowly, the deterioration of their marriage. Now that she thought of it, it had begun even before Tracy was born. Even while she was defending him in her mind, she was reacting unhappily to the way in which he bawled out people on the set. If a plumber came to their house to do work for them and Jimmy didn't like the way the work was done, he'd bawl him out as though he himself knew a great deal more about plumbing than the plumber did. It was the same way with directors. She knew that people in Hollywood thought of them as the "doll" and the "brute." She was always popular with the people she worked with; those who worked with Stewart were often livid with hostility. At first she figured he was older and wiser than she. And she thrilled like a little girl at his rages, thinking his anger was a sign of his strength. It was inevitable that when she was cast