Motion Picture (Aug 1933-Jan 1934)

"I Have Been In Love Fifty Times!" — says Loretta Young cate hand-rail, old bits of china and porcelain, and books and prints. It all has the charm of simplicity. It all reflects this poised, cultured and lovely girl, who has such surprising dignity and humor and frankness. And in this white house, amazing monument to the success of a twenty-year-old girl, lives Loretta with her mother and her step-father, her three sisters, Sally Blane, Polly Ann Young, and Georgiana, aged eight. There is a brother, too — Jack, eighteen. And a very unusual story goes with him. When he was a small boy, a wealthy and charming woman, a close friend of Loretta's mother, took a great fancy to him. He went to "stay" with her. He has stayed with her ever since. He comes often to visit his real mother and his sisters. The two families are like one. Between Jack and Loretta is a lovely friendship and affection. The whole family is jolly and close together. Which may be another reason why Loretta (born Gretchen) doesn't take love "too seriously" yet. Loretta said, "Women do take love too seriously, really. Most of us wake up in the morning, bathe, dress, do our ordering, go shopping, go to the theatre, go to our work, eat our dinners, go to bed again with that one thought, that one emotion uppermost in our minds. We really have no other thought and no other interest. It's too bad. It may expand the heart, but it narrows and contracts the mind and spirit and lessens the vitality of other interests. Why Men Accomplish More " T T'S also too bad because men do not X reciprocate this singleness of purpose. Which is why, of course, there have been more achievements, scientific, literary, musical, medical and so on by men. A normal man — and Heaven defend us from any other — says goodbye to his wife or his sweetheart and goes about his business and forgets her completely, until he sees her again. He is in love with her while he is with her. He is not out of love with her while he is away from her. He is just — away. " It is undoubtedly true that working in pictures makes a girl take love less seriously. And more often. Much more often. After all, we work, we play emotional love scenes, we are in intimate daily contact with the most romantically and emotionally appealing men in the whole world. We play in one picture after another with one attractive man after another. And it is nonsense, it is untrue and it is unhuman to try to pretend that we do not fall in love with them. We do. "I fall in love with all my leading men. If I fail to fall, it is just too bad for me and too bad for my love scenes. But the exceptions are so few that they are scarcely worth mentioning. There was one recently. I had the most awful time. I couldn't bear the man. When he touched me, when he had to make love to me and kiss me, I — well, if you want the truth, I left the set and was ill after each scene. That's how it affected me. "If I didn't fall a little bit in love with the men I play opposite, I could not do love scenes with them. I could not be fondled and caressed and kissed by any man, on a set or off, unless I felt an emotional interest in him. It would be impossible. And if I don't feel a spontaneous attraction, I see to it that I work one up. (Continued from page 5/) "Attractions" Happen Easily WHICH is fatally easy, of course. In the first place, when a man is to play opposite you, he makes it his business to be especially charming and courteous to you from the very first day on the set. He has his best foot forward, naturally — and / have my best foot forward, too. We are both delightful to one another. We are young and — and human. An attraction springs up, always. A superficial attraction, perhaps, but an attraction, nevertheless. "If I should fail to be in love with my leading man," said Loretta, "or the star with whom I am playing the feminine lead, the camera would catch it. I had an amusing example of that very thing one time — N*P No, it isn't a new Hollywood romance. Johnny Weissmuller, recently made an honorary lifeguard at Santa Monica beach, is just out to improve the swimming technique of Maureen O'Sullivan, his mate in "Tarzan and His Mate" not so very long ago. I was playing in a picture with two men. One was cast as my brother. The other was cast as my lover. I did a very unfortunate thing. Quite by mistake, I fell in love with the man who was cast as my brother! "When we did the love scenes — the other man and I — there was nothing there — nothing worth having. The scenes were cold, lifeless, frozen. When I had scenes with my 'brother,' I just went — aaaahhhhh — all over the place. The thrills, the tears, the terrors of love were all there. The director nearly had a spasm. He said, 'Loretta, for heaven's sake, this man is supposed to be your brother!' " I tried my darndest. I tried not to look at him when we were on the set together. I tried to avoid meeting his eyes when we had a scene to do together, with the result that the 'takes' were unbearably coy. It was no use. Every time I had to meet his eyes, the whole state of affairs was caught by the camera, which doesn't lie even to save a lady's face. Every time I had lines to speak to him, my voice went soft and hot. I begged the director to change the casting, to cast my brother as my lover and vice versa — then we would have had scenes! It couldn't be done. And only after long and patient rehearsals and retakes, after schooling my mind and tongue to give stern admonitions to my heart and pulse were we finally able to get scenes where I did not appear to be about to swoon with unsisterly ecstasy every time I caught sight or sound of my supposed brother! Will Know Love When She Sees It OF course, I know, by this time, that these 'loves' are nothing but infatuations that start when the camera begins grinding and end with the final 'take.' Usually, they do work that way, neatly timed. But sometimes there are over-laps. Sometimes I think that maybe — perhaps — this is real. Then another picture starts, with another leading man, and the emotional processes begin anew. And so I have learned not to take 'love' too seriously" — Loretta grew more serious. She said: "I began, of course, with Grant." (Grant Withers — with whom she eloped at seventeen and divorced a year or so later.) " I believed with all my heart that I could not live without him, would never be able to live without him. I was in love with him — then. I shall never, I know, feel just that way about any man again. I am not one bit sorry that it happened. The experience matured me. I shall know the real love when it comes. " You see, I know exactly what emotion is. I know, to a fraction, the possibility of duration, the possibility of an ending. I know that emotion — or passion — is not enough. Not enough for marriage. I have acquired standards, now. And the man I marry for always, will have to measure up to them." I said, "How will you know this man? How will you be sure about him?" "I shall know him, easily," she replied. "He will have to be older than I, ten years perhaps. He will have to be the sort of man on whom I can depend, on whom I can lean. He will have to be so much wiser and stronger and finer than I that there will be no possible question about it. I will have to be able to visualize him clearly as a father, as well as a husband and lover. "And I have learned enough of emotion to run away if I find myself falling in love with a man who does not measure up to these standards I have set. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder — that is a fallacy. It works the other way around.' I've found that out, too — at least fifty different times. "Women do take love too seriously — or what passes for love in common coinage. They isolate love. They do not link it up with the march of time that is marriage. They do not connect it definitely enough with home-life, with motherhood. Most of all, they do not take fatherhood seriously enough. If they would stop dreaming and mooning over the face of their lover and tryto frame the face of the father of their children, there would be a great many more sound and happy homes and fewer divorces and disillusionments. " I have been in love fifty times — I ought to know!" 68