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HOLLYWOOD Sob Stories
Walter Pidgeon
Thought "The Jig Wa s
Up And It
Didn't Matter"
By
lH)RO 1 H Y MAN N ERS
EKjH I t,t,N inuiuhs ago, Walter Pidgeon wai> dying. Not only had an unfortunate jinx pursued the course of his career in silent pictures, but he was obsessed with the suspicion that he was victim to a dreadful and fatal disease incurable in the realm of medicine — cancer!
Specialist after specialist had examined him to no avail. He had made the long trek to the famous Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota to be met only with a shake of the head. They could not (he believed they would not) diagnose his case. Several years previous, a friend of his had met with the same reception at the hands of the same doctors. He was a victim of cancer, but they would not tell him. To the discouraged and pain-wracked movie actor it was little short of the handwriting on the wall. The world loomed with Nothingness!
In pictures, his chosen profession, he saw only mediocrity in his future. At best, he felt, he was just another leading man, casting a shadow here . . . there ... doing nothing that fifty other handsome and mildly talented actors could not have done in his place.
In life there were few personal ties to bind him to this existence. His wife had died at the time of the birth of their daughter. "Frankly," admitted the six-foot hero of .Marilyn Miller's new musical screen revue, "I thought the jig was up for me — and it didn't particularly matter.
He Made His Will
ICAMK back to Hollywood from Rochester, and made out my will, leaving everything in trust for my eight-year-old child. I was pretty reconciled to the idea ofdeath, but there was one thing I could not do — and that was merely to quit and wait for death! Though innumerable X-ray plates showed no localized trouble that would warrant an operation, I went to the finest
stomach specialist in town and insisted on one. I said, 'I'm going into a hospital to-morrow and I want you to do the operation. If you don't — some other man will. To save me from the hands of some quack, you'd better do it.
"He protested at first. He wanted to wait and take X-rays and make a diagnosis. But that didn't get anywhere with me. I had had too much of that kind of treatment. There was something seriously wrong with me. I wanted either to get at the trouble — or finish the job! Strangely enough, the most interesting offer I had for picture work that year came the morning I went into the hospital. Warner Brothers wanted me for a talking, singing picture, and I wanted tremendously to do it. But first, and more important, I wanted to know whether I was ever going to be a well man again."
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