Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

^Motion Picture Classic is the de luxe publication of the screen. It prides itself on its bright and attractive features — features which are off the beaten track. It is ever in search of new, original and fresh ideas. 1 1 believes in giving you the up-to-date slant on what's going on in the picture world. It's far ahead of the field, bee au se it scores one journalistic beat after another. Its contributors are constantly writing new impressions. ^uy the Motion Picture Classic for DECEMBER on Sale November 10th ORDER YOUR COPY NOW The ^Magazine 'with the Personality "I was wild. I said T was engaged to Gilbert Roland. They tried to pull me out of the car and I threatened to call the police. At two the next morning a newspaper telephoned that he had tried to kill himself and blood was running all over the floor on my pictures. "You remember the case in court. I refused to say I thought he was crazy. But, do you know, he actually took a house next to mine in the canyon after that and wrote me terrible letters? It was just one of those things that a girl has to watch out for and guard against when she is in pictures. "It all made Gilbert terribly jealous. He didn't seem to understand. For the second time he said I must not see any other men whatsoever. "And two days later I met Gary Cooper." Clara paused for a rest, looked out over the ocean. Her eyes twinkled as she turned back, with a shrug, to her interviewer. BECAUSE SHE COULDN'T SHE DID WHY is it that when someone tells a girl she just can't do something she always wants to do it? He had warned me twice. But Gary was such a big boy, so strong, so manly and so bashful. He was always around the studio. I wasn't fickle, really. I suppose I was just a little devilish. Women are like that. Anyway, someone told Gilbert that I was seeing Gary Cooper. "That was the last of Gilbert Roland. He told me he had given me three chances and he was finished. " He met my father on the street. ' I will always love Clarita,' he told him. 'If she were only twenty-six, God, how I would love her. But she is just a baby. She doesn't understand men and she doesn't understand love.' And I guess I didn't. " I went with Gary Cooper for six months. I felt something like Gary's mother. I wanted to rumple his hair, listen to all of his troubles. "Then he became jealous of Victor Fleming. Oh, dear, it was the same old story. "Gary was big and strong, but Victor was older and understood me. You know I have always been terribly lonesome. I have no brothers or sisters, no mother. I need someone to soothe and quiet me. Victor was like that. I mothered Gary, but Victor mothered me. THERE IS LOVE AND LOVE IT was an attraction for brains, too. He knew everything. I admired him tremendously. You know, I think a woman can love in different ways. She can love with her intelligence, with her respect and admiration, or she can love a man because he is wistful and seems to need her. She can love another because he sweeps her off her feet with his ardor. "I thought I loved Gilbert Roland as I would never love any human being. But I know now that it was only puppy-love because I have found the one man who brings complete happiness into living." Her voice softened; she looked over the now dark sea with a light in her eyes which only love could inspire. "I am sorry," she spoke softly, "I cannot tell you his name. He is not in the motion picture profession. I would gladly tell you if it weren't that I must protect him. "He is married. He has not been living with his wife. There are no children. I was sure of this before I let him come out to see me. "I love him." As simple as that, as whole hearted. "He has. the ardor and the mystery of Gilbert. He is the same boyish type and has something of the appearance of Gary. He has the brains of a Victor Fleming and tries to steer me like Victor. "Yet, for me, he has something more. I can't explain it. Love is so strange. You can never put your hand on it. I think a good test of love is to go away and surround yourself with really attractive new men. If you feel there is someone there, some newface which might attract you, someone with whom you'd like to become really acquainted, then you don't really love the person whom you have left at home. I feel that real love only wants the one attention. It's a palship, a friendship, an all-in-all feeling which will absorb you three hundred and sixty five days in the year and never weaken. HER SELF-MADE SUCCESS "T KNOW there have been some unkind *■ things said of me and my love affairs j ust as there are of all girls in pictures. But I want to say right now — " She paused to look at me with eyes cleared of all shadows — a long, direct look which was just honest. "It's not my success or my physical looks that I'm proud of. But I am conceited that everything I've done I've done for myself. I am where I am and there's not a person on earth who can say, ' Clara Bow owes her success to me.' And I'm proud to be able to make that statement and it does come into my heart-life story because I've never given my heart to a producer or a director who might help me to rise in pictures. "As to my getting married," she hesitated. "I have to take the plunge sometime, don't I? If it were possible, now, I'd do it. But we can't rob the future. I don't know whether love would overcome the obstacles of having a husband who was not in the motion picture profession. I don't know. "It's so different in this business. A girl can't be just a girl. She belongs, at least half of her — more than half of her — to the public. And another part belongs to the company for which she is working. There is so little left for a husband. " If I'd been older, had understood better, Gilbert and I would have been married. If he were free, the man whom I love now more than all of the others and I would take the vows tomorrow. But since that can't be, who can tell what may happen? FEAR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW " ALL of us in pictures are so frightened. ■^* We have such a short time on the screen. I am so lonesome. I need a husband. But I can't decide whether a girl in this business has the right to the proper ending for her heart-life story. What do you think about it?" What could I think about it? I have said so often, I have written so often of how sorry I feel for these motion picture people. We brandish their affairs about like snow before a huge steam shovel. We delve into their hearts like a diver hunting for pearls in the ocean. We consider their innermost secrets our personal affairs, when they are, perhaps, none of our business. Yet we are of so little help to them in their life-decisions. Clara Bow has bared her very soul to us in this story. She has told for the first time her exact feelings for the men who have loved or pretended to love her. And she has done it because she feels she owes her very heart to her public. She feels this perhaps because the public has given its heart so entirely to her. Clara Bow has had many an individual in love with her. But it is unlikely that the regard of any one person could be as constant and dependable as has been the affection of her fans. And this she cannot wholly disregard. In return for it she must give something of her own heart. Could she, then, really share that heart with a husband? 106