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The star of "A Message to Garcia" delivers another kind of message in this vivid interview. And you'll! like it!
By
ERIC L.
ERGENBRIGHT
Kids Today Need Kicking Around!
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""*HE trouble with these modern kids" — says Wallace Beery — "is that they're taught too much by advice and too little by experience. They're given too many theories and too few black-and-blue spots. They're being made too soft, too dependent on other people — in short, they don't get kicked around enough !"
And if there is any man in Hollywood — or in Keokuk or in Timbuctoo — who is really qualified to testify regarding the stimulating effect of a well-placed boot from Fate, that man is the aforesaid Beery. His life has resembled nothing so much as a continuous ride on a scenic railway, with a bouncing mat at the bottom of every dip and a kick at the top of every grade. He has been a section hand ; he has been a bank director. He has been an elephant trainer ; he has been — and is — a movie star. (He has just finished A Message to Garcia.) Also, he happens to be the adopted father of a four-year-old named Carol Ann, who is, to date, unspoiled.
"You can't blame the kids," he says. "They're all right.
Kids are always all right. One generation is neither better nor worse than another. The fault lies with the oldsters. They are too anxious to protect their children from the same kill-or-cure experiences that they, themselves, had as youngsters.
"The average American parents acquired a lot of fol-derol ideas during the flush 'twenties. They tasted sudden prosperity, lost their heads and immediately started pampering their children. Sane American men, who had battled their way to success by virtue of their ability to take it on the chin and come back for more, proudly boasted, 'Thank God, my children will never have to face the hardships and selfdenials I went through !' That Declaration of Insanity was heard so frequently that it became a symbol of the times.
"The depression has caused considerable suffering — but I've got to give it credit for restoring a few of those misguided parents to sanity. The others, as far as I can see, are still laboring under the delusion that their kids will grow into tempered steel without ever going [Continued on page 84]
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