Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

IVl arches time they decided to build a beach house at Laguna Beach. They stayed just long enough to see the tennis court finished and play a few sets on it. The beach house was still being built when Fred received orders to march on to the Paramount Eastern studios in Long Island. In New York they went to live at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel where, with a sigh of relief, they could live on a month to month basis. They could leap for a Pullman at a moment's notice. But the home instinct is strong in the Marches. Also the urge to knock down walls and build tennis courts. They like to putter around and there's no puttering around with the gilded elegance of the Sherry-Netherland. SPRING came along, too. That didn't help any, either. In addition, Paramount seemed to have an extended program mapped out at Astoria for Fred. It looked as though his work in the East would take on some aspects of permanence. So, with prospects of a long stay in the East, a wall-knocking urge and the sniff of spring in their nostrils, they made the plunge and pulled up with a home in Great Neck. It was there I found them. As I arrived the phone rang and Fred answered it. It was a friend. A friend with a sense of humor. He just called up to tell Fred, in a voice hysterical with glee, that he heard Paramount was going to send him back to the Coast. Hehehehehehe. Well, good-bye. And so, with that bit of news to start us off, I heard all about the lease-leaping of the Fredric Marches. If it had merely been a case of going back to Hollywood, there wouldn't have been this cry of plaintive futility seeping out through the shrubbery of the Long Island home of the Marches. They would have been glad to go back to swim and play tennis and ride and see old friends again — and look at the beach house they built but never got a chance to live in. But it meant more than that. It meant another pulling up of the tender young roots of a home Fred and Florence have tried to plant time and again. A home means a lot to them. They like to stay in it, and have their friends in it, too. They live modestly and simply. So far, Hollywood hasn't done things to them. If they can help it, it won't. To find a Hollywoodite without something wrong with him sets one to investigating. I tried to find out what was wrong with Fred March. "I'm normal!" he confessed. AND he was right. He is normal. He's an actor who rejoices in being an actor. Now that he's a movie actor and making more money than he ever could have made on the stage, he still wants to be an actor. He hasn't worked up an English country squire complex, with a yen for Irish setters, horses, a wooded estate named Breeming Downs-in-Woode, and a yacht. If he did, the Little Woman would knock it right out of him. And, what's more, he'd pay attention to her. For, to take the words out of Harry Leon Wilson's mouth, she's his best pal and severest critic. Only that's not kidding. He tries out all his roles on her, because as an actress whom he played with for years before they were married, he formed a deep respect for her talents and judgment. The story they tell about them when he was making " The Royal Family," has become a classic around New York. He carried the role home from the studio and continued to act it around the house. Every time Florence looked up [ please turn to page 124 ] While Florence Eldridge, the Little Woman, is coming to believe that a quiet evening at home consists in being curled up in a Pullman berth with just a good timetable to study for the return trip 53