Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1933)

104 Photoplay Magazine for March, 1933 CHAPPED LIPS <r>* A Private Wife for Me •»•> promoted, healing^ bxmldke± roughrwM. To protect your lips from their great enemies — chapping, roughness, or cracking, use soothing, cooling Mentholatum. This delightful ointment contains all the necessary ingredients to heal your lips and keep them smooth. A little Mentholatum night and morning gives effective, economical protection. MENTHOLATUM cAluifor CHAPPED HANDS 52S25252S2S2S2525252S252S25252525252S2S252525252S252S2 52 ffi H 5d 52 52 Si 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 Si 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 NEED EXTRA MONEY? Then Photoplay can help you. We need wideawake representatives in your locality to handle our subscription business. You can establish a business of your own and earn an income which will help the "old budget". Write now for information which will help you earn extra cash. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE Dept. NEKI3, 91 9 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, III. [ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 53 to settle down in the heart of Africa or wherever, like a couple of nuts, and having ourselves an elegant time. . . . Then we always catch the boat home, just as scheduled." " "LJTAVEN'T you ever gone too far with one •* -*-of these spells?" I asked. "Oh yes, I broke down and bought a house out in New Canaan, Connecticut. Perfectly Early American, with three Dutch ovens. I wanted it, gosh, how I wanted that house. "And was that the test of the true woman and wife! "Alma didn't once remind me of how impractical it was, how far away, or anything. If she had been an actress, her first thought would have been, ' How will I get to the theater? ' You see, I explained airily that / would commute. It's only a few hours from New York." "Is he really as nutty as he sounds?" I appealed to Alma. "Oh, much more so," she assured me, proudly. " He's a life work for any one woman — and I thrive on being the one woman." Frank told me how their Eastern friends gave them three months — possibly six — to stay together after they came to Hollywood. Dire predictions were murmured about Hollywood blondes, about Hollywood divorces. "If Alma were a picture actress, maybe I'd be alarmed," Frank said. "There are lots of handsome actors out here. Faking my life in my hands, I make the bold assertion that there are more good-looking men than women! "You see, I've been in two Ziegfeld shows, and done a bit of traveling hither and yon, so perhaps I'm immune to Hollywood blondes. We've managed to weather nineteen years, so I guess things will go on the same as usual in Hollywood." Alma added that being slightly nutty helped. They found their own company awfully good entertainment. "And what are you two being crazy about at the present time?" I wanted to know. "George!" They agreed simultaneously. "And dachshunds!" George, it turns out, is a seventeen-year-old son. And George is no ordinary run of child. George is about the most completely extraordinary and satisfactory son two people ever had. (George occupied the next two hours, with never a dull moment.) He is studying in an Eastern school to be a diplomat or an archaeologist, they don't know which it is this week. AS a parting shot, I asked Frank, "Don't ■* *-you think this marriage might have been a success, even if Alma were an actress?" "I'm not so sure she isn't, sometimes — just as all good wives are." Frank grinned and shifted into high with the other eyebrow. " But so long as her performances are staged for me alone, it's okay! " <r?T? I'll Take an Actress 99 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 52 women who have nothing else in the world to do look after their homes and their husbands properly?" Eddie still wants to know. And he believes that the answer would eliminate a lot of grief in American homes. When Eddie and Lilyan were first married I hey made an agreement. It was Lilyan's house which they intended to — and do — live in; Eddie pays all the household expenses and domestic bills. Lilyan pays for her own clothes. She is known as the best-dressed woman in Hollywood, and she has often said that she would never expect any man to pay for the enormous wardrobe she keeps constantly upto-the-minute. She spends several thousands of dollars a year for her hats alone. ( Incidentally, the only thing which she and Eddie ever row about is a little black beret which she bought in Germany and which they both like to wear.) It is a part of her profession to be strikingly dressed, and the expenditure comes under necessary professional expenses. Hut imagine a non-professional husband being able to understand that! HPHEY both make large salaries, and it would ■*■ be a very optimistic wolf indeed who hung around the Lowe-Tashman door. Both are financially independent of each other. Neither has to remain with the other for economic reasons; the only reason they stay married is because they want to. "Imagine the compliment that is paid a man," Eddie remarks, "when he feels that his wife is there only because she prefers to be. He knows that she lives with him because she loves him — not because she's got to stay to be sure of a living." And so far as that is concerned, too, Eddie has a thing or two apropos. "Every woman would feel better, I think, and her life would be happier," he went on, "if she were able to make her own living — if her own efforts made her independent, i know that this, in a large number of cases, is impractical, especially in these days. But the idea is that some women seem to like to be clinging vines, virtually asking their husbands for handouts. Such a woman could never make an ideal wife for an actor. "It isn't the money so much, but an actor feels that just as he must have a competent person playing opposite him in his pictures, so he must have a wife who is competent to play opposite him in real life." XTEITHER Eddie nor Lilyan stop acting •*-^when they leave the set. No genuine trouper ever does. They act in private just as they act in public — if they didn't they wouldn't be themselves. But no non-professional, Eddie thinks, would ever understand that this acting at home is really the genuine thing. True happiness in marriage, declares Eddie, lies not in a diversity of interests in the home, but in a consolidation of them. And in Eddie's opinion, a non-professional has about as much chance of sharing a professional career as the haystack has of finding the proverbial needle. "Then there are the little things," he finished, "all the little things that are really the big things of a motion picture player's life. How could a non-professional wife ever hope to understand an actor's peculiar twists and turns, so to speak, the peculiarities that go to make up his personality? His pet little superstitions, for instance, and his generally screwy way of doing things? No, I tell you that I don't believe it would work— I'm sure it wouldn't with me. The only possible way an actor can get full understanding in a wife is to marry an actress." And thus, dear people, Sergeant Quirt Lowe sez his say.