Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1941)

night we served supper. But somehow there was something wrong and I knew it. That party just wasn't. And I had tried so hard! "Well, a few weeks later . . ." (Ann likes to tell about this) . . ."I bought a croquet set and installed it in my back yard. I'd met some awfully nice people on a picture and I began inviting them to come over and play. Sunday is the only day for things like that, of course, when you're working, so that was the day I told them to come. It occurred to me that it would be fun if I had some sausages and eggs and waffles and things and we could all cook. It didn't occur to me that I should be giving a party. "Everybody came and played croquet and helped cook and even helped MAY, 1941 ccessful parties ever given in Hollywood: Mary Astor's Chinese dinner, where everyone laughed a lot and loved it to straighten up a bit afterward and then we went to the beach and it was all very hoop-la. When someone said, 'Do invite me to another backdoor party soon!' I knew I had something. I like to know why things happen, if they're important, so I tried to figure out why this had been fun and my formal party hadn't. "In the first place, everyone took part somehow. No one had to do anything. But everyone wanted to . . . especially the men. There's something about the sight and smell of food cooking, I guess, that does something to them. Especially coffee. Haven't you ever noticed that when men get poetic about going camping it's always cooking over a campfire that they talk about? "Then, they could play games or not, just as they chose. They could eat properly at the little card tables or they could sprawl on the grass and get ants in the maple syrup if they wanted to. Of course, this is California and we can do these outdoor things all the year round. But I don't see why any girl anywhere — even in a small apartment in winter time — shouldn't have a few people on Sunday, just as we do. If you work all week, Sunday is a lazy day. And it's so nice to be with nice people while you're being lazy! "I've discovered something else that's necessary. It's awfully important to have fun yourself at your own party — because if you aren't enjoying having people, how can they possibly enjoy being there? That was what was wrong with my first one. I was so anxious to have it go nicely that I didn't have time to have fun myself!" ANN certainly has something there. It's difficult to know how some women have the knack of making a party go — making it jell — and other women can't quite achieve it. Intelligent women study their guests and act accordingly. Jeanette MacDonald and Gene Raymond give some of Hollywood's most successful parties and yet Jeanette will tell you that she had to make some personal sacrifices of taste and inclination before she quite learned how. In its way it's a sad little story. When Jeanette was married she acquired all the things that most brides dream of and can't have. A perfect dinner service for formal entertaining. Beautiful linens, silver, china, crystal; exquisite gadgets for flowers and candles and place cards — everything to delight a fastidious woman's heart. After she and Gene were settled at last in their own house, she acquired perfectly trained servants to handle all this elegance and proceeded — as for gosh' sake, who wouldn't — to have a party. She had several in swift succession. Small, perfect jewels of parties. Then she stopped having them. "People didn't like them!" she mourns. "They didn't have fun. I think some of the women enjoyed them — the nonprofessional women who didn't have to rush from sets or offices to get ready to come. But the men didn't like them and I'm sure the working women didn't care much for them, either. Life in Hollywood — and in most other places — is too highly paced, too jerky, too frantic for anyone to be content to sit down suddenly and enjoy anything which is too perfectly timed and staged. It seems artificial. People like to relax without form and formality. "I said to {Continued on page 90) 69