Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1942)

Virginia, to parents of wealth, started out in life with a future laid out for him. The death of his father, while John was attending Mercersburg Academy, left the family real-estate poor. With the crash of 1929, high taxes ate up what remained of their one asset and John, at sixteen, was a young man on his own. He did anything and everything that came his way. His interest in model planes led him to enter an aeronautical school in Massachusetts. Although he had already soloed a full-sized ship, he failed to pass the entrance test in mathematics and while attending the University of Virginia his liking for the theater developed. So up to the drama school at Columbia University traveled John, working his way through in the wildest assortment of jobs known to man. In turn, he became nursemaid to the small children of a widowed businessman, a professional boxer, a bouncer in a night club, singer in a burlesque house in accompaniment to a strip-tease act. Before his chance came with Beatrice Lillie in At Home Abroad," John was a young nies. But almost from the start they discovered a wide gulf stood between their different tastes. John loved sports, exercise and outdoors. Anne didn't. "Maybe," John said, as if groping for pieces of a puzzle to fit together, "if I had not devoted so many of the free hours I did to horseback riding or gymnasiums and spent them with Anne, things could have gone more smoothly this last year, especially when I knew Anne wasn't too "happy." That John was a devoted father no one can deny. The sight of those two on the floor — enormous John and squealing, laughing Julie being tossed into the air and caught by her daddy — has been something to see. I remembered, too, the pride in his face when Julie Anne had displayed the tiny embroidered flowers on the little silk panties given her at Christmastime, how her smartness and cuteness, her memory for the names of their friends, .Deanna and Vaughn Paul, and their mutual friend, agent Henry Wilson, had delighted him. That Anne was an equally An about-to-say-good-by picture of Anne Shirley and John Payne, taken the night they had dinner at Romanoff's. It was this evening Anne broke the momentous news to John man who had experienced many phases of life. He had developed broad values, wide understanding. A NNE had been poor, at times desper'' ately so, but always she had been sheltered and loved by her mother. When her mother and little Anne (then called Dawn O'Day) hardly knew where their next meal was to come from, Director Herbert Brenon offered Mrs. Shirley $50,000 in return for the privilege of adopting Anne. The offer was turned down. The strains and stress of poverty, the irregular working hours all combined to cheat little Anne out of the usual carefree, normal childhood. On all sides she was protected by the loving care of friends, however, and then, when she was just eighteen, just four and a half years ago, she met John. John was seven years older in years than Anne and seven hundred years older in experience, but after three short months they were married. That Anne and John were deeply in love, even madly in love, no one de 72 loving and devoted mother also goes without saying. "Julie's a person," Anne told me. "I love her." And all the mother love in the world went into those words. My talk with John at the studio was on a Saturday afternoon, the day after the announcement of the separation. On Sunday morning early, too early for an actor who has no studio call to be awake, John telephoned me. "Please go to see Anne today," he said, "and tell her all I've said to you. I want her to know." I stopped at John's first, the beautiful hillside home just across the way from Deanna and Vaughn's and close by Cesar Romero's home. This was the home John and Anne had lived in together. Outdoors the baby's swing and kiddy car rested on the lawn. As I was leaving, Julie was brought in to visit him, but already there was an air of loneliness about the lovely rooms. Impulsively I asked, "John, couldn't you get together again, you and Anne?" He shook his head. "Only this morning I telephoned Anne and asked if she was happy. She is. I'm afraid it's final." Four or five blocks away in a small furnished bungalow I found Anne. I knew that only because I was an old friend was I there with this shy sensitive girl and her heartache. "It's just too simple for people to understand," she said. "I really don't expect them to and I'm not angry at the rumors that have flown around about John and me. I guess if we'd had a violent quarrel and separated it would be easier to understand. But you see, what's happened to us happens not just in Hollywood. It happens to people everywher* . Little things grow and grow until the fact that unhappiness is there can't be overlooked. It's so easy to put off and postpone making a break once you know it must be made. Tomorrow or next week you think you will, but time is a peculiar factor in Hollywood, with each partner working so hard, so when I finally knew I was right, I told him at the only moment I could." That moment, incidentally, was ore night during dinner at Romanoff's. "John, I've something to tell you," she had said. "Let it go until tomorrow," John urged. "We'll discuss it then." "No," she said, "tomorrow will be too late. I'm looking for a little house *o move into tomorrow. You see, John, I'm leaving." "I had to find a way of life both he and I could live and this is the way," An:e resumed. "I know each of us can find a happy life apart and had we stayed together, year after year, we'd never have found it. My only regret is for Julie. I love her and want her to be happy. I stayed in our old neighborhood so sh could have the same little children to play with and our friends could be around her. "No one wishes Johnny more succe than I. No one knows how really capable5 he is, how many bigger things he will do in his work. I used to read of Holly-' wood people's separating and how ead claimed they were still friends and I put it down to bosh. And now, here I si saying it and knowing it's true. "We have to do what we believe is right, don't we?" she asked. "I believi this is right." I knew with all her heart she di believe it. I I 3 J I HAD heard those rumors Anne spoke, of and determined to search thotr out, so I went straight to Henry Wilson,] an agent and a mutual friend of Anne and John, a lad who talks straight and honestly. "I can give you my word," he said.l "none of Hollywood's rumors is true, but let's check." I came away convinced. "Perhaps," Henry Wilson said, "theii ways of life, John's and Anne's, were sc different they couldn't be traveled together. Perhaps, too. they didn't know | each other well enough before their mar-j riage. Anne, so sensitive, and John. w:tl his trick of flatly stating facts that is set often mistaken for conceit, were an oddy combination even too difficult for lovn to weld. "No one should say, 'I'm sorry' abouli this decision of John and Anne's to sep-1 arate," Henry said. "Neither requires! sympathy. Both are wonderful people!] both different, and yet intelligent enougtl to realize when the exigencies of life thai 1 1 come to all of us create an insurmount ♦ \ able object, the thing to do is accept it and go on from there, separately." He's right, of course. But somehow it a tragic thing to hear John say, always love Anne," and to know Fate decreed that love cannot be. The End. 'H photoplay combined with movie MrRROfl