Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1942)

. . . can make the final decision: How you stack up as a person against the little girl who knew what was wrong and a bigger girl who didn't — but found out just in time BY mm u. mu ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN J. FLOHERTY JR. ONE new and shining quarter. No more and no less. Betty glared at it, her face screwed up until she looked like a belligerent kitten. Which was all very well, but had no effect upon the quarter. It remained the only one of its kind on the premises, it was all there was, there wasn't any more. A three-cent stamp for her letter to Johnny. Ten cents each way on the bus to the studio. Even if she had got seventy in algebra, Betty knew that made twenty-three cents. The phone call from the studio had been pretty unexpected and there was always the fact that if she hadn't played hooky she wouldn't have been there to answer the phone. But school got so dumb and as long as she had been home, she ought to go. They were very nice at the studio because Dad used to work there. They gave Mom and Betty extra work whenever they thought about it, but they were pretty busy. When they saw you, it reminded them. Mom wouldn't ever amount to anything, she hated it, but Betty was pretty sure she had a future if she could just hurry up and develop so she could wear a sweater and look grown-up. There had been chipped beef again for dinner last night and the rent guy had been around twice, so Betty figured it was time to remind them over at the studio again. The phone call made it easy. Except the twenty cents bus fare. Because there was this business about a Defense Stamp. Tomorrow was the last day and all the girls in her class had agreed they'd start a little book of them and bring them to class to show Miss Ames. Miss Ames, who wasn't too awful for a teacher, had started something when, very quietly, she had read them an editorial from a newspaper — just as if they were grownups. It had been called "On Me Alone" and it began with a quotation from the diary of Martin Treptow, who fell at Chateau Thierry in 1918: "America must win this war. Therefore I will work; I will save; I will sacrifice; I will endure; I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the whole struggle depended on me alone. . . ." After she had finished, the classroom had been very still. Then Miss Ames had said just five words: "This means — on you alone." When school was over for the day, the girls had got together and decided on their plan for a class Defense Stamp book. Miss Ames said it was a great idea and she knew they'd measure up a hundred percent. Naturally, if you were the one who spoiled that, you'd stand out like a sore thumb all right. Miss Ames said if they had to make some sacrifice, if they could earn the quarter themselves, so much the better. . . . Of course the studio only wanted her for a still picture. She'd had three days' work weeks ago playing a couple of scenes where she was supposed to be Myrna Loy before Myrna grew up. Mom had had to take aU of that except the quarter. Of course if she mentioned it at the studio now, someone there would probably give her another quarter. But Mom might find out and she"d throw a fit, the way she did that time when she borrowed a dollar off Mickey Rooney. Mom had funny ideas; she said they mustn't ever let people in Hollywood know how broke they were since Daddy died, they must keep up a front. As though Rooney would tell! He was a good guy for an actor. So asking for a quarter back for expenses was out. Mom cried enough as it was. She did want to send her letter to Johnny. So you were supposed to buy a Defense Stamp. So what? BETTY sat on the rickety steps and regarded the ocean with a jaundiced eye while she tried to make up her mind. The ocean looked swell again today. After the long rainy winter, when the mud sluiced down from the paUsades and made the waves yellow against the sand, after weeks when the gray clouds hung so low the sea mirrored that same color, it was grand to find it a deep, fi'iendly blue again. It meant that summer wasn't so very far away now. And summer from Santa {Continued cm page 32) 30 PHOTOPLAY combined with movie mirror