Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1943)

.\\o .VS ***** >^ I HAVE never been one to subscribe to the theory that Hollywood actresses are just like other women; that Judy Garland might be the little girl next door and that Hedy Lamarr has the same domestic tastes and Claudette Colbert the same temperament as your neighbor. Having lived in the cinema capital a great many years I am inclined to believe that screen stars are different or they wouldn't be screen stars. But on my last trip out there after war had laid its hand upon us, I found that the vast and mighty demands of our country in these days of battle have gathered us all into a wave of kindred emotion that seems to me a very touching thing. On the train somewhere between Chicago and Kansas City I got to talking in the dining car with a quiet little woman whose eyes showed the shadow of recent tears. She had been to the eastern seaboard to say good-by to her husband. With an apologetic little smile that asked pardon for her weakness she said, "I wanted him to go. I'm very proud of him. But — that can't change missing him, can it? I kind of hate to go home. We've had a tough time paying for our house these last five years and we did it all together and painted the kitchen and — you know. Now — it seems so empty without him. Of course I'll carry on — but there's no use pretending it isn't hard to do." 32 And out in Hollywood Brenda Marshall said to me, "What could make anybody think that an actress doesn't miss her husband just the same as any other woman? Of course our lives are busy — and what is called colorful. But — the home Bill and I built together is just as empty as any other home and I haven't been able to have dinner in the dining room since he left for camp. Dinner was always the happy gettogether after the long day, the time when we were both just full of things to tell each other and now — somehow I'd just rather take a tray into another room." Her husband, William Holden, is with the Army Air Corps. Up in Canada, where I went to see my oldest son get his wings in the RCAF, I stayed in a delightful old hotel and I kept hearing the smalltalk of a very young baby next door. I went calling and discovered the pretty dark wife of a lad who had also just graduated and won his coveted "overseas posting." She sat there holding her six-weeks-old son, prepared to go back to her home somewhere in Minnesota, and she said, "I'm so glad I've got the baby. You know how it is. It keeps you from being too lonesome — he does look like his daddy, doesn't he? I'll be so busy taking care of him that it won't seem so long until Ted comes home." And out in Hollywood, dark-eyed Sue Carol, married to the new star Alan Ladd, said the other day, "Of course Alan and I wanted a baby. So we are having one and I thank God for it. While Alan's away in service the baby will keep him close to me all the time. I'll be so busy taking care of our baby when he comes that it will help keep me from being too lonesome. Alan and I have always been very close — he's a gentle, rather shy person even if he is a killer on the screen. We've been everything to each other since we married and now he's gone, as I would have him go, to fight for his country. I think it will be wonderful for him to realize I'm taking care of our baby. It will give him a sure sense of the future to look forward to." Van Heflin is a lieutenant in the Artillery and his wife, pretty Frances Neal, is expecting their baby before long. When that's over she'll go back to work for Metro, but the first thing in her life will be Van's baby. An American home ought to have a baby in it, two people in love ought to have a baby — and wartime only takes a little more courage in that as it does in everything else. There doesn't seem much doubt that Van Heflin will see combat service — he's in line for it — and Frances knows it will be lonelier than anything when he isn't there to stand by while the baby's born. Lonely because she won't know he's outside pacing a hospital corridor and that she will have to miss that supreme moment when he (Continued on pagt 91) photoplay combined with movie mirhob