Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

That was a few weeks before he divorced Sybil and a couple of months afterwards he bumped into Carol on the lot. "Hello!" he said quickly. "How are you? Come on. I'll drive you home." Only they went for a ride instead, and after that Keith took her under his wing. He didn't like her apartment and he found her another. He didn't like her clothes or the way she did her hair and he had her change them. " I can help you some," he would tell her. "But I can't put you across as a star. You'd have to do that for yourself. It would have to be the most important thing in the world to you. And other things seem to be more important to you than putting yourself across." Then for days she wouldn't see him. She would think that she was never going to see him again. And then suddenly he would turn up to sit quietly by her fire, smoking his pipe. Presently he would begin to talk. He would tell her about the picture he was working on, what pleased him and what annjyed him and what he dreamed of doing. And sometimes when he left he would hug her to him a minute. "Good girl," he would say, and then he would be gone. One night the miracle happened. He kissed her and told her that he wanted to marry her. What a hungry little thing she had been in those days, she thought, so eag3r for his love, for the strength of it. Then gradually, in marriage, growing more sure of herself, until it was she who was looking out for him, running his home so unobtrusively that he should never be annoyed by details — proud to give him the peace he had never known. Carol tugged off her small hat and tossed it aside. She began to pull off her gloves, staring at her tired face with its shadowed eyes. She had dressed so carefully to go out to the studio to watch Keith direct the picture. She had scarcely seen him since they had started working. He hadn't had any meals home. He came into the house to drop into bed for three or four hours and then was off again. Most of that time he was drilling Sybil. " She's doing the best work she's ever done," he told Carol one night as he stood in the center of his room undoing his tie. " She's more beautiful than she was, too. More electric. Lord, that woman's got more than any one mortal has a right to!" And Carol sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to the news, was stung to say, "More temper, anyway." " What? " he looked at her in surprise. " Oh," he said, "she's reformed. You'd be surprised. She's learned a lot. And after all it was understandable. She worked her way up from nothing and worked hard. Success was bound to go to her head a little until she got her bearings. You've got to forgive and forget things like that. Well, I'm done in. Mind scooting:'" He had kissed her and patted her cheek while he was thinking of something else. That was when she began to realize that he wasn't seeing her any more. She had become just a fixture in a smoothly running household. He had always been detached and preoccupied when lie was working on a picture, but not keyed up and excited like this. And Carol knew, even if he didn't himself, that the excitement was Sybil. Then she tried sticking closer to him. That was why she had gone out to watch the picture today. Ml dressed in white which suited her dark beauty best. She had sat in a chair beside his. She had wanted so badly to show him that, if he could work so well with Sybil, she was interested too and she made a small suggestion that did not please him. "Please, Carol," lie begged impatiently. "We tried it thai Who doesn't want to go to Hollywood? Luscious little Sally Byers wanted to go — badly — and dreamed of the day her name would be in headlights. She figured a lot could happen at a country club dance when a brilliant young visiting director is in town. It happened, all right — but not what Sally had planned for. Read this exciting story, "All Aboard for Hollywood," by Margaret Dellison, in the August Photoplay, out July 10 way yesterday and it didn't work." Then seeing her hurt expression, his eyes had squinted at her searchingly and suddenly he reached over and took her by the shoulder. "Look here, you're not looking so well. Why don't you run out to the ranch until the picture's finished. Then I'll join you. It'll be about three weeks." Three weeks. And he had never wanted her away from him a day before. Now he was asking her to go. Carol got up and walked about the room, her slim body drawn taut and desperate. She supposed some women would have tried fighting Sybil on her own grounds. But a certain dignity in herself would not permit it. Scrap with another woman over Keith as if he were some little ninny that could be won by the lady with the biggest bag of tricks? Xo. She respected him too much. Keith was a man. It was up to him to choose what he wanted. If he preferred what Sybil had to offer . . . She flung herself across the bed suddenly and now she was sobbing. For two hours she made no effort to control her misery, and at the end of that time she arose a saner woman. She would go to the ranch — and wait. It would give Keith a chance to find out if he missed her, what she meant to him. If he didn't miss her . . . well, perhaps, it was better to find that out too. Bob Blake who ran the ranch for them was waiting up for her. She had telephoned him along the way that she was coming. When she drove up alone in the dark he was shocked. "You shouldn't have come alone," he said. "Why didn't you tell me to come down and meet you? It's after midnight and the roads around here are pretty lonely." Carol laughed. It was good to hear his warm, pleasant voice assuming as he always did a pro tectiveness towards her. "You'd think I was a child," she had said once to Keith. And Keith had caught her to him hard and held her close, his cheek against her hair. "You are," he had laughed tenderly. "You'll always be. For me to take care of." He had forgotten now, she thought, as she followed Bob and her bags into the house. He had forgotten all the things he had said to her, while she was beginning to remember them one by one with the acute pain of loss. She stood in the middle of the big room and looked around at its rough walls, half-covered with Indian blankets and Keith's hunting and fishing trophies. Bob had a fire roaring in the hearth for her. She stood before it and unbelted her coat. Bob took her bags up to her room and then came down again. He stood beside her. his Dig. tanned face grinning clown at her his immense pleasure to see her. "Not working in any pictures, eh?" he asked. She shook her head. "Xo. I only plan to do about two a year now I'm married. So many other things 'nave kept me busy." "I guess from what 1 hear a lot of those picture dames don't lake marriage so seriously." "Well everj body's got to figure out what they want most from life." I lis face grew sober and he looked away from her. "And then try and get it!" he said bitterly. She wondered what it was he wanted and couldn't get. She shivered a little. Was life like that for everybody? " I think I'd like a drink. Hob." -die -aid suddenly. "Strong." "Sure," he -aid. and disappeared into the kitchen Keith had had the ranch for [ please turn to page 78 j 60