Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1940)

'My Fight for Jimmy" (Continued from page 19) The new champion waved me aside. "A speech? Nothing doing! I'm just a tennis player." . . . "Wait!" I ask. "You've won the tennis cup, now you've got to tell them how you did it. Here — settle yourself with a stick of Beeman's. The flavor's great and that tang — " "You win!" says the champ. "Gotta hand it to Beeman's — it's got what it takes. A fresh taste that's doubly refreshing. A dash and tang. A flavor that's too good to last — yet does." He laughed. "Sure I'll make a speech! It'll be good, too — if you'll just keep that package of Beeman's on tap!" *PfP/ff€S7J0H Hollywood, dazzling everyone with her white and black beauty. I have known Gene since he was the "catch" of the town, the sophisticated man of the world who had wooed such beauties as Ina Claire and Gloria Swanson and who had won lovely Joan Bennett for his first bride. When Hedy and Gene met and fell so deeply in love everyone thought they would be sincerely happy. They seemed so right for each other — the gorgeous Hedy and the successful and polished Gene, one of the most important producers at 20th Century-Fox. I'll never forget my excitement when they sent me a note in the middle of the night giving me the scoop about their elopement. Gene wrote: "I must tell you that Hedy and I are leaving in a few minutes to be married." While still honeymooning, they came often to Marsons Farm to dine with us and spent quiet Sunday afternoons down at the pool. Yet, in less than a year, they were parted. What happened to this marriage that started out so brightly is hard to say. Certainly I can't think of two people who tried harder to fight against the insidious developments that came into their happiness almost from the start. That they failed isn't either of their faults. I believe they are both heartsore and saddened about a parting they strived valiantly to stave off. Perhaps the first great trouble was that Hedy and Gene met and fell in love too soon after his separation from Joan Bennett and while his heart was still torn over being parted from his adored little Melinda. Not that Gene was even remotely in love any longer with Joan. That is an unfair implication. They had parted the best of friends and there was no "torch carrying" on either side. But where there is a child deeply loved by both parents there are always intangible bonds that even a divorce court cannot sever. Another great influence in Gene's life was his mother, whose passing last year left him so saddened. Mrs. Markey was devoted, too, to Joan and her little granddaughter. When she lay so seriously ill — close to death — it was for Joan she asked. Hedy and Gene were there, too — but Hedy waited outside in the hospital corridor while Joan and Gene were at his mother's bedside. A difficult situation for a bride, you must admit. A situation that required the tact of supermen and women, not just ordinary mortals with sensitive feelings and emotions. It is ironic that both Joan and Hedy should have been rivals for Hollywood's beauty crown. It is even more ironic that they look a great deal alike — particularly since Joan changed her golden locks to raven. They are amazingly similar on the screen. Naturally, this was much played up and written about. It was bound eventually to create a situation that might never have happened if the two women Gene Markey had wooed and won had been plain "Mrs." instead of famous girls in the spotlight with every move they made furnishing food for gossips and columnists. Hollywood "friends" have a way of making these delicate situations no easier, either. I have been present when someone cattily remarked to Joan something Hedy was supposed to have said about "la Bennett dying her hair to look like mine." I know well that Hedy never made such a remark. You heard over luncheon tables and, of course, Hedy heard it, too, "Joan won't permit Melinda to visit her father and Hedy. He worships the child. He's brokenhearted because he feels it is asking too much to expect Hedy to go to Joan's to see the baby." Such gossip was obviously unfair to both Joan and Hedy. I know Joan so well that I can say her unselfishness, her natural sweetness, would never permit her to do such a cruel thing as to keep Gene from his baby. When he and Hedy separated she telephoned to tell him she was sorry and she honestly meant it, for Joan is supremely happy with Walter Wanger, her present husband. Hedy, too, is a sweet, understanding person. She understood Gene's devotion to his daughter and tried to make up to him in every way his heartache over being separated from Melinda. She once told me that this was one of the things she loved best about Gene — his love for children — the way he acted when he was with any child. When they first started talking about adopting a baby I think Hedy wanted to help Gene forget what she realized was a deep loss in his life. That was in the beginning, before they began to search high and low for just the little son they wanted to adopt. Perhaps Hedy was so set on the idea of a boy because she realized it might be hard for Gene to learn to love any other little girl as much as his own flesh and blood. On October 16, 1939, fat, chubby little Jimmy who is one of those adorable babies with "personality" came to live with Hedy and Gene and it seemed that their cup of happiness was overflowing. What plans and commotion went on! The hilltop house where they had been honeymooning seemed small for a nursery, so Gene and Hedy promptly moved into the second-best bedroom and turned their room into the baby's domicile. I'll never forget dropping in when Hedy was in the throes of picking out wallpaper for the nursery. Samples were strewn all over the place and Hedy sat in the middle of the floor looking like anything but a glamour girl as she excitedly looked at "toy" paper. "This is it!" she finally cried, holding up a sample of paper showing little fat ducks waddling up and down the wall. "This is what Jimmy will like best. It will make him laugh. He's so fat himself." After that, I don't think Jimmy was ever out of Hedy's thoughts no matter what she was doing. Following torrid love scenes with Spencer Tracy (they were making "I Take This Woman" at the time) she would rush to the telephone to see if Jimmy had eaten his spinach or if he had lost a pound! "He's having to diet," she told me one day. "He's a little overweight. Isn't that cute? When he gets big enough, though, we're going to eat ice cream to our hearts' content and not care how fat we get," Hedy laughed. Gene loved the little boy deeply, too. He loved him as fondly as though he had been his own — but with men, I think, more than women, blood is thicker than water. Gene still had obligations of the heart for his own little daughter and it was harder on him than anyone will ever know because it was so difficult for him to spend as much time with Melinda as he wanted to. It was a trying ordeal for everyone involved — for little Jimmy had become almost an obsession with Hedy. Who is to say who was right and who was wrong? They wouldn't have been human, as I said before, if there hadn't been misunderstandings. I O add to the domestic complications — both Gene and Hedy were having career problems at the time. Gene was winding up his long and successful contract at 20th Century-Fox with "Lillian Russell" and there were several important deals on the fire which necessitated many conferences with his manager. Hedy was not happy about "I Take This Woman." M-G-M was trying desperately to find just the right story that would set their lovely star off to the same advantage as "Algiers." The whole thing was too much — too much of a strain for two swell people who wanted so much to save their marriage not only for their own happiness but for the sake of the baby they had adopted. If they had been less honest with reporters who heard about their quarrels — if they_ had wanted to live out a sham of happiness, they could have remained together until the fateful "first year" of the adoption was over. But Hedy and Gene couldn't lie. When the reports that she and Gene were having trouble became too loud to ignore — she finally gave out the simple and dignified statement that it was true. "Why didn't you wait, Hedy?" I asked her. "It was such a short time more — and you could have saved yourself so much of this heartache?" "I couldn't," she said. "We tried, Gene and I. I feel nothing but the deepest fondness for him I respect him so much. But it was the only honest thing for both of us — to admit that we weren't able to make a go of our marriage. "I will just have to fight it out this way— the honest way. Surely they (the Children's Society) will understand. They must realize that this thing that has happened to Gene and me cannot in any way affect the way I feel about the baby. I am still just as good a mother to him as I ever was — better perhaps — because this fight for his custody has made me realize deeper than ever how much he means to me." So Hedy took up her battle to keep little Jimmy — a battle that was her own heartache but which she did not have to brave completely alone, for I happen to know that the person who appealed to the Children's Society and begged that his former wife be allowed to keep her son was none other than Gene Markey. You know now the sequel of this fight. The Children's Society listened to the pleas of Gene and saw the tears on Hedy's cheeks — and wisely they decided that the screen's greatest beauty is also one of the finest mothers in the world. All this the newspapers have carried — a happy ending for a story that might have been the most tragic in Hedy Lamarr's life. She called me the day it was all settled: "I can keep him," she almost sobbed into the telephone. "Little Jimmy is all mine. Of course, the adoption can't go through for another year. It is almost as though the probationary period were starting right now instead of when Gene and I took him. I've been appointed his legal guardian and later, after the year elapses, the adoption will come up again. But I know in my heart it is all right now. I know it!" I know it, too, Hedy — and I know that one of the finest stories ever written behind the scenes of Hollywood is the love and devotion the great "glamour queen" of the screen feels for the small boy who is now the greatest happiness in her life. 02 PHOTOPLAY