Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1938)

ME QUICK/" Beautiful Brat "YOU WIN! I can't stay mad when you bring me Beeman's! It's got such flavor — a dash and tang and irresistible lusciousness that lifts me right out of the dumps! They say it's the triple guard airtight package that keeps Beeman's so fresh and full of flavorall / know is, it's good!" Beem an's AIDS DIGESTION... lighted her. Maggie Sulla van tripped out on the stage and that evening played the silly, stupid Girl-Scoutish Bab with a vitriolic brutality that not only condemned the Rhinehart character but also satirized every one of her classmates, painting them as she saw them through eyes that held no sympathy and no pity. Not even the audience, composed of teachers and fond parents, could have missed it. She saw them squirm, and thus left Chatham Episcopal Institute forever, revenged. I HERE were outdoor summer camps for her, then. Something had to be done about her frail health and — Cornelius and Garland both hoped — about her inexplicable attitudes. The camps advertised that besides teaching discipline and healthy wood lore that would enable any young miss to survive being lost in the deepest African jungle, they also built character and showed girls how "to live in harmony with sister Americans." Maggie's sneer for this selling point was decided and audible. "My sister Americans," she said, "my hat!" But she went. She had no choice. She donned middy and bloomers; arose at six to swim in icy lake waters; rode hurtling and dangerously down mountain bridle paths; paddled breathless in birchbark canoes with coy Indian names painted on them; lifted her harsh young voice in "Aloha Camp Forever" around the campfire; wove baskets which always had suspiciously sophisticated designs hidden in the pattern; did batiks; burned designs on leather; hiked and read and slept. She got a sunburn, gained eight pounds, learned an incredible number of stories that are whispered among girls in their teens, and came rattling home leaving the camp guardians in a kind of weary stew of relief. After that there were many camps, for many summers, until she had finished college, which was soon. All of the Sullavan family had gone to Hollins College, wherefore Mag gie held out for any other institution; and they compromised on Sweet Briar. Then she went to Sullins, where she enrolled in the first courses that came to her notice. She didn't really care, because she knew there would be only a few more months before Liberty, before Freedom. . . . At camp, the summer before, she had met a family from Boston — a family who d i d different things with r's when they spoke, a family who talked vaguely of the stage and of schools for dancing and of a brilliant, wholly new kind of life. "You love to dance," they told her simply. "Why don't you come to Boston and learn?" It was that uninvolved to them. (Continued from page 21) One year of college, then. Maggie conceded that. But when it was done — OHE sat stiffly on the Adam sofa in her mother's drawing room, rubbed her finger along the delicate patina of old rosewood, tapped a Sevres vase with one fingernail, looked anywhere but directly at the troubled eyes of Cornelius and Garland. "It's the one thing I want to do," she was saying. "The one thing. I've always done as you asked, I've always obeyed the essentials. But you must try to understand: I can't be a polite sub-deb who paints wishy sunsets in water color and keeps her eye peeled for a husband. And I'm sorry, but I'm going to Boston." "Fantastic," said Cornelius. "I forbid it." Garland sighed, looked unhappily from determined daughter to stern husband. "My dear," she said to him at last, "we must let her go. I — perhaps I understand what the child means. Let her try, anyway. She can always remember it afterwards, then." Her expression, at that moment, told the shrewd observant Maggie something about her mother she had never even guessed before. The girl went over and touched Garland's flushed cheek lightly with her fingers. "Thanks, Mother," she said. So she went to Boston. Cornelius, still unimpressed, granted her a small allowance which annoyed her so much that she decided not to use any more of it than she could help. To this end she took her first job, selling books in a cooperative store at Harvard. It was on a commission basis and she broke all records, earning eighteen dollars a week for one month; whereupon she quit. After the first enthusiasm, it had become a bore. She was nineteen, then, and it was 1928, a strange year. It excited her — its madness, its extravagance, its drunken headlong flight to nowhere. If Photoplay takes a bow — it plays a part in "The Annabel"! In the role of movie actress, Lucill presses her importance on John Sutton by ratin portrait. Real or make-believe, it's a s i g n a she had been capable of fear, it would have frightened her, as well: she was two people, this nineteen-year-old girl, representative of no era and no place and no custom. Deep-rooted within her subconscious, although she fought it, was an attitude impressed indelibly despite herself by the repeated admonition of family, by the long years of teaching — an attitude that wore a lace scarf and curtsied to convention. She didn't like it, but being intelligent she had to admit it was there, prodding her on occasion, pointing an accusing finger at her activities, sneering haughtily at the vulgar Jazz Age that surrounded her. The other Maggie, the real one, observed detachedly what went on, made clear-cut choice when necessary. She studied dancing, then, for a few months. But one evening an acquaintance took her to see a performance of "The Connecticut Yankee" at the Copley Theater, and she viewed the individual characterizations with critical eye, and concluded with a certain amount of scorn that she could do better than that herself. Going to a dancing class as a concession to her overflowing vitality, as a stopgap until she was ready to settle into the accepted young-lady-of-goodfamily class, was one thing. Going On the Stage was another. She lay awake all one night, a battleground for conflicting viewpoints. By morning she had decided. It is not important to Margaret Sullavan's story that she joined E. E. Clive's Copley Dramatic Theater then, without letting Cornelius and Garland know, except that it kept her away from home until, after a few months, she could meet Charles Leatherbee of Harvard. There was irony here: it was friends of her parents who introduced him to her. But he was interested in the stage, and had assembled a number of students who also were interested, and he had an idea. "We're going up to Cape Cod in the summer," he explained, "and start a group called the University Players. We'll build a theater and learn everything about the stage from firsthand experience. D'you want to come in with us?" "Who else is joining?" she asked him. "Bretaigne Windust, of Princeton," he said, "and a kid named Jimmie Stewa r t , and Hank Fonda. . . ." "Okay," she told him, "okay. I'd love it." You know , of course, that Margaret Sullavan eventually married one of those boys she met at the Cape that summer. Next month, Howard Sharpe gives you a vivid picture of this brilliant young star in the throes of her first love. Don't miss November Photoplay. Affairs of e Ball im g a cover honor 80 PHOTOPLAY