Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1938)

ff£K& 4 SORE MMy W PR07ECT y(?(/R KEEP YOUR UNDERARM DRY, AND YOUR DRESS CAN'T HAVE AN OFFENSIVE "ARMHOLE ODOR" • Sometimes the man \who seems to pay you the closest attention at a party sees some other girl home. If you think men are just fickle, make this one simple test of your appeal tonight! When you take off the dress you are wearing, smell the fabric under the armhole. You may be mortified at its stale "armhole odor," but you will know why women of refinement insist on a deodorant that keeps the underarm dry as well as sweet. No matter how dainty you keep yourself, if stale perspiration collects on your dress, it will give you away every time you wear it! ODORONO IS SURE: With Liquid Odorono there is no possibility of unpleasant "armhole odor," because it keeps both you and your dress always DRY. ODORONO IS SAFE: Perspiration is simply diverted from that one small area to other parts of the body where it can evaporate freely. PROTECTS CLOTHING: When used according to directions, Odorono is harmless to fabrics. It saves them the destruction caused by perspiration acids. Start today to make the most of your natural charm! Use Liquid Odorono according to directions on the label of the bottle. Two strengths — Regular and Instant. At all toilet-goods counters. half a mile from her dressing room, alone at the far end of the almost deserted lot, in the chill fog of Christmas Eve. She wore no coat, only a thin, light scarf which she held around her as she started walking toward the faraway checkerboard of lighted dressing-room windows. Along the empty street, past the great closed stages, her French heels and their echo sounded like castanets against a very large stillness. Usually the lot was as busy by night as by day . . . but this was Christmas Eve. She reached her dressing room, unlocked the door, snapped on the light, put down her make-up box, slipped out of her shoes to thrust small cold feet into felt bedroom slippers. Her maid, whom she had sent home early, had left a thermos bottle full of hot chocolate. Miss Shearer poured out a cupful and held it to warm her chilled fingers. Then, a startling sound, came the ring of the telephone. "How little I guessed," she says now, with a quiet smile, "that just that telephone ring was to change the whole mood of my life!" For it was Mr. Thalberg, asking, in a somewhat nervous voice, if he might call on her tomorrow to say: "Merry Christmas." I HE following year, to spend their honeymoon, they went to Germany, a trip of especial interest to Miss Shearer . . . Mrs. Thalberg . . . since she had just finished the role of Kathi in "The Student Prince." And to impress her husband she had busied herself at studying German. At some unexpected moment . . . though not as an obvious effort to be clever . . . oh, no, not at all like that . . . she would give an easy exhibition of tossing off German as casually as though it were English! It was thrilling to see old Heidelberg, which had been duplicated on the lot so perfectly; an amazing feeling to find, in Germany, as they drove along, everything exactly as they had left it on the lot in California. They wandered through the grounds of the old castle with its crumbling walls, everywhere students wearing their little pillbox hats and the scars of their duels; with fascinating nonchalance hitting the ferns with the canes they carried. Then one afternoon the honeymooners hired an old-fashioned carriage with a deliberate horse, the little man on the box wearing a feather in his hat. They didn't care where they went . . . had nothing to do. . . . "Take us," they said, "somewhere for supper." Late afternoon found them in a tavern garden on the hillside looking down at the town, a little circle of musicians playing Viennese music . . . not too well . . . the Herr Proprietor giving them a smudgy card upon which was printed the assortment of food to be had. And printed in German! Mrs. Thalberg's opportunity! Mr. Thalberg ordered potato pancakes. His pretty frau instantly recognized a phrase which by merest accident she had happened to learn . . . "corned beef and cabbage." "I'll have this," she smiled, and read it in glib German. "What is it," Mr. Thalberg wanted to know. In German she repeated it. "Yes," he said, "but what is it?" "You should have learned those things," she teased him. "Wait and see. You'll be surprised." "Nothing else for Madame?" the Herr Proprietor asked. "Oh, no," she told him. "Nothing else." So through the warm sultry end of a summer afternoon, the young Thalbergs walked down to the rock garden, bought sugar and fed the horse . . . and waited for dinner. They requested a favorite Viennese waltz, a second favorite Viennese waltz . . . and waited for dinner. They ordered coffee . . . and asked about dinner. "Madame's order," explained the Herr Proprietor . . . "it takes a little time." They watched the sky. . . . "What on earth did you order, dear?" Mr. Thalberg wanted to know. "You'll see," Miss Shearer smiled. "It's very American. I suppose that's why they had to cook it specially." The musicians played. The first stars came out. . . And then the Herr Proprietor appeared with a wide smile and a plate of hot potato pancakes. "And Madame's order comes," he beamed, as indeed it did ... an entire plum pudding briskly burning in brandy! IHREE years later a memory ... a very happy memory; gay plans for a trip through the Mediterranean, for Norma Shearer, Mr. Thalberg, Miss Helen Hayes and her husband, Charles MacArthur; with the prelude of a heyday three weeks in New York, parties to be given by friends, plays to see, Fifth Avenue to "do" . . . plans, invitations, arrangements on every side, thrilling and exciting, trunks unpacked at The Waldorf as if the stay were to be forever. Then suddenly it had all become so intricate that Mr. and Mrs. Thalberg, checking down the list of every terrifically important detail, could see but one solution, which was to do none of it all, to figure it out by forgetting evei-ything! So when the telephone rang, Miss Hayes to report that she and Charlie, trying to crystallize plans, offered as the only way out, a postponing of sailing until the fourth week . . . Miss Shearer replied . . . "Irving and I have been trying to figure it out too. How about sailing this afternoon?" There was a little silence ... a little struggle for words at the other end of the line. ". . . and not tell anybody we're going, not anybody at all," added Miss Shearer . . . "until we've gone!" Swiftly things began to happen. By midafternoon four dizzy, giggling people found themselves on the deck of a ship bound for Southern seas. "How depressed we'd have been," laughs Miss Shearer, "how terribly, terribly hurt if there hadn't been any parties or plans for us . . . but it was such fun running away!" LISTEN-LISTEN -LISTEN Not since Paul Revere wakened Concord has there been such a Revolutionary idea. You don't have to be beautiful or rich to have a marvelous time in Hollywood, and we can prove it! Just read . ; PLAIN GIRL IN PARADISE by Diane In November PHOTOPLAY But as the ship slipped away from the wharf it came home to them that there wasn't a familiar face in the crowd; not a soul to whom they would be waving and shouting good-by! "But we simply must say good-by," they decided. So hastily Helen, Charlie, Irving, Norma, picked out persons to whom they would say "Good-by." "I'll take the man in the green jacket." "I'll take the woman holding the redheaded baby." "I'll take the girl with the yellow chrysanthemums." . . . And this may, at last, offer explanation to a broadshouldered gentleman in overalls, as to why, when that majestic ship glided into the harbor that day, the excited lovely lady bearing so striking a resemblance to the then decidedly famous Miss Norma Shearer, called repeated good-bys to him, blew him a kiss, urged him to take good care of himself and waved farewell as long as he could see the flutter of her handkerchief;. I HEN came the September day when once more the world changed for her, changed this time beyond anything she could believe. For the one in whom she had found ideal happiness . . . was dead. For the first time in her life, when slowly, mechanically she came to realize it, there didn't seem to be any future, no goal which could possibly be important. She considered his ambition for her, the ambition which had always been hers for herself, knew now, more than ever, she must have work to do. But it was all only confused and bewildering. She couldn't conceive a beginning when all she could think of was this utterly unlooked for end. Six months after Mr. Thalberg's death, Norma Shearer's mother took her to New York hoping that, with seeing Broadway's newest plays, her mind might respond. One afternoon, dressed obscurely, entering the theater very quietly after the lights were dim, nobody knowing of her presence in town, Norma Shearer went to a matinee of "Stage Door." She sat in the front row, as a place where she could most easily miss recognition. The play was received with enthusiasm, Margaret Sullavan, in the lead, greatly applauded and appreciated. But after the second act curtain, when the lights had come on, the applause didn't stop. "What's she going to do now?" Miss Shearer wondered. "She'll have to make a speech." And then she became aware that it was she whom the audience was applauding, her acknowledgment they were asking. It was a moment of complete and genuine surprise to her, so certain had she been that today, in this crowd interested only in the play, she had no identity. She rose . . . smiled . . . bowed . . . as the applause swelled and continued ... a sincere salute. "And I'm sure it was that day," Norma Shearer says . . . "which provided the answer." So there's a new Norma Shearer in Hollywood . . . young . . . lovely . . . (and apparently quite herself again, with a smile which succeeds in hiding any trace of unhappy shadow). Somehow she has accomplished it. At the moment she is busy with "Idiot's Delight," which presents her again with Mr. Gable. And Hollywood and the rest of us are mighty happy to pin a pair of orchids on — "the girl who came back." 88 PH OTOPLAY