Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1938)

Beautiful Brat (Continued from page 65) at last, she went out for a drive on an autumn afternoon and hooked the town catch, wearing his fraternity pin to a ball given by his ex-fiancee that night. He was a gay young man, only son of a great name and a great fortune, and he was addicted to speed in open cars and to jazz and to the ringing fantasy he seemed to find in a tenth Martini, or a twelfth Rock and Rye, or in the bottom of the special flask he carried in a special pocket tailored into his jackets. There was this, over which she had no control. She shut her eyes to it, as she had deliberately blinded herself during these months to many things: to the summer past, to the sharp memory of a beach and a boy and his voice saying, "Someday, Maggie. Someday." She had not heard from Hank. And it was winter, and the man she would marry said, "June, Maggie?" and she said, "Yes." And she danced some more, and "Among those present was Miss Margaret Sullavan, lovely debutante daughter of . . ." And there were the nights when she was too busy or too tired to remember. And there were the nights when she had to remember; and the spring came, bringing with it finally, shatteringly, his letter. "I know you will come," Hank had written. Simply, without exhortation or argument. She could hear her mind click into another gear as she read the sentence; and quite suddenly the period just ending assumed a distant perspective, became a strange episode in her life for which there was no explanation. Mag gie offered her regrets to her bewildered fiance with a kind of polite detachment. She didn't even bother to argue with her family. I HERE was the second summer at Silver Beach, then, and whereas before she had been a nineteen-year-old girl finding new excitement in first love, now she was all of twenty — and she had a whole dreadful year of confusion behind her. Wherefore Hank seemed to her more than ever wonderful, for his sharp intelligence and his solemn wit. She was frantically in love with him now, and now, because of this new intensity, they quarreled more often and more seriously than before. Each quarrel meant a magnificent reconciliation, a potpourri of emotion, and more excitement for Maggie ... it was sometimes she, therefore, who cast the first verbal stone that set them off. That fall there was no wire from home. She went to New York unhindered. The road company of "Strictly Dishonorable" — not a very good play — was getting ready to go out and needed an understudy for the female lead. They told Margaret she could have it at sixtyfive dollars a week. She worked them for seventy-five dollars, learned the entire part the first night, and set blithely forth on her career. The company played Norfolk the second night out. She arrived in town in terrific jitters, had dinner with her unsuspectingly joyous family without telling them about the situation. She was safe for the nonce, since Cornelius was in bed ill; but the next morning the papers printed that their own Maggie, herself, would play the matinee on Wednesday. And, to the malicious triumph of her fellow debutantes, she did, before a capacity house. In the middle of the first scene her entire family, wearing brave Sullavan faces, straggled staunchly down the aisle and sat en forte throughout the entire piece, even through the scene in which she was forced to undress on the stage. Under the circumstances they could do no other. They never mentioned the affair afterward to Margaret, of course. And she left on the evening train, shaking her fists at the fates and her chuckling stage manager. But somehow it was a decisive episode; the lot of her future was irrevocably cast with the theater. She had made her choice, not in the privacy of her mother's drawing room but on a public stage before the assembled townspeople; and in a way, after she was through with fury, Maggie Sullavan discovered she was immeasurably glad. I HEN, as if by signal, her life went completely kaleidoscopic. Things happened to her with such speed that she had neither the time nor the ability to deal with them except intuitively; she knew that this approach, rather than her usual unhurried intellectual survey before action, would be the origin of blunders. But there was no alternative. She was incapable of dodging anything that whispered of progress or of excitement. While she was playing in Philadelphia, the P. T. Intime (Princeton Theatre Intime) wired her, asking if she would come to Princeton for a piece they were producing. She accepted, as a matter of course. For a week end she played to a convivial and noisy audience and on the final night discovered that there was a Shubert man — one Elmer Harris, a playwright— in front. She was horrified. She felt ill, anyway, and with this drunken house she knew her performance would be relatively bad. Nevertheless, two days later a wire from the Shubert office asked her to come to New York, to read a part. It could not have come at a worse time. She now had laryngitis in addition to the vague illness for which she could find no excuse and no remedy. Even so, she took the first train to the metropolis and in a husky, deep croak read the lines that were handed her. "Sounds like a sore throat," commented one listener. "You're crazy," said Shubert. "This is another Ethel Barrymore voice. She's hired." Maggie went back to Philadelphia and immediately had acute appendicitis. She had the appendix out and wired New York there would be a slight delay. Two weeks later she was up, learning to fence, rehearsing for the starring role in "The Modern Virgin," and frantically driving through fog without a coat so as to encourage the laryngitis. She was so successful that after the opening all the critics repeated Shubert's opinion and, in addition, raved about her ability as an actress, even M/alk wlt/t ^lldln^ t?rac& through tkz // /Qty to -foot trzscti owt Heel Latch shoes put you on a fashionable footing for Fall. Not only do their styles provide the perfect complement to your costume but they hide a deeper magic. Find your "gait-way" to foot freedom, smooth action, beauty in motion in their snug-fit heel and cushioned arch RONDETTE iMPfik ROBERTS, JOHNSON & RAND SHOE CO. • ST. LOUIS, MO. Division of International Shoe Co. TURNABOUT NOVEMBER, 1938