Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1938)

COMPLETENESS marks the love of Frances Dee and Joel McCrea, enriching everyone who knows them. It's inspiring. Under all the circumstances, it's miraculous. To see Joel romping on the sand with his two small boys, utterly oblivious to the world around, and to see him rise, at the sound of Frances' voice, beaming the No. 1 Special McCrea smile, is to observe two lives Hollywood tinsel has never touched. To see Frances' own smile, watching Joel stride around a room, would make any man say, "Boy, I hope my girl friend feels that way about me!" Why "miraculous"? Think it over. How would you like to be Joel, working over at Universal at rush speed, with the temperature 101, in "Youth Takes a Fling"? Or how would you like to be Frances, that same day, under forty pounds of brocade and umpteen hundred light watts, smiling a lady-in-waiting smile for rascally Louis XI in "If I Were King"? In either case, could you come from that day to dinner (if you got to dinner) pick up the mutual problems of home and two children and keep consideration . . . understanding . . . love . . . burning bright? If so, you are smarter than dozens of Hollywood star-couples. Make your own list. Swell people all. And they all tried. When even one party to love lives the tense, trying life of studio work, with fatigue, discouragement and drawn nerves (those come to even the most successful) domestic bliss may become a laugh o'Reno. When both parties buck the grind — pray for that miracle! Unimaginative people, prisses or individuals who are good-natured just because they're weak, don't have much trouble getting along. Not capable of great love, how canvthey lose it? But, in Frances, Joel has a cat-swallowed-thecream. have-my-own-way type of girl (the quiet kind always fools you) with a temper like a buzz saw. And, in Joel, Frances has an equally self-willed boy who won success early, has recreational tastes in which no wife could share (steer branding, for instance) and whose six-foot-three raises a good-looking face just high enough to draw every feminine glance, and sigh, in every crowd. There must be a miracle. So what? So miracles have cause and effect. Sure, serene and eager affection is life's greatest prize and what won it for the McCreas (temperament and picture strain considered) ought to work for anybody. What makes love tick? Consider these two youngsters who came together under white, bright lights: Frances, born in Los Angeles (within five blocks of Joel) . . . moves to Chicago as a baby . . . tomboy girl, who climbed telephone poles . . . small success in school except in studies (like French) that fitted her daydream, acting . . . dull job in the want ad department of a Chicago paper . . . rebellious (the quiet kind always fools you) . . . wild decision to go to Hollywood . . . bitter months without work and as extra . . . break in a million: Chevalier's leading woman ill, Frances eating in studio restaurant, Chevalier passes, sees her, says, "That's my leading woman!" . . . swift success. Joel, born in well-off family . . . moviecrazy but worker by nature . . . delivers newspapers, holds horses for Tom Mix and Bill Hart, operates road scraper at sixteen, runs away from school to work on ranch . . . father persuades him to enter Pomona College because of dramatic school (Bob Taylor's Alma Mater) . . . movies take his smile to their heart . . . wanting to play Westerns, is starred with Connie Bennett in drawing-room drayma. rRETTY lively ingredients for matrimony! Frances' beauty had made her telephone ring all day and florists' delivery boys buy new tires for their bicycles. (She had quite a crush on M. Chevalier.) Joel had been much seen in public with Connie Bennett, could have been the town beau if he chose. The two meet in a picture, "The Silver Cord." Immediately, other people cease to exist for them. One secret of successful love is to fall really in love. Apparent choice between career and happiness arose at once. Remember the English craze? All actors were to improve their fortunes by getting that oh-so-superior English | direction and "international" standing. Joel was offered four times his American salary to go to London. Frances was offered double hers. Joel said quietly: "There's no assurance our pictures abroad will coincide. We'd be absorbing new excitements, meeting new people, just when we should be learning about each other." To her closest woman friend at that time, Frances said: "I think Joel is right. And I know there'll be months when I will desperately want him with me. I'd like to have two children while we're young, and home and with Joel is the place for me." It didn't count at all that desire to travel had been almost a mania since school days. That English bubble has long since burst. Many careers went blooie in London fog and the principal fruit was income-tax troubles. Lucky McCreas? Maybe. In screen careers, in love and in life, if you deal firmly, you're apt to win; if you cringe or toady, life turns and plays the bully. The close woman friend said, "Isn't marriage setback enough? If you're going to take time out for two babies, just write your career off." (After the wedding Joel's fan mail dropped, for awhile, from 3,000 letters a month to 300.) Frances merely smiled. She knew what career she wanted most. Master Joel Dee McCrea arrived and shortly afterward Big Joel, in the locker room of a beach club, confided: "I never had any particular fatherhood ambitions. I always loved children but I thought one was about like another. I'd as soon have adopted a son. Of course, now — " That McCrea grin! HOLLYWOOD forgets quickly, but a year after Joel Dee was born, Frances was offered the lead opposite Francis Lederer in "The Gay Deception." You may not have noticed it, but camera angles had to be figured very carefully in that picture. Wiseacres bit the dust. Motherhood had done something for Frances, added a new, shining quality. "The Gay Deception" accomplished more than any other picture to give her solid star standing. David, the second boy, came into the world just too late to see the preview. Zingo! The old problem — Love vs. Career. If a studio can count on an actress for from five to seven pictures a year and has a long term hold on her, money for publicity and exploitation pours out like quips from Sam Goldwyn. But — an "occasional" actress? Not so much build-up. Not nearly. Dazzling offers came from five companies. Frances, as unshakable as she seems to be meek, answered: "I'm a mother and a wife. I'm going to work at it. Two pictures a year, at the most. And one year's contract at a time." This put a whopping decision up to Joel, who hates to worry but will if he has to. He had never before been in such demand. All the topflight actors were getting smart and free-lancing, letting the studios bid for them. But Joel figured: "There are four of us now. Frances has deliberately cut and maybe weakened her career. My job is to cinch security." He turned down several juicy one-picture deals and signed a long-termer (and no options) with Goldwyn. "Well, that's not so (Continued on page 83) 29