Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1948)

HOLMES & EDWARDS \ CTTnT Tiff VUV HTT>° What spoon would you choose? Surely the one with these sSsP* “ ''//nx'' ,/,/iu' The two blocks of sterling inlaid at backs of bowls and handles of most used spoons and forks. They make this silverplate stay lovelier longer. Fifty-two piece set $68.50 with chest, (tax free) Copyright 1947, The International Silver Co., Holmes £ Edwards Division, Meriden. Conn. Sold in Canada by: The T. Eaton Co. , ltd., °Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. .{a West e magoibce^ s^ "hest wiU Vend ,nch Cedar Hope £ home Unction to V°u -ts spacious eticuVousVv n'a“ ’ l mothproof tenor and rd Y°»' mstruction «^and those ne woolens, »n that vou reasured .^V^lJdest dreams. «OMV I Ufi Fr ( Continued from page 82) him. There was one of his own classmen, a husky heckler who’d best be called Bill, who made a habit of accosting him outside the study hall, preferably in front of an audience of girls, “They tell me you’re scared of a football, Laddie Boy,” he’d say tauntingly. With the girls giggling at the “Laddie Boy” stuff, a fellow couldn’t answer back, “My swimming coach won’t let me — ” “Football is a great game,” Swendson would warn him, “but it uses a different set of muscles. Stay away from it.” Three years, all of them spent in training, and the small kid was over and done with like a moth’s cocoon. Seventeen now, with his blond hair and green eyes complemented by lean jaw and square chin; with an athlete’s body, hard and tanned and with sinews as tautly strung as the strings on a fine violin. A job on which coach Swendson could look with pride and know that it was well done. More than a job — a hope — for now it was 1932, the Olympic year. The tenth Olympiad, the first one to be held in the United ‘States, was coming to Los Angeles. The thrill of winning a swimming meet was no longer new to Alan, the Ladd mantel was heavily a-glitter with silver trophies. The Olympics, however, were something to stir a fellow’s blood as well as his ambition. Forty nations, sending two thousand contestants across the ocean in the interests of “Good sportsmanship, peace and better understanding among the peoples of the earth.” Each of the two thousand a youth who, as one chronicler impressively wrote, “—has for years been preparing body and mind at great sacrifice . . . has parted from friends and family to travel halfway around the world, carrying in his heart the honor of his country.” Alan was among the top three contenders for the Olympic diving team when the coach was called to New York. “I’ll be gone for two months,” he told Alan, gray eyes stern. “I haven’t much to say to you, Ladd, except — stay up there!” And why not? Striding along North Hollywood High School’s halls with the assurance now of an upper-classman — and a prominent one, at that — Alan felt good. It was swell to have your schoolmates as admirers instead of hecklers. Maybe that’s why when Bill, now friend instead of enemy, told him the football team needed him worse than ever, he said he’d go out for it. He’d have two months to play while Swendson was gone. Maybe the swim coach didn’t realize that school spirit was important, too. The meet for which Swendson had timed his return was an important one. Alan’s leg had been giving him a little trouble since that day the whole football team came down on top of it — but not too much. He was confident as always. It wasn’t until he had reached the end of the board that he knew something was wrong. He raised his arms above his head — but that old “violin-string” fineness wasn’t there. Watch it now, he told himself, everything counts for that perfect score of ten — position, run, jump, execution. He tried, but it wasn’t clean the way he left the board or the way he hit the water. His next turn would have to be better. After three more dives he saw Swendson turn his back and walk away. There were a few more weeks before the Olympics. After two weeks, the coach called him. “It’s no use, Ladd — you won’t be ready. I’m sorry, but it’s hardly my fault. I -have a report on how few times you were dn the tank while I was gone. You’ve been playing football.” “Yes, I have — ” burst out Alan defiantly, “ — because I can’t believe just a twomonth let-up in training can hurt me.” “It can’t — now,1’ said the coach quietly. “You are no longer swimming for Hollywood Athletic Club.” “No longer-^for Hollywood Athletic Club — ” The words went round and round with every turn of his bike wheel, all the way home. A new bike — and new words — from those of four years ago. He resented the man who had pronounced them. The man who ifiad shut him off from the Olympics — robbed him of his place under the waving banners, in the headlines, in the newsreels. Then, he remembered Coach and Ins mother on the phone, as they had often been during the years. “He can be one of the greatest swimmers in the world—” Suddenly Alan knew that not just his own dream had died, but the dream of three people. And he knew that he, himself, had killed it. Smith, Galitzen and Kurtz formed the diving team of ’32, and kept the championship in the U. S. A. Clarence “Buster” Crabbe won a fame that is still potent. Alan Ladd later won the West Coast diving championship at a high-school meet, and still holds the local fifty-yard free style interscholastic record. When he was out of school his highdiving experience won him his first job on the movie lots — on the cat-walk, forty feet above the stage. He feels that “swimming is good training for an actor, gives him poise and control of his body.” The struggle from that first stage-hand’s job to his star status of today was also a Spartan one. He accomplished it because Alan Ladd turned from boy to man at seventeen. A man who decided that when you lose one dream, you reach out and grab yourself another. And keep grabbing — until you find one you can hang "on to! The End 'Ten (?entl Chance A chance to help lick infantile paralysis. Start your dimes rolling in the Health Parade hy sending your donations now to your local county chapter of the March of Dimes MARCH OF DIMES JANUARY 15-30