Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1948)

ADVERTISEMENT lem in a fair , constructive way. Ask him lo have a talk with your mother — without revealing your instigation of the talk — encouraging her to allow you to entertain your gue.sts in your own way. just as your mother has her own methods of amusing her guests. Claudette Colbert Dear Miss Colbert: I am twenty-one years old and have been married for one year. I can say with pride and gratitude that I have no marital problems. My tale of woe is, briefly, this: My husband’s work requires that he travel almost constantly, so we live away from home and friends. I travel with him, so I find that I have a lot of unused time on my hands. Because we are usually located in hotels I am somewhat limited as to recreation. I have tried busying myself with hobbies: I’ve worked on scrapbooks and albums; I’ve window-shopped and explored towns; I’ve attended movies and listened to soap operas. Yet I feel that my life is being wasted. It exasperates me to think that day after day I am accomplishing nothing. Can you suggest a hobby that will bring happiness to a lonesome girl? Sharon E. The world is so full of things to do that my problem, in answering you. is to refrain from filling the rest of this magazine with suggestions. First, why not plan for the future? Since you and your husband travel, why don't you start a study of languages. You should buy any of the several books guiding language study and bolster these with recordings which can be played upon a small portable phonograph. While memorizing vocabularies, or listening to recordings, you might start to embroider a set of petit point covers for a dining-room suite. You wrote to me from a large city, so undoubtedly there are a number of orphanages nearby. Whenever possible, you should introduce yourself to the superintendent, and make arrangements to take two or three children on an afternoon outing. There is always need at hospitals, homes for the aged, or orphanages for a cheerful person who wishes to be of service. Please let me know whether any of these suggestions prove to be of help to you. Claudette Colbert Dear Miss Colbert: I’m seventeen and I am in love with a man thirty-two. I have been going with him for over a year. I know he loves me because he does everything in the world for me. He says he would marry me tomorrow but he hasn’t enough money. He claims he never has had anything and he never will have anything. I have told him that by both of us working together we could get along fine and make a good life together, but he doesn’t see it that way. He tells me to go out and have a good time, but I don’t want to because I love him too much. What should I do — keep on staying at home in hope that he will change his mind, or go out and try to forget him? Doris N. I have said it before, but I'll say it again: When a man gives a girl an excuse for not marrying her, the plain truth is that he is not in love with her, or he has some secret and highly important reason for not wishing to marry her. When a man is in love with a girl he thinks nothing of asking her to marry him, even if he has to borroic money for the marriage license. Nothing matters except being with the girl of his choice. Any girl who refuses to have dates when a man specifically suggests that she go out with other men, simply doesn't understand the basic personality of mankind. A man in love is jealous ; he can't bear to think of his girl being out with another man. By all means, take this man's advice. Co out on dates with other boys. One of two things will happen : Either you will find someone more suited to you, or this man will come to his senses and decide that he loves you and wants to marry you after all. Claudette Colbert Dear Miss Colbert: When I was ten my widowed father remarried. I tried to please my stepmother and gain her love for my father’s sake, but she was always cold, critical and treated me like an unwanted outsider. When I married, my stepmother told my husband that she didn’t like him and never would and made a good many disparaging remarks about his family background. We moved to another city, so her unkindness made no difference in the happiness of our marriage. We now have a three-year-old daughter. A year ago my father died. My stepmother made a series of bad investments and eventually lost everything my father had left her. I had inherited nothing from him, incidentally. Last week I received a letter from her, asking us to take her in. Glenn flatly refuses even to consider the matter and says that I must choose between my stepmother and him a