Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1950)

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Y. 18 These Precious Things (Continued from, page 55) pale blue satin cushion, resplendent with lace, on Sue’s dressing table, are a dozen inexpensive baubles, the earliest tokens with which Alan said, “I love you,” to the girl who discovered, fell in love with, and married him. On shelves in their bedroom are a dozen priceless figurines-, Dresden and Royal Copenhagen, with which, over the eight years of their marriage, he has repeated, “I love you, I love you.” A dollar for a trinket was a lot of money for' Alan Ladd when he first went shopping for a present for his Sue. But to Sue Ladd, the tiny gilt pin, a flowerpot with glass “jewels” for blossoms, which sits on her pincushion, is just as meaningful as her exquisite “Girl at the Harpsichord” in priceless Dresden. The love story, not the gifts, is the thing. THE love story began in 1939 when Sue Carol, then an actors’ agent, heard a stirring male voice on a radio program. The “voice” played a man of sixty and his son. Sue, curious to know the real age of the owner of the voice, called the radio station, asked Alan Ladd to come and see her at her office. The man who appeared was in his middle twenties, shy, but eager. Sue told him what had intrigued her in his radio performance. “How old are you?” she said.“Well, I can tell you I am twenty-five, but I can’t prove it.” And he explained that the courthouse and all its records in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he was born, had been destroyed in a fire when he was a baby. If he had to ask the sovereign state of Arkansas to vouch for him he couldn’t prove he had been born at all. It didn’t really matter, Sue told him. What mattered was that he was a good actor, and she was a good agent. She thought she could get him into films. Sue got on the phone, Alan says she was born with a telephone in her hand, and began calling producers. While she talked about the good-looking, talented young man in her office, she doodled. Sue always doodles while she telephones, and she always draws the same doodle, a flowerpot, with two flowers, which Alan insists look like strawberries. The, first day’s effort landed Alan a part in Paramount’s “Rulers of the Sea.” It wasn’t a big part, but it paid substantially more than he had been earning, and with part of his first pay check he bought Sue her flowerpot pin, or “doodle pin,” as they both affectionately call it. That was the beginning, of everything. Of the career of Alan Ladd, of the love story of Alan and Sue, of the collection of “I love you” presents. Alan worked fairly regularly from the outset of his professional association with Sue, and he saw more and more of her after office hours. Whenever Alan came to pick Sue up, he particularly admired a pair of Dresden figurines, dancing couples in Empire dress, and Sue loved him for loving them. They had been her mother’s, and were her most valued possessions. “Someday, I want to buy you a figurine,” Alan would say, half -jokingly, after that, when he turned up with yet another bauble for the pincushion collection. Not long after this, Alan got his Big Break. Director Frank Tuttle, on Sue’s urging, tested Alan for the shock role of Raven in “This Gun for Hire,” and signed him the next day. This meant a big boost in his pay check and he felt he could ask Sue to marry him, “one day.” For the first time since he’d known her |! he was rich enough to go to a jewelry store j to buy her a gift, and the ring he chose, a giant topaz set in cabachon rubies, she accepted as an engagement ring. And the next day, she bought an “engagement ring” for him. “I found it,” she confesses, “in a hock shop on the boulevard. It was all I could afford. It was a plain gold signet ring, inscribed with the , name Paul, the pawnbroker said he would sell it for nine dollars. “How much to change ‘Paul’ to ‘Alan’ and add a single ruby?” she asked him. He thought he could do it for another six dollars. Alan wears the ring now to cover his wedding band when he is portraying an unmarried role. “This Gun for Hire” was completed, and while the public had not as yet had a chance to look at Paramount’s new star, the producers of the picture were sure enough of their “find” in Alan Ladd to cast him in “The Glass Key” and send him on location with a company to Mexico. SUE CAROL visited the location one weekend, and between shots, as it were, she and Alan were married by a Mexican justice of the peace on March 15, 1942. For some reason, they say today they don’t remember what it was, they decided to keep the whole thing secret. The army was looming for Alan, and both he and his bride were intent upon one thing, they wanted a baby, now, before Alan had to go away. Which made for wonderful headlines a few months later. A day before Alan and Sue were remarried in a religious ceremony in a chapel in Santa Ana in July of that year, one columnist reported that Sue was consulting an obstetrician in Beverly Hills. Sue had visited the doctor to find out why she was not having a baby, but that wasn’t the way it came out in the papers. “Alan Ladd and Sue Carol deny they are expecting a baby,” the columnist columned the next day. While on Page One in the same edition much larger headlines announced “Alan Ladd and Sue Carol Wed in Santa Ana.” Alan bought Sue a tiny golden bank for her charm bracelet at that point, it already included a miniature of her “doodle” flowerpot, an engagement ring, a camera, a wedding ring. “It’s better,” he assured her, “to have money in the bank before the baby comes.” Alan had time, before his army induction, to go to New York for personal appearances in connection with the opening ; of “This Gun for Hire.” It was his first trip to the Big City, and Sue locked up her office to go along. When they found themselves between trains in Chicago with an hour-and-a-half to waste, Alan disappeared. When he returned, he had a present for Sue, four Dresden figurines of the muses, Painting, Music, Sculpture and the Dance, quite the most beautiful and the most touching gift that Sue had ever had. “They had another one,” Alan said, “which I wanted to get for you, a girl with a harpsichord, but I couldn’t afford it.” j They were going to stay at the Waldorf in New York. It is certainly the most famous, and the most splendiferous, Sue thinks, and she thought Alan would love it. As their train pulled into Grand Central DO YOU WANT TO GO TO HOLLYWOOD? SEE THE MAY PHOTOPLAY