Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1944)

I GO TO WAR What do boys think about on that first day away from home? Their girls? Their families? the answer — with a punch BY I SAT looking quietly out the window . . . hearing the sound of the train as though it were unreal . . . watching the trees, the telephone poles, the warmly beckoning homes in the distance roll by. I watched a life fade behind me with each passing mile, a life I had known and loved. I waited with each new moment for the life that lay ahead. And as the many thoughts rolled through my brain like patterns in a kaleidoscope, it seemed that the train kept repeating, “This is it . . . this is it . . . this is it. . . .” Yes, this was it. The day so many of us young fellows have to face. The day when our country gives us a chance to repay our debt for being Americans. . . . I’ve thought back to that day many a time here in the barracks. I’ve shared the feeling of countless boys who looked out a train window and perhaps brushed a tear or two away from their eyes. But I know those tears weren’t signs of weakness. They were tears of a young boy growing up. Maybe growing up a little early. Maybe missing a lot of youth because of the sudden need for manhood. . . . The barracks are full of men tonight, but each of us is alone. And lonely. It’s the time when you can’t help remembering. Remembering so many things. Little moments that once seemed so unimportant, big moments now because they are a part of the life that has slipped away for a while. San Jose, California, where I was born . . . school rooms where I wrestled with physiology and civics. Boy! how I detested those subjects . . . Meeting Ingrid Bergman, who has that naturalness I like in girls and being so embarrassed before her loveliness I could hardly speak at all. . . . That day when my letter came. I remember that. All it said was “Greetings.” The rest I knew. I had been waiting for it for weeks, ever since the first of July on my eighteenth birthday. I was working on “The Purple Heart” at the time. I remember feeling how lucky I was to have been able to finish two pictures before the time came. Sure I had regrets. I loved acting. Ever since I was a kid and had my first circus fever I’ve wanted to act — if you don’t count one brief spell of wanting to be a veterinarian. I could never honestly say I didn’t mind giving up the life that meant so much to me. I remember when I began acting in a couple of Little Theater plays in Hollywood I could feel something inside of me growing, something satisfying, a lot more satisfying than clerking in a grocery store in Universal City. And the day when Mr. McIntyre, an executive at Samuel Goldwyn studios, came to see me after a performance of “The Wookey” in Hollywood and asked me to come to Samuel Goldwyn’s for a screen test for the juvenile lead in “The North Star” . . . The awful expectancy as I made the test . . . the thrill as I was told I had won the part. Then “The Purple Heart” with its further progress. And director Lewis Milestone’s request that I appear in a third straight picture with him, “Guest In The House.” That was swell even if it was something I couldn’t do because of my induction. And yet I feel at times as though I had done it. . . . Those are some of my thoughts as I sit in the darkening barracks. Those are the thoughts that make me alone in a crowd of young Americans. What are they thinking about, these other fellows around me? Their girls? Their mothers? Their fathers? Their homes? The jobs they left behind? The hopes they had? They’re alone too. I think once a boy knows he is going, he looks forward to that day when he ( Continued on page 72) P m M 30 Granger, civilian, Hollywood sensation of "North Star" and ' ' Purple Heart'1