Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1944)

yet, a fighting man. Sure, he might have enlisted, but like many another young father, he has been held back by the wish to provide a little better for his wife and child before leaving them. For all of his success, he is still a long way from the big income brackets. What’s more he isn’t positive, because of a couple of football injuries, whether he could pass the Army physical. “The ranch squares it up with my conscience a bit,” he says. “I put a couple of hundred chickens and scores of dozens of eggs on the market weekly.' That’s supposed to be necessary war work.” He works on the ranch daily, even when he’s working on a picture. The ranch house burned last year, so now he has a home in Westwood Village, not far from M-G-M, and commutes to the ranch by motorcycle. His ration board granted him enough gas to go by car, but he feels that isn’t fair, so he slings a couple of saddlebags containing a homemade lunch over the cycle and away he roars just after dawn to return just before sunset. At the ranch there are two pinto ponies, Punch and Judy, and Jim rides them alternately on his rounds. Characteristically, when the ranch house caught fire, Jim didn’t go berserk. The first thing he did was to throw the phone out of the window and onto the lawn. Thus, later, when the fire was under control, he was able to phone the studio and say he would be late to work. The only flaw in this picture is that Mary hates California as much as Jim loves it and loathes the ranch in proportion to his worship of it. She was born in Maryland and brought up in Washington, D. C., and snow and seasons are what she craves. “Why that ranch doesn’t look at all like a farm,” she sputters. “There aren’t any trees or even a brook and no matter where you look you can see houses.” Jim just grins when Mary says that, and, watching them, you know that the way he likes things is the way they are going to be and that Mary knows that, too. JIM asks, “Do you know what it is to *' watch things growing, to be around when the horses are in foal and the cows are having their calves? That’s when you know that you are alive and that there’s some reason for it.” Men who are money-mad don’t talk that way. And they rarely speak about the talent that earns their income with such frankness as did Jim not long ago. “The studio kept telling me to get some acting tricks,” he was saying. “I began going to see every movie Cary Grant was in, because I think he’s the best actor of all. It was just as I began thinking maybe I’d go to a drama coach for additional technique that they cast me with Margaret O’Brien. Now that little girl can’t even read, so what could she know about technique? But she’s an actress, a very great actress and a very great star. So I decided if I could keep the simplicity and sincerity of Maggie, I’d do okay.” He’ll do okay, regardless, for he’s made of the stuff that endures. The night clubs can be packed and the bands can be torrid, but he’ll never know. The sounds he loves are the mighty pride of the roosters at dawn and the lowing of the cattle coming in at sunset to be milked. Even if war and its destruction calls him, he’ll still survive, for he has the instinct for the constructive side of things, whether it’s only the right way to curry a mare or something as important as being the architect of his own destiny, and through the brilliant development of his talents, being a sure guide to a better life for his son. The End MAim m v,s,a MEDICAL AUTHORITIES RECOGNIZE PHILIP MORRIS proved far less irritating to the smoker's nose and throat! WHEN SMOKERS CHANGED TO PHILIP MORRIS, EVERY CASE OF IRRITATION OF NOSE OR THROAT-DUE TO SMOKING — EITHER CLEARED COMPLETELY OR DEFINITELY IMPROVED! — facts reported in medical journals, on clinical tests made by distinguished doctors. Proof that this better-tasting cigarette is better for you . . . less irritant to nose and throat! America’s Finest Cigarette