Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1945)

Beautiful blonde Betty Hensel whom Cary has been seeing WHAT goes on with 'Cary Grant, who cannot talk to a girl without having all the Hollywood tongues start wagging and giving birth to the rumor of a new romance? What’s on his mind? Does he plan to re-marry or will he go on by himself, a happy bachelor, sought by all the unattached beauties? Well, I am going to tell you what I think about Cary’s future. But before I start, let me say I can only speculate on his plans. I don’t believe even he knows at this writing just how he will steer his course. Cary, you see, is going through the transition of not knowing exactly what is going to happen in his life. He acts ill at ease when Barbara Hutton’s name is mentioned, and he shies like an unbroken colt when any reference is made to Betty Hensel with whom his name has been so often linked. I have known Cary for many years and he has always been very frank with me. Well do I remember a tea at the Douglas Fairbanks Jr. home with Cary and Barbara two days after they had met, when he was so infatuated he couldn’t take his eyes off the slim, graceful, blonde girl who seemed as completely swept off her feet by him as he was by her. Yet, despite our long-standing friendship, I know that he doesn’t want to discuss even with me what finally broke up his marriage to Barbara. Neither does he have any desire to discuss any matrimonial plans that may be simmering in his brain. He was hit hard when Barbara With the crossroads of his marriage behind him, will Cary choose the lone trail or one that leads to romance? BY lOUELlA 0. PARSONS and he parted the first time. He was unhappy, too, when they decided to end their marriage the second time, but this time there isn’t that desperate unhappiness, that wild desire to explain to Barbara it was all a terrible mistake. Although I know and he knows that I know much of the inside of why he parted from Barbara Hutton, he becomes very self-conscious when we speak of her. Still I know there is no chance of reconciliatiorh. He has put on the market the Bel Air mansion he had bought when he reconciled with Barbara and he is now looking for a much smaller house. So it’s all over. Still, it’s only natural that Cary, who is young, rich and attractive, should find solace elsewhere. His solace — and this is no secret in Hollywood — has been pretty little blonde Betty Hensel, a nonprofessional, who has been madly in love with handsome Cary for a long time. I have met Cary many times lately at parties. Strangely enough, he seems to go out more socially than he did even ^ when be was married to Barbara Hutton. I saw him stagging it at the Sam Goldwyns; the next night he was very much present at the Reginald Gardiners Russian Easter party, a gay affair that brought out all the best dancers and went on until curfew rang down the curtain. Cary again was alone, but as I left I saw him sitting in a corner talking quietly to blonde Kay Williams who was once rumored engaged to Clark Gable. If I hadn’t knovra that he had been with Betty Hensel earlier, I might have wondered if he, too, were falling for Kay, who is so gay, so full of life and such fun. When I met him again the following week, alone at Lady Mendl’s dinner, I walked straight up to him and asked, “Are you going to marry Betty Hensel?” Can you imagine the poised Mr. Grant looking flustered? Well, he did. But his answer came without hesitation. “How can I say what I’U do in the next year? Right now I have no plans. I am still a married man!” But I know that Cary has been seeing Betty often and that, while they make no public appearances together because of the situation, he has been calling her and seeing her quietly. Obviously, there can be no plan for another marriage