Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1947)

9Dliai; SIwhcIcI 9 Do-? t & p YOUR PROBLEMS ANSWERED EAR Miss Colbert: I am nineteen and deeply in love with a fellow of twenty-five. We are planning to be married soon. When I first started to go with him, he told me that he had been married when he was twenty, but had been divorced for almost three years. He talked about his first marriage very frankly with me. Now he and I think exactly alike. We both enjoy sports, and think that trust and partnership are the best foundations for marriage. We want to build a house, starting with one room on a GI loan. I want to keep my job until we start our family in about five years. When I finally told my mother that Bill was a divorced man, she said flatly that I could never marry him with her blessing. She said, “There are enough nice single boys in this world without your causing gossip by marrying a divorced man.” I am crazy about Bill and want to marry him. But, I don’t want to do anything to make my mother and father unhappy. Please tell me how to make them see that it isn’t Bill’s past that counts, it is his future — with me. Penny B. In your case, 1 would say that you are still young enough to alloic your love for Bill to be tested by time. Why not wait another year before setting your wedding date? The wise girl prolongs her courtship days until she is quite certain that her respect and love are great enough to last a lifetime. Something about your letter impels me to the belief that your mother is using BilTs previous marriage as an excuse to cover some other objection. Why don’t you ask Bill to have a talk with your parents. If he will outline his previous marriage and divorce to them as sensibly as he has to you, I think he will be able to persuade them that he has profited from a bitter experience and that he is now a better human being and will become a better husband as a result. Claudette Colbert Dear Miss Colbert: I am a bride of ten months. I met my husband in 1942. We were living in the same apartment building and were introduced by the manager. With me it was love at first sight. After I caught on to his routine I would “happen” to be Claudette Colbert, star of “Sleep, My Love” around when he came home. I would “happen” to be cooking dinner and would invite him to come in to share it. Sometimes he would tap at my door when he came in around ten o’clock in the evening and we would have a glass of milk together. From the time I met him until he was called into the Army in 1943, we had only one formal date. When he went into the Army I didn’t see him for two years. Although I wrote regularly, he would write only once in three or four months. Yet, when he was given a furlough, he came straight to see me, said he had missed me and our evenings together and asked me to wait for him. We were married in late 1946. I quit my job two weeks before we were married and he has been after me ever since to go back to work. He says that two people can never get on in the world unless both buckle down and stay busy. He is continuing his studies at night and works during the day, so we really don’t have much married life. He is nice and courteous to me, but somehow I don’t feel that he adores me. We are more like good friends occupying the same apartment. Do you think I should go back to work? Can you think of some way to make my husband fall in love with me — really in love? Anapola I. You realize in your own heart, of course, that you pursued this man. That seldom pays. A man likes to do his own hunting. There are subtle ways in ivhich a girl can encourage a man, but inviting him to her apartment repeatedly is too plain a folloicing of the old adage about the way to a man’s heart. I have a feeling that your husband has never really noticed you as a BY CLAUDETTE COLBERT woman. He probably thinks of you as a contemporary combination mothersister who provides him ivith the comforts of home. Definitely, you should go back to work. You should also enroll for some sort of evening class so that you will be as busy as your husband. Match his moods (unless he is irritable), try to live so deeply within yourself and your own thoughts that you become somewhat mysterious. Buy a fete becoming neic clothes and wear them without calling his attention to them. Make yourself more interesting and more independent, and I believe that — since your marriage is so new~— you may be able to duplicate the old novel title, “ He Fell in Love ivith His Wife.” Claudette Colbert Dear Miss Colbert: I am a man of seventeen with a serious problem. While I was visiting my aunt in Chicago this summer, I met a wonderful girl who was visiting the people next door. We spent the summer together, and had a swell time. She is a wonderful girl of sixteen and she is solid. She has always lived in California. She is back in school out west now, and we have been corresponding. Since I am at home, I am not satisfied with anything. I am also back at school, but I am not getting good grades. All the girls seem like squares and at home things are really rough. My father drinks and he doesn’t get along with my mother and me. I have half a notion to quit school, run away to California and get married. I don’t know what to do, but I don’t want to continue going to school and living in this mad house. Harry L. Being seventeen is a difficult responsibility. You are no longer a child, nor are you yet an adult. I receive many letters from girls of seventeen who ponder the relative merits of continuing with their education or getting married. Hoivever, you are the first boy to place the question. That query leads me to believe that you have no very clear idea of the seriousness of marriage — particularly from a man’s standpoint. How would you support a wife? For a time you might be able ( Continued on page 6) 4