Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1951)

Your Christmas Cards Will Find You Out (Continued from page 49) be on the getting end, too) and not only at Christmas but the year round. You have a love of food and are probably a “mouth-watering” cook. Dr. Woodward says the choosers of the Santa Claus card are not likely to have any strong interest in “keeping up with the Joneses,” nor much concern about “what will people think?” If they had, they wouldn’t choose the Santa card. They’d worry lest it might seem too childish. “As a matter of fact, the Santa Claus card is apt to be chosen,” says Dr. Woodward, “by very mature people who have grown up enough to enjoy good, gay things without feeling any need to explain, or to apologize for their enjoyment. Santa Claus-card senders are also liable to have less trouble than others in their relationships and they have the likelihood of achieving a good and lasting marriage. If you are a Santa Claus-card sender, it is to be hoped that this analysis fits you as it does the young Hodiaks. PEOPLE do reveal themselves, Dr. Woodward says, in the small things they do, day by day. Such as, for instance, the ease and speed — or the laggard lingering — with which they get up in the morning. If you leap out of bed, beating the alarm clock to it, you may be sure you are a happy in-your-work, well-adjusted person. If you just hate to get out of bed, can’t wake up, it means you are unhappy in your work ■or in some department of your life. Even the way one person meets another is, Dr. Woodward told me, a giveaway. The way you listen tells tales on you. If you listen with interest and without interrupting, you have a comfortable certainty of your own importance. But if you only half listen, waiting to get into the conversation, it means that you are lacking in self-confidence, that your ego is hungry. If you go in for blues in dress or decoration— especially the dark blues — you are apt to look on the dark side. “Not for nothing,” said the doctor, laughing, “are the phrases ‘I feel blue,’ or ‘It gives me the blues,’ in common usage.” On the other hand, if you go for green, nature’s primary color and very restful but gay, you reveal yourself as well balanced and contented. And so on through the everyday choices. And of these choices, a Christmas card is especially fraught with meaning — because, at Christmas, people’s emotions are nearer the surface. With the pageantry of the coming of the Christ Child, and the annual advent of Santa Claus, childhood memories come thronging back with the wistful longing expressed in the verse, “Backward, turn backward O Time in your flight, make me a child again just for tonight!” Which is what Mario Lanza may be saying, without knowing it, of course, in his choice of a Christmas card: “For conceivably,” says Dr. Woodward, “the choice of this scene could be Mr. Lanza’s subconscious expression of his wish to return to the infantile and so, uninhibited enjoyment of Christmas, with his admiring parents looking on. “The thing that most interests me about this card is the simplicity and the highly formal nature of it. The whole picture is nothing but the Christmas tree and the traditional family — mother, father and child. But the picture is so rigidly formal, the mother and father so proper, I would suppose it chosen by a person who just has to be very proper, who can’t veer away from the accustomed patterns.” When I reminded Dr. Woodward that the chooser of this card was M-G-M’s lusty Italian tenor, “The Great Lanza,” and one not given to any prunes-andprisms pattern, Dr. Woodward laughed. “Without realizing why he was doing it,” he said, “Mr. Lanza could have chosen a scene that pictures a mode of life in which he grew up and for which he still has some preference. His card could be an unconscious expression of his wish to turn away from his present environment to the more peaceful life of his childhood. Or to a different life — the one of which he dreamed, perhaps, as a boy and which he has not, in spite of his fame and fortune, truly realized.” If you would choose a card like John Derek’s, you will be fascinated to hear that it’s those who love the old ways who are liable to send such a card. “I often wonder,” Dr. Woodward said, “whether such cards are chosen by people of rural background, who have memories, or by people in crowded city places who yearn for the out-of-doors. By both probably. Some choose scenes for the fond recollections they bring of childhood years. But one thing is, I think, certain, and that is that the person who chooses this card, with its down-to-earth quality, has the same quality in himself. It’s a card that symbolizes a kind of revolt against superficiality. The chooser may realize that his nostalgia for the country is greatly idealized— that life in the country may be rather cold — and bad traveling. He still loves the scene because it looks so peaceful, romantic and clean. He chooses it because he wants his life to have a solid footing and so, comfortable or not, be real. “And there is a plus,” Dr. Woodward added, “for, in addition to the down-toearth quality, the high steeple of the church, reaching upward, suggests that while your feet are planted firmly in the earth, your eyes are on the stars. You have an aspiration higher than yourself, a recognition of forces beyond your control. And a kind of acceptance of what comes.” Compared with the more traditional WHEREVER YOU LIVE YOU CAN BUY If the preceding pages da not list the stores in your vicinity where the Photoplay Fashions are sold, please write to the manufacturers listed below: Date Dream evening dress 1400 Broadway, New York, N. Y. Juniorite satin separates 1359 Broadway, New York, N. Y. Sportset dress and overskirt 1400 Broadway, New York, N. Y. Teena Paige star print dress 1375 Broadway, New York, N. Y. White Star luggage 32nd & Allegheny, Philadelphia 32, Pa. Dresner luggage 512 S. Peoria St., Chicago, 111. Coro jewelry 47 W. 34 St., New York, N. Y. Deltah jewelry 411 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. Artemis petticoat 901 Louderman Bldg., St. Louis 1, Mo. Wonder Maid shorty gown 1727 Locust St., St. Louis 3, Mo. Luxite bed jacket 404 W. Fowler St., Milwaukee, Wis. Barbizon brunch coat 475 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. Powers Model slip 392 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. rural scene of young Mr. Derek’s card, those of Kirk Douglas and Don DeFore, while similar, reveal men who are not similar at all — either to John Derek or to each other. Kirk’s card shows neither the farm nor the church — which indicates that he has no strong subconscious desire for the rural life or for the good old days. It could symbolize, however, according to Dr. Woodward, the sender’s desire to have more space around him, to tap the value of rural life without its hardships. This is the type who would go for the log cabin in the mountains provided it was supplied with hot and cold running water. This is the card of a man who enjoys — not solitude— -but a retreat to the country accompanied by his family and (as the young ladies skating toward him suggest) friends. “A physically vigorous man in all likelihood,” the doctor commented, “would choose this card. The scene depicts him demonstrating a vigorous enjoyment of skating. But whether skating, boxing, swimming or dancing, the choice of this card points to the man of action; to a doer, not a dreamer.” Don DeFore’s card, also a rural scene, pictures a couple of houses, some standing trees in process of being cut down and a train being loaded with the cut trees. The train says “Loads of fun.” The chooser of this card could be — the doctor told me — a person with a lot of hostility in his make-up. Somebody who has destructive urges, can’t face them, wants to get rid of them and so, vigorously cuts down the trees. The solitary figures, each cutting down his own tree, characterize a person with hostile feelings, who would always rather be alone. “It is pretty general,” the doctor explained, “that people find it difficult to accept that they have hostile feelings, destructive impulses. A child will shout, ‘I’ll shoot you dead!’ and quite healthily and happily get it out of his system. But adults dress up their destructive impulses. “One value of symbols, however — and the Christmas card is definitely a symbol —is that they often require different interpretations for different people. So, this card also could have been chosen by someone who thoroughly enjoys rural out-ofdoors in the winter. Someone who pities the poor city fellow, wants to send him a trainload of trees. Or by someone who has a happy association with trains.” THAT Don has a childhood association with trains, we know.. He comes of a railroading family. And as for Don, easydoes-it, genial Don DeFore with “destructive urges”? Oh, surely not! When we came to Loretta Young’s card, the doctor said, “Undoubtedly, Miss Young chose a religious card because her church is very meaningful to her.” (It is. It deeply and devoutly is.) “However, it is a curious fact that people who are not religious often choose a religious card as a safeguard to hide a hostility within themselves. More nonreligious people choose religious cards because religion has had a rich, nostalgic association with their childhood. If you do choose the religious card, and especially one like Loretta’s, you are probably a person of extremely gentle disposition but also of deep and tender feeling as indicated by the tender pose of the Virgin and the Child. If you choose a card similar to Olivia de Havilland’s, you are a woman who has real maternal interest and who anticipates finding much of her own fulfillment in parenthood. Or, if not, the card misrepresents you. It doesn’t misrepresent Olivia,