Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

In this final installment of her life story, Loretta remembers her promise, "If there will be great happiness I will take that and if there will be deep sorrow I will take that, too" BY HOWARD SHARPE I ORETTA stood beside the yellow roadster, laughing and saying a temporary good-by L* to the man in it. "At eight, then," she said, and trotted up the steps, pulling off her gloves It was a clear spring afternoon, almost warm enough for summer. As she stood waiting foi the butler to open the door Loretta hummed snatches of a song; looked admiringly at her exquisite, newly done nails; thought pleasant small thoughts anent the way she would spend the rest of her day. A long bath to try out those new crystals, first; and a couple of chapters of "Tortilla Flat," the one about the beans and possibly the one where the house burned down; and then an hour for her hair, and fifteen minutes playing with the new Swiss clock that surprisingly tinkled a barracks ditty. . . . The door opened and she almost danced through. I'll suggest the Grove tonight, she decided suddenly. I vmnt to dance, and he's magnificent when a tango comes on. He's magnificent anyway, she added mentally, smiling. Then she saw the stacked luggage near the staircase. "Georgianne's bags?" she said, pausing. "Oh — she goes back to school today, I forgot. Where is she now?" "In her room, Miss Young," the butler said. Loretta ran up the stairs, frowning. Georgianne's last day at home for the Easter holidays and now quietly alone in her room, instead of dashing around the house. That didn't sound healthy. Headache, maybe, Loretta concluded. She pushed open Georgianne's door without knocking. The child had been crying. She stood listlessly in front of the bookcases, keeping her head turned so Loretta would not see the tearstreaks on her face. The older girl came forward and put both hands on Georgianne's shoulders, which turned reluctantly. "What's the matter, honey?" Loretta said softly. "Sad because you've got to go back?" Georgianne nodded. "Do I have to?" she asked. "It's so nice here, and I could go to school in Beverly Hills." "But you like your school! You — " "I hate it!" the child wailed suddenly, bursting into tears again. "It's horrid there — it's — it's a terrible place. Please, Gretch — let me stay here. Please." "Now listen, baby," Loretta said, pulling the child over to the bed and sitting down. "Something's happened and I want to know what it is. Stop crying and tell me." There was no response. "Georgianne." The little shoulders straightened then. The quivering chin came up. "All right," Georgianne said, "it's those girls. All of them. They say bad things about you and no matter how much I argue they keep right on saying them . . ." She stopped as she saw her sister's face drain suddenly white. There was a long silence. Then, in a very low voice, Loretta asked, "What is it they say?" "That you fall in love all the time and then go on to someone else and fall in love with him That just because you're a movie star you — " "Why do they say these things?" Loretta interrupted. "Where do they find out about them?" "In the papers. In the magazines." "I see." Loretta pressed her fingers to her eyes, trying to think. "Georgianne. You know these things aren't true, don't you?" "That's what I'm always trying to tell them!" the child said eagerly. "They yell at me that I'm just sticking up for you because you're my sister. I — it's terrible for me." "I know. Poor baby — you won't have to go back. We'll find another school. Call Nana and start unpacking now. I — have to go and dress." 'N her own rooms Loretta dialed a number, waited, said, "I can't come tonight. I'm suddenly too sick to hold my head up." She paused. "Yes, isn't it silly! It may have been the lobster, Tomorrow, maybe? Or next week. . . ." Not ever again, she thought as she hung up. At the window she stood looking down into the garden. Two years ago on that little marble bench by the fountain, she had sat waiting for tears to come because a man she had loved was dead. She remembered the evening clearly now: the way the moon had looked, the way her persistent intelligence had thrown back wave after wave of approaching emotion, scoffing at its sincerity. She remembered, too, the promise she had made herself — that next time she would not run away when great love came; that when again anything as big and all-consuming as the thing she had felt for Bill happened to her, she would take it with both hands, ignoring consequences. Standing there, she watched the procession of months pass swiftly in her memory. Two years: nineteen thirty-three, and the summer ending in a quiet haze, with more work to do and more fan mail and a new contract for more money de It's George Brent, secret sorrow of half Hollywood's glamour girls, who's beauing Loretta these days spite the growing depression, and the first man after Bill to say, "Loretta, I love you." Dark, handsome lad, with an hereditary endowment of great charm and two million dollars: "Yes, lunch tomorrow, Yes, Santa Barbara for cocktails, Yes, I adore yachts and Catalina Island, Yes — I mean no! No — " And he was not the one Winter, and two new hits to emblazon her name even brighter on even more marquees, and those three or four amusing dinners with that famous star until the papers said, "Will Loretta Young be the next Mrs. ?" — she might have known then, so Georgianne would have been spared — and I am sorry about this, Loretta, it's all so ridiculous, and the New Year, and finally spring. There was a man in New York then, he of the urbane Chesterfield and the knowledge of wines. She remembered him dimly, because after the first week he was definitely not the one. And there was summer, and the agent who played the piano; and there was winter and the co-star who liked badminton and there was the beginning of 1935 and the co-star who didn't like anything, because of gout. And none of these had been the one. She could see the gossip column squibs, the sly inserted double entendres, the grab shots, unretouched, on pulp paper. She remembered thinking at the time, How absurd. Jimmy's fun but we've never even held hands. Still — why bother to deny it? Why give it that much importance? I'm copy. Let them go, let them make their typewriters rattle. But she hadn't thought it would go that far. Not so far that even Georgianne — 7 can't even live, Loretta thought furiously. I can't even live. It was because her mind was fighting this contretemps so fiercely, because her heart was hurt and frightened, that when the thing happened — almost immediately — she did not recognize it for weeks. IT would be unfair to remember this man's name, since it happened, so far as these circumstances are concerned, three centuries in the past; but we can call him Stephan. Stephan was working opposite Loretta in an important picture, when he was working; when emissaries of the studio, sent forth by anxious officials, could find him and give him a cold shower and get him on the set in time for a scene or two. He was a great actor, and is, but there was headshaking about him in that year. He who had never had time for liquor now used it for a purpose, which he achieved magnificently: to forget the wife from whom he had separated. Loretta observed him with compassion, knowing his story. It was a dirty shame, she thought, a nice guy like that. If only there were something someone could do. . . . On an afternoon when the picture was only a third finished she did it herself. The company was breaking up and from her dressing room she saw him heading, alone, for the sound-stage door. She knew he was going to his hotel room, and she knew that no one would come to see him during that evening, and she knew what he would have for company. And on an impromptu impulse she called to him. "Would — would you drive me home?" she asked, when he had come up to her dressing room "My car's not here and it's such a nuisance getting a studio car. I hate to ask — " "I'd like to very much," he said gratefully. "I haven't anything at all to do." In his car, as they drove out of the studio grounds and headed toward Bel Air, Loretta said, "I can't wait for the rushes on that sequence we took today. You've never done better work." He smiled a little. Loretta shrugged. "Have you heard about this new fellow named Pinky Tomlin who's down at the Biltmore?" she went on smoothly. As he helped her out of the car in front of (Continued on page 78) 69