Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

1 'learn to be a man who can be indignant at the right time and for the right reason, and to back up that indignation with fight until he wins his i point!" (CHILDREN really bring themselves up, Eddie ; said. All parents can do really is to give them (a little guidance at the right time. And that ["guidance" should not be by the rod, according !to Eddie's lights; he advocates reasoning with i a child, treating him with the respect he deserves; not robbing him of his individuality. "You know, a child's intelligence is vastly underestimated," he went on to say. "Basiically, that intelligence is an honest one. They learn hypocrisy from their elders." Eddie doesn't want Manny to be handicapped by "old school" discipline. He is most definite about that. So definite, in fact, that, although he did not say it in so many words, I have the feeling he is seeking to protect his son from some indelible experience of his own youth. It explains, I think, the leniency with which he permits the boy to express himself and many of his desires, such as helping a train conductor collect tickets, playing waiter in a dining car, or pretending he is a deck steward on board ship and gravely going around tucking passengers into their deck-chair blankets. "The average parent prevents that sort of thing. I don't," Eddie acknowledged. "I cannot see any harm or wrong in it. It gives a child a sense of being important to himself and others, and I think that is essential." The "old school" of discipline, to Eddie's way of thinking, bred inferiority complexes by the carload in children because it robbed them of all initiative by suppressing wholly normal instincts. MANNY walked quietly through the room just then and, called by his father, came over to be presented. He shook hands politely, chatted for a moment, and then went on about his business, which was playing some phonograph records to Marlene on the little phonograph in his own room. Soft strains of nursery rhymes and some of the tunes from "Snow White" drifted down the broad staircase. I wish you could have seen Eddie's eyes when he was presenting Manny. You've seen them hard and calculating on the screen, filled with venom and hate as he portrayed some character of the underworld. You saw them cold and a little frightening in his current picture, "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse." But you should have seen them at that moment if you wanted to see the real Eddie Robinson. The pride, the joy, the happiness in them defy description. Seeing that, you realize why Gladys Lloyd Rob %* >e *h *°/>e 9t*n Ms *°°d J?»4 1,f». / A est ** 'Ms 6~"!s i "e, IS "■"fB^ tifefc/ r *v Gladys Lloyd Robinson deemed it worthwhile to risk her life to give her husband that which he wanted above all else in the world inson deemed it worthwhile to risk her life, as doctors frankly told her she was doing, to give her husband the child of his own flesh which he wanted above all else in life. She gave him more than a son; she gave him what is given to few men on this earth — completion. By one act alone, Eddie repaid her the other day. Any woman who has seen her child cringe in fear at something that ordinarily cannot be avoided would so agree I think. He saved her the torture of standing helpless while her child suffered. Manny had to have his tonsils removed. The surgery was to be done in a local hospital. Now, in a child's mind (as in adults', too), fear of an impending event is ten times worse than the event itself. Eddie was determined to prevent that in Manny's case, if it was humanly possible. A week before the surgery was scheduled, Eddie broached the matter to the lad. "Tell you what, let's rehearse it so we all can play our parts perfectly," he suggested. Immediately, Manny's interest was fired and his first touch of panic completely allayed. "You be the patient, I'll be the doctor, and Mother can play the nurse," Eddie went on. Manny thought that was a great idea. "First of all, we've all got to put on white clothes," Eddie directed. "They always wear white in a hospital, you know." Solemnly they all changed into white clothes. "Now I'll (Continued on page 82) 27