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HANDFUL OF MEMORIES
BY DIXIE WILLSON
THERE is a new "glamour girl" in Hollywood. Everywhere she goes Norma Shearer is a bit of a sensation in beauty, in smartness of appearance, in charm of manner. She is somehow younger, more arresting, more tireless in work than ever before.
How she has found the courage to accomplish it (in the face of her great tragedy) , nobody quite knows. But she has accomplished it. She's riding the crest of the wave.
As for her future, she has, in her portrayal of an unforgettable Antoinette, set a brilliant pace.
As for her "past" . . . we herewith turn back the months . . . the years ... to a handful of her memories:
The first one, the occasion which inspired her decision to be an actress!
IN Montreal, life for the three Shearer children, Athole, Norma and Douglas, was aimless and gay. There was a pleasant, roomy old house of parlors and stained glass windows. There was a stable of saddle horses, a pony and gig. And nobody thought of a "future." Never did it occur to the littlest of the blueeyed girls, as she faithfully practiced her music and learned her geography, that sometime her life must have a design of its own.
And then one night her mother and father were to attend an "affair." An affair of such aplomb, taking up at so late an hour, that Norma, put to bed as usual on the eventful evening, shared none of the excitement which attended preparations.
This arrangement, however, she saw a way to remedy. In bed, wide-awake, she waited until sounds indicated that departure was near, then downstairs she went, a little barefoot ghost in the shadow of the stairs.
She remembers watching her own shadow traveling grotesquely on the ceiling as she crept
along. She remembers the hall clock strikinj nine. Then in the bright parlor, as she peerec down through the spindles, she saw her mother dark hair piled high in a cascade of curls, £ white aigrette, bare arms and shoulders, a gowr of amethyst satin embroidered in seed pearls And with the faint fragrance of lavender, a glimpse of white kid slippers, the impressive elegance of fur, presently she was gone, the front door closing with a little flurry of snow, its cold breath left to follow small Norma's bare feet all the way back to bed.
And that night a little girl not yet eight years old, not especially clever, not especially pretty, lay wide-awake, her eyes fixed on the window's pattern of frost as she pulled the blankets closer and made her decision to grow up to the only state which she could be certain would provide for her such glamour as she had just witnessed . . . not a mere one night of it, but a world of it!
Many a time afterward she could smile at the naive mind behind planning a destiny about the rustle of amethyst satin and a cascade of curls,
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