Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

// Give It Another Chance // (Continued from page 28) hounds, a thousand head of them, herded around her wherever she went. More fame than ever. More money than ever. More work, more demands on her time, more everything. This for Alice, whose husband worked in the same studio in occasional featured spots where a good-looking singer was needed. Joan and Franchot had faced that same situation, as had Joan and Doug, Jr . and with the same outcome. Carole Lombard and Bill Powell, Claudette Colbert and Norman Foster had faced it in their turn, and, in their turn, confessed that career differences and marriage form a bitter precipitator of jealousy when mixed. When Alice took the train to New York last winter, for the opening there of "In Old Chicago," her marriage to Tony was at an end, to all intents and purposes. It had not been only religion, only working together, only her enormous success as opposed to his lesser triumphs; in addition there had been their several temperaments, their personalities at opposite poles. Tony: young, gay, insouciant, incapable of worry; he loved to play, to laugh, to dance. Hollywood, nightclubs, bright lights were new to him, and he to them, and he took them big. Alice. . . . But you must know her story, before you can know her. nLICE was born into the House of Leppert twenty-three years ago — a heartylunged, long-legged infant whose howls shook the paper-thin walls of the cheap tenement building and startled Grandma Moffit, nearly eighty but still going strong, out of her felt bedroom slippers. Pop was a policeman. Her mother worked until she started to work. Also there were two brothers to help clutter the already cluttered rooms. There was a policeman's salary with which to provide. They just managed. Thus, against the steaming backdrop of the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, small Alice evolved through the early, post-War years, hoarsely shouting to make herself heard over the babble of stronger voices, doubling up her fists on occasion when the alley brats she scorned got tough, going to vaudeville shows for amusement and to city parks on Sundays for a breath of that queersmelling stuff called fresh air. She quit school at thirteen, took dancing lessons, cajoled a stage casting director into thinking she was older than her age, and went into the chorus. She need not have done that. The Lepperts, weary but bighearted, would have seen her through high school, anyway. But a magnificent hatred for poverty and all it implied drove her forward. A world that held glamour — the glamour of jeweled women, of penthouses, of long motors — beckoned her irresistibly. The years in the chorus were what they were. There was backstage, the smell of cheap perfume in the dressing quarters. There was her income, which defiantly she lived on, a sturdy sense of integrity refusing to let her exchange personal freedom for a Duesenberg. She knew, somehow, that she would do better than that, on her own; and when Rudy Vallee heard her voice on a record, offered her a singing spot in the Scandals show, and later hired her to sing with his band, she understood that she had been right. The important thing is that at that time, while she was still very young, Alice was given all the things which, to Tony Martin, were still new and still exciting years later, in 1938 Then, she stood at countless microphones in countless supper clubs, on countless roofs of skyscrapers. Below the stand on which she stood, a moving pattern of white tie and black broadcloth shoulders, of slim figures glittering with sequins, of slick hair and orchids. Her life then was a mass of sensation: the sound champagne makes in pouring, the muted cry of midnight trumpets, the slam of expensive car doors — and the way Rudy looked when he smiled. . . . She fell in love with him, in a heroworshipping sort of way, and he was kind to her On one winter night they drove furiously through rain and mud, intent on reaching an engagement spot in time, and the car turned over. After three weeks in a hospital, with the greatest surgeons in New York busy over her, Alice emerged, mended and, miraculously, still beautiful, so once again there were the microphones to sing into, and radio, and, as a finale to the months labeled "Rudy Vallee" in her memory, there was Hollywood. And, at last, Tony. By the time she met Tony she had outgrown the Vallee-Webb divorce, in which her name figured. Charley Leppert, her father, had died in a New York hospital. The motion-picture public had remarked, "She looks like Jean Harlow, only she sings." Twentieth Century-Fox had signed her. Money had rolled into her bank account so that diamonds from Cartier now glittered at her throat and satins lay lightly next to her grateful skin. She had these things, having lived much — if not so long — in getting them. Tony, exactly her age, seemed to her a naive and delightfully refreshing youngster, handsome and eager, needing love. She gave it to him because she needed him, too — but with a faintly maternal smile. . . . Alice Faye came back from New HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR HOLLYWOOD? UIVE yourself ten points for every one you guess right. If you get sixty or less, you don't keep up with Hollywood. If your score is eighty, you're doing quite well; and if you have a score of one hundred, you know as much as Photoplay. Check up on page 80. 1. It pays to be versatile. This man has a four-way writer-actor-directorproducer contract with 20th CenturyFox: Gregory RatofF Gene Markey Mike Romanoff George Sanders 2. Two'of these actresses are married to agents: Jean Chatburn Irene Dunne My ma Loy Maggie Sullavan 3. This actor is very embarrassed to discover that he has become a setter of feminine styles, since his costumes in a recent picture have been adapted for feminine wear: Errol Flynn Basil Rathbone Gary Cooper Joseph Schildkraut 4. Before she entered dramatic schoo and became the great star that she is now, this actress used to be a hat model: Greta Garbo Claudette Colbert Constance Bennett Joan Crawford 5. Love interest is usually an integral part of any picture, but this one is being made with no romantic interest of any kind: Men with Wings Submarine Patrol Hearts of the North Dawn Patrol 6. Studios have a language all their own. "Free ride," for example, means lunch on the company. One of these expressions is the name for a sound mixer's apparatus: Federal job Tea cart Jockey wall Bloop 7. After her first picture in Hollywood, this star told reporters in Chicago that "Hollywood is a bore": Hedy Lamarr Franciska Gaal Danielle Darrieux Andrea Leeds If Lili Damita is a leader of feminine styles, is Errol Flynn the embarrassed actor mentioned in question No. 3? 8. The first Hollywood actor to have a motion picture shown by Royal Command in England was: Charles Chaplin Spencer Tracy Fredric March Clark Gable 9. He leaped to fame after just one picture and his latest movie deals with the California redwood forests: Tyrone Power Wayne Morris John Payne Lew Ayres 10. She has three dogs of her own and was recently elected president of the Tailwaggers Foundation of America: Bette Davis June Lang Joan Bennett Dixie Dunbar York and the opening of "In Old Chicago" a star. To make her status doubly secure, the studio gave her the feminine lead in "Alexander's Ragtime Band." A year ago, she realized, she would not have been ready for that role, for even as late as then the blatant voice of Hell's Kitchen still crept sometimes from the carefully quiet tones she had learned to use. But now she was ready. On the last day of shooting she knew she had given the finest performance of her career. She knew, too, that in doing it she had neglected Tony, forsaken what efforts her marriage demanded of her. To me she said, "I didn't give Tony half a chance. If we'd really broken, it would have been my fault." Yet, estranged and a little bewildered, they walked out onto the terracs of their apartment one evening and faced each other. It's over, Alice thought wearily. It's over and itfs my fault. I've made a mess of the only thing I've ever cared about in the world. "No," she said aloud. "I won't let it be over. Tony, darling, we've no right to let our own foolishness queer a thin<; as big as our marriage — as big as our love for each other. We've got to give it another chance." He lit cigarettes for both of them. Then he said, "We'll give it every chance." He looked at her, his eyes saying what the modern etiquette of expression wouldn't let him tell her in words. "You're — the only thing that matters to me. You know that." "We've never really been alone together," she said. "We've never even had a chance to know each other. Let's go where Hollywood can't get at us. Let's go to Honolulu. Now." HONOLULU was the test. "I knew if that didn't work, we'd have to give up," Alice said. "That trip represented a section of our lives together as we would have to live it later, when we were through with pictures. It meant really being husband and wife, without work or anything else to interfere." She paused and grinned. "The second day out, I knew. The guy's terrific. It's going to take more than the things I told you about to get my marriage into the headlines. "I've never been so happy in my life. Not just now, of course — he's away and there's nobody to come into my room when I'm dressing, nobody to throw a shoe at, nobody ... I tell you, I'm actually staying home at night and twiddling my thumbs." She began to laugh. "Imagine. Alice, staying out of the bright lights! Why, even when Tony's here, we've taken to inviting people over, having a couple of Daiquiris, and playing backgammon. I'd no idea you could have fun in your own living room." "That's not all," I suggested. "No," she agreed. "Well, we're arranging. We're going to build a little place in the Valley, like any other settled Hollywood couple, and keep the home fires burning and stagnate respectably. If — " "Never mind," I said. "You've conquered so much, achieved so much, in twenty-three years. You can manage this." "Maybe I can." She got up, paused, and let her fingers trail slowly across the soft surface of the cushioned chaise longue. She looked at me. "Isn't it lovely?" she said. "Isn't it lovely." 68 PHOTOPLAY