Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

74 Photo by White Studio "Oh, Honey, oh, Babe," is Jack's favorite expression to Estelle, and it sums up his boyish exuberance of feeling. Eartky and Square With al! the excitements of fame, Estelle Taylor and Jack Dempsey refuse to be shaken from their firm hold on honesty and reality, yet they are the most glamorous and surprising couple in Hollywood. By Esther Carples people are ! Now, "O one knows how nice som take Estelle Taylor. Suppose it was a rainy day, and you felt like talking with some one warm and particularly "all there." Suppose you wanted to spend an hour with some one earthy and square, and by chance you gave yourself an assignment to see Estelle Taylor. Estelle is warm with the low-down on things. She is so real that she amazes you. You think that if you were in her place, you wouldn't have come out quite as whole. She and Jack are happy with such intimate reality, that the posings of happiness of other stars seem inconsequential. Estelle will tell you that she isn't smart. She and Jack are not sophisticates yet, so Estelle, knowing much and feeling much, says she isn't smart. They have known the same backgrounds, and they still coach each other in a friendly game called learning life. Jack is a hundred times more articulate than when she married him, but his fullest expression is still coltish playfulness. When he is pleased, he will say, "Oh, Honey, oh, Babe." Jack thinks Tunney's racket of highbrowism is a scream. He thinks the rackets of the drawing-room are funny, too. He knows they are funny, but he can't signal to Estelle with innuendo and cynicism, so he gets lumbering and playful. At a gathering in Washington not long ago, something got Jack's goat, and the Congressional ladies got the shock of their lives. "Give me one of those great, big kisses you're so famous for, Honey dear," Jack pouted at Estelle. It burned Estelle up. But all Jack would explain was, "That's that, Honey." Jack is keyed to tremendous exuberance, and Estelle doesn't pull him down. There is the rose garden of their Hollywood home. Jack won't have anything about him that isn't of extravagant proportions. He planted more rose bushes than any one else in Hollywood, and so they fill the place at every turn, blooming in perpetual rotation, as prickly to negotiate as barbed wire. They've strangled every other growing thing on the place, and torn Estelle's tulips to pieces ; but the roses are gorgeous and abundant, and in the heavyweight-championship class. "Our marriage is a nice kind of marriage," said Estelle. "We have no squabbles, and there is more to it than just love. I think it has done everything for me. It's got inside me. If anything happened to this marriage, I couldn't stand it. I had some idea of what life was, and when I married Jack it opened the way to understanding. I always get a big laugh when people say that marriage interferes with living. If anything tends toward making you happy and contented, that thing can't become an issue. "Before I married Jack I had the feeling of being outside a locked room, where precious things were kept, and the door was shut. Every one has the feeling that there is such a room, but they feel that there are too many doors. But marriage took the fear out of me. To me fear is hell. If we are afraid of anything, we are licked at the start. "And Jack, in spite of his success, was the same way. He was so self-conscious that he didn't even dance — he kept his hands in his ■pockets. Now he just relaxes. I used to say to him, 'Why are you so self-conscious ? You're the biggest man in the room. They are all dressed in their best because you are here. They stare at you because they like you.' "But it took Jack a long time to get accustomed to seeing things that way. He thought people were pointing at him and saying, 'Look at the fighter dressed up in a tuxedo.' He never used to analyze anything, but jump at conclusions. Now he trusts himself." "And that's how you got your reputation of being the big boss of the duo?" "That's how I got it," drawled Estelle. "By making Jack a present of himself. "Jack and I just had to figure things out. Sometimes I think that if you don't do something bad, you haven't got character. As a little girl I wasn't goody-good. I used to climb over our back fence in Wilmington, and run off with the boys, because I had more energy than I knew what to do with. My grandmother found me Continued on page 106