Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

74 This Thing Called LoVe It has changed Joan Crawford from the pet of the party to the soul of the studio. By Myrtle Gebhart THE "Hey-hey Girl" has become "Miss Crawford." The dancing girl has shed her brilliants and dropped out of the giddy whirl. Love, the great alchemist, has remade Joan Crawford. It has clipped her butterfly wings, steadied her, awakened her to the worth-while things of life. Probably by the time this is printed, she will be the wife of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Their engagement has been announced and rumors of a secret wedding are circulating. So often it is the little, inconsequential things upon which major events hinge. We see only the big moments, limned in high lights, seldom the apparently insignificant forces that cause them. Two gardenias, nestling among lilies of the valley in the green tissue of a florist's box, meant a turning point in loan's life, though she didn't know it at the time. Amid all the splendor that the spendthrift sheiks lavished upon her, little acts of chivalry won the Hey-hey Girl. Her room full of dolls — dream children, she calls them— the mulligan stew that she delights to cook, her sewing, her crying over Doug's gardenias — these commonplace things that the modern girl considers archaic are dear to Toan. In this phase of awakening to genuine sentiment, they are strange and new and poignantly sweet. Once the central beam of the whirligig's glitter, Joan has tempered her glow. She is wandering off, curious, a little wistful, into the half-light to see what is there. She is familiar with the shadows — the dark caverns that lie far from the merry lane of light. She learned early to hate poverty and dirt and cruelty, and to scratch ; to yearn for something with all her heart, vague though those impulses were, during her formative years while doing housework and laundrying, taking care of the children in a school, streaking out in rebellious mood to a garish dance hall for a madcap evening with the riffraff who couldn't afford to be expensively wild. Experience taught her the value of prettiness and physical attraction, a sharp, witty tongue, and gifted toes. She has virtually hewn her own path, against odds that girls reared in sheltered homes cannot know. No, the shadows do not Joan Crawf o r d now radiates power and assurance instead o f her former n e r v o u S frenzy. Photo by Louise beckon to her, nor the blatant Broadway light with which she is all too familiar. She has just awakened to her need of the experiences of an ordinary life. Those commonplace things, from which many girls long to escape, hold out to her an anchor of safety. Her life has been a turbulent stream. Her wish now is for a steady, regular flow. Of course, a poet would quench the flame of the Hey-hey Girl. Startling as it seems at first thought, on second consideration, it is the only logical thing that could have happened in this magic townlet built on drama's shifting sands. "She wears her suitor of the evening like a corsage !" That gay phrase trailed Joan through her fads, escapades, and dance madness, summing up her frivolous outlook. Flaunting her banner, Joan danced the merrymerry, audaciously challenging convention. Then thoughtful attentions that "the evening corsage suitors" scoff at, tempered her headlong plunge, made her take inventory, and cast influences, like soft, sidelong glances, even upon her work. "Dodo" — to give him Joan's pet nickname — is a dreamer, an idealistic, artistic boy. He writes poetry, is an amateur sculptor, reads the intellectuals. Emulating his father, whom he idolizes, he has become proficient in sports. His chief success has been gained on the Los Angeles stage, particularly in "Young Woodley." He is distinctly not "the evening corsage" type of suitor. His sharply chiseled features denote strength of character, his intent eyes, deeply set, aquesting for the truth of things, and a will. Absurdly young — only twenty — and yet ageless. That is the way that Doug, Jr., impresses one now, with his quiet moods, his authoritative air, his utter disregard of everything that does not immediately concern him. A florist's box containing two gardenias and a spray of lily of the valley, was the overture to a sweet courtship, its sentimentality strange in cynical Hollywood. Joan's florists' boxes had always contained orchids. Only Dodo knew that this orchid girl had a gardenia heart ! "I cried," she says, simply. After that, there were books, poems penned to her, gentle attentions that the speedy gallants overlooked. Her merry path, carpeted with frivolities, colored by the lights, has changed into a calmer routine — studio, work, sewing, cooking, planning practical things. Joan economical ! Hollywood roared gleefully, and thought it , just another fad of the capricious k Continued on page 103