I Found Stella Parish (Warner Bros.) (1935)

FICTIONIZATION Fictionized from the First National picture, starring Kay Francis, and featuring Ian Hunter, Sybil Jason and Paul Lukas. Director, Mervyn Le Roy. Screen play by Casey Robinson based on a story by John Monk Saunders. Fictionization published by courtesy of Romantic Movie Stories Magazine. Chapter 1 No other man than Stephan Norman would have dared intrude upon Stella Parish as that black-haired darling of all theatregoing London sat in her dressing room making up just before the curtain was to rise on her new play, The Day She Died. “I brought you a little flower,’ said Stephan as he opened the dressing room door. There was shyness behind his kindly, apologetic manner, as if he feared he were presuming upon his privileges. Older by a dozen years than Stella, there was yet an adoring light in his grave eyes which moved Stella to bury her lovely dark head in the huge cluster of blooms he had brought her. “Beautiful!” she cried. The marvelously expressive voice which had made her the toast of London softened in a mood of tenderness. “Indeed you are.” The sudden mistiness of her dark eyes gave him courage to go on. “Stella, will you marry me?” “A fine, helpful director I have!” she chided him. “He comes in ten minutes before curtain time, when I’m just a bundle of nerves, and proposes to me!” “My sweet,” said Stephan, “I have proposed to you so many times without its ruffling you in the least, I was sure it wouldn’t make you any more nervous than you are. Will you marry me?” Stella said tenderly: “No, Stephan.” “We've gotten that over with again.” His smile concealed his hurt. “Then, if you won’t marry me, will you come to the party I’m giving after the theatre tonight?” Her expressive oval face clouded with apprehension. “Stephan, you know I never go out.” She could not evade his reprov _ ing eyes. “Don’t you think you’re carrying this phobia for aloofness to ridiculous lengths? You never go out in public, Stella. You make a lady hermit of yourself. Why?” She wondered, in sudden panic, if he could sense the swift surge of fright which had clutched her heart in icy fingers. “You know we both agreed in the beginning, Stephan, that we would build up an air of mystery about me. Don’t tell me you’ve begun to be taken in by our own publicity!” “I wonder.” His smile had vanished. “For the past three years we’ve worked as closely as two people can, and still I don’t know you. “IT FOUND Kay Francis and Ian Hunter, who form a new team of film lovers, have the leading roles in the First National picture “I Found Stella Parish” which opens at the...........0.0.0000000.. vaste ENRCOUT Cn ON oe It seems that you have a deep distrust of every living soul—that for some reason I can’t guess you lead a secret life in a private world of your own.” “Oh Stephan, Stephan! He was driving her back against the wall. “Would it please you very much if I came to your party?” He nodded eagerly. “Then of course I’ll come.” TELLA PAR “Will you really?” His delight was boyish. “If you do, as a special treat, Pll propose to you all over again.” She was grateful for the entrance of a call-boy announcing curtain time. Stephan walked with her to the wings. He couldn’t know, she reassured herself, that her haunting fear had its source in some thing far deeper than nervousness on an opening night. When the curtain had been rung down on the last act and Stella had responded to a personal ovation unprecedented in the history of the London theatre, she returned elatedly to her dressing room to prepare for Stephan’s party. But as she opened the door her body froze into a rigid thing of ice. A man sat there staring at her cynically, his unpleasant mouth twisted into an insolent smile of greeting. “How — how did you get in here?” Her choked words were barely audible. Clifford Jeffords studied her from cruel little eyes. He was not bad looking except for skin the color of dirty chalk. “Picked up the rotogravure a couple of weeks ago in Chicago and saw your picture sitting on a caption,” he explained contemptuously. “You’ve climbed high — too high. You should have known they’d put your picture in the paper.” He grinned at her look of stricken terror. “You had those monkeys out in front goggle-eyed tonight. I’d like to see their faces if I told them what you know and I know. They’d swallow their monocles! By the way, how’s your kid?” “She’s—” Desperately, Stella grasped at a straw. “She’s dead!” Jeffords was not deceived for an instant. He said harshly, “No, kid, you'd just as well look at things they way they are.” “You think you’re scaring me?” she cried from dry lips. “I know I am,” he grinned. “You’re scared stiff.” He was right. The whole carefully planned structure of her life had come tumbling down about her ears. Frantically she sought for a way out. There must be a way — there had to be! (To be continued) | PICKUP HEADING FROM CHAPTER I | SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTER The night Stella Parish had her greatest theatrical triumph in her finest play, “The Day She Dies,’ two things happened. First, her manager Stephan Norman proposed marriage; second, when she re turned to her dressing room after the last act, she found her husband, Clifford Jeffords, sitting there. He was the last man in the world she expected—or wanted—to see. Chapter 2 When, after a long time, she had temporarily gotten rid of Jeffords, Stella collapsed weakly into a chair and for many minutes sat staring straight ahead of her with burning eyes. When energy returned sluggishly to her, she penned a note to Stephan Norman: My dearest friend: Tonight I am leaving the theatre and leaving England forever. I cannot tell you why. I can only ask you to try to forgive me, to try to balance our few but precious years of friendship against this final wrong. Goodbye, Stephan, and thank you for your sweetness. I am too miserable to write more. She summoned a messenger and dispatched the note to Stephan. Her eyes circled the dressing room with the torment of one looking upon a loved scene for the last time. Then, closing the door behind her, Stella Parish went out into the London night. Relief flooded over Stella Parish Stella as she boarded the liner which was taking her away from England. There had been no sign of pursuit. Why should there have been? Who would have guessed that the elderly woman with the gray hair and thick glasses and lined face was Stella Parish, whose disappearance When you’ve seen this show you'll realize what a swell story it is. Two chapters are shown on this page—four more complete the serialization. Mimeographed copies are yours for the asking, plus the six stills, if you need ’em. If your editor likes these two chapters, write for the rest to Campaign Plan Editor, 321 West 44th Street, New York City. . had thrown London into a turmoil? With her was a bright-eyed little girl with Stella’s own dark hair and oval face, in the care of Nana, her nurse. “It’s a large boat, isn’t it, Auntie?” the child asked Stella. “Yes, Gloria.” Stella took her daughter by the hand and started forward on the deck. “But when a boat is as large as this one, you call it a ship.” “Why, manded. “Tm sure I don’t know. But a captain almost threw me overboard once for calling his ship a boat.” A young man, standing at the head of the gangplank and scanning every passenger with anxious sharp eyes, attracted Stella’s mild curiosity. He was in a full dress suit and the formal tails were strikingly out of place in the bustling throng. When they had reached their cabin, Gloria burst out excitedly: “Aren’t I doing well, Mommy? Did you hear how loud I called you Auntie?” Stella smiled at the child with amused pride. “Yes, I did, dear. I thought you overdid that a little, for a real actress like you.” “I am a real actress now, aren’t I?” Gloria asked anxiously. “Yes, you are. Do you think you can play the game all the way over to New York?” “Oh, yes! It’s such fun!” As Gloria rushed to the porthole in an adjoining room to watch the bustle of departure, Nana, the nurse, turned a troubled face to Stella. “Do you really think it’s safe to go back to the States?” she asked. “Where better can an American hide than in America?” Stella de Auntie?” Gloria de manded wearily. “In New York Ill be a needle in a stack of six million straws.” “That devil!” Nana’s eyes blazed as she thought of Jeffords. “If I’d seen him I’d have choked the living breath out of him!” “He can’t harm me — it’s only my baby,” said Stella quietly. “But he won’t! The first time I held her in my arms I made her and myself a promise — that she would never know the things that, if she did know, would ruin her life. Nothing — and nobody — is going to prevent my keeping that promise!” (To be continued) “If you won’t marry me, you won't. But there is no harm in asking,” Stephan concluded—Kay Francis and Paul Lukas in a thrilling scene from the intensely dramatic picture “I Found Stella Parish” coming to ERO he TROGEO ON. -5. 5. cca ex 5 Page Seventeen