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B Y MARY WAT KINS REEVES
has dangled by the single fragile thread of a man's pride, a thread that threatened to snap at any moment and hurl another celebrity romance against the rocks of divorce.
Only very recently has the thing occurred which has restored the marriage of these two singing stars to the secure basis on which it was founded the summer day in 1931 when they were quietly wed at Tenafly, New Jersey : Gladys Swarthout and Frank Chapman are to be back on the air right after January first singing together on a new program for the same sponsors of Parties at Pickfair. Now the story of their past three years can be told.
The first time I heard Gladys sing was four years ago in a large southern city. She came to town much heralded by publicity, she wore a metal cloth gown that fitted her exquisite figure so perfectly she might have been dipped in silver, she gave a performance that set the local critics to dusting off their finest stock of adjectives. And yet only three hundred people gathered in the small salon of a hotel to hear her sing.
A year later she could have returned to that city and packed its mammoth auditorium to the roof for three nights running. For in a few short months she had become a radio star and an idol of the public. Radio had lifted her from the comparative obscurity of the recital stage and the Metropolitan into the coast-to-coast limelight of the microphone, and almost overnight her name had become a household word from Broadway to Hollywood.
Like a skyrocket, the girl from Deep Water, Missouri, had zoomed to greater heights of recognition than she had ever dreamed would be hers. But instead of being totally happy about it, deep in her heart Gladys Swarthout was sick with regret and fear. This wonderful success, this sudden fame had come to her — but it hadn't come to her husband! And the two of them had started out together on an equal footing.
Frank Chapman was an established concert artist when Gladys Swarthout was an obscure young singer playing the Balaban and Katz theater circuits of the west. They met in Florence, Italy, where Frank had spent two bril
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Prank dropped his singing for Gladys but stardom is his.
FRANK CHAPMAN SAW HER STAR RISE FAR
ABOVE HIS OWN TO THREATEN THEIR MAR
RIAGE BUT NOW DEVOTION IS REWARDED
liant years as the only American member of the Italian National Opera Company. They fell in love, returned to this country to attend each other's debuts at the Metropolitan, gave a joint recital which brought them ovations of praise, and a year afterward they were married.
Then they settled down to the business of being very happy together and very busy. During the opera season they appeared just about equally on the stage of the Met, during the rest of the year they went on concert tours both singly and together. Of the two of them Frank was by far the more outstanding professionally. He was the well seasoned artist; he led, Gladys followed. Which status, where two musical careers in the same marriage are concerned, is ideal. (Continued on page 69)
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