Radio stars (Sept 1933)

(Starting at the left and reading across the two pages) Ann Leaf, shown here with big William Hall, cannot forget a certain terror she experienced. Jacques Fray would give anything if he hadn't written that letter! Mario Braggiotti Is haunted by nnemories of the War. Lee Sims (pictured with his wife, llomay Bailey) never, on any of his programs, plays "The Rosary." There's a reason. Frank Crumit still blames himself for the thoughtlessness of his youth. His wife, Julia Sanderson, would forget another's dishonesty. By DORA ALBERT IF there were just one thing in your life that you could forget merely by wishing to forget it, what would it he? ff you coulrl wipe out the memory of one thing that has happened in your life, which would you choose? W hen I asked that cjuestion of a grou]) of radio stars, 1 knew that it struck deep. I hoi)ed to uncover hidden dramas in their lives, because the things that we would like to forget arc things that are blazed in our memories, that torture and crucify us. They are things that have hurt us so bitterly that we would like to forget them if we only could. And yet I did not realize how deep the (|uestion really ■<trtick. When 1 asked it. I saw jjeople's faces change. T saw them with their masks otT. 1 saw looks of pain and horror in their eyes as they remembered things that they had been trying to forget all their lives. I shall try to tell you some of the things that were really in their hearts — the things of which they found it difficult even to speak. For only in that way can you learn to understand what the radio stars are really like underneath all their glamor. "If there were one thing, just one that I could forget," said Frank Cruniit of the team of Sanderson and Crumit, "it would be the thoughtless way I treated my grandmother, who brought me U]). My mother died when I was about two years old. 1 was brought up in my grandmother's household. She was a remarkable woman, but of a rather stern New Fngland ty\^. I must have broken her heart countless times in a thousand thoughtless ways. I remember the time 1 came home from high .school, after 1 had been drinking too much beer. Now I can realize what the sight of me that night must have done to her. Then it seemed such a little thing. I was just a careless kid and did not understand. And now that I understand, how 1 wish I coulfl wipe out the memory of my thoughtlessness. 1 wish that my [)eople were alive today, so that I could treat them as wonderfully as Julia (Julia .Sanderson, his wife) treats hers." BUT Julia Sander.son also has her bitter memories, memories she finds it difficult to talk about. There is the memory of her first disillusionment. She was such an idealistic person, the young Julia. She thougin that everyone tried to be honest and that ]ieople coulfl be trusted and that tho.se who pretended to be her 10