Radio stars (Oct 1934-Sept 1935)

RADIO STARS DEAR FAY WEBB VALLEE : The world hates a welsher. You hate a welsher, too, unless you are a lot different from most of the attractive California girls I've met. Yet through your recent court actions against Rudy Vallee in NewYork City, you are forcing newspaper headlines to paint a not-so-nice picture of yourself as just exactly that. It isn't a pretty thing to imply that of a pretty girl like you, hut the world is beginning to do it. Probably it isn't all your fault; possibly advisors poured into your young and inexperienced ( in these legal affairs ) ear so many rosy stories of what you were entitled according to law. that you begin to believe them yourself. By the way, just what are you entitled to? For marrying Rudy Vallee and living with him for an elapsed period of nineteen months, less than twelve of which vou spent at his side, what reward is yours rightfully? Down deep in your heart of hearts, can you honestly answer that question ? I know, of course, of the settlements that your lawyers have offered. Just the other day a newspaper story said that your representatives met in the office of J U d g e Bushel, Rudy's c 1 b s e friend and legal representative, and offered to call the whole thing quits for two hu n d r e d thousand dollars. That offer was refused and the quit claim price finally dropped to fifty thousand dollars. I don't like to believe that you would bargain with Rudy or with anyone else. A wife's rights cannot be measured by money attempt to do so is to cheapen both one's emotions and oneself. Another thing that sticks in the back of my mind (and my craw, too) is that court action you've filed in California. Unless the papers have misinformed me, you have demanded a monthly payment from Rudy of seventy-four hundred dollars. You also claim ten thousand dollars for expenses, plus fifty thousand dollars for your lawyers. Evidently you value those months spent with Rudy very highly. Much more highly, apparently, than does the man with whom you spent them. Just to clear up the record, lie promised, didn't he, to pay you one hundred dollars a week for life, or for as long as you did not marry again? You signed a paper to the effect, didn't you. that you To would be content with fifty-two hundred dollars a vea for the rest of your life or until you married someonj else? You also contracted mutually not to talk for public; tion about your married life. Each of you was to hav complete personal freedom. And you, Fay, agreed th? you would not take part in any motion picture or pla which purported to reveal incidents taken from you] married life. Those were the general terms of your agret ment that you signed, weren't they? It's that agreement, the papers are telling the work that you want to break. And the world is asking a oml word question : Why ? Don't think that I'm blaming you for anything — yell I know so well how you must have felt in those "Vagi abond Lover" days, when you met Rudy asll was making his first motion picture m Hollywood. I know the thrill vol must have felt when he wh| was the most adored man ij America came to you an| aid his complete del votion at your feei A man's love is heady draught anjj there never ha been any doul in my min that R 11 d I; 1 o v e d v n utterly. Hil heart, whic you held i your ow 1 c h i 1 d i si' c a r e i hands, wa yours lonl after hi mind kne> that you di not love hir as he love you. Those trips til New York befoij you were mat r i e d must hav I opened new vistas ill your mind. The tele grams and telephone call from him. begging you t come for just a few day;' must have given you a deep an warming satisfaction. Doesn't the men ory of those sweet days show how deeply you wer loved, and how completely the man was under you spell? And doesn't that memory make something dee inside you ache and ache ? And then you were married secretly, but your preciou secret could not be kept longer than three days. What three days they must have been ! What a three week: and then three months ! Was it during the fourt month that you began to find that your marriage wa faltering ? No sane person can deny a young girl her right t gaiety and happiness, but I wonder sometimes if merel i being Mrs. Rudy Vallee didn't go just a little to you head? If you didn't begin, soon, to enjoy being Mr' Rudy Vallee instead of being with Rudy Vallee. Rudy has said, you know, that you did neglect him. in which the writer suggests how Fay may find wha 14