Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1941)

REVELATIONS OF AN ARMY WIFE! It is amazing how little most of us know about the intimate lives of the professional soldiers upon whom the whole destiny of the nation depends when war threatens. What kind of men are they?How do they live? An army post is inhabited by more than the military. There are their wives and children. What is army life like for them? What effect do the long years of just preparing for something that may never happen have on the character of a professional soldier? How does it affect his love life — his marriage? Is married life in the Army fraught with special dangers? These and a thousand and one other questions about army life are answered for you in "Confessions of an Army Wife," featured in the January True Story Magazine. Never before has there been presented to the American people such an intimate revelation of the hearts and souls of army men and women. But "Confessions of an Army Wife" is far more than this. It is an amazing human story of one woman's life — a woman who came into this world an army officer's daughter, grew up in far-flung army posts, fell madly in love with an enlisted man, saw her lover and father go off to war from which only one returned, became the center of a fierce double triangle which threatened to shake army society to its depths. Read it today, and read the wealth of other stories told direct from life. Enjoy the special departments and the helpful features. Compete in the cash prize contests. Truly a magazine for every member of the family, January True Story is outstanding in a long line of great issues. Don't miss it! Jiue Stoi y 66 to be there. How could I face him? What would he say? What could I say? What could I do? Who was there anywhere, who could tell me? I don't remember thinking of Ed Whitney, the man who wrote our script. I only can remember the earlymorning look of the hotel where he had his living-apartment and office. And I remember the way the clerk watched me, as if I were a sleepwalker whom he feared to see wakened, as he phoned to Mr. Whitney that I was there to see him. I remember how the sound of the elevator door seemed to tear across my nerves when I reached Mr. Whitney's hall, and how he looked to me, that day, almost like an angel, with his reflective, clerical face, and holding out a hand to me, standing in a streak of sunlight from a window. I FLASHED into the room, demand' ing as he followed me, "Do you believe the things our program says, Mr. Whitney? Do you know it's true that there's goodness in any one — any one — and that any one can believe in honesty, and understand it and — and respond to it, once he believes?" "Yes, I believe that. Yes, child," Mr. Whitney said, placing a chair for me at a wide, cool window, and glancing with only very slight regret at coffee that was cooling on a table. "Will you let me tell you why I asked you that?" I begged. "Will you tell me how I can make myself be believed? Then take your coffee, and don't look while I try to tell you. Telling will be easier that way." And while he drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, I told him about Stephen Langley and me, except that I didn't tell about the house party, but only said I knew Stephen had misunderstood me. I didn't tell how I knew. "Please tell me what to do," I begged. "I love him. You do understand, don't you? You've loved some one? Can I — could I possibly have any right to — to go into the kind of affair he thinks I want, the kind I've made him want? I mean I don't care what becomes of me, if I make him happy." Ed Whitney smoked cigarette after cigarette, until I was sure I'd scream if he lighted another. But at last he stopped smoking to say. "Tell him the truth, just as you've told me. If he gives you any answer except, 'I love you, too,' there's nothing more you have a right to do, except to stop seeing him. I believe that's what he'll say. If he doesn't, come back to me and I'll see what can be done about another program for you. Go and tell him now, just as you've told me." "I— will," I said. The elevator door clashed open as I started to leave his apartment. A man stepped off and, my soul frozen within me, I shrank back into Ed Whitney's amazed arms, whispering frantically, "It's he. It's Stephen. He mustn't see me here." But he was on his way to Ed Whitney's room. Already he had seen me and was at the door. Scorn and disgust were in his face, and with them such a rage of jealousy as I had never seen. "What did you expect him to be able to do for you?" His voice was like a sharp-edged tool. "How many more of us are you making use of at the same time?" Ed Whitney's hand closed urgingly over mine. "Tell him," he said, "just what you've told me. Don't mind what he's saying. It only means that he's cut to the heart by finding you here." "I thought Mr. Whitney could tell me what to do about you." I drove myself to say it. I don't know how I ever managed to. "He said to tell you truly what I had told him about me, and that he believed you would give me — the only answer I could take and go on seeing you." Shephen looked queerly from me to Ed Whitney and back again. "What's the only answer you could take?" he asked, his face still set in its harshest lines. "It's — 'I love you too'," I answered. "You told him that you love me?" he gasped. It wasn't the right answer. But then it wasn't an answer exactly. It was a question. Maybe I still could make him want to give that only answer. "Yes," I said. I'd go through with it. I'd make myself able to, somehow. "I told him I'd wanted you to notice me because you seemed to think I was nothing but a machine to sing songs. You thought it was because I thought it would be good for my career — and you've gone on thinking that. And I told him we started going out, and that — the first night — I started loving you, and began dressing to please you, and so you'd be proud of me, and not just to — impress you, the way I'd done at first. I began— thinking about your career, and not even caring about my own. I asked Mr. Whitney if I'd have a right to — to do what you wanted me to do, even if you didn't understand. He said I had no such right, I hadn't any right to do anything for your sake, except — be released from your program unless you said—" UNLESS I said, 'I love you, too'," he finished out the sentence for me. "Betty, I do. I told you I'm crazy about you. But I thought I saw through all that, about impressing me and wanting me to marry you. I knew you were different from other girls. I thought you were only smarter. I was an awful fool. I want you to love me because I love you. That's the only way it has ever been, with me. But I wouldn't let myself believe it was that way with you, too. That's why I wouldn't let myself think of marrying you, and wanted to be able to forget you." Most of the time he was saying these things, I was in his arms. But Ed Whitney had not gone out of the room, the way men disappeared out of the office when Stephen and I were there. His face was radiant, and it frankly was so because of us. And suddenly a kind of awe filled me. "The program — worked!" I exclaimed. "I mean — you know — the method did. It's true." And we all laughed, a little crazily, we all were so excited. But we got so many more letters, once we ourselves believed the message of our program, that we were taken on a larger station, and could not have a vacation to be married in. We were married in a chance hour we had, when our program gave up its t:'me on the air to a special broadcast. But anyway, we were married. RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROH