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now, definitely, he would refuse to compromise with himself, with his own sincerity and honesty.
They attacked him again when word got around that he had bought a house in Beverly Hills. The boys who congregate along Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard thought Artie was showing off. They didn't know that that house was a symbol of happiness to him.
Just a week before he left New York, he told me about his house:
"It is perched 'way up on top of a bluff. You can sit there on the front porch and look straight out to the ocean. Look another way — the mountain is your background and the view stretches for 60 miles. It's quiet and it's peaceful — and it's beautiful. I'm going to give up all this soon and that's where I'm going to live."
IT was in Hollywood, too, that Artie met Betty Grable. The gossips hopped on that quickly. Here was another story made to order for the city room and they worried it like a cat worries and tosses a mouse. Betty and Artie parted when he had to head east, but New York was to be their meeting place.
Before he and his band returned to Manhattan, they spent weeks on the road — playing at dance-halls, theaters, hotels. Artie was tired, awfully tired, when he reached Broadway and the Strand Theater. He had noticed jitter-bug exhibitionism, he had heard the comments about himself, the remarks about Betty and him, and his pride — in himself, in his work, in his band — suffered. When a newspaperman came to interview him, he told him exactly what he thought.
The results of that interview hurt. It was said that Shaw hated jitterbugs, that he was biting the hands whose applause made him what he was. And Artie had meant nothing of the kind — his remarks were aimed only at a relatively small group of exhibitionists whose poor taste and manners had given swing a bad name. Then Shaw cancelled his radio contract and the wise-acres reported that his sponsor had fired him because he had offended his followers.
I was at the Pennsylvania the night he opened. Betty was there, too. It was the first time I had ever seen her and I discovered then what must have drawn Artie to her. He began to talk of marriage again. But Betty's divorce from Jackie Coogan was almost a year in the future. They were together only when he could take a few hours away from work or she could spare time from rehearsals. That wasn't the sort of thing he wanted. And music could no longer quiet the longing within him. He began to be dissatisfied with his orchestra. He
couldn't transmit to his men the ideas, the inspirations he felt. Music, once again, had come to be nothing but a business. I noticed that, I thought, when I spent an afternoon with Artie and the band at a recording session. Something was gone. The fire, the spirit Artie and his clarinet had given to sometimes prosaic tunes to make them great and unique.
That was when he told me about his California home. He told me how he planned to spend his years there, give up the band business and make whatever money he had to have playing his kind of music as a soloist on radio or records. He would devote the rest of his time to composing and trying to write again. He was ready to seek happiness once more.
THAT is why his story is incredible. In 22 of the 29 years that Artie has lived, he has lifted himself from poverty, from a background with no advantages, to wealth and glory and security. But he tossed it away because he refused to compromise with life. He left when thousands were calling his the country's greatest swing band and he himself was already known as music's foremost clarinetist. A completely normal person in that position may have withstood the constant pressure of agents with contracts to sign, of autograph hounds, of people on your track day and night with recording dates, theater engagements and dollars — thousands of them — to be made. Another may have taken more quietly the bold theft of 'his private life — never a look, a word or an embrace that wasn't noted and recorded.
But Artie couldn't. He refused to accept the true with the false; the gold with the dross. He saw no reason why his privacy should be invaded. Why his music, instead of remaining on the high level of art he had set for it, should be commercialized.
He has gone. But, though many disagree with me, I think he'll be back. Once again he'll try. This time, too, there will be no compromise. From now until his return, I believe he will work on another new musical idea. If the public likes it, he will be ready to give it to them. If not? He has the answer ready.
Does Betty fit into that picture? I don't think so. A few days before he left, a gossip columnist rumored that Betty already had a new heart interest. That may have hastened Artie's decision. But it had to come. He was nearing the end of his soulrending, almost breathless search. He had to be free. His self-honesty demanded that he say good-bye to all he had drained the blood of his young years to build.
I hope he gets there this time.
DEVIL'
s
ORGY
Perhaps you saw the newsreel . . . "Buildings fell on all sides of me . . . My only though! was to get to my wife and children . . . Bullets were whizzing everywhere . . . For three days 1 wandered like a madman . . . Finally in the smouldering ruins of what had been our home ... 1 found them!"
Read this poignant story AMID SHANGHAI'S BOMBS 1 PRAYED by Wang Gin Chun in the January issue of the non-sectarian magazine
YOUR
FAITH
At Your
Newsdealer's
A
MACFADDEN PUBLICATION
S \A IT M< >DERNS PREFER
IT
BOB PINS
Show off your figure with a flattering corselet dress. . Show off your hair whh/^zSlsecure chignon, fluffy bangs.
Softly draped berets make smart headlines. . . 'won't slip' Bob Pins keep coiffures smooth.
Military neatness marks her princess dress . . . and her up-in-front, down-in-back hair do
FEBRUARY, 1940
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