Screenland (Jun-Oct 1932)

for October 1932 55 Markey, and Gene's bachelor days would be at an end. And then another famous star, the recent husband of Leatrice Joy, the adored of Garbo, twisted that papiermache triangle into a cocked hat ! It was in the summer of that same '29 that prosperity, the Claire-Markey combine and Wall Street all took a nose dive. Ina had been signed by Pathe for two pictures and was sent to the Coast to begin "The Awful Truth." Gene followed soon after, stopping off at Chicago for some trousseau miscellany. It was there he received a preview of "The Awful Truth" — the horrible, irrefutable reality of his shattered romance — Ina Claire had married John Gilbert ! There are those who believe Gene had dallied too long, but I do know it was thought by those "in the know" that Ina's previous marriage and more recent divorce had violated Gene's religious scruples. It may have been that time was needed to reconcile Gene's Catholicism to Ina's situation — and that Ina was irked. Yet there may have been other reasons — for Joan, Mrs. Markey that is, is also a divorcee ! Gene was deeply shocked and sincerely hurt when Ina Claire married John Gilbert, but he's a swell person — sporting, regular. He became a friend of the Gilberts, was entertained by them and entertained them. And then the Gilbert romance ended in a draw. But where was Gene? Writing in Hollywood. And where was Ina? Appearing in Paramount pictures. And where, indeed, was Joan? Working for Fox. It was at the home of the Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye that Joan and Gene met, the home of that other glamorous Bennett — Con The mother of the Bennett girls, the former Adrienne Morrison, photographed with her volatile young daughter on a recent visit to Hollywood. Some of the Bennetts at play. Joan's mother (now Mrs. Eric Pinker); Joan herself; Gene Markey, her husband; and Sister Connie. Don' t the Markeys make an impressive couple? stance. And that, children, is how that started. One cannot help wondering if Joan's blonde beauty was not, at first, reminiscent of Gene's former love. Both are blondes, both are women who dress exquisitely, are abundantly intelligent, the natural companions of men of fastidious discernment. Ina, with her wise, twisted smile, delicately cynical ; Joan with her disarming pout, her almost naive glance, seem very different types of women — yet they are both inherent sophisticates. Joan is a 1932 edition of a still young Ina. As for Joan — Markey, she felt, was at last a man to trust and to believe in. Her loss of faith in men was real when her first marriage proved disastrous. Still an adolescent, in spite of her participation in adult life, Joan was as malleable as are most young girls of sixteen, and the unhappy turn of events to her romance plumbed unsounded depths in the soul of this impressionable girl. Her romance with Considine was probably a rebound from her divorcement. She was finding men again. Finding life and its eternal riddle intriguing. When she was apparently jealous, inconsiderate, and sometimes even conspicuously dramatic, her conduct must be condoned as that of severe readjustment. To me it seems that neither John Fox nor Considine were really men in Joan's life. They stand, rather, as ideals of a romantic girl's first love and as the rebirth of romance. Markey seems surely the first real (Continued on page S4^ a