Screenland (Nov 1938-Apr 1939)

Coaxing a smile for the camera, Spencer Tracy applies his expert knowledge to make his daughter steal a scene made by a still camera at the M-G-M studio. thing in the idea. There's also something against it. Money goes to your head and, if you don't watch yourself, you're likely to get drunk on it. It acts like wine in another way too — the less you're accustomed to it, the greater the clanger. Even beginners in the movies usually make a hundred and fifty and two hundred a week — that's ten thousand a year, more than most of us could earn after years in any other profession. It seems limitless. You catch yourself thinking, 'I'll buy this, I'll buy that.' After a while, you make more. What used to seem staggering no longer does. Where a thousand dollars once sounded like the savings of a lifetime, it now becomes part of )rour checking account. You say, 'It's a week's salary, so what, I've got forty more coming.' At least," he grinned, "that's what I'm sometimes inclined to say. Betty isn't. I've as much respect for the dollar as she has, but less perspicacity. I'll bicker more violently over two bucks than I will over two hundred. She has a better sense of balance. 'Who are you,' says my wife, 'to be giving out with that, it's only two hundred? Two hundred is also quite a piece of change.' "Once in a while I go berserk. I wanted a Cord. Don't ask me why — the actor coming out in me, maybe. Betty sniffed, said she'd rather have it in the bank than rolling around on wheels. So I bought it, and by the time I got through feeling selfconscious about it, I'd begun to feel panicky. I had to starve myself to feed it gas. Also it's off the market and has no turn-in value. So I'm what is commonly known as stuck with it. Betty doesn't say a word — just groans sweetly when she pays the gas bill. That was a bagatelle, however, compared with the time when I took it into my head that I was going to buy an oil well. How it came about God only knows, and He's in doubt. Normally, I'm nobody's financial wizard, but by the same token, I'm nobody's sucker either. Still, some guy got hold of me, painted a beautiful picture, and I fell. It meant borrowing to the eyebrows. Betty argued, she pleaded, she all but wept. 'What's the matter ?' I said, 'don't you think I've got any business sense?' 'No,' she said. T ignored that. I waved my arms around. 'Here's a gold mine going begging,' I said, 'and you turn it down. How do you suppose Carnegie and Morgan got rich?' I said. 'By sticking their money in the bank at two percent?' "My lawyer seemed to think maybe Betty was right, which made it me against the world. Finally he said : 'Would you be willing to gamble three hundred dollars for an absolute guarantee? Call it insurance.' 'What do you mean?' 'That'll cover my plane fare. I'll go down and investigate.' Even in my state, that sounded reasonable. He came back in a week with a briefcase full of clippings and statistics, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that I'd been 98 on the point of making a spectacular jackass of myself. I was sick. Betty didn't say anything that time either. I beat her to it." They've lived in the same house since before Carol Ann was born. It has its inconveniences, but they've grown attached to it, inconveniences and all. Chief among these is the fact that the neighbors are too close. They rattle dishes on one side and play badminton on the other. "We realize," says Bob, "that dishes have to rattle. We even realize that badminton has to be played. But the blow fell when they reported a party of ours to the police one night. I assure you it wasn't a loud party — not nearly so loud as the shrieks they shriek when they hit or miss the ball. Our faith in the -good neighbor policy was shattered. We even talked of moving. We even looked. We'll look at anything, but we won't buy it. It's not the neighbors alone. Every once in a while I get the agrarian yen. I go around, muttering, 'Elbow room ! View ! Trees ! Grass !' Betty turns on that mournful look. 'I love the house so, Bob. Couldn't we stick it down in the middle of a field and stick a fence around it?' That's as far as we get." He gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance, then shook his head. "To strike a reasonable average, I'm trying to think of something I want that I haven't got. But I can't. I like my wife, I like my job, I like my house, I like my friends, I like my mother-in-law, I like my children. Wait a minute, though — maybe we've got something there. I did want a son the second time. The first time I didn't care.T was too worried about Betty and the baby. That's the irony of it. Carol Ann came along without any trouble. So we took it for granted the second would come the same way, and rode blithely down to the hospital, wishing for a boy." Bob's wife almost died when Barbara was born. He and her mother waited in the hospital corridor hour after hour, while the doctor went to and fro with nothing more comforting to give them than a grave, "I'm doing my best." It was Bob who collapsed and clung sobbing to Betty's mother, while she murmured from between white lips, "It's started, son. It's got to be finished." When the agony was over, he'd forgotten he ever wanted a boy. "Anyway, we've got the nearest thing to it — a tomboy at the age of one. Her hair's short, and her shoulders look as if she were going to be a football tackle. People who stop and pat babies on the head always ask, 'How old is he?' The nurse gets furious. Carol Ann was always a feminine youngster. She hated dirt. If you put a new dress or a bonnet on her, she'd go sit in her buggy like a little old lady, sort of inviting the world to admire her. Put a bonnet on this one, and she'll rip it off. Dress her up in something clean, and five minutes later, one sock's up and the other one's down, she's got holes in her knees, dirt on her face and thunder in her eye. She smashes everything within reaching distance. The other day she got my collection of pipes on the floor and stamped the daylights out of 'em. Then she turns this heavenly smile on you, and you're sunk. What do I need a boy for? He couldn't raise air unholier racket. "Now if you'd come to me two weeks ago and asked me about my suppressed desires— let's call 'em unsuppressed, because I generally talk about them loud and often — if you'd come two weeks ago, as I say, I could have obliged. I've always wanted a dressing-room of my own at home. No, I didn't have one — contrary to the general impression of the luxury Hollywood lives in. "When we first moved in, there was a clothes closet in our bedroom that was destined to be a dressing-room for me. But Carol Ann was born, we had no nursery, so we took out the clothes and put her in there to sleep. Reasons : it had a window, protected by some wide bars, and a door. We could open the window, give her fresh air, and us a sense of security. We could close the door, so if she woke up in the night and yelled, we wouldn't hear her quite so soon. If she yelled loud enough and long enough, indicating a reasonable rieed, we'd hear her and take delayed action. "We finally got a nursery built and Carol Ann moved out, but other important domestic paraphernalia moved in. My clothes were all over the house, I was given a drawer here, a shelf there, a couple of hangers somewhere else. I was a dependent on the bounty of my wife and daughters for wardrobe space, I was a lost soul chasing frantically round the house for a pair of socks. But two weeks ago I got a dressingroom. After years of exile, all my clothes are all together in the same place. I spend hours gloating over 'em, and I can't think of another thing I want." He may not get the girl nor the fattest roles in the most expensive pictures. But he's got the only girl who' counts and, viewed from within, the best of all possible parts. So don't be sorry for him. He'd hand you back your sorrow on a silver platter, bowing politely, smiling his cheerful smile, saying : "Thanks a lot, ladies, but I really wouldn't know what to do with the thing!" Pefe Smith Explains Continued from page 65 fingered hand and a poor memory for names" "But—" "That's your fifth 'but' by actual count. All right, go ahead; but what?" "I've forgotten what I wanted to ask," I bleated, miserably. "That's fine. Now I'll talk some more. What were we talking about, outside of 'buts'? Well, no matter. We'll think of something more interesting. D'you know, I'm as happy as an ant on a picnic sandwich when audiences like one of my shorts. But I'm as low as a worm's ankle when they don't. I'm excitable and nervous, but I don't beat my wife. I'm an insomniac, and keep myself awake counting sheep, kangaroos, and my losses at a silly card game called 'Hearts.'" As I got to the door of Pete's office on my way out, his voice drifted across the room. "I'd have given you a better story, if you'd have let me get a word in edgeways." With a grin, and a wave of the hand, Pete went back to work. The last glimpse I caught of him as he began to talk into a poor, defenseless dictaphone, which, presumably, couldn't talk back, even to the extent of a "but." THE CUNEO PRESS, INC., U. S. A.