Screenland (May-Oct 1940)

he felt something brush against his legs. He looked down and there was the porter's big, black cat, rubbing against him and purring. "Hello, pussy," Jimmy said dispiritedly. "Is it bad or good luck when they rub against you?" Betty asked. " 'At all depends on what happens afterward," the porter said. "You said it !" Jimmy agreed mournfully and then he stopped suddenly, for there was a sign painter just finishing putting his name on the door of the office that was to have been his. "Pretty nifty, huh?" the sign painter chuckled. "Say, who is this MacDonald who won the whatcha-call-it contest? Private office, secretary to himself — hot dog !" "With mustard," the boy said bitterly. But he walked in anyway, just to see what it would feel like, this once. He even sat down at the desk that would have been his. Suddenly Betty broke. "It was going to be nice, wasn't it?" she asked. "Quit it, will ya?" he demanded as she buried her face in her arms and started to cry. But he didn't mean to be harsh with her. It was just that he felt so much like crying himself, and so he took her in his arms and did all the things, the tender ones, the sweet ones that a boy will when the girl he loves is crying. They were standing there in each other's arms when the door opened and Mr. Baxter came in. Jimmy took a deep breath. It was pretty awful to have to go through the whole thing and explain the way things were. "If you thought my ideas were good this afternoon, you think they're good now, don't you?" he said at the end. But his voice didn't sound as confident as his words. "It wouldn't make any difference in the ideas that I didn't win the contest." "Of course it makes a difference," Mr. Baxter said. "I thought your ideas were good because they sounded good to me, but the fact that you won the contest made me sure they were good. And now you haven't won the contest." _ It was Betty who stepped forward then, timid little Betty who would have been scared to say "Boo" to the Boss, if it wasn't Jimmy she was fighting for. "He belongs in here until he proves himself or fails !" she said earnestly. "I don't know how to put it in words the way Jimmy could, but all he wants is a chance to show what he can do, to find out if he has anything while he's still young and burning. You know it's one thing to muff a chance when you've got it, but it's another thing never to have a chance." She couldn't help the tears that came in her eyes then or the trembling in her voice. "His name's already on the door, too." Maybe Mr. Baxter could have overcome her logic. But he couldn't do a thing about her tears. He'd always been soft about a woman crying, especially a girl like this, so soft and so pretty; she made him think of spring and the way it feels to be in love when you're young and a lot of other things he had forgotten. So he cleared his throat and in a very brisk, businesslike tone said that Jimmy might as well stay in that new office, but that he certainly wouldn't be getting any more salary until he proved himself. The girl couldn't help rushing to him and giving him a shy, quick kiss on his cheek, and he was terribly embarrassed, but pleased too, as he backed out of the office and left it to them. "Isn't it wonderful?" the girl asked, her eyes shining. "You were wonderful," the boy said slowly. "You'll always be wonderful. But I'm a little bit leery about me." And it was true. For the first time in Jimmy was holding Betty in his arms when the door opened and Mr. Baxter came in. It was pretty awful to have to go through the whole thing and explain just how things were. his life Jimmy MacDonald knew what it felt like not to believe in himself. He looked down, for he felt something rubbing against his leg — and if there wasn't the black cat again ! Some people said a black cat was bad luck. Others were just as sure it was good. Oh well, Jimmy knew just what kind of luck that cat was. All kinds, and all of it bad. And just to make him feel worse than ever there was the Parker House sign blinking at him from the distance. Did they have to make that sign so big you could see it all over the city? And of course Jimmy was just a boy, and an awfully nice boy, too, and a boy terribly in love, but even that didn't give him the power to see into the future or even the present, so he couldn't know what was going on in that building. For the contest had been decided at last. The twelfth judge had won over the other eleven and the winning slogan was "It isn't the Coffee, it's the Bunk." And at that very moment they were sending a telegram to the lucky man who had won. His name was James MacDonald. But of course Jimmy didn't know that and so he felt just plain sunk, looking at that sign and thinking that of course Mr. Baxter was right when he said it was winning the contest that proved his ideas were good. "Aw, cheer up, will you ?" Betty said softly. "Smile, will ya? Who wants a penthouse anyway? Way up high where it catches all the soot and makes you dizzy when you look down. Come on — smile !" "I am smiling," the boy said, but it wasn't really a smile, the way he was forcing it that way. "Look," the girl said. "There's that cat again." And there was the cat, sure enough, purring and rubbing against Jimmy's legs. Maybe it was true what some people said and the cat was good luck. It certainly was funny the way he kept sticking to Jimmy that way. "What do you suppose he's doing that for?" she asked. "Probably got fleas," the boy said. "Probably — ah, cheer," she urged him. _ She flung her arms around him and kissed him and then she was happy again with Jimmy' arms tightening around her and she knowing that whatever had happened or would happen they were together and had all the rest of their lives ahead of them, contest or no contest. Why My Marriage Ended in Heartbreak! Continued from page 25 stars to the premiere of "Dodge City" in Dodge City, Kansas, four months after the young Morrises were married. Wayne with his wholesome looks, his ruffled hair, and his good-natured grin I liked at once, but I was a little wary of Bubbles. "A child bride !" I screamed when someone suggested I meet her. "Heavens, no ! Spare me that." I thought she would be too too young, too too silly, and too too awful. When I finally did meet her she turned out to be perfectly swell. Sane, sensible, most intelligent, unusually attractive, and with a sense of humor that even a Lombard might envy. When I told her that I was going on to New York from Dodge City I noticed a rather sad look in her eyes. "Poor kid," I thought, "I do believe she's homesick. She probably finds Hollywood strange, and very lonely." I who loathe the non-professional wives of Hollywood movie stars found myself liking her very much. I called her "My favorite Hollywood wife" in a story I wrote. She liked that. She and Wayne and I became great friends. And that's the reason I feel I know enough about the break-up of their marriage to place the blame on Hollywood, despite the fact that both Wayne and Bubbles insist that it's incompatibility. Incompatibility, of course, had something to do with it, for here were two young people from entirely different worlds ; but once again Hollywood, that deep-dyed villain with the black mustache who says "Curses" to happy marriages, must play the heavy. "I first met Wayne on a Saturday night, the 22nd of October, 1938," Bubbles once told me. "We were on the same party at the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel in New York. I had never met a Hollywood movie star before, and I thought he was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. A few weeks before I had seen him on the screen in 'Kid Galahad.' One of my friends, down from Yale for the week-end, had taken me to see the picture, and there I was holding hands with my Yale boy when suddenly Wayne came on the screen. I completely forgot Yale from then on. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I met Galahad in person in the Persian Room." Wayne, a struggling young actor whom the Warner Brothers had discovered in the Pasadena Playhouse and turned into a star practically overnight, had been sent East, accompanied by plenty of press agents, to make personal appearances with his latest picture, "The Valley of the Giants," which was playing one of the Brooklyn movie houses. "After I met Wayne," Bubbles said, "I made two trips to Brooklyn every day. Thanks to Wayne's personal appearances I certainly learned about Brooklyn." Wayne, in Hollywood where movie stars are no novelty, and where there's plenty of competition from such guys as Jimmy Stewart, George Brent, Robert Taylor and Clark Gable, was just another likeable and agreeable young leading man (though he did all right with the gals) ; but Wayne in New York, without competition, and swathed in Hollywood glamor, was the Biggest Excitement in town. He lunched at "21," and he danced at the Stork Club, and all the little debs simply went mad about him. When Bubbles' schoolgirl chums learned that she had met Wayne Morris, from Hollywood, at a dance at the Plaza 76