Screenland (May-Oct 1940)

Although Loretta Young and Tom Lewis, left, had hoped that their wedding would not be typical of what has come to be known as a "Hollywood wedding," it turned out to be a real movie star affair. More than three thousand persons milled about outside the church to catch a glimpse of Loretta. International Loretta Young Finds Real Love At Last! Continued from page 28 learned, with only their families and a few very close friends. Following the weddingthere will be a wedding breakfast at Loretta's home. Georgianna, Loretta's youngest sister, will be her only attendant. Dr. Charles Lewis, New York physician, will be his brother's best man. Inasmuch as her last venture into matrimony was ten years ago when, little more than a child, she eloped with tall, handsome Grant Withers (her mother later had the marriage annulled), Loretta is very eager this time to be married in a church. Both Loretta and Tom are Catholics. After a month's honeymoon — in Mexico City, they hope — Loretta and Tom will move into their new home on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills. It's very amusing about their new house. Tom is a radio executive with the advertising agency of Young and Rubicam and has to spend his time commuting back and forth from New York to Hollywood. About six months ago when he and Loretta decided to get married he was suddenly called back to New York before they could make many of their plans. But he phoned her from New York that he wanted to buy her a home and would she please go ahead and select it so they could have it ready to move into after the honeymoon. Although he is quite a big shot in the advertising world, Tom's salary is nothing like a movie star's salary — but he had expected something better than Loretta selected. As soon as business permitted he flew back to Hollywood and Loretta gleefully drove him over to Beverly Hills. "It was night," Loretta told me, "but of course with the lights he could see perfectly. When we drove up in front of the house his face fell a mile. 'Are you sure this is it, darling?' he said, trying awfully hard not to show his disappointment. " 'Oh, come on inside,' I said cheerfully, 'you'll be crazy about it.' When he saw the bedrooms, each about the size of an office desk, he tried awfully hard to smile, but he actually looked sick. When we were leaving we ran into a man in the driveway who just made the evening complete. The man said, 'You folks won't like that house. It's terrible. I moved away from the neighborhood on account of it.' " But what poor Tom, a bachelor of thirty-seven, didn't realize is that a house, as is, never means anything to Loretta. She can take a shambles, and this little bungalow on Camden Drive was as near a shambles as you can find in Beverly Hills, and change it in a few months' time into one of the most attractive and charming homes you could ever wish for. Loretta and her mother both have the knack of home-making, and both of them know interior decorating from A to Z. For several years Loretta and her mother have been buying ugly old houses and transforming them into model homes, as sort of a sideline business. But poor Tom didn't know that. No wonder he was sick at his stomach when he saw those teensy-weensy bedrooms, that horrible Mexican stucco, and those early California tiles. But just wait until he sees it when he arrives for his wedding! The eight bedrooms (it was formerly owned by a Mexican family who added a new room every time they had a baby) have now become three very large, airy bedrooms, with wonderful bay windows. It's still one of the smallest homes in Beverly Hills, it's all on one floor, but it's decidedly one of the most charming. Loretta is as pleased as punch. So is little Judy, the baby Loretta adopted in 1936. And Tom is due for a surprise. Loretta met Tom Lewis two years ago, and it wasn't love at first sight. Tom was sent out by Young and Rubicam to manage the Screen Guild Show. He always appeared at dress rehearsals and it was at a dress rehearsal of her first appearance on the Screen Guild Show that Loretta met him. Tom and Glenda Farrell were going together at the time, and Loretta was going with Bob Riskin, so when they met they merely said, "How do you do" quite casually. A year later — Loretta was going with David Niven, Jock Whitney, Broderick Crawford and her agent, Myron Selznick, at the time — they met again at a radio rehearsal, and this time Tom wasn't quite so casual. He asked for a date, and got it. But before the romance got off to a good start he had to return to New York. But on his next trip out he made up for lost time. He and Loretta were able to keep their engagement a secret in gossipy Hollywood because he was out of town so often. But we who know Loretta knew that little minx was up to something several months ago. Always a live, vital person, with more energy than any fifteen Glamor Girls, Loretta suddenly seemed to take on a very soft mellow glow. On the set of "A Doctor Takes a Wife" one day she broke down and admitted to me that she had never been so happy, and so much in love, in all her life. "But I can't tell you about it," she said, "I'm superstitious." I saw her at Ciro's with Tom one night and I knew then what it was all about. Mrs. Belzer, Loretta's mother, announced Loretta's engagement to Tom Lewis three weeks before the marriage at a gay lunch eon in the garden of Loretta's very beautiful Bel Air home. (As soon as the Camden Drive bungalow is complete Loretta will sell this estate.) There, of course, were Loretta's three sisters, all famous for their beauty, Georgianna, Sally (Mrs. Norman Foster), and Polly Ann (Mrs. Carter Hermann). Also her best friends among movie stars and producers' wives. Will Tom Lewis be happy married to a Career Woman? Will Loretta Young be happy married to a man who must spend part of his time in New York? Even before those two nice young people reached the altar, Hollywood was beginning to ponder over their future. Those long distance marriages have a habit of breaking up pretty quickly in Hollywood. But I think I can safely answer "yes" to both of those questions. Tom has been associated with movie stars and career women in his radio and advertising business long enough to understand thoroughly their temperaments and idiosyncrasies. Loretta has been acting before the camera for twenty-two years (she made her first picture at the age of five) and taking her away from pictures would be like cutting her heart out. Fortunately, Tom is a very understanding person. He admires Loretta as an actress and has no intention of interfering with her career. Loretta realizes that she probably will not have Tom with her all the time but she is planning things so that it will certainly be for most of the time. Loretta is a very important star now, she is under contract to no studio, and she can pick and choose her pictures as she pleases. Like most top-notch stars she plans to make only two, or three at the most, a year. (About eight years ago she made fourteen in one year.) That will give her much leisure time which she can spend with Tom in New York. "I've never lived any place except Hollywood since I was a four-yearold kid," said Loretta. "I think I shall like living in New York for a change." Both Loretta and Tom are crazy about children so it's my bet that they'll be adding a nursery to the Beverly Hills house before another fall rolls around. When Tom told Loretta that his brother, Charles, was an obstetrician Loretta was quite pleased. "It's a good omen," she told me. When Loretta becomes Mrs. Tom Lewis, Hollywood will lose its most glamorous and popular bachelor girl. Loretta has been "in society" in Hollywood for the past four or five years and no producer's wife or movie star would dare give a party without inviting her. Not that they were always so terribly fond of Loretta but because all the eligible young men would rebel. Every place that Loretta went she always found plenty of escorts, and this in a town where males are at a premium. But life in Hollywood hasn't always been just a series of gay parties and handsome escorts for Loretta. She has had more than her share of heartaches. There was her first tragic heartbreak when she discovered that she had acted too impetuously when she eloped with handsome Grant Withers at the age of seventeen. There was the nervous breakdown she had the year after she made those fourteen pictures, when for months and months she had to stay flat on her back in bed without talking to anyone. Being romantically inclined she has fancied herself in love several times with men who were not worthy of her, and the resultant publicity has caused her plenty of shame. Yes, lovely Loretta has had her share of heartaches in Hollywood and all her many friends are now so pleased that she is marrying a man on whom everyone places a stamp of approval. As one of her closest friends, a girl who loves Loretta dearly, said, "Isn't it wonderful that Loretta is marrying Tom? To think that she had sense enough to pick a swell guy like that !" 88