Screenland (Jan–Jun 1948)

Memo to Alan Ladd Continued from page 23 basis, trying to make it mean a little security for the future so that if the worst comes, we can at least eat and live. Raising blooded horses, race horses, is, at present, our money-making project. We've also got a garden out there and never have to buy a vegetable. In the world of today," you added, "you just don't know. It's a little frightening." Plus the blooded horses and the vegetables ("the race horses and the rootabaga," is the way you put it) you have seventeen dogs at the ranch. (Jezebel, the boxer, is your girl.) Eight ducks. Fourteen cats. Thirty-two chickens. Two pigs. And you are shopping for a cow. You've cut down some on your pacing, it's true, but certain things still make you nervous. Noise, for one. Door-slamming. "Door-slamming drives me out of my mind. Noise, in general. Don't like noise, I guess. Except," you added, "the noise of children at play." Waiting for gas at a gas station also makes you itch. "Rather than stop for gas," you say, "I'll start a twenty mile drive on half a pint of gas, telling myself, 'I'll get there! I'll get there!' " And birds flying. Birds flying around your head. "Most frightening thing that ever happened to me," you recalled, "happened when I was a kid, in South Pasadena. Walking home one night, at dusk, under a tree filled with birds, and all at once they swooped down on me. They circled round my head, black and thick, batting me with their wings. They made like blinding and smothering me. It made me sick. I've never forgotten it, and never quite got over it." As you recalled this childhood scare, I was thinking how very seldom you reminisce. About anything. And mentioned it. "I don't particularly like to reminisce," you said. "Don't like to go back in the past and re-hash and re-do it. I like to look ahead. What I see ahead looks brighter," you added, "than what I see when I look behind me." Untidiness upsets you. "I'm a picky guy," you grinned. "Like things picked up and in their places. Guess this comes from my mother, who was uncommonly neat and orderly." Susie doesn't call you "picky." She puts it another way. "Alan's very neat," she says. "Everything is picked up and put away, in his bedroom, in his bathroom. His wardrobe and desk could be," Susie laughed, "exhibition pieces on How to Keep Wardrobes and Desks to Perfection." Immaculate, too, in his person. Suits, for instance. He can wear a suit and wear it and wear it and never a spot! "Fastidiousness is terribly important," Susie says, "when you're living with a person. And fastidious is the word for Alan. He keeps a dignity, too, which is also terribly important when you're living with a person. When we travel, for instance, and can't get a drawing-room, are cooped up together in a small space, Alan will go down the car to the public washroom to shave and dress. The sensitive-to-the-other-fellow thing. The nice to-live-with thing. The considerate thing. "Alan is, in fact," Susie went on happily, with her favorite topic (which you are, as you so well know, Alan, as Susie is yours) "the sweetest, most considerate man in this world, I'm sure. Not only of me — of everyone. He's considerate, extremely considerate, of the household help. He's almost painfully considerate of his friends. Particularly of friends — or even of bare acquaintances — who aren't getting the breaks, haven't got jobs. I've seen him through many a sleepless night over an executive, or a minor player, who was leaving the studio. He'll knock himself out trying to get jobs for people. He actually annoys people about jobs for the jobless, he's so persistent about it. One chap in particular comes to my mind — a young actor who started when Alan started but wasn't getting the breaks. So, characteristically, Alan heckled and haggled the Front Office until they gave this young man a part in 'The Long Gray Line.' In a number of cases, I've known Alan to insist that the parts of minor players in his pictures be built up so they'll at least have some good film with which to interest the Front Office in picking up their options. "He is so considerate of the children, you might almost say he is too considerate for their own good." "Susie means," you moved in to say with a grin, "the way I let them sleep in the morning. I love to sleep in the morning. Not really sleep — I can hear the children — just sort of cat-nap and doze. But when I do sleep late, I always get up with a guilt-complex, which lasts about an hour. Finally figured out what it comes from. My stepfather — he was a house-painter— had to get up early every morning. A kind man, and indulgent in many respects, he couldn't stand, just couldn't stand to have me, a young husky fellow, in that bed. I'd hear him slamming around, demanding of my mother, Co-stars of "The Exile," Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Paule Croser, on NBC air show. 'When is he going to get up?' Eventually, my mother would have to get me up, to keep the peace. That's the origin of the guilt-complex, I'm sure. I still expect to hear someone slamming about, demanding to know why I'm not up and about the day's work and when I'm going to get up and be about it. So, my kids can sleep as long, and as late, as they like. I've made up my mind I'll never bother them; in fact, I'll pussy-foot around the house in order not to bother them, if they want to sleep from sundown to sun-down." You like to be on time — "Get awfully nervous when I'm not" — and, with rare exceptions, are ahead of time rather than behind it. You hate to answer the telephone; hate to talk on the telephone. "Always expect a telephone, or a telegram, to mean bad news." You don't like to travel. You say, "Susie likes to — and once I get started, I rather enjoy it. But it's difficult to get me started. Truth is, corny as it seems, I'm awfully shy around people I don't know. At a party, I'm a sitter-in-a-corner character. On the other hand, I love people. Love to have our friends at the house. Love to sit in a room and discuss problems. And I enjoy the fans, I really do. Perhaps because I feel my fans are people I do know; are my friends." You're not at all demonstrative, Alan ^which stems, perhaps, from shyness. Or is one of the facets of your fastidiousness. For instance you never, according to Sue, "Go up to a woman friend and kiss her hello. I've always been the type," Sue added, laughing, "to rush over and kiss my old-friend men guests. But since I've been married to Alan, I don't do it any more. He doesn't like it. And now, it would sort of embarrass me. "He's easily shocked, too, Alan is," Sue told on you, with a kind of loving amusement. "A gal will have a couple of drinks, for instance, feel very chummy, sit on her boy friend's lap, and — 'She's going to lose him,' Alan will say, 'behaving like that.' Off-color stories embarrass him, too. He never tells one, and would just as soon not hear one. I often think," Sue said, "that Alan was born out of his proper time. He belongs, I tell him, halfkidding but also in earnest, in the days 'when knighthood was in flower' — full flower." You don't like to get dressed up, you remarked. You like casual sports clothes, comfortable sports clothes, but like them to be good. You said, "I like nice clothes, really do." (Nice sports jacket you had on, that morning you and Sue and I breakfasted at Hampshire House in New York, Alan. And those red morocco slippers, .very tasty!) "Like jewelry, too, as a matter of fact," you said, "rings, watches, etc. This gold cross in a circle I'm wearing on a chain around my neck, Susie gave me for my last birthday. Susie hangs chains on me!" you said, loving it. "Guess my liking for nice clothes, jewelry and so on is because I never had anything when I was a kid," you added. You are superstitious about only one thing, you told me — your wedding ring. "Susie gave it to me," you explained, "and I will never take it off. It has never 60 SCREENLAND