Screenland (Jan–Jun 1948)

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We go out and, always, 'Order for me, dear,' he'll say, and gee, you have a choice of steak and steak. French fried potatoes. Stewed tomatoes. He doesn't eat any breakfast, ever. I often wonder whether he'd eat ever, period, if someone wasn't around to remind him that that's the way you go on living." You're a worrier, Alan. You are a worrier. You admit it: "A great worrier," you said. "About what?" I asked. "About anything," you said, "about everything. That's my trouble, worry is. Among my faults, that's one of my worst. Worrying about something, building up something that will never happen. Always crossing bridges before I come to them. Building bridges to cross. I'll sit up and yak-yak-yak with Susie until four in the morning about what's going to happen or about what I'm afraid is going to happen." "It isn't the big things,' Susie says, "that worry Alan so much. For instance, I'll lose something valuable, a piece of jewelry, perhaps (I lose things all the time) and all Alan says is, 'So?_ Well, doesn't really matter. If you find it, fine. If not, it's replaceable. Be glad the kids are okay!' Or I smash up his new car (as I have done) and he's mild as milk about the crack-up. On the other hand, if we have an appointment to meet and I'm five or ten minutes late, he'll give me holy heck." You and Sue do an awful lot of sitting up late, talking. "We have a great theory," you said, "that is, we 'kick it around' by ourselves. We never keep anything, one from the other. Get it all off our chests. Argue like mad but never get mad. Never lie to each other. That's one thing we've never done and will never do." You love to talk about Susie as well as with her, don't you, Alan? As we were recalling, over the breakfast table that morning at Hampshire House, you were the first of the film stars to discuss your wife and marriage for publication. Against your studio's wishes, too. For soon after you made your epic hit in your first picture, "This Gun for Hire," your studio advised you to pipe down on your marriage, not to talk too much about Susie and your home-life when you were being interviewed. The fans would like you better, you were advised, if they could think of you as single, unattached. But you wanted people — wanted everyone— to know you were married, and how happily married. You wanted to talk about Susie — to whom you owe, you said then, and say now, the success you've had. You had to talk about Susie. You did talk about Susie. You still talk about Susie — and, well, how -popular can you get? Nervous as you are, or were; noorpacer that you are, or were, you can sit quietly, hour after hour, on a set on a studio sound stage. "That's because I love the business so much," you explain it. "Love every bit of it. Every minute of it. When I was gripping at Warner Brothers, I loved that. When I got off the cat-walks and down there in front of the cameras, I loved that, too. Love all ends of the business. Camera. Sound. Makeup. Script. Lighting. Even other fellows' sets and performances. "I look at the business and love the business," you said, "as a whole, not just my part in it. I believe in the business. With all my heart. Believe in the magnificent medium that is motion pictures. Don't think we've so much as tapped the potentialities of the medium yet." Sue says, "I think Alan would die without pictures, that's all. I mean it! He loves them like the part of him they are. He's so proud of them. So proud of being in them. He resents it so when someone does something to disgrace the business. At the same time, Ladd, the actor, is just a character to us. A very important character, but not more so, if as much, as Ladd the husband and father, and," Sue laughed, "the rancher!" You are not too happy, I gathered, about some of the stories you've been given. You are hopeful that "The Long Gray Line," in which you and Donna Reed are co-starred, will be as interesting to watch as it was to make. Especially the scenes, the location shots, you made at West Point. "They were wonderful to us at West Point," you told me, "just magnificent. I'm so grateful to them, we all were, for the kindness and interest shown us, and the cooperation." After you finish "The Long Gray Line," you are going to do F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." You said, "I dug it up myself. For myself. In desperation. I must have a change of pace. A character as unlike as possible my other screen characters. In 'The Great Gatsby' I believe I've got the departure I need. He's the guy who never explains where, or how, he made his money. He dresses just a little too well. He talks just a little too well. He's something new for me," you said with, half and half, a grin and a sigh, "so he should be good for me." You'd like to have your own producing company, you told me. You said, "We'd love to have our own company, Susie and I. And I believe we'd do a good job together. Susie and I work together so much — and so well. She's got a darned good business head on her. Whether I have a good business head or not, it's difficult to tell. Difficult to tell," you laughed, "just where Susie's head begins and mine ends'! She's such a good leveller for me, you know. She can stick to something and follow it through whereas I'm apt to kick it around until it gets lost. Well, one of these days, we will have our own company. That is one of the things we yak-yak about in our untilfour-in-the-morning yak-fests. "Susie and I are so completely happy," you said then, something heartening and very good to see in your gray eyes, as they met and held Susie's brown eyes. "My life is so complete now, with Susie, with Alana, with young David, I just hope," you said, "nothing hurts it." You said, "God has been good to 08 SCREENLAND