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she said wds^Tm searching for simplicity. The simpler I keep my life, the happier I'll be"
LONESOME ever since she could remember, Diane nevertheless built a high wall around her which people found difficult to penetrate.
success, a $500-a-week salary, the devotion and admiration of her friends — and for what? To make her home in a strange new place because "I do not ever again care to be a part of the picture business."
The cynical saw Diane's action as a shrewd and calculated publicity stunt. Others believed that Diane had been badly wounded by one-time big star Joan Crawford, who had, in an interview the week before, blasted Diane for her sloppy dressing, and for supposedly appearing at studio meetings barefooted and in blue jeans-. Still other gossip bad Diane going to Bennington to write a book. Jerry Wald vehemently denied that Diane had ever come into his office — or any office — barefooted. "I have had many meetings with Diane," Wald declared. "She never appeared in jeans. She couldn't afford extravagant clothes. She wore simple things, but she was always neatly dressed." And as for Diane's going to Bennington to write a book, this Diane herself said was untrue. "There's nothing to that," she commented. "My baby and I will live as quietly as possible."
And beyond the immediate plan "just to live quietly in Vermont and take care of my child," there was for Diane Varsi, ever the passionate pilgrim, "nothing more to say."
It is, of course, easy to reason that Diane is solving her problems by running away from them; to call her, once again, "Hollywood's Miss Enigma of all time"; to point to her as a frightfully mixed-up girl, unprepared for the sudden onslaught of success. "She hit a home run in the very first picture she ever made," one studio friend declared. "That's certainly enough to bewilder anybody."
SUCH an explanation is as glib as it is incomplete. There are other reasons for Diane's abandoning Hollywood — reasons that go back a long way. What they are are Diane's own secret, but knowing her as I do, I believe I can point to some of them.
When Diane first came on the 20th lot, I met her, talked to her and liked her very much indeed. I have reason to believe that she felt I understood her perhaps a little better than anyone else in Hollywood. In a number of interviews I had with Diane, she discussed, for long hours, her life, her hopes, her fears, her dreams. We laughed together, shared enthusiasms, talked of her poetry and how it helped her to express some of the troubling things inside her. I told her that my son John, only a couple of years older than she, was a struggling poet, too, and I gave her some of his published poems to read. "I
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