Silver Screen (Feb-Oct 1935)

52 Silver Screen for October 1935 Part Two — c&hc Story of Booth Tarkington'S HEROINE: — "Alice Adams" SYNOPSIS OF PART ONE IN THE R-K-O picture, 'Alice Adams," Katharine Hepburn (as Alice) is an attractive small -town girl of twenty-two. Mr. Adams (Fred Stone) her father, is a clerk in the Lamb Drug Store Co. His family of four are forced to live within the mediocrity provided by his slender salary. Walter Adams (Frank Albertson), Alice's brother, also works at the Lamb Drug Company, as a bookkeeper. Alice is ambitious for herself. She longs for nice clothes and other luxuries. More than anything else, however, she wants to be attractive to men— the kind of men who go with such girls as Mildred Palmer, whose father is wealthy. She is invited to a party at Mildred's house eventually. It is a large affair, not an intimate social group. That's why Alice is included. But she lacks an escort. Walter, pressed into service at the last moment, takes her, loudly proclaiming his distaste and bemoaning the date he must miss. To Alice, the party is a medley of triumph and disaster. She is seen arriving in a battered old car which Walter supplies, and is coldly treated by her hostess and the more elite guests. She has to dance with fat Frank Dowling whom she detests, but who is better than no one at all, or Walter. Walter is caught shooting craps with the colored servants, and were it not for the fact that Alice meets Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray), the evening would have been a tragic affair. Arthur is a stranger in town and is attracted to the pretty, ' vivacious girl. The balance of the evening, up until the crap shooting episode, is a sort of seventh heaven for Alice. And this seventh heaven does not end with the party. To the consternation of the other girls, Alice receives most of handsome young Mr. Russell's attentions, and for the first time in her life she finds herself within arm's reach of an eligible man who comes up to her standards. In the meantime Mrs. Adams, with her continual heckling, has persuaded her husband to give up his job with Mr. Lamb and open up a glue factory. AT LAST Adams promised to open the glue factory. He moitgaged his house fc and put everything into the venture. When the factory was nearly ready he took Mrs. Adams to see it. He had written to "J. A." Lamb and as he heard nothing Adams was worried. Although he reassured his wife that there "wasn't any way it could be made a question of law." Russell and Alice saw each other several times and she told him her forebodings; that "they'll say something." One night, Walter, the son, who still worked for the J. A. Lamb Drug Company, came home hurriedly and tried to borrow three hundred and fifty dollars from his father— unsuccessfully— Walter cleared his throat, and replied in a tone as quiet as that he had used before, though with a slight huskiness, "I got to have three hundred and fifty dollars. You better get him to give it to me if you can." Adams found his voice. "Yes," he said, bitterly. "That's all he asks! He won't do anything I ask him to, and in return he asks me for three hundred and fifty dollars! That's all!" "What in the world!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "What for, Walter?" "I got to have it," Walter said. "But what for?" His quiet huskiness did not alter. "I got to have it." "But can't you tell us—" "I got to have it." "That's all you can get out of him," Adams said. "He seems to think it'll bring him in three hundred and fifty dollars!" A faint tremulousness became evident in the husky voice. "Haven't you got it?" "No, I haven't got it!" his father ans wered. "And I've got to go to a bank for more than my pay-roll next week. Do you think I'm a mint?" "I don't understand what you mean, Walter," Mrs. Adams interposed, perplexed and distressed. "If your father had the money, of course he'd need every cent of it, especially just now, and. anyhow, you could scarcely expect him to give it to you, unless you told us what you want with it. But he hasn't got it." "All right," Walter said: and after standing a moment more, in silence, he added, impersonally, "I don't see as you ever did anything much for me, anyhow— either of you." Then, as if this were his valedictory, he turned his back upon them, walked away quickly, and was at once lost to their sight in the darkness. Mrs. Adams insisted in inviting Arthur Russell to dinner, since he seemed so interested in Alice. The couple had had several rides together and also evenings on the porch. Preparations began, and in the rush of action Alice, that morning, forgot to call Walter. With that she recalled her mother's admonition, and went upstairs to Walter's door. She tapped upon it with her fingers. "Time to get up, Walter. The rest of us had breakfast over half an hour ago, and it's nearly eight o'clock. You'll be late. Hurry down and I'll have some coffee and toast ready for you." There came no sound from within the room, so she rapped louder. "Wake up, 'Walter!" She called and rapped again, without getting any response, and then, finding that the door yielded to her, opened it and went in. Walter was not there. He had been there, however; had slept upon the bed, though not inside the covers; and Alice supposed he must have come home so late that he had been too sleepy to take off his clothes. Near the foot of the bed was a shallow closet where he kept his "other suit" and his evening clothes; and the door stood open, showing a bare wall. Nothing w h a t e v e r was in the closet, and Alice was rather surprised at this for a moment. "That's queer," she murmured; and then she decided that when he woke he found the clothes he had slept in "so mussy" he had put on his "other suit," and had gone out before breakfast with the mussed clothes to have them pressed, taking his evening things with them. Satisfied with this explanation, and failing to observe that it did not account for the absence of shoes from the closed floor, she nodded absently, "Yes, that must be it"; and, when her mother returned, told her that Walter had probably breakfasted down-town. They did not delav over this; the coloured woman had arrived, and the basket's disclosures were important. ##*##*##* Her mother came closer to her. "Why what's the matter?" she asked, briskly. "You seem kind of pale, to me; and you don't look— you don't look happy." "Well " Alice began, uncertainly, but said no more. "See here!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "This is all just for you! You ought to be en[Continued on page 60]