Silver Screen (Nov 1937-Apr 1938)

vc A.n Unexpected Flirta= tion May Ob scure The Wa r m t h And Glory Of True Love. Fictionisation of MET My LOVE AGAIN." Produced by Walter Wanger and Directed by Arthur Ripley and Joshua Logan. Screen Play by David Herb?. From the novel by Allene Corliss. (The cast will be found at the end of this story). Imprisoned by the storm, Julie (Joan Bennett) found the stranger in the cabin irresistibly charming. LYNBORO had not changed. Julie Weir, looking from the window of . the station taxi saw the same giant elms, the familiar white houses with green blinds. Girls in sweaters and sneakers carried their books to class across the college campus. Boys glanced after them and hastened to catch them up. Lynboro of 1937 was like the town of ten years before, but Julie Weir had changed! ^fe. Outwardly she still bore the trim, almost girlish figure of 1927. Her face had that same eager, youthful beauty. But life had done things to the heart of Julie Weir that she was almost afraid to remember. Life ^jj and her own youthful folly had snatched that Julie Weir from the arms of a man she loved and given her to a tragic fool. She was no longer the romantic girl who had attended classes in Lynboro. She was a widow and beside her in the taxi sat a seven year old daughter whose father had died a tragic death in Paris. Ten years was a bridge, a long bridge in dreary perspective at whose far end stood a wistful eyed Julie Weir she scarcely could recognize. Returned from abroad after ten years, Julie told herself she had come to Lynboro only to see her Aunt William who was closer to her heart than her own mother had been. But it was mostly of a man that Julie thought as the taxi hurried on. He was the man she once had been engaged to marry— the man she loved still. His name was Ives Towner. That spring morning when Julie returned he was meeting his class in Advanced Biology, on time to the minute as he always met his classes through term time. He was saying in that dry, weary voice that poorly concealed his impatience with it all, "Monday we discussed the morphology of the ant. Today we shall study its polymorphism." He still resembled the Ives Towner of 1927, a studious, intent man with the mature good looks that ten years had added. Every gesture he made, every sudden glint of his dark eyes showed practised restraint of nerves that were tortured by his tragic loneliness. Ives Towner and Julie Weir had been boy and girl sweethearts. Julie had meant everything to the studious, imaginative young man— his dream of beauty, romance, ambition! He had been the happiest man alive— in 1927. On Christmas eve Julie, hurrying home to Aunt William's, lost her way in the blizzard. Fate turned her to the cottage rented by Michael Shaw. She had mistaken Michael's practised sophistication for the one great love and next day Julie left Lynboro and Ives Towner forever— so she thought. Ives lingered on, the shell of a man who taught Biology B.2 and remained a dutiful son to a managing mother. His life included neither past nor future, only a dreary present. He was pointed out as one man who had never lost his head over a woman. A girl student in Ives' biology class knew this. Her name was Brenda Lane, the daughter of a rich man. She knew it partly By Jack Beckdolt f 1 n in campus gossip and partly from the sure intuition of a young woman romantically in love with her teacher. She was used to gratifying her impulses ai any cost, in Ik r own mind she was perfectly certain that some day she would make him love her. From this you will see that two women came into Ives Towner's life that spring day that brought Julie Weir home from Paris at last. Julie was talking to her Aunt William, their topic Ives Towner. "I loved him so much I was too happy," she said. ' Darling, do you know what I mean? Sometimes something makes you so happy you don't realize what it is— and you think it's everything else in the world except the thing it is. And you never know until you've lost it." Bed-ridden Aunt William answered with a note of pleading. "He's old already, Julie— beaten. All the things he could have been are gone. He's lost." She leaned forward and her eyes begged her niece, "Unless you find him again?" Julie's smile was regretful. "I suppose I still look young— and feel young to your fingers— but I'm not. I've thrown my youth into a Paris ash can . . . Whatever it was we once had that was young and fresh and new— now it would be old and stale. I can't bring it back. I don't want to bring it back. It's gone." But Brenda Lane was young and she had the beauty and lure of youth. And the will! 52