Silver Screen (Nov 1939 - May 1940)

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Silver Screen for May 1940 75 hearing it and knowing in that moment that love can mean hurt as well as excitement. But Deems didn't see Wilma when he came back. One of the Hollywood gossip writers had written a story about the little episode in La Quinta, lampooning Wilma. ''We all know the most beautiful girl in Hollywood is as heartless as she is beautiful," he wrote. "So it was amusing to see her play the mother to the son of a certain young millionaire. All the men who have loved her and discovered how httle love means in her scheme of things would have laughed to see her acting as a woman who could actually feel anything except vanity. Ah well, in these precarious days with everyone knowing her contract won't be taken up after her next picture, millions are worth striving for." Of course, he didn't mention her name. He didn't have to. And after I read it, I did something I'd never done before. I mixed into a love affair. I went to Deems and told him how outrageous the whole thing was and how untrue. But he interrupted me bitterly. "It isn't just the item," he said. "Everybody's been kidding me about it. I've heard stories. Isn't it true she's played around all her hfe?" "This time it's serious," I told him. "She cried that morning we left you. She talks about you all the time. . ." "She's an actress, isn't she?" he demanded. "It's nice of you to be her friend and all that, but don't you see what it's done to me? I loved her. And now I know it didn't mean anything to her. There have been lots of women after my money. But I didn't think Wilma was hke that." It was useless to argue with him. He was hurt as bitterly as Wilma was and I could see what that hurt was doing to her. "I didn't know love was like this," she said to me one evening. "It's like going mad, isn't it, or being hurt physically? Doctors say a heart can't really break. But mine's breaking." Then after a while her pride came to her rescue. "I've got one thing left anyway," she said. "My work. Oh, I know that everybody's saying that my contract won't be taken up. But it will. I'll work so hard in this picture, it'll be a success. Just wait and see." Deems left for Europe the day Wilma's picture started. It was a few months before war had come again and business interests demanded he be there. Dirk was staying at Pasadena with his nurse, because the doctor had advised Deems against taking him along. I was seeing a friend off to New York at the airport the day he left, so I saw Wilma coming up to him breathlessly. Of course, he was polite. Deems always would be polite, but I think it would have been easier for Wilma if he had cut her dead. Little D'irk ran up to her and I saw Deems turn away almost in disgust as she kissed him. But after he was gone and they wept together watching the plane become a dot on the horizon, I wished Deems could have seen her eyes and her tears and the way she held on to his boy, in that desperate hungry way. Even he would have known she wasn't pretending then. I didn't see Wilma for a while after that. She was working harder than she had ever worked before and I knew how important her work had become to her now that it was taking the place of everything else in her hfe. So, when I heard that little Dirk was desperately ill in Pasadena I thought the kindest thing to do would be not to tell her. She couldn't do anything about it anyway. But one evening she called me. "Dirk's nurse has sent for me," she said. "I didn't know he was ill or I would have gone even though they didn't want me. But they do want me. Dirk's asking for me." The next few weeks were a nightmare. Deems was still in Europe and the cables his secretary sent hadn't reached him and the doctors said the boy had less than a fifty-fifty chance of living.' Wilma was spending every moment she could with the boy. He was happier when she was there and she went to him as soon as she was through at the studio, sitting up with him all night so that he would see her when he awakened. She dozed sometimes in the big chair pulled up beside the bed, but slept so lightly that her name whispered on his hps or his small hand reaching towards her was enough to waken her. Her face became haggard under the strain. Even make-up couldn't hide the circles under her eyes, the drawn look around her mouth, the sunken contour of her face. My heart sank one day when I was at the studio and I saw the rushes of the day's work. "You can't go on like this," I told her. You'll be through. Wilma you've got to rest. This picture is so important." "Nothing's important, except Dirk," she said. She was trembhng from nervousness and loss of sleep. "The doctor says my being there is a help. And Dirk's got to get weh. He's got to." I went with her that afternoon. It seemed like a mausoleum sitting downstairs in the living room in the hushed house. Nurses flitted past the door on their way upstairs and down, doctors and speciahsts came and went and through it all I heard Wilma's voice coming down to me as she talked to the boy. Once she sang to him and there was such poignance in her voice it almost broke my heart. Then I heard a key turn in the massive door and Deems came in. He hadn't shaved for days and he looked tired and gaunt. Afterwards, I heard how he had come from Europe on the Atlantic Clipper and of the special plane he'd hired in New York to get out here, but then it didn't seem hke a miracle to see him standing here. We'd all been through so much we couldn't think. "How is he?" he demanded. "Is he. . ." But I didn't have to answer. I heard a door open upstairs and the sound of feet running down the stairs and there was Wilma. "He's going to live," she said breathlessly. "He's passed the crisis." Then for the first time she saw Deems looking at her and her voice broke. [Cofitinned on page 78] Smooth, tempting lips are every man's ideal ATO MAN LIKES to kiss lips that are hidden under a coat of heavy, greasy color. Don't let your lips repel men ! Use Tangee Lipstick because it doesn't hide the softness of your lips . . . because it has a marvelous cream base that gives your lips alluring smoothness, flattering color— just the kind of lips that invite kisses! The Natural shade of Tangee looks orange in the stick, but magically changes, when applied, to the one color, ranging from rose to red, that is most becoming to you. It doesn't blur or smear— and it stays on! When you try Tangee Natural Lipstick, be sure to use the matching rouge, compact or creme. 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