Silver Screen (Jun-Oct 1940)

Silver Screen for October 1940 "Marriage Is Not Enough! [Continued from page 37] ing for his car to come up the drive. "I don't believe that nonsense about actresses not being like other women. That's simply an alibi, thought up by the girls themselves, in order to cover a multitude of sins and selfishnesses. An actress can go through life like other women, if she is normal. I," said our Miss Bruce, "am normal. "I've heard actresses say they want careers, particularly if they are married to men in this business, because they want to keep on being glamourous to their husbands. I think that's nonsense, too. And it's not my reason for wanting a career. Because I don't believe a woman is ever more glamourous to a man than when she is functioning as a female. 'Male and Female created He them' . . . and a woman is never more appealing than when she stays on the female side of that biological life. And as she is most female when she is domestic and dependent . . . well, that answers that. "No, I don't want a career in order to remain glamourous to my husband. I'm not one of those who believe it hurts to let a man see you without make-up. If it does, then say 'ta-ta' and have done with him. Skin-deep things peel off. Nor do I believe that a woman 'lets herself go' if she stays at home. Feminine pride goes deeper than that. I certainly know that I keep myself just as sleek and smart for my husband as I do for any George Brent or Errol Flynn on a movie set. "I don't want a career because I think it makes me more interesting or stimulating to my husband, either. Mentally, I mean now. It's true that when I'm not working, I have less to say; when I am working, I blab all the time. And while I think Sonny gets kind of a kick out of it, it may well be that he'd rather hear me talk about canning and preserving than about the kind of thing he hears all day long at the studio. "I've heard women who are married to very busy, professional men say they have to have careers, or wish they had careers, in order to keep them from being lonely; that their husbands are too busy to spend any time with them. There is a group of women out here, wives of producers mostly, who are called 'The Bachelor Wives of Hollywood,' because their husbands are never with them. I've given dinner parties, invited half a dozen producers and their wives — none of the husbands came. But I haven't that excuse, either. Sonny is always home by six-thirty, always. Which is sweet of him and very sweet for me. "Another popular stock reason women give for saying 'Marriage is not enough' is that they haven't enough to do, at home. The Machine Age, they say, with its vacuum cleaners, washing machines, tireless cookers and other labor-saving devices make household duties too light to be time-filling. With nursery schools and the scientific way children are raised today, they say, even home and children do not fill a woman's day. While if you have servants, they sigh, you are practically a she-drone . . . / don't agree. "I, for instance," laughed Virginia, "have spent the entire morning supervising the scouring and de-mothing of our rugs and drapes. I have picked and arranged a dozen bowls of flowers. I've conferred with the dry-cleaner about whether it's better to dry-clean or launder some little jackets of Susan's. I've worked in the garden, uprooting last year's petunias, spraying geraniums with Vitamin A. I've called up some little girls and asked them to come and play with Susan this afternoon. If a woman is really domestic, there are certain things she does in her home herself, no matter how many servants she has. And neither nursery schools nor a governess take a mother's place with her child. "I don't know what women mean when they say T have nothing to do.' Why on earth should they do nothing? How can they be 'bored?' I'd never be bored, if I were not working. I'd paint and draw. I can, too. I have a little talent that way. I'd take up piano again. I love to sew and knit. I love to wash curtains and clean pantry cupboards. I love to mend linen, garden, make a cast-iron biscuit. I'd like to improve my tennis, not to mention my mind. I'd like to be a good bridge player. I'd like to go to college. I would. I'd like to go to U.C.L.A. and study gardening and psychology. I'd like to learn to book-bind . . . why, there are so many things! Above all, I'd like to spend more time with my child, the one I have now, the others I hope to have some day . . . "No, Great Scott, no, it's not because I'd be bored at home that I want a career. It's not that I have nothing to do with my time. There's never enough of the stuff. It 'fugits' like a frightening phantom. "I'm not even the career-type, the vital, go-getting sort of woman. I've never gone out after things. I've never fought for things. I don't know how, I haven't the weapons. Things have always happened to me and I've simply done the best I could with them when they came my way. "I gave up my career when I married Jack Gilbert. I went to Irving Thalberg then and asked to be released from my contract. I would never work again, I said, I would stay in the home, where a woman belongs. But Irving, wise in many more ways than one, told me 'You'll be back. I'll just suspend you.' And he did. And I was. He knew, you see, that the modern woman lives in a different world from the world of her mother. He knew that the pattern has changed. "And he was right. Well, then, my marriage went to pieces. And then I got ambitious for the first time. I had Susan. I had my family. I wanted to give them everything I could. I knew I'd better get in there and pitch. "I tried, I really tried. I got a little excited, felt I was getting a little bit of somewhere when I played in 'The Great Ziegfeld,' in 'Born To Dance,' in 'Bad Man of Brimstone.' I married Sonny. Then things just went along for a couple of years. And then, the last two pictures I did at M-G-M, they were my downfall. They washed over me like the waters of oblivion. I found I didn't take kindly to oblivion. It was sort of sickish, like a sickish anesthetic. I'd get letters from fans, asking 'Are you dead?' "Then I didn't work at all for eight months. Maybe I should have gone in and talked to Mr. Mayer oftener. But I can't do that sort of thing. I stumble over my own feet, get twisted up in my own tongue. I had such an unwanted feeling. I felt they were fed up with me, bored with me. There were all the new girls coming along, Lana Turner, Greer Garson, Vivien Leigh, they increased my feeling of inferiority. I never feel I have anything to offer, compared with other girls. "Then is when I should have said 'Marriage is enough.' But I didn't. Something in me that has no name made me stubborn. I got a new agent. He did for me what I, being I, could not do for myself. He gave me new enthusiasm and brand-new courage. Aided and abetted by him, I asked to be released from my M-G-M contract. And that alone should have proven to me how much I want a career. Because that was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my whole life. All the harder because they were wonderful to me about it. "So, why, then, why with love and child and home in my life, with more things to do than I can ever accomplish, why this compulsion to go on careering? "Well, I could evade the issue by saying that I can't stop now because I have too many responsibilities, too much to pay out. I like to do things for my family." (Virginia has just built her mother a home, and furnished it.) "I can say I like to have my own money. I do. That's part of being a modern woman. I can say, because it's true, that I kind of like to keep 'in things,' it's kind of fun. But only 'kind of.' I'm not hag-ridden by the thing. I know that if I had to make a choice between my marriage and my career, I'd take my marriage like a shot out of heaven. "No, none of these reasons answers the question honestly. I could manage them, if I wanted to badly enough, without working. "Irving Thalberg gave me the real answer. When he said 'You'll be back.' When he knew we live in a different world, we modern women. When he knew the pattern has changed. "For that's the real answer: the pattern has changed. The loom is bigger, the loom of women's lives, much bigger. Our capacity for living has so enlarged that nothing is enough, short of everything. "Yes, that's the answer," said Virginia, "we've got to have everything, we girls of today. We've got to use every thread in the new pattern. It's not a question of any one individual, any little me. The individual is just one thread in the pattern and as the pattern goes, the thread goes. "That's why marriage, whether it's made in Heaven or in Hollywood, is not enough today. That's why nothing is enough, short of everything. "We're modern women, living in our times," Virginia fetched up triumphantly, "that's the answer."