Can Film Stars Lead A Normal Life?

ONE ACTRESS LIVES MILES FROM HUSBAND, THE OTHER BEMOANS THE LACK OF PRIVACY AND TIME, YET BOTH ARE HAPPY WITH HOLLYWOOD LIFE

In Hollywood, torn by jealousies and competition, politics and favortism, quarrels and divorce - in this cinema capital of the world - is it possible for a movie star to lead what the rest of us call a normal life?

Irene Dunne says yes. Jeanette MacDonald says no. Irene is married. Jeanette has been engaged for more than two years. They've written their sides of the case for this paper.

Yes says Irene Dunne 

By Irene Dunne

written for the Herald-Post

Certainly it's normal to have a home and a husband, and quite usual these days to combine them with a career.

 When I leave for the studio in the morning, I go to business exactly as if I were a stenographer, or a lawyer. A stenographer often works overtime. A lawyer burns midnight electricity preparing briefs and I expect the lawyer and the stenographer both do just as I do when they're kept late - telephone home not to wait dinner.

 House is well run

 On the lot, I'm Irene Dunne. At home I'm Mrs. Frank Griffin. My house is well-run, if I do say it as I shouldn't. My servants are competent and they stay with me. It's not necessary for a woman to care personally for every detail of her household unless she has to. But I keep as sharp watch over my household as I do over my business.

 My husband is a doctor and his practice is in New York City. That creates a slight problem right off. To solve it, I go east between quick pictures and Frank comes to the coast on frequent trips when I'm working. The distance really isn't so great - not in an airplane, anyway. We're together a good deal more than, say, a travelling salesman and his wife. Also, and this really is important, we are fonder of each other today than the day we were married.

Average Social Life

 Socially, I am generally Mrs. Griffin, not Irene Dunne. I go out no oftener than the average woman. I wear the same kind of clothes she does (there's nothing I dislike more than conspicious or extreme styles), and eat the same kind of food (thank goodness I don't have to diet!).

Doesn't that sound like a normal life? It's a very happy one, too.

No says Jeanette MacDonald

written by Jeantte MacDonald for the Herald-Post

A MOTION picture star has no time for a life or even a love of her own. The abnormality of existence begins at dawn when you have to put on heavy make-up to wear in broad daylight. It ends only when your health setting-up exercises and bedtime beauty treatment are over and you have carfully arranged yourself in the painfully correct sleeping position that is supposed to promote good posture.

 The whole day is a long strain - re-takes, waits, crisis. Half the time they shoot at night so that if you have made a romantic engagement for that evening it's just too bad.

 Always On Parade

If you go to the theater, you don't relax like everybody else because you're speculating about the kind of picture the play would make and what you would be like in the leading role. You are always on parade, too - a public character who has to maintain her public's illusion.

 Imaging going abroad and working so hard that you have no time to shop in the Rue de la Paix! Yet that't what happens to me. I ask you, is that leading a normal life? Instead of seeing points of interest, I become one.

 Has No Privacy

 Privacy doesn't exist for me. Nor for any of us. A lover's quarrel or a domestic spat becomes a free-for-all with the world taking sides. I'll wager there have actually been Hollywood divorces just because the participants, while quite ready to kiss and make up, were afraid to do it for fear dissapointing their adherents!

 Yet, having said all this, let me add that mine is a swell life and I wouldn't trade it for anybody's, however normal!

(El Paso Herald-Post, Saturday, April 21, 1934)