PARTED - But Happily Married

WHICH is the happiest marriage in the movies now - since Ann Harding and Harry Bannister have stunned the world by parting? Geographically speaking, the happiest Hollywood marriage is only half in Hollywood, the other half being located in New York City, three thousand miles away. And if you wanted to be cynical and sniff that that's why Irene Dunne's marriage is so happy, I'd contradict you indignantly if I didn't remember how constantly the Bannisters were together.

 Irene Dunne has senn her husband, Dr. Francis D. Griffin, just seven times in the twenty months - and she is still in the honeymoon stage of happiness. Hers is the only Hollywood marriage that is absolutely untouched by divorce rumors. 

 Irene is a big Hollywood star, but she lives so quietly that she has made the news columns of the local papers only eight times, including the headlines when she made a hole-in-one on a Del Monte golf course. Three of the remaining newspaper appearances of her name have been one-inch items to the effect that "Miss Irene Dunne, Radio Picture star, having finished work on her latest picture, has left for New York for a short vacation." The other four times Irene has made the papers, her name has been in similarly brief paragraphs, stating that "Dr. Francis Griffin, New York physician, is in Hollywood for a short visit with his wife, who is known on the screen as Irene Dunne."

 If Irene Dunne ever weakens and allows her doctor-husband to do what he has once or twice suggested - give up his Fifth Avenue practice, built up over long years, and movie his office to the West Coast - will her all-Hollywood marriage prove as happy as her long-distance marriage, with commuting honeymoons every three years?

 Irene is a clever woman. She knows too much to tempt fate. 

 "It's hard enough for my husband as it is," she says. "The medical profession is the most conservative, the most ethics-bound in the world. Doctors shudder away from the least bit of publicity, you know, whereas there's something garish and flamboyant about just being an actress! 'Can't you keep me out of it?' he begs. Probably that's why people made such a fuss over my 'secret marriage.' We've never tried to keep it a secret, but I don't like to bring my poor doctor-husband into interviews any more than necessary. I'm thinking of his professional dignity."

 Already a success on the stage, Irene Dunne gladly promised to give up acting and to be just a wife when she married. The Griffins went shopping and bought a grand piano, and linen, and silver, and everything needed to start housekeeping. Then they stored it and went on a honeymoon to Europe.

 When they returned, they tooked a furnished apartment just until they found the permanent home they wanted. And the bride's linen and the silver and the grand piano are still waiting patiently in storage to-day! But Dr. Griffin has paid the rent on their first apartment eversince. They're sentimental about that apartment - it having been their first. This alone proves that they are romantic like newlyweds. 

 When he knows that Irene is returning East for a visit, he has the place opened and aired and cleaned and polished and filled with flowers. And the taxicab takes her there from the station and they play for a few precious days that it is their home. Then, when the studio begins to send frantic wires and Irene leaves the apartment for Grand Central Station. Dr. Griffin turns they key in the lock and leaves the rooms to gather dust for another three or four months, while he takes up bachelor quarters at his club.

     Long-Distance "Family Life"

"WE DO the best we can at a family life," Irene says ruefully. "My brother lives with him at his club, and my mother lives out here with me. We write each other every day, and we telephone four times a week. It's more satisfactory for him to call me, I can't ever be sure when I'll find him in - doctors always being called out at odd hours. So I simply stay at home four evenings a week and wait to be called on the telephone. I wouldn't go to the grandest party in Beverly Hills on those evenings! Even doing it as economically as possible our telephone bills run about three hundred and fifty dollars a month."(remark: this would be about 5680$ nowadays)

 Every room in Irene's Beverly Hills house has a photograph of her husband, while she send him a complete set of all "stills" from her new pictures with pencilled explanations of what she is doing in each scene. When an Irene Dunne picture opens in New York, the doctor is at the head of the waiting line before the ticket office. When an Irene Dunne premiere occurs in Hollywood, the corsage of orchids on the Dunne shoulder is a gift from her husband, ordered by wire. He sends her flowers on all birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions exactly like a husband-on-the-spot, or even more faithfully!

 "And when I go back home on a visit," laughs Irene, "he fills the apartment with little presents, hiding them in bureau drawers and under cushions and behind things, so that the first three or four days are thrilling with surprises! I buy new clothes for all my visits, and for all of his visits out here to see me, too. We take little journeys together. We try not to spoil things by looking ahead to the next parting. We simply couldn't manage our long-distance marriage if we planned ahead. The only thing to do is to live one day at a time. But our visits together make the weeks following so lonely! I've cried myself to sleep many and many a night ---"