Motherhood in Hollywood

A mother's feeling for her sons and daughters is not touched by ingratitude and denial; it remains true to its nature, brimming with love and tenderness, to the last breath.

The blazing lamps of the "studio" were throwing their strong light upon the scene set up for filming, while darkness lay over the rest of the place. In a far corner sat three women knitting "stockings," bent over their work, never lifting their heads to anything, with no one paying them any heed... I learned that two of them were seamstresses, waiting for any signal to mend whatever clothes and the like might need mending. The third was Mrs. "Temple," mother of the world-famous star "Shirley Temple." Her keeping apart in this way struck me as strange, so I stood watching the three women from where they could not see me, and my thoughts ran to the idea that the star's mother had tucked herself away in this spot because she felt that others wished to do without her — above all, her daughter!...

She raised her eyes and saw me...

The mother in Hollywood is of all mothers the most jealous of her dignity, and the last to confide her estrangement to others — this "Gertrude Temple" above all; but in that hour she confided to me what no one would have expected to hear from that woman with the delicate lips that bespeak firmness of resolve and strength of will.

I asked her, feigning ignorance: "And where is Shirley, then?"

She said: "Oh... she is in her room; perhaps she is spending the rest period reading. But even so, I wait for her to turn to me, so that I may answer her call."

A faint smile glimmered on her lips, and she went on: "The time when she felt she needed me is gone... She now wants to live as she pleases, believing she will never have need of me; so I sit here, waiting for the hour when she will say: Come to me, Mother."

We talked long about the past — the talk was in whispers, after the custom of people in Hollywood — and I reminded her of a day when I sat with her and little Shirley in the wings of the "Twentieth Century-Fox" studio, when she asked her little girl to address me in French, and she did; but after a while it grew hard for her to pick the right words, and she turned imploringly to her mother and said: "Isn't that enough, Mama?"

The mother said, sighing at the memory: "That was long ago... Shirley is a grown girl now, and I understand her desire for freedom." And I left Mrs. Temple to finish knitting the wool in her hands, waiting for that happy hour when her "little girl" would remember her and come back to her!

How bitter is this ingratitude that mothers meet with in Hollywood — they who were the cause of their children's success and of their reaching that glory, through all the care and guidance they lavished on them in the days of their childhood! The studios of Hollywood do acknowledge the mothers' influence, and pay them generous wages to stay beside their children during the acting, to carry out the directors' instructions...

Thus the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company pays 500 pounds a week to Mrs. Gladys O'Brien, mother of the new star Margaret O'Brien, who is now ten years old, to stay with her during the acting; while Mrs. Doris Dudley, mother of

the child "Butch Jenkins," receives 400 pounds a week for the same purpose; and Mrs. "Ethel Gumm" went on drawing a like wage until her daughter grew up and married — she being the world-famous star "Judy Garland," Mickey Rooney's partner in most of his pictures.

The one mother who did not stay with her daughter during training is the mother of "Deanna Durbin." The English star "Angela Lansbury," meanwhile, still acknowledges her mother's authority over her and accepts her guidance without grumbling, though she has passed sixteen.

Stranger still, the Metro-Goldwyn company still pays a monthly salary to Mrs. "Tita Garson," mother of the Irish "Greer Garson," who has passed forty, to help it curb the temper of her high-strung, headstrong daughter, who will obey no one but her. Set against this is the ingratitude shown by a certain star — whose name I was not permitted to mention — who rebuffed her mother and snapped at her not to meddle in her affairs, until the mother, from excess of grief, took to drink; though she lives in Hollywood still, hoping that her daughter will come back to her one day... and how vain the hope!