The Heart That Was Never Broken

... Her father gave her nothing of fatherly tenderness and love, for he had wanted a boy to help him plow the land; and so he drove her before him to the field to help him... And when she claimed her right to an education, he denied her that right with bitter harshness, and did not scruple to beat her and whip her! — while she murmured proudly: "I will not shed a tear!"

This is Adeline Reynolds, now 88 years old, who has always known how to triumph over pain and preserve her vitality. And behold, in 1940 she became a movie star in Hollywood, at an age when women can no longer manage their own affairs. She has appeared in 19 motion pictures and has hundreds of admirers who call her "Grandma Reynolds." But the camera that took her picture in 19 films has told nothing of her strange story — and how could the story of a woman who waited seventy full years until her dreams came true just as she wished not be strange!

"Grandma Reynolds" lives on the shoulder of a hill, in a house shaded by green trellises, on the outskirts of Hollywood. No sooner do you meet her than your cares lift from you, and you feel a certain energy entering your spirit and your soul together! She greets you with a face overflowing with cheer, and white locks waving over a broad forehead — will and pride!

In her quiet, modest parlor, "Grandma Reynolds" speaks of herself, saying:

"It is not my habit to talk of the past; I have scattered its events as a tree scatters its leaves in autumn. I cannot bear to carry the weight of yesterday, or to waste time shedding tears. It has been revealed to me that life gives us everything we want, if our shoulders are not weighed down with the cares of the past."

This is the sum of the philosophy of life in the eyes of this mighty woman. And now she takes us back eighty years, to the days when she was a child on her father's wide farms...

As a child she was short, with tousled brown hair and a pressing longing for learning. She saved up the small coins her mother gave her in return for her work; she saved those coins and bought with them a dictionary and a set of Shakespeare's plays. And when she had obtained this precious set, she committed its scenes to memory line by line and acted them out, in her mellow voice, for the trees ranged along the slopes of the green fields — and she felt a thrill of triumph!

People saw in this young girl only a rover of fields, a romper of threshing floors... Her mother alone differed from people in their opinion, and would tell her daughter about cultivated, elegant women, and about the possibilities before her. She knew tenderness only in the shelter of her mother's eyes — and how she thirsted for tenderness!

Mrs. Reynolds said: "How fierce was my father's opposition when I wanted to enter a girls' school and then college! One of the teachers tried to convince him that I must be educated, since I had this insistent desire — and he kicked the teacher out of the house. And that brutality served only to add strength to my resolve..."

At seventeen, I fell in love with the governor's son, and when my father opposed our marriage we ran away together and were married... And it came about that my husband Frank failed in his life and in his work; yet I never wearied of him in the least, for I believe that a woman must accept her husband's failure just as she accepts the color of his hair! And she was content with him, failure and all. He did not shower her with his love and tenderness — she who had forever yearned for love and tenderness!?

Children came to her... Once a traveling theatrical troupe offered to have her join it and work with it; but when she faced the facts, she saw that she would not give up her children for anyone in the world, and that she had not the strength to be parted from them... She refused the position, much as she loved it, and clung to her family, lavishing love and tenderness upon it and playing the part of the good mother...

Her husband died, leaving four children, in a condition little short of poverty and want. Then began the chapter of

struggle — the chapter of a woman working the impossible to keep the scourge of hunger from her children and to pave the way before them to a high education and a comfortable life.

And how was she to accomplish that when she was nearing forty? She seemed on the brink of breaking, but for a resolve in her breast and a strong faith in her heart — and her guiding rule in life was: "The secret of happiness is to find happiness in your present condition, whatever it may be, and to load your cares onto no one among men..."

She had the highest hopes in one of her sons, who was sensitive, quick of heart, and inclined toward acting; he would listen to her with sharpened ears as she recited theatrical parts to her children as they sat around the fire in the evenings. She would say to this son:

"We shall go acting together someday, you and I!"

And suddenly this son, so dear to her heart, dies, leaving a great emptiness in the life of the struggling mother...

... It was a cruel trial that all but shattered this woman and crushed her utterly, but for her strong faith, which awoke in her at last — the faith her mother had planted in her heart when she was an innocent child...

In 1926 Adeline Reynolds entered the university, being then 64 years of age. Her children helped her pay the university fees, and she herself gave private lessons in French.

One day the professor of dramatics held a competition among the students, believing that women students over the age of eighteen were of limited imagination and rarely destined to win...

But behold, Mrs. Reynolds entered the competition and won with great distinction... Cheers and applause rose for her from every side, and eyes brimmed over with tears... Why did their eyes fill with tears so?

When she graduated from the university and announced her readiness to take up the art of acting, she was seventy years old. She began to prepare herself in body and in spirit: she learned swimming and horseback riding, and dancing of every kind; and when her director asked her where she got those supple wrists, she answered: "From scaring off wolves with broomsticks!"

And after a struggle of seven years in bit parts of no account, she was given the chance to appear in a film with Hedy Lamarr; she drew all eyes to herself, and everyone praised her acting.

The director asked her, after a full, exhausting day of rehearsal: "Has this work tired you?" She answered:

"One who has waited seventy years feels not the least fatigue."

That film was followed by 19 others, and no one remembers ever hearing Mrs. Reynolds grumble a single time... And to this very day she is still learning and studying. Last year she took a course in handicrafts at a night school, and now she is learning the art of "mysticism"! She is forever seeking out new things that will preserve her energy and the liveliness of her spirit!