Evening star., 1944-10-01
It's aGreat Day
For Fathers
At Long Last
By Harold Hefernan.

HOLLYWOOD.
Movie stars can do a lot of things
today they couldn't do a few years
ago without endangering their
careers. They can brawl with knives
and bottles and garden pots. They
can 60 sailing and look at the moon
through portfolios. They can get
married and let the world know
about it.. They can even have chill
dren.
A few years ago it was all so diff
ferent. Once upon time the car
dinal rules for maintaining the box
Office popularity of a boy or girl
star were:
/. Don't become involved in q
scandal.
2. Don't get married.
3. If married, don't have children
4. If either of the crimes men,
toned in Nos. 2 and 3 have been
committed, they must be hushed up
Scandals, of course. did break oc-
casionally in the years gone by and
in nearly every instance-from the
Fatty Arbuckle to the Mabel Nor
mand affairs-they were ruinous to
the players involved.
However, producers always felt
they could control the situation re-
garding marriage and offspring.
They wrote fancy clauses into con-
tracts forbidding charming young
ladies and gents from mating. II a
big star happened to get married on
the sly, publicity departments were
ordered to dummy up" Those who
had children were ordered to sound
proof the nurseries.
Bushman Case First.
The famous expose" of Francis
Xavier Bushman, first of the screens
matinee idols, was responsible, Of
course, for the studio theory that
pop-eyed swoon fans of two decades
ago couldn't take their shadowy
idols as mated and as papas and
mammas. Bushman, it was disclosed
at the height of his romantic team
ing popularity with Beverly Bayne,
was welded and a runaway from his
home and seven children.
It's amazing how long movie ty-
coons nursed this silly antimarriage
theory. Up to a few years ago they
were still cautioning their young
box office properties against the
career dangers of marriage. Some
contracts still in existence carry the
d-fashioned anti-marriage clause
In no instance has one Of them been
known to hold good in court of law.
In this year 1914 all Is different.
It took war and Selective Service
Aof ~ y,,oGn y,-i "a no nd r
hood the rule rather than the ex-
ception in movieland. There have
come to town in the last couple Of
years many handsome young men
who can't get into the service and a
lot of them are f1anked by wife and
child, sometimes surrounded by
broods.
Newcomer lads of the year whose
family closets are wide open are
Gregory Peck, Mark Platt. Greg
Mcclure and Jimmy Brown. Peck,
who recently passed out cigars on
his first born, is potentially the
outstanding man of 1945, judging,
at least, by the raves over his work
in three unreleased pictures. 7
Brown Thrice a Father.
Platt, currently playing leading
man for Rita Hayworth in Tonight
or Never" has an 8-year-old son.
Brown, a hit in Paramount's Going
My Way" and Our Hearts Were
Young and Gay"-now loaned to
Warmers for objective, Burma
makes no secret of his three young
sters.
And who would say that Frank
Sinatra, dividing his film making
shores between RKO and MGM, is
any the less popular with the bobby
sox crowd or at the box Office be-
cause he is married and the father
of two children?
Out at Universal the other day
George Korvin, the Broadway stage
actor, signed contract for the CO.
starring part with Ella Raines in
"Arsene Lupin,' then promptly re-
turned to New York and married.
On the same lot for the past year
Peter Coe has been going great guns.
He has wife and child in New York.
A couple of croonerS were Just
placed under long term contract at
Twentieth Century -Fox-and they
both are family men. Dick Haynes
is the father of two children and
Perry Como, not long married, has
hopes. At the same studio John
Harvey, whose best role to date was
opposite Betty Cradle In Pin Up
Girl" is also passing around the
cigars. It's a girl.
What's wrong with Barry Sullivan,
who has just finished "And Now
Tomorrow" at Paramount, and Mi