Don't Try To Re-Model Your Husband

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 November 1928, Page 9

Don't Try To Re-Model Your Husband

FIRST SIGNPOST ON MATRIMONIAL HIGHWAY SHOULD READ "LEAVE HIM ALONE,” SAYS LUCILE WEBSTER, HOLLYWOOD PLAYWRIGHT. “IF YOU MUST GO IN FOR ‘MAKE - OVERS,’ CONFINE THEM TO HOUSES, CLOTHES AND YOURSELVES.”

■OW to he happy though married’ is a topic that has engaged the thoughts and tongues of a good many people at various times, but very few seem to agree upon the answer to the riddle. Here come the Gleasons—James, the husband, and Lucile Webster, the wife—to shed their particular light upon the question, their fitness for taking up the argument being based on the fact that they have been married for more than twenty years and still find delight in one another’s society. The Gleasans collaborate on each other’s plays, act in the same productions, travel in company or stay at home together with the same enthusiasm. “Don’t try to remodel your husband,” laughed Mrs. Gleason to an interviewer from the deep-cushioned Chesterfield that faces the open fireplace in her hilltop Hollywood home. “That’s my first piece of advice to all wives who really mean to make a success of marriage.

“When a woman buys a hat or a gown, she doesn’t begin to make it over the minute the delivery boy brings it home. She doesn’t take it out of its box and hold it up to the light and say: ‘Dear me, I’d dye this blue and turn the sleeves upside down and cut that frill short here and put a row of buttons there.’ She might come to that after she’s worn it for some time and discovered its drawbacks, but at first she gives it a chance. “But it seems to me that a good many women —and men, too as soon as they are married begin to try to remodel the partner of their joys. The first signpost on the road to matrimony should read; .‘Leave him alone!’ “When I married, I knew my husband had blue eyes and big ears and that he drank tea for breakfast. Any sane creature knows that all the effort in the world wouldn’t change the colour of his eyes, and only a, plastic surgeon could do anything about his ears. I like him as he is, so why should I start in to change the teadrinking simply because I like coffee in the morning? “And that brings us to another:

“The second signpost should road; ‘Don’t give in about unessentials!’ In our family, Jim drinks tea foi bieakfast and I drink coffee. When we began our married life it might easily have happened til al "tic oi us mighi have, decided to give in on his or ’nr preference and drink the favourite, beverage of the other, but always there would have been just, the least feeling of martyrdom on the part of file one who gave in, just the quiver of the chin at sight of the. coffee pot or the lea caddy. “Do I stagger around the golf course after him, learning to bit the little balls? Do I rush around a, tennis, court, or skin my hands with the oars of a rowboat? Not me! He dpesnt expect me to and I do not attempt it. “I love the theatre. In spite of being an actor and a playwright, Jim hates sitting still through a long play, so I never ask him to take me to a show. There are always plenty of people eager to attend a play with me —people who get the same thrill out of the theatre that comes to me—so why should my husband be - sacrificed l “The third bit of advice, it seems to me should be something concerning sticking to each other when circumstances conspire to make the sticking difficult. There ought to be a sporting sense between partners in matrimony just as there should be between partners in business. “And the most important advice of all:

"Every wife should have an absorbing interest of her own, quite apai t from her home. Modern homes are so well equipped that they no longer need all a woman’s time and attention. Unless she has something outside to keep her up to the mark, the wife is likely to become bored and to bore her husband, or to wander off into forbidden paths that lead to nothing but grief. “It’s my opinion,” said Mr. Gleason, who had come in from a conference on a “talking picture” on which he is engaged, “that the best advice 1 can offer to men who would like to be happily married is to seek a girl witn a gorgeous sense of humour. One who knows how to laugh and when.

“I’ve noticed, in observing contemporary husbands, that many married people, seeing a free evening ahead, sav to each other: ‘I ■wonder what the Smiths arc doing to-night. Let’s have them over,’ or ‘Call up the Robinsons. Maybe they’d like to play bridge or go to a show.' , »I call that a horrible comment on matrimony.” , ~ “If you have a turn for remodelling, said Mrs. Gleason, in conclusion, “take it out on houses, clothes or yourselves. You can add a sunroom to the bungalow, make the afternoon frock into, an evening gown—even let a plastic sui - geon change our Roman nose into a Grecian one —but let your husband alone!”