HAPPY FILM COUPLE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4012, 11 August 1931, Page 7

HAPPY FILM COUPLE

DOUGLAS AND MARY ! PARTED FOR FOUR MONTHS REUNITED BY SPEED DASH. Douglas Fairbanks, in a 70-miles-au-hour motor dash from Westward Ho! to Barnstaple to catch a train to meet his wife, Mary Bickford, who had landed at Southampton; the whole station staff at Reading searching the train for Douglas to tell him Mary was waiting there for him; Douglas found and motoring to London with Mary in the new Rolls-Royce car he had just given her. These were the chief pulsating scenes in a love film in real life which Mary Pickford staged recently on-lier arrival in England from America (says the ‘ Daily Herald ’). On landing at Southampton Mary at once telephoned to her husband at Westward Ho!, where he had just been beaten in the first round of the British open amateur golf championship by J. R. Abercrombie, a Liverpool player. He decided to catch the 2.38 train from Barnstaple to Paddington, where Miss Pickford would meet him at 7 o’clock. Douglas had less than an hour to pack, lunch, and motor nine miles to Barnstaple station. He covered the

nine miles in eight minutes —nearly seventy miles an hour—driven b.y a well-known racing motorist. “ IT JS WONDERFUL.” Meanwhile, Mary declared slie simply could r.ot wait until 7 o’clock to sec Douglas, from whom she had been parted for over four months. “ The idea of meeting the train at Reading came from Mr Edward Knoblock, the playwright,” she said. “Mr Knoblock found the train stopping at Reading, and we motored there in the lovely new car Douglas sent to me at Southampton this morning. Douglas leaped out of the train. Then 1 saw stars, dashes, and exclamation marks.” “It is wonderful to see Douglas again,” Alary went on. “Do \ r ou know that it is exactly four months three days sixteen hours since we were last together? i have kept an exact record of the time day by day, except for odd minutes. I have never beer so

excited as F was to-day. I have been awake since 2 o’clock this morning. I couldn’t sleep later for excitement.” When Mary reached Southampton her first question was: “How has Doug, got on at Westward Ho? i. would have liked to have been there to see him play. “ i am the happiest wife in the world, which is much better than being the world’s sweetheart. Doug, is the best husband any woman could have, and, after all, a man has a right to bis hobbies. Doug’s is golf and. as with everything else he does, he gives his b st. He loves the game.” Someone asked whether Mary will appeal on tlie London stage. Her eyes lit up. “ 1 would love to appear in London,” she said. “ I have not been on the stage since 1919, when I was David Belasco in the ‘ Good Little Devil.’ ” MARY REVEALS SECRETS. Then Mary confided that she prefers gang thrillers on the screen. “I adore them,” she said enthusistically. She does not believe that her own films will have any great interest for future generations. “We move so rapidly,” Mary went on, “t’ : even a generation hence would probably only laugh. I shall insist that all my films are destroyed when 1 go to the happy hunting fields The triumphs of to-day will be just stupid to the people of the future—just shadows of the past.” Another secret Alary revealed was that although she means to be Douglas Fairbark’s partner for life, she will never partner him on the screen again. “ Doug’s films simply roar away like racing cars, while 1 must be content with the family car,” was her explanation. Wive n Alary heard that Doug had been beaten in the first round of the tournament she exclaimed : “ What bad luck!” Then she added hurriedly, “Now we can meet to-night in Lon don. We have talked on the telephone, and now we start on our second lioneymoon in London.”