I was a thirteen year old boy scout in a farming community over fifty years ago. While nowadays, people recycle their own paper to a drop off place, our town allowed Paper Drives, teenagers going around to all the houses, collecting their unwanted paper, carrying it to the processing plant to fund raise for our organizations.
It is probably a prohibited activity now, fear of a lawsuit resulting from someone’s darling getting a paper cut while on someone else’s property and having to slug it out in court. The work was hard, but the money was worthwhile.
On one occasion, we were called to the homestead of an elderly woman who had just died, having lived her entire life in this one place. The son gladly gave us permission to clean out her paper. He directed us to a chicken coop and we learned why he gave his permission so readily.
The lady had deposited all her magazines and newspapers in there. It was used for nothing else and the level was up to my chest, wall to wall. She must have simply opened the door and flung the latest unwanted periodical onto the pile. It was a treasure trove for us, simply from the cubic feet of marketable product.
Despite my youth and my density, even I realized that we were engaged in a paleontological endeavor: the top layer of magazine reflected the tastes and needs of her senior years- Redbook, Time, Newsweek. As we carted this layer away, we reached the stratum that corresponded to her child rearing years and she had purchased appropriate magazines- National Geographic to share with the kids, arts and crafts newsletters etc.
Removing that layer brought us to the Mother lode, the stratum corresponding to her own teenage years – silver screen magazines, glossy, glitzy, filled with pictures of stars from silent movies and talkies; columns written by Heda Hopper, Louella Parsons and other pencil-assassins. These had romance, adventure, subtle sexual innuendo, and far more protection of celebrity than we see nowadays. Back then, a hint of scandal would ruin an actor. Now, scandal merely increases an actor’s popularity.
The Hollywood magazines I appropriated. We would store all the paper in our horse barn until the first floor horse stalls were at critical mass and required a trip to the processor. But the purloined magazines were taken up to the hayloft. They were mildewed and Mom wouldn’t let them in the house.
Fine by me. I would hop up into the loft and open the loft door to let light in. Morning or afternoon, summer or winter, I would succumb to their siren call. There I would sit on an equally mildewed pile of loose hay, and thumb through the pages of these decaying invitations to a magical world.
The intent of such magazines was to portray Hollywood as a mystical kingdom apart from the working world. The pictures were just slightly fuzzy (and not because of primitive lenses) but rather to cover up facial blemishes and render an otherworldly character to the subject. There were no color photos, but the hue of the pictures would be blue, pink, or even gossamer sepia.
The men would have hair parted in the middle and slicked with Macassar oil. Francis X Bushman, Clark Gable, the Barrymores, Valentino, William Powell, Wallace Beery, Dick Powell, Nelson Eddy, Cary Grant: They would leer, grin, seduce, or appear untouchable, each according to the genre of his screen persona. The women would have slinky dresses on their boyish (except for Mae West) figures: Jeannette MacDonald, Myrna Loy, Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer: They would vamp, smile, or flash over-made eyelashes from beneath improbable eyebrows.
Like a curse unearthed from a long buried sepulcher, they enchanted me every bit as much as they must have gripped all children of my age living back then. Clara Bow, the ‘it girl’ still had ‘it’ and my heart melted before ‘it.’ I fell in love with her. The adoration lasted until I turned the page and, faithless as only a 13 year old boy with raging hormones can be, I would then transfer my undying affection to the next goddess.
In my fantasies, I lived amongst these people. I was equally not-quite-real in their not-quite-real world. I could live in their presence with a sepia tint to the whole world, like the early scenes in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’ I would return reluctantly to the mundane present that, despite being full color and inhabited by three-dimensional humans, was not quite as interesting.
Now, years later, I watch movies on Turner Classics and see these people, animated on film where they were still and silent in those old magazines. However, I now watch these movies with emotional bifocals – half of my lens is for the present; half is from that 13 year old boy who, without their knowledge, had entered his own time machine to live among them.
Theirs was a world without ambiguity: heroes were heroes, villains were villains; ladies needing saving and wars needed to be won. Ruthless cattle barons had to be stopped in range wars and love meant marriage before having children, not after. Sometimes I wonder if, given a choice, I would prefer to live in a colorless world of clear ethics like that, instead of this full color world afflicted with expedient morality.
Dennis Garvin is the author of ‘Case Files of an Angel’ and has co-authored with his brother, Lucky, a collaborative diary of growing up- ‘Growing up in Stephentown.’ These books are available online at Amazon, Barnes& Noble, and www.westbowpress.com
Great work!! Love to read your articles!!