Why are people so interested in the matrimonial status of the film stars?

After all, marriage is "nobody's business" except the two people concerned. It is strictly their private affair.

Moreover, it is damaging to a star's following for the more intimate details of his or her domestic life to be broadcast far and wide. It is particularly unfair — if not actually unwise — in the case of the film actor who plays great-lover rôles to stress the fact of his having a wife and children, no matter how he dotes on them in private.

Probably for this reason, if for no other, Hollywood no longer indulges in the big formal church weddings with gay banquets and dancing to follow — red-letter events like those which thrilled the film colony to the core when the nuptials of Vilma Banky and Rod La Rocque, Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon were celebrated a few years ago.

Then, of course, there were the spectacular marriages of Gloria Swanson to her marquis, and of Mae Murray and Pola Negri to their brother princes Mdivani. Of these, Mae Murray's is the only marriage that has survived.

Despite the blaze of glory in which Gloria descended with the noble marquis upon Hollywood in 1925, and the fact that the film colony rose with one accord to do them honor, the romance was soon shattered. Not so soon, however, as that of Pola Negri. Last of the trio to wed, Pola was the first to shed her spouse. She beat Gloria to the divorce courts by just six days. Incidentally, both husbands have since found consolation elsewhere — Prince Serge (Pola's ex-husband) with the Chicago opera star Mary McCormick, while the Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye, alias "Hank," is now known as "Mr. Constance Bennett."

Personally, I should hate to have my husband lose his identity to that extent. Rather than that, I should want to retire from the screen altogether. I should want to forget I had ever been Greta Garbo.

With so many broken romances littered about the studios, Hollywood is not so keen as formerly to draw attention to the love affairs of its players.

Nowadays quiet weddings are the vogue.

It is the fashion to slip out of town by airplane, get married in far-away Mexico, and maybe or maybe not announce the fact afterward.

Ina Claire, reigning beauty of the New York stage, and John Gilbert, then prince of screen romantics, eloped by air to Las Vegas and were married there very quietly. Even so, bets were being made within two hours of the ceremony about the outcome of the marriage: that it wouldn't last a year; that it would survive six, eight, perhaps ten months.

What chance of success has the average marriage in these circumstances?

Can you wonder that film stars hesitate to exchange single blessedness for married bliss?

The particular problem that faces the film star, however, is this:

Have I the peculiar kind of genius and temperament that makes of matrimony a holy and lasting bond? Am I a fit and proper person to be anybody's "lawful wedded wife"? Can I make a success of married life?

With a male star, perhaps, it is different. When he maries, convention expects that his wife shall subordinate her interests to his, as happen recently in the case of Maurice Chevalier and Yvonne Vallée.

An artist in her own right, Yvonne relinquished her theatrical laurels gracefully, without complaint. When Maurice was invited to make pictures in Hollywood, it was as plain Mrs. Chevalier she urged him to accept, and as Mrs. Chevalier that she accompanied this internationally accepted exponent of charm.

How embarrassing, on the other hand, is the situation of the non-film-acting husband married to a famous film star! He is bound to lose something of his own identity. Imagine a man being known as "Mr. Garbo" — just that and nothing more!

And in those sections of society still impressed by the false glitter of the limelight, and where the spectacle of a woman who has made her own way in the world is still matter for surprise and idle chatter, this is what would surely happen.

Only a fool or a hero could abide such an anomalous position.

The only good reason for two people getting married is that they can be together most of the time. That is impossible with me so long as I remain on the screen.

The marriage contract which has to make the best of whatever is left over after the film contract has been fulfilled seems rather a makeshift affair. A husband needs his wife's thoughts and spiritual support as well as her actual physical presence. Unless one marries a fellow film artist, there is little chance of this ideal union of sympathy and interests. For I am in deadly earnest when I say that a film star's career is a whole-time job.

When I first went to Hollywood under the wing of the great Mauritz Stiller, I used to go to parties regularly and attend premières. But soon I found that my work began to suffer. Also, that to make public appearances destroys the illusion that surrounds the shadows of the silver sheet. The creative artist should be a rare and solitary spirit.

Stiller's death was a great blow to me. For so long I had been his satellite. All Europe at that time regarded Stiller as the most significant figure in the film world. Directors hurried to the projecting rooms where his prints were shown. They took with them their secretaries and, in the dim silence, they dictated breathless comments on the wide sweep of his magnificent technique.

Stiller had found me, an obscure artist in Sweden, and brought me to America. I worshiped him. There are some, of course, who say it was a love story. It was more. It was the utter devotion which only the very young can know — the adoration of a student for her teacher, of a timid girl for a master mind.

In his studio Stiller taught me how to do everything: how to eat; how to turn my head; how to express love — and hate.

Off the screen I studied his every whim, wish, and demand. I lived my life according to the plans he laid down. He told me what to say and what to do.

When Stiller died I found myself like a ship without a rudder. I was bewildered — lost — and very lonely. I resolutely refused to talk to reporters because I didn't know what to say.

By degrees I dropped out of the social whirl of Hollywood. I retired into my shell. I built a wall of repression around my real self, and I lived — and still live — behind it.

In the gayest, maddest colony in the world, I became a hermit.

I did not go to parties any more. I was too tired. I went to bed when my work at the studio was done.

If I needed recreation, I liked to be out of doors: to trudge about in a boy's coat and boy's shoes; to ride horseback, or shoot craps with the stable boys, or watch the sun set in a blaze of glory over the Pacific Ocean. You see, I am still a bit of a tomboy.

Most hostesses disapprove of this trousered attitude to life, so I do not inflict it upon them. Besides, I am still a little nervous, a little self-conscious about my English. I cannot express myself well at parties. I speak haltingly.

I feel awkward, shy, afraid.

In Hollywood, where every tea table bristles with gossip-writers, what I say might be misunderstood. So I am silent as the grave about my private affairs.

Rumors fly about. I am mum.

My private affairs are strictly private.

Publication Date: October 22, 1932