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Yfh,a_fote% @ou% lH~l HJ~~~ Just before starting work on Rose-Marie, Joan went with Paul Bern to see Young Woodley at the Vine Street Playhouse. The star of the play was Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the son of the macho silent action star, Douglas Fairbanks by his first wife, Beth Sully. Young Doug was trying to carve out a career of his own without slavishly imitating his father, with whom he had an essentially sterile relationship. Joan had met Doug Jr. briefly at the studio, and found him stuffy, but she so admired his sensitive performance in Young Woodley that she sent him a congratulatory telegram. That was the beginning of their relationship. "I thought his performance was wonderful," Joan remembered years later, "but I also had set my cap for him. Not so much marriage, at first. I just thought he was delectable and wanted to get to know him better, if you know what I mean. At the studio he was cool and distant, and that made me angry. I wanted him to notice me. What better way to an actor's heart than through a telegram telling him he's wonderful? It did the trick." While generally well-liked in youth (as he would be later in life), Doug Fairbanks Jr. was also considered a bit of a snob and a pantywaist, a pretty boy trading on his father's name. He wore an air of entitlement, and acted decidedly "superior"-at least until he got to know someone. He was a product of impeccable breeding, however, and usually was well-mannered enough not to make his contempt obvious. But Joan, sensitive to slights and condescension, had noticed his somewhat haughty demeanor at the studio and was determined to thaw the iceberg. No one could stick up his nose at her and get away with it. Doug was "thawed" by Joan's telegram, and by her obvious sex appeal. Joan was also shrewd enough to play up to the actor's vanity. Doug may have been more cultured and better-educated than she was, but Joan was no dummy. She let him patronize her-up to a point- letting him feel that he was the big, strong man giving the little girl the advantage of his masculine counsel and advice. But at all times it was the more sophisticated Joan who was really pulling the strings. After a while, Doug Jr. became more than just a catch, but someone Joan liked, was attracted to-and then fell in love with. Underneath his snobbery, he was boyishly sincere and unsure of himself sexually. "For all his good looks," Joan recalled, "Doug was not that sexually experienced . I think I taught him plenty of new tricks and from then on he was putty in my hands." Joan didn't need Doug's money-she had plenty of her own-but it was part of her upwardly mobile nature to seek a mate with an impressive pedigree, and in that regard he was the right stuff. Both Doug's father and his stepmother, Mary Pickford, were Hollywood royalty. Invitations to their estate, Pickfair, were highly coveted. Joan would definitely be marrying up, if she could just keep him as starryeyed as he had been since their first encounter involving the big telegram. But Joan had two obstacles to contend with: Doug's mother Beth did not want her little boy to get married, especially not to a "fast" girl like Joan; his father thought that Joan was just a fling, certainly not the kind of woman who should marry the "Scion of Pickfair." Not as influential as far as Doug Jr. was concerned, but definitely part of the equation , was Mary Pickford herself, who looked down onJoan as just another sluttish chorus girl. There would be no invitations to Pickfair for Joan from that quarter. As Doug and Joan continued to see each other and fall deeper in love, they both continued making movies, first at separate studios , and then both at MGM. Joan continued to be sexually active with other men (and sometimes women) during the period that her friendship with Doug Jr. blossomed into a full-fledged love affair. Rumors of her activities undoubtedly got back to his parents-and Pickford-which made them doubt Joan's suitability as a bride all the more. Illogical as it may seem to us today, it was common during the silent era to make straight dramatic film adaptations of famous...

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