Gossip Friday: Christmas with Classic Stars (Part 2)

Continued excerpt from last week, “Santa is a Headache”, Hollywood magazine, January 1940:

Many of the stars, including Barbara Stanwyck, have started a considerable amount of Christmas charity work. Barbara tells me: “I’d a lot rather give the money to a hospital or to some needy groups of people than spend it on gifts for friends who already have a lot. I think they like it better, too.”

There is a growing tendency among the players to get away from cards. Most send telegrams to friends who aren’t within the charmed gift circle. Or cards which read:

“This card should be a very nice one. But it’s plain, because my Christmas appropriation for cards has been given to the….charity.”

No doubt, if you know Shirley Temple and Charlie Ruggles, just to mention two of a host of people, you’ll receive such cards.

Bette Davis is planning to get flowers for most of her friends. In addition she takes time and care to work with a charity-minded woman who furnishes her with the exact needs of many people, mostly young girls looking for work with no suitable garments to make themselves presentable. Bette buys these clothes, sees that they are delivered.

George [Raft] is a generous guy. He can’t keep his hands out of his pockets when somebody asks for something, Christmas or any other time. Christmas came along and he really outdid himself. He got a huge tree, scouted around, found out what everybody at his studio wanted, brought great armsful of gifts, wrapped them, put them under the tree and sent out word.

Property men, grips, stenographers, mill workers and laborers mobbed the tree as George stood back. The tree looked as if a hurricane had struck it. Tissue paper, boxes, broken ornaments and tinsel littered the floor.

George looked at the tree, contemplated it sadly.

He advanced slowly to it, eyed a lone package. “For George,” it said.

Gleefully, gratefully, he opened it. It contained one pair of socks from his bodyguard, Mack Gray. Of the hundreds, not one had thought that maybe George might have been made just a little bit happy by some small thing from them. Not something that cost a great deal of money. Just something that would have let him know that he had been thought of.