When you say "how glad I am that he grew out of it," is it because being a pretty face is such a limiting thing?
I don't know that he wouldn't have had a wonderful career if he had kept that astonishing beauty into adulthood. He became less astonishing and more interesting and I think it served him incredibly well. I just saw him tonight in State Fair (1933) as the brash reporter who romances the corn-country heroine played by Janet Gaynor, where he has to make clear that their relationship started as a fast pick-up on his part and his rapidly deepening feelings have surprised him to the point where he doesn't want to risk her reputation with anything but a proposal of marriage and no matter how sincerely he takes her and the audience's breath away—they met on a roller coaster—he may still be too much of a long shot, a footloose slick talker used to having a girl in every press room; it would break his heart and might still be true. He could handle all of that complexity. Even just a few years later, he looked lived-in enough.
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I don't know that he wouldn't have had a wonderful career if he had kept that astonishing beauty into adulthood. He became less astonishing and more interesting and I think it served him incredibly well. I just saw him tonight in State Fair (1933) as the brash reporter who romances the corn-country heroine played by Janet Gaynor, where he has to make clear that their relationship started as a fast pick-up on his part and his rapidly deepening feelings have surprised him to the point where he doesn't want to risk her reputation with anything but a proposal of marriage and no matter how sincerely he takes her and the audience's breath away—they met on a roller coaster—he may still be too much of a long shot, a footloose slick talker used to having a girl in every press room; it would break his heart and might still be true. He could handle all of that complexity. Even just a few years later, he looked lived-in enough.