Article - Life Goes to a Party

Life
August 5, 1940

Life Goes to a Party

with seven stars in Houston, Texas

Down onto Houston's municipal airport on the Fourth of July swooped a shiny TWA transport from Hollywood. Out into Texas' midsummer heat stepped Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Mischa Auer, Nancy Kelly, Richard Green and Olivia de Havilland. All that day they smiled, shook hands and shared the idolatry of thousands of tumultuous Texans. That night they appeared at a gigantic rally in the Sam Houston Coliseum, where Fonda and Stewart panicked admirers with an unexpected exhibition of magic. When it was over they enplaned again for the coast.

It was no isolated set of circumstances but a great Hollywood custom that led this delegation to Houston. Movie stars today are the most peripatetic people in the land. They fly from city to city at the drop of a press agent's cigar. Socially conscious of late, they lend their time and faces to causes in which they believe. The Houston junket shown here was made at the behest of a Texas committee for aid to Britain. Between public appearances, the stars cooled off in the swimming pool of Oil Tycoon Stephen Farish. Above, you see Tyrone Power sitting at the feet of Venus de' Medici.