Henrietta Hay's Column

Sometimes the young come up with wisdom far beyond their years. In a recent column Ana Veclana-Suarez tells of the shock of discovering a lone white hair one morning in her mass of black. I'm only assuming she is young since she went on to discuss the advent of aging and concluded with, "I've always boasted that I would age gracefully . . . But I'm not sure what that means precisely . . . Who truly knows? I suppose middle age and old age will be much like youth - in and out before you know it, with plenty of foolishness to mark the way." How right she is.

My youth was spent in what we fondly call the golden age of movies and I loved them. I probably saw every one that came to town. The stars were beautiful, young, graceful and oh so romantic. My memory of them got stuck there.

But I got a shock recently. Ginger Rogers was the guest on a TV talk show. I probably should quit watching those. Anyway, Ginger has been pretty much out of the public eye, or at least my eye for many years and suddenly here she was, a woman of 80, looking it, chair-bound, a complete stranger. The Ginger Rogers I know is slim, very beautiful, moves like a feather, one of the really great dancers of the early movies. Watching her float with Fred Astaire is - was - pure magic. Who was this stranger?

I don't know how it is with others of my generation, but I see yesterday's movie stars on TV and read those lists of birthdays in the papers with a certain wonder as I try to put together in my mind the person I remember with the aging person who now exists. I don't know why I have so much trouble realizing that those glamorous people grew older just as I did.

The real answer should not be so hard to understand. We live linearly, growing and changing very gradually from beginning to middle to end. But from time to time something jogs me and my romantic memory kicks in. I am faced with the knowledge that what I remember is not necessarily what is.

The two-in-one person who is hardest for me to accept is the beautiful mature woman who is the American Ambassador to Czechoslovakia. She was 63 years old on her last birthday, but I will never be able to believe that she was once the delightful, tiny Shirley Temple dancing across the screen with those blonde curls bouncing. I loved her dearly and never missed one of her movies. I am sure she is still five years old. My mind tells me that if she had not been Shirley Temple she would probably not now be Ambassador Black, but that doesn't help much.

Helen Hayes, on the other hand at 91, doesn't look a lot different than she did when I saw her on the stage in 1937 as Queen Victoria, far more beautiful and no less majestic than the British queen ever dreamed of being. In her case, her stage career has continued, and we have seen her often through the intervening years. Her public image has grown along with us. She has now become an author and she is still very much in the public eye. She is the one who said, "If you rest you rust." She has certainly not rusted and you can see in her current photographs that young Queen of the thirties.

Of course, there is the eternal George Burns who was never either young or old. I used to sit glued to the Philco during the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio days. Then when George and Gracie graduated to TV and movies I was one of their fans. But George's current 96-year-old cigar-chomping relaxed persona is about the same as it was then. He recently signed a five-year contract with the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He said they wanted to make it ten but he would only sign for five years, because the resort might not be there in ten.

I don't care how old they get. They will always be young. Ginger Rogers still dances and Shirley Temple still twinkles. I really must quit watching those daytime TV talk shows.