Love Begins at 40, cont'd
and contemplative citizen than when he was stripped of his immaculate Hollywood wardrobe and shoved into the baggy blue breeches of a French artilleur.
His arduous adventure has served to emphasize the character of Charles Boyer as a family man, a tender and attentive husband, a generous and devoted son.
 It may be that in the upredictable period when he was part of a great army rising, stretching and shaking itself down for the rigors of a bitter war, Charles Boyer came to realize what an extended separation from his loved ones could mean in loneliness.
It may be that love, real love, the mature, lasting love of close companionship and understanding and mutual appreciation and gratitude, begins at forty.
For it is at forty, Charles Boyer believes, that love approaches its real fulfillment.
You might expect a man who had been known as a playboy of Paris in his twenties to think of his salad days with the most romantic memories. But to Charles Boyer the most emotionally satisfying years of his life are just beginning.


Because of his ability to project across the screen the profound significance of love, Charles Boyer has entrenched himself in the hearts of women...
It is perhaps because of his peculiar ability to project across the screen the more profound significances of love -- the sort of love that glows and warms as opposed to the more explosive passion that detonates, throws off a glittering shower of sparks -- and dies -- that Charles Boyer has been able to entrench himself so impregnably in the hearts of women.

One expects, naturally, then, that Boyer has developed some very definite ideas of his own on the topic of love.   One is not disappointed.
"Tell me," I said to him, "what is the difference between love at twenty, at thirty, and at forty?"

 "Understand," he replied quickly, "that in answering I speak only for myself. Or, let us say, in generalities. Love at twenty? If it is the real thing it is the greatest thrill life has to offer. And it may well grow into the steadier, more serene and sure emotion that is part of every lasting love.
 "At thirty? The thrill is still there but with it there is the satisfying sense of working toward something for someone else, for the essence of love is still sacrifice, a truth that the old-time sentimental novelists understood. And mature men have a need to care for, to protect those they love.
 "At forty? Love then becomes a combination of these things with something more added. Now love is approaching its time of fulfillment -- for the major concern of love and its greatest recompense is the succeeding generation."

 "Suppose a man is happily married at thirty," I queried. "How does his love change at forty?"                   continue

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