Honey Rose’s dream date. (Maureen O’Sullivan & Robert Taylor in “The Crowd Roars.”

[1938]

Miss Honey Rose Kaplan
Box 2192 TSCW
Denton
Texas

Dear Ms. Kaplan:

Thank you for your kind invitation to the Senior Formal of the Texas State College for Women. I expect to be in the midst of a new picture at that time, which would make it impossible for me to attend.

I enjoyed my visit to your state sometime ago and look forward to a return at some more remote time in the future. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than to have been able to take advantage of your invitation as a very excellent excuse for renewing old acquaintances there.

“Three Comrades,” my latest picture, will soon be released. “Northwest Passage” looms in the near future, and from all appearances is very promising. It will be in technicolor.

It would be as though they were all alone. (Robert Taylor & Loretta Young in “Private Number.”)

With best wishes for the success of your dance, and regretting my inability to take advantage of your charming invitation.

Sincerely,
Robert Taylor (signature)
RT/JK

The letter is accompanied by an article in the school newspaper.

The Girl Who Dared, Or Robert Taylor’s Reply is this week’s box office attraction, starring that idol of American womanhood, beautiful Bob Taylor, and Stoddard’s girl who took a dare, ROSE KAPLAN.

ROSE, when “pikered” to write filmdom’s First Lover, penned him an invitation to the senior formal. There was kidding in the right of her and kidding to the left of her, and all the classes buzzed—at the forwardness of the gal. Her date for the formal graciously and grinningly offered to go “blind” if the guy from Culver City accepted.

Monday, Dare-Devil KAPLAN got the reply that will be a museum piece down the centuries. Mr. Taylor regrets, etc…but there it is. Robert Taylor’s polite decline to the invitation equals [unclear] most eloquent acceptance. (He made it on personal stationery, too.)

Robert Taylor and fans.

You have a campus agog with envy, ROSE, and we wish this were the opening chapter of a week-to-week serial. Anyway, if you exhibit that letter—dubs on two matinee seats.

No hard-working reporter brought in anything this week is the equal of the scoop HONEY ROSE KAPLAN scooped when she got “regrets” from Robert Taylor for not being able to take her to the senior formal. Mr. Taylor’s answer was good, yes indeed, but Rose’s (too bad we couldn’t get a copy) invitation must have been better to have merited such a gracious refusal. This came on tan personal stationery with “Robert Taylor” engraved in golden brown in the right-hand corner.

[Text of letter follows. They note that the signature is in Mr. Taylor’s own handwriting]