Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

so frugally rationed in those first years, we could spare none of it for petty bickering or the frequent inconsequential differences that arise in what marital soothsayers call the "adjustment" period. Another overworked theory is that no marriage is big enough for two careers. Not as experts, but just as a happily married couple, Betty and I would like to debunk that one. We believe our work is the fundamental basis of our ever-growing understanding and pleasure in each other. And our careers themselves are looking healthier. Contrary to popular belief, I did not descend from a pink cloud just in time to oet in on The Jolson Story. I had slashed through a solid wall of 30 "B" ("B" as in 'bad") pictures, before getting a chance at my first "A" production, Counter Attack, just about the time Betty and I married. And while Betty had made a start on Broadway in Cole Porter's Something For The Boys, her first starring role in Call Me Mister came shortly after the wedding and just about the time The Jolson Story began rolling. As a bachelor, I couldn't have explamed why I always wanted to marry an actress, but T did. There was one other requisite she had to be a good actress. I would hate to go through life married to a bad actress. As a happily married guy with his dream a reality, I think I know why my heart was set on an actress-wife. When I come home from the studio with my day's problems, Betty is not only sympathetic, but she understands from her own experience exactly what I'm talking about. I never could have weathered the gruelling, endless months of production on both The Jolson Story and its sequel, Jolson Sings Again, without Betty to come home to. One night just about the time Jolson Sings Again was finished (or so we thought) the studio brain -trusters added three more songs. Along with the news of weeks more of rehearsing, recording, rehearsing again, everything on the set went wrong that day. Betty listened to my fuming and growling while she fixed hot soup and cold chicken sandwiches that evening for dinner. As usual, she said all the right things to soothe my ruffled spirit. Sitting there on a high kitchen stool, almost drowned in a voluminous blue apron and with a stray blonde curl bobbing just above her nose, she looked like a tired little kid as she buttered slices • of my favorite crusty bread. "How'd you do today, honey?" I asked that's hoil Carl Schroeder tells it: Those in Hollywood who know Father MacDonald of Notre Dame are exceedingly fond of him. "You know, Father," a Hollywood press agent said to him recently, "I am sick of the problems of those $3,000-a-week actors. I have ten of them under contract and every day they come into my office to tell me their troubles. I don't know how I stand it." "Do you think that's tough?" the priest asked. "How'd you like to be one of God's press asents?" Irving Hoffman in The Hollywood Reporter her, sorry I'd been so grumpy. "Did they shoot your dance number?" That particular dance number was her current pride and joy. "Not so good," she said, wrinkling her nose ruefully. "They cut it out. Too many dance numbers." Here I was, complaining about a couple of extra weeks' shooting (but also an added chance to build up the picture) and Betty had been working just as hard, only to see her best spot cut out. Then in my comprehensive denunciation of everyone even remotely connected with Betty's disappointment, I completely forgot about my own peeve. After I had consigned all of MGM's executives, directors, producers, and cameramen to permanent box office oblivion and Betty had fashioned countless scathing appraisals of Columbia's unreasonable campaign to overwork her husband, we both felt much better. All the pent-up tension was gone. Betty soaked her poor dance-weary feet and I gargled my blistered tonsils which had emitted about 45 renditions of Sonny Boy that day. Then we both fell into bed for a sound ten hours of sleep. Waking in the morning, we weren't mad at anybody. Jolson Sings Again would be my best performance and Betty's remaining numbers would stand out even more brilliantly because there weren't too many! It was a new day — acting was our dish — and tonight, reunion! opposite outlooks . . . For a pair who see eye to eye on practically everything, Betty and I are poles apart in temperament. I am a worrier. I worry about leaking faucets, overacting, underplaying a scene, the state of the world, and the chances of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Betty is as carefree as a kitten, refuses to worry and keeps on hand an enormous supply of silver linings with which she outfits every cloud that appears on her daily horizon. I'm cautious and methodical about work when I'm rehearsing or learning a part. "Stuffy" is her specific adjective for this sterling trait. Timetables, curtain-time and other institutions of immovable habit have never intimidated my wife. Once when I went back to New York for the opening of Call Me Mister, she had me in a cold bath of perspiration as curtain-time moved nearer and nearer, and we hadn't yet left the hotel. When we reached the theater at last, the curtain was going up and Betty had about eight minutes to change, make up, and be onstage. She made it, and as always was poised, calm and terrific. Now take me. I would have been pacing the dressing room for hours, going over every word, every gesture. And would mine be a better performance? I should say not. Some day Betty and I want to do a play on Broadway together. This will probably take ten years off my life. I will certainly work myself into a nightly lather, just wondering if we'll make the opening curtain. Betty insists the experience will be good for me, and guarantees that under her guidance, I will soon be shaving, dressing, racing to the theater, changing clothes and singing the second chorus of my opening number — in four minutes flat. If in all this, I've conveyed the impression that I think my wife is the swellest girl in the world, then this is a true story. And when you hear people say that Larry Parks got his lucky break in The Jolson Story, will you tell them for me that he got his real lucky break the day he met Betty Garrett? The End Larry Parks' current film is Jolson Sings Again; Betty Garrett's is On the Town. if. to Only a woman can appreciate what the invention of *Tampax means to her while passing through those "certain days" of the month. . . . This modern monthly sanitary protection is worn internally . . . and the user is not aware of its presence. This fact alone should give her poise and reduce her embarrassment and mental anxiety — A call to freedom! The Tampax method has been called the freedom method because it gives a woman freedom from the pin-belt-pad harness as well as freedom from odor. Also, Tampax gives freedom from bulging or wrinkling beneath sheer dresses and freedom from trouble in changing or disposal. A doctor thought it up Tampax was perfected by a physician and is made of pure surgical cotton compressed in dainty applicators. You cannot even feel the Tampax when in place. Three absorbencies: Regular, Super, Junior. Ask for Tampax at drug stores, notion counters. Tampax Incorporated, Palmer, Mass. *Reg.-U. S.Pat. Off. 1 IrXfMB Accepted for Advertising by the Journal of the American Medical Association