Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

Flatter Yourself! There are many things about Tummy Tucker you'll adore, its design, its comfort, its low price and especially Tummy Tucker's famous "INSIDE STORY" the concealed inner, elasticized panel which helps make your figure lovelier to look at. Only Lewella gives you Tummy Tucker with the "INSIDE STORY". Write for name of nearest store. LEWEL MFG. CO. 149 Madison Ave., N. Y. 16 Roberta in New York at the time, but I flew back to Cleveland whenever I got the chance. I wanted to be with my mother as much as possible. In a year's time, after going through terrible suffering, she died. I hit the lowest moment of my life that day. She never knew the name of the enemy that, had taken her life. But I did. And at that moment my faith in life and in justice hit its lowest ebb, too. In church we had learned about a great Friend who was kind, just and merciful. In one of his sermons, the minister had spoken eloquently of how not even a sparrow could fall without God's noting it and suffering for the anguish of that sparrow. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows," he had read from the New Testament. I had grown up believing that this was a world of justice and fair play; that if you always did that which was right to the best of your ability, you would get your reward. But look at the reward my mother had gotten in return for years of selfsacrifice: pain and anguish at the end. TVdn't the Bible say, "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your besom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again." My mother had given only goodness and kindness. So why should He who was supposed never to miss the fall of a sparrow have allowed her to suffer such a fate? What sort of justice was being dealt out m a universe where a wonderful woman who had made sacrifices for her children all her life, died, just when they had reached the kind of success where they could take care of her? Why hadn't a merciful God spared her this suffering' Or was much that I had learned in church untrue? Was this a world in which one couldn't count on either mercy or justice? In those bitter days following my mothers illness and death, that was the way it looked to me. Years later, I hit another low. My younger brother, Syd, was dying of the same illness that had killed my mother I thought he didn't know what was happening to him— that at least he would be spared that much. Then one day he sent for me. "Bob," he said, "I just want to ask one thing— take care of my five kids when it happens." I knew then that he knew. Again my faith faltered. Syd, like my mother, had been a good, kind person. He had loved his family and done everything he could for them. Sure, I could take care of his five kids financially. But kids need and want their own father— and he was such a wonderful father. Why should he be taken away when they needed him so much' No sermon I had ever heard in church answered those questions for me. My brother had done his best to lead an upright life. Yet he had been struck down by cancer. Most of the things I had been taught in the past seemed like a hollow mockery of the truth. My mother and brother had believed these things. They had believed in a kind and merciful God. But here was the spectre of injustice haunting my own family. No wonder I asked myself: Are we all pawns in a game of universal chess? Was there an unkind and malignant Fate which put the finger on people who were good and kind with the same impartiality with which it struck down others? In that case, there could be neither justice or mercy expected from an Unseen Power. One day Fred Williams, one of my writers, anrl T wprp rli^fiis^' from Palm Springs in a driving rain, along roads that were rather greasy, for they were smudging the orange groves near Beaumont. Suddenly the car swerved and hit a ditch. It turned over, ran into a tree and I was thrown through the door I remember seeing little sparks; I remember how my neck jerked and how I thought, "This is it. I'm going to die " I remember everything that happened till I got hit on the head and blanked out. XT/" hen I recovered consciousness there was a lump as big as an ostrich egg on my right shoulder. I was half delirious with the shock of the accident. Fred Williams started waving frantically for someone to stop. A car finally did stop, and the driver took us to see Dr. McCarthy at the Riverside Mission Inn. He looked me over and said he'd better take me to a hospital! 1 should have been dead or seriously injured. Instead I emerged with nothing worse than a dislocated shoulder. I was put m a cast for ten days till I begged to be let out. Then I was put in a harness It started me thinking. Why had I been spared? My narrow escape certainly made it seem as if there is a good Friend in heaven looking out for us— One who would be conscious of the fall of every sparrow and to whom we are of more value than many sparrows. This isn't the only narrow escape I've had from death. I've flown about a million miles under all kinds of conditions, in have you seen page 8? all kinds of planes. Once I was in a Navy plane m Australia when the motor conked out. It was a sea plane, and we were high over the mountains. The pilot, Lt. Ferguson had to get near some body of water. Making his way over strange territory on one motor, he hit the water, skipped 100 feet, skipped another 50 feet and ran into a sand bar, making a magnificent landing It we had hit the sand bar first before we hit the deep water, the plane might have gone up in flames. I thought a lot about that. Certainly we had a great pilot. It turned out he was a kid who lived just around the street from me He couldn't have made that landing without help from an even greater Pilot When one escapes from death by a narrow margin, as I have so often, one has to say, "Hello Friend." You say it reverently, not quite understanding how these miracles work. But I do know that to go through the things I've faced, I had to have the best of help from every angle. My own narrow escapes from death helped me regain my faith. But I still couldn't understand why the great Friend who had spared me so many times hadn't spared my mother and brother their suffering. Then still another narrow escape from a serious injury gave me the clue. Tt happened about a year ago, when I was Jmaking Fancy Pants at Paramount, and was thrown off a prop horse. At first a counter-balance had been used for the prop, but the director had decided there wasn't enough action and ordered the counter-balance taken off. When I was six feet in the air, I flew off the horse, exposing my back to the hard concrete. Everyone on the set thought I must have broken my back. For two days doctors Xrayed me. They found that by a miracle, I d fallen on the right muscles and not one vertebra in my back was broken. The doctor added one more statement.