Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

MARCH BIRTHDAYS If your birthday falls in March, your birthstone is the aquamarine and your flower is the jonquil. And here are some of the stars who share it with you: March l— Harry Belafonte David Niven March 2— Jennifer Jones Desi Arnaz March 8— Cyd Charisse Sean McClory March 16 — Cornell Borchers Jerry Lewis March //--Michael O'Shea March IS Marjorie Hellen March 19 — Louis Hayward March 20— Wendell Corey March 22— Karl Maiden March 23— Joan Crawford March 24 — Richard Conte Gene Nelson March 26— Sterling Haydert March 28— Frank Lovejoy March 29— Dennis O'Keefe March 31— Diane Jergens Shirley Jones Richard Kiley Jay C. Fiippen John Smith March 6 March 6 Gordon MacRae MacDonald Carey 70 March 12 March 15 Last Photos of Diane Varsi {Continued from page 40) in that tiny annex right next door to it. It's got two rooms upstairs. Two rooms down . . Fools lots of curious folks who drive by Sundays to take a look and who think that maybe they'll get to see her and that little son of hers." He turned his head slightly. "She's been divorced twice, you know," he said. "Son's from the first marriage . . . Twenty-two years old and divorced twice. What do you think of that?" He looked back at the road. "Yup," he said, "that's it, up ahead, the small place. And it sure fools folks who drive by Sundays to take a look. Most of 'em think she's still got all that California money and lives in the big house." He stopped the cab, with a jolt, in front of the little place. "I better wait," he said, as we paid him and got out. "You're liable to be right back in here, you know." We felt him watching us as we walked to the door and knocked; as — after a few moments — the door opened and Diane stood there looking at us; as she whispered something, surprised, at first; and then as she began to smile a little and said how nice it was to see us and asked us if we wouldn't come inside. "You stayin'?" we heard the cabdriver call out, at that point. We said we were, for a little while. "Humph." he said. Then he said, "Well, let's make it a hour-and-a-half, if that's all right with you. 'Cause you can't phone me when you want me to come. She ain't even got a phone in there!" Diane today And, with that, he drove away. . . . Diane closed the front door and led us into the living room of her house. As we walked along with her, we noticed that she looked lovely, and relaxed — more lovely, more relaxed than we had ever known her to look. She was dressed in slacks, light blue, and a white blouse. Her hair was longer than she had usually worn it, softer-looking, it seemed. Her blue eyes were bright. Her skin was clear, her cheeks rosy, minus the blemishes that had marred them at the time she left Hollywood. The living room we entered now was a smallish room, no larger than eight-bytwenty; sparsely-furnished — with one couch, one chair, a phonograph, some records, a bookcase — half -filled, a Picasso print on one of the walls, a pair of neat but ancient-looking curtains on the window. We both sat. And Diane spoke first. She asked us nothing about why we had come to see her (a subject we ourselves didn't intend to bring up immediately). Instead, she said, very simply, "Nobody has ever come to visit here before. You're the first company I've had in this house. It feels nice. Very, very nice." Then, quickly, she began to ask about the few good friends she'd had in Hollywood the three years she was there, people we mutually knew. She asked about Diane Baker, Dick Sargent, Dean Stockwell. She'd worked with Dean in Compulsion, her last picture. They'd been very close. "Has he done any directing?" she asked. "I remember the last time I talked to him he said how anxious he was to do that." We told Diane that as far as we knew he hadn't directed anything yet, but that he was doing lots of television. Had she seen him, we asked, in the Ernest Hemingway story, The Killers, a few months back? Diane shook her head. "Like the taxi man told you, I don't own a phone," she said, "and I don't own a TV either. "Maybe when Shawn is a little older — maybe then I'll get one," she went on. "I mean, he'll want to see things like cartoons, the Disney things. And the way he's so crazy about cowboys — " She nodded. "Yes, I guess I'll have to get one then, when he's older . . . But not before." We asked about Shawn, how he was. "Sweet," Diane said. "A good boy." He went upstairs now, she said. He'd had his nap a little while earlier and he was upstairs getting dressed. "My mother's here for a while, with us, and she's helping. They get along very well. They're very simpatico, my mother and my son. They can spend hour after hour together and enjoy themselves thoroughly. Time passes very quickly for them." And how was time passing for herself? we asked. "It passes well," Diane said, smiling a little again. She brought her hands up behind her head. Taking care of her son — of her house — that made time pass, she said. Fooling around with her jeep when something went wrong with it — that made time pass. Taking classes at the college a few times a week — mostly in poetry — studying, reading, writing poetry of her own — that made time pass. We asked Diane if we could read one of her poems, hear one. "Never," she said, bringing down her hands and clapping them together, laughingly. "Nobody read Emily Dickinson's poems till she was dead. And nobody's going to read mine — ever." She winked. "Unless maybe one, someday, maybe, if I feel it's good enough." She got up, suddenly. "Coffee," she said, " — I should have asked you earlier. Would you like some? Good and hot and with rich brown sugar?" We said we would. Souvenirs Diane headed for a door that led to the kitchen, stopped midway and walked over to the phonograph instead. She picked up the few records that lay on the floor, underneath the phonograph, and examined them. "Just so you won't get bored waiting," she said, "how about a little music?" We noticed that one of the records was a capriccio by Saints-Saens. One was Bach — toccatas and fugues. One was the Surprise Symphony by Haydn. One was Kurt Weill's Berlin Songs . . . We remembered, silently, that these were the same few records Diane had had when she was back in Hollywood, in her home in Topanga Canyon. And we wondered, silently, if Diane kept these records, and only these records, as a link to the past, a past she somehow missed. Despite her relaxed look. Despite her smiles. Her laughter. . . . We brought up the subject of returning to Hollywood, finally, a little while later, as we were having our coffee. We brought it up suddenly, in order to get an immediate and true reaction. And a reaction we got. Before Diane said a word the coloring in her cheeks vanished, we saw. The brightness in her eyes dimmed. Her lips pursed momentarily. And then she sighed and, her voice tight-sounding, tense, she said. "I couldn't ever go back. It's not for me. It never was and it never will be. Know that . . . please. Please know that." She was silent for a moment.