Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

I Was Too Poor To Have Dreams (Continued from page 34) their big bosoms, their curves, their slickcombed hair, their pouting months — they moved him all right. But only so far. "In the long run they're actresses or would-be actresses," he once said, " — and competitive, just like men. And who needs two of those in the same apartment for any length of time?" HE HAD NO IDEA AT THE TIME— three years ago — that there was a girl for him, a girl named Ellie, a girl he would fall for and who would fall for him and who would change his mind about the subject of marriage, and even change him. He had no idea of her existence three years ago. He only knew that he was. in one hell of a state. And, sometimes, when he really pondered his fate, he would wonder how things, life, might have been for him if he weren't an actor; if Hollywood were some faraway place the ladies in the neighborhood read about, and not the place where he lived and worked . . . and he would wonder how things, life, might have been if the trouble hadn't started between his folks back in Naponee, Wisconsin, way back when he was just a kid of four; if his mother hadn't been beautiful and restless and if Mr. Ziegfeld had never told her to look him up should she ever decide to enter the glorious world of show business. . . . "And he told me I should," he remembered her voice cry out that night, back in Naponee. Florenz Ziegfeld — she'd said. The greatest producer of them all. He'd been there in Atlantic City; there, at the Contest. He'd come up to her when the contest was over and he'd said, "I think, personally, Miss Graf, that you should have been elected Miss America. But know this," he said, "anytime you want to come work for me, you can, Miss Graf." . . . And that had been Florenz Ziegfeld speaking. Ziegfeld! He remembered his mother's voice that night. And he remembered his father's silence. And he remembered how it was that next morning, the morning after the trouble, standing there on the little platform of the Naponee railroad station, saying goodbye to his father, then getting on the train with his mother — just the two of them and those two big tan suitcases of theirs; how then, after a while, after they'd sat in their coach seats for a while and then had gone to have breakfast in the dining car and then had come back to their coach seats again, he had looked up at his mother and had seen that she was crying and he'd asked her, "Mama, where are we going?" They were going to New York, he remembered her saying. Mama was going to have an interview with Mr. Ziegfeld, in his own private office. And then Mr. Z. was going to give her a part in one of his shows, like he'd said he would, and make her into what she'd always wanted to be — a star of the New York stage. David remembered how his mother had cried, very softly and confused-like, for over an hour after she'd said that. . . . His mother, strong and determined a woman as she was, had been very unhappy those next five years, he remembered. She had gotten to see Mr. Ziegfeld, all right. And he had given her a part in one of his productions, a big and fancy musical. Only it, was a very small part and it was with one of the great impresario's touring shows, and not his New York company. So, he remembered, for those next five years they'd traveled around the country, the mother (she'd divorced her husband in this time) and the son and their two big tan suitcases, from city to city, town to town, living in each place for a few weeks at a stretch and then packing, boarding a train and moving on, the mother more and more heartbroken that nothing really big was happening to her. the son more and more lost in a backstage world of bright lights, brash comedians, poker-playing musicians and self-loving and cutie-pie Follies girls. It would be, David remembers, that they would get to a hotel in a new town and he'd walk down the street during the day while everybody else was asleep, looking for somebody to play with. He'd meet some kid, the son of the owner of the cafeteria where they ate maybe, or some kid who delivered papers to the hotel. They'd become friendly. Pals. And then, before he knew it, he would have to say goodbye and he would know that he would never see this kid again, not for as long as he lived . . . He didn't want this anymore. It hurt too much. He began to want to vomit every time he knew they were going to have to leave and he would have to say goodbye ... So he avoided kids. He didn't look for friends anymore. This was the beginning of a lifetime occupation for David — not looking for friends. He became a brooder. He sat alone in hotel rooms. He became a boy who just existed. It was a lousy feeling — young as he was he knew this, that it was wrong, unnatural. But time passed and there was nothing he could do about it. FINALLY, IN 1939, when David was nine, his mother left the Ziegfeld show and moved to Hollywood. Her aim was a final fling, a long shot: to try to get into pictures. She entered the movie town with high hopes and some money she'd saved. It wasn't long, however, before her hopes were gone, and her money; before she was working as a saleslady in the May Co. department store in order to make ends meet. This was when she decided that her son would become an actor. "Why?" David asked, the day she took time off from her job and started making the studio rounds with him. "Because," she said, "you're a goodlooking boy and you've got a good speaking voice and I think you'll make a fine actor . . . Besides," she added, "I don't want you ending up a short-order cook or a car-hop, God forbid." ("I've never figured," David says, smilingly, today, "why when my mother got excited she would pick on those two jobs. I think that deep-down she'd seen me sitting around those hotel rooms so long, doing nothing, she was really afraid I was going to wind up a plain ordinary bum!") Within a few days after they'd started their tour of the moving picture studios, David landed his first role. The picture was called Swamp Fire. The stars were those two Tarzans of days gone by, Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe. The experience, for David, was one of mixed emotions. On one hand he hated the work — "the director was always goading me. And I didn't like wearing powder and rouge." But, on the other hand, David had few complaints, really. Because despite what happened Mondays through Fridays, from seven to seven, he knew that come evenings, come weekends, he could hop on a bus and go to a place called Home. It wasn't a big place, Home; only a fourroom apartment, in fact; but for the first time in a long long time David Janssen had a room of his own and a mailbox with his and his mother's name on it and a storage room in the cellar with a lock on it, where they parked their two big tan suitcases. And the place was far from the railroad station. And there wasn't a cafeteria within blocks. And for the first time in a long long time young David felt something like what he knew other kids must feel like. And no, he was not complaining. THINGS GOT EVEN BETTER after his mother re-married. He'll never forget the night, when he was thirteen, a couple of years after the wedding, when his mother came into his room and sat alongside him on his bed. She'd just put her new baby daughter to sleep in her crib. She was smiling. "David," she said, out of the clear blue, it seemed, "would you like to give up picture work?" "How do you mean?" he asked. "Just that," his mother said. "I'm proud of the work you've done, Davie. Maybe a little selfishly — but I am proud. I've seen a dream of mine come true," she said. "Do you understand what I mean?" "Sort of," said the boy. "And now," his mother went on, "more important, I want you to have your own dreams . . . What are they, Davie?" She took his hand. "Your dreams?" The boy thought for a while. Then he told them to her, gradually. He would like most of all, he said, to go to a school, a real school. He didn't like those one-room classrooms at the studios, he said, where most of the time he was the only student in the place — just him and a teacher. And then after school, real school, he said, he would like to go to college and study something interesting, like engineering, aviation engineering or chemical engineering, something like that. He knew, he said, that college was expensive, that things were tough and he couldn't expect his parents to pay his way. But, he said, he liked sports and maybe if he worked hard enough at them he could get an athletic scholarship to some good college, and with a scholarship, he said, well, then everything would be all wrapped up and taken care of. When he was through, he asked his mother, "Is that an all right thing for me to want?" "Yes," she said. "And you mean it," he asked, " — about me being an actor? I don't have to be one?" "No," she said. "You don't have to be anything you don't want to be." She bent to kiss him. "Goodnight, Davie." she said. "It's getting late. It's time for you to be getting some sleep." And he noticed, as she said that, that her smile was gone and that there were tears in her eyes. "What's the matter?" he asked. She didn't answer at first. "Mama?" he asked. "Mama? ... Is something the matter?" "I ONLY DID WHAT I DID." she said then, "because I, too, had a dream once. I'd been determined to make something of myself. When that failed, I wanted to make something of you . . . Now, I'm only sorry if I've hurt you in any way. I'm sorry. Davie." He sat up, and he put his arms around his mother. "Don't be sorry, Mama," he said. "Please, don't be. . . ." David entered Fairfax High in Hollywood the following week. He became,