Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

Continued from page 49 to recall that this is the very church in which Olivia was baptized, such a few short years ago. Too few, and far too short. . . . You feel a hand grip yours — a strong, comforting hand. And you look up into the eyes of your husband. Roald Dahl, who sits next to you. Without him, you would never have had the strength you needed today. With his help, you pray that you can face not only today, but the many long, sad days and nights to come. Just as you have somehow faced the tragedy of the past few years. The years since Theo’s tragic accident. . . . You had to act! But right now, the present and the recent past are too painful to think about. And your mind, seeking some escape, can’t help recalling how different everything was when you were very young — when you were Patsy Louise Neal (how you hated that name!), a tall ( far too tall, as you knew only too well) and gawky young girl from Kentucky. You thought of only one thing in those days: that somehow, some way, you just had to become an actress. And it all seemed so wonderfully easy at first, though of course it was hard work, too. The fortunate meeting with Eugene O’Neill in New York City, where you had come fresh from Northwestern University in search of a break in the theater. After a few months of taking odd jobs to support yourself, you met O’Neill in the Theater Guild offices. And he helped you get a part in summer stock that led to the starring role in “Another Part of the Forest” on Broadway. That was the role that brought theatrical awards showering down on you. How the folks back home must have gasped when you wrote them that you'd actually sat in a drugstore sipping a malted with America's number one playwright! But you never dreamed, in those young and golden days in the mid-1940s, that your own life would rival in tragedy the lives of Gene O’Neill’s most starcrossed heroines. You hit Hollywood in 1948, with a toppaying Warner Brothers contract in your pocket, and gave out an interview that must have come back to haunt you since then: “Pm the original nothing-ever-happens girl,” you told a reporter, apologizing because you didn’t have an exciting life story. Barely over a year later, you were linked with a married man. His name was Gary Cooper. You met Coop when you co-starred with him in “The Fountainhead.” one of your first pictures. Like a knight in armor, f Gary — kind, gallant, wonderful Gary — came to your rescue when you needed him most. For something had already gone QU. _ ... wrong . . . terribly wrong. All the poise that had helped you sail through your stage roles suddenly left you when you started working in the movies. The stopand-start. no-rehearsal system made you panic. You couldn’t perform your roles to your satisfaction, and you felt you were botching up your scenes. Not only that— you were once again all too conscious of your height, five feet eight inches, which made you tower over movie leading men. You had even taken to slouching around the Warner lot in low heels, until Jack Warner himself scolded you: “Stand up and be your height!” And then you met Coop. Who could feel nervous alongside calm, relaxed Coop? What’s more, “She loves doing scenes with Gary Cooper because he is one of the few actors taller than she,” a columnist noted. But it soon became apparent — first to just the two of you. and then to Rocky Cooper, and finally to all of Hollywood — that there was another reason you loved acting with Coop. It was because you loved the man himself. And after you and he had made another picture together, he and Rocky separated. That was in the spring of 1951 — a spring you’ll never forget. For suddenly you found your picture in all the newspapers, with harsh headlines labeling you “the other woman” in the Coopers’ separation. At first you denied that you’d had anything to do with the breakup. In fact, you told photoplay, “I’m sure most intelligent people agree with me that no one could break up a happy marriage.” Ironically, Elizabeth Taylor was to use almost those identical words nearly a decade later, in denying that she had broken up the marriage of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. But there the resemblance ended. For Liz is a wilful woman who takes what she likes, no matter how many lives may be affected. But you and Coop both fought against the emotions that swept you both up so suddenly, and even after the separation it was a long time before you were seen in public together. Your strict Southern upbringing made you shudder at the thought of breaking up another woman’s marriage, and it’s obvious that you did think what you said was true — that you “Do you think it’s easy . . . dusting 41 rooms, for $8.50 and carfare ?” can't break up a really happy marriage. But the strings that bound Coop to Rocky were too strong to be broken — perhaps to his surprise as well as yours. The separation dragged on through most of 1951, with no sign that he was planning to ask Rocky for his freedom. Rocky was there The impossibility of your position be I came painfully clear at, of all places, a party — one of the first you and Coop had attended together. Rocky was there, too, with Peter Lawford, who was then one of Hollywood’s most popular bachelors. Everything seemed to go wrong for you that night. You and Coop came in as quietly as possible, and went directly to the end of the bar. When Rocky came in, laughing and chatting with Peter, you suddenly realized what it meant to be up against a sophisticated woman of the world who was determined to win back her husband. She was superbly gowned, making you all too conscious that your taste in clothing had never been too sure. Her hair was immaculately coiffed, and you realized too late that the flowers in your own hair made you look like an insipid young ingenue. The worst part, though, came later in the evening, when someone asked you to dance. While you were on the dance floor, you noticed out of the corner of your eye that Coop had gone over to Rocky’s table and was engaged in deep conversation with her. That was when you realized you’d lost. “I will not see Coop again,” you told Hedda Hopper in an interview. “How many times have you been in love. Pat?” she asked you. “Only once,” you said. And then the pain was too much to bear, and you couldn’t help adding. “Wouldn’t you know it would be just my luck to fall in love with a married man?” By now Hollywood was all ashes for you. Your romance was over, and your career was slipping badly. Warner Brothers had dropped you, and with your usual candor you admitted to a reporter that the reason was simple: All your pictures had been boxoffice flops. Oh, you were still in demand, and Fox signed you for one or two pictures a year. But your stock was sharply down, and you knew it. To forget Coop, and to get away from Hollywood with its unhappy memories, you went first to Korea, to entertain the troops, and then to New York, for a Broadway play — “The Children’s Hour.” And soon after your arrival in New York, the seemingly impossible happened. You met a man who made you forget your heartbreak. Roald Dahl was a man who nobody ■ could ignore. For one thing — and this was certainly in his favor, as far as you were concerned — he was six feet, six inches tall. A brilliant writer whose satirical and horror pieces glittered in the pages of the New Yorker and other magazines, he loved the theater as you did. But he was no Ivory-Tower dweller. He’d been a Battle of Britain pilot during World War II, and although he was a Scandinavian, England was now his home. You began dating him steadily. He shared your delight in the glowing reviews for your Broadway performance in