Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

print, the Karls are burdened unfairly with the worry that others might believe it. He gambled and lost As a result Debbie and Eddie are presently even more reluctant to discuss their private lives. There is, however, a truth buried deep in the relationship between Debbie and Eddie. When Eddie walked off with Liz Taylor he gambled with a lifetime of happiness. He got what he wanted but he didn’t hold it long. Debbie suffered and survived. No woman ever had more right to resent the return of an ex-husband. But today she is happy. She no longer thinks of the past. “That hurt is a closed chapter in my life,” she told Photoplay, “and I am bitter toward no one. I wish nothing but success and happiness to Eddie.” The children have two fathers, their own, who loves them and a new one who also loves them. When they leave Eddie, after a day with him, it is unlikely that they understand the reluctance of his goodbyes or the catch in his throat as they scramble from his side, back into the house with the greens and flowers and trees around it . . . back to their mother, a woman he once loved. The children won’t know for a long time that Daddy, the man they left out in the back of the big black car, has no real home to go to, as they do. It’s worked out well for the kids. And it’s worked out well for Debbie. But their father gambled and lost. Life demanded its debt: loneliness. And Eddie Fisher makes a payment every time his kids leave him. — Alan Somers Debbie’s in Paramount’s “My Six Loves,” and M-G-M’s “How The West Was Won.” Her next is WB’s “Mary, Mary.” JMhl NATALIE WOOD i a Continued fro/n page 42 mind was the idea, ‘You made your mistakes, now let me make mine.’ Only I didn’t really think it was a mistake. “There couldn’t be a better sister than Natalie. She’s kind and generous, and when the going gets rough she’s so patient. We’re a close-knit family and this may be an odd thing to say — but the breakup between Jack and me, with all its aches and pains, has actually drawn Nat closer to my heart. I always loved her, but now Pm beginning to really appreciate her at her true value. I hope she’ll take my word that Pm a reformed character. I can’t say I won’t go balmy about another young man, but next time I’ll try not to be so headstrong. I don’t want to be a problem or make problems for Nat or my family and friends.” Lana is the youngest daughter of Maria and Nicholas Gurdin. Natalie, at twentyfour, is the middle one, and Teddy is eight years older than Nat. In looking back on her abrupt and ill-starred elopement, Lana seems to feel that “it was never meant to get off the ground.” Rather ruefully she says, “It’s like one of those terrible airfield tragedies you read about. The plane zooms up like a rocket. Beautiful! But it never does clear the field. “Jack and I were so sure we were madly, desperately, passionately in love. When we talked it was like singing. When we walked, like flying. We just couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t cheer us on to take the big jump. Not that Nat or Mother or Dad or Nat’s boy friend, Warren Beatty, tried to stop us. They simply warned us not to go too fast. “But of course we weren’t in a mood to listen. Couldn’t they feel what was pounding inside us when Jack and I looked at each other? Were they too old? Silly, isn’t it? Two infatuated kids wondering if a Natalie Wood and a Warren Beatty, still in their early twenties, could be too old to understand romance? That should show how immature we were. They weren’t too old at all. We were just too young. Terribly, terribly young.” So sudden was the wedding of young Lana to the eighteen-year-old son of the TV producer of “Lassie” (Jack’s stepmother is the actress, Bonita Granville), that Hollywood was caught by surprise. Even their most intimate friends had no idea the pair were more than acquaintances in the early stages of dating. When the marriage took place on December 18 in Juarez, Mexico, they had been going around no more than ten days. Someone who saw them’during this brief period describes it as “one of the fastest romances this town ever had, and we’ve had them all. They were like a couple of cubs, pawing and nuzzling, getting to know each other — then bang! — the announcement was in the papers. They were married! It was one of those things that just — throw you!” They told her folks Though everyone else may have been taken off guard, Lana’s family was not. “I’d never have dreamed of doing it without first letting my parents and sisters know,” Lana insists. “The moment we realized we were so much in love that to be separated even for one night was misery, we went straight to my family and told them. Jack wanted it that way, too. I can still see Mother’s face. It was startled, glad, and just a wee bit worried. My father’s even more so. They were very nice to us, though. Mother said, ‘I want you both to be happy. You’re both awfully young, but you’re old enough to think. Lana will be eighteen in March. What do you say to an engagement now and a wedding in June?” “It was a reasonable suggestion — but it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. I looked at my big sister Natalie and said, ‘Nat, you were only nineteen when you got married.’ She smiled. 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