Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1959)

New York were silent, but voices echoed around Rex Harrison’s head. The doctor’s voice, gentle, pitying: “We know almost nothing about leukemia, except that it is usually fatal. A disease of the bone marrow ... a form of cancer . . . I’ve taken samples of Miss Kendall’s bone marrow. There is no doubt . . .” His own voice, hoarse with fear. “Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything.” “There is nothing to do.” “Medication?” “There is no medication.” “Treatment?” “There is no treatment.” “There must be. There must be. Doctor, I have money. I can afford the best sanitarium, anywhere in the world. Tell me where to go. Give me hope.” With infinite sadness: “There is no hope.” There is no hope. “There has to be,” he cried out. But the silent streets gave him no answer. On a stoop in front of a tenement house, Rex Harrison sank to his knees and wept. The doctor had offered him a choice — a simple choice. “You can tell her the truth,” he had said. “You can tell her and make what’s left of her life a hell. You can drag her from one doctor to another, looking for cures, fighting a heartbreaking, futile fight. Or you can keep it from her You can simply make her happy. “It’s a kind of disease in its way. It comes without pain, without fever. It does its work in silence while the victim goes his way, knowing nothing. Occasionally, there’s a feeling of tiredness, sometimes anemia; a tendency to bruise easily and unexplained bleeding, but nothing that can’t be fixed up temporarily. There will be no certain illness, no certain pain.” “Only — death,” said Rex bitterly. “But how long — ?” And again, the doctor had shaken his head. “Some live two years, or four, or six — or even as long as twelve. Some die in that many months. Nothing is certain.” Only death. When he rose at last to go home, Rex Harrison had accepted his new double life. A life of careful lies and hidden despair, where all laughter would have a secret core of tears. A life based on two principals alone: Kay would be happy. Kay would not know. And the new life began. On the surface, it ran much as the old one had, and even that was agony to Rex Harrison. For it meant that he left her alone, night after night, to play Professor Higgins in “My Fair Lady.” Sometimes, he could barely apply his stage make-up, his hand shook so. Before it had been a joke; they were apart so many hours they couldn’t possibly get tired of each other. Now, it was no joke. It was a tragic farce which had to be played; there was no way for Rex to drop his huge success, walk out on his contract and his stardom, without telling Kay the truth. But Kay would not know. Kay would be happy. The long-delayed divorce wasn’t funny any longer. Rex phoned his lawyer: “Can’t you hurry it up?” “There are complications. These things take time.” “I haven’t got time!” he cried. Kay, watching him, was puzzled. “Darling, we’ve waited so long; we can wait a little longer.” “No — I don’t want to wait. You might — ” “Might what?” He blinked. “Might leave me for another man.” “Who me? Old scatty Katie? Where would I find one tall enough? Or old enough? I’m thirty-one now, you know — my best years are already behind me.” “Thirty-one,” he repeated, looking at her. “Thirty-one years old.” In June of that year, the divorce came through at last. They were married on the twenty-first of that month, in the All Faiths Universalist Church at Central Park West and 76th Street in New York. Kay wore a simple shirtwaist dress. Her groom blinked down at her through horn-rimmed glasses. It was very quiet and very simple. “Until death do you part,” the minister said. Until death do us part . . . They sailed for London when Rex’s contract was finally up. Kay was famous by then: First for “Genevieve,” then “Les Girls,” an international triumph for her. Producers, who once had told her, “You’re too tail, you’re not pretty, you can’t act and you photograph badly,” now begged for her. Watching the offers pour in, Rex was afraid. They had always planned that Kay would work after their marriage; their careers were tremendously important to them both. If a good offer for a Hollywood movie came through, she would surely want to take it. though Rex would have to stay in England for the British production of “My Fair Lady.” After all, why not? They had forever, didn’t they? So he listened with a sinking heart, when Kay told him she was being sought for a new movie, “The Girl Friend.” “It’s a very attractive offer.” “What are you going to tell them?” he asked. “Why, yes, of course — if they meet my terms.” “And what are your terms?” he asked lightly. “A chauffeured Cadillac, like in ‘Les Girls’? A percentage?” She laughed. “Nothing so simple. Just — they’ll have to make it here in England.” Then she looked at him, and the laughter stopped. “Why, Rex. You didn’t think I’d go away and leave you, did you? I’ll never leave you,” she said. The following January, they were both free of work for a while. “What do you want to do?” he asked. “Oh, anything. Nothing. It really doesn’t matter.” “Kay, you’re not feeling ill, are you? Tired?” “Of course not,” she said. “Only content.” He smiled at her. But he had already made up his mind that they would go to Switzerland. That was the healthiest country in the world, people said. People with tuberculosis went there to be cured, people with practically anything. Of course, according to the doctor, climate wouldn’t affect Kay’s bone marrow; wouldn’t alter by one moment the spread of her cancer. But it couldn’t hurt, could it, to go to a place where miraculous cures happen daily? So they went to Switzerland. And in their hotel room one night, she woke up crying. “I have a pain, Rex. I have a pain . . .” “Don’t move,” he said. She lay still and even through the blur of pain, she knew she had never seen a man move so quickly, act so fast. Within minutes, it seemed, she was out of the hotel and into a hospital in St. Moritz, with a troop of doctors standing beside her bed. There was the sting of a needle, and then, at last, sleep. When she woke up, the pain was gone, and Rex was there. If his voice trembled a little, she was too weak to notice. “Hello,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare for nothing.” “What— what’s wrong with me?” “Nothing,” he repeated. “Just a pain. You’ll be coming home in a few days.” your best moisturizer When your hands are rough, red and dry, dermatologists say they lack moisture, not natural oils. Chamberlain's clear Golden Touch Hand Lotion contains not one but two of the most effective humectants known to science. 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