Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1951)

a Such Beautiful Music" after." Now I was about to find out. Actually, my marriage has been more like a fairy tale than anything else. It all started once upon a time — a little less than two years ago to be exact — on Stop the Music. Remember the silver-toned crooner who has the singing spot on the show? I'm sure you do. That's Dick, the one and only man in my life. He literally swept me off my feet in a whirlwind romance that left me breathless for the first time in years. On Sunday evenings, I play Patsy on Nick Carter — Master Detective, where I scream at least once a week and help Nick solve myriads of crimes. At that time I was on Stop the Music, too, and I'd have to dash right over from the Nick Carter show. I arrived rather late one night last May and took the only empty seat on the stage — right behind Dick. He turned around and whispered, "How about a cup of coffee afterwards?" I shook my head. "Got a date." "How about tomorrow?" "Uh-uh, busy." I didn't even know him, I thought to myself. Why should I bother to go out with him — even if he was so handsome? The following Saturday, I bumped into him on the dance floor of one of the hotels in New York. He was with a lovely-looking redhead, and he scarcely said, "hello," to me. When I saw him again after the show on Sunday, I stopped him outside the studio. "That was a beautiful girl you were dancing with last night. Are you in love with her?" "Nope." Dick grinned at me. "I'm in love with you." So we made a date for the next day. Dick picked me up at my apartment, and informed me that "you're going to be married to me by December." I laughed then, but a month later it wasn't a joke. It was love. By July 21st we were engaged, and Dick pulled a classic on the television show, This is Show Business. That's where entertainers present their problems to a panel of advisers, consisting of George S. Kaufman, Abe Burrows, a guest, and Clifton Fadiman (moderator) . "Now that I'm getting married," Dick told them, "my future wife says I should conserve my strength and not go out of town so much." (He sings in the nightclub circuit outside of New York, and I had once kidded him about it.) "You won't be going out of town much longer," Kaufman promised him. "You're so handsome, I'm going to have to do a show with you." "You're beautiful," added Burrows. Dick broke up the show. "Sorry, boys," he quipped. "I'm engaged." We decided not to wait for December. When you're engaged, you see each other every day and you might just as well be married. So we jumped the gun early in October, and had a delayed honeymoon two months later — five glorious days together basking in the Florida sunshine and making love under a Miami moon. Dick likes to kid me about our wedding day. "Remember, honey, when we were married and you went to work R the same night?" I went to work every night that first week; Dick must have felt like the proverbial stage-door Johnny. The second week he went to Washington on «0 (Continued from page 26) a nightclub assignment, and I know I felt like a grass widow. It hasn't been much different since. I work regularly on a number of radio shows. The Brighter Day, Nick Carter, and Twenty Questions. I also narrate Fashions On Parade for Yesterday's Newsreels. That means that I'm forever popping in and out of the apartment. Dick goes out of town every other week, flies into New York on Sundays for Stop the Music when he can. I am unable to join him on the road because of my radio commitments. With careers like ours, you might wonder how Dick and I manage to stay married at all, no less blissfully married. It's easy, really. I've always felt that two people, who are in love and who really work at marriage, have happiness right in the palms of their hands. If they understand each other, share common interests, have fun together (as Dick and I do) , they can't miss. Our pattern is a simple one, and we've never yet had even one good solid argument. Day by day, we work all our problems out together; professionally, we leave each other strictly alone. Dick does the singing; I do the acting. (Or as my friends put it: "Dick does the singing, Charlotte does the talking.") When I start warbling off-key in the shower or behind a dust cloth, he brandishes his razor and breaks into Shakespeare: "Is this a dagger that I see before me . . .?" I know when I'm licked. All Dick has to do is make me laugh. He has a wonderful sense of humor. It never fails him, even in the morning when I'm so grouchy I can't even talk before I've had my second cup of coffee. He can cook, too. There's a sensational kind of omelet he whips up sometimes when we get hungry around midnight. I don't know what he puts in it, but it certainly tastes good. There never was any question of my giving up my career when we married. Dick is as proud of my acting as I am of his singing. He understands what I mean when I say, "How can you turn your back on happiness?" I'd rather have a good role — one that's a challenge — than all the money in the world. My husband rates number one priority, and I make sure he never doubts that. But acting is my hobby, and I would feel only half a person without it. My career was really the beginning of the fairy tale. The store opens several years ago, when I hung my college diploma on the bedroom wall, buried my teaching license in the bottom dresser drawer, and set out from Brooklyn by subway to seek fame and fortune in the theater. I had a letter of introduction to a producer, who might be able to help me get a toehold on Broadway, I hoped. But I stumbled into the Theater Guild office by mistake. That turned out to be the luckiest mistake I ever made. Two men were sitting in the office, pouring over a script. They told me where I could find my producer, then followed me to the door. "Just a minute. Are you an actress?" "Yes, I am." It wasn't a lie, really. I'd won a scholarship to New York University through my work with the Washington Square Players. "Fine." The two men beamed at me. "Take off your hat." I was hired on the spot to understudy the lead in "Ringside Seat," a forthcoming Broadway play. Then things started happening — the unpredictable, sensational things that won me the title of "Cinderella Girl" and, years later, delivered me into the arms of Dick Brown, Prince Charming extraordinare. The night "Ringside Seat" opened on the Great White Way, my good fairy waved her magic wand and our leading lady lost her voice. With my heart pounding and my stomach doing setting-up exercises, I went on in her place. It was Thanksgiving week, and the play was right in season — a turkey. But I got fabulous reviews. The night before we closed, there came a knock on my dressing room door. It was a director from NBC. "You have a lovely voice," he congratulated me. "If you're interested in radio, come and see me." I'd been trained in Shakespeare, Shaw and Sheridan; I didn't know one bit of radio lingo. But I did know opportunity when I heard it. I marched around to NBC, auditioned for Parade of Progress, and got the glamor-girl lead over two hundred other young hopefuls. My pumpkin really had turned into a coach. Only then it was the subway back to Brooklyn, and I had to break the news to my family. Mother and Dad were wonderful. They hadn't wanted me to become an actress. But they'd made a bargain with me. "Get your teaching license first. Then take a crack at the theater for a year." I had kept my word. Now they kept theirs, as they always had. Mother brought out our best china and threw a dinner party. Dad kept proposing toasts to me — over wine, water and coffee. I think they really were proud of me, even though I was determined to read from scripts and not from textbooks. I soon found out I had a lot to learn. What I didn't know about radio would have filled a New York public library. The first time a director said, "Fade," to me, I lowered my voice to a whisper. The engineers in the control room nearly dropped their ear phones. What I was supposed to do was simply to back away from the microphone. Any radio extra knows that. Once I even lost out on a part, because my voice made a clicking noise over the mike during try outs. No, not false teeth; I had a cough drop under my tongue. But my good fairy was right in there pitching. Within three months, I was signed to play the lead on an Arch Oboler show, and had gotten the starring role in Society Girl. Thereby hangs a tale of mistaken identity that would have delighted the soul of my old friend, Shakespeare. It began one rainy afternoon when I was walking down Fifth Avenue. A chauffeur-driven Cadillac pulled up to the curb, and a middle-aged woman leaned out from the back seat. "Can I give you a lift, Brenda?" Who me? I looked behind me and all around, then did a double-take. Nobody else was in sight. "No, thanks," I shrugged that one off. Toward the end of the week I had a date for dinner and the movies. In the restaurant, people kept turning around to stare at me. I was beginning to