TV Radio Mirror (Jul - Dec 1957)

Sugarfoot Will Hutchins doesn't like people who get lost in the crowd. He himself isn't likely to. Here's Frank Blair's family-size family! Front: Bill, Frank, wife Lil, Patricia, Theresa, Paul. Rear: Mary, Tom, John, and Mike. pily reconciled. . . . Mel Allen celebrates his twentieth anniversary as a sportscaster and his forty-fourth anniversary as a bachelor. . . . Jean Gillespie, who plays a teenager, Marge Davis, in Young Doctor Malone, is also playing Esther Hunter, the mother of six, on Ma Perkins. . . . We didn't hear it, but they report that when Randy Merriman asked a contestant, "Do you take your wife out often?" the man answered, "I take her everywhere but it's no use. She always finds her way back." Big, Big, Big Family: No one ceases to wonder at the size of Frank Blair's family. His oldest boy is 21; his youngest a baby of six months. In between, there are six others. "We have two platoons," Frank says, "the growing and the grown." Wife Lil has only one maid helping her with 13 rooms and eight kids, but says she has plenty of spare time even though the family is seldom split up. The kids prefer the home fires. "Once we sent the older boys to Scout camp for three weeks," she recalls. "After a few days they wrote that if we didn't come for them, they'd hitchhike home. And when the eldest went off to a National Guard camp for a month, we figured we wouldn't be seeing much of him. He was forty miles away, but somehow he got home for dinner almost every night." Lil notes that she felt a little self-conscious last time she reported to the obstetrician. "I'm forty and that seemed old for pregnancy, but the new baby has made me feei younger, happier and look better." Frank Blair, around the home, is just as soft-spoken and intellectual as he is on the Garroway show. "Instead of speaking sharply to the kids when they're in the wrong," Lil says, "he sits down and talks to them for up to two hours." The family shares an enthusiasm for boating. Frank, who has 5,000 flying hours, is helping his older boys get their wings. He is also enthusiastic about rock 'n' roll. "Lil and I took dancing lessons three years ago and now enjoy dancing to the beat as much as the kids." Amazingly, neither Frank nor Lil grew up in large families. He was an only child. She had a sister. About plans for further expansion, Lil said, "I don't know. If I had been told 22 years ago, when we married, that I would have an eighth child at forty, I wouldn't have believed it. We planned on only five." Ready, Aim, Plop: Lee Vines, Robert Q's announcer, now turning up in dramatic roles. Had lead in CBS Workshop and role in Second Mrs. Burton. . . . This season Garry Moore plans the all-time giveaway. For a weekend, he will give away the entire cast, including himself, Ken, Durward, Denise, et al. . . . Garry very proud of older son, Mason. Lad put off entry into Harvard to accept a scholarship in England. One of three boys chosen. . . . Singers on Hit Parade get $750 weekly, not high pay so far as TV goes, but it means lots of exposure to the public. . . . Little Lu Ann Simms, ex-Godfreyite, making TV comeback via kiddie circuits. Will be a regular with Captain Kangaroo. Lu's baby, Cindy, is now two and Lu reports, "She's enthralled when she sees me on TV, but howls the twenty-five minutes it takes for me to get back to the apartment. I wonder what she thinks happened to me." . . . Now that Jaye P. Morgan's divorce from actor Mike Biano is final, New York columnists keep marrying her off to everyone she dates. Sweet Sugarfoot: Kind of a Tab Hunter type is Will Hutchins, tall, slender dirty -blond who stars in title role of Sugarfoot, new ABC-TV Western. Says Hutch, "I'd never been on a horse or held a gun before, but I've always wanted to be an actor." Hutch, 25 and six-one, was born and raised in L.A., studied at Pomona and U.C.L.A. First time in Manhattan and excited. "I'd like to live here. I was in a restaurant (Lucky Pierre's) last night where they broiled meat with a blow-torch. How about that? And the jazz here is just great." Besides Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday, Hutch has a taste for eccentric foods. Like bean soup with a splash of cottage cheese or a health cocktail called "Live Longer" that includes fruit juices, wheat germ, soy beans, blackstrap molasses, sunflower seeds, etc. "It keeps up my energy," he explained, then complained, "Everyone asks me about girls. I guess I'll have to date more. Tell, you my type. I flipped for Audrey Hepburn. I guess I like the type of girl (Continued on page 13)