Radio-TV mirror (July-Dec 1952)

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A little oil of a French peasant, on the back of which is inscribed, in faded ink: "Toujours votre ami, Ed. Manet." "Manet always signed his paintings, 'Edouard Manet'," Jone said, "so this may not, of course, be a Manet. Or rather, not the Manet. But I'm not going to have it appraised. It's kind of fun to wonder. . . ." Meta Roberts could not always be described as a creature of impulse. But Jone is. As an example, Jone was christened J-o-a-n, Joan, same like all the famed Joans — Crawford, Fontaine, Evans, Blondell, et cetera and et cetera. Soon after she started in radio, Joan changed the Joan to Jone. Not because numerologists so advised. Jone doesn't bother her pretty head about isms and ologies. She changed the spelling of her name because: "Suddenly one day, it just seemed like it might be fun," Jone laughed, "so I did." This change of name, or the spelling thereof, is a clue to Jone, who is a creature (as lovely women are popularly supposed to be) of many impulses — some of which land her, as she admits with amusement, on Uneasy Street. As an instance, when she first started in radio and TV, Jone went one day to see a producer about a TV job which, she'd heard, was "open." "This was some ten or eleven years ago," Jone explained, "and in those days I was scarcely working and couldn't have been more unknown. When this producer asked me the stock question: 'What have you done?' I told him that I was working in summer stock with the Southhampton Players and named the play in which (strictly as a supernumerary) I was appearing. So far, so good, and also true, but when he asked me what part I was playing, impulse got the better of me and I told him I was playing the second lead, naming the character by name. To which Mr. Producer replied, both eyebrows ascending, 'That's the part my wife is playing.' "I went quietly," Jone related, with relish, "but quickly!" Other than in beauty, femininity and impulse, Meta Roberts and Jone Allison are just about as opposite as possible. Meta Roberts has been on trial for murder. Jone can't even read a whodunit without shuddering. Meta Roberts is a girl who has suffered a great deal, more than her share, in fact, as you who have followed her through the years — and tears — know so well. "Everybody has known some unhappiness," Jone remarked. "Every woman past her teens has met some hurt, great or small, and so have I. But as compared with Meta I have suffered, I should say, not at all " Meta's troubles, most of which she brings on herself, started with her complex about her decent, but unremarkable, family. Because she was, shamefully, ashamed of her family, she ran away from home and so her troubles began. . . . Jone loves her family dearly, is proud of them, was happy with them and never ran farther than around the block from home. Not until after her graduation from Friends Seminary did Jone meet with a family impasse. Even then, it was a slight one, and surmountable: "I always wanted to be an actress," Jone said, "since I'd spent most of my indoor life as a child listening to radio, particularly to serial dramas and dramatic things, I particularly wanted to be a radio actress. But after finishing school, I had to throw a fit to avoid going to college. Born of a non-theatrical family, my parents took a dim view of the theatrical profession for their daughter. However, I threw the fit — whereupon my family, understanding as they are, agreed to give me two years in which to get a job, after which, if I had not been successful, I agreed to go to college. I never," Jone laughed, "went to college." Also unlike her fictional counterpart, Meta, who brings disaster to everything she touches, courts disaster wherever she goes, Jone, starborne, walks a celestial Milky Way. Almost from the start, for instance, Jone struck pay-dirt in her chosen career. "I just feel I've been lucky in radio," she says. "Don't know how it's come about, only know — and am grateful — that it has." Since her network debut in 1940, Jone has been heard on Lincoln Highway . . . as Mary Aldrich in The Aldrich Family ... on Light of The World, Home of the Brave, Pepper Young's Family, Kitty Foyle, Brave Tomorrow, The High Places, Tennessee Jed, Rosemary . . . and, of course, Guiding Light. Jn her private life, too, stars shine on Jone Mosman, nee Allison. Curiously, the one time Jone was not impulsive was the one time girls are liable to be all impulse — meaning, when she fell in love. Or rather, when she took her own time in calling love by its right name. "I first met Jack," Jone told me, "when he was directing Kitty Foyle on radio, with Julie Stevens in the name part and with me in an all-but-nameless bit part. We met one morning in the studio — and eight years later we got married. Which is impulse in sharp reverse," Jone laughed, "wouldn't you say? "During all of those eight years, I doubt that Jack and I ever said more than 'How dee do' and 'G'bye' to each other. I worked for him, off and on. We ran into each other, now and then, at studio parties and the like. And that was it. There was never so much as a flirt between us. I never thought he was attractive, never did. I just never thought of him as a man at all, period. "Then one day, some seven years after our first meeting, we practically collided on a Fifth Avenue bus and sat, quite by chance, together. Merely to make conversation, I asked him where he was going. 'Sailing,' he told me, 'like to come along sometime?' 'Why, yes,' I said, 'be delighted.' "So the next week we went sailing on the Sound off City Island. It was fun. I liked his love of the sea and of boats and his knowledge of both. I liked him. It was the first time in all the years I'd known him that I thought of him as a man — and an attractive one — instead of as a director for whom I occasionally worked. "After that first sailing date, we continued to see each other — at sea and ashore — and we liked, enjoyed each other. All the more, perhaps, because, as individuals, we are so different. Jack is much more deliberate than I, quieter. And deeper, as a man should be. He uses his mind whereas I just go along, and if I get into trouble . . . ! "As we grew to know each other better, it was the strength in Jack that I fell in love with. I don't mean physical strength, though that is there, too, but the kind of strength which was, I gradually realized, something I could rely on, depend on, count on. . . . "Also, different though we are as indi