Screenland (Nov 1950-Oct 1951)

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You can too — without experience. Show friends, relatives, coworkers, FREE SAMPLES of richly designed EXCLUSIVE Christmas Cards, SO for $1. On 200 boxes of 21Card $1 Assortments you keep $100. Gigantic line of 100 money-makers includingGift WrapB, Religious, Everyday Cards, Irnprintcrd Stationery, Plastic Gifts. Extra Cash Bonus AND valuable Prizes. SEND NOW for FREE SAMPLES Send just your name, address for Free Samples of Christmas Cards. Also get beautiful Assortments on approval and big money-making kit. Organizations! write for apedal fund-raining plan. ACT NOWI WETM0RE & SUGDEN. INC.. Dept. 81 -S 749 MONROE AVE., ROCHESTER 2, N. Y. When he was in Paris en route to the German location for the filming of "Decision Before Dawn," he arose at sunrise and prowled the streets of Montmartre. "I had things entirely to myself, barring the birds," he recalls with relish. "Paris is a city that wakes up later than any place I've ever been. Of course, it doesn't go to sleep until dawn." When Gary was working on Broadway in "Born Yesterday," he and singing star Ray Middleton occasionally used the first bright hours of day to prowl the unlikely streets around the Fulton Fish Market, having coffee in some ramshackle rendezvous about to go up in smoke or down in exhaustion. Although Gary was one of the hits in the hit play of the season, his attitude was gloomy. "I've had it," he kept telling Middleton. "This play has been running over a year and it behaves as if it might run forever. I can't take it. I've got to get back to normal living — the kind I do when I'm between jobs. You know, sleep from ten at night until five in the morning. Look for work during the day when people should be working." In sharp contrast to his orthodox New England approach to the proper hours for humankind to keep, is Gary's warm sentimentality. His enthusiasms are intense and forthright. He loves San Francisco, for instance, and he plans to spend frequent vacations there. In common with San Franciscans, Gary loves to walk. (Nobody in Southern Calijornia crosses his own patio on foot if there is a bicycle handy.) Also in common with San Franciscans, Gary loves hills. And windswept views of the sea. And eating seafood in redolent, tumble-down restaurants on Fisherman's Wharf. And the Top O' The Mark, "even if that statement does sound slightly touristy. I understand that the Top was once a private penthouse. I wish 7 had owned it. I'd still like to live up there." Some of the Chicago Skyscraper apartments along Lake Michigan also appeal to Gary. "I could be happy anywhere if my vantage point were high enough so that I could watch the changing aspects of the lake. It is never twice the same." Much that he says makes it apparent that he is not an elbow-rubber. His admiration for lofty places with a vast view, for obscure streets or remote villages, indicates his tendency toward solitude. He likes to tell about being stretched out in a big chair on New Year's Day, before his own fireplace with his family and a few friends nearby, watching the Rose Bowl game on television. Someone, savoring the supreme comfort and contentment of the scene, observed to Gary, "Ah me! I wonder what the poor people are doing today." "They're doing exactly what we are," responded Gary. "Only the pathetic millionaires who shelled out fifty bucks for seats on the fifty-yard line, are stuck out there on those hard benches, in the cold, with ninety thousand people shoving them around. The rich have it rough." Like most big, totally masculine men, Gary reserves a special softness and sentimentality for children. He is completely devoted to his two small daughters. The elder, called Beedee, is a dividend; he acquired her when he married her mother. The younger, Margot, is adopted. Gary is wryly humorous in describing his relationship with his youngsters. "Before Bette and I were married, I was somewhat critical — in a restrained way, of course — of what I considered Bette's inclination to over-indulge Beedee. Now, the tables are turned. I'm the one who has to be cautioned against over-protecting, over-indulging, over-attending both Beedee and Margot. Here's another thing: I'm on the verge of carrying snapshots in my hip pocket. Me!" The thoughtful actor, and Gary Merrill certainly answers that description, is usually convinced by his success that there is more between earth and sky than this world dreams of ... . especially the presence of intricate cross-currents of circumstance. During his first stay in Hollywood he lived in the San Fernando Valley, chiefly because he had heard so many theatrical people praise its wide open spaces. Unfortunately, a combination of war and post-war boom changed all that. One of the most intricate traffic jams on earth can be caused" on the Cahuenga Freeway if one automobile runs out of gas or blows a tire. After an experience of this sort, Gary spent his Sundays in investigating Los Angeles County with an eye toward the future. He fell in love with the rugged, sky-hung Malibu coastline and vowed that if he ever came back to California, that area would be his home. Q.E.D. Current address of Mr. and Mrs. Gary Merrill is Malibu Beach, California. When he was flying home from Germany, after having worked in "Decision Before Dawn," he had one day's layover in London. He scouted the countryside and decided in what general locality he would like to live in case he should ever make a picture in England. And in that exact locality Gary and Bette lived during the filming of "One Man's Poison." However, he has no luck at all in winning roles when his favorite books are brought to film. He wanted to do the John Garfield part in "Gentleman's Agreement," but failed to pass the screen test. He has regarded several Hemingway scripts with a yearning eye, with no noticeable result. So, when a friend spoke enthusiastically about a novel titled "One Man's Poison," saying that it would make a fine vehicle for Bette but that there was also a great part in it for a man of Gary's type, he shunned the book. That's right. He got the part. It is pleasant to report that there is one great contradiction in the Merrill character. This lusty, two-fisted, straighttalking man is sedate as a deacon on the highway. His favorite automotive speed is twenty-seven miles an hour. He has never sassed a fellow motorist, and he lives in mild terror of traffic officers. "It is a holdover from a painful boyhood experience," he explains. Seems that, at the impressionable age of seven