Screenland Plus TV-Land (Nov 1952 - Oct 1953)

career means each one understands all the problems of the other. "If Gower is kept late at the studio," says Marge, "I don't sit home wondering and growing angry. I know from my own experience what must have happened, and when he arrives tired and irritable, I can understand why he doesn't want to talk." Biggest, and perhaps best thing of all is that there is no division of authority in their marriage. It's Gower who leads in every way, and Marge who happily follows his directions. And as most marriage clinics agree, women are usually happier when the man leads and they can look up to him. In Hollywood, where careers and marriages are notoriously bad mixers, the Champions seem to have the right solution. They work together, and they enjoy their work. There's no fretting because one is working and too exhausted for social life when the other is taking it easy. The Champions are exhausted — or full of life — at the same moment. There's no worrying about gossip because of studio-publicized extra-marital appearances with the stars of their separate pictures, because they star with each other. And because they share the most important things in their lives with each other, all the dissimilarities in taste or opinion become too unimportant to quarrel about. "Marriages fail when one partner makes more money, or is a bigger success than the other," reveals a close friend. "While the Champions could be successful on their own — Gower as a dance director, and Marge as a soloist — they are wise enough to stay together, and thus remove the possibility of separations in their success or failure." In reality, the saga of the Champions was a love idyll from the start. They both attended Hubert Howe Bancroft Junior High School together. Gower was one of Ernest Belcher's star dancing pupils, Mr. Belcher being Marge's father. Gower won a dancing contest at the Cocoanut Grove headlines in the papers are full of cases where girls just couldn't settle down and take on a sense of values, a balance in living. Why else do you read about the tragic errors in the lives of so many teen-agers? "My daughters will some day be at the age when they will want to go out a lot — and to do all the normal things young people do. This is fine with me as long as they stay with normal things. I hope to have complete supervision over them, though, until they're eighteen — and that means they're not going to have the chance to do all they'll probably want to. Nor are they going to date just any boy. One night a week for a date will be their allotment — and in that way they'll not see and do so much they'll be with Jean Tyler, and together they successfully toured the nation as a team. In the meantime Marge was scoring in light operettas, in Walt Disney movies as the model for "Snow White" and the "Pinnocchio" Blue Fairy, finally landing on the New York stage. World War II took Gower from behind the footlights and into the Coast Guard — with stints in the Atlantic and Pacific. Following his discharge, he found himself without a partner — Jean having married and retired from show business. It was in New York that he met Marge again, eventually to form a dance team. They were doing all right when Marge got an offer to appear in "Allegro." "This meant breaking up the act," says Gower, "and so we were married, thus preserving the team." Finally, it was their sensational engagement at the Sunset Strip night spot, the Mocambo, that paved the way for their career before the cameras. And the rest you know. As for that married look, or rather the absence of it — that, too, can depend on a choice of profession. The Champions were lucky in the pursuit they had picked for themselves. Dancing isn't something that requires "emoting" or tragedy. Dancing, especially when done by Marge and Gower Champion, is a happy thing. It calls for a smile on the face and for bright eyes and gaiety. Everybody knows those apparently simple but breathtaking twirls and spins are the result of hard physical work and weeks of rehearsal. Everybody knows Marge occasionally gets a bad bruise, and Gower's muscles ache while they're working on a particularly strenuous routine. But in the finished performance, when the dance routine is perfected, they let themselves go, and the result is as exciting for an audience as sitting in on the birth of romance. Yes — they're married, but the romance is still there. They're young, they're in love, and they're partners in rhythm. And every time they dance together, they fall in love all over again before your eyes. END bored to death within a very short time. "I admit I'm raising them the way I was raised — and they'll probably think I'm just as 'unreasonable' as I thought my mother was. Needless to say, I'm now very glad mother took the stand she did. I was never allowed to be out after eleven-thirty at night until I was eighteen. Oh, I thought she was being very cruel then but because of this training everything is exciting to me now. I've never been bored in my life and I haven't a single frustration running around inside me. "The play girl is, in a way, a contradiction. She has to depend on a certain amount of attractiveness to be in demand enough to lead the giddy life. And yet she forgets that the more frantically she runs about searching for something new to do, the faster she will age. Fast living shows quickly. It doesn't take long for that wonderful freshness to fade. And once that is gone, so is her appeal. "Getting a sense of values is important to any girl. To be really happy she can't live twenty years in two. If she takes it easy and doesn't try to do everything today or yesterday she'll have some great tomorrows to look forward to." The play girl usually feels that she must have a lot of dates. And, as a rule, it doesn't matter what the fellow is like as long as he'll take her somewhere. It's the restless urge to be doing something, a feeling that the more she dates the more popular she is. Betty has never gone along with this line of thinking. When she was the belle of New York while doing "DuBarry Was A Lady" she was asked out a good deal — and always by the most popular men. The girls in the show would drool at Betty with envy, but she never accepted a single date. She was not interested in playing the field. She was content to wait until she found the right man. That's why she later became a happy Mrs. Harry James. "Lots of dates may be all right for some, but they didn't intrigue me," Betty went on. "However, there is a certain value to going out with several different men because a girl gets a better idea as to the kind of man she wants to marry. I frankly hope my daughters won't start going steady too soon. But I also will try to be sure that they don't get so superficially date-conscious that they forget what's important in life. I'm sure this won't happen to them. "The play girl dates so many different men that eventually she loses interest in all men — and, whether she'll admit it or not, in herself. What's even more important— a man soon loses interest in her when he sees her with so many other fellows. "Some play girls think that the more they date the more desirable they'll be to men. I don't agree with this philosophy. I think that when a man is interested in a girl he wants her to go with him and no one else. This is quite a natural — and commendable — attitude. "The girl who goes out with anyone just to be going out sooner or later should wake up and find that what she has always really wanted is a husband. But by now she has burned herself out so much that while she may only be twenty she looks thirty-five, so she has to start the date routine all over again — but with a different attitude. The trouble is that by this time she's not going to be so desirable to the kind of man she suddenly wants. "Dates are a perfectly normal part of a young girl's life — as long as they're not made into a production. Every girl wants to date the football captain. The danger comes when she starts envisioning herself as the femme fatale whose duty in life is to play games with men. "The play girl has a tendency, as a result, to think too much of her own importance. And sooner or later she becomes dominant, aggressive. Gradually, 59 PITY THE POOR PLAY GIRL [CONTINUED FROM PACE 35]