Hollywood (Jan - Mar 1943)

shoulders and said that some day, when he'd taken it on the chin once or twice, he'd get over it. Mickey went out a lot with such assorted beauties as Linda Darnell, Mildred and Gloria Lloyd, Sheila Ryan, Lois Ranson and Pat Dane. For a time Ann Rutherford stood high on his list, and rumor had it that it might lead to an altar march. But Mickey just smiled his impish grin, and assured interviewers that marriage was the furthest possible thing from his mind. His mother was still his best girl. Then Mickey met Ava Gardner. F6r the first time in his life, he was hit seriously by a romance. Ava had just recently come to Hollywood from North Carolina under contract to M-G-M. Mickey was introduced to her one day in the M-G-M commissary, and was immediately bowled over. After that, there were frequent dates. Hollywood got its first inkling of how serious the romance was when, on his twenty-first birthday, Mickey stepped out with his mother and Ava Gardner. The grin he turned on them both was proof that Mickey now felt he had two best girls. And on Ava's birthday on Christmas Eve, Mickey, gave her an engagement ring that was a stunner, an emerald-cut diamond in a platinum setting. On January 10, 1942, they were married at Ballard, California. Shortly afterwards Mickey and his bride came to New York on their honeymoon. Photographers took pictures of Mickey ardently kissing Ava. "Is it all right to let the newspaper photographers take pictures of this type?" Mickey asked his confidant, Les Peterson. Les smiled his approval. Then Mickey confided to the reporters. "We've been looking as silly as this ever since we got married.'' It was an idyllic note on which to begin their marriage; and the two kids probably thought that they could keep their romance pitched to the same high key for a lifetime. But they didn't take into consideration the fact that Mickey had been spoiled by his doting mother. Unconsciously. Mickey expected his bride to do everything for him that his mother had done, and at the same time be her own lovely, youthful self. This combination doesn't come in one package.. Ava had been surrounded by adulation herself, and hadn't been trained to wait hand and foot on anyone. She expected Mickey to do things for her — not the other way around. Mickey [Continued on page 57] Dav Dreamer Delude m Elisabeth Fraser was just a stage-struck kid, but her day dreams came true when she walked through the wrong door. She's in The Commandos Strike at Dawn By LAURA POMEROY | Are you a day dreamer? Do you go balmy every once in a while and fancy yourself envied, admired and queen of the May? And like the lad who sat down to play the piano, does everyone laugh at you? Well, don't feel sheepish about it. Day dreams do pay off sometimes, and there is Elisabeth Fraser, day dreamer deluxe, to prove it. Come ridicule, come scoldings, come discouragement, Elisabeth stuck to her dreams until fancy turned into glorious fact. You'll see Elisabeth as the cool, blond Norwegian bride in The Commandos Strike at Dawn. But just two years ago, Elisabeth was a plump Brooklyn schoolgirl struggling over her geometry. She was about as far from an acting career as she was from the China Sea. That she achieved her wildest hope is such a triumph of wishful thinking that day dreamers everywhere can feel vindicated. What decided Elisabeth Fraser about acting was a visit to her first movie at the age of eight. It was the high spot in a life that for those tender years had been far from dull. Her father was a steamship executive and his family followed wherever he went. When Elisabeth was four months old the family traipsed to Haiti for a spell, and when she was six they lived in France. But all of these journeys were commonplace comoared to the greatest thrill of all. weeping through the performance of Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven. The family was back on native Brooklyn soil again, but from that time on Elisabeth carried on like a soul gone moonstruck. She would walk along the street, glassy-eyed and remote, mumbling bits from pictures she had seen. Her parents were startled. Nothing like an actress had ever blossomed on the family tree and they didn't quite know what to do with their queer young daughter. They hoped she would outgrow this acting fever in school, but it became worse. She went through her classes like a sleepwalker, deaf and blind to the lessons going on. "I was in a complete and overpowering daze about everything in school," Elisabeth reminisced. "While the teacher tried to get geometry into my noggin. I was dreaming about Romeo and Juliet. Abraham Lincoln was as nothing to me compared to Fredric March, and the fundamentals of algebra took second place to Helen Hayes. The only time I came to life was during the school plays, but you can't get a diploma that way. "Finally, because the teachers got sick of seeing my face in their classes term after term, they passed me. I graduated a year after my regular class, and was promptly dubbed 'least likely to succeed.' But that didn't bother me. With school over. I could now try to get a job as an actress. I worked on the theory that a girl of seventeen who is a nuisance will eventually get a job." The day after school was out, she read in the papers that [Continued on page 63] 23