Modern Screen (Jul-Dec 1946)

"Well," she said, "it's too bad he can't talk. But he's very pretty anyway!" He was a whiz kid from the start. Back in Cleveland, Ohio, Ross had his own radio program when he was only eight years old, and before that the local newspapers were doing stories on "The Kid the Neighbors Liked," as they called him. Because it all began when moppet Marty Fuss started showing off around his block, and instead of wanting to swat him with a skillet, the neighbors actually looked, listened and hollered for more. He was Martin Fuss then. It's German and you pronounce it "Foose," like in "Moose." Just the same, Marty got tagged "Fussy" and "Fuss-Button" around the school yard, just as he got kidded in Hollywood when he first arrived. They still call him five or six different things around Hollywood, where he draws his check, because when they were digging for a glamor name everybody had a gag suggestion. The wardrobe department came up with "Bruce Fuce" and the makeup gang suggested "Russ Fuss," and today Ross is still "Bruce" and "Russ" when he walks in those places. Anyway, Marty raised quite a fuss (excuse it, please!) when he started singing around the house in Cleveland. The milkman and the iceman and the delivery boys ganged up on the back steps and the neighbors hung out the windows, because the kid was good. Ross loved the idea himself, and thus encouraged, he'd climb up on the garage roof and give out with song and orations for clusters of kids until his folks would have to pull him down to supper. These neighborhood one-kid clambakes got noised around and when the newspapers wrote him up, all the neighbors told Russ' mama — "you ought to take that talented boy straight out to Hollywood!" murder, he said . . . He used to lock himself in his room and act out "Tom Sawyer" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" all by himself. He'd organize his chums and stage colossal productions with Ross as star, of course. Even when he played the usual childhood games, he had to get dramatic about it. Once, for instance, Ross remembers he was playing hide-and-seek, when he ducked injudiciously into a doghouse. Five outraged mutts bit the pants off him. He limped out and poured a bottle of peroxide on his wounds and of course, it foamed up. "Hydrophobia!" cried Ross. "I'm dying!" So, instead of telling his mama, he called up a funeral parlor and told them to come get him. By the time they had arrived, Ross had written flowery farewells to all his pals and sweeties, relatives and friends, and even willed all his kiddie treasures. He had ready all the plans for the kind of funeral he wanted when the undertaker arrived. Only by then, of course, his folks found out, chased off the morticians, and gave Ross a sound whacking. The radio program sopped up some of the show-off energy young Ross packed. It was over station WJAY in Cleveland. He won It through an amateur night contest. He sang a sugary song, "My Mom," and that was enough. It made him star of a fifteen-minute show that lasted six months. They called it "Over the Coffee Cupi," and eight-year-old Ross warbled out such drippy numbers as "A Cottage For Sale," "Old Playmates," and "When the Leaves Come Tumbling Down." But he wowed the customers, and after that an RKO Circuit kiddie revue signed him on for a theater tour to sing and tap dance. Then his dad handed Ross a body blow after the RKO tour. "That's all of this kiddie career business," said he, slamming his foot right down. "You get a solid education, my boy — that's the important thing right now." 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