Modern Screen (Jan-Nov 1952)

Revealing the Guns -and -Girls Rough and -Tumble Uncensored Shocking LOWDOWN ON THE BIG TOWN! y / • , \ By Ace Reporters JACK LAIT & LEE MORTIMER Here's the story of Chicago you'll never find in the guidebooks . . . the truth about the mobsters, "B" girls, strippers, clippers and gyppers . . . politicians and street walkers . . . bums and slums . . . dope and delinquency . . . and fabulous Virginia Hill. The amazing truth about the great city is all here, shocking and gripping! A DELL 35c BOOK NOW AT ALL NEWSSTANDS wrong track in her relationships with people. In Doris' work she must, as can be imagined, meet a lot of strange birds. If you bring somebody to her with an apology— someone who perhaps can help her career but is on the horror side personally— she will say to you later, "Why, I thought he was rather sweet." Once, however, she was really annoyed by someone who happened to be a fellow actor. He was pompous and pretentious. He tried to steal scenes from her, often didn't bother to learn his lines and definitely let it be known that he considered Doris an untalented little upstart. It got under Doris' skin. "I don't like him at all," Doris said to a friend. But even as she said it she got the preoccupied look. This time it was her own words she wasn't listening to. But instead of thinking about plants for the back yard or draperies for the den she had something much more important on her mind. What she was thinking was: "There is nothing wrong with that person. It's just my thinking about him that's wrong." So, Doris said later, "I changed my thinking. I saw him as sweet and wonderful and that's the way he was. Now we are friends." For Doris believes that love is reflected in love. She has never been disillusioned in people. She has never experienced what almost every Hollywood star has known — the so-called friend who loves you not for yourself but because you are a star. She has never, to her knowledge, been played for a sucker. She says, "You get out of life what you expect. If you expect people to do you dirt they will." She always believes that if you can really communicate with another person you will never have misunderstandings. Sam Goldwyn was scolding a newspaperman who told Sam that he doubted the veracity of a story his press department just released. "The story isn't exactly the truth," admitted Goldwyn, "but we have the facts to prove it." H. W. Kellick Here is another facet of her personality. She goes to bed around ten-thirty at night so she can get up at eight in the morning. When she was traveling with bands she worked until all hours and had to sleep until one or two o'clock in the afternoon. She hated it. She felt she was wasting her life. Rather, she felt she was wasting her days and she likes days better than nights. She is a very resourceful girl and there is so much she wants to do. She would like to have a dress shop. She loves clothes and she loves to shop, although she admits she doesn't have the imagination to be a designer. "I have to see the finished product before I know how it will look," she says. But she knows she has good taste and she believes women would be thrilled "to come into my shop and find such nice, pretty things." Sometimes she toys with the idea of managing a hotel in a town like Carmel. When she was traveling she saw so many mismanaged hotels, and she thinks she could make a hotel comfortable, attractive and homelike for weary travellers. She also loves houses, but she knows she could not be an interior decorator. Her son Terry knows this, too. One night Doris came home from an upsetting day at the studio, and was tired. "I think I'll quit the movies," she said. Terry said, "Oh no! What would you do?" "Well," Doris said, "I could be an interior decorator." "No, you couldn't," Terry said. "Your client might want modern and you'd just walk out of his house." Knowing all this about Doris you might come to the conclusion that she isn't the type to be a movie star. Actually, becoming a star was never a big drive in her life even though she played "movie star" when she was a little girl and, later, sat enthralled when Betty Grable appeared at the Shubert Theater. Doris went trouping as a singer because she thought it would be exciting to travel all over the country, and she thought it would be good experience. Not experience for a career, but for living. "I never wanted to be somebody," she says. "I just wanted to be married and have a family." She was not the type to come to California and work in a drive-in hoping to be "discovered." It was by accident and not by design that she got in pictures. And if it ever interfered with her happiness she would give it up "like that." When she hears stories about the real glamor stars of Hollywood she asks, "How can it be . worth it if you have to live like that?" And she honestly forgets that her name is in lights at Radio City Music Hall and that she is the star of many movies, including her latest, Warner Brothers' I'll See You In My Dreams. She doesn't understand the girls who drive and push for stardom. "It's like this," she says. "When you're looking around to fall in love you never do. Then when you least expect it love falls right into your lap. If you try too hard for anything — love, a husband, a career — you get too tense. You must take everything in its course. What should happen comes naturally." \ secretary at Doris' studio says, "I've never given a present to a star in my life. I couldn't afford anything that the average movie star would ever look at. But I just bought Doris Day a present because I knew she would like it. It cost a dollar. I saw an ad for it in a magazine and thought of her." The present was a mystery story that could only be solved by working the jigsaw puzzle that went with it. Doris loves mystery stories. She also loves jigsaw puzzles. Doris liked that present from the secretary as much as a diamond bracelet ■ — even more. She has no place to go to wear a diamond bracelet. She read the mystery story and worked the jigsaw puzzle at home. Doris thinks of herself as just an average, normal person. Relaxed as she is, though, she is impatient. Her penmanship is scribbly because she thinks faster than she can write. Her mother, recounting some daily happening, is prone to relate the story in minute detail. Doris says, "Come on now. Let's get to the point." Doris has had many experiences which she would like to forget. But she has no regrets about the past since she acquired maturity. That's why she thinks she has friends like Charlotte Greenwood and her husband who are older than she. She gravitates towards mature people because, "I try so hard to be mature in my own thinking." She is impressed by good people — sound, normal people, and draws away from pompous ones. She is . en rapport with people of a religious turn of mind. She believes that drinking is a "stupid escape" and she has seen a lot of drinking. She has known people who went without food to buy a bottle of hootch. "For what?" Doris wants to know. It is because neither she nor Marty drink that they find cocktail parties dull and so have acquired the reputation of being anti-social. Same way with night clubs. They go only if there's an act they want to see. They watch it, and leave.