Modern Screen (Jan-Nov 1952)

off in between stints at filling stations. So I went back to Oklahoma City. "I got my mother and my two aunts together, and I said, 'I believe I can make a success of it in Hollywood. Only I need a stake.' "'How much?' one of my aunts asked. '"About $20,000,' I said. 'That should keep me going for a few years. If I can't make it with that, I'll call it quits.' " His aunts, Lillian and Ruth Queenan, thought it over. Dale was responsible to them for a lot. He was three years old when his father and his mother were divorced so he spent a good deal of his youth with them while his mother tried to make a living in the state banking department. Mrs. Robertson had two other sons to support in addition to Dale. There was Roxy, who is now private pilot for Bill Likins, one of the wealthiest oil men in the world, and there's Chester, a real estate man. "Originally," Mrs. Robertson says, "I planned on having Roxy become a doctor, Chester a lawyer, and Dale a minister. Dale had a real fine voice as a youngster, still does, and he studied the violin for seven .years. But he really hated it. Only reason he took violin was to please his aunts." Ruth and Lillian Queenan were sure, even when Dale was four years old, that one day he'd end up on the stage. In fact, Will Rogers once saw the boy in Oklahoma and said, "Why don't you let me take him out to Hollywood and give him a screen test?" But Dale's mother refused the offer. "Sure do appreciate it, Mr. Rogers," she said. "But Hollywood is no place for a four-year-old. He belongs here with his folks." Dale's aunts thought so, too. They were also determined to make a gentleman out of their nephew, who was equally determined to grow up and become a cowboy. They bought him fancy dress clothes, artistic berets, long-flowing ties, black patent-leather shoes. "When I stayed with my aunts," Dale recalls, "I wore all the fancy clothes. When I stayed with my mother, I wore my blue jeans. It was a question of indoor life versus outdoor life." When Dale showed up in Oklahoma City in 1946 and asked them for a $20,000 stake, his aunts were convinced that the young man's cultural and artistic nature had triumphed over his love of the outdoors. They gave him the money and Dale headed for Hollywood. "He was so homesick out there," his brother Roxy recalls, "that everytime he saw an Oklahoma license tag, he'd chase the car like a dog chasing a rabbit just so's he could tell the driver, T come from Oklahoma myself.' " Homesick or not, Dale knew that he had to make a go of it in motion pictures. He had to satisfy his own ego and he couldn't fall down on the folks back home. He sat down with his $20,000 and he figured out his plans. "I realized right from the start," he says, "that drawingroom dramatics weren't for me. I took a couple of night courses in motion picture production at the University of Southern California to get an idea of how the movie business worked. "I also learned that if you want to get anywhere, especially if you're a newcomer, you'd better get yourself an agent." Ordinarily, top-flight Hollywood agents shy away from newcomers who've had no dramatic training. Luckily for Dale, he was introduced "by a producer to Ned Marin, who works for Charley Feldman's Famous Artists, Inc. Ned Marin took him out to MGM. "I'll show him to Billy Grady," Marin said, "he looks the Metro type." 82 Billy Grady, MGM's famous casting director, told Dale; "You have a good face. Let's see if we can find something for you." That sounded great to Dale, but the months winged by, and he was still haunting the sound stages. In the interim, however, he made friends with the studio secretaries and messenger boys. "These kids," he says, "would sneak scripts of forthcoming productions out to me. I'd read 'em, then call my agent and say, 'Hey, Ned, Paramount has a Western coming up and I think I'm right for such and such a role.' Ned would go around the next day and get me a reading. "Lots of folks think the best way to crash Hollywood is to give parties for actresses and big shot producers. Not true. Much better to use the time for study and the money to live on. "One office boy, I remember, worked for Nat Holt and slipped me a copy of Fighting Man Of The Plains, a movie Nat was planning. "I read the script and there was a wonderful Jesse James role in it. I picked up the phone and called my agent. 'You've got to get me an interview,' I told him. He did, and it wasn't too hard, either. His brother was directing the picture. "They asked me if I could ride and I said, 'Sure.' Then they asked me if I Studio boss Harry Warner's hobby is building and selling homes. Recently he erected a beautiful place at Malibu Beach and tried to interest writer Everett Freeman in buying it. "The beach air's bad for my sinus condition," Freeman said. "But I know you'll love this house, so I'll tell you what I'll do for you," Warner offered. "You pick out a lot anywhere in town and I'll have the house moved onto it, free of charge." Freeman considered the proposition a moment, then: "I'll be home all day Sunday. Why don't you drive the house by and let me look at it?" Mickey Novak had any acting experience, and I said, 'None.' Then they said, 'Go ahead and read the part.' I'd read it before and I knew it pretty well. I got the job." When the picture came out, Dale got fairly good notices, and various studios began, looking up their files on him. Over at 20th they discovered that Dale had been tested three weeks before he got his first job in Fighting Man. The test was run again. It was horrible. While 20th was wondering whether or not Dale was worth another test, Nat Holt put him in Caribou Trail. Since audiences seemed to understand his Oklahoma drawl and like his sagebrush personality, Zanuck called Dale back. One more test, and he was signed to a seven-year contract. That was on November 9th, 1949 — a little more than three years after Dale had borrowed $20,000 from his aunts, and spent it. In the two-and-a-half-years that have elapsed since he signed his contract, Dale has acted in Two Flags West, the only film he made in 1950, and Call Me Mister, Take Care Of My Little Girl, Golden Girl, Lydia Bailey, Return Of The Texan, Outcasts Of Poker Flat, all made in 1951. And last year he was married, exactly 34 days after he met the girl. Her name was Jacqueline Wilson, and they met on April 15th at a dinner party hosted by producer Andre Hakim. Five nights later, on their second date, he said to Jackie, "How about you and me getting married one of these days?" Jackie smiled, and they were married on May 19th at her parents' home. They spent a week-end at Santa Barbara then Daje had to return to the studio. They've yet to enjoy a honeymoon. But Dale had two weeks off between the completion of The Outcasts Of Poker Flat and the start of The Full House, and since it was Christmastime he decided to take Jackie back to Oklahoma City and show her off. Dale was so anxious to get home that he made the trip in 28 hours. "Coming back to Hollywood," he says. "I wasn't that anxious. Took me three days." Among the 40 members of the clan who gathered to spend Christmas at the Robertsons was Dale's cousin, Fenny Wilson, who says: "Hollywood may change most people, but it sure hasn't done anything to Dale. He looks the same, acts the same, talks the same, eats the same. When he was a little kid, he was wild about hot biscuits and grease gravy. He still is, also lemon pie." His mother, Mrs. Varvel Robertson says, "About that lemon pie. Dale never could wait until I set the pie out on the table. He was always sticking his finger in. He did the very same thing at Christmastime. Matter of fact, he hasn't changed one bit, not only in* little things but in outlook as well. "To my boy, Hollywood is just the means to an end. He loves the outdoor life. That's what he wants more than anything else. People "tell me that sooner or later acting gets into your blood, that it will get into Dale's blood. I don't know. Maybe it will. Right now it hasn't." Dale says that this last Christmas at home was one of his best not only because he introduced his wife to the folks and she got along with them beautifully, but because it gave him an opportunity to spend some time with his brothers. Three days after Dale arrived, his brothers showed up with three shot guns and a bird dog. That night the three Robertsons came home with their legal limit of quail. A day later, Dale and his wife rode out to inspect the six fine saddle horses his mother owns on a farm 15 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. There was also much play with Captain and Chief, two German shepherds. It is incredible how little of Hollywood has rubbed off on him. His best friends are people like his stand-in Kit Carson, his double Tom McDonough, and Kit's brother-in-law, Charley James. He keeps away from flashy personalities, and he keeps his head. "I'm not much as an actor" he drawls, "but maybe I can make a go of it. And by the time I wear on the public maybe I'll have enough put away to start my own production company. "I want something working for me so that I can have a ranch and plenty of horses. I'd like to go fishing for maybe three months out of the year. I'd like to have three sons and a daughter. But I'll take what I get: I'd also like a ranch house with a lot of land. A man needs space and lots of air." There is never any talk from Dale Robertson about plush Hollywood nightclubs or the latest stage hit in New York. Neither is he interested in local gossip or the publicity handouts which describe him as "the bobby-soxers' Western delight." "He likes Hollywood very much," his mother says, "and he's set his mind on becoming a big success. But his thoughts will alway be in Oklahoma." "On horses," Dale adds. The End