Modern Screen (Dec 1952 - Nov 1953)

that little Drake girl?" he queried. "Five hundred a week," Jane Broder said. "Don't be foolish. She's a newcomer, has had no experience." "All right, Hal,~what do you consider a fair price?" "Tell you what. I'll give her $350 a week, and half of any dough we get on loanouts." "It's a deal," Jane Broder agreed. So Betsy trained out to Hollywood, only to find that Wallis had no part for her. She. hung around, lonely and fearful, asking for any type of acting work. But each week all she got was her salary check. It was more money than she'd ever earned before, but she was unrequited, frustrated, disillusioned. After six months Wallis offered to keep her on at her original salary. "I'd rather go back to New York," Betsy decided. Few people understood this girl. Why give up a good salary and go back to job-hunting? But back to New York Betsy came. She landed a job in the English production of Deep Are The Roots. For four months she played up and down the British provinces. Then she caught the Queen Mary home. That's when Cary Grant came into the picture. '"Phis falling in love with Grant, the chance meeting, the strange set of circumstances all seemed to have happened so quickly, Betsy couldn't quite keep her equilibrium. Back in New York, Cary mentioned something about returning to Hollywood. Under the proper auspices he was sure she would like the place. And let's face it, what better sponsor could a girl have in Hollywood than Cary Grant? Here was one of the most talented light comedians of the day, an actor every studio was clamoring for, a star who could name his iown vehicle, his own leading lady, his own director. | When Betsy Drake showed up in Hollywood, and Cary was asked about his relationship with the young actress, he said quite simply, "I first saw Betsy in England where she was appearing in Deep Are The Roots. I met her aboard ship on the way home. She hadn't made any pictures in Hollywood, but I thought she was com mitted to producer Hal Wallis. When she told me this association had been terminated, I introduced her to Don Hartman who was looking for a newcomer for Every Girl Should Be Married." Grant also spoke to David Selznick who was then in production, and Selznick agreed to share Betsy's contract with RKO. • While Betsy was at RKO, she and Grant were virtually inseparable. He coached her, rehearsed her, taught her, encouraged her, while Hollywood cats kept saying to each other, "What does he see in her? Certainly she's no great beauty. She doesn't have money, and she doesn't have style, at least, not the style he's accustomed to." In a way they were right — only the style in femininity that Grant had been accustomed to wasn't necessarily what he wanted to marry. What he had been looking for all along, although no one would believe him; was a wife who would like the simple life, "quiet and relaxed." In 1932 when he had first been married to Virginia Cherill, he had told reporters that he planned to live a retiring life. "You know," he said, "quiet and relaxing." They had laughed at him, because they knew Virginia, and they were right. But their estimation of Grant was incorrect. He actually meant what he said. He wanted a wife who would be content to stay away from the mad whirl. Tn Betsy Drake he has found such a wife. x Here is a girl of integrity, self-sufficiency, intellect and talent. While she desperately wants a full-fledged career of her own, she is wise enough to realize that her basic career is keeping her husband happy. She knows that without Grant's assistance she would not be where she is today. She knows that it was for her sake that he agreed to one of those husband-and-wife radio programs, Mr. And Mrs. Blandings, shortly after their marriage. The radio program didn't come off, and as a matter of fact, both Betsy and Cary are being sued for $15,250 by their team of script writers. Like his good friend Humphrey Bogart, Grant is a mature man deeply and almost irrevocably set in his ways. He hates disruption of any sort and is a stickler for neatness. For years now his obsession with clothes has been a Hollywood joke, and it is said facetiously, albeit with a modicum of truth, that there is no tailor who wants Grant's business. He is so finicky when it comes to fit that hardly any tailor will undertake the job of clothing him. Leo McCarey, who knows Grant well — they used to rent adjoining houses down at Santa Monica beach — says jokingly that Cary is a frustrated haberdasher. As a matter of record, Grant at one time owned haberdashery outlets on both coasts. Grant refuses to lead his private life in public and feels that after 20 years of hard work in the business, he is well enough established to do without stories of his home-life, his love-life, his hobbies and his habits. Neither a joiner nor an organizer, he bothers no man, and wants no man to bother him. Like the good wife she is, Betsy has adopted his ways, which is why relatively nothing has been printed of their marriage. "Just because we are happily married," Betsy says, "I don't think that's particularly newsworthy. I read about divorces and marital quarrels in the movie magazines, but all our friends seem very well adjusted, so that such news is very far removed from us. It's been my experience that there are more happy marriages in Hollywood than most people think." Frank Vincent, Grant's agent, who died a few years ago, was once asked why Cary refused to discuss his marriages or home-life with the press or pose for extensive home layouts. "His reticence may seem strange to you," Vincent pointed out, "but you must never lose sight of one fact. Even though Cary became an American citizen in 1942, he is essentially an Englishman, and to an Englishman'his home is, his castle. He looks upon it as the last refuge of his privacy. Cary has never cried the blues and never shouted his happiness. Marriage to him is a very private affair, and he simply refuses to give out progress reports on its welfare. He never has and as far as I can see he never will." end they broke all the rules (Continued from page 43) if it has been managed according to Hoyle. A few weeks ago a visitor was in Marty Melcher's office. The phone rang. Marty picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, then said, "Can't talk to you now. Somebody's here. Get to you later." As he hung up he said, "That was my wife." The visitor pondered on this clipped conversation after he left the office, and finally came to the conclusion that it was all right. "After all," he shrugged, "they've been married almost two years." It was this acceptance of the fact that there was no need for further cooing that inspired Modern Screen to take stock of the marriage of Doris Day and Marty Melcher. But, of course, there were other reasons. One of them was that Doris and Marty, according to the opinions of most marriage counselors, were going about making a success of their union in entirely the wrong way. Another was in deference to that common Hollywood practice which has a good percentage of the guests present leaning toward a companion just after the ring has been slipped on the bride's finger and whispering, "It won't last six months." This survey is dedicated to these cynical beings. According to the experts, Doris Day and Marty Melcher are breaking the cardinal rule of matrimony: She's working. The authorities, almost unanimously, agree this is dynamite. They say that the male, in order to maintain his masculinity at a proper level, must be the sole breadwinner. When a woman works a marriage is supposed to fall apart at the seams because it frustrates Dad. Well, to this hour, Marty Melcher hasn't been frustrated, nor is he even mildly unhappy about Doris' working. He is delighted, possibly because he is proud of her achievements and possibly because he's been so busy being happy he hasn't had time to read the rules. A nother bad thing, according to the chaps who know, is a man and wife working in the same business — if she must be employed at all. This is also supposed to have an effect on Pop's pride. It' no doubt dates back to the emergency years when a husband and wife would often toil side-by-side in a factory of some sort — and Mom often wound up as her old man's foreman. Doris and Marty are in the same business, and in a sense she is his boss, because Marty acts as his wife's agent. That is not supposed to make for marital happiness. It could curb a man's tongue when he was on the edge of winning a family argument. His wife could not only have the last word, but the last two words: "You're fired!" But, then almost everything that has happened to Marty and Doris Melcher has been opposed to the book. Ordinarily a man first sees a girl across a crowded room, as the lyricists say. Not Marty. At the end of a hard day at the office, he was asked to give up his plans for the evening to take a client, one Doris Day, whom he had never seen, to a radio broadcast. It wasn't a date. Marty was told to see that she got there on time, didn't get run over, didn't sign anything, didn't forget her script, got the proper introduction on the air and a dozen other things an agent is supposed to look after when a client works. If he said he was delighted he was only being polite. If you have ever seen, an agent escorting a star to a public function, you have seen unadulterated, sophisticated boredom. It is a function only with these boys, no matter how beautiful and glamorous the doll is. Marty, -on this first "date" with Doris, was no different from the others. As a matter of fact, he had personal problems at the time that kept him out of the mood for enjoying the company of any lady. He was separated from his wife, Patty Andrews, and it was beginning to look as though it would end in a divorce. Consequently, until the broadcast was over and Doris was escorted to her car to shove off for home, there was absolutely nothing personal in