Modern Screen (Dec 1953 - Nov 1954)

Be it ever so mixed-up, there's no place like Rome! ■ With Hollywood's avenues and boulevards turned into miniature Romes and Parises by the influx of foreign sports cars, it seems only fair that the vias of the Italian capital should be populated by Hollywoodites. Most of these wandering stars are working in Italian films, though some are looking for work and others are just on a holiday. A reporter on a European assignment, I spotted my first familiar face above a pair of gloves being purchased by Dawn Addams. Picturemaking in Rome, Dawn told me, is far less regimented than in Hollywood. At home she is accustomed to working on a schedule; in Rome no one has ever heard of schedules. Pictures just grow. She laughed and admitted that while she has not gotten used to the disorganized days, she loves the disorganized nights. I was inclined to agree. Evenings there are wonderful. Everybody goes to the Excelsior Hotel around nine o'clock for a drink before dinner. (That's right, the dinner hour is nine-thirty.) In the Excelsior bar you meet your friends from home who are looking for friends from home and a very pleasant evening develops, usually ending at someone's garden or at one of Rome's beautiful outdoor nightclubs. That evening I saw Dawn again — at the Excelsior bar. William Lundigan came in, looked around, spotted her, went over and kissed her, sat down at her table. After a cocktail, they went out together. As she passed, Dawn stopped and muttered happily, "See what I mean?" I saw. — Wanda Hale 58 mama mayo (Continued from page 50) Miss Mayo eventually was contracted by Warner Brothers and became a fixed star. Five and a half years after their wedding, Mike and Virginia said, "Now is the time." It happened just like that, as though they had written the order on a sales slip. To this day Mike looks in wonder at anyone who suggests that the O'Sheas were lucky to have their order filled so promptly. This was the way they had planned it, you see. Why shouldn't it happen? So, things were going along just right. The baby would be born in November. That gave Virginia time to finish Devil's Canyon and Mike the opportunity to clear up some TV chores and make It Should Happen To You. Then all they had to do was sit and wait. "We ought to get the space problem settled, though," said Virginia. "Space problem?" said O'Shea. "A baby doesn't take up much space." "Well, with your room and my room and the housekeeper's room, where shall we put him? Her?" 'Build a room." "But where? The kitchen's on one side, and our rooms are too close to the property line to put it on that side, and if we put it on the back — " "We'll build up," announced Mike. "Put on a room upstairs. The foundation should be able to take it." From that moment, orderliness disappeared from the atmosphere, and a cloud of confusion rolled in. True, a baby doesn't take up much room, but as anybody knows who has remodeled a house, every stone unturned means another $500 worth of work. It began with the foundation. Mike's optimism about the strength of the existing one turned out to be a mistake, and a good deal of shoring up had to be done. This was followed by the problem of slicing off the roof. It had to be sliced low, or the second story would sit up so high that the whole house would look like a shoe box standing on end. So it was sliced so low that Mike and Virginia spent a week of evenings sitting in their livingroom and looking up at the stars. They lived in the diningroom, kitchen and bedrooms, skirting the hole in the middle, and thanking Providence that it doesn't rain in the California summer. The chimney had to be raised nine feet, so they decided they might as well have the whole thing rebuilt with new brick. The new roof made the old roof look like a stray cat, so the entire thing was recovered. The entrance, in order to match the new facade of the house, was graced by a new porch, and Mike decided they might as well have new screens and new sashes all over the house. The addition had to be painted, spanking new, of course, so they repainted the whole house white. They agreed that the room and bath upstairs wouldn't be the best place for a baby, that a baby should be downstairs. Mike relinquished his old room downstairs for the nursery and planned the new one upstairs for himself. Virgina's bedroom, redecorated in yellow and shades of brown, adjoins the nursery. This leaves Mike free to continue his night owl habits, reading into the wee hours, while Virginia hits the hay. at her customary early hour. Midway through this Operation Upset, it occurred to them that insulation might be advisable. It would keep the neighborhood noises from the baby's ears and the baby's noises from the neighborhood ear. In addition to new roof, new ceiling, new foundation and new paint, they found themselves with new walls. And, naturally, new paint and new wallpaper. It was a bumpy, busy four months of construction, and before it was over, Virginia announced that it was time for her appointment at St. John's Hospital. That was on the morning of November 12. On hearing the news Mike made a motion as if to leap for the garage and the car. "Sit down," said Virginia. "Eat your breakfast." Mike insists he was not nervous, that in any situation of impending danger he grows gimlet-eyed, his nerves become steel, that the adrenalin surges through his system, making him icy calm. He cannot, however, claim that he was as nonchalant as Mrs. O'Shea. Fatso, as he lovingly called her in those days, ate a substantial breakfast and sat around a while before she deigned to begin the trip. On the way they made occasional stops, at Virginia's request, to ogle the furniture in Wilshire store windows. She wanted a lamp for a table in the front window, and the lush lamp displays could not be ignored. Mike put his foot down when Virginia showed a willingness to tour an open house. "Oi-veh!" he said, taking his hands from the steering wheel and holding the sides of his head. "Couldn't we go in?" suggested Virginia. "There's plenty of time." "No," said Mr. O'Shea, who was silently calling on his system for a fresh supply of adrenalin. At the hospital they found a substantial group of reporters who had been notified by Virginia s studio that the event was about to take place. The collective press was one jump ahead of a fit. Virginia swirled calmly past, with Mike trailing. Mike spent almost every minute with his wife before she went into the delivery room. He used the remaining few minutes to case the joint. There were signs here and there which read, "No Admittance," but no one seemed to care, so Mr. O'Shea passed blithely by them and under them. The long row of labor rooms leading to the delivery room sheltered several women in the same boat with Virginia. In spite of their condition, some of these patients took time out to notice that Mike O'Shea was scooting around the corridor. Mike is a gregarious guy, and summoned by some of these damsels in distress, he trotted happily into their respective rooms and chatted briefly with them. As Mike says, "A maternity ward in a hospital is like a jail or the Army — everybody there is every-^ body else's friend." Nevertheless, he was shaking his head at the fact that he'd been asked for his autograph. Of all places! ~\^irginia was wheeled into the delivery " room shortly before seven o'clock that evening. The doctor, leaving Mike, shook hands and said cheerily, "Well, this is it." "Don't be nervous," grinned Mike, "whatever you do. Everything's going to to be all right." It was, Mike says, the greatest performance of his life. At the doctor's suggestion, he went back to Virginia's room to wait. It may have been an eternity to Mike, but by Greenwich mean time, it really wasn't long before a nurse came in and told him his daughter had been born. Mike went down the hall to the waiting room where the press gang was sitting, minus fingernails. He wore a smug expression and rocked on his heels several minutes, building suspense. Finally somebody giggled nervously, "What's new, Mike?" "It's a girl," he announced, and when the reporters, half of whom were women, buckled into a mass of sentiment, Mike fled. He scurried down the hall toward the nursery, and posted himself where he couldn't be seen. By this time he knew I the layout and he was sure that the next J