Modern Screen (Dec 1953 - Nov 1954)

TO EACH HIS OWN The lean years left MacDonald Carey with a few amazing habits! ■ With all the delicacies he has to choose from, MacDonald Carey's favorite food is peanut butter and onion — that's right, raw onionsandwiches. Carey invented the combination when he was a struggling Broadway actor, doing research on the cheapest foods available in bulk with the highest nutritional value. "You can live indefinitely on nothing else," says Carey. "It's a solitary life, but a healthy one." The onions cut the clinging taste of the peanut butter, and the peanut butter cuts the tang of the onions. "I used to have a small room in New York — just a bed, a chest of drawers, a sack of onions and a big tin of peanut butter that doubled as a stool," Carey continued, "and my outlay for food was under two dollars a week until the cost of bread went up." Carey is back in New York, following production of Fire Over Africa which was filmed in Spain with Maureen O'Hara. Co-starred with Kitty Carlisle in the Broadway smash hit Anniversary Waltz, he now lives off the fat of the land with a superb French cook quartered in his kitchen. Back in the pantry, under the truffles,' escargots and pate de fois gras is a fifty-pound tin of peanut butter. He still likes it. pressed by the kids' comedy routines, Fanchon & Marco booked them for a series of summer shows. In high fettle, they returned to Cincinnati and school, practically professionals. A little more wrestling with stuff like algebra, a little more growing up and they'd be on their way. A former classmate who'd moved to the nearby town of Hamilton asked Doris over. A boy friend was coming with another boy to take them for a drive. The boys were cute, the moon was full, the evening lovely— until they reached the unguarded tracks, and from out of the peaceful night saw doom descending in the headlights of a fast freight. For a split second, for an eternity, they sat in frozen horror. Then it hit — ripped the hood away, dragged them a block and a half, came at length to a shuddering halt. Only the front of the car had crossed one rail — by which slim margin they escaped. "Multiple leg fractures," the doctors told her mother. "She may never walk again. She may be crippled for life." With Doris they handled the facts more gingerly, but she was a girl who could read between evasions. So she lay alone, weeping for her shattered body and the dreams shattered with it. As the slow months passed, however, as she moved from hospital to home, from bed to crutches, hope and resilient spirit took over. Unable to make with the feet, she made with the pipes — mostly to release her thwarted energies. Mom and Paul put their heads together, the result being a casual call from a friend who happened to teach singing. Casually, he asked Doris to perform. Feeling silly, she did. He said she was a natural. He said she had rhythm and feeling. He thought maybe they should work on her range a little. "You think he's kidding?" she inquired after he'd gone. "Why should he bother?" shrugged Mom, and went in to fix dinner. From the kitchen a few minutes later she heard the strains of "Tea For Two," which was normal, followed by another sound which wasn't. Her daughter beating out a jubilant tap routine on crutches. Not until fourteen months after the accident could Doris navigate under her own steam, but she made the time count. At the same local shindigs where her hoofing had once drawn applause, she now hobbled up to sing, and professionals took note. Danny Engel, song plugger, boosted her to Grace Raine, WLW's voice coach, who offered to iron out the rough spots in her style. Providentially, Doris discarded the crutches just as Barney Rapp prepared to open Sign Of The Drum and called Miss Raine at the radio station. "Got anyone ready for handwork, Grace?" "Sure thing," said Grace with nary a quiver. "Name of Doris Kappelhoff — " "The name I can't use, the girl maybe I can. Will you send her over?" She sang "Day After Day," and just like that he hired her. "Now about this name — " "Means something like churchyard," she told him helpfully. "And that's where it belongs — " " 'Day After Day' was lucky for me, Mr. Rapp. How about Doris Day?" So she made her professional bow — a slim, freckled girl with corn-colored hair and cornflower eyes. No beauty, but her smile broke like sunlight, radiating friendliness, and her voice held the same quality of warmth, as if she were singing straight to each hearer's heart. The customers liked her. They liked her well enough to pump up her courage. Greatly daring, she cut a record of "The Wind And The Rain In Your Hair," sent it to Bob Crosby, then at the Blackhawk in Chicago, tucked a note inside. "I love your band, I would like to 72 sine with vou." The answerine wire came while she was at work. Mom phoned her. "It's signed Bob Crosby!" "Yes, but what does it say? Stay home?" "Now you know he's too smart to say that! He says, 'Come right up — ' " P^rom Crosby to Fred Waring to Les *■ Brown and a ballad called "Sentimental Journey" which rocked the juke-set and spread the name of Doris Day from coast to coast. Only by that time she was Doris Jorden, housewife. In later years she said: "Twice I loved madly. Insanity's the word for it — blind, starry-eyed worship." Not yet eighteen, inexperienced, romantic, impulsive, she gave her heart to Al Jorden, trombonist with Jimmy Dorsey, and retired to domesticity in a cottage on Cincinnati's Price Hill. As blithely as she'd set out to sing, she quit. Both instinct and training told her that, married, you devote yourself to your husband. What's an empty career compared to the glory of love? An eager, earnest bride, she proceeded to tackle the range with indifferent results. At ten she'd start cooking. At six she'd hover over Al with her mouth open. "Is it good?" No matter how the meat loaf tasted, the marriage turned sour. No alibi kid, she insists that the blame lay as much with her as with him. Nor could she regret the union which gave her Terry. The year after insanity struck she divorced Jorden and asked the manager of WLW for a job. He gaped. "But, Doris, you're bigtime now. We can't pay you more than sustaining rates — sixty-four a week minus taxes — " "I need the money," she said. Money was soon replaced by another nroblem. It took onlv the news that Dav was again for hire to bring bandleaders flocking. But bandwork meant the road and separation from Terry. Emotions torn, she finally took the long view, signed with Les Brown, left her baby with Mom, and fared forth to seek security for them all. Whenever the outfit worked within hailing distance of home, Mom and Terry joined her, and for a while her hungry arms would be filled. A t the ripe age of twenty-two, she met George Weidler, playing sax for Stan Kenton in New York, and Cupid fitted a second dart to his bow. Though one marriage had flopped, her illusions remained intact, her nature turned trustfully toward the sun of love. Besides, this was different, this was the true flame, the man predestined. Again she quit her job, this time to travel with her husband. Bookings landed them in Hollywood, the housing emergency landed them in a trailer. Anything was fine with Doris as long as she had George. She had him for a fast year. Even when he pulled out with the band, leaving her behind to nurse the trailer, she refused to admit more than a passing cloud on their happiness. If he seemed moody at times, aren't we all? If he seemed to be drifting away, she was just over-sensitive. If they quarreled, they always made up, and the first year is the hardest. She loved him better than when she'd married him, and love conquers all. Having spent her first anniversary with loneliness, virus X and budget nightmares, she accepted a month's engagement from New York's Little Club. The story has been told, and by no one more movinslv than Doris. "Once I sang