Modern Screen (Dec 1954 - Dec 1955)

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CHICAGO 47, ILLINOIS NOW! Save Up to 50% on Nationally Advertised Gifts Use this big, new FREE CATALOG to buy all kinds of gifts and merchandise for yourself, family, friends, neighbors. Terrific saving on big-name items. Also, make money spare time taking orders from others! EVERGREEN STUDIOS Chicago 42 II. PICTURES OF MOVIE & TV STARS 25C FREE Sensational Collection Of Scenes, Pictures, Photos, Etc. One Exciting Scene from a Latest Production. You'll be thrilled with this Star-Studded Packaqe. Send 25c to MY FAVORITE STARS Dept. Ml 0 O. P. O. Box 997, New York 1, N. Y. today! MR. KAY. BOX 14. BELMONT, MASS. 80 Look like a Hollywood star read 1000 HINTS BEAUTY erever magazines are so id show business. To casual observers Lili Kardell was having a ball. The only trouble was, she couldn't get Jimmy Dean off her mind. Every time she spotted a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, a motorcycle, even a leather jacket, she felt a pang. Partly to provide diversion, she moved from her Valley Sands apartment to a new one south of Sunset Boulevard. The new one had no memories. Lili told herself she was glad. Then one morning, she woke up thinking "But how will Jimmy find me? He doesn't know I have moved!" At that point she capitulated. If she couldn't forget him, she couldn't. So she called her agent. "Don't forget," she told him. "As soon as Jimmy calls, give him my new phone number." Then she sat back to wait patiently, somewhat buoyed up by the knowledge that she probably wouldn't have to leave Hollywood again. Twentieth Century-Fox was prepared to test her "just as soon as Darryl Zanuck gets back from Europe." In Texas, Jim worked hard. After all, work was just what a young actor — a serious young actor should think about. He refused to answer any questions about his love life. Especially questions that went, (as by this time they did), "Is it true that you're in love with Lili Kardell?" When they asked him that, Jim just turned and walked away. But he couldn't get the name out of his mind. One evening in the middle of this past July, the phone in Lili Kardell's apartment jingled. Lili answered it, unaccountably nervous. "I had a strange feeling," she recalls. "Something told me." "Hi! Cat!" said a voice. Lovely Lili threw herself tummy -flat across the bed. "It's you, Jim," she cried. "You, Jim." Then she swallowed hard. A lump welled up in her throat, and it wasn't easy to keep from crying. END P guy's doll (Continued from page 37) relatives. They didn't know my Pop. All he did was to follow her to New York, where it was much easier to talk her into marriage. It's funny. My mother was a convert and she became the best Catholic of us all." A romance could, perhaps, be broken up, but an established family could hardly be made to disappear into thin air, so after Sheila was born her father felt safe in returning to the Ould Sod, where his name was already well known in the racing world. And there Sheila grew up knowing the costumes, the customs and the ways of a little Irish girl. She was not to see the land of her birth again until she was fifteen. Her first impression? "That school here was so hard. I thought I should never catch up." Sheila's interest in acting was awakened in a curious, somewhat comic way. The first job she ever applied for was that of an unglamorous, ordinary telephone operator. She learned the mechanics of a switchboard easily enough; but perplexed customers of the telephone company were unable to translate her impenetrable Irish brogue. So Sheila learned to speak English. Dramatics was also taught at the school where she studied elocution and so she only had to take a single step in the direction pointed out by fate. Before long her heart was set on Hollywood. Sheila worked regular shifts as a long-distance operator and picked up extra money as a beautiful model. "It didn't take long to save enough," she points out, "because I didn't need so very much. Friends had already invited me out to pay them a long visit." Sheila got a screen test at Paramount by the simple device of walking in and asking for one. The clouds were her stamping ground — but only for the sweetest, briefest moment. Nothing came of the test, nothing came of anything. A few minor TV bits, but scarcely enough to keep beans in the dinner pot. When her resources were reduced to the price of a ticket home, she bought one. Guy Madison didn't meet Sheila on her first trip west. He was busy surviving a pretty rocky time himself. Back in 1946, when he made Cinderella look like a piker by the magnitude of his overnight success, Guy told a reporter, "I felt a tap on the shoulder and I was in. I'm not expecting any joy ride and I intend to work hard. Because all I need is another tap to be out again." The trouble was, he hadn't time for all r, the hard work he planned before the sec : ond imperceptible tap came. With the total experience of about seven minutes on film in Since You Went Away, Guy was immediately cast in big-budget pictures which demanded far more of him than his I, limited knowledge of acting could produce, J and he fell on his face with a thud heard i around the world. Guy suffered. His audiences suffered. His boss David O. Selznick did not. While Guy was distinguishing himself by spectacularly wooden, self-conscious performances, he was on loan-out to other studios and incidentally earning Mr. Selznick some $150,000. By comparison, his own top salary at the time was $600 a week. After three or four pictures that had best be forgotten, Guy Madison was washed up. The incredible masculine beauty re \ mained, the animal grace remained, but how did you sell them to an industry con \ vinced that their possessor was the world's' worst actor? Two people were not convinced: a very stubborn young man named Guy Madison, and Helen Ainsworth, the agent whose persistence had brought him to Hollywood in the first place. There was a difference, they believed, between a lousy actor and an inexperienced one, so the kid from Pumpkin Center, California, hit the road to learn the rudiments of his craft. For eight months Guy played summer stock, tackled any form of theatre | that came to hand. Stubbornly, he held on until TV gave him the break that put him back in business. (TV and Sheila, too.) With his comeback assured by the! phenomenal success of Wild Bill Hickofc,: and picture studios making their usual preposterous efforts to outbid each otherl for his services, Guy's personal life became a trial by ordeal. His deeply-felt marriage to Gail Russell was admitted to: be a failure. This is the time friends remember Guy's being feverishly gay. He had won one tremendous battle against all odds, only to find that he had lost another.i The stage was set for love when the lovely little Irish girl came riding back toi Hollywood on a new and reinforced bank-j roll. Sheila and Guy met on April 15, 1954,1 when the annual Sportsman's Show was held at the Pan Pacific Auditorium. It fig-' ured that Guy Madison would be at anyic sports show anywhere, but Sheila Con-) nolly was there only by chance. A friend of hers worked for the show's publicity; director and got her in for free; other-i wise she might have been ten other places that night.