Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1957)

But that wasn't quite the whole truth, either. The first time she had married, at seventeen, she had wanted to do every romantic thing. Too much separation He was Al Jordon. He was a trombonist in Jimmy Dorsey's band. They fell in love and got married. Then, just as she was eighteen, she discovered she was going to have Terry. She took a little house back in Cincinnati and wrote Al every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes three times. He had to be on the road. Doris was bitterly lonely. She had barely enough money to live on, and Al's letters, arriving special delivery and usually at 3 A.M., broke up her wretched sleep. Sick as only a lonely, pregnant girl can be, Doris reached the breaking point one night. She yanked off her wedding ring — she didn't want it — and she threw it out the window. Only that hadn't been true, either. She didn't want to lose her wedding ring. She wanted what the wedding ring meant — a husband with her. The band business got worse. The separations between Al and Doris lengthened. Doris got her divorce. She didn't ask for support of her baby, Terry. She told herself she would manage. Somehow. The somehow turned out to be singing on a Cincinnati station for an announcer's wage of $64. She hadn't been too proud to take it. Sure, she had already made "Sentimental Journey," and sung on the Hit Parade. But she took the $64, which fed her and the baby, and when Jimmy Dorsey offered her a job it was pure heaven. And more heavenly, yet, when she met George Weidler. Some more untruths She worshipped George Weidler and felt that he was a great artist; in Hollywood he would find thousands of jobs. He didn't. In Hollywood there was a housing shortage and Doris and George had to buy a trailer. Doris cooked. Doris cleaned, and planted flower boxes on the windows of the trailer and sang and sang. She didn't want a career, she told herself. She just wanted to be George's wife. Writing in her notebook, the Doris Day of 1955 realized this, too, had been one of her bits of untruth with herself and life— the untruth she had sold herself and sold George Weidler— that she didn't want to sing any more. One day she was offered a booking at the Little Club in New York. There was no money, no work for George, no food in the trailer. George insisted that she take the job. She went. Opening night she got a telegram from him; he told her not to come back. He was through. The Doris Day of 1955 realized this was one of the nights she had really died. She had gone on for that first show, laughing through her tears, singing over her sobs. She got a release from the club and flew to Hollywood. But when she got to the trailer George was gone. She searched for him, days . . . weeks. And then, when she had given up, she ran into him on Hollywood Boulevard. She took one look at him, and knew there was a profound change in him. She stammered, "Can we talk somewhere?" Over a cup of coffee, he told her. He had found religion. He was at peace with himself. By every gesture he told her something else: she was still desperately in love with him, but he was completely out of love with her. She agreed to give him his freedom. She made the test for Romance On The High Seas and signed a contract with Warners. Now she could afford to have her baby with her. She could send her mother some decent money. Stardom she didn't think about. She was too unhappy. Yet stardom had come, and that was where Marty had come in. Marty, the nice man in her agent's office. Then Marty, the nice man she liked so much and whom Terry loved. And Marty with whom she had made such a sensible, calm marriage. The Doris Day of 1955 writing in her notebook stopped. Was this the truth? Had she really married Marty because he was so good and her son liked him and he knew show business and he guided her career so well? She stopped. She stopped the writing for months. And made Love Me Or Leave Me. She was so busy with the picture that she forgot her gasping breath, forgot her hammering heart, forgot to be afraid of living. Then she was making Julie, which Marty produced, and she had a million things to do and she didn't have time to feel anything really. It was while she was making Julie that she suddenly realized she had already found the road back, the path from hell to happiness, the power to live fife without fear. Perhaps it was the months of examining herself and learning to understand herself each time she wrote in her notebook . . . or perhaps the sudden realization that she had nothing to be afraid of. Whatever it was, it happened in a split second. One day she was playing a love scene with Louis Jourdan. Marty was standing behind the camera. She had looked up and seen Marty watching her, and in his eyes there was such complete devotion. She felt her heart throb— but it had been a good throb. She had drawn her breath, and it was a good, long breath. "Wait a minute," she said, moving out of the scene— and she had gone across and kissed Marty. "You okay?" he asked, as a husband does, not talking things too big. "Perfect!" she answered, and she knew she was! She had escaped her personal hell. From that moment on, she could face herself, actress enough to go into scenes, woman enough to love her husband, celebrity enough to live up to every bit of it. Life, in other words, was wonderful. END Doris Day will soon be seen in the Warner Bros, musical film Pajama Game. Watch for her also in Paramount's Teacher's Pet, RKO's Curtain Going Up. how's your sense of humor? (Continued from page 35) ball. "Jim— is Eddie home?" "Uh-uh," yawned Jim. "He missed his plane, got tied up with business. Missed two, in fact, by the time I left. Why?" "Nothing. Nothing at all. Everything's wonderful. I'll call you later." 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