Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1958)

WHEI FIRS1 WHEI FIRS! Starring JOHN SAXON SANDRA DEE Co-starring LUANA PATTEN • MARGARET LINDSAY • VIRGINIA GREY ..thJODY McCREA-ALAN BAXTER TERESA WRIGHT JAMES WHITMORE as "Elizabeth Grant" as "Ed Henderson" Directed by HELMUT KAUTNER • Screenplay by EDWARD ANHALT Produced by ROSS HUNTER • A Universal-International Picture ^ (Continued from page 13) heart, you can't let it out. True, I didn't have a sweetheart then, but I wanted to be with my mom and my brother Walt. I don't know what made me do it, but lots of times you feel as if you're going to burst if you have to stick things out one minute longer. So on Saturday, the ni<*ht after Christmas, I went over the hill. AWOL. I asked for an overnight pass, and some chicken officer in command looked at me sourly and said, "Nothing doing, Gelien." I wasn't Tab Hunter then. I was Art Gelien looking to find myself in the world. So I slipped out of camp after chow, soon as the sun went down, and I thumbed my way into New York in search of Christmas. But where to search? A young couple gave me a lift all the way into town. They'd been with relatives in Massachusetts, and they told me Christmas in the country was great. Christmas in the city, they said, had gotten too commercial. For a moment I was afraid to go to New York. But what's a lonely Coast Guardsman going to do? Sit in the barracks and listen to the radio or read a book or play cards with the guys. I'd been doing that for months, and I was tired of it. It was Christmas, and I wanted to come to the city and see a part of the world. When we arrived in New York, they dropped me off at Times Square. There I was, plunk in the center of this rushing throng of people. Everybody was with somebody. Like Noah's ark, it was two-by-two for everyone wherever you went or wherever you looked. Twoby-two for everyone excent me. What to do? I began walking along those honky-tonk New York streets — Broadway, Seventh Avenue, Eighth Avenue. The snow had been trampled to slush by the Christmas crowds. All the shopkeepers were hawking their wares: wristwatches and papaya juice, tattoos and candied annles. I asked a stranger where St. Patrick's church was, thinking I'd make a novena, but he told me he was from out of town and hadn't the vaguest idea. "Anyhow," this guy said, looking at me as if I was a freak, "it's Saturday night, fella. There's plenty of time to go to church on Sunday." So I walked along those dirty, slushtrampled streets and looked at the jazzy Broadway shopwindows, at the dime-adance tango palaces, at all the hole-in-thewall record shops blaring the novelty songs of Christmas and the corny versions of the sacred Christmas carols. I stopped in a pinball gallery, and people were pushing and shoving to get to the machines. I'm in hell, I thought. Here it is — hell! — if anybody's wondering where to find it. I went out to the windy night. When you breathed, the air clouded around your face. I walked along Broadway, my hands in the pockets of my pea jacket, thinking I ought to hitchhike back to those desolate Coast Guard barracks at Groton. This was a lousy way to spend a Christmas. Better to be in bed at the barracks dreaming about home. . . . Then suddenly I heard the music — loud, thumping, hurdy-gurdy music. I looked up at the blazing, white-lighted marquee. It read: Gay Blades Skating Rink. The music was too inviting to pass by, and anyway I've always loved skating. This would take my mind off things. It had nothing to do with Christmas, but I'd relax. I paid the price (Continued on page 27)