Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

(Continued from page 62) a wonderful person. He was deeply involved in his acting. He's on his way today. Right now he is working in Twentieth CenturyFox's Holiday for Lovers, with Jane Wyman and Clifton Webb. His part is big. But back in '54 and for a few years after that, work was hard to come by. And Nico had to spend most of his time studying, rehearsing, making rounds, trying out for parts, most of his time away from home and Debbie. There were money problems, too. Nico and Debbie lived skimpily, in a drab one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Hollywood. Ready cash was at a minimum. Debbie tried to help out. She got a job in a department store. Once, in an attempt to win some money, she tried to get on the Groucho Marx tv show. "You're awful pretty, Sis," she was told, "but you're just not out-of-the-ordinary enough." Debbie felt the walls of her life closing in on her. It was a few years now, and nothing was going right with this marriage. "If only we were really in love," she started to say to herself one night. She stopped suddenly. "Aren't we . . . aren't we?" she asked herself, in anguish. "Has this been another mistake?" She waited for Nico to come home. It was late when he arrived. Debbie gave him his supper and as he ate, they talked. By the time the meal was over they both decided to come out with it. Their marriage was wrong. It would be best for everyone concerned if they divorced. It was, in fact, not long after the divorce when Debbie met Tyrone Power. They met through a man named Charles Skipskey, a friend of Debbie's. Skipskey, strangely enough, was the brother-in-law of Linda Christian, Ty's ex-wife. He had just married Linda's sister, Ariadne, and decided to ask his exbrother-in-law if he could borrow his beach house for his honeymoon. He and Ty made an appointment for lunch one day, to talk it over. That morning, Skipskey ran into Debbie on the street. He mentioned lunch, and Ty. He noticed Debbie's face begin to flush. "What's the matter?" he asked, laughingly. Debbie shook her head. "What?" he asked again. Debbie sighed. Smiling, she told him now how ever since she was a girl she'd had a crush on Ty Power. "I used to keep a big scrapbook on him," she said. "I remember I went to see him in Blood and Sand five or six times. I told myself, 'Someday you're going to meet that man!' I was so young at the time. . . ." "Come with me," he said, leading her into a nearby drugstore. There, he made a phone call. "Would you mind if I brought a friend to lunch?" he asked into the receiver. "She's very nice, and pretty." Debbie shook her head. "Please," she whispered, "I couldn't . . . I really couldn't." Skipskey paid her no mind. "Okay?" he said, "see you at one." At exactly one, a stunned and nervous Debbie walked into a luxurious Beverly Hills restaurant. Ty shook hands with her, and smiled. For those next two years they spent together — first as lovers, then as husband and wife— Debbie was happy, for the first time in her life, truly happy. She had found a man— a warm, gentle, wise, sophisticated man — who not only gave her love but who received, gladly, almost gratefully, all the love she had been forced to store inside herself for so long. Finally, it seemed, all the sadness of these long years since her childhood, all the searching, had been worth it. And then, suddenly, it was over. That, Rock, is where you came in. You comforted Debbie, and consoled her. And then, it seems to those who know you both, you began to fall in love. So far, you — like Debbie — have not admitted to this love. You probably think people will not understand. And so you say nothing. It is true, in a way, that we might not have understood before we knew all the facts. But now we feel we know Debbie, and understand her, and that we know why you have fallen in love with her. Don't worry what the world thinks. Love her. Sincerely, Rock will appear in This Earth is Mine for U-I. "No Woman Can Live Alone 64 (Continued from page 41) Gale was not speaking from delirium. We've been friends and neighbors for a long time, and she's told me the same thing repeatedly and emphatically before and since. Nor was she talking entirely about her professional success. "Only egotists will take all the credit for their careers," she once said. And if anything, she's not that! She's often mentioned how grateful she is to Jessy Lasky for bringing her to Hollywood when she won his Gateway to Hollywood contest, to Alex Gottlieb who produces The Gale Storm Show, to Hal Roach, Jr., who finances it, to the writers, the publicists, the make-up people and hairdressers and everybody else who has helped her get ahead. She meant primarily all the people who taught her to be happy, to appreciate the basic things in life — like love, and like being wanted and needed. "No woman can live alone," Gale said thoughtfully. "I think Mom first showed me how wonderful being needed can be," she remarked as she recalled how she picked cotton in 120° heat on a neighbor's farm in Texas — when she was six years old. Her father died when she was seventeen months old and her mother, Mrs. Minnie Cottle, had managed to support her family by taking in sewing. Gale's brothers and sisters managed to add a little to the family budget by doing odd jobs here and there, but Baby Jo, as Gale was called then, was too little to bring in anything. One day, when she walked home from the first grade, her girlfriend told her how her twelve-year-old brother had made a whole dollar picking cotton. That gave Gale an idea: why couldn't she do the same? Even if she couldn't work as fast, she might be able to bring home fifty cents, anyway. When she told her mother, Mrs. Cottle shook her head. "Not in this heat, Baby Jo," she insisted. "You'd be exhausted for a week. . . ." That night Gale went to bed crying. By morning Mrs. Cottle had changed her mind. "Many years later she told me how she had stayed up half the night weighing between seeing me tired from work or feeling crushed because I thought I couldn't do my share," Gale explained. "She finally told me if I really wanted to do it, I had her blessing. . . ." Gale worked all afternoon till she finally stumbled home at suppertime, exhausted but feeling exhilarated for having done her part to help her mother. "I was so excited that I forgot to collect the twenty-five cents I'd earned," she remembered. It was so little that the farmer in whose field she worked forgot about it too — till she reminded him three years ago, when she recognized him on the now defunct television show, Place the Face. Gale can't live without her mother "The same feeling of being needed works both ways," Gale insisted, and then readily admitted that in spite of her present success— she still can't get along without her mother! Just the other day her husband, Lee Bonnell, phoned her excitedly from his insurance business. "We are having a convention in Jamaica in a couple of weeks," he told her. _ 'Tm so glad for you, darling, Gale cried out. "You go and I'll stay home and take care of the children. Have fun!" "Nothing doing," he insisted. "The last time we were separated I had a miserable time. Either we both go, or I'll stay home!" Since they were unwilling to take the children out of school and have never left them with their servants, there was but one chance for Gale to go along. "How about a trip to California, Mom? she asked Mrs. Cottle via a long distance call to Houston, Texas. "To see you?" "To look after the children. . . . Ten days later Mrs. Cottle was on her way West. ... Mrs. Cottle isn't the only member of the family who is still essential to Gale. "I certainly couldn't get along without Lee. Aside from the fact that I absolutely adore him, there's the small fact that I know nothing about finances!" she grinned. The following incident which occurred, last summer is a typical example. Gale rushed into the house about 5:30 on a Friday night. Before Lee even had a chance to kiss her hello, she exclaimed, "I saw the most beautiful table today! Lee seemed pleased. But he's also a businessman. "How much?" "Forty dollars," Gale said, positively. That didn't seem bad to Lee. In fact it sounded rather reasonable. But before he could say, 'Why don't you order it? Gale wondered, "Maybe it was four hundred . . ■?" Lee's mouth dropped open. He should be used to this by now, but he isn't . Gale changed her mind again. "No — it's forty! I'm sure it was forty. And I have the number of the store right here. Want me to order it?" "Just to make sure, honey, why don t you ask them to reconfirm the price," Lee suggested. , , After she was on the phone a few seconds, he could tell by the expression {Continued on page 66)