Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

continued one Academy Awards viewer. LETTER BOX Mrs. Phyllis Joy, Streatham Hill, London, England, gives us an interesting inside tip: My husband has the privilege of working for the Royal Family and there has been quite a bit of interest in John Raitt since the showing of Pajama Game (with Doris Day) at the Palace. His line voice and good looks were much admired and there have been inquiries about his next film. I'm sure lohn will be flattered to read this, Mrs. J. At the moment he is concentrating on TV and I don't believe he has a new film coming up. . . . With the exception of Cyd Charisse, Sophia Loren, Bette Davis and Doris Day — the clothes worn at the Academy Awards were just ghastly, complains Mrs. H. E. Little, Fort Worth, Texas. They look like they came off a bargain sale counter. They didn't. They cost pJenfy. . . . Oh, Dolly Sazone (Wilmington, Delaware)— how can you write: 1 think John Wayne is fhe mosf underrated actor in Hollywood. Underrated????? John's been leading the box office polls for about the last fifteen years . . .! I want to sound off! I'm sick and tired of everybody picking on the Crosby boys — particularly Gary. Why in heaven's name don't they leave the kid alone? All the Crosby boys are behaving very well in a very difficult situation, is the considered opinion of Dorothy 18 Hudgin, Cupertino, California. . . . Quite a bit of mail this month about Roger Smith who has clicked with many belles around the country in Auntie Mame and also in the 77 Sunset Strip tv show. Marg Treisch just about sums it up with her enthusiastic. This young man is really going places. . . . Frasguith Benati yodels greetings from St. Moritz, Switzerland, where she reports she had the strangest encounter with Richard Basehart. I asked him for an autograph on a restaurant menu and he said, 'Oh, no!' — ffien turned right around and wrote his name and the nicest message! What do you make of this? Maybe he was trying to eat and it just popped out of his. . . . / love your column in Modern Screen buf you write only about Natalie and Bob, Liz, Eddie and Debbie, Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Judy Garland, Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Lana, Doris Day. I want you to do a story on my favorite, Gregory Peck. Afso Louis Jourdan. Are you listening, David Myers, to this suggestion from Margaret Jean Johnson, Picayune, Mississippi . . .? Martha Young, Chicago, postcards: J am a faithful Johnny Saxon fan and I would like to see him date other girls instead of Vicki Thai. He's still very young, too young to insist on steady dating when he insists he isn't thinking of marriage. I don't care what he insists — I think Johnny has definitely thought of marriage with Vicki, Martha. . . . May I nominate Doris Day as fhe best dressed girl on the screen? asks Ginger Gates, New Orleans. She wears just the type of clothes girls in their early twenties would love to have the money to afford. They aren't movie-starish — if you know what I mean. . . . Letty McNamara, St. Louis, offers up the plea: Affer fhe marriage of Eddie and Liz, please, please, please may we have a respite from their doings? I can't tell you how tired I am of reading about every time they sneeze. That's all for now. See you next month. More and more fans are writing me about Roger Smith. This boy is really going places on Sunset Strip.