Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

folks all picked out. Carlo, who'd been working on a liquor truck, quit his job. Angelo, a waiter, got so nervous he started spilling soup and coffee all over the place. Freddie just bit his nails." For a few days after the record was released, the boys all joined Freddie in biting their nails. Mr. Schwartz finally phoned Dion. "I'm sorry," he said. "But, frankly, we've got a bomb. I like it. You boys like it. I'm afraid, however, that the popularity club ends there." Mr. Schwartz' faith in the boys didn't end there, however. Because less than two months later he signed them up for I Wonder Why. "There's something in the air when you've got a hit, even before the record is released," Dion was to say later. "People around the studio begin to hum it right after it's been cut, disk jockeys get to hear about it, people from the newspapers start calling you and asking you when you were born and what are your plans for the future . . . That's the way it would happen later with No One Knows, Don't Pity Me and Teenager In Love. And that's the way it happened that second time round with I Wonder Why. "That time we knew we had a hit. "That was when the fun began. . . ." Who wants it? But now, a little over a year later, the fun was over for Dion. A few hours earlier, he'd heard the news — that Buddy, Ritchie and The Bopper were dead. Still, in just a few minutes time, he would be expected to go onstage anyway. "How am I going to be able to?" he asked himself, over and over, lying on his cot in the little dressing room. "And why should I want to, now, or ever again? My friends are dead, the guys I joked with, worked with, lived with, was going to keep touring with. So why should I want to go on out there without them?" In the distance, Dion heard the music. A band was playing the overture — the same happy music they'd played two nights before, in Iowa, the last time the entire troupe had appeared together. The show must go on! — just as if nothing happened, he said to himself, angrily. Again, there was a knock on the door. "Five minutes!" the voice came this time. Dion looked over at the door. He wanted to fling something at it. He picked up the guitar at his side. He held it up. He was just about to throw it when he saw the name, printed on the strap — The Bopper's name. The tears came rushing to his eyes. This guitar, he realized suddenly — this was all that was left to him of his friends. Destroy this, he knew, and he would be destroying their last link with show business, the business they had loved with all their souls. And they did love it, he thought. Just the same as I — He got up from the cot. He hung the guitar around his neck. He knew now what he had to do. He would go on stage and he would sing — just the way he had always been meant to sing, and he would accompany himself on this guitar and this would mean that the boys would be out there too, in a way; that they had not been completely destroyed, that a part of them still lived. And so he opened the door, walked out of the dressing room, through the wings and onto the stage. And he smiled as he sang that night, even through his tears. END Go, Go, Go! (Continued from page 38) crash, he had been ticketed for speeding by the State Highway Patrol. . . . A year later, Ricky Nelson, in a Porsche his parents had given him for his sixteenth birthday, hit an oil slick on the highway, and his car went out of control, rolled over three times, burst into flames, and was demolished. Ricky and his companion were miraculously saved only because the impact had pitched them twenty feet from the burning wreckage. . . . Steve McQueen, who once drove a souped-up tank in the U.S. Marine Corps, was caught by State Troopers speeding to his own wedding. Fortunately, the troopers felt sorry for him, escorted him to the church and witnessed the wedding ceremony. . . . Steve, who now drives a Ferrari, has given up speeding, but still loves auto races and the racing crowd. Steve's pal, Bruce Kessler, driving a Porsche in the Pomona Sports Car Grand Prix, lost control at 130 miles per hour and crashed into actor Lee Marvin's car. Steve and Lance Reventlow, a big wheel in the Hollywood auto racing set, were the first to rush to Kessler's bedside at the hospital. . . . George Reeves, who plays Superman on tv, was driving his sports car when it skidded into an embankment on Benedict Canyon Drive, in Hollywood. Reeves was hospitalized with a five-inch gash on his forehead and other injuries. . . . These are sample incidents indicating how the speed age has descended upon Hollywood. Just driving is not enough In the old days, it was a legend that Hollywood was being ruined by fast women; now it's fast cars. Sports cars and racing cars are dominating, more and more , the Hollywood scene, especially among the younger actors and actresses. The car is no longer just a method of comfortable transportation. For more and more actors, it is a way of life, an instrument for thrills, a way to prove you're up-to-date, an indication of your wealth and your sophisti72 cation. Just driving a car is not enough any more. The stars tinker with them, rebuild them, re-design them. They own two or three cars, turn them in often, buy new models, follow the newest rages, and try not to be caught with an old-fashioned car. They run in cliques: the foreign car enthusiasts, the American sports-car crowd, the ones who like custom-made cars, the crowd that remodels old jalopies for dragstrip races, the followers of the car races, the motorcycle crowd, the ones who prefer motorbikes or scooters, and so on. The racing car enthusiasts include Tony Curtis, Gig Young, Ricky and David Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Jackie Cooper, Ronnie Burns, Sal Mineo, tv's Bill Leyden, John Derek. Tony Curtis wanted to swap his Mercedes Benz for a Porsche, but his wife Janet said "Nothing doing!" and Tony bought a Cadillac instead. David Nelson used to drive a midget racing car in competitions under the name of Randy Bigelow. Later, he entered the regular car races under the name of Mike Sullivan, without his parents' permission or knowledge. Scared by a couple of nearmisses, he told his parents what he had been doing and promised never to race again. Now he rides a motorcycle in the hills for kicks. And still he got arrested The most professional speed driver in Hollywood is Jackie Cooper, who was once under contract to the Austin-Healey Co. and demonstrated the company's car at more than fifty tracks throughout the country. Jackie belongs to the British Auto Racing Club, the Sports Car Club of America, and the California Sports Car Club. Jackie's top speed was 142.636 miles an hour, during 1953, and he explained that the car could go faster than that but that he would not risk "my neck, or somebody else's neck." Jackie bragged that, in all his years of speed racing, he's never had an accident. In 1957, however, Jackie was accused by California highway patrolmen of doing 145 miles an hour in his $12,000 Mercedes Benz. Jackie insisted he had not gone over 100 miles an hour. Another big race fan is Ronnie Burns, son of George Burns and Gracie Allen. He hangs around with Lance Reventlow, Jill St. John's boyfriend, and Bruce Kessler, Molly Bee's former boyfriend. But Ronnie stays in the pits with the drivers, and does not race. A former Corvette owner, he's switched to a Chrysler 300C, and plans to go to Europe to film a documentary on the Grand Prix races, in which Reventlow and Kessler will compete. Bill Leyden brought back from Europe a copy of the car that won the Le Mans race last year. John Derek brought back a new BMW V8 from Europe. It's a cutdown German car that won the Alpine Cup and Grand Gold Medal in the Deutschland Rally, and the Eiffel race in France. Elvis Presley, who used to drive Cadillacs before he got into the Army, has become fascinated with the BMW 507, which cost $3,750 in Germany. He says he plans to bring this car back with him. The few actors who have raced cars on tracks do so under controlled conditions, of course. The big problem seems to be the actors and actresses who drive fast cars on highways and are tempted to go the limit, usually 140 miles an hour. "I'm going to be killed . . ." Frankie Avalon, for instance, bought himself a flaming red Thunderbird on his eighteenth birthday. Now he's been driving since sixteen, and he's a good driver, but his new T-Bird can race up to 140 miles an hour, and Frankie realizes the great temptation it presents. Recently, he confided to a friend: "I'm going to be killed in this car ... I just know it!" As with all cars, sports cars are safe when driven carefully and under favorable circumstances. But a Jag, for instance, can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 6.3 seconds — a very dangerous talent in the hands of the wrong person. Some young actors and actresses are so speed-happy that they just can't wait to get out onto open highways to race their car ... so they sneak brief moments of racing in the back lots of the movie studios. One big Hollywood studio had to warn Dwayne Hickman and Joan Collins never again to race their cars in the studio's back lot. For some time, the Jaguar was the most popular sports car with show people in Hollywood, but now the Thunderbird