Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

to go into transporting him out to Knott's — which turned out to be fifty miles away from town. But he still wasn't discouraged. This was Hollywood, the beginning of the dream-come-true. He'd bide his time till Mae joined him, and then everything would be as they'd planned. She'd get a job — she didn't mind working; she liked it — till he had it made. When they saw how much she'd earn, then he'd have a better idea of what they could afford. . . . So, after five weeks, Mae joined him, and there was just one little hitch. Mae wouldn't be able to hold a job for very long. She was going to have a baby. Dean spent his lunch money to bring her roses. "I'm glad, darling," he told her over and over again. "I've always wanted a son. Don't worry. We'll manage." He got himself a job parking cars at a race track. At the Berry Farm his duties included not only acting — in four shows a day — but sweeping out the theater, barking for the extra attractions, making himself useful backstage. As he got to know them, he found that other young actors in the melodrama were in almost as bad financial jams as he was. One of them, the fellow who played the villain, had a little two-bedroom home in the Valley. He offered to let Dean and Mae move in with them, on a share-the-rent, chip-in-forfood deal. In San Diego, they might have moved in with Mae's parents, or with old friends and lived peacefully, accustomed to each other's ways. In Hollywood, there was no choice but the one they made — to try to exist in cramped quarters with practical strangers. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult — with the particular conditions of those months, it was impossible. The two men drove hours every day, to and from work at the farm and extra jobs. They lived in a state of constantly increasing tension, waiting for phone calls that didn't come, fearing dismissal every time lack of sleep and too much anxiety made them miss a cue on stage. There was not always enough food — what there was was designed to be filling rather than nutritious. Both Dean and Mae worried terribly about whether she was eating properly, and there was no one to turn to for help, as there would have been at home. No experienced mother, no long-standing girl friends. Only strangers — and of course a doctor (but doctors cost money; you can't run to them with every little problem, unless you're prepared to pay for advice). In the little house in the flat, sun-baked, dusty valley, tempers rose and flared and exploded. "I was afraid, finally," Dean said later, "that in the scene where my friend, as the villain, tried to stab me — I was afraid he'd really do it." Still, he hated to give up. He met a friend, a real friend, Bert Richman, who gave him what seemed to be good advice. "Dean, you've got to pull yourself out of this hole you're in. Stop waiting for things to come your way — go after them. Have a kinescope made the next time you're in a TV show. That way you'll have something to send around to the people who count." He had an assignment coming up — a Spade Cooley Show, for which he was to be paid a hundred dollars. With that money, he and Mae determined to move out of the house in the Valley — if they didn't, they were afraid they might both crack up. But a kinescope cost two hundred and fifty dollars. Dean tortured himself over it night after night and finally came to his decision. He used the hundred, and he took another hundred-fifty out of his mustering-out pay. Mae didn't argue with him, for the simple reason that she knew nothing about it. It was the first time he had ever kept anything from her, 80 but what else could he do? He was in Hollywood, wasn't he? He had to make it work. So he had the kinescope made. Without seeing it, he sent it out to people who had expressed an interest in him. Within days he had an answer. "Sorry, Dean. The kinie's out of focus. Can't see you at all." Sick at heart, he took more money out of what was left of his Navy reserve, and moved himself and Mae into a one-room house in Van Nuys. The house, to put it mildly, was not roomy. There was enough floor space to walk past the bed — if you went sideways. The length of the house was approximately three times the length of the bed. But they would be alone together, he and Mae told each other. They could stand anything if they were really together. Only, they couldn't. Living with the other couple, they had been united — if only in being on the same side during the quarrels. Now, there was no one to take out fears and frustration, anger and hurt on — except each other. They couldn't help it. They tried not to fight. Dean reminded himself over and over that Mae was a young girl going through her first pregnancy far from home and help, that she was naturally touchy and difficult at a time like this. Mae, in turn, repeated to herself that Dean was doing his best for her, exhausting himself with long hours of work, fighting to make a living — and suffering terribly at the idea that he had failed her. She would be very careful not to complain — Well, I could sure go for a blonde with big brown eyes and a tiny turned-up nose . . . something like the girl in the picture story, "New Girl In School" in INGENUE Magazine. How about you, Fabian? (See what Fabian has to say on page 82.) But you can't keep terror bottled up in yourself all day, all night. Not when there's no one to talk to, no one to tell. And so the fights grew worse and worse. Then the doctor told them that the RH factor was going to be part of their lives. The technical jargon isn't important. The important thing is that stories they had heard about 'blue babies' frightened them. "Don't worry," the doctor told them kindly. "It almost never affects a first baby at all, and medical science has now advanced to the point where RH mothers can go on having babies safely. Don't think about it." So Dean and Mae went home, pretending not to think about it. But how were they to do that, alone in their cracker-box house? They couldn't afford to go to a movie, to entertain — even if they had had close friends. They could always, of course, think about other things — the gas bill they had not paid, the last role Dean hadn't gotten, their last fight. . . . On March 5, Dean took Mae to the hospital. Late in the night, she gave birth to a baby girl. Dean rushed to a phone in the lobby. He called his parents in Alabama, Mae's folks in San Diego, everyone he knew from the Berry Farm theatre. When he finally emerged from the booth, the nurse at the front desk called to him. "We've been looking all over for you, Mr. Jones. The doctor wants you at once." He was suddenly shaking. He found the doctor and stood riveted, hearing that the impossible had happened — his first-born was a blue baby. They wanted permission to drain all the blood out of her tiny, choking body, to replace it with new, unaffected blood. Numb, Dean signed the papers. "Does Mae know?" he whispered. "No," they told him. "Say nothing to her. Talk to her as if it were all right." So he went to Mae's room. She lay, white-faced and beautiful on the pillows, smiling at him. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "You wanted a boy. . . ." Somehow, Dean stretched his dry lips into a smile. "Oh, another twenty years and she'll be bringing in plenty of boys." Then he went out, to wait, alone. He sat in an anteroom outside the operating theater. Minutes passed and became hours. No one came by, no one spoke to him. He stared at the clock on the wall, and wondered how he could tell Mae if their child died. The clock read twothirty, two-thirty in the morning. That meant they had been working on his baby for two-and-a-half hours. Why wasn't it over? Three o'clock came. The door of the operating room opened and nurses exploded out in all directions. One brushed past him, racing to a phone. "Send Dr. So-and-so with a something-or-other," she cried. The words made no sense to Dean's frightened ears. Then a doctor stuck his head out, saw him. "Have Mr. Jones wait in the lobby," he snapped. Dean heard the words with the sense that they ended all hope. It was over now. Alone, he went down to the lobby. Alone, he sat there, while in San Diego, in Alabama, he knew, the folks were calling up their friends, saying, "We have a granddaughter." And in Hollywood, his land of dreams, Dean Jones put his head into his hands and wept. At four-thirty in the morning an intern walked by and saw him, still sitting. "How's everything?" he asked, friendly. Slowly, Dean raised his head, focused on the white coat. Then he leaped to his feet. "How's my baby — ?" The intern stared. "Didn't anyone tell you? She'll be all right!" And walked away. . . . There were no tears left in Dean Jones then. No tears of joy for his baby daughter, who would live. No tears of gratitude for the doctors who had saved her life, had saved him from going to his wife with the news that their first-born had died. There was only emptiness, and cold, dry fear. He had no money and no hope. He had no way to pay for the saving of his child. He had no funds for a nurse to bring his wife and daughter back to health. He had no home to take them to — only a cramped, crowded, airless room. He had no confidence left to offer them — only failure, only defeat. For himself, he didn't care. The magic of Hollywood is strong; the enchantment lasts a lifetime. But he could not ask his weary wife, his fragile baby, to live on magic and on dreams. They needed roots, a real home, security. And Dean Jones swore to himself that he would provide those roots . . . that home and security, even if it meant working himself sick. He worked and MGM came through with a contract. He made Gaby, Night of the Quarter Moon, did the benefits and went on the tours that would eventually mean parts in Handle with Care, Imitation General, Never so Few . . . He worked hard, but did not work himself sick. Mae was the one who got sick. They had had another baby, and a tragedy at the time. Mae's mother had died suddenly one night, and Mae's fourteen