Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

The Patient Lovers (Continued from page 43) Their love story began in unhappiness, loneliness, and fear. Maybe it had to. Otherwise it might never have begun at all; certainly it would never have grown so swiftly. Jimmy Darren had good reason to be unhappy. Only a few days before he met Evy, his wife, Gloria, had left him, had taken their little son back to Philadelphia and left Jim alone in the Hollywood house that had never been a real home to either of them. A lot of stories were written afterwards about how the marriage had been shaky for months, how Gloria had wanted an every-day sort of husband who could leave his work at five and come home to an ordinary evening, an ordinary life. The writers explained in detail how this was impossible for Jimmy, who was struggling with the demands of a new career and an exciting new world. They talked about the quarrels and the stormy scenes that always ended with Jimmy storming out of the house to drive furiously through the winding canyon roads till his hot temper cooled off and he could go home again. But what the stories didn't say was that only a week before the break-up, Jimmy was still telling reporters that his marriage was as wonderful and shiny and perfect as ever — telling them that, and praying that it was the truth. When the end finally came, it was almost as much a surprise to Gloria and to Jimmy as to the rest of the world. One day they had a marriage — troubled and uncertain, but still a marriage. The next day they had nothing, and Jimmy roamed restlessly through the empty house, asking himself over and over what went wrong, what he should have done. He was still terribly depressed and lonely days later when his friends urged him to try to forget his troubles with work; to take the acting classes Columbia was offering for its young stars. "You're the hottest property on the lot," they told Jimmy. "You owe it to yourself and your studio to buckle down to business." So he went to class. They meet . . . Evy Norlund went that day, too. She was as lonely and as frightened as Jimmy Darren, she felt as deserted and lost as he did — but for different reasons. She had only been in America for a few months; she had come six thousand miles from her home in Denmark as a finalist for the Miss Universe contest, and she had come all that way just to lose! But it wasn't losing that Evy minded; after all, she had gained a contract at Columbia Pictures — she was going, they told her. to be a big star. But Evy Norlund was lonesome. When she and the other finalists had arrived in Hollywood, they were surrounded by people — reporters, photographers, contest officials — and most of all, chaperones. Oh, how those chaperones hovered around the pretty, bewildered girls. Oh, how they loaded them down with do's and don't's — mainly don't's. "Don't talk to strange men. They're wolves." "Don't accept any dates. Hollywood men aren't like the boys you're used to." "Don't trust anyone but us. This is a crazy town; you'll just get into trouble." "Stick together, girls — don't have anything to do with strangers." A group of American girls might have laughed in their faces. But these girls were strangers, far from home. They didn't 80 speak much English and all they knew about Hollywood was what they had read — mostly scandal and half-truths. So they believed what they were told. Anyway, while the contest was on, they were too busy for men and too friendly with each other to be lonesome. They had fun. But now the contest was over, and so was the fun. Some of the girls had gone home, others on tours of the country. The chaperones had left — but their warnings stayed behind. "Don't trust anyone. Don't talk to strangers, especially men." Poor Evy Norlund, left alone with her contract, moved into the chaste, oldfashioned Studio Club, and paced her room miserably between studio appointments, wondering what to do with herself. There was no one she could talk to — everyone was a stranger to her now. She was sure of only one thing. She wanted to succeed in movies. Someone at Columbia told her about the acting class. She had never been on a stage in her life, except as a model or in a contest. So she enrolled, too. And it was there that they met, in the middle of a studio acting class; there that the spark caught. Thinking of Jimmy The teacher took her around to introduce her to everyone. She made the rounds smiling shyly and shaking hands, as Europeans always do when introduced. Modern Screen offers its profound apologies to Mr. Cory Grant, and to our readers, for having printed what Mr. Grant has been kind enough to inform us were erroneous details in regard to his meeting with Miss Kim Novak at the Cannes Film Festival, which meeting was discussed in an article entitled "Heartbreak on the Riviera" appearing in the September 1959 issue of Modern Screen. And finally the instructor said, "Evy — this is Jimmy Darren," and she found herself staring into a pair of wide, troubled brown eyes. Of course, she knew who he was; everyone on the Columbia lot expected great things of him. That was why, instead of just shaking hands quickly and moving on, she found herself thinking, He doesn't look conceited — he doesn't even look happy — I wonder why. . . . Jimmy, on his part, was looking down at a tall, slender blonde with the prettiest face and the most wary eyes he had ever seen. Maybe it was because he was lonely for the touch of a woman's hand, for the feel of the caresses that seemed gone forever now, that Evy's hand in his felt so warm, and good, and right. Or maybe he just forgot he was holding it. Anyway, to quote a fellow who was there, "They just stayed like that, looking sort of numb and holding hands, until someone started to laugh. Then they both let go and started to blush. I guess everyone in the room knew even before they did that they were going to fall in love." All through class, Jimmy thought about Evy. Not about love, or anything like that — nothing was further from his mind. All he knew was that for a moment, while he held her hand, the lump of ice around his heart melted a little, he had felt almost good for the first time in days and days. He wanted very much to talk to her. Only he didn't know how to go about it. It was years since he had asked a girl out — all the way through high school there'd been only Gloria, and then they were married. He didn't know how to go about it. But he knew he had to try. So after class, a little awkwardly, he made his way to her, and began to talk. He didn't know what else to say, so he told her he had a new Porsche. "You know, the German car." "Yes," Evy said in her gentle voice. "Many persons in Copenhagen, they have Porsches." "It that so?" Jimmy said. "Isn't that interesting." They were outside the classroom by then, and he was at a loss again. So he blurted out, "Look — that's my car — the Porsche — over there. I could take you for a drive in it. I can take you home. Or we could go first for something to eat — " He stopped, with his heart pounding as if he were just a fresh kid, and waited for Evy to say something. But she was just as baffled as he was. She wanted to go — she was so lonely, and this was such a nice, sweet-seeming boy — but she didn't dare. She hardly knew him, and he was goodlooking and an actor — everything she had been warned against. Finally she shook her head. "No," she said, hesitantly. "Then tomorrow?" Jimmy Darren asked. "Tomorrow afternoon — ?" Evy looked again into the warm brown eyes questioning her so anxiously. She thought: o boy who wants to take me out in broad daylight can't be a wolf. If he still wants me to say yes tomorrow, then I will know it's all right. "Maybe tomorrow, Jimmy," she said at last. "Maybe." All right in the daylight And the next afternoon after class, she let Jimmy lead her to tne shiny black Porsche and help her in. She sat at his side as he drove along the curving miles of Sunset Boulevard, past the mountains and the wooded canyons — and then suddenly she gasped. The Pacific Ocean stretched out before them, blue and shining under the late afternoon sun. "I had never seen it before," she told Jimmy, hunting for the right words in a strange language. "Oh, thank you." After that, they were not afraid any more. Jimmy drove slowly along the silver ribbon of highway that edges the beach, and Evy looked her fill, and laughed and talked. After a while Jimmy began to talk, too. It was like an orgy of chatter after the long silent days they had both been through. They talked about everything. Evy told Jimmy about her home outside Copenhagen, about her three sisters, her two brothers — and her loneliness for them all. She told him about the times she had been to Paris and other great cities of Europe — but always with a group of friends or other models, never alone She told him how frightened she had been of him, and when the sun finally went down, he laughed and asked: "Are you too scared to go to dinner with me — now that it's dark?" Without hesitation, Evy put her hand in his. "I'm not scared at all, any more." And Jimmy felt the cold inside him melt away again. That was how it began. Ordinarily, the boy might have said to the girl, "We must do this again, next week." And she would have said, "Yes, I'm busy the rest of this week." But Evy and Jimmy could not play games. They had told each other too many truths too fast, they had come so close so soon. And they needed each other to drive away loneliness — they had no one else. So when Jimmy dropped her at the. Studio Club that night, they knew, without needing to say, that they would be together again tomorrow — and the next day — and every day, unless something went wrong. But nothing went wrong, and at the