Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

excitement, the biggest of the big time." "Well, they deserve each other," practically everybody sneered, the day last May when Eddie and Liz were married. Everybody except those very few people who realized the truth. And who said, "They need each other, desperately, don't they?" For these are the people who saw behind the titillating newspaper headlines, who sensed the real truth of this couple. What Eddie had to offer "We got to know each other," Liz has said, in private, to friends, "soon after Mike died. We had seen each other for years, Eddie and I. We had been in the same room a thousand times. He had been best man when I married Mike. But it wasn't till the night, not long after the funeral, when Eddie called me that we actually got to know one another. "Lots of writers — newspapers and magazine people — have written about this call. They say it came at four o'clock in the morning. They indicate that Eddie and I talked about Mike for a while and that then Eddie asked me what I was doing the next night. They wrote what lots of their readers wanted to read — about these two bad people plotting their future, evilly, clandestinely, while the rest of the world was fast asleep. "Actually, Eddie's call came shortly before midnight that night. I remember this because I was just about to go to bed when the phone rang. "Yes, we talked about Mike, of course. Mike was all we talked about, in fact. For ten minutes, fifteen, twenty — I don't remember exactly. "Except that I do remember, just before we hung up, Eddie saying something to me that I will never forget: " 'Liz,' he said, 'I've botched my life up with all kinds of problems, so I guess I'm not really the guy who should go around offering help — but if you ever need anything, want to talk over anything, if . . . going through what you're going through now . . . you find yourself faced with problems you can't solve yourself, alone, please — please, Liz, get in touch with me. For what little help I might be . . . .' "I loved Eddie for that. Hundreds of people had gotten in touch with me those past few days, offering me help, consolation, solace. I knew they would take me to dinner, if I liked. I knew they would take the children for a drive, out of the house for a while, for some fresh air, if I wanted that. Invite us all out somewhere for a week end. I knew they meant well, that their offers were genuine. "But something about Eddie — about what he had just said, the way he'd said it, the lost, sad feeling and sound of his voice — made me feel that here was the only person alive I would really want to call on if the days ahead became any blacker than they already were. " 'Thank you, Eddie,' I said. 'I may just do that — give you a ring some day.' "And then I hung up. "And it was the next day, as the lonely hours grew darker, that I found myself thinking about him, what I'd said . . . as I found myself staring at the phone, wanting to talk to him again, wanting so much to talk to him again." Liz did phone Eddie — a few days later. "There were moments during that call," Liz recalls, "when there were long silences between the two of us — when neither Eddie nor I said anything . . . Other people might have cleared their throats during those pauses and made one excuse or an other and finally said 'Well . . . good-by for now,' and hung up. "But, for us, even in those pauses ther was warmth, a wonderful warmth, th beginnings of our love. "I began to realize — during that tall and the meetings that inevitably followe — that I was with a human being I coul understand, who could understand me. "What was it about Eddie, exactly, tha made me feel this way? "Well, let's put it this way, simply: "I learned to share life with Eddie, learned — me, someone who had been wa; up on a special pedestal all her life, wh had been on the receiving end of life a] these years — that there was soraeont somewhere, with whom I could exist on ai equal level, someone I could give to whil I received. "I had never given before. I don' know that I had ever thought about givinf It had been comfortable, convenient, to b clothed in a warm blanket of security, sur rounded by people who wanted to d things for me, and only for me. "But now I realized that what I hai thought to be comfort . . . convenience . . was not that at all. "That all my life I had really wanted person I could comfort, who needed m; giving as much as I needed his. "This has been the special beauty of ou love, mine and and Eddie's. "I needed him. He needed me. "Together, we have shared life. . . . "I have learned to give. And for this, ti God, to my husband, I will always b grateful. . . ." EN Liz stars in Suddenly Last Summer. Co lumbia. Butterfield 8, MGM. and Cleo patra. 20th-Fox. An Ave Maria for Mario (Continued from page 21) "A boy." "And what are they naming it, do you know?" "Mario, after the mother, Maria," said the midwife. "Mario Lanza Cocozza." The neighbor woman listened as the baby, in the next room, began to cry suddenly. "Listen to that noise," she said, "You sure, with a big voice like that, he was only just born?" The midwife smiled. "I told the father," she said, "as soon as I heard that loud voice, that first moment — I said, 'If anything, you should name this little one Enrico, in honor of Caruso.' " "Ah," the neighbor woman said, shaking her head, "it's a sin, isn't it, what happened to Caruso?" "What happened?" the midwife asked. "He died," the other woman said. "Last night. In Italy. I just heard it on the radio . . . He was singing. His throat began to bleed. And he went, just like that. You didn't know?" "No," the midwife said, her smile disappearing, saddened by the knowledge that the greatest tenor voice of all time had been silenced, and feeling foolish inside herself that — even in jest — she had compared a tiny newborn baby's crying with his voice. . . . HOLLYWOOD— THE WINTER OF 1949: "I know, I know," the agent, a smaii and enthusiastic man, agreed with the MGM producer, a big man, a bored man, "they say it about any guy who can open his trap and reach a high C — 'He sounds just like Caruso!' . . . But, believe me, this guy I've got waiting outside does." "Does what?" the producer asked, yawning. "Sings," the agent said, for the tenth time those past five minutes. "Like Caruso, he sings. Like an angel. Like nobody you've ever heard before." "Same guy I saw you walking with before, near the commissary?" the producer asked. "Yes," the agent said. "He's too fat for pictures, you should know that," the producer said. "He must weigh 300 pounds." The agent shook his head. "He weighs 240 right now. But he can cut off fifty of 'em easy. He's a nervous type. He needs a job now. When he's nervous he eats — poor as he is, he eats and eats and gets fat. Sign him up, relax him and you'll see how fast he loses." The producer shrugged. "Look," he said, "this fellow of yours, he's got some test recordings he's made, hasn't he?" "S"re," the agent said. "Well, mail me a few of them and I'll listen when I have some time . . . I'm busy right now." He yawned again, and started to turn away. "Nossir," the agent said, "it's now or never. You hear him today, live, or you don't hear him at all. Not at this studio." The big producer turned back to look at the little agent again. Little agents, he knew, didn't talk this way to big producers unless they were pretty damn sure of themselves. "In exactly forty-five minutes," the agen went on, "I have an interview with m; boy over at U-I. This afternoon we go tx Warner's. I brought him here first be cause I think you people can put him b best use. But if you don't even want b hear him — " "All right," the producer said, bringinj up his hand, "wait a minute." He picked up his phone and dialed ai inter-office number. "Joe?" he asked, talking now to Josepl Pasternak, another Metro producer, th< most music-minded of all the Hollywooc brain-trust, "got a kid here, young tenoi from Philly. He's supposed to be good Want to hear him with me? . . . Okay, se< you on Stage 12 in ten minutes." He hung up and rose. "Come on," he said then, to the agent "let's pick up this marvel of yours anc get this thing over with!" .... "It was the most unbelievable moment oi my life," Joe Pasternak has since said. 11 got to the soundstage a little late. He had already begun to sing. I recognized th« song as the tenor aria from The Girl c\ the Golden West, by Puccini. I stood there] at the door, listening for a few moments, If he had stopped right then and there, I'd have known that this was the mosl beautiful male voice I had ever been privileged to hear. But he did not stop He sang on and on, other Puccini arias Verdi arias, popular tunes, Neapolitan street songs and sea chanties his parents had taught him. The voice grew more and more beautiful as he sang. I was awe-struck. I even wept a little. I have since wept over him — over what eventu ally happened to him as the next year passed. But at that moment, that firs moment, standing there at that door, m tears were only for his voice, strong, an< pure, and beautiful, that voice that h