Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

are as rare as people say they are. What is rare is a good voice, combined with a good appearance, an engaging manner, a deep sense of what words mean, and a love of singing so sincere that it shines in the eyes every time a song is sung. "You don't find that combination very often. But I felt Johnny Nash had the right mixture of all these things the first time I watched him work. Since then, I've worked with him on show after show, and every time I hear him sing, I know I am right. I can honestly say I think he's about the best young singer on the scene today." The miracle that smoothed Johnny's path with astonishing good fortune was repeated when Burt Lancaster saw Johnny singing on the Godfrey show. Lancaster had been searching for a seventeen-yearold Negro boy to play the lead role of the film version of a Broadway drama, Take a Giant Step, and he had auditioned 750 boys over a period of three years. When he saw Johnny, he liked him at once and offered to send him to Hollywood for a test. When Johnny was told this, he scoffed, "Ha . . . ! You're kidding . . . ! What would Hollywood want with me . . . ? I have no experience in acting . . . I'm only a singer." But he yielded to his managers' insistence and studied the script, learned it quickly, and reported to Lancaster in Hollywood. After working with Johnny for a while, Lancaster told Johnny's managers, "This boy is so good! How much acting experience has he had?" He was assured, "He was once in a high school operetta . . . that's all." After the test, Lancaster said, "I don't have to see the test. I have seen what I want. But I still think you're lying . . . This boy has had experience!" Johnny got the contract and made the movie. On the basis of sneak previews of Take A Giant Step, MGM signed Johnny for the only Negro role in its big film, Key Witness. The first Negro teen idol Johnny earned almost $50,000 in 1959, and is already the first Negro teen idol, drawing a tremendous fan mail. He is clearly destined to be the 'next Belafonte.' He takes his success with calm. "Around our house," he explains, "we never boasted. We're not the type who exult when we're lucky. Ours is a quiet kind of joy. We're not too demonstrative, although when I'm home Mother still wakes me up with a kiss and the words, 'Time to get up.' "We don't express our joy outside; we feel it inside. We know our strength comes from within, and we are ready for whatever comes. When things are bad, nobody complains. We know that This too shall pass." As soon as Johnny felt more secure about his earnings, he asked his mother to quit her housekeeping job and stay home. "She hadn't been feeling well, and I felt good being able to tell her to take it easy." When he visited the family last Easter, he asked his mother, "What do you want for Christmas?" She said, "Nothing." "How about a new house?" he asked, his velvet-brown eyes sparkling. She gasped, "You're kidding?" and he said, "I am not!" When his dad heard about it, he said, "Son, save your money." But Johnny is looking for a plot of land in Houston, and wants to build his parents a new house. But if his movie career builds up, he may buy them a house in Hollywood, instead. Last summer, he had another thrill at home. He flew in one Saturday morning, took his sister to an auto agency, and bought a new black-and-white Buick sedan. Then he drove it home and said, quietly, "Mom, I've got you a new car!" His mother wept happily, and his dad protested, "No . . . ! Our old car is good enough." But, in time, they accepted the new car, and now his dad shines the car personally and explains to neighbors, "This is the car Johnny bought for us with his own earned money." Mom Nash says, the mother love shining in her eyes, "Johnny is what God intended every son to be." His success has not changed his values. When he was earning $3,000 a week for two weeks at the Apollo Theatre, he walked to his apartment between shows to rest and eat. It did not occur to him to hang around backstage or to go to fancy restaurants with an entourage. "I don't want to live a fancy life," he explains. "I like to live simply." A new world His managers keep his accounts, pay his bills, give him an allowance, prepare a detailed monthly financial statement and send a copy to his parents. But he's so frugal, he rarely spends his allowance. He keeps busy around the apartment, constructing lamps, fixing lights, setting up a hi-fi system, reading books on science and math. His experiences away from home have shaken him up, of course. Arthur Godfrey, virtually a national institution, has embraced him in full view of millions of TV viewers, and invited him to his Virginia estate. He has found white as well as colored girls sweet, understanding and inspiring. They have triggered off self-improvement sprees. One white girl, employed by a publishing house, impressed him with her erudition so much that he told his managers the next day, "I realize now that a high school education is not enough ... I must somehow get a higher education!" Because he cannot take time out for college, he has begun to read better books, carrying them with him constantly into rehearsals and trips out of town. He hungers for social contacts that will bring him new insights into life. He'd like to see white and colored people know each other better. He worships Harry Belafonte because Belafonte is a solid citizen as well as a top entertainer. He is a friend of Johnny Ma this and Earl Grant. His loneliness, despite his growing circle of friends, is real. It is not easy for a teen-ager to be away from home, accepted but not yet completely part of a new and exciting world. "But I am never really alone," he explains, "I have my faith, and it is my constant companion." END Johnny stars in MGM's Key Witness. From Ugly Duckling to Cinderella (Continued from page 58) Franconero from Newark, New Jersey, being the Cinderella in the huge, popular Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade — ? Well, it was too much. Macy's told me Shirley Temple and lots of other stars would be in it, and they wanted me to have a float of my own. The reason I hesitated wasn't that I didn't want to be a part of it. It was because I was bowled over. I gulped and swallowed and finally muttered a "Yes, I would love to," and when I hung up the telephone I was so excited I could hardly speak. My mom wanted to know who'd called, and, in a timid voice, I said, "Macy's." I was afraid to tell her the whole story for fear they had made a mistake. Maybe they wanted a Connie Somebody Else instead of me. But she finagled the news out of me, and she said we ought to celebrate with coffee and cake. "No cake for me, Mama," I said. "Oh, come on, honey," she answered. "Just this once." "Uh-uh," I said firmly. And I sat down at our big-yellow-andchrome kitchen table in our nice new house in Bellefield, New Jersey, and began to think. My mother started the coffee pot percolating while I gazed out the window 78 at the October sun dipping behind the dry brown hills. All I could think of, all I could recall were my days in Junior High School, when I was fat as an overstuffed chicken, unhappy and made-funof. Because, now, Macy's wanted me to be their Cinderella. The truth is I wasn't only fat. I had no confidence at all in whatever I did. I was terrible in sports, in gym class. Whenever the captains of different teams in gym class would line up the girls for their teams, they tried to pretend I wasn't there and would always leave me until last; and then finally the gym teacher would tell me to go over to such-and-such a side. I was too short for basketball, not strong enough to throw a volley ball. And I always kept goofing in the middle of a game. And, besides, I was very heavy. I was twelve going on thirteen, and I weighed one hundred and thirty-eight pounds. And I was a shrimp, too. People used to say, "Connie, you're no bigger than a minute!" and they made me very self-conscious of my height. The only thing people would mention to me when they were hard-pressed for something nice to say was, "Connie, you have such nice long hair." And, one day, a boy I had a crush on announced he liked short hair during a class break at school so I went and got a "butch bob" — and when I got home and looked at myself in my dresser mirror I screamed. I looked like a scalped porcupine, and I began bawling because I knew, then and there. I looked awful. I was ugly, I told myself. Ugly. And I cried every night for two weeks. I tried to make excuses to my mom about not going to school, but she wouldn't have any of it. I just didn't want to face any of the kids. But the heartbreaking climax of my short haircut story is that the boy who said he liked short hair came up to me in school and said, "What's the matter with you? You look so funny." And he scowled, and I went home bawling like a baby again. All the while I had to make the rounds for auditions for TV and stage shows, and wherever my father and I would go, I'd see girls my age looking like dreams in picture-pretty dresses, with doll-baby figures. They looked like somebodies, and I felt like such a nobody. They'd wear cute shoes with small heels. I knocked around in scuffed-up flats. They'd use all sorts of make-up tricks: lipstick brushes and mascara and pancake powder. And I wouldn't bother. One day I was to play my accordion and sing Golden Earrings on George Scheck's Startime program on TV, and a boy I liked whose name was Tommy was also