Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

"I'm fine," she said, in a quiet voice. "Happy?" Frank asked. "Yes," she said. "Have they been tough, too tough, these past ten years?" Frank asked. "At the beginning, they were tough," Nancy said. "But you learn to live with your life, the way it's got to be, after a while . . . And then it gets less and less tough." "You going to get married again?" Frank asked. "You've been going out for quite a while now, to parties and things. I know he's a nice guy, from people who know him. I know he's proposed to you. That he wants to marry you. But that you keep saying no . . . Isn't that right?" "That's right," Nancy said. "Why, Nancy?" Frank asked. "I've said it before," she said. "I guess I can say it again ... I had the best once. I can't expect anything more in life than that. . . ." "You know where to call" She smiled, and tried to change the subject. "I hear, Frank, that you've been going pretty steady recently . . . with the dancer . . . Juliet Prowse?" "Yeah," he said. "She seems lovely, Frank," Nancy said. "I saw her in Can-Can. I've seen her on a couple of your shows. . . ." "She's hip," Frank said. "And she's a good gal. She's one of the few who didn't come after me for what she could get." "That's the way it should be," Nancy said. "That ain't the way it often is," said Frank, more than a little bit ruefully. Again Nancy smiled. "Tommy," she said, " — he's an awful nice boy, isn't he, Frank?" Frank nodded. "And our girl," Nancy said, "did you ever see her look prettier, more radiant, happier, than she was when she was sitting there, looking at him, while he was talking to you." "She looked beautiful," Frank said. Nancy nodded. She rose from her chair. "Well," she said, "I'd better be going now." Frank got up, too. "We'll be here through Sunday, Frank," Nancy said, walking towards him, taking his hand in hers, gently. "Are we going to see you sometime? Tomorrow, maybe?" "Tomorrow . . . sure," Frank said. "Well," Nancy said again — she kissed him on the cheek now — "You know where we're staying . . . And if you're not feeling well tonight, and you need somebody to come take care of you — you know where to call." She was gone a few moments later. And Frank, alone now, completely alone in the big room, walked back to the chair on which he'd been sitting and he sat again. "Ten years ago," he found himself asking, after a while, "what happened ten years ago?" He found himself looking over at the couch to the left, to the spot where Tommy, his son in law-to-be, had sat a little while earlier. "I had everything," he remembered the boy saying before, during those awful nervous minutes for him, when he was asking for Nancy Jr.'s hand, " — except I'd get lonely. I felt empty inside me, like there was something important missing. I know now that it was love. . . ." "I'd get lonely," Frank repeated the boy's words to himself now. He nodded. Lonely, he thought. He laughed an empty laugh. As he remembered his own loneliness now, these past long years. And how he'd fought it. With women — with woman after woman after woman after woman — so many, he couldn't list them for you right now, not for a thousand bucks. Women. All kinds of them. Good women, bad women, happy women, miserable women, love-making women, fighting women — starting from A and going through Z, and Z finished with, starting with A, all over again. . . . He slumped even further back in his chair. He looked from the spot where Tommyhad been sitting, with his daughter, Nancy Jr., and over to the chair where Nancy, the other Nancy, had sat. He stared at the chair, for a very long time. And he closed his eyes, wearily. And he tried not to think, nor remember, any more. end Frank will star in Ocean's Eleven, Warner Bros.: and can be seen right now starring in 20th Century-Fox's Can-Can. The Sal Mineo Story {Continued from page 21) Thirty years ago my eye wouldn't have had a chance. The doctors tell me I'd have been blinded the very first time I neglected the pain. And now, all through these warm spring days, I sit in my dark room, waiting, hoping, praying this crisis will pass. Occasionally I walk over to the window, and although I shouldn't, I peek through the slats in the Venetian blinds. My dark eyeglasses distort the color of the green buds unfurling in the outstretched branches of the apple tree, and, in the distance, the bright gold of the April sun silvers the Long Island Sound. And, within my heart, I thank God for the beauty He has given the world, the beauty we so often take for granted until suddenly we're shocked into consciously appreciating it. This latest relapse of my eye trouble — the crisis I'm going through now — occurred a couple of months ago after I finished working on my movie, The Gene Krupa Story Not only did I have to learn to play the drums the way Gene played them, but I sat for weeks and weeks with the writer and producer working out the 'little things' in the script. I'd be up at dawn, drive to the studio, act in front of the cameras all day, finish at seven or eight o'clock. I'd grab a quick bite to eat, go to rehearsal hall to rehearse the drum numbers, then, by ten o'clock I'd hurry to the projection room to catch the rushes of the day's shooting. I'd get home by one, only to wake up again at five. I never had a moment to stop and breathe. It was go, go, go all the time. Giulty secret They say a runner never feels tired <62 while he's running. It's only when he stops that he's out of breath. Or feels the keenness of pain in his heart from overstrain. And suddenly when I finished filming The Gene Krupa Story, I was out of breath, on the verge of collapse. I woke up that first morning after the shooting was over, and there was that terrible and excruciating pain in my right eye. I closed my eye. I wasn't imagining it; it was there, a pain that felt as though hundreds of sharp-edged knifeblades were hacking at my eyeball. For three days I didn't tell anyone about the pain. I was scared, petrified. I'd been warned about what could happen. By the end of the third day the pain became so torturous and unbearable I screamed in my sleep. And my mother knew my secret. "Sal, Sal," she cried as she ran to my room, her eyes flooded with tears, "why haven't you told any of us? What's the matter with you? Do you want to destroy yourself?" Her voice was kind, loving, sympathetic, and I felt like a heel. But like a child I kept hoping against hope the pain would pass, that it was only momentary. Deep down within my heart I knew better. I knew the pain was worse than it had ever been, and the doctors had warned me twice before. Mom didn't lose any time. First thing in the morning, she had my brother, Mike, drive me to Dr. Hubert's office in the East Sixties in New York, and when I got there and Dr. Hubert looked at me, he shook his head impatiently. "Sal," he said, raising his voice, "you'll never learn, will you. When I operated on this eye, what did I tell you? That if you didn't look after it, you'd be in real trouble, that you were playing with fire as far as this eye was concerned. What's the matter with you? Can't you understand plain English?" He was right. He had warned me. But that had been part of my trouble all my life; the fact that danger fascinates me. When I went to Mexico one summer, for instance, I took a chance and didn't get all the inoculations (I hate needles going into my arms!) Once I rode a wild horse and it was one of the greatest moments of my life: the challenge of whether or not the horse would throw me. It did, and for weeks I suffered with a broken knee cap that wouldn't heal. But the broken knee cap was worth the thrill of excitement. "Sal," Dr. Hubert continued, after he had examined my eye, "this is it. Your last warning. Your eye muscles are so weak it's a miracle you can see out of your right eye. If the pressure isn't eased, we'll have to operate again to alleviate it. But, Sal, stop and take inventory of yourself. What in the world's bothering you? Something's eating at your insides for you to have such a terrible pressure crippling your eye." I didn't say anything. What was bothering me? Everything. And nothing. The desire to do right by my work, the desire to keep growing as an actor. You know an actor's only as good as his last movie. And although I had thousands of fans, I was strangely lonely. "You must go into seclusion for a month. At least! If there's no improvement, there's the danger of complete atrophy which will. . . ." He stopped, pursed his thin lips together. "Let's say this: that if the eye improves we stand a chance of saving it." "My own enemy" His words didn't sound real to me. They sounded far away like an echo, as if someone was calling from another world. I probably didn't want to believe what he was saying, and when I left his office and walked out into the sunlight I wore a black leather patch over my right eye and my dark glasses. Dr. Hubert told me I'd , have to confine myself to dark rooms for the next month. He didn't want the other j eye strained.