Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

atr I C. IVIES ELK BIRTHDAYS If yotrr birthday falls in September, your birthstone is the sapphire and your flower is the aster. And here are some of the stars who share your birthday: September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September September 1— Yvonne DeCarlo 2 — Michael Dante $— Alan Ladd 4— Mitzi Gaynor /—Donna Anderson Gustavo Rojo 6— Jody McCrea 7 — Peter Lawford 9— Cliff Robertson 10— Lloyd Nolan Edmond O'Brien 11— Earl Holliman 13 — Scott Brady 14 — Jack Hawkins 15 — Jackie Cooper 16 — Lauren Bacall Anne Francis 17— Pat Crowley 18 — Frankie Avalon Rossano Brazzi 19 — Ray Danton Jimmie Rodgers 20— Haya Harareet Sophia Loren Karen Sharpe 22— Paul Muni 23— Mickey Rooney 24— George Raft 25 — John Ericson Aldo Ray 26— Julie London Jack Kelly 27 — Betty Lou Keim Kathy Nolan 28 — Janet Munro Heather Sears Peter Finch 29— Anita Ekberg Lizabeth Scott Gene Autry Steve Forrest Trevor Howard 30— Angie Dickinson Anna Kashfi Deborah Kerr Johnny Mathis Claudette Colbert September 13 Greta Garbo September 18 Bob Stack Greer Garson 74 September 29 Ben Cooper September 30 (Continued from page 21) could hear them think, " — guy's almost arrived so many times, he's worn out the welcome mat." "Poor Bob," he could hear them, " — all these years of batting away, and still minor league." "Poor Bob," he could hear them. "Poor guy." He turned back to Rosemarie. He took her hand. "I love you, Rose," he said, very softly. "I could have lost you once. But I didn't. Thank God I have you, at least." And then, facing the stage once more, he began to think of that shelf in the den of their home, which Rosemarie had cleared earlier in the day, saying proudly, "Here is where your Oscar goes, darling, right here. The prize you've worked so hard for, in this business, all these years!" And he began to wonder, for the first time in all these years: "How did I get into this business, anyway? How? And why? Why? . . ." It began with a kiss Actually, Bob's career in pictures began on a light note . . . with a kiss, in fact; one of the most famous kisses in screen history. The year was 1939. Deanna Durbin, the reigning teen-age star, was sixteen. Her studio, deciding it was time for their million-dollar baby to grow up, prepared a script for her called First Love. The search for a leading man that followed was a publicity natural. "Who will be the first young man to kiss our Deanna?" came the cry from Universal Pictures. And the world, or at least a great part of it, waited breathlessly while young man after young man was tested for the job. As it happened, no suitable young man was found. Not, that is, for about two months, and till the day a fellow named Robert Stack — nineteen, six-one, blue-eyed, blond, very handsome, a socialite, an All-American skeet champion, and fresh out of college — dropped by the studio for a visit with Deanna, whom he knew. They were in the studio commissary, having lunch, when it happened. Deanna's producer, a very German German-type, passed by their table. "Mein dear," he said, bowing slightly when he spotted Deanna. Then he looked over at her lunch date. "Mein Gott!" he said, his monocle beginning to twitch against his nose. "But you are wunderbar, marvelous," he said to Bob. "You are an actor?" "No," said Bob. "You would like to be an actor?" asked the producer. "I never thought much about it," said Bob. "Mit dot face, mit dot physique," said the producer, "you must be an actor . . . I don't take no for an answer." He didn't, either. For the next hour, right there at the table, he talked to Bob, talking him right into a contract, which was signed a couple of days later. Then, for the next few months, he and his director guided Bob through the paces of picture-making, right up till the last day of shooting, the day of the Big Kiss, the scene in which Deanna, once and finally kissed, swoons dazedly into her young boyfriend's arms. When the picture was released, Deanna's swooning was multiplied by millions. Girls and women all over the country began to flood the fan-letter bin at Universal with cards and letters about Bob. They wanted to know all about him. Who was he? What was ne reany iuta : — uu, been all their lives? "Adulation, especially at the beginning, is a funny thing," Bob says today, looking back. "I guess it turns lots of people's heads out here. I don't say I was completely untouched by it. But whenever I did start to get a little cocky about the way things were going I'd always remember what my brother said to me after he saw me on the screen the first time: 'Bob,' he said, 'you're sort of all teeth and no talent.' He said it in a kidding way. But that about summed me up, I guess." Still, those first years, Bob wasn't shedding any tears over the fact that he was minus on the acting side "and being paid well for something I couldn't even do." Life as a young Hollywood personality was fun. And young Bob Stack wasn't bound to start fighting fun. Active to passive to active again "The only misgiving I had at the time, those first four years, those first nine or ten pictures," he recalls, "was that I was living a primarily passive existence while all my life I'd been used to action. You see, when you're in pictures you're the guy who may be up there on the screen, but behind you there are lots of people plotting things out for you, telling you what to do, how to do it, what to say, how to say it. And there's waiting, days and weeks and months of waiting sometimes between scripts. ... I wasn't used to this As a kid I'd lived rough, tough, despite the fact that we were fairly well-to-do My dad died when I was about nine. And because he'd been quite an athlete, my mother went overboard with my brother and me in athletics. 'Wouldn't Jim have wanted them to do this?' she'd say. And be fore you knew it we were either riding motorbike or a polo pony or a hydro plane or fooling around with guns. A: it turned out my brother and I had aboui a hundred fathers, friends of my dad': who'd come over and take us on campin trips, teach us how to ride, this, that. ] had been an active life for us. And now for me, suddenly, it was passive. ... As 1 said, I had some misgivings about this al the beginning. But not too many. I wa living it up. And, I guess, I sort of didn' make the time to think much about it." The war, however, helped change thing — and those five years between 1942 anc 1946 which Bob spent in the Navy gav€ him plenty of time to start thinking thing: over. They were a long and sobering five year: for the good-looking young lieutenant fron Hollywood. And when they were nearly over, these five years away from The Town, th parties, the general hoopla, Bob decidec that he would try to become an 'Actor. "I had a talk with myself one night," h« says. "It was very brief and simple. 'Goc willing, Charlie, you've come through th war okay,' I told myself, 'and you've dor a fair job at what you were assigned tc do. Now how about growing up, getting serious and trying to do a job at home? ' When Bob did get home, however, ht found that nobody there gave a hoot abou how he had talked to himself, or what he'e said. "To every producer in town, I was ai image," he explains. "Their image o Bob Stack was of a guy who kisses Deann; Durbin, swings a mean tennis racket anc mixes martinis at debutante balls . . . Well I had an image of myself, too, a great bis image, of the guy who was going to buckl< down and prove himself and get to worl with directors like George Stevens anc play opposite stars like Bergman and t< hell with the tennis rackets and the martinis. It was a fight between the twe images — theirs and mine. It was a worth