Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1943)

HOLLYWOOD'S QAneM, I J XN\r. ■JJJQ CHERYL CHRISTINA CRANE SPEAKING 32 I HAVE navy blue eyes and black hair. I weigh ten pounds and thirteen ounces so far, and I was born on July twentyfifth of this year. My name is Cheryl Christina Crane. I probably inherit my looks from my parents. I don't know whether you've heard of them or not — they're Mr. and Mrs. J. Stephen Crane, and my mother's acting name is Lana Turner. But considering how old they are (she's twentytwo years older than I am and he's twenty-eight), I think they are stunning people. She's about a foot shorter than Daddy, with soft blonde hair that falls around her face, and she wears a size ten dress; and he's six feet one, with big shoulders and brown eyes and dark curling hair like mine. And aside from being good-looking, they're the two happiest people I've ever seen. Not that they've always been happy. They had a bad spell for two weeks, just before I was born — because of Daddy. You see, he was just determined to have a son. In fact, he even told Mother he'd disown her if I were a girl and he got very touchy whenever anyone kidded him about it . . . and one time, a week before I was born, he even walked out on a party to cool off because he got so angry when someone said I might be what I am. So you can imagine how my mother felt when I finally appeared, at 5:14 Sunday morning on July twenty-fifth. She'd been conscious all the time I was arriving, because she'd taken something called a spinal anaesthetic; so the minute she was told about me she said, "Oh, how will we ever tell Stephen?" One of the nurses said she would, and she went out into the hall and said very quickly, "Congratulations — you have a lovely daughter!" Then I hear that my father turned milk-white with disappointment. But he came into the delivery room right away and kissed my mother, and then couldn't helD snarling when he said. "Well, where is she?" The nurse took him over to where I was, in a hotbox in the corner . . . and he took one look at me and changed his whole attitude right then and there. Mother says he got the most foolish look on his face — and now, whenever he thinks she's not around, he comes into my room and tehs me a lot of pretty foolish (but very wonderful) things. If anyone makes me conceited, he will. He says I am the most marvelous baby girl in the whole world and he wouldn't change me for anyone. Even a boy. What I wouldn't change is the life I lead. I lie all day long in the prettiest room you can imagine, which my mother designed herself. The walls are pale, pale blue with fleecy white clouds painted on them — and pink cherubs pulling the clouds along, and riding them, and pushing them. My furniture is all pink and blue and white, too — and outside my room is a one-story white house on a hill overlooking the whole Pacific Ocean and the city of Los Angeles. A swarm of people live here — seven altogether. There's my grandmother, and Daddy and Mother, and two maids, and my nurse and me. Only I sometimes wonder what the nurse is for — because Mother likes to do everything for me. She feeds and bathes me, very gently, and talking to me all the time. If my Daddy were here alone, of course. I could understand the nurse — because, even though he likes to come in and make love speeches to me, he's scared to death to touch me. And whenever he does. Mother says he's so clumsy that she's terrified he'll drop me. Before I was born a lot of hubbub seems to have gone on. Like Mother's yens, for instance. She got a strawberry yen. when she ate strawberries for breakfast, lunch and dinner and in between meals too — and she insisted that everyone else in the house eat them with her. She got so strawberryconscious, she even bought a strawberry-print maternity dress — and Daddy just stopped her in time before she had