Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1955)

...are you really lovely to love? Doris knew she had to get work to send money to Mom for her and Terry. Finally, she went in to see her agent, A1 Levy. “Sure I can find you something,” Levy said. “You just sit tight, kid, and I’ll phone you every day and you phone me whenever you feel like it. If I’m not in, you talk to my assistant, Marty Melcher.” She noticed that Mr. Melcher was attractive. Nothing more. A1 Levy made an appointment for her to see Bob Hope. They waited hours, then Hope said he couldn’t see her. “But she’ll be famous one of these days,” Levy argued. “When she is, bring her around,” Hope said. Her money ran lower. “Say,” said Levy on the phone to her one morning, “I’ve got an appointment for you to see Mike Curtiz. You know, he’d got that picture ‘Romance on the High Seas’ ready to go, but Betty Hutton can’t do it because she’s going to have a baby.” Doris felt a stab of jealousy. A happy girl going to have a baby. “But I can’t act,” she said to Levy. “And I’m not pretty enough for pictures, anyhow.” “Let’s go see,” said Levy. “The guys who wrote the songs asked for you, especially.” It was like the Hope appointment. They waited hours. Finally the great director, Curtiz, came out. He gave Doris one look. It wasn’t a flattering look. He virtually collapsed when in reply to his question about her dramatic experience, she said all she’d ever done was play a duck in a school play. “Just listen to her sing, Mike, please,” Levy pleaded. They put a song in front of her, a new song that was to be in the picture. It was called “That’s Magic.” A love song. They played it through for her once and she loved it immediately. A true love song. She sang it, and at the end, looked up to see the tears in Curtiz eyes. “With your kind of heart, you can act,” he said. She called her mother in Cincinnati the next day, after her screen test. “How’s Terry?” she asked. “How are you? Yes, I’m fine.” It wasn’t until she was almost ready to hang up that she added, “Oh, Mom, I’m signed to a seven-year contract at Warners.” It was 1947 and everybody was wonderful to her at Warners. She liked the days, but the evenings, the nights were terrible. She still walked Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, hoping, searching. Or she sat in her little hotel room and played Perry Como records, especially his “Without a Song” so many times that she wore out four pressings of it. She was a smash hit in “Romance on the High Seas.” Bob Hope sent for her. “I was crazy,” he said. “Now look what I have to pay for you.” She was made a regular part of his radio show. She made a recording of “It’s Magic.” It sold a million copies. She was big business. More and more she had to transact things with Levy. More and more Marty Melcher had to handle details for her. She liked and respected him very much and realized never before had she had a male friend. She figured he understood about girl singers because he was married to one, Patti Andrews. Her income began climbing, a thousand a week, two thousand a week. Her second picture was a smash, too. She said to Warners, “I’d like to make family pictures. About families. Stories about marriages, happy marriages.” Mom was living with her now in a little house not too far from the studio, and Doris was going through the crazy situation of persuading her six-year-old son that she really was his mother. Crazywonderful situation, because he was the A sweet, appealing air of freshness . . . is yours, always . . . when you use Fresh Cream Deodorant. Fresh keeps you free from embarrassing underarm odor and stains. Underarms are dry! For Fresh contains the most highly effective perspiration-checking ingredient now known to science. When you open the Fresh jar you’ll discover ... its delicate fragrance ... its whiteness, its whipped cream smoothness. Not a trace of stickiness. Not a trace of greasiness. Gentle to skin, too. For an air of freshness use Fresh Cream Deodorant every day — be sure you are lovely to love, always. fgESH is a registered trademark of Pharma-Craft Corporation. Also manufactured and distributed in Canada 83