Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1957)

pick Doris Day. It would be as easy as snapping a finger. . . . She’s authentic. She’s the girl every guy should marry.” Just then the guy she did marry joined us, freshly showered after a session on the tennis court and obviously feeling good all over. He had seen the trade papers in the locker room. “You’re great!” he announced to his smiling wife. “A smash, a wow, a socko, a loud, hot and torrid hit. You did it, you did it, you did it! I’ll buy you a whole new box of Tootsie Rolls. And a whole bouquet of lollipops. All flavors.” “You must have won your tennis match,” said Doris, unmoved by his generous flattery. “Lost, as a matter of fact,” said Marty cheerfully. “But what about ‘Julie’ in New York? Did you do it, or didn’t you do it?” “You did it,” said Doris firmly. Marty turned to me. “Actually, Andrew Stone and his wife, and my wife, and Barry Sullivan, and Louis Jourdan and Frank Lovejoy — they all did it. Andy wrote and directed ‘Julie,’ and his wife Virginia was his assistant and film editor. Now there’s a husband-wife team that is going places.” It was too good an opening to miss. “So why not the husband -wife team of Melcher and Day?” I asked. “Why no more ‘Julies?’ ” “Different. Entirely different,” replied Marty promptly. Then he said, “Producers and actors come from opposite sides of the fence. They have to. A director can work with his assistant director and a writer can collaborate with another writer. But it’s tougher for a producer and a star to work together. It’s business against creative art. That’s where an agent comes in handy— to iron out the difficulties between his star and the producer. When I was Doris’ agent, I used to go to bat for her. When I became her producer I used to — Say, isn’t this a wonderful day?” he suddenly interrupted himself. “You don’t have days like this in the winter in New York.” I had to admit it was that kind of a day, and definitely not the kind of a day on which a producer should squabble with a star when a handsome husband had a beautiful wife to admire. In fact, from the way he was admiring her, it was not the kind of a day they should have ruined by interviewers. So I remembered another appointment, made the necessary arrangements to meet again, and left. It was Marty I met the next morning at the suite of offices occupied by his music publishing company on the Sunset Strip. It looked prosperous, if not downright opulent, and Marty was obviously proud of it. “This is it,” he said. “This is the kind of business I’ve always liked. I like music, composers, lyric writers — the whole funny business. And every now and then a hit tune to stir things up.” “Like ‘Whatever Will Be, Will Be,’ for instance?” “A perfect ‘for instance.’ That’s Doris for you. And if you are still interested in that husband -wife team idea, music is one business in which we hit it off. We’re partners in one firm that just handles her music interests. But that’s one of the few places we meet in a business way.” I was surprised. It was no secret that in the days before their marriage, Marty, as Doris’ agent, had handled everything for her, from leaky faucets to milliondollar contracts. “You’re not her agent any more?” I asked. “I would say that I am her personal manager. MCA handles most of her contracts, and that usually leaves us free at night to talk like a husband and wife instead of about some clause buried down there in fine print. Let MCA or someone else worry about the fine print. Don’t forget, Doris is big business, and my getting too much involved in that isn’t good for us. Looking at her, you forget that every time she makes a picture or a recording, there are thousands of people involved, just as though she were a big factory. I remember when she starred in ‘April In Paris,’ there were nearly 3,000 people working on the picture at Warner Brothers alone, not to mention the thousands of others — theatre owners, projectionists, box-office girls, newspaper ad salesmen, ushers — who make a living out of theatres all over the world. Do you see what I’m driving at?” “It’s hard to think of Miss Day as a big factory, but I’m trying.” “Well, Doris used to say she could manage her business affairs by dumping her purse out on the table and counting the change. Now her business affairs are handled by the management firm of Rosen thal & Norton, and they have a big job or their hands. The point is, if we workec on her business affairs as a husband-and-i wife team, we’d be 'working at it full time/ and what kind of a marriage would thal make? It would be like being married to a corporation.” “Is that what happened on ‘Julie’?” Marty considered the question gravely, “I’m glad we made ‘Julie,’ and I’m glad it looks like a hit. We proved we could do it, and that means a lot. But I don’t think that Doris and I are ideally geared to work together as star and producer and then carry all the pressures into our home life. Andy Stone had a lot of good ideas about using real settings instead of sound stages, and I had a few of my own, and I can say that we brought the picture in for about a million dollars less than it would have cost a major studio to produce it. As a partner in Arwin Productions, Doris admired us for that, but as the star of the picture there were some corners she would not allow us to cut. She was right, of course. You don’t get to be a star if you aren’t right most of the time, but still we had arguments.” He paused to reconsider a delicate subject. “Now here’s the pitch,” he said at last. “In most businesses, when a husband-andwife team win a point, they win it together. But in our case, if Doris won, I lost. And if I won, Doris lost. Now you take a situation like that home with you. Instead of the star going home to get some sympathy from her husband, and the producer going home to weep on his wife’s shoulder, we’d go home together. And there, over a wonderful dinner, we’d sit, not too happy. You get the picture. Then one night we both started to laugh, and then we realized what was happening. “It didn’t matter which one of us had a won on the set. In the end we both had lost. We had lost a happy evening at home together, and man, it was because we § wanted to be happy together that we had married in the first place. Our so-called teamwork was ruining the very thing we v had teamed together for.” I said, “So just when you were going good, you called the whole thing quits?” f “That we did. But, mind you, this is the way we happen to feel right now. We’ve been saying that we’d never do another ‘Julie.’ I’d like to restate that. If we go on thinking in the same terms about a star’s relation with her producer, then, chances are, we won’t work together again. But, who knows, we might see some new angles on the thing. In that event, we’ll review the whole case.” He smiled. “Noth ; ing’s ever really definite in this business, i “Anyway, look what happened,” he brightened considerably. “Doris got the starring role in ‘Pajama Game’ at Warner Brothers, and instead of having her poor husband for a producer, she’s got the great George Abbott from Broadway, plus Frederick Brisson, Robert Griffith, and Harold Prince. Four producers! We’re going to have a wonderful winter together.” 1 An intercom announced the arrival of a songwriter Marty had been expecting. He said, “Now that’s what I like about my / business. This guy might have a hit that will sell a stack of sheet music the size of the Washington Monument. A million records. A theme song for a movie. Who knows?” I left Marty’s office and took the sixmile ride from the Strip to the studios of Warner Brothers. I tried to picture Doris Day as the big corporation whose product was beauty and talent. But was this the same girl I had met at the tennis club? The same girl who had been bom Doris Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, the same girl who was a good wife and mother? I arrived at the studio thinking that there ANSWERS TO CROSSWORD PUZZLE ON PAGE 86 Across 48. Ben 11. N W (Natalie Wood) 49. taste 14. Let’s 1. Satchmo 50. Far 16. Egg 8. Martin (Dean, Dewey) 52. Piper (Laurie) 18. Minnesota’s 12. Tryon (Tom) 56. Star 19. Mamie (Van Doren) 13. Leslie ( Nielsen) 57. flier 22. Andersen (H. Christian) 15. R M (Robert Mitchum) 59. hair 23. C R (Cliff Robertson) 16. E L (Elsa Lanchester) 61. in 26. geese 17. Ken 62. ape 28. R A ( Ray Anthony) 18. mom 63. Happy 31. Ann (Blyth) 20. A S (Ann Sothern) 66. voters 33. Agar (John) 21. Magic 69. Isn’t 37. Mine 24. Toni 71. Veil 42. mast 25. A G ( Ava Gardner) 72. Alive 43. Astaire (Fred) 27. Stranger 73. O’Hara (Maureen) 44. O’Brien (Edmond) 29. Sr. 74. Lena 46. Kern’s (Jerome) 30. name 47. Affair 32. Brand Down 51. Alps 33. Annie 52. Paper 34. E O (Edmond O'Brien) 1. Strasberg (Susan) 53. Phyl ( Phyllis Isley) 35. Genes 2. Armstrong (Louis) 54. E A (Edie Adams) 36. R N < Robert Newton) 3. Ty (Power) 55. rival 37. M R ( Michael Red rave) 4. Colman (Ronald) 58. R H (Rock Hudson) 38. A S (Anthony Steel) 5. H N (Harmon Nelson) 60. role 39. G G (George Gobel) 6. Ollie 64. Ava 40. Is 7. ask 65. Pia 41. Roma 8. minor 67. tin 44. One 9. A E (Anita Ekberg) 68. Eva (Marie Saint) 45. task 10. 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