Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1957)

as usual, but not reluctantly. When at last he got a wire offering him a job with a band Gene Krupa was getting together in New York, he had a long talk with Doris. It was too good an offer to turn down, but still — He went to New York, but this time with real reluctance. The famous Krupa jazz beat did something for Al. Within a matter of weeks he became one of the best trombone players in the country, and Jimmy Dorsey snapped him up for his bigger and better-paying orchestra. Al’s letters to Doris became more urgent. It was then that Danny Engel returned from a swing that had taken him through Chicago. Danny is a rotund, amiable man who calls himself a song-plugger for the Chappell Music Co., Inc., but as one of the deans of music in the Ohio Valley, his influence goes far beyond the modest limitations of his office. Quite by chance Doris happened to be in the music store where he hangs his hat, and when he saw her he was struck by one of his many inspirations. He walked up to Doris and said, “How would you like to sing for Bob Crosby at the Blackhawk in Chicago?” Said Doris, “Huh?” “Yep. I just left Crosby, and he’s looking for a girl vocalist. Now I know what Barney Rapp says about you, and I’ve heard you on the air, and I think you’re ready for the job. First the Blackhawk, then the Chicago Theatre, and then New York for the fall radio season with ‘Your Hit Parade.’ How does that sound?” “You think I can get a job like that?” gasped Doris. “Come on, let’s go!” Danny said. “Sing for the man.” Thus impetuously was Doris launched into the big time. And everything worked out just as Danny had predicted. She tackled the huge Chicago Theatre and learned how to sing to huge audiences. By the time she reached New York, the millions she sang to over a vast network held no terrors. She won them over with the same ease that she had won over the patrons at the Sign of the Drum. All except one man. The truth was, Doris had been a little absent-minded about such minor details as birthdays, and one of the network vicepresidents started to fret about the child labor law enforcement officers. To spare “Your Hit Parade” this staggering embarrassment, Doris was ordered dropped at the end of the first thirteen-week contract. But Al Jorden was in New York, they were two hometown folks in the big city together, and Jimmy Dorsey’s band looked set for the winter. The logical, if not the sensible, thing to do was get married, so they did. Almost at once the band business was engulfed in the black clouds of World War II. Big bands gave way to small combos, and the combos fought it out over jazz, swing and bop. Long-term engagements gave way to countless one-night stands in the sticks, and Al was off on the road. Fortunately — and this is what Doris means when she says things just happen to her while she does nothing — the very night she finished her last show with Bob Crosby, Les Brown offered her a job. Then began a strange kind of married life. Doris went one way with her band and Al another with his. They crossed trails frequently but seldom met. On those rare occasions when she could join Al for a week or two between engagements, she spent her time riding with him in buses from one stand to the next. For family life she sat in impersonal hotel rooms waiting until 5 a.m. when her husband, p after riding all day and blaring out a high tempo all night, would come “home” too exhausted to speak. Two months after Pearl Harbor Doris gave birth to Terry in the vast Medical Arts Center of New York. For the first time in years she was radiantly happy. Though she showed every promise of reaching the top in her career, she renounced the whole works in favor of her family. Al, too, was happy, but now, as the sole breadwinner in the family, he found the going tough. They talked it over and decided to return to Cincinnati. With the last of their savings they made a small down payment on a house and Al went into war work, a task for which he was eminently unsuited. He felt trapped. When he was offered a chance to join a small band playing at Army camps around the country, he was off. The marriage, doomed by circumstances from the start, began to crumble. The road was no place for Terry. For a time Doris tried leaving him with her mother while she joined Al on the road, but her heart wasn’t in it. This period, in which she was a hotel-room wife and absentee-mother, is particularly painful in Doris’ life. She was neither singer nor homemaker — nor mother. The marriage disintegrated completely. Three years after it began, it ended in divorce, one of the countless thousands produced by the times. Back in Cincinnati, she found happiness in Terry, but the hurt of the divorce was deep. Complicating matters was the fact that she had to earn some money, and real fast, to keep milk in Terry’s bottle. The only trade she knew was singing. Her first solid offer came from Milt Weiner, general manager of music at WLW, a man who has introduced more singing talent to the radio audience than almost any other manager in the land. “Oh, the fan mail she used to get,” he reminisced recently. Unfortunately for Mr. Weiner, one of the listeners one night happened to be Les There’s only one PAT BOONE! Read his thrilling life story in June PHOTOPLAYMAY 7 Brown. He was making a long, late haul from one one-night stand to the next, and que sera, sera. He tuned the car radio to WLW and recognized Doris’ voice. Les stopped at the next all-night filling station and began dropping coins in the phone. When at last Doris was free to answer, he blurted: “I heard you! You’re better than ever! Why didn’t you let me know you had started work again?” “Oh, Mr. Brown,” wailed Doris. “I can’t leave Terry.” “The band needs you, Doris. Look, don’t give me your answer now. Think it over, and let me know.” He named his next few stops. “I won’t do a thing about a singer until I hear from you.” Doris was in a turmoil. Les was in a position to pay four times what she could earn in Cincinnati, and the clincher came when her friends pointed out that the big job would not only aid the war effort, but make Terry’s future more secure financially. After the war the glamour and romance returned to big-time show business. Doris sang in the biggest hotels, met the most famous people, was dined in the most fabulous restaurants and entertained at parties at the richest estates. And she was miserable. She missed Terry. To conceal it, she affected a gay brittleness, gave out with the fast wisecracks, and sprinkled her conversation with jive talk. She was to all appearances a real hep kid. But her defense was not as iron clad as she thought. When she met George Weidler, a top saxo phone player with Stan Kenton’s hot aggregation, her lonesomeness showed through her glib patter. She married him in Mt. Vernon, New York, in 1946. Now, she thought, she could make a home for Terry. There was no home. For the second time, she found herself taking her voice in one direction while her husband took his saxophone in another. This time it was even tougher. She had left Les Brown and was working in the famous Little Club in New York, a top spot, but for her the end of the road. The bouncy vivacity that had made her was all but gone. When she sang a love song, she thought of George off in the sticks somewhere, and her eyes filled with tears. The owner, who knew what she could really do when in the mood, was properly sympathetic, but he also had to face such sordid realities as the rent money. “You’re all mixed up,” he said kindly but with finality. “You can’t sing in New York when your heart is somewhere else. You had better take some time off to get with your family.” At this low ebb, Hollywood held up a false and glittering promise. Not the movie Hollywood, but the radio and television Hollywood, which was booming. George, whose sister Virginia had achieved some success as a movie actress, agreed that there might be a point in rushing out West to get in on the ground floor. Once more Doris had visions of a small cottage for her family, with maybe a small palm tree and a geranium in the front yard. They arrived just in time to get in on the ground floor of one of the greatest housing shortages in America. They ended up in a trailer. But they had a roof over their heads. Now that they were in Hollywood, job offers came through from New York and Chicago that Hollywood couldn’t meet. “It’s too confusing,” said George dolefully. “We’ll never get organized.” The confusion worsened. If Doris got an engagement in some distant club, George was out of work. If George was on the road, Doris would be sweating out a period of “at liberty” in the trailer. Married life became a series of letters and postcards, with the sender writing in haste and the receiver reading at leisure, with hours to pick out “hidden meanings” in the hurried phrases. They broke up once and were reconciled. With renewed hope, Doris signed up with Century Artists, Ltd., a Hollywood agency that might be able to get her bookings closer to home. It was run by three partners, Al Levy, Richard Dorso, and Martin Melcher. Melcher handled most of the music bookings, but he was married to Patti Andrews, who was also a top draw. So as a matter of diplomacy, Al Levy took over the handling of Doris’ bookings to avoid any hint of family partiality. It worked for Doris, who could sing with any band, but George, talented and highstrung, could work only with bands that required his particular brand of highly skilled musicianship. For him things became more exasperatingly confused than ever. On April 10, 1947, he announced that marriage was just another complication. This time he walked out for good. An hour later Al Levy, excited about the possibility of a movie role for Doris, was on the phone to her. In the third part of Doris Day's life story she begins at last to see the light of her future happiness , in singing , in Hollywood , in her marriage with Marty Melcher. Read the third installment of this heartwarming story in June Photoplay. ( Doris is in M-G-M's ‘'Julie” and Earners’ “ The Pajama Game.”)