Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1959)

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I’d gone to Chicago, to be with my family, and a columnist invited me to a New Year’s Eve party. ‘I’d love to come,’ I said. ‘May I bring my sister and brother-in-law?’ We’d spent Christmastime very quietly, and I knew Arlene and her husband would enjoy the party. “The columnist said that would be all right. It was later that he mentioned his television show. ‘By the way,’ he said to me, ‘you can stop off and say hello to my television audience on the way to the party.’ “ ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him. ‘I can’t do it. The studio doesn’t allow me to go on television without their permission. You know that.’ But he was furious! “The entertainer has offices in Chicago. He flew into town briefly and called me about a script that was in the wind — a possible part that he wanted to discuss with me. I was staying at my sister’s, in a suburb, and he came out to talk to me. Arlene’s family and our parents were there, too, and Mother asked him to have lunch with us. Later on, I remember Mother — so sad, so puzzled — saying, ‘Is it a sin to ask a fellow human being to break bread with you?’ ” Kim was pacing the room again, her body tense with indignation. “The items began coming out in the columns — not mentioning the entertainer’s name. Then there was one that did mention it — about the entertainer discussing a script with me. The papers began to link all these nothings together, but to me it was too ridiculous to take seriously. I went ahead and took the train back to Hollywood to begin ‘Bell, Book and Candle.’ I didn’t know . .” In her restless pacing, she had stopped beside a chair, and now she gripped the back of it. It was an entirely unconscious gesture, for Kim was concentrating deeply on each word she said, reliving a scene that she hadn’t even witnessed. “I didn’t know what I was leaving my family to face. My mother told me about it. She didn’t want to at first, but I made her tell me. And now I can’t forget it. I can see it, every moment . . . “It must have been a little after midnight, they figured out later. The doorbell of our house on Sayre Street rang. Mother was half asleep, and she said, ‘Who could that be? A telegram, maybe . . .?’ Dad was just getting ready for bed, so he went down to answer the door. “Mother sat up and listened, and she could hear a man’s voice. But she didn’t recognize it, and she couldn’t make out any of the words. Finally, Dad called up the stairs, ‘Blanche! Can you come down? There are a couple of men here from the newspaper.’ “Her heart started to thump, Mother says. All sorts of wild ideas went through her mind while she was hurrying to put on her robe and her slippers. An accident? She knew I was on the train. Had something happened to the train? She found two strangers in her living room — one of them with a camera. It was the other one who spoke up, and she was so relieved to see the cheerful look on his face that at first she hardly took in what he was saying. It started out something like: ‘Sorry to get you up, Mrs. Novak, but this is kind of a special occasion, isn’t it? We hear Kim’s getting married.’ “Mother did get that, and she must have looked absolutely amazed, because the reporter said, ‘Well, the train she’s on goes through Las Vegas, doesn’t it?’ He said it as if it was a most reasonable explanation. “The reporter finished by saying, ‘If you don’t mind, we’ll just wait here until you get the news.’ “Meantime, while Mother had been trying to take all this in, she’d noticed the photographer kind of circling around the telephone. Before she could open her mouth, he pointed to the chair beside the phone, and he said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Novak — we’ll want to get a picture of you right here when Kim’s call comes through.’ “Then Mother burst out, ‘This is ridiculous!’ She knew I wouldn’t wake her up in the middle of the night unless it was a real emergency. She was expecting to hear from me in the morning, because I always call up when I get out here, just to let them know what kind of a trip I had. “But they wouldn’t leave right away. There was my mother in her robe. And my dad was tired. And it was getting later and later. Finally, the reporter and the photographer did go, and Mother and Dad went on up to bed. Of course, they were upset, and they had to talk it over, and it was a while before they got to sleep. They’d just about drifted off when the phone rang.” Kim’s hands had been pressed against her cheeks. Now they slid to cover her ears. It was the same gesture she had used to shut out the remembered laughter of her nightmare. “They made it all sound as if it was a game. A joke. And that wasn’t the last phone call. They kept checking, hour after hour. Mother and Dad gave up any idea of sleeping. They got dressed. By six o’clock in the morning Mother was so nervous that she put in a call to Norma — Norma Kasell, that is, my personal manager. It was only four o’clock out here, so Norma was waked out of a sound sleep. And then she got up, too, so she could meet the train and tell me.” Kim drew a long breath and slowly crossed the room to sit down on the sofa again. She was shaken, but obviously she had finished what was for her the most painful aspect of her story. “You see, while all that was happening I was on the train. I didn’t know a thing about what my family was going through. When I got off, the newspaper people were all around me before Norma could reach me. I just didn’t believe they meant what they were saying. There was one wire-service man that I’d respected for a long time. I said to him, ‘You’re always making jokes. What do you really want to know?’ Then I turned to the group of friends around me and said, ‘Isn’t this the funniest thing you ever heard?’ But nobody was smiling. . . .” Kim’s head was bowed; her voice was hushed. “The days after that . . . The nights . . . Oh yes, I know what my dream meant, because in those weeks I was in a nightmare while I was awake. I couldn’t sleep. The gossip kept snowballing. I discovered my phone was tapped. When I went out, I was shadowed. And the lie kept growing. There was no way to stop it.” She lifted her head and clenched her hands together in her lap. “When such things happen, you feel you’ve got to do something about it. Your family is hurt. Your friends are hurt. And you’re advised to say nothing. But I want people to know the truth about me. I want to tell them myself. It’s just like in the dream. I’m so anxious to explain — I get all excited — and then I’m stopped. How can I get through to them?” “You just have,” I said. “Photoplay will print it.” And here it is. The End kim’s in Columbia’s “bell, book and CANDLE.” 90