Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1959)

SANDRA DEE Continued from page 43 “I have it. They gave it to me for a souvenir.” “Gollee! Can I come over tonight anyway? Just to see the bullet?” “Oh, no . . . you can’t do that. Don’t come over. I mean . . . well, you see . . . I’ve got to have plenty of rest. I’m not allowed to have any visitors.” “Gee, Sandy, that’s too bad. Do you think you’ll have a scar.” “Oh, no. Well, maybe a little one.” “You could always have plastic surgery.” “Ugh! I don’t really think there’ll be a scar. At least not one you can see with the naked eye.” “How long do you think you’ll be in bed?” “About two weeks. Oh, here comes Mother. She’s going to change the dressing on my wound. I have to hang up now.” “Is it all right if I call you tomorrow?” “Oh, yes. Gosh, if it wasn’t for the telephone, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. Well, bye now.” I hung up the phone. Mother had only come in to bring me a cup of chicken bouillon and the afternoon papers. I let the bouillon cool a little on the round white table next to my bed and I plumped the pillows up against the quilted headboard, pulled my blue blanket up around me and began turning the pages of the first paper. Then that fat black headline jumped out at me. “Sandra Dee Down With Mild Case Of Mumps.” I could actually feel my face turning red, but Mother just laughed. “You ought to know better than to make up such a story,” she said. “Everybody knows what good care the studio takes of its players. That sort of accident could never happen.” I’d only said it so he wouldn’t know I had anything so humiliating as mumps, and there it was, smack in the headlines. Now everybody would know I had the mumps. Mumps! Gosh, I remember I could hardly believe the doctor when he told me . . . I’d gotten back from a publicity appearance in Texas on a Monday and the very next day I climbed in my car and drove down to the Universal studios to have my hair and makeup done and then pose for some publicity pictures. When I walked into the makeup room with its brightly-lit wall-wide mirror and the counter shelf under it filled with pots and jars of every kind of makeup, Barbara Gayle, my stand-in and my very best friend in Hollywood, was already there. She was trying on a false goatee and it looked a scream wagging up and down on her chin as she said, “Hi, we’ve missed you.” “Me, too,” I said. “Who’ve you been dating while I was gone?” “Well, you know that cute boy I met at U.C.L.A. He . . .” Suddenly, Barbara stopped and looked at me. “Say, Sandy, haven’t you put on some weight?” I laughed. “Seriously, Sandy,” Barbara insisted, “you have put on weight. At least your face looks fuller, even if the rest of you doesn’t. You’re so lucky. Me, I always show it first in the hips!” I couldn’t say a word, ’cause the makeup man was painting my mouth with a lipstick brush. But then he stepped back, looked at me critically. “Sandy, your face does seem a little puffy,” he said. “Do you have a toothache.” “Uh-uh.” “Maybe you ought to drop by and see the studio physician?” It was beginning to sound like a conspiracy, but I went over to the doctor’s white wooden bungalow at the other end of the lot anyway. “The doctor will see you in just a few minutes,” the nurse said. “Won’t you have a seat?” I sat. Why do doctors always paint their offices green? I wondered. To match their patients’ faces? And why do they stuff them full of leather couches? Mother and I recently redid my bedroom, covering the old openwork headboard with padding and then quilting it over, so I’m full of decorating thoughts these days. Matter of fact, we just bought a new house and right now I’m in the middle of trying to talk Mother into doing it blues, silver, orchids and little touches of pink, to match the hotel apartment I loved so much in New York. Finally, I heard the rustle of the nurse’s starched uniform and I looked up from a magazine — it was last month’s, the way they always are in doctors’ offices. She opened a door and beckoned me through it. The inner office was green, too, with diplomas hung neatly in thin black frames on one wall and an oxygen tank, also green, leaning in one corner. The doctor was seated behind a big carved-oak desk. “Doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me,” I said quickly, “but they keep teasing me that my face looks puffy.” “Ummm,” he said. He looked at me — stared is more accurate — then he felt my forehead. “Any pain in your neck or around the jaw?” he asked. “No,” I said. “Where do you mean exactly?” “Behind your right ear?” I reached up with my hand and touched Take a tip from Sandra Dee. Let floral, stripe and plaid bed linen pep up your morale! For instance: Pepperell scatters roses all over a white background in their Bridal Rose cotton blanket ($4.95) and matching percale pillow case (98^ each ) . You can set them off with a solid pink, blue or yellow percale sheet ($2.98). Cannon’s dream-bait, Candy Stripe, comes in a woven cotton blanket ($4.98), matching percale sheet ($3.49) and matching percale pillow case ($1.19 each). Fieldcrest’s blue-and-green plaid dresses up a bed when you combine a matching set of cotton printed blanket ($5.95), percale sheet ($2.99) and percale pillow case ($1.25 each). Stripes or plaids can be mixed ’n’ matched with solids. (Prices are for single beds.)