Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1962)

this business. Suppose something happened? Suppose something went wrong? I’m not the kind who thinks about tomorrow. Tomorrow I don’t know about. I live for now . . . today . . . tonight — tonight with Tuesday. . . . “We’ll cook dinner at her house tonight, we usually do because we can cook better for the money. Besides, I enjoy goofing around the kitchen. My specialty is a German dish called rouladen, round steak sliced and rolled with slivers of pickle, cinnamon, salt, pepper, cheese and bacon, browned, then baked in the oven with mushrooms. But I don’t have to cook because, man, this girl of mine can cook, she’s almost as good a chef as her mother.” Some nights they go to movies, usually at the Village Theater in Westwood, which was Gary’s hangout when he was a student at UCLA. He likes the Village because they can dress as casually as the college kids do. Gary’s anti dress-up. So is Tuesday. They see the movie, stop at Greenblatt’s delicatessen to pick up a few sandwiches and then drive along the ocean in Gary’s little red Corvette. Warm nights they go for a long drive with Tuesday’s massive white police dog — and use Tuesday’s silver Thunderbird. Three’s strictly a crowd in the Corvette! A few months ago, they spent their nights at the hospital. Gary did all the talking then because Tuesday had had her tonsils removed and she felt miserable. It really doesn't matter where these two are, so long as they’re together. They hate big parties — they’ve gone to exactly two: Tuesday went to one for his sake, Gary went to one for hers. They love small parties at the homes of friends like Curt Lewin (Gary’s stand-in and friend for ten years), Tom Murphy or Barry Coe. Gary’s introduced Tuesday to tennis and water skiing. It was a surprise that Tuesday was so athletic. Gary says she has true coordination, excellent rhythm, and can learn anything in the world she wants to learn. They talk ad infinitum about acting; for they’re in love with it as well as with each other. This girl who started as a stony-faced child model (They used to call her “The Rock.”) and this boy who escaped from a ranch to football, and would have been all-American if he hadn’t injured his knee in a UCLA game, have a lot in common. In acting they both Continued from page 45 terror. For Mrs. Clark Gable, a mother’s worst fears had come true. It was a heartgripping fear which she will never forget. “It was almost as if I had received a physical blow,” Clark Gable’s beautiful widow told me later. “When the man on the phone said they had learned of a • plot, that they wanted to steal my baby, found they could do something they never dreamed — they found they could project themselves into another personality, they could become someone else. It was exciting! It made up for being something of a lone wolf in a world that often seemed alien. Yes, they have a lot in common — yet, when they met during “Wild in the Country,” Gary didn’t flip for her at all! “I wasn’t out looking for movie stars,” he told me. “Then one night I took a date to a party — but I found myself yakking with this little blonde. A week or so later, we started working together in the pilot of ‘Bus Stop.’ It was a great script, great lines, she played the Marilyn Monroe part and I the Don Murray part. We worked well together. As a matter of fact. I was fascinated with the way she works. In one scene I have to drink down a whole quart of milk. I figured she’d react big. The director figured it, too. Well, she didn’t. Her reaction was a sort of ‘So what?’ “I never even thought about her as a date. Every guy has a type and she just wasn’t mine. She was cute looking, sure, but I wasn't interested in her looks, I was interested in her thinking. There’s a tremendous love affair that goes on between Tuesday and the camera. The camera loves her. For all her youth, she has a marvelous technique. In between scenes we talked about everything. I teased her. I called her ‘The Monster.’ We never did have a date. One night after work as we were walking toward the parking lot, she asked if I’d like to come by and have dinner. We talked until one the next morning.” After that night Gary still didn't ask her for a date. He didn't like the way people made a fuss over her on the set. As if they were afraid of her. He wasn't going to be in any of that. No indeed. He wasn’t getting involved in any of that. Girls were too easy to come by, he didn’t have to get involved with a prima donna. But talk to her he did. They’d smoke a cigarette and talk. His birthday rolled around and she brought him a present — a green sweater. For that he took her to dinner. They never did get around to an actual date. They’ve always hated advice, yet tons of it is constantly heaped on them by well-meaning pals. The only advice they want is from each other. Often, in the beginning, Gary — a kid who worked hard for every nickel he ever had — was tempted by money to say, “I’ll do anything, just give me a script!” But he has a fierce pride, too, and Tuesday, having a fierce pride herself, pointed out to him that money or no money you have to believe in what you do. Gary’s been up for parts and not gotten them because they’ve gone to names that matter on the marquee, they’ve gone to “pretty” boys. Gary’s no pretty boy. he has a wide nose and a fighting kind of jaw, a strong face, a stormy face. Tuesday tells him not to worry, that she didn’t get the kind of parts she wanted at first, either. “You’ll get them,” she says. She knows strength pays off on the screen. She’s acted with plenty of top talent and. as far as she’s concerned. Gary’s is top talent. He dreams of playing Hal in “Picnic,” he dreams of intense, dramatic parts. Meanwhile, everything that happens is training. The goal is art. The greatest night they’ve known together was the night of the Moiseyev Ballet. “We dressed, I’ll have to admit,” he laughed. “I was absolutely flabbergasted at how wonderful Tuesday looked. Black dress, white coat, her hair all honeycolored and neat. I wore my blue suit, my one and only suit, and felt like Gladstone Gander, Donald Duck’s nemesis. We were excited just thinking about the ballet, but what we saw was even more exciting. It was enlightened ait . . . masculine . . . virile . . . smooth . . . living . . . precise . . . fantastic ... so great! I’ll never forget Tuesday, standing up, clapping her hands and shouting "Bravo!’ She’d have thrown hundred dollar bills all over the stage if she’d had them. . . . We felt at once exhilarated and empty, thrilled and ashamed of ourselves because we’re so little by comparison. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and twice as beautiful because I saw it with two pairs of eyes — hers and mine. It was unlike any adventure I’ve ever had. But then, when I’m with Tuesday, every minute, every night is unlike any adventure I’ve ever had. I know Tuesday’s dated lots of other guys, but 1 think it’s different with me. I hope it is. And I hope it lasts . . . because without Tuesday, I’m lost.” — Jane Ardmore Gary can be seen in Warners’ “Splendor in the Grass” and on ABC-TV’s “Follow the Sun,” Sunday, 7:30 P.M. EST. Tuesday’s new film is “Bachelor Flat,” for 20th. wanted to kidnap Clark’s son. fear knifed right through me. It hit me so hard that for an instant I seemed to stop breathing. What mother can ever forget a terrible moment like that?” Kathleen Gable has forgotten little about that crisp October morning when a report to the Los Angeles Police touched off one of the biggest kidnap scares since the tragic Lindbergh case. Nor have I. Within an hour of the time the detectives first notified Kay of the kidnap plot, I was on my way to the Gable ranch in Encino. Kathleen is a long-time close friend of mine. “Come right out, Kendis,” she had told me on the phone. Things seemed to be normal at the entrance to the twenty-two-acre estate. I pressed the button on the call box by the huge iron gate which guards the front entrance, and identified myself. In a moment the gate, which is electronically controlled from the house, opened just long enough for my car to pass through. As I headed up the familiar winding road I wondered if there shouldn’t be a guard at the gate at a time like this. It was then I spotted another car bearing two detectives. Apparently they’d been informed I was expected, since they let me pass. But I noticed that they looked me over carefully and even jotted down my license number. In the corner— a detective Inside the house there was no immediate f sign of crisis. However, I noted that the door to the nursery was tightly shut. In