Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

The long wait was ovei Tony Curtis sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. In five minutes he would marry a girl twenty years his junior. Gossips had had a field-day with their romance, had even implied that she didn’t really love him. One thing he had learned from life was patience, and he was glad he had waited until Christine was sure. Now the time was right, their time to be man and wife. Faintly he could hear the chatter of the girls in another room down the lush corridor of the swank Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He imagined he could hear one particular voice over the rest. He smiled to himself, got up and walked over to the mirror. He stared quietly at the reflected image. Carefully he regarded the man who stared back. The man wore a black suit, a white shirt and a large white carnation. But it was the face and the eyes that demanded most of his attention. He was almost thirty-eight, but except for the iron gray at the temples, he could have been taken for five years younger. His eyes, a deep but brilliant blue, revealed an expression of a man who had learned to suffer through gossip and live with it, had learned that two people in love had to choose their own way, no matter how it seemed to others. A friend, well-dressed and beaming with happiness, came in and slapped Tony on the shoulder. “That guy staring back at you looks like a man who might be reconsidering an important decision. In five minutes you’ll be a married man, a husband, a breadwinner. Too late now, Tony,” the friend quipped. Tony laughed. “Not me,” he said. “I’m the eager bridegroom and you may quote me.” (Continued on page 77 1