Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1948)

/ > p Discover the lovely secret of April Showers . . . a dash of recklessness, a murmur of mystery, a breath of romance. Enchanting fragrance for enchanted hours! Eau de Toilette, $2.00 Dusting Powder, $1.00 Perfume, $7.50, $4.50, $1.25 —p/us /ax PERFUME There's fresh bright magic in this gay perfume! Frolic whispers to you of high* hearted moments— joy that lingers in your heart, arid his! Eau de Toilette, $2.00. Dusting Powder, $1.00. Talcum Powder, 50#. Perfume, $7.50, $4.50; debutante size, $1.25 —p/us taH My Handicap — Carson (Continued from page 57) another one,” I said casually, as though we’d been catching bigger ones all day. Jack’s eyes popped. “You’ve been catching quite a few,” he said. “Oh, we’ve been doing all right,” I shrugged. Jack wouldn’t leave that spot all day. Not even to come in to lunch. But he didn’t catch any. “Jeepers, Stan ... do you sing to ’em?” he said. We went fishing partly to let down and recover from the shock of the reception we had been given in Milwaukee when we went there for the premiere of “Two Guys from Milwaukee.” We thought we’d take a few fast bows at the Warners’ theater and a few fast beers with some of the boys around town we’d known. But we’d reckoned without Milwaukee. What a place. They really stick by the home team, whether you’ve got it coming or not. Streets were roped off, sirens were going, fire engines whistling, confetti falling and bands playing “On Wisconsin,” as we rode on the back of a 1910 White automobile in the mile-long parade. The city was all ours, but we were too stunned to take it and we didn’t feel like making much conversation, for our throats were too full. “This is ridiculous,” I said. “Don’t you wish we’d discovered penicillin or something . . . Anything?” said Jack. I don’t know what he was thinking about as we chugged along. But I can guess. That not so many years ago we were downing a beer and steak down at FritzGust’s joint down the street and wondering what, if anything, the future had in mind for us. I was thinking, too, and with small satisfaction, that I probably owed part of mine to Jack who was taking bows there beside me. JACK was selling insurance when I first met him. Rather, he was the son of an insurance man. I think Jack sold a couple of policies to some distant cousins since removed. We only knew each other casually and he didn’t try to sell me. I was working at radio station WTMJ, reading poetry, going over the news in “The Green Sheet,” the Milwaukee Journal, sweeping out, playing records and announcing my own vocal program as “Tomorrow’s star . . . the Prince of Song.” Carson was afraid of radio then. He couldn’t see any future in it. He thought we were taking people’s money for doing nothing. And I had just as little faith in vaudeville when Dave Willock, who worked on the station with me, took Carson out on the road to break in an act. But when they came back to town making around $400 a week at the Palace Theater and walked down the same red carpets Sarah Bernhardt had trod, I was jealous as all get out. I quit my $35 position and started into show business too. We met up again three years later in Chicago, where I was doing okay at the Palmer House and Jack was playing for peanuts in a third-rate vaudeville house. I’ll never forget it. I ran into him on Randolph Street one cold wintry day and he was wearing a too-thin overcoat and the customary Jack Carson courage. “Stan! What are you doing here!” he greeted. I told him modestly that I was breaking records at the Palmer House. “Well don’t worry about it. You’ll do better. Just keep at it,” he said. He’s always been very ambitious. Always trying to exceed his own expectations— and that’s no easy job. He tries a little of everything. In fact he changed his mind about radio. Has a show of his own now. In fact, he and Crosby both hit the West Coast at the ( Continued on page 72) _ 70