Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1949)

BETTY GRABLE starring in "THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND" A 20th Century-Fox Technicolor Production "fiC tastes best!" the right thing for a young lady’s walk. Reluctantly, I then turned her over to her nurse for her mid-morning feeding and Richard and I went downstairs. At the breakfast table, we each picked up our morning paper and started to read, but I was bursting with plans. I said, “Oh, I do hope you won’t be working when I’m off this summer. I’m dying to spend a few weeks in Santa Barbara.” “It’s a great idea!” he answered. Great? It’s wonderful. I’ll never forget my first vacation when I was twelve years old. It was summer, and Westchester was at its hottest and stickiest and I was sent to a camp for underprivileged kids for two weeks. It should have been glorious for me to be up in the Catskills. It was for the others, but I hated it. I was afraid to dress or undress in the light, for fear the others would see the awful brace I had to wear. I couldn’t hike, swim or do anything else the rest of the campers did. About all I could do was weave with colored string until I thought I was being strung on a rack myself! I wanted to go home so badly! And what kind of home? Well, you know pretty well what it was like, if I was sent to that camp. Richard interrupted my thoughts by saying, “I think after this, you’d better order orange juice and coffee for my breakfast. I’ll be getting fat as a pig.” "I took the famous taste-test . . . compared the three leading colas and one was outstanding for finer flavor. That was Royal Crown Cola ! “RC tastes best!" "Now I’m a regular RC fan— always serve it at home.” Enjoy this finer cola yourself. Keep a supply on ice for quick, frosty refreshment! TAKE HOME A CARTON! SERVES 12 FULL GLASSES! SAVES MONEY! «H!” I snorted, smearing butter on my French toast, “I tried that. What happened? You ate half of my breakfast! I have to eat a lot when I’m working. I can’t break my routine for just a day off.” “A day off?” he said. “Look at the time. You're due at the studio for a portrait sitting in ten minutes. You can’t go on being late everywhere.” As I got into my shiny, dark gray Cadillac, I looked around at our house in BelAir and remembered the time I’d just sort of stuck my nose through the Sunset gate and exclaimed, “Golly, people must be awfully rich to live there!” Exultantly, this morning, I put my foot down heavily on the accelerator, revelling in the rush of speed. “I’ll bet I could make it to the studio in five minutes,” I was bragging to myself, then I heard a “r-r-r-r-r.” I pulled quickly over to the curb and very meekly said to the man in the blue cap, “Yes, sir!” After that, I proceeded cautiously, with my ticket, to the studio and arrived a whole hour late! What a rush! How they whisked me right through the gates. Everybody was waiting! Why is it I can always be on time for production calls, yet never quite make it for anything else? Sometimes, I suspect that subconsciously, I like to have everyone rush me into M-G-M and give me their immediate attention. If so, that’s a carry-over from the first time I telephoned the studio from that suite at the Beverly-Wilshire and said desperately, “This is June Allyson. Who. ...” I was switched from person to person but they had never heard of me. I got scareder and madder and scareder and madder. I didn’t know then how complicated a big motion picture studio is. After seeming to get nowhere, I set out for the studio itself, determined to knock down the first person who interfered with my entry. I got into the reception room of the administration building and asked to see Arthur Freed, who was to produce the picture for which I thought I’d been signed. Mr. Freed was not available at the moment. Three hours later, I met him. He explained the mix-up, then he said, “We’re glad to have you with us. We’ll go to work soon.” A year filled with lessons later, I went to work. Work? One picture right after another with scarcely a day’s vacation 78