Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1950)

the transformation of was in love. He was a wonderful guy, all of eight, and he was already tall, dark and handsome. I wanted him to flirt with me. He never batted an eyelash at me. He was too busy using his eyes on my best girl friend. I’m explaining all this because, among my readers, there may be other girls who are now going through that same self-criticism I’ve experienced ever since I was a little girl. The first time I ever met Michael O’Shea he walked up to me on the set, looked at me and kissed me on the cheek. I gasped and said, “What’s that for?” Mike said, “That’s because you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen!” I fell in love with him, that instant. Two years ago, last July, we were married. Now, I have a thousand better reasons for being in love with Mike than that compliment. But then it meant the world to me. One word of praise and I can be turned into a devoted slave. One mean word and I can really be struck dumb. Or, at least, I could be until just recently. I was never able to defend myself. I couldn’t fight back. I would just shut up and sort of die inside. How did I get that way, in the first place, and how did I get over it, finally? I grew up pretty much of a tomboy, probably aping my brother, Lea, who was two years older than I. My dad was an advertising solicitor for the St. Louis GlobeDemocrat and he had quite a few highbrow leanings. He helped me write my compositions in school. He helped prod and push me through English and history, but the things I got “A’s” in myself were art and biology. The subject I flopped in (because Dad didn’t know a word of it) was French. I flopped when it came to attracting boys. All the way through school the boys who took me to proms were just as dull as I was! Now all this just proves what an inferiority complex does to you because, looking back, I see that I actually had grounds for feeling quite something. Even before I entered Benton grammar school, I actually knew just what I wanted to do with my life, which is more than lots of people know when they get out of college. From my first conscious moment, I wanted to be a movie actress and I kept after my family to take me to movies. I nagged them so that usually I got to see two movies a week. I kept lists of pictures in the order in which I thought I should see them. One list I marked “must.” The second was “should” and the third was “if possible.” My “must” pictures were the highbrow ones, and to this day my favorite reading is Shakespeare. The “shoulds” were the movies with good performances in them. The “if possibles” were the ones designed merely for pleasure. Putting anything that is designed merely for pleasure into the remote class, I’m now convinced, is another sign of an inferiority complex. When you are happy, you make other people happy. Therefore, they are attracted to you. But when you are unsure of yourself, you don’t dare just have fun. You are as solemn as an owl. I was definitely as solemn as an owl. By the time I was eight I was attending (after grammar school), the Wientge School of Dramatic Expression. Here I not only learned the rudiments of acting but how to dance and sing, construct stage sets, make costumes and do general designing. The dramatic school was owned and directed by Mrs. Alice Jones Wientge, who also is my aunt. Because of this she was more critical of my work than of the other pupils, for which I now am grateful. I had my first professional engagement when I was only eight. The Stratford-on-Avon players came to St. Louis with their Shakespearean repertory company and when they did “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” I played an elf. I kept up with my ballet studies all through high school, however, and did well enough with them, for when I was sixteen, I answered the call for dancers for St. Louis’ famous “Muni” (for Municipal) opera. I made my own costume for the tryout. It was of turquoise blue satin with a wonderful pleated skirt that showed my legs, and it fitted beautifully. Maybe the dress did it. Anyway, I was hired. There I got my first glimpse into a world that was gay, Bohemian, and still very hard-working. After one night’s performance, I knew I hadn’t been wrong in my decision to be an actress. I was still aiming at Hollywood, but I realized at once that any part of show business was still to bring joy to me. When the brief opera season was over and I got a chance to dance at a night I club, I was more released and unafraid than I had ever I been in my life. But I was still Sis Jones, there, in that St. Louis night •: club, and while I was beginning to have lots of dates, i they still weren’t with the type of boys I desired. My final year at Soldan High arrived, that year when they rated me “pretty, but dumb,” and rated my girl friend , (still going with that tall, dark and handsome 'male I wanted), as having “loads of personality.” Just before l graduation, I got a chance to be in a vaudeville act with 1 Andy Mayo. Andy was a guy with a horse named Pansy. | I not only took that chance a couple of weeks after I got my diploma, but I also took Andy’s name for my i professional surname. For four years, Pansy and I toured all kinds of towns i and all kinds of theaters, eating in beaneries, traveling i on dirty trains. I began to comprehend, dimly, that it wasn’t only St. Louis that had its right side and wrong side of the tracks. I came to realize, vaguely, that people 4 were people everywhere, some nice, some horrid, some g generous, some grasping. In the theaters I was Virginia a Mayo, who, papers and audiences seemed to think, was ♦ pretty bright. Yet, off stage, if I’d get invited to some <t small city party or dinner, I was still Sis Jones, scared and not believing in myself. We finally reached Broadway. Pansy and I were fea a tured in “Banjo Eyes,” Eddie Cantor’s show, and then, » later, at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe. And that was jl the order of our importance, first Pansy, then yours in j securely. It was, by this time, the year 1943. One night | Billy Rose came back to my dressing room and told me I that Samuel Goldwyn* had caught the show and wanted I to interview me the next day. Sis Jones was so thrilled she could hardly speak. It