We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
With husband Michael O’Shea and “Duke.” It was Mike who began the cure that completed the transformation of Sis Jones
turned out I didn’t need to. At the Waldorf, Goldwyn asked me how I’d like to be in pictures. I gasped that I’d like it very much. Two weeks later, my mother and I were in Hollywood. I wasn’t so naive that I expected to be a Greer Garson overnight. But it shocked me when they set me studying for weeks and then ended by saying I’d be a Goldwyn girl, which is Hollywoodese for chorus girl.
I said, “Yes, Mr. Goldwyn,” and went into “Up in Arms” but to Sis Jones I said, “I told you so. You’re not up to the Hollywood standard. You’ll never get ahead.” My next picture was “Jack London.” It was a good picture and I wasn’t bad in it. But you probably remember that the star was Michael O’Shea. That’s when I met Mike, bless him. We didn’t let ourselves know for a long time that we had fallen in love. I just couldn’t get anything so wonderful through my bewildered head. I only knew that when Mike was around I was very happy.
Instead of cheering me up, when I went into “The Princess and the Pirate” with Bob Hope and then “Wonder Man” with Danny Kaye, it shattered me. No two men could possibly build up an inferiority complex quicker. Both of them are so clever, they glitter. In scenes with them, I felt less important than a gnat.
Danny and I stayed together through four pictures, and they always were referred to as “Danny Kaye pictures.”
I honestly think I would have packed up and gone back to Pansy, the horse, if it hadn’t been for Mike. But Mike was full of laughter, full of assurance. He was the only man I ever loved. When he asked me to marry him,
r"
Mike loved me not just because I was a blonde, or wore my clothes well. Mike loved little Sis Jones of St. Louis.
That was the beginning of my cure. Because somebody was loving me, just for me, then maybe I could make other people like me on that basis. Instantly I came to that conclusion, I began to laugh and have fun as I never had.
I went into “The Best Years of Our Lives” next, with Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Myrna Loy, Freddie March. When the notices came out and conceded that I had held my own among such stars, I was in sixth heaven, moving into seventh heaven on July 7, 1947, when Mike and I were married.
I thought that seventh heaven was the top. But I discovered an eighth heaven. Warners signed me to a long-term contract and gave me a variety of good roles. No longer was I just a pretty stooge for comics.
When I brought homa the reviews on my performance in “White Heat” and read them to Mike, emphasizing phrases like “great dramatic power,” “exciting performance” and “Academy Award contender,” his comment was, “Sweetheart, why are you so surprised? I’ve been telling you those things for years.” He kissed me tenderly and added. “Now get your levis on. I’ve got the horses saddled and we’re going riding.”
We have the best times together, Mike and I. We live on a ranch in the Valley, in a simple house with a stable for horses out back.
Someday I hope we have to add on a nursery wing, and if ever I have a daughter, I won’t tell her to “Be Herself.” I’ll say to her, “Find Yourself. Then be it — and be happy.”
55