Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1952)

I ( Continued from page 45) didn’t notice she was too pale beneath her careful quiet make-up and that behind the business-like brightness of her eyes there were shadows of tragedy. “But, Doris,” he said, “you’re a big wheel. You’re the hometown kid who made good. You’ve been on the road with name bands. You’ve sung in some sharp clubs and all that. What do you mean you want a job here at the station on a sustaining basis? Have you any idea what that could pay?” “No,” said Doris Day, who twenty-one years before had been born right there in Cincinnati — Dorothy Kappelhoff she was then. “How much does it pay?” “Sixty-four dollars a week,” said the station manager. “I couldn’t even promise i you a raise unless you auditioned for everybody and you’d have to sing at all hours.” “I am desperate.” Doris said it very ; quietly, both because of her natural pride and her fear. She didn’t dare go into how desperate she was. She didn’t think he’d believe her anyhow if she told him she didn’t have a cent in the world. Waiting for his decision, which was, of course, a fast enthusiastic acceptance when he realized he actually could get her, Doris thought this was the blackest moment there could ever be in her life. But she was wrong. A much blacker time was to come. There would be nights when she looked out from a New York night club and watched the snow flakes fall. She would bounce through, “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” and the fond audience would applaud her and laugh at her gaiety and she would laugh back at them. But all the while her secret heart was crying. And there was to be the day when she made her first movie test. Somebody at Life Is for Living Warners asked her, “Are you nervous?” She replied “No” very truthfully. She couldn’t be nervous over facing a mere camera because she lately had gone through something so much more terrible, so nearly devastating. And when, after the test, she was incredibly signed by Warner Bros., she had suffered too much to think that it could mean happiness. That wonderful test seemed to guarantee steady work for her and that was very important because she wanted so many things for her little boy. She wanted so many things for her mother. Love was something she had put behind her. In her early twenties now, she was sure she could never love again. She had taken an inexpensive room in Hollywood’s Plaza Hotel, a tidy place, but not luxurious. Her room looked right out on the hotel’s electric sign toward the Brown Derby, across the street. SHE worked by day on “Romance on the High Seas” but every night she was back in the Plaza Hotel, all alone. At dinnertime she crossed the street and ate alope in the Derby. Then she walked back, except on those evenings when, because of her desperate hunger just to be near people and to hear their voices, she would walk down Hollywood Boulevard and look in the store windows. As she walked, she watched the young lovers on the Boulevard, who whispered, “Darling.” She watched the young mothers and heard them say, “Let Mommy help you up the curb.” And she gulped back her tears, wanting Terry with her so heartbreakingly, but not yet able to afford to send for him. She never could walk many blocks before a masculine figure would pause too close to her and a masculine voice would mur mur, “Why be lonesome, girlie?” She would turn fast then and walk faster back to her hotel and play records, which she collected frantically, until she fell asleep. She collects records no longer. She doesn’t need to now. In her snug white house in The Valley, with Marty Melcher, her husband, and Terry, her son, and Alma, her mother, the song is in her heart. But this is the record of the courage and intelligence and tenderness and wisdom that make her the most popular girl in the amusement world today. * * * It was the golden-haired, apple-cheeked little girl who lay in her bed, shivering with fear. She trembled, knowing what she would see when she raised her eyes to the window. Yet something made her look. It was a black, cold night with the wind howling. Yes, exactly as she feared, they were there, ten and twelve feet tall, all of them, with burning eyes and flat noses and claws for hands. If she stayed there in bed, all alone in the big black room, they might do what she always believed they’d do — come straight through the window and get her. But if she acted quickly, maybe, she could escape. She threw off the bedclothes, hopped out and flinging open the door of her room started running down the hall. “Mother, mother,” she screamed. Her father’s voice answered her. “Go back to bed at once, Doke,” he ordered. That stopped her screaming. But she still ran, though silently now, and on tiptoe. She came to the door of her parents’ room and leaned against it, waiting. From inside, she heard her father grumble, “That crazy girl. Always imagining things.” HAIR? ■<<*«**, Qf/MKMy Make your hair gleam with glorious color-highlights. Nestle Colorinse removes dulling soap film . . . leaves hair shining with colorhighlights and sheen. 10 glamorous shades that rinse in . . . shampoo out! 6, rinses /hf . st 25**. 14 rinses 50**. COLORINSE ■LONDES: Restore the color of youth! KKWU I wpowiy \jQWU i^txs / Give your hair longer-lasting color-glamour with Nestle Colortint. Enrich your natural hair color or try exciting new color effects. 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