Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1953)

I Shyest G i (Continued on page 39) 'j match. If you’re like me, they don’t, f When I was twelve and in the seventh grade, I was nearly six feet tall. I looked like a match walking. I weighed j a himdred and thirty. Now, at six-footJ four, I weigh two hundred. But then I ; could barely carry my hands and feet. ' They were so huge they spread all over 1 everything. ■ Then I had another handicap that kept r me from being a member of the lodge. As |j high as my head was, my voice was higher. Being the boy soprano in the church choir when I was eight had been keen. But being the boy soprano when I was ■■ thirteen — chums, that was murder. Socially, I was sparkling as lead, too. F That word “social” meant something in f my home town, Winnetka, Illinois. I love J, that town, always did, always will. But it ^ is a rich suburb of Chicago and it defi; nitely has two sides of the track. I came : from the wrong side. Yet the best things I know today about good manners, kindliness and gracious I living were taught to me by the mother I of one of my school chums who lived on I the right side. ■ The big thing about being shy is that it not only spoils your own enjoyment, but the enjoyment of everybody around you. I know now that everyone is generous. We all want to give. But the “give” works both ways. If someone has been kind to you, you should reward them • with your appreciation warmly spoken. ■■ In my own case, all I used to be able i to do was mumble, “Thanks.” Take the i dancing teacher in Winnetka, who gave ;i me free lessons. She was a wonderful teacher and instead of its being the rich kids’ duty to go to her weekly classes, they looked forward to it eagerly. I never ' could have afforded the lessons, but she spotted me hanging around one day, invited me to dance with her, and then i volunteered the other lessons. I was nearI ly overcome, and to keep it from being too much a thing in my mind, I told myself she liked dancing with me just because she was tall, and the average kid j in the class only came to her shoulders. ; I’m even more grateful to her today than I I was then — because now I know that hers was real generosity. But when I was ten, I couldn’t possibly have told her what those lessons meant to me. Actually, I think it was because I was so shy that I fell so violently in love the first time. I know all the clowning that goes on about so-called puppy love. It wasn’t fun with me. It was deeply serious. For all the girls, growing up, who feel shy because they are not beautiful, let me say right here that I don’t believe I would have fallen in love with this first love of mine if she had been beautiful. My girl was much too plump. She didn’t know how to dress. Her skin wasn’t perfect. But — and this was the big thing to me at that time — she was fun. She wasn’t scared. She knew how to have fun. When it wasn’t right there in front of her, something like a party date, let’s say, she went out and made fun for herself and everybody concerned. There I was, twice her size, exactly her age, but it was she, not I, who discovered the break in the hedge of one of Winnetka’s big estates. She was the one who found out we could slip through the hedge and go swimming in the estate pool. Boy, how beautiful that pool seemed to me then! I thought it was the most beautiful swimming pool there could possibly be — and do you want to know something? Now that I’ve seen hundreds of uy in Town pools in Hollywood, I’m sure that it was! It started like a brook, rambling along the back of a hill. Its diving board came out between the branches of a tree. Then the stream widened, spreading out into a wide, round, very deep pool. Let me tell you that when I finally do marry and have children — lots of children, I hope — the very first thing I shall teach them is sports, all the sports. I think this is especially fine for girls. I don’t know any fellow who wants his girl to be the demon athlete; but when a girl does swim at least reasonably well — when she can take a swing at a golf or a tennis ball — she can meet a guy on a wonderful level of companionship. I shall teach both my sons and my daughters all the games. And while I’m teaching them games. I’ll also try to teach them how to talk — and talk well. My girl could talk well. And all I could do was lie there by the pool, watch her, and listen. We went there nearly every day in the summer, even when it rained, my girl and I. When I had the price. I’d bring along some candy bars, and after we’d been swimming, we’d lie on the grass and look down across the lawns at the big house of the estate. It made me dream. It made my girl dream, too. She’d say, “Roy,” (my name then was Roy Fitzgerald), “Roy, when I grow up I’m going to be. . Tomorrow is the day you prepare for that never comes GEORGE SANDERS and then she’d spin out a day dream. She’d talk and talk and talk, and then she would say, “Now tell your plans for the future. What do you want to be?” I never could tell her. I didn’t know myself. But I knew that I wanted money, not for power, not to exploit other people, but to get at some of the gracious living I got glimpses of in Winnetka. And I wanted to marry my girl in a few years, when we were old enough. But I was too shy to tell her any of this. I never did. So it’s no wonder (though it was a terrible shock to me), that she told me, one day after nearly two years of this, that she was going to date another guy. He was on the high-school football team and he had shoulders to match his height, which couldn’t be said of me. And his voice had deepened to where it belonged for life, which couldn’t be said of me, either. And he expected to go into his dad’s firm when he graduated. That really clammed me up. How could I tell her I’d seen a movie where Jon Hall dived off a crow’s nest into a lagoon, and that I thought it was a slick way of making money? Right then and there my bug to be an actor was born — but all that seemed in sight for me at the hot age of fourteen was driving a truck. I couldn’t tell my girl that. I didn’t. I was too shy. The goony part of my attitude was that a lot of things were happening to me that should have killed off my shyness. Like the Winnetka dancing. But I lost my girl — because I was too shy to speak out. And I have never forgotten her. The Navy got me as soon as I graduated. And 1944 merged into 1946 as I was sent from Hawaii to Guam, from Guam to Australia, from Australia to the Philippines. 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