Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1956)

There Was a Boy (Continued from page 50) ery well. He was glad he had come East. I had been offer^ a job in New York, ut upon my arrival, I found it had been lied. Since Jimmy was the only person really knew in town, I contacted him timediately. Over coffee at Walgreen’s » briefed me on the New York situation. 'e stopped by Louis Shurr’s office, where “ introduced me and kidded with the >ents and office girls. Then he made a aick phone call and we left to meet imeone very important. Jimmy had met Elizabeth (Dizzy) leridan a month or so before, and was impletely captivated by her warmth, larm, and alert mind. Dizzy, the daughr of pianist Frank Sheridan, was a incer — or, that is, she aspired to be a jincer. Alone in New York, she had tak, a part-time job as usherette at the liris motion -picture theatre, and was isting solely on her small salary. Someiw, she scraped together enough to jdy dance, her first love, and on rare casions to go horseback riding, her secd love. Dizzy had a wonderful sense of mor and was easy to know. It was unrstandable that she and Jimmy got on well. That afternoon. Dizzy, Jimmy and I )k a walk through the zoo in Central rk, where it was decided that Jimmy d I should find an apartment to share, nmy had been staying temporarily with riend and had been thinking of moving. Apartment-hunting in New York, as / New Yorker will attest, is a fatiguing ji complex chore. After less than one Ur of looking, we gave up the struggle ,if compromised by taking a single room !\;h bath at the Iroquois Hotel on 44th .f eet. The quarters were cramped, the I [it was too high for our pocketbooks, f it put an end to a search that could re gone on for weeks, leveral members of Jimmy’s special iCile of friends were living next door at (}iv York’s famous old theatrical hotel, Algonquin. Most of the people in the ^up were well established in the theatre 0 TV, and their acceptance of him was i#y gratifying to Jimmy. Prominent in J group was composer Alec Wilder, who |i)te “Songs Were Made to Sing While IV ’re Young.” Alec had gained Jimmy’s ■^ect and admiration and was responIje for slowly reactivating his interest ir nusic and literature. Gradually, Jimmy ban looking to both Alec Wilder and Riers Bracket, another member of the gup in whom he had a great deal of ccfidence, for advice and guidance. he summer months crept on us and wi them came the annual theatre and te vision disease, the summer hiatus. It is "le time when many of the regular TV slws go off the air and the theatre becoes less active, leaving actors to either ss^at out hungrily the muggy New York su mer, or to take jobs in summer stock companies out of town. Jimmy decided not to try stock, but to remain in town and take his chances at getting work. As the weeks went by and the work failed to materialize, Jimmy became more and more depressed. Summer in New York can be that way when you are not eating regularly. In an effort to offer him some relief, Rogers Bracket invited Jimmy for a weekend at the home of some friends who lived up the Hudson River. The thought of a refreshing weekend in the country appealed to Jimmy, and he accepted gratefully. That was the first of several weekends he was to spend at the home of Lemuel and Shirley Ayers. Lem Ayers was a rising young Broadway producer, then working on plans for a fall production. Jimmy liked the Ayerses and, during his visits, he would spend his time puttering in their garden and listening attentively to the inside conversations about Lem’s forthcoming production of N. Richard Nash’s “See the Jaguar.” As time went on, the Ayerses came to like the quiet young man who came for occasional weekends. They were not aware, however, that somewhere in the back of Jimmy’s mind there glimmered a hope, a dream for the near future, which very much involved them. The weekends in the country made the days between in the city more bearable, but in spite of the relief, Jimmy’s despondency over the lack of work continued. He tried to spend his free time reading and studying. Even in his darkest hours he remained very active, meeting and getting to know new people, finding new and unusual things around New York, and discovering a little more about himself each day. New York seemed to stimulate Jimmy’s mind to a point where it was more alert than it had ever been. One day, during a period when he had been reading a lot of modern literature, he asked me to suggest something in the classic vein to read. He seemed especially interested in Greek philosophy and drama, so I suggested he start with Plato. That night he turned up with a volume of Plato’s works and began reading a section on Democratic Education. After an hour or so, he closed the book and offered to treat me to a cooling beer at a bar near by. I knew Jimmy was an expert bluff artist, especially when he was in a corner, but I had never seen as vivid an example as I was about to get. As chance had it, we ran into a friend of Jimmy’s at the bar. The man was a writer for Life magazine and was apparently well-educated. In less than five minutes, Jimmy had him deep in a discussion of Plato’s philosophy. Although he had read a mere twenty pages or so, Jimmy talked with the authority and enthusiasm of an expert. I am confident that when that man left the bar, he was Send Today for Your Gayla hold-bob with Flexi-Grip, the world’s best bobby pin, offers you a Beauty Bonus of sheer, luxurious, 60 gauge, 15 denier nylons at savings of over one-half. You can get a set of three of these leg-flattering nylons by sending only $1.00 with the top of a Gayla hold-bob bobby pin card or Gayla Hair Net envelope. 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