Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1959)

iUMMIE’S IVOT THE MATV I THOUGHT I MARRIED continued “What happened?” he yelled. Then, still quite puzzled, he put a hand to the top of his head. “Something hit me,” he concluded. Then he eyed me suspiciously. “Thanks,” he muttered sarcastically. And right then and there he picked up the only possible offending article — the frame — and hit me with it plump on top of my head. “There,” he said, evidently feeling better. I shrieked and slapped him right back. Then Jimmie climbed out from under the covers and walked stiffly over to my side of the bed. For a moment I thought he looked sorry and was going to give me a please-forgive-me kiss. Instead, he picked me up, threw me over his knees, and gave me a spanking that made it painful to sit down for days afterwards. “Fiend!” I whimpered. “This isn’t in that contract.” Sometimes we take everything too seriously. I know I did — that time. I packed my bags, mumbled some mumbo-jumbo and said I was going home to mother. Jimmie just stood there, looking sheepish in his pajamas, and watched me pack. Then suddenly he came over and showed me the funny, egg-shaped lump on his forehead. He didn’t say a word. But it melted me. I just swallowed all my silly pride and scurried into the kitchen to make a big pot of coffee. Over it, I explained to Jimmie what really had happened. But, anyway, how was I to know I was marrying a man who snored? And who’d’ve thought it significant? As a matter of fact, that pot of coffee has its significance, too. “Colleen,” my mother had said, just before Jimmie and I were married, “no matter how glamorous marriage may seem to you now, no matter what dreams you may have, remember, there’s bound to be some trouble. And when there is, sit yourself down with Jimmie over a pot of coffee, and you’ll find it’s the best referee in the whole wide world!” I was very young at the time, and still dreamy-eyed. Marriage seemed strewn with sweet-scented rose-petals. Then I got married and found that, well, it is . . . lots of times . . . but there are problems, too. At first it was a shock to realize we were just two ordinary people. living together within four ordinary walls, faced with each other, a coffee pot, and just plain living. Come to think of it, ours was a “coffee” courtship too. The first time we dated we went for coffee — and ended up staying out all night ! Oh, I’d known Jimmie all my life since both of us grew up in Camas, Washington. We used to have fun back in grade school, with the Shetland ponies that belonged to Donna, the girl who lived across the road from me. I was Colleen McClatchey then, and Jimmie always referred to me as “that McClatchey girl.” By the time I was in eighth grade, I had a terrible crush on him. But he was a junior (he’s three years older) , and I didn’t think he’d go for a kid with braces on her teeth. But I remembered how we’d gone horseback-riding before we became teenagers — and all the fun we’d had. Jimi.iie’d sing all the time, whether we were riding, or sitting by the roadside chewing quackgrass and clover-leaves or taking the horses back to the stable. Actually, Jimmie didn’t do much dating, although he did go to the high-school prom with a really glamorous girl before he enlisted in the Air Force. But we never lost touch. When he was assigned to Korea, a friend of mine named Connie sent him packages of goodies, and a couple of times I baked peanut-butter cookies and packed them in coffee tins for Connie to put in Jimmie’s packages. “You can tell that McClatchey girl I said thanks for the cookies,” he wrote back to Connie. And that was that ! By the time Jimmie came back from the war, I’d already left town. I’d gone to Hollywood for a screentest and was studying acting at Universal-International and also playing bit parts. I couldn’t get back home much. Then the studio sent me home on tour and that’s when I ran smack into Jimmie at the Modern Cleaners on Fourth Street, where my mom worked. He was lonely; I could tell. He’d just gotten out of the service, and, like most guys fresh out of uniform, was trying to find something to do in civilian life. He asked me if I’d go out with him later that evening, and, even though I felt rather {Continued on page 82) 64