Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1961)

(One of the few who ever got away with being “anybody else” is Garbo, hut you have to wear a hat like hers for a disguise.) This is what it is to be a performer, a public image. A few years ago Municipal Judge Leo Freund of Los Angeles imposed a heavy fine for drunkenness on a prominent movie actor. He said, “When you are a great actor, you belong to the people. Anything you do or say becomes important to the people.” But the judge didn’t know many actors. Take the newlyweds, Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin. I would be the last to deny that they are good at their jobs and deserve the enthusiasm that movie-goers have for them. But they should be the last to deny what publicity did for them. They are at the top, and all publicity did for them was to help them get there. It seems like yesterday — in fact it was yesterday — that Tuesday Weld was being quoted all over the map for her way-out reactions to questions. Tuesday was campaigning for recognition with no personal press agent and no studio publicity department writing for her. She did it with her own little hatchet — a sharp wit for one so young. And an eye and ear for the I shocker. If going to a TV interview barefoot would make people write about her — she went barefoot. Tuesday was a lot like Shelley Winters in the days When Shelley was fighting her way up and admitted. “I get carried away by the sound of my own mouth.” . . . So who’d believe there would ever be a day when Miss Weld would inform her studio that from here on in, she wanted to be asked only certain type questions in interviews? And show up in shoes, at that! Fame does many things to many people. It made Bing Crosby quiet and reserved. It brought Doris Day out of her shell. It made Tony Curtis tell how his visits to an analyst improved his acting. When Liz received her Oscar this year it meant that Hollywood and the world had forgiven her. Same thing when Ingrid Bergman was awarded her Oscar for “Anastasia.” It appears that the Academy Awards provide this unwritten function of forgiveness. And it is done in public, on TV. with fifty million people watching. But on this night, no performer wants privacy. They don’t even dress for it. One of the best interpretations of “right to privacy” was expounded by Thomas C. Ackerman Jr., San Diego attorney. He wrote: “In its broadest sense, privacy is a right to be left alone. It is the right of every man to live his life as he pleases, in seclusion if he so desires, free from unsolicited publicity, subject, however, to the rights of others. “But,” he added, “it is not a right measured by the standards of the supersensitive, but by the ordinary citizens, and there can be complications. “For instance, a person who has once been a public figure can never completely withdraw from the public gaze. Years after he has faded from the scene, the public is still entitled to hear again about his past exploits and. within the limits of common decency, to find out what has become ot him.” This is where the trouble starts and ends: to establish the limits of common decency. To me it’s a matter of taste. A writer has to have good taste. But so does the actor. Ingrid Bergman kept no dark secrets from the world, and in the end, the world took her back into their hearts. Most of the time Tony Curtis is the outgoing funster type. Marlon Brando seems to think that if you don’t talk of trouble it’ll go away.