Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1962)

ked into those eyes of hers, it was like dding a frisky puppy or a child.” \Vhen Ruth Gordon went on to a bigger >, Nancy’s personnel director soon called nnie aside. “Look, kid,” he said, kindly, can’t run my store to suit your audition :es. So I’m firing you for your own good 1 mine. I want you to go out and make nething of yourself. And don’t make ool of me. you hear?” 11 L in te vere kei “happened so fast”! tom Com rrom then on, Connie remembers, “everyng happened so fast!” Those auditions to which Connie was / ays running from her job at Nancy’s re with a new singing group, The Four;ena()st. Originally, there were three boys, Connie was to round out the quartet. *' !e Fourmost, however, never really got 1^1 the ground; one of the boys quit to get rried, another returned to college, and Connie says, “In the end we just had give it up.” But an agent, Byron Griffith, | Id heard the group. He was lukewarm f)ut the boys, but Connie struck him as fresh new face and voice. “Sign with he told Connie, “and you’ll go in If.ces.” Curiously, Connie, at first, did not want 1 1 try it on her own; she always felt more lent! mfortable and secure singing with a « n nip. “No need to be scared,” her new rati fent told her. “We’ll start you small, and ie » i’ll take it from there.” M|The “small beginning” was a TV bakery nmercial Connie did for Langendorf lylead. Even today she can’t get over the it that her introduction to fame showed oss instead of a profit; her fee for the commercial was seventy dollars, but initiation and dues in the Screen whiftors Guild cost her $250. “The dialogue the commercial was real kookie,” Conremembers. “The whole thing ran jut twenty seconds. And you know who hml it with me? Gary Vinson. He’s now ii6 Varners contract player.” That bread-selling bit, as Connie says ier w, was her “real entree into show busiSb 5S.” To make up for the cost of her ier ild card, Connie pleaded with her agent get her more work. She even hired a at Jss agent — on credit, rha ‘Her manager brought Connie to me ar|j d asked me to take her on,” this publiha t said. “She had no money; I was to 1 1 ndle her on a percentage of her salary, jj lon’t normally take newcomers on specula ion, but Connie was so cute and apS aling, she had such a wonderful look § out her, I couldn’t bear to tell her ‘No.’ ” Du Perhaps the publicity helped (Connie ie still this press agent’s client), but a iui y weeks later, she had a fairly good si e in a quickie called “Eighteen and !ixious,” then a featured part in “Young iid Dangerous.” These were low-budget fLkers made for teenage audiences; deJiite this, a check of the trade paper ||<mments shows that the unknown Connie if evens was not only noticed, she got Irprisingly good reviews, j Next came a co-starring role, opposite ii Handsome, sandy-haired boy named Gary •arke, in another teenage film which Irely struggled through to completion I he money failed in the middle of the icture), but it came out as “Drag-Strip lot.” Connie also sang one song. Jerry wis spotted Connie in this, and within a few months she was in “Rock-a-bye Baby.” With her first salary check from Paramount, she put down a deposit on a $21,000 house. “It was crazy,” Connie recalls, “but I later sold the house for a $6,000 profit.” Busy as a little beaver now, Connie made some major TV appearances, where she had to be taught how to work with the TV cameras. Then Warner Brothers Records signed her as their first recording artist — and in weeks, it seemed, she was hitting the Top Ten Charts with “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb,” made with •Edd Byrnes. “Boy, was I wrong about that!” Connie admits. “I didn’t want to do the song, not because of Edd, but because I thought the thing was just silly. And you know how many platters it sold!” She was just as wrong about Gary Clarke. She did not foresee, when she first met Gary and said, aloud — “My God. who is that square?” — the part that Gary was to play in her life. She could not envision, at that moment, the “engagement” that was not an engagement, the relationship with Gary that was to bring her so much joy and pain. She was, just then, the lady in a hurry, and that unstoppable motor in Connie was already racing at 6.000 r.p.m. Men— her best subject But love — where does love fit in? Connie still doesn’t know. Crushes, sure, she’s had a zillion of ’em. When she was a school girl, she got “A” in boys. And in Hollywood they were and still are her best subject. A catalog of some of the men she’s been linked with since she’s achieved some prominence includes: Bob Neal, Lindsay Crosby, Tommy Sands, Edd Byrnes, Kenney Miller . . . and Gary Clarke. Dale Robertson, Nicky Hilton, Dick Beymer. Tony Travis, Gustavo Rojo, John Ashley, Dwayne Hickman, Andre Phillippe. Grant Withers, Tom Tryon . . . and Gary Clarke. Peter Baldwin, Mark Damon, Michael Dante. Gary Vinson, Troy Donahue, Mario Costello. Earl Holliman. Elvis Presle . Glenn Ford, Bo Belinsky . . . and Gary Clarke. Gary Clarke, always Gary Clarke. Says Connie, “I’m torn between Gary and the other boys.” She has known Gary for five years, wa.once actually engaged to him — but “not for publication” — and she still talks of him with affection in her voice and perhaps even longing in her heart. Even so she says with great finality: “Anything serious between Gary and me is now over.” Gary agrees. Gary, the young, still-aspiring actor-singer, hasn’t got it made — yet. He was more important than the virtually unknown Connie Stevens when they made “Drag-Strip Riot” together — but as things go in Hollywood — Gary is still trying. Connie is a star. Someone once called Gary “the boy who didn’t marry Connie Stevens after all.” Gary is aware of this: Gary, who still lives in a tiny furnished bachelor apartment in a modest section of Hollywood, while Connie lives in a sumptuous home and drives a Cad. “When Connie and I first starting dating,” Gary said, “we used to make the rounds of the studios together. We went to Warner Brothers once and they flipped over me, if you’ll excuse my sounding immodest. They wanted to send me to acting school, but when I found out there was no pay, I had to turn it down. They weren’t interested in Connie at all; they didn’t think she had it. So who turns out to be the big Warner Brothers star? Connie Stevens.” Gary himself is aware that Connie can’t stand being mediocre, that she must be — 65