Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1963)

Carol Lynley continued Never had Carol Lynley sounded so lost, so broken, so infinitely sad as she did that Saturday morning in late March — the day the newspapers announced her separation from Michael Selsman. For Carol knew her marriage was definitely over, even though the separation was labeled a “trial” one in the official announcement. (A few days later, she and Michael sued each other for divorce, charging extreme cruelty, and each parent also sought full custody of their pretty little year-old daughter, Jill Victoria Selsman.) “I’m all right,” Carol insisted that Saturday morning, in answer to my worried question. “It’s just that . . . this whole thing isn’t very easy for me, Jim. . . .” Only a close friend of Carol’s — and I had counted myself one for the past five years — could realize the full, aching truth of her words. For admitting the failure of her marriage before the whole world involved not only a personal tragedy, it also carried a bitter dose of humiliation. When she married Michael, an ambitious young press agent, she had gone against her mother’s wishes and warnings. At the time of the wedding both mother and daughter tried to deny that fact in order to avoid embarrassment. (However, it was not true, as some newspapers reported, that Carol’s mother failed to mail her the birth certificate she needed in order to expedite her marriage license. It was, as she said at the time, held up in the mail.) But Carol’s mother — now Mrs. Arthur Broderick of Los Angeles — had the good sense not to say “I told you so” when Carol called her and said, “Michael and I are separating. I wanted you to know it before we told the newspapers.” Whatever her inner feelings, she accepted the fact without comment and offered motherly sympathy. And the next day — after Mike had moved out and Carol was alone in the big house in Benedict Canyon, except for the baby and a Spanish-speaking nurse, Mrs. Broderick called her to ask: “Would you like to come over for dinner tonight? We’re having your favorite pot roast. . . To me, Mrs. Broderick predicted: “Now people will probably start saying that I broke up the mar riage. But 1 didn’t.” And she was telling the truth The difficulties between Carol and Mike were not caused by her mother. They were the result of deep and, finally, fatal differences that existed between the two young people themselves. These differences existed, like hidden time bombs, the day they married. But the young couple had to live together in order to discover them. And Carol’s increasing maturity — she was only eighteen when she married — not only failed to help the situation, it made her more conscious of its hopelessness, and less willing to endure it forever. Mike steadfastly refused to admit the possibility of divorce until those time bombs finally started going off all around himself and his young wife. And when the smoke had cleared, it was too late, and the marriage that had started so hopefully lay in ashes. A few days after the separation announcement, I spoke again to Carol between takes of her movie, Columbia’s “Under the Yum Yum Tree,” which she had just started. Actually, for Carol — as for most people, it would have been much harder to sit at home alone and brood about her misfortunes. So the necessity to work hard in order to keep up with her more experienced co-stars (like Jack Lemmon and Edie Adams) was a blessing in disguise, and one which she seized gladly. Carol was reluctant to discuss the breakup for publication, but felt that if it had to be done, it would be better to have a personal friend write the story. “Please emphasize one thing,” she told me. “Basically it’s just a difference of personalities, plus the fact that we got married when I was very young. There’s no scandal, there’s nobody else involved on either side. People may try to see things in the separation that aren’t there, but that’s really all there is to it: Our personalities were just too different.” I listened without comment as she spoke. I knew that while that was the basic reason, there was much more to it than that. And so, of course, did Carol. Apparently she read my thoughts, for she added, “Jim, you know the whole story, because you saw it happening. Just write the truth.” My first question was ( Continued on page 32)