Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1963)

Continued from page 46 about Jill’s custody. This was before Michael asked for custody in his divorce suit. Carol’s answer was particularly significant in view of later developments, for it showed that she thought she and Michael had worked that problem out. “Oh, she’s with me. There’s no question about that,” Carol said confidently, adding that Michael would have liberal visiting rights. She continued : “It’s always difficult with a child involved, but ... it just seems better to separate now rather than wait until she’s older and really understands a lot. It’s really not fair to raise a child in a home that’s not— uh — regular. . . .” By “not regular” both she and I knew that she meant a home in which the parents are quarreling — as she and Mike had begun to quarrel. When the arguments became frequent and bitter, Carol finally decided that it was better to have Jill raised in a home with only one parent, if necessary — as long as that was the only way to keep the home happy and harmonious. Better than Jill’s being involved in constant friction. Jewish or Catholic? “When you and Mike were married, you said you were planning to convert to Judaism. And you told me that this was your decision — that Mike himself was not particularly religious and wasn’t really as interested in Judaism as you were,” I reminded her. “Then later on you told me that you’d changed your mind about a formal conversion, because you already felt Jewish, and that the formalities weren’t necessary. You also told me that Jill would be raised in the Jewish faith. How does the separation affect that de • • Q 5? cision : “I still intend to raise her in the Jewish faith,” Carol said firmly. “Which brings up an interesting point.” I told her, “since you were baptized a Catholic, and then married Michael in a civil ceremony — by a Justice of the Peace on December 30, 1960 — rather than a Catholic ceremony, in the eyes of the Catholic Church you have never been married. So you could marry someone else at some future date within the Roman Catholic Church. How do you feel about that?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t affect me at all, because I’m not a practicing Roman Catholic and am not concerned about those matters. As I told you, I feel Jewish. I still do. That’s closest to being the religion that I can identify with.” I told her of her mother’s fear of being blamed for the breakup, and Carol assured me, “My mother had nothing to do with it.” On the other hand — as Carol and I both P knew — her problems with Mike were not free of the “mother-in-law problem.” Mike’s father died several years ago, leaving Mike to support his mother and his younger brother and sister. The brother is a college student, and the girl is sixteen. From the very beginning, it became very clear to Carol that Mike was not only devoted to his mother, as any good son should be— he was also determined to keep her near him . . . When Carol and Mike were first married, they rented a little one-bedroom apartment at the end of the subway line in New York City, out on Long Island. Mike was then a publicist with 20th CenturyFox, and Carol announced that she would make no pictures that couldn’t be filmed in New York, because she didn’t want to be separated from Michael. “Anyway, I hate California,” she said. And I knew this was true! For Carol has always disliked the hot sun. She was born and raised a New Yorker, and she wanted to stay there. But Mike had other ideas. After leaving his job at 20th and taking a position at Paramount Pictures’ New York office for a few months, he again went job-hunting — and this time he accepted a position in Los Angeles, with the Arthur Jacobs publicity office. So Carol had to swallow her distaste for California and, dutiful wife that she was, move to the West Coast. And so did his mother, his brother and his kid sister. For a while, the five lived together in an apartment in Los Angeles. But as soon as they could, the newlyweds rented their own apartment in the San Fernando Valley, where apartments are reasonable — for they were trying to live on Mike’s income, as any normal couple would. And Mike’s mother, brother and sister took an apartment right across the street. By now Carol was pregnant. But Mike wouldn’t let her reveal the fact. He pointed out that if her pregnancy were known, she would possibly miss out on some acting jobs. And Carol herself was anxious to keep working as long as possible, sensing that acting was perhaps more important to her happiness than she’d thought. Several months of sitting alone in a Long Island apartment, looking at four walls and waiting for Mike to come home from the office every day, had shown her that cooking and dusting were not adequate to hold her interest. In New York she had resumed modeling, and in Hollywood — now that she had moved there — she wanted to act. Carol enjoyed acting. Baby announcement “Finally, I began to look more and more pregnant,” she told me at the time she was expecting the baby, “so I’d say, ‘Honey, announce it! Please!’ But he thought we should wait. He’s a press agent, and it was very important to him to break the news properly.” By “breaking the news properly,” Mike meant telling a columnist at the proper moment. As a press agent who had to keep in the columnist’s good graces because he was handling several clients, Mike was very careful not to offend her by giving the story to someone else. He had always made a point of staying friends, and he wanted to keep it that way. But finally the magic moment arrived, and Mike informed the columnist — and through her the world — that the Selsmans would soon be three. By this time that fact had become perfectly obvious. Soon after Jill was born — in a dangerous Caesarean operation, after Carol had waited many hours for a normal delivery — I visited the Selsmans in their small garden apartment. Carol had called for me in her car, and on the way she admitted to me that she and Mike had already had a number of arguments. Among other things, it seemed, he didn’t like the way she rolled up his socks after they were washed. He was very insistent that she get just the proper knack of doing it — not this way, but this way. If she did it wrong, he was very upset. Also, and not surprisingly, Carol didn’t always get along with her mother-in-law, who had definite ideas of her own on child rearing. But these were trivial things, or would have been, if it weren’t for the main problem: Mike’s general attitude. We arrived before Mike got home from work, and as Carol prepared dinner she told me that she and Mike had managed to compromise on their tastes in food, which differed radically. Carol ate sparsely, and she was not a particularly good cook. And she admitted it, though she tried her best. So she prepared fairly simple food — things like meat loaves and chops — and when Mike yearned for the Jewish foods he’d been brought up on, he prepared them himself. Since Carol didn’t like Jewish food, when Mike had it she’d make herself something else. “Change the baby . . At that time, the Selsmans didn’t have a nurse for Jill. Carol had brought the baby along in a Port-a-Crib when she picked me up, and now Jill was lying quietly while Carol prepared dinner. She seemed a very happy baby. Soon Mike arrived home from work. He nodded to me. mumbled something inaudible, kissed Carol, and went over to the baby. He picked her up, felt her diaper. and told Carol, “Change the baby!” He said nothing further, but went directly into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He’s quite a bug on cleanliness and likes to shower and wash his hands a lot, so I assumed he might be taking a shower. Carol, who was in the midst of dinner preparations that required her presence in the kitchen and dining area, continued to prepare the food and set the table. After fifteen or twenty minutes, Mike came out of the bedroom, felt the baby’s diaper again, and said grimly, “You haven’t changed the baby!” I felt embarrassed when I heard the tone of his voice. I sensed it was no joking matter to him. And while I sympathized with his viewpoint, I didn’t see how Carol could take time out from her dinner preparations right then to change the baby — who wasn’t crying anyway. Carol, trying to make the best of the situation in front of company, said something about having to get the dinner on the table and attempted to make a joke of the whole thing. But Mike simply glowered. When Carol told me, a year later, that their “different personalities” had made the marriage impossible, I remembered that moment. At dinner, I kept trying to make conversation about Mike’s job and his plans. He told me that he had an option on a novel by a well-known Spanish novelist, and intended to make it into a movie as