Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1948)

{Continued from page 96) while tricks. I have a hard time finding the paper around home if there’s a bad review of Ladd in it. When I ask, she looks innocent and says, “Why, I’m sure it’s around somewhere.” Which is a fact, because she’s carefully hidden it. That doesn’t apply to constructive criticisms — only to smart-aleck barbs meant to display the writer’s cleverness. Susie — ever and always, praise be! — is feminine. She has a feminine weakness for jewelry and perfumes, both in moderation, and for nice clothes. She’s a stickler for good grooming and for cleanliness. If she uses hair-curlers or face creams I never see them on her. And I’ve never seen her slopping around the house in a soiled dressing gown or run-down slippers. Women who do that, she says, are merely telling their husbands: “Well, I’ve got you, fellow. Now I can relax!” Like most husbands, when we’re going out for the evening I often have to wait while my wife finishes dressing. I used to be genuinely annoyed by this; now I only pretend to be. The results are worth it, for one thing. Then I remember that she starts later than I, because she’s still seeing to the children and to household odds and ends while I’m already in the shower. My friend Susie and I, we get along. Being human and married, we have our little differences now and then. But they’re very (Continued from page 41) She worried especially over this picture because it marked Fred Astaire’s return to the screen. She told friends she hoped she hadn’t failed him in the dances she did with him. “Judy,” her friends reassured her the day of the preview, “you must calm down. The picture is a great hit. Have you eaten anything?” “I can’t eat anything. It comes right up,” she says. But once at the preview — hearing that first laugh — Judy laughs, too. She goes to the party afterwards at Romanoff’s — enjoys the lavish supper, has fun. “I just die,” she admits, concerning these “tortuous” occasions. She talks with the same intensity with which she acts, dances or sings. There’s no ’“casual” conversation with her. Every sentence is marked with superlatives usually accompanied by expressive gestures. If she even comments on the weather, you can fairly feel the sunshine pouring in, the raindrops beating on the windowpane. For no reason that Chuck Walters, who directed her in “Easter Parade,” or anyone else can think of, Judy designates her approval of anything with, “Oh, that’s very soothing.” It was Judy’s first day on the “Words and Music” set after not working for some time. She talked of her latest enthusiasm which is sewing. “I picked it up from Sylvia Sidney, my best friend. Sylvia sews so beautifully. I got one of those form things and I’ve made a robe, a cotton evening gown — that kind of clothes.” Asked if she had turned out any little numbers for Liza, she said, “Oh, no. I’m not good enough for that. I wouldn’t want hers to look homemade.” Producer Arthur Freed, who has produced fourteen of her pictures and has the utmost respect for her talent, says, “Hers is an honest humility.” Arthur Freed, incidentally, was present on the momentous occasion of Judy’s audition at M-G-M. Then a plump little member of the “Gumm Sisters,” she so captivated her official audience with “Zing Go the Strings of My Heart,” that she was then 98 small differences. I’ll tell you about the “insurance” we took out, early in our marriage, to keep them small and to ourselves. It was at the time of that “first quarrel” which comes to all newlyweds. Ours, over something so trivial we can’t remember what it was, was a humdinger. WE’D gone ’round and ’round, hurt and pouting like embattled children, far into the night. Finally I thought I’d end it by going upstairs. I did, but Susie didn’t follow. After a while I called down, still stern and bellicose: “You going to stay down there all night?” No answer. I went down, calling again. Still no answer. Susie was gone and I was panicked. I found her outside, walking in the night, trying to calm her nerves and reason things out. I brought her in, and we went into that little matter of scaring silly a guy who really loved her. And finally — with p>enitence on both sides — we made our pact: Never, never would either of us leave the house in anger. We recommend that pact. Too many married people, closing doors on a house, have learned too late that they were closing doors on a life as well. We love our home, and you’ll find both of us there most evenings. I have men friends, good friends, but “nights out with The Punch in Judy and there on her way to becoming a top box-office success. She has great personal warmth, Judy, and a gay gamin quality that enables her to laugh at herself. Chuck Walters calls Judy a director’s dream girl, not just because she takes direction so beautifully or because of her great acting talent, but because she’s so cooperative. “Just toss Judy the ball and she carries it for a home run,” he says. “She never goes glamour girl on you.” Actually she’s always ready to sacrifice glamour for realism; as witness the mangy-looking wig, the tooth blacked out in front, the tattered costume, of the tramp number in “Easter Parade.” She disapproved of a more flattering costume, saying, “This isn’t half gruesome enough.” She found a size forty tux, had it torn up and put back together, then relaxed happily at the ludicrous effect achieved. At large parties Judy is likely to be quiet and retiring, almost shy. However, if a hostess insists — she accedes graciously and sings. Until, all too suddenly for those present, it’s four o’clock in the morning. Proof of how Judy sends her public when she sings is the fact that nobody ever noticed that she once sang the wrong words when she sang “The Trolley Song” in “Meet Me in St. Louis.” She “chugged” when she should have “buzzed.” It happened like this: After Judy had run through the lyrics, the director suggested they record it with the orchestra, then play it back to study it. Judy stepped to the mike and sang the song from memory, singing it so brilliantly and with so much spirit that the director said, “That’s it! Print that.” No heed was paid to Ralph Blane, the conscientious writer, who was aghast that they were “printing” the biggest production number with Judy repeating, “Chug, chug, chug, went the motor,” when she should have been singing “Buzz, buzz with the buzzer” instead. “With Judy singing it as she did nobody ever will notice,” the director insisted. The song, as you know, was a smash hit, became number one on the Hit Pa the boys” hold no lure for this one. Susie and I read, we listen to music, but mostly we talk. What about? Everything. The day’s doings, the children, the news, politics, books, horses, the ranch, the past, the future, the present, everything. We’re always planning — big things and little. We build houses and tear them down. We plot pictures and pull them apart. And when we have a problem, we really 4 tear into it, batting ideas back and forth *. until we have the answer. Maybe it isn’t the right answer always, but it’s ours. Neither of us believes in running off to relatives or friends with our troubles. I The way Susie and I talk, I’m reminded of that old Doc Gibhs in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Tovwi.” Doc Gibbs confessed to his wife — after twenty years — one of his “terrors” as a bridegroom. He had been afraid they would run out of conversation in a few weeks, and then would eat their meals in silence ever after. But “you and I’ve j been conversing for twenty years now,” he chuckled, “without any noticeable barren spells.” With Susie, God willing, I believe that twenty, or forty, or fifty years from now. I’ll be able to make the same speech. And I can’t think of a nicer compliment I would pay the wife who is also . . my friend Susie. The End rade. And nobody ever did notice. Ask if it is not difficult to be directed by one’s husband and live with him at the same time, and Judy laughs softly. “Not with Vincente. He’s so wonderful, so brilliant in so many ways — not just as a director.” For their second wedding anniversary, Vincente had a tortoise-shell brooch designed for her. “I don’t know where he gets all the valuable pieces,” Judy says. “Once he talked a museum out of one.” Ask about little Liza Minnelli of the dark hair with golden glints, the blackbrown eyes with their long black lashes and Judy says gently, “She’s my life.” Liza, who sits with her father beside the cameras, gravely eyeing the grips on the catwalk overhead, never spoils a “take.” When a record of Judy’s is played she comments approvingly, “That’s my Mama.” And she demonstrated her vocal ability by singing “Happy birthday. Mama,” to Judy an entire afternoon. Judy observed her birthday with her husband, her baby and old friends like her dancing stand-in, Betty O’Kelly. She wore the mandarin -style loimging pajamas Sylvia Sidney gave her, enthused over the mink jacket Vincente Minnelli chose for her, and looked often towards the photograph of Liza that Vincente had taken and had framed as Liza’s gift. Liza, however, insisted on picking her own birthday present for Judy — a bouquet from the garden of a stranger. She had gone for a walk in the hills with her nurse when the inspiration struck her. So she stopped at the nearest flower bed and was interrupted by the owner. Gravely she announced, “I am picking flowers for my Mama.” ’“Wouldn’t you like to come with me and pick some prettier ones?” asked the owner, amused. “Fine,” she agreed and followed him back to his prize rose garden, where he cut some beautiful roses. These, with her own bedraggled bouquet, she carried to her mother m the pink house, way up high on the cliff banked with pink and white geraniums where it may be at long last, the dreams Judy dreams will come true. The End