Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1951)

For Sentimental Reasons ( Continued from page 37) I explained very earnestly that Doris and Marty were only business acquaintances, that there really wasn’t anything personal in their relationship. “Maybe so,” said Dr. De Courcy, unconvinced, “but there’s a look of love in his eyes.” You really can’t fool the family doctor. And although neither Doris nor Marty were aware of it at that time, it turned out that Doc’s diagnosis was accurate. “Everything happens for the best,” always has served as Doris’s trustful philosophy. Although she has had her share of tragedy and discouragement, she has hung onto that trust. Even the accident that threatened to cripple her for life didn’t depress her too much. One morning during the period of her convalescence I heard a peculiar rhythmic thump-thumping in the living-room and hurried in to find the record player beating out “Tea for Two” and Doris, on her crutches, working out a tap routine. “Watch out! Don’t fall,” I cautioned. But I couldn’t help feeling happy and proud. If this sixteen-year-old girl of mine, who’d always been so active, could be tap dancing on crutches instead of moping because she was missing proms and basketball games, she would surely, I felt, be able to weather whatever life held for her. r 76 LITTLE did we know then that life would be so generous, and then, on top of everything else, bring the tall, dark-haired Marty Melcher from North Adams, Massachusetts, with his easy-going humor and thoughtfulness, into her life. As for Doris’s eight-year-old son, Terry —my grandson — one would think the whole affiliation his inspired idea. Since he was a towhead of two, when I held him up in the wings of theatres and ballrooms so he could watch his mother on stage, Terry’s has been an all-important vote. So, one day, Doris settled down with him for a heart-to-heart talk, to discover how he would feel about acquiring a new father. He was a little awed at first, then just plain delighted. “I’ll have somebody to go fishing with,” was his first comment. Then, very seriously, “Besides, Mom, a fellow needs another guy around.” That evening, when Marty arrived for dinner, Terry opened the door for him with, “Come in, my intended father.” However, had Doris been marrying someone whose occupation threatened to remove her from Hollywood, I doubt if Terry would have been enthusiastic. For, as he points out to her, the fact that she’s a star augments his own prestige. “I’m going to quit this business,” Doris announced one evening when she came in completely exhausted from the studio. “I’m tired of this getting up at 6: 30 in the morning and working until 6:00 at night.” Terry was aghast at the mere suggestion. He talked about it for days, pleading with her not to turn in her Warners’ contract. “I think you have a wonderful job, Mother,” he said, really selling her. “You can sit on a couch or lie down between scenes. Suppose you had a job in a store, and had to stand on your feet all day.” Doris, who of course had actually no intention of quitting, was amused. “Well, maybe you’re right,” she finally agreed. “And,” Terry added, “think about me.” “You? Why, you’d be all right. You would be taken care of,” said his mother. “But I’m very popular because of you. All the kids at school would love to have you for their mother. Whenever they see you in a picture, I rate great!” When Doris was growing up, she was always pirouetting and humming around the house, but I never pushed her or entertained any thought of her having a career. I just let her take singing and dancing lessons because she loved them so. She was always play-acting, too, but like all kids do, putting on shows with other neighborhood children in our garage. When she was ten, she was more excited about the pair of black patent pumps with “shaped” heels her grandmother got for her, than the applause that greeted her first professional appearance — doing a dance routine with a small boy friend, Jerry Doherty, at a private club. It was a few years later when she was auditioning for a little morning show on a local radio station that she got the chance to sing with Barney Rapp’s band. That and the band engagements that followed with Bob Crosby, Fred Waring and Les Brown were for Doris no feverish pursuit of a career, but rather exciting adventures and work that she loved. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM 'fa "Say what you will about good bets, I have discovered that the only way to double your money is to told it and put it in your pocket." ... PAT O'BRIEN IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIU When she was sixteen, she had turned down an opportunity offered by Paramount. We were staying in California awhile so that Doris and Jerry, who had been playing clubs across the country, could study with Fanchon and Marco. Paramount seemed excited about Doris. “She’s a natural,” they said. But they weren’t interested in her dancing partner and Doris wouldn’t break up the team. “Don’t you want to be an actress?” they asked, amazed. “Not that much,” she said. “Not if it might hurt someone else.” She was singing on “Your Hit Parade” a few years later, when she was chosen for “Romance on the High Seas.” In one letter home she’d mentioned casually that she was going to take a screen test at Warner Brothers. “I don’t know what will happen, but I’m not going to worry,” Doris wrote. “If it’s meant to be, it will be.” A few nights later she called me and was about to hang up when I asked about the outcome of her test. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” she said. “I signed a seven-year contract.” That Doris can be so well paid for just being herself, for singing and dancing and doing what has always come naturally, still surprises her. If she’s working with a good gang, if the cast and crew are relaxed and have a few laughs along — then it’s a good job. She never sees her own pictures. Close-ups of her face make Doris uncomfortable. “They magnify feature faults too much,” she says. If I put her photograph up on the wall, she promptly takes it down. And she never hesitates to tell interviewers who ask about her favorite singers, “Well — I don’t like girl singers — including me.” The fact that Doris isn’t overly careerconscious seems happily to eliminate any conflicts in this direction for Doris and Marty. As she says, “I am very happy with my work. I like the people I work with, and it’s fun making pictures, doing different roles. But I would never put my career before my husband or family.” Doris has absolute faith in Marty’s judgment and is happy to relax and let him supervise her career. Theirs is, they feel, and I heartily concur, an ideal double relationship — that of husband and wife and manager and star. Marty alway: picks out songs for her and on this they occasionally disagree. For, as Doris point: out, “I am an artist — and you know artists — they like to sing a song they enjoy, one that appeals to them personally.” Bui Marty knows the commercial angles anc he’s always there to remind her, “Yoi have to give the people what they like. “In fact, Marty’s just perfect for me,” overheard her telling a friend the othei day. “He understands all my little peculi arities. I’m a fanatic on keeping house, can’t stand crooked pictures, dirty ash trays, clothes lying around. I’m a difficul character to live with, I imagine.” Hardly that, and certainly with Marty own innate neatness and understanding have no worries regarding such domestic1' details. My good feeling about their mar riage is based on more than that. I fel instinctively from the first, as mother will, that they were right for each other They’re basically the same. They believ in paying their taxes first and then liv ing within their income. They both prefe living simply. Doris realizes now tha love isn’t just moonlight and orange bios soms, but something steady and serene. BOTH she and Marty are on the inform; side. They wanted their wedding to b fast, sweet and simple. And since Dori was working in “On Moonlight Bay” al most up to the very date, this followe automatically. For sentimental reason: Marty hoped their work would perm them to be married on April 3, Doris birthday. And they were married on th date before a Justice of the Peace at Bur bank, with only close relatives present. They wanted to jump in the car after th ceremony and take off for destinations un known — without a too-planned itinerar; Doris did hope they’d get time to go New Orleans. Once, while touring wil the Bob Hope troupe, she’d spent two da there and she was enchanted with tl colorful old-world charm of the city, wil the “Old French Quarter” and especial ; the “Court of the Two Sisters” where she lunched. “The food is out of this world she told Marty, forgetting for the momei that she was on a Yami Yogurt kic “Everything is so old. It’s been there sue a long time,” she enthused, leading up the antique shops that abound there. While it might seem odd to some th the newlyweds would route their hone; moon to some place where they might fii an old English sea captain’s table or inside hutch — to Doris and Marty, bo engrossed in completing the furnishing their home, it seemed only natural. Doris is antique-happy and nothi that’s plantable is safe, with her aroun She even planted an old bed chamb and made it into a lamp for my boudo Her favorite pastime is changing furnitu from room to room. She decides that t 200-year-old table she inherited from h grandmother should be moved into the h; to serve as a telephone stand. Does) Marty think the divan would be betl between the windows against the wa' Mm-mmm? And poor Marty patienl walks around with a hammer and nails his hand, saying hopefully, “Now, is tl where you really want this?” They’re both homebodies at heart. < Sundays, if they’re not switching furi ture, they’re working in the flowerbe'