Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1954)

^a/m Color portrait by Cronenweth Miracle at the Crossroads BY HYATT DOWNING • There are several excellent ways of starving to death in Hollywood, but John Derek, the handsome and extremely gifted young graduate of Columbia’s school of star-making, chose the one most likely to suceed. He tossed out the window a comfortable salary and an assured, though not rocketing, career and started freelancing in a town where sheer talent doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. Moreover, he did this in the face of obligations which might well have daunted an older man, a man already scarred by the arrows of fate. John was the father of two children; he was supporting a large house not fully paid for and a hobby only slightly less expensive than a yacht — the breeding of Arabian horses. It takes more than mathematics and an expert knowledge of percentages to take a jump like that. Faith of an almost sublime quality is needed, the kind that moves mountains. John had this gift of heaven, and in his case, at least, it worked. “I remember the morning last April when the telephone rang,” John said. “Things hadn’t been going too well. Oh, nothing of the ‘bloody but unbowed head’ sort of thing, but it did begin to seem I might have jumped off the roof with an umbrella instead of a parachute. A free-lance actor, especially one not too well established, is putting his head right in the lion’s mouth ( Continued on page 117) John lost a role but left with something more important after his talk with Cecil B. DeMille fCith loyal Patti by his side, new faith in himself , John’s no longer afraid of the future. Everyone has faced critical times when they’ve waited for something unusual to happen. When it does, it sounds fictional. But for John Derek, the miracle was real — and lasting 1 * i 69