Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1954)

So Glad They Met ( Continued, from page 59) dog, he’d disappear for several days at a time, eluding search parties and scorning the inevitable punishment when he returned home. “I always loved the out-of-doors. I was always a kid wild for adventure,” Rory says now, which is undoubtedly the truth in a limited way. There was more to it than that. Your average kid gets his adventure in groups, not alone. Rory was good at sandlot baseball; in high school he was a star athlete, specializing in football and boxing, and he was popular. But always there was that inner loneliness, that restlessness. He liked people; he wanted people to like him — and they did, but he could never be sure of it. Not being sure, he took refuge in solitude. He was still a solitary after graduation. In three years, he tried a succession of jobs — all out-of-doors, all adventures. He was a bronco-buster on a ranch near Tombstone, a hard-rock miner in a silver mine outside of Reno. He worked in a logging camp and on a fishing boat and dug ditches in Oklahoma oil fields. On each job he had pals, buddies — but no close friends. Sooner or later, he always moved on, to a new job, new acquaintances. Finally, back in Santa Cruz, he signed on as a ranger in the near-by mountains he’d known and loved so well as a lad. This was his happiest job, and he might be a forest ranger today except for one of those completely unpredictable twists of circumstance which sometimes occur. Called to Los Angeles by the illness of his great-grandmother, Rory slipped away one morning for an hour’s horseback riding in the Hollywood hills. There he encountered a friendly young man who looked vaguely familiar, and they talked for a few minutes, mainly about horses. “Are you an actor?” suddenly inquired his new acquaintance. “Heck, no!” said Rory, who had even shied away from parts in school plays. “Maybe you could be,” the other said. “I’m Alan Ladd — my wife runs a screentalent agency, and I think she’d be interested in you.” Sue Carol was. So was David O. Selznick when he met Rory. And as simple as that, Rory became an actor. He wasn’t at all sure he’d like it. Acting looked to him like a mighty insecure profession. With a very real modesty, he couldn’t understand why anyone would pay good money to watch him on the screen. Still, the Ladds and Selznick and other people who ought to know their business seemed to have faith in him. Well, he succeeded. Not right away — it took a couple of years and a change of studios. And it took Lita’s love, too. Lita Baron Calhoun was known professionally as plain “Isabelita” when Rory first met her. She was a singer and dancer, working mostly in night clubs. Her parents were both Spanish and she’d been born in Madrid, moving to the United States and Detroit when she was six. From her ear■ liest teens, she’d been deeply involved in show business, singing with Xavier Cugat’s band whenever it played Detroit and touring with it as soon as her education was completed. She and Rory met casually once or twice in Hollywood during the time when Rory’s career in pictures was still getting under way. He was in no mood to fall in love. He hadn’t yet convinced himself — or been convinced — that Hollywood was for him, and his principal purpose in life was to earn enough money to buy a ranch. A real ranch, one that would support itself and him — just in case. Then, one evening, he dropped in at the Mocambo — in itself an unlikely thing for Rory Calhoun to do, since he is no nightclubber. But he was lonely — actively lonely that night, not just vaguely so. His mother and stepfather, with whom he was living, had gone out for the evening and he’d had dinner alone. He was at loose ends and thought he might see someone he knew at the Mocambo. He saw Lita. She was appearing there, and it was early, not yet time for her show. They talked, they danced — and all at once it hit Rory that this was the girl he’d been looking for, without even realizing that he was looking for any girl at all. He didn’t believe it at first. He stayed until closing time and drove Lita to her home. After that she didn’t hear from him for a whole month. He was on location and he didn’t write. He kept telling himself he’d stop thinking about Lita — but he went right on. It seemed to be something he couldn’t help. Back in Hollywood, he called her, made a date — and the instant he saw her again he was convinced. This was his girl. So Rory Calhoun went back on everything he’d ever said about the kind of a girl he hoped to marry one day. He had told interviewers that she’d have to know how to ride and be fond of hunting and fishing and camping. Lita Baron hardly knew one end of a horse from the other; she’d never fired a gun or cast a line or slept on the ground — or planned to do any of these things. However . . . They were married on August 29, 1948. Hollywood tends to favor two kinds of weddings — the elaborate, expensive sort with hundreds of guests, champagne flowing and press photographers’ flash-bulbs exploding; or the secret, quickie elopement to Vegas. The Calhoun wedding was different. It was, come to think of it, distinctly old-fashioned. It was sudden, yes. After planning a formal church wedding in the autumn, Rory and Lita discovered they were unhappy waiting that long, so within a few days arrangements were made. They went to Santa Barbara and got their license under their legal names of Isabel Beth Castro and Francis Timothy Durgin. They were married on a Sunday, in Santa Barbara’s Trinity Episcopal Church, before a wedding party consisting of both sets of parents, Lita’s sister (her maid of honor) and two brothers. Lita wore a soft gray dress, a gray chantilly lace skirt and white gloves and carried a bouquet of lavender and white orchids, framed in white carnations and gardenias. Rory wore a plain blue suit. After the ceremony there was a wedding supper at the Harbour Club in Santa Barbara. Rory and his bride spent the night at the Santa Barbara Biltmore, and left the next morning for Ojai Inn. It was a wedding, neither a spectacle nor an elopement. And it was so beautiful that Rory and Lita made a promise to each other on their honeymoon: Every five years they would return to Santa Barbara and be married again, re-creating the circumstances of the first ceremony as completely as possible. Sentimental? Yes, frankly so. Oldfashioned, too — and who cares? Not Rory and Lita. This is their own private fiveyear plan and they are carrying it out. They were married for the second time on August 29, 1953 — although they couldn’t arrange to have the wedding in Santa Barbara. Rory was on location in Alberta, Canada, making “River of No Return” at the time. The members of the original wedding party were some thou \ \ 2 delightful forms of the TALC^in Americifs\ \ beloved^fragrance^ \ 1 . The long-loved talc . A silky-soft, i:\ 1 . The lc mg-loved talc . . \ silky \ luxuriously smoothing and soothing ). . . with the fragrance that’s fresh gs a garden inlthe rain. Ask for A Showers Regular Talc. 39< i 2. New! Deodorant Form \ Exciting, “two-purpose” version of this V t famous, flagrant talc. Wonderful ingredients haVe been added for all-over) body deodorant protection. 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