Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1954)

He Stuck to His Guns ( Continued from page 37) She was Helen Ainsworth, the woman who had discovered Guy and is his agent. “He looked so cute with his little sailor cap, I fell in love with him at first sight,” Miss Ainsworth relates, referring to the oft-told incident of how she discovered Guy in a picture on the back of a naval publication while she gulped down coffee at a drugstore counter. She got in touch with him by mail, persuaded him to visit her in Hollywood and saw him signed for a contract that same day. No doubt about it, Guy Madison — until then, Robert Ozell Moseley — was cute. But cuteness wasn’t enough. It didn’t wear well. “I became a victim of my own publicity,” Guy comments on that phase of his career today. “The build-up was terrific. It made me into sort of a male Marilyn Monroe — only more so. The trouble was I had nothing to back it up.” He’s still one of the handsomest men in Hollywood, but Guy Madison today is a far cry from the downy-cheeked sailor lad he was ten years ago. Nobody in his right mind would think of calling him “cute.” It takes a while, in fact, to find in his taut, virile features the faint echo of the tousle-headed youth he once was. It’s a man’s face now, a face full of character on which life has left its imprint. “It took a little seasoning to bring it out, but Guy’s always had a strong spiritual quality,” Miss Ainsworth says about him in a more serious vein. “He couldn’t have held on through all those years if he hadn’t had character right from the start. What few people know about him is that he has strong religious faith. One of the men he admires most and has looked up to all his life is an uncle who went into the ministry and who is today a missionary.” He himself is a little resentful at having the former Guy Madison dismissed too cavalierly. “It wasn’t my fault that I was young,” he protests. “What else was there to expect from a twenty -year -old kid fresh from Pumpkin Center, Cal.? It was like coming to fairyland — the fuss everybody made over me! One brief appearance in a film, and I was right at the top of the heap. And I didn’t know beans about acting. Naturally I promptly proceeded to slide down.” Guy’s first picture after his release from the Navy was “Till the End of Time,” in which he was co-starred with Dorothy McGuire. Cruelly overshadowed, he looked stiff, awkward and self-conscious, and completely failed to come across. After that, his studio decided to loan him out instead of using him in its own productions. Guy’s reputation failed to improve, however. Nor did his performances. “One of my bad failings was that I used to resent criticism,” he admits. Guy didn’t know much about acting. It was quite the fashion to pan him. “Harvard, I think, once voted me the worst actor of the year,” he recalls. “It seemed almost like a conspiracy. After all, hadn’t I become a star with my very first picture? “Altogether, I guess I must have been pretty full of myself in those days. Maybe I didn’t show it — I hope I didn’t — but you can’t have a bunch of teenagers go into convulsions over you and pretend not to notice it. It embarrassed me all right, but I won’t claim that it didn’t affect me to some extent. Deep down in my heart, I probably considered myself pretty hot.” During his early days in Hollywood, Guy was shy and blushed easily, though. Once a famous beauty with an equally famous reputation cornered him at a party and asked him what he liked to do for his amusement and whether perchance he liked to play postoffice. “No, Ma’am,” he replied, reddening to his ears. “I like to go rabbit-hunting.” Maturity has since given him a lot more poise without taking away from his attractiveness. According to some of his associates, there’s rarely a female who doesn’t immediately shine up to Guy. During a recent personal-appearance tour with his tv partner and sidekick in the Wild Bill Hickok series, Andy Devine, a party of fifteen women raided his hotel room in New Orleans. They left hurriedly when Andy instead of Guy greeted them in bulging shorts. In Seattle a young mother pushed her son toward Guy. “You go and shake hands with Wild Bill,” she coaxed him. “You go and shake hands with him yourself,” the offspring replied. “This was your idea.” And in still another receiving line, a girl in her late teens squeezed through to the front of the crowd. “I bet my girl friend five dollars that I could kiss you,” she giggled, pursing her lips expectantly. Guy looked her straight in the eye. “Lady,” he said, “I’m sorry but I’m afraid you just lost yourself five bucks.” Despite his enormous mass appeal, he’s personally always been a one-woman man who doesn’t run around and scatter his affections. He did some experimental dating for a while, but fell in love with Gail Russell soon after he came to Hollywood, and for a long time Gail was the only girl in his life. 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