Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1948)

ANYONE who has to go out in front of the public and make like an actress for her living is apt to have times, usually late at night, when she wonders who she is. This is a mild mental disorder which might be called angleitis, since it is the result of being written about from too many different angles by people who have nothing better to do than go around thinking them up — publicity men and such. One's sense of being a real person can get completely lost in the angular mazes and distorted mirrors of publicity. The other night at dinner I was trying to tell ray husband, Allan Nixon, something about this. "Allan," I said, "sometimes I feel so overcrowded, and lately it's been getting worse." "Now look, dumpling," Allan spoke very firmly, "don't go trying out any of that Irma dialogue on me." If you've ever heard Irma, you'll need no diagram of my husband's unkind meaning: he meant that what I was saying sounded to him kind of off-center and lunkheaded. Which just goes to show, as every married woman knows, that even the best husbands can be awfully obtuse at times. What I was trying to tell Allan was that sometimes the inside of my skull feels as congested as the area immediately around the football half a second after a fumble on the one-yard line in the Rose Bowl. There are too many Wilsons in there — or too many press agents. First, there's bone-dome Wilson, the dumb, good-hearted blonde of CBS, Irma on My Friend Irma; then there's glamor-gam Wilson, one of the more prominent exhibits in that menagerie of show business, Ken Murray's Blackouts; and finally there's smartypants Wilson, who works hard at being a nitwit and makes it pay off on the movie lots. And away down underneath the pile-up, still trying hard to hang onto the ball, is a slightly scared and somewhat suffocated character — and that's me, Marie Wilson. That gal needs air. She needs to get all those other Wilsons off her chest. That's what this story is for and about. Since Allan wasn't interested, I'll just tell you. To begin where the story begins, we have to go back to Anaheim, California, December the thirtieth, nineteen hundred and none of your business. But it was later than 1916 — I've got a birth certificate to prove it. Shortly after my arrival, my father and mother were divorced. I firmly believe that this was merely a coincidence. Anyway, my mother married again very soon and my stepfather turned out such a grand person that the "step" part could just as well be omitted, as Marie Wilson is My Friend Irma in the CHS comedy, beard Monday nights at 10 P. M. EST. A double life can be a very confusing thing for a girl — particularly when it's made up of two strong personalities like the make-believe Irma and the real Marie Wilson By MARIE WILSON far as I'm concerned. With my three brothers and two sisters I had an abnormally happy and normal childhood among the orange groves and nuts of Anaheim — a lot of English walnuts are grown in that district. Ours was a chattersome houseful; whenever there were fewer than three people talking at once, things began to seem dull. Play-acting was a popular pastime in our family. All kids like to do it, I suppose — dress up in their elders' clothes and parade their conceptions of how grown-ups act. Incidentally, the most educational thing that could happen to most grown-ups would be to catch a child's impersonation of them. Of course the grown-up has got to have a sense of humor, or the results for the child caught doing the impersonation are likely to be painful. I speak from experience. However, no matter what some people say, I grew up, and at sixteen I didn't graduate from high school. I'm pretty sure I would have, eventually, if I'd persisted long enough, but who wants to spend ten or twelve of the best years of their life on plane geometry? I quit before I'd accumulated enough credits to merit a diploma and went to Hollywood to be a movie star. Two things made the Hollywood venture possible — a sizable inheritance left me by my real father when he died, and an absolutely colossal unawareness, all my own, of what it took to crack a movie studio. The first move of my foray against fame and fortune was to bring my whole family to Hollywood with me. Being one of a big family isn't (Continued on page 89) 30