Radio mirror (Nov 1937-Apr 1938)

RADIO MIRROR with the housework, scrubbing the stairs or the kitchen floor for ten cents a week, dusting the walnut furniture, making the beds. At play, they gave little shows in the cellar, using the empty coal-bins for dressing-rooms during the summers. Anna never quite understood how the little starched white dresses got so incredibly black in such a short space of time. Occasionally the girls fought among themselves, as girls will. Jeanette remembers one particular time when she angered Blossom, and Blossom snapped back at her, and in a moment both were rolling on the floor, screeching and flailing. Blossom, being bigger, won; she sat astraddle Jam and choked her, until eventually she noticed that the child's face was quite purple and her movements frantic. When Anna came flying in to investigate she found Blossom sitting with Jeanette's wobbly head in her lap, rocking back and forth, wailing miserably. "Come back to me, Baby, come back, come back!" moaned Blossom. There was the crippled old man next door, named Mr. Maetrich, who listened kindly and encouragingly when little Jam came over to sing for him. From phonograph records of Caruso and his ilk she had learned the melodies of great classics; the words she made up, labelling one batch of strange garbled lyrics French, one Italian, one German. Mr. Maetrich was a definite influence — he told her that one day she would sing in opera, and thus implanted an idea that was harbored in the young brain of the girl and grew with her until at last it became an obsession. There was. too, the school teacher — an embittered, vicious old woman who shall be nameless here — who made Jeanette's life in school as uncomfortable as possible. This person (pince-nezed, thin-bosomed, with an eye for her neighbor's sins and a nose for prying and a heart for no one) discovered that her new pupil had been touring with a road-show during the summer, and immediately went before the Board of Education. This, she insisted firmly, must be looked into; and the Board wearily agreed. The MacDonalds, called in for inquiry, explained with bewilderment that the child was not suffering from her professional engagements. Jeanette herself was made to answer questions: No, she had never heard any dirty words. No, her parents didn't beat her — the idea! No, the money she earned wasn't snatched from her by force as soon as she got it. In fact it was being used for her piano and music lessons. In the end the Board smiled at the flushed and outraged family, glowered at the teacher, and waved a dismissal. But the old busy-body wasn't through. She came to all of Jeanette's performances— most of them benefit, now that she was so busy in school — and sat in the first row, staring intently at the girl. Jeanette began to dread stepping from the wings, knowing that always she must look down into that hateful countenance, sing against the invisible waves of sheer spite that seemed to engulf her. Once the terror they inspired was too much: in the middle of her song she burst into hysterical tears and ran off the stage. Then a smile of grim triumph broke at last the wrinkled mask in the front row. 'there was that, and there was the little boy with whom she decided to be in love. This was a typical child's romance, without actual emotion, but abounding with melodrama; he sat down the row from her, and she would toss him notes 60 . Make Way for Melody {Continued from page 14) which grew increasingly passionate until— one day — she found her own store of words too meager, and copied a printed love-letter from the front page of a newspaper. She didn't bother to read the accompanying story, which was an account of a breach-of-promise suit. Jeanette was about nine years old then ("If you will elect me, I will keep this country out of war," Mr. Wilson had said, but he hadn't done it) and about that time an amazing thing happened. She began to grow with incredible rapidity—"Like a weed!" exclaimed Anna, astonished— until within a year or two she was as tall as her sisters. You must have been, at some time in your life, a lean and stringy and taller Benefit performances gave that MacDonald child her chance to sing and dance even during her school days. than-average youngster to understand just how miserable young Miss MacDonald actually was during that period. Always before she could — as the baby of the family — observe Blossom and Elsie with their several beaux without envy. She could steal the box of chocolates Elsie's fellow brought, and hide behind the sofa to "Yah-yah!" when Blossom got too sentimental with her visitor. But now, since she matched them in height she felt herself an outcast — she was loo tall to be treated as the child she was or to indulge in pranks — too young to be admitted to the charmed circle in which her older sisters moved. She must stand hidden on the landing watching them. She must tie the bow on Blossom's new, very long party dress, and help with her hair, and listen to her excited anticipation of the coming evening; and, in her short child's skirt and cotton stockings, she must stay behind in the littered bedroom when the doorbell had rung and Blossom and Elsie had gone. For long years . . . Until Elsie had married and left home, until Blossom had gone to New York and joined a chorus there; until the Armistice had been signed, and the world was drawing a long breath, preparatory to picking up the pieces, preparatory to the return to normalcy and the Jazz Age. . . . Then it happened. Young Marie Prescott. in Jeanette's class at school, had a birthday and decided to give a party. Jeanette would be very welcome to come^Freddy would call for her, wouldn't Freddy? Aw, come on Freddy, she won't hurt you! Just this once On the night of the affair Jeanette stood at the door of her closet, looking distastefully at her innocuous little highnecked, brief-skirted, best dress. She already had on her cotton bloomers, which buttoned all around to the gathered cambric upper; her legs were already encased in sheaths of snowy-white cotton stockings; the low-heeled patent leather pumps were already on her feet. CHE took the dress and holding it out ** before her went down to where her mother sat sewing. "Please, mother," Jeanette said, almost tearfully. "You'd better hurry, dear," Anna answered. "Freddy's half an hour late now — he'll be here any minute." Slowly Jeanette returned to her room. Slowly she pulled the dress over her head. Then she sat, unsmiling, on the bed to wait. She waited until ten-thirty, when with the same dragging movements she undressed again, put out her light, crawled into bed, and began to cry. The next day she met Freddy on the school-grounds. "Where were you last night?" she asked him. He shoved his cap further over his left ear. "Oh go to hell," he told her. (Some years later, when she was on the stage, he called her for a date. "You remember me." he said. "Yes. Do you remember what you yelled at me one day at school?" "I told you to go to hell, didn't I?" "That's what I'm telling you," said Jeanette, and hung up.) But that afternoon, when she came home, she had no heart to answer when Anna, waiting on the porch, called to her. "Hurry!" shouted Mrs. MacDonald. "I've news!" She waved a special delivery letter. "From Blossom," she explained, as Jeanette came up the steps; "she says they need dancing girls in New York, and that maybe you could get a job there. She wants you to come at once." Trembling, Jeanette stood looking at her mother, wordless. Before her the gates to romance, to womanhood, fulfilled, to glamour and lights and music and all the gaudy things she had never known, stood suddenly open. But would mother . . . ? Anna smiled. "You can go," she said softly. New York and glittering Broadway was a long step for the young red-beaded daughter of a staid Philadelphia Scotchman. To leave home, leave town for — a job as a dancing girl! Jeanette's dreams were suddenly, miraculously coming true. Don't miss the January instalment of this great story, the. intimate recollections of Jeanette MacDonald.