Radio mirror (July-Dec 1947)

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"In your performance last night," he'll say, "in that scene with the priest, the way you sat in that chair gave the wrong impression about what was going on in your mind. Your posture suggested that you were questioning the priest when it should suggest fright." Then he will sit in a chair and show me what he means. No one kjiows my voice like Walter. He can tell, the very minute I open my mouth, and far better than I can tell, how I am going to sing a performance that night. He guards, protects, shelters and runs interference for me in every way. HE never lets certain things happen around me in the theater. For instance, he will not permit my secretary or anyone else to come into my dressing room while I am making up. Nor may anyone come into my dressingroom and sing snatches of a different opera from the opera I am singing that night. He will not permit anyone to see me between the acts and never, of course, just before I go on. Nervous as I always am before a performance, I could not see anyone for I am just not talkahle. Besides, if you do not concentrate on your very first entrance, you may lose the whole performance. In opera, the vital thing is to get the voice quiet, still, before you go on . . . It was Walter who, long ago and far away, made me give up smoking. In Prague, in the days when we first met, I smoked constantly. In those days, too, it was the custom for members of the cast and their friends to sit together in a Coffee House before a performance, having cake and coffee — and cigarettes. On one such occasion I was smoking a -cigarette that was one of a long chain. Walter suddenly flipped it out of my hand. I was so embarrassed, I didn't speak to him for a week, but — I never smoked again. If I get a little out of hand — and how easily, in this profession, you can get out of hand — Walter is wonderful at putting me in my place. Never, with Walter, will I get to the point of being spoiled, become the "diva." If, for example, I have a performance and am very high-strung, and become abrupt in speech and manner, Walter takes hold of me with both his hands, and "This is one thing," he says, "we don't do, ever." After I have dismounted from my high horse, "Your performance will be much better tonight," he tells me, "if you remember that." Only an actor, one who knows, could say that or would say it . . . Walter buys most of my clothes. When we are in Hollywood he usually visits Adrian, makes the selections and all I have to do is go in, try things on for size. Knowing my size and taste in shoes, he buys all my shoes for me. He buys me beautiful robes and mules and lingerie. He buys my hats (all of this shopping, mind you, without me) although he prefers me, always, without hats. 'The result is that most of the bonnets he buys are so small, with little tiny veils and worn way back so you can't see them. Walter thinks there is no reason for hats, period. Unfortunately, my weakness is hats. I cannot pass a hat shop without going in and buying one or two. When I am at home, in Hollywood, I just relax. Never do any planning of menus. Never do any housework, never do any cooking. Walter doesn't like me to. Walter doesn't like me to be (Isn't this a husband to make your mouth water?) in the kitchen. In New York, we use room service for all meals, and such light housekeeping as I do consists in keeping jams and jellies, extra cream and beer (Walter likes beer) in the ice-box. And of course, Nicky's food, which his English nana prepares. We have, alas, so little time for home things, for friends, for anything at all but my schedule. Such time as we can manage to salvage out of no time at all, we spend with the baby who, I am enormously flattered to say, loves to hear me sing. Especially the Brahms luUabye and, in his lighter moments, nursery jingles. (Walter loves best to hear me sing "Through The Years." Our song, we call it, and so every word of it is .. .) No one, by the way, can safely say to Walter that the baby doesn't look like him. The least egotistic of men, if someone says the baby doesn't look exactly like him, I have a job of pacifying to do! An easy job, however, because (Walter, please note!) the baby does have Walter's coloring, shape of face, many of the same expressions, really does look — well, alm,ost exactly . . . WHEN we do have an evening to ourselves, we sometimes have dinner with friends — the Nigel Bruces, who are very close friends of ours, or with friends who are not in our business at all, when we are on the Coast; with the Fred Aliens, or my family, when we are in the East. Or we go to the movies, which is the most relaxing way we know of spending an evening. But since I must go to bed not later than 10:30, and always do, in order to be up and in voice and at breakfast with Walter (We never have breakfast without one another) at eight, our evenings out are few and very far between. Since there is no time in my life for very much besides my career, I try to m,ake Walter go out occasionally, without me — to dinner with friends, to the theater — and although he isn't very happy about it sometimes, to please me, he does. Perhaps, I often think, I should have resisted the irresistible temptation and said "No" to Walter when he took over my career. For it was, although he denies it, a pretty supreme self-sacrifice. He would have made a great career of his own if he had not become so involved with mine. So deeply involved that he has made only one picture in this country — -Warner Brothers' "To Have And Have Not," in which he played the head of the French Underground. He will not even go to see the films he made in Europe when they are shown here. "There is, besides, the embarrassing attitude some people take toward a man who makes his wife's career his job. A man can manage a "property" and no questions asked. A man manages his wife and although it is exactly the same kind and amount of work, calling for exactly the same acumen and energy — if not more, since it is an around-the-clock stint — there are those who look at him askance. When I worry about it, "What difference does it make. Rise," Walter will always say, "So long as we understand each other?" There is only one answer to that question, tender as it is, true as it is — and I make it.