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CAN you imagine what it would be like at the height of a great operatic career suddenly to find your voice completely gone? To be young, talented, ambitious, with a brilliant future stretching away before you one moment; then — nothing but a blank wall of silence.
Ed Jerome, whom you hear as leading man on Rich Man's Darling, as well as in dozens of other dramatic shows of the air, knows what it means to come face to face with that haunting threat which hangs constantly over an actor's or a singer's life.
Even though it happened long ago, that period of silence haunts him still, a vivid reminder of the uncanny tricks that fate can play, a force which shapes his career even today.
But let us go back.
At sixteen, Ed Jerome was a simple Irish boy, a telegrapher's assistant in a New York hotel, tapping out messages at eight dollars a week. He'd hum to himself at his work in his deep voice, because life seemed very full and pleasant to him.
He was helping to support his family in a little flat. Once in a while he could save enough for the theater and stretch his overgrown legs in a second balcony seat, craning his neck at the remote wonders on the stage.
And then it happened — that sudden onrush of fame. His pal, another telegraph operator, persuaded him to take sing
ing lessons, a vocal teacher marveled at the voice, got him a scholarship at a New York school. But it wasn't enough.
One summer evening, with a little scraped-up spending money in his pocket, his passage paid, and the promise of a scholarship at the Conservatoire de Paris, Ed Jerome sailed for France to become an opera star.
He couldn't get over it as he walked the streets of bewildering Paris, and sat in little sidewalk cafes with strange new friends. Everything had been so easy, so sudden. Everything he did was wonderful.
The greatest teacher in the Paris Conservatory adopted Ed Jerome as his protege. Ed Jerome, the wire-chief's son, the big Irish boy who hadn't been able to finish high school, walked around with the vocal score of Gounod's "Faust" under his arm, and drank tea at the afternoon parties of countesses.
At seventeen, Ed Jerome in the black velvet domino and devil horns of Mephistopheles made his operatic debut in "Faust" on the stage of the Paris Opera House. He was the youngest Mephistopheles of operatic history, but he sang the role like a veteran — perfect from the glorious mature bass voice to the last subtle little pantomime.
Even after the thunderous applause and the praise, he couldn't believe it. Something was the matter. Things didn't happen like that in the (Continued on page 76)
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I
THE STAR OF RICH MAN'S DARLING
LIVED A WEIRD LIFE OF SILENCE
By LUCILLE FLETCHER