Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

RADIO MIRROR "You bet!" Milton replied, still in that happy daze which smothers actors' judgment when they hear applause. "I thought so," the man said grimly. "Your name is Berlinger and you're twelve years old and you'll have to give up your part in this show." There was nothing anyone could do. Vainly Mom and Milton protested that Milton was a good student at the Professional Children's School, that they had to have the money because Milton's father was an invalid. The law was the law. Once more a way had to be found past an apparently insurmountable difficulty. Just as when the movies failed him he had turned to the Broadway stage, now when the Broadway stage failed him, Milton turned to vaudeville. Until he was seventeen he toured the country, first with a girl partner, later in an act by himself. It was expensive; Mom or some older person always had to go along, and he couldn't devote as much of what he earned to his family as he could in New York; but there was nothing else to do. AND there were the horrible years of adolescence, the years between fourteen and sixteen that every child who makes his living on the stage dreads. Awkward and ungainly, his voice changing, he was neither boy nor man. Booking agents would look at him doubtfully, shake their heads. He took what engagements he could get, watching the lines of worry deepen on Mom's face. She could hide them from Moses, but not from her son. His brothers, only a few years older than he, had left school and gone to work, but their combined salaries weren't as much as he had made in his good days. Time passed, and he was through that dark period, once more making enough money to assure ease and comfort for the sick man at home. At last his big opportunity came — a chance to be master of ceremonies at the Palace Theater in New York. If he succeeded there, he knew, he'd be in the big time for good. If he failed . . . well ... he couldn't fail. Something must have told him how not to fail. An unknown youth, he was following such headliners as Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor before the most critical vaudeville audience in the world — so he capitalized on his obscurity. In his opening speech he informed his audience that they didn't know who he was, and that the only reason the Palace had hired him was that he'd watched all the big comedians, and knew all their jokes. That statement started the great joke-stealing myth that still haunts Milton, but it turned the trick with the Palace audiences. Just once more Milton Berle has had to succeed in a new field. Radio at first would have none of him. He guest-starred on Rudy Vallee's program, then on Fred Waring's, then as a pinch-hitter for Fannie Brice — always without success. Stubbornly, Milton buckled down to conquer the toughest job of them all. He analyzed his comedy style, discovered just what was wrong with it for the air — too fast, too sophisticated, too Broadwayish — and tried once more. And succeeded. Thanks to radio, Milton is today happy in the knowledge that nothing can ever happen, while they live, to bring privation to the father and mother he loves better than anything in the world. It is the first time in his life he has had that knowledge. Radio has brought him enough money so that he has been able to put some aside, in annuities, against possible disaster. His brothers and sisters are making their own ways in the world, and Mom and Pa occupy a luxurious apartment in New York while he is out in Hollywood. Moisture inside the skin cells keeps Hands lovably soft HAND skin only too easily dries and chaps. Because cold, wind and water dry out moisture from the skin cells. And most women find they have their hands in water up to sixteen times a day. j But — with Jergen s Lotion — you can speedily replace that precious lost moisture inside the cells. Jergens soaks in more effectively than any other lotion tested. Your hands soon lose their neglected look — soften, become girlishly smooth. Jergens contains two ingredients doctors use. Use Jergens regularly for tender hands a man loves. It's never sticky. Only 5(¥, 25^, 10^ $1.00 for the big bottle — at any toilet goods counter. Carries beautifying moisture into the skin more effectively than any other lotion tested. FREE: PURSE-SIZEiJERGENS Use after hands have been wet, to restore girlish smoothness, whiteness, to your hands. The Andrew Jergens Co., 1728 Alfred St., Cincinnati, Ohio. (In Canada — Perth, Ontario.) Please send my purse-size bottle of Jergens-— free. -State 69