TV Radio Mirror (Jul - Dec 1955)

"But as a result of our planning," says Brooks, "our dream of visiting Europe came true to the letter. Halfway across the English moors, we did get a little 'Parishomesick' and went back there a day earlier than we'd planned. But otherwise, we followed our schedule to the second. Like our trip to Europe, if you want any dream to come true, you have to plan it in detail." "And that," says Eve, "is how we got our farm, Westhaven. When Brooks and I were married in Connecticut, in 1951, on the 50-acre farm that belongs to the Amsters, we planned someday to have a place just like theirs — birch forest, running stream, and our own pond. We went through a great deal of trouble to keep our wedding from being discovered, by the way, and the farm, near a little town called Shelton, was so well hidden that the only newspaper to find us was the local gazette — the little lady reporter who came chugging out Ln an old Ford discovered us only because she doubled as census-taker." During the next three years of their marriage, Eve and Brooks continued to share the dream of finding a place just like the Amster farm in Connecticut — and they planned this dream down to the last detail. "First of all," says Brooks, "we wanted room for the kids to run in. Then, of course, it had to be a Pennsylvania Dutch red barn. We wanted a vegetable garden and country flowers and animals. We got them all. Though, when I first saw our new place, I wasn't so sure. "To begin with, it was raining. We'd been visiting the Alan Ladd country ranch. We'd heard this place was up for sale. It was early spring, and things were green. They should have been — it had poured down rain for four days. This is where the bridge comes in — we had to cross a ravine to get to the property. Eve said, 'Oh, I've always wanted a place with a bridge with a little stream running under it. And look at those oaks! Doesn't it remind you of Connecticut!' " 'Yes,' I said, 'but, remember, we only want this as a weekend place — and it isn't going to rain every weekend. Besides, the barn's white, not red, and it costs too much!' "But," Brooks continues, "when Eve saw the waterfall in back of the tennis courts, she knew she'd found our new home. You might like to know that it hasn't rained heavily enough, since then, to fill the ravine. Needless to say, there's been no water in the waterfall, either. "We bought it, anyway — and have never been happier. 'Today, I like to think that we were the only people in sunny Southern California who saw a place on a miserably rainy day and fell in love with it." "But the white barns didn't stay that way for long," says Eve. "Brooks and I started out with the red paint and soon had them all well covered. "Then we decorated them with hex signs that were symbolic of all the little things that went to round out our dreams — animals, flowers, and white picket fences! "Hex signs, you know," explains Eve, "were used extensively by the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch farmers on their barns to ward ofE evil spirits. We had an old book of hex signs. We used some of their designs, and made up others that best fitted our own needs. We made one, for example, that was a big circle divided into four parts with a bright red heart in each quarter section. When our daugh^ ter, Connie, asked why the heart, Brooks ^ said: 'We use the heart because it's part g of us, because we love the farm, and because we are in love.' " "It didn't take long," says Brooks, "for us to paint the barns, stock the farm with sixty-two chickens, four ducks, a dog — our Bassett hound, Gertrude — a few stray cats, rabbits, sheep, twelve turkeys, and four cows. We even have a vegetable garden and the kids love to work in it." "And we never buy eggs any more," says Eve. "The girls and I, together, gather the chicken eggs, and we feed the white turkeys. They're my favorites at the moment. They can see us coming a mile away with their greens. You've never seen so much excitement in all your life as white turkeys waiting for their supper! "The farm — which has become our fulltime home — has been wonderful for the children. They even love the country school. They pedal their bicycles through the little grove we call our fruit tree orchard, down the hill, and tuck the bikes behind the gate where they meet this tremendous yellow bus loaded with kids. They just adore it! "It's quite terrific the way the girls — and the boys, too, for that matter — ^have grown since we came out here a year ago in April. We took movies of them out by the barn, then three months later we took the same type of movies in the same spot. I must say I was kind of startled to see how white and thin they looked in the earlier reels, by comparison! The girls were brown as berries, and Liza had grown about four inches and her hair had grown about a foot! "The girls, of course, love the farm. And why not! Liza has her own pinto pony. Patches, which she bridles and saddles all by herself, leaping on and off and riding around like a little Miss Gene GIVE— Strike back at CANCER Autry! And Connie has her rabbits— she hand-feeds them carrots fresh froni the garden. The other day, I asked her if she minded cleaning up in her room, and she replied, 'I can't right now, Mother, got to go out to pick the carrots!' Talk about falling in love with the farm: Brooks and I were in the city recently — we keep an apartment there — and had taken Liza along for a haircut. Brooks asked her if she wanted to move back into town and she replied, 'No! Not ever!' "Though the girls both love the farm," Eve continues, thoughtfully, "the boys are a little too young to know there ever was a difference. Of course, Douglas was born in the year and a half since we've been here. The farm has been grand for him, too. He's just a year old, yet he weighs only two pounds less than Duncan, who is twice his ^ge! He's a regular little Gargantua. (As Brooks says, 'Why not? He eats all the time!') But he's a happy fellow— you have to be, to get up at 6:30 A.M. the way he does. And he's very active. He only catnaps about thirty minutes in the morning and thirty minutes in the afternoon. Duncan, on the other hand, sleeps like a log from one to four every afternoon — but then Dune is up running full tilt! "Doug is still a crawler," says Mother Eve, "but he crawls crazily. He is trying to walk. He'll come to us in the morning, standing up with his nurse, Helen, holding his hand. He'll start running, and Helen has to walk fast to keep up with him. Doug doesn't want to walk, he wants to run. He takes two or three steps, then things get confused. But, before he falls, he looks down at his feet as if to say, 'Hey! What happened down there!' " And Brooks takes up the story: "Doug's trying hard to learn to talk. Of course, we think we recognize the words he's trying to say. The Amsters' daughter, Susie, for example, stayed with us during the summer. When Susie came into Doug's room, he'd look up and say, 'Shooee.' When you give him a new name — like 'Liza' or 'Connie' — he'll watch you pronounce it, then he'll practice saying it over and over, watching you all the while. He's going to be a good little student, I think, for he has great powers of concentration and tries desperately to form the words. 'Mama,' of course, was his first successful effort. And, when he finally got his first 'Dada' out, I naturally told everybody to be quiet so he could be heard all over the house!" Eve says, "The girls adore both of the boys. They think it is kind of fabulous having two little brothers like that. Liza looks after them, changes their clothes, takes them to the potty. Connie, too, is a natural little mother and, when Doug first came home from the hospital, wanted to start taking care of him right away. Liza, on the other hand, gave the baby a quick look-over, decided he was very cute, but she was more interested in the clinical details. She wanted to know all about everything that happened at the hospital. "But," says Eve, "as any mother of four can tell you, it's not always serene. Take the matter of jealousy, for example. I think that most parents are aware of jealousy between their children and they try to protect them against it by preparing them, first off, for the arrival of another child in the house. That's what Brooks and I did. We tried to plan the arrival by telling them the entire story. "Then came the day when I thought everything was settled — but I relaxed too soon. Naturally, the baby demands a great deal of attention, and one day Duncan came running into the room with his little face just alight at the thought of seeing us. Then he stopped dead in his tracks at the door. I was puzzled for a moment until I realized this was the first time Dune had seen me holding the baby in my arms. So I put Doug down in his bed, patted him and turned to Duncan — then the smile returned and he came to me. But you find that there are many repetitions of this sort of thing and you can't always be on guard every minute. "That's the problem Brooks and I are fighting right now. When you have four, you find your time is cut up so small that when you are with them they are all vying for your attention — you are either babying two at once or turning your attention quickly from one to another. 1 o overcome this, we had to develop a plan which would give each child individual attention. What Brooks and I did was to take each of them on separate little trips where they were 'the only ones' in Mother's eye. In fact, when we were shooting at Warner Bros., we took them into the town apartment one at a time on the slimmest excuse — for a haircut, a new dress, or a piano lesson — and lavished love on just the one for an entire day. As a plan it works fine. But then I 'talk a great game.' We are all just full of theories, you know. "We are both very concerned right now with the different needs of the children. Liza is rapidly approaching teen-age and her needs will be different from Connie's— whose needs, in turn, will be different from the boys'. To solve this problem, we are trying to plan our lives so that we can spend more time with the children. We also want to travel, and we don't feel this is incompatible, because we intend to taice them wherever we go. I will not go