Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1951)

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SHE'S MY WIFE (Continued from page 31) a country house, a city house, a villa on the Riviera, a cabin in the Maine woods, or any of the like. We do have a two-room apartment in Manhattan's east eighties. The building is one of William Randolph Hearst's former mansions. As you probably know, Mr. Hearst always did things in a big way, often dismantling whole castles for piece-meal shipment to the states. And so, our apartment is elaborate — although we didn't have anything nearly so imposing in mind when we went house-hunting. "We want a two-room apartment," Imogene had told the renting agent. "Something comfortable but compact. Sort of peasant style." Imogene's voice must have trailed off to a whisper — it does, sometimes, for she's more than ordinarily shy. At least, if the agent heard her he paid no attention, and we found ourselves ushered into a lavish one-room apartment. The foyer is floored in white marble with ornate, carved wood spiraling up the walls, and furnished in spidery iron furniture. And the room of rooms once Mr. Hearst's music salon, has all the compactness of a basketball court. It's about thirtythree feet square, with a ceiling much too high to estimate. On a clear day Imogene claims the Pan American Clipper passes across the ceiling on its approach to LaGuardia Field. A huge chandelier of real Waterford glass hangs over the center of the room and if you stand on a chair and nudge the chandelier you get a series of musical tinkles that belong in fairy tales. There is a fireplace large enough to stage the Saturday night show. "There is another one-room apartment that connects to this," we were informed by the renting agent. "You could have it for a bedroom." We said no. There was quite enough space in the big room. However, after we moved in, we discovered the walls were not as soundproof as you might expect. We could hear prospective tenants whispering in the next room when the agent showed them around. So we decided that in order to allow ourselves the freedom of playing the radio or sounding off whenever we wished without disturbing neighbors, we had better take the adjoining apartment. Actually, we don't spend as much time at home as you might think. For the big Saturday night Show, we work six days a week. An average day for Imogene starts at eight. After dressing and a breakfast of coffee only, she gets to rehearsal at ten sharp. From Monday morning until Saturday night's performance, she and Sid Caesar — along with producers, musicians, the cast, writers and arrangers, which includes me — work over the script and ideas for sketches. Seldom does Imogene knock off until seven-thirty in the evening. If we get through at six-thirty, we consider ourselves lucky. The theater is our main interest but there isn't time to make an eight-thirty curtain when you have only an hour to eat and dress, especially when you are beat 1 right down to the ground by fatigue. And H as Imogene knows, people expect her to be "dressed" when she goes out. Not in the sense of being extremely fashionable but at least a fresh change after a day's work. As a result, we usually go straight home and stay there. Imogene likes to read magazines and mysteries because they require so little concentration. She relaxes at the huge concert piano and, of course, there are the pets. At the moment, we have a French Apricot Poodle, a Red Persian Cat, a turtle and a Budgie bird. "Apri, the poodle, has delusions of being a real woman," Imogene will tell you. "And she has to be treated like a sensitive one." When guests come into the house, Apri looks them over with the fine scrutiny of a hotel clerk. She walks up to a person's chair and stares until she has quite made up her' mind about what's going on. If she doesn't get enough attention, Apri climbs into a chair and sulks. The little Budgie bird, a kind of parakeet, we picked up on our vacation in Florida. You may remember two Saturday nights in February when Imogene and Sid Caesar were absent from the show. They had earned a well-needed vacation. The last vacation Imogene had was a mere five days last summer, sandwiched in between summer stock. We were at Fire Island but it didn't do Imogene much good. "I could hear the clock ticking away all the time, telling me that having nothing to do was just an illusion," Imogene recalls. "We just didn't relax at all." But we did make our trip to Florida count. We caught a train for Miami after our Saturday night show and arranged to have a rented car waiting for us so we could drive up the coast and find a nice, isolated place on the beach. We arrived in Miami, the four of us, and found the car waiting. We then drove north along the shore looking for a quiet, secluded spot. Just about evening we hit Boca Raton. There we saw just what we wanted, a small cottage on a private beach with nothing moving but the surf and the only other company, a fat moon. "And now I'm going to do nothing but sleep, swim and sit on the sundeck," Imogene promised. One other thing we did, too, was to catch up on the daytime serials. Both of us are steady fans of Wendy Warren, Rosemary and Ma Perkins. In our apartment we have four radios, one each for the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. Sometimes when I have to run back to the apartment for a couple of hours during the day, I'm sure of one question from Imogene when we meet again. The question is usually, "How's Ma Perkins doing?" We have a television set, of course, which we get to use in the evening. You can guess which show is my favorite. Imogene's are Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Open House and Jimmy Durante. Far too often we miss seeing them — but we're always missing something. Living with your work so much may sound horrible but both of us have been accustomed to it since birth. Our parents, in both cases, were show people. Her father, of Spanish extraction which accounts for Imogene's surname, wa9 an orchestra leader and her mother was Sadie Brady who ran away from home to join the troupe of Thurston, the well-known magician. Imogene began taking piano, singing and dancing lessons when her head barely topped a piano stool. At fourteen she was a full-time trouper herself. A few years later, she headed for Broadway. She went through the starvation-frustration routine of most stage struck girls. When her break came it was in a revue called "Shoot the Works" produced by the late beloved Heywood Broun. Funny thing at this time was that Imogene had never thought of being a comedienne. She wanted to sing and play straight dramatic parts. It was in the '30s that a cold draft changed the direction of her career. She was rehearsing for a revue called "New Faces" when she began to feel chilly backstage. She borrowed a polo coat from another "new face," Henry Fonda, and began clowning around the stage in one of her now famous dance parodies. The producer thought it was hilarious, put it in the show, and Imogene was a success. We had never met up to this time, although we both worked for the same producer. I was acting in a showboat revue and came to a matinee of "New Faces." I was struck immediately by Imogene but didn't fully realize it until I saw her on the street one day. She was looking in a shop window and I was standing on the opposite corner. I stared impolitely and said to myself, "That's the kind of girl I want to marry." But I waited for a formal introduction. It came shortly afterwards in our producer's office, where we were auditioning new songs. By the time we got back to her Greenwich Village apartment, where Imogene lived with her mother, we were holding hands. That same fall we worked together in a new musical. It ran only two weeks but we kept going. The Monday we collected our final pay, the only money we had, I proposed. And we were married that night. Of course, a lot of people believe that Sid is Imogene's actual husband. People who see him out with his beautiful wife frequently give him the dirty look usually reserved for philanderers. Poor Sid. He's a great friend but we don't see much of him socially. He keeps the same long hours as Imogene and his home is outside Manhattan. Many nights he gets home too late to see his little daughter. Please don't misunderstand and think that Imogene or any of us gripe about the work that goes into a television show. Imogene thinks it's the best medium she has ever worked in. It's true — Imogene may come home from work too tired to enjoy one of those highly spiced meals. She may not get much use out of the tailored but very feminine party dresses she so carefully selects. She may find Apri sulking for a lack of attention— me, too, occasionally. But she loves television and for a good reason. "When I meet people who watch the show, they're such nice people," she explains. "They feel right at home with me as if I were a life-long friend. It gives me the most wonderful feeling of warmth. Actually their sincerity and friendship is many times worth the work and sacrifice of show business."