Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1951)

MY HUSBAND, KEN MURRAY (Continued from page 57) look at him and think, This is not the man who, when a problem presents itself, solves it with a crisp executive 'This is it.' I think, This can't, be the good business man who writes all the things he wants — even things his manager and lawyer don't think of — into his contracts; the man who has the last word on his CBS-TV Ken Murray Show. The man of so many talents. K' EN was born in New York City on July 14, 1903. His father, Joseph Doncourt, was a comedian in vaudeville; his mother a non-professional. When Ken was born his father was only twenty and not quite up to the responsibility of a family, so after his parents were divorced Ken was raised by his paternal grandparents on their farm near Kingston, New York. It was all work for the little boy and not much, if any, play. He had to get up with the chickens in order to get to school — "by shank's mare" — on time. After school there were the chores to be done. Feeding the chickens. Milking the cows. Ploughing. Planting. They had hardly any money at all and Ken, beyond the necessities ("Which happily for me," he often says, "included good wholesome food and the warmth and love which makes the poorest home rich"), had nothing at all. When Ken was fourteen his grandparents moved to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, Ken sold newspapers, shoveled snow, tended furnaces. Later he sold phonographs in a big Brooklyn department store. What with one thing and another his earnings totalled about fifteen dollars a week, and at the end of each week he'd take his money and go to New York, where he'd see one Broadway show after another. There was more method than madness in these Saturday sprees of Ken's, for he had known, since he was in knee pants, that he was going to be a comedian. Ken got his first theatre job (a fivenight date) in a little theatre in Brooklyn. On the second night the manager told him, "You won't do." Ken wasn't discouraged. He knew this happens on the way up. He was nineteen when he got his first firm foothold in the theatre. A vaudeville team named Morey, Senna and Dean was booked into a local theatre. At the eleventh hour Morey left the act. Young, on-thelookout Doncourt got wind of this, audaciously applied for the vacated spot and got it with the provision that he change his name to Murray to keep the billing. The name stuck and Ken clicked. After two years with his partners Ken decided he was ready to try a double act, so he teamed up with a girl named Charlotte whom he married. Billed as "Ken Murray and Charlotte," they played the Keith-Albee circuit for a year. Soon after this, Ken and Charlotte were divorced and Ken went on by himself. By 1927 he had his own Ken Murray unit which was booked on the Orpheum circuit. Ken is not a scrapbook boy. Lets the clippings fall where they may. Prob R ably the only record he'll have of M his colorful and crowded career is the commentary film he's making for his two voung sons. Cort, aged seven, and Ken 78 neth Junior, eight, the children of Ken's second marriage, to Cletus Caldwell. Ken loves movies, especially old movies. So he's making a history of them. Ken will beg, borrow or steal to get these old films. He even buys them, too. Ken likes nice things partly because, no doubt, he had so few of them in his childhood. He loves a Cadillac — has one of those great big seven-passenger Cadillacs (vintage '46) . This he laughs off, saying, "It pays for itself — we rent it out for weddings and funerals!" Knocking out walls, remodeling old houses is yet another of Ken's favorite pastimes. A year before we were married he bought an old house on Hollywood Boulevard which is now, thanks to Ken's vision and handiwork, all modern. At present we live nine months in an apartment on Central Park South in New York. When I first met Ken in November of 1942 he was, of course, a Big Name. If I should attempt to put down all the things he'd done since he changed his name to Murray I'd have writer's and you'd have reader's cramp. So let's just give a colossal career the capsule treatment: In 1928, just four years after he started in show business, Ken was playing the great Palace. In the space of the next three years he returned to the Palace as a headliner eleven times. He was the Palace's first emcee, too. In 1929 he made his first picture. RKO's "Half Marriage," with the late Olive Borden and in 1929 he co-starred with Irene Dunne in Miss Dunne's first picture, "Leathernecking." He made his radio debut in 1933 on a Rudy Vallee show. He starred in two Earl Carroll revues. "Vanities" and "Sketchbook." While in "Sketchbook," he took a real flyer in radio as star of CBS' Laugh with Ken Murray. Meantime he continued to go out playing theatre dates, and it was at Loew's State on Broadway that he got his big idea: Why not whip several acts together in a revue format — one without book or story-line? Ken was in luck. Back in Hollywood Sid Grauman agreed with his idea. And on June 24, 1942, Ken Murray's famous "Blackouts" was premiered in Grauman's famed and fabulous Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The fame of the "Blackouts," slow in starting, soon grew like a beanstalk. By the summer of 1949 only Ken and his leading lady. Marie Wilson, remained of the original cast. I, Elizabeth Walters, was only a little name when I met Ken. I'd done radio work in Hollywood, playing ingenue and bobby-sox roles. Helen Mack, the producer of A Date With Judy, knew Ken was looking for a girl for a dramatic sketch, The Valiant, on "Blackouts" and suggested me. I'd seen Ken quite often in the movies, on the stage, but never face to face. He fascinated me, I must admit, but as a showman. He'd disappear, stay away through a whole act, come back and finish the sentence just where he'd broken it off. Eventually he sat still long enough for me to read for him. When I'd finished he said, "Say, Pardner," (Ken calls everyone Pardner) "I think that's all right." Soon after we started working together Ken began to kid me, saying, "Every time you give a good performance I'll give you a kiss!" Then at the end of every performance he'd tell me. "You were just swell!" whereupon he'd give me my rewarding kiss! One^ night just before he went on, he whispered to me as I stood in the wings watching, "We're all going to the Biltmore Bowl later on — can't you come along?" I said I'd phone my mother (I was only eighteen at the time) and ask permission. When he came off-stage the next time I told him I could go. The next thing you know he's on stage singing "I Have A Date With An Angel," which didn't belong in the sketch at all. Ken never did ask me, formally, to marry him. It was just kind of an understanding that we wanted to be together. I don't know that I can analyze exactly why I fell in love with Ken. We had a lot of fun together. I liked his sense of humor. And he's awfully sweet, a really sweet man. Too, I'm the kind that likes, not the fatherly type but the protective type, the guy who knows his own mind, which Ken does. Never a thing of "I don't know what to do" with Kenneth Abner. After our quiet marriage, which I've described, we honeymooned at the Racquet Club in Palm Springs. Two days after we arrived there was an earthquake that all but swallowed the desert. It wasn't funny except for a telegram Ken got from his cast which said, "Gee, Ken, we know you love the girl — but take it easy!" After we were married I did less work, radio and otherwise, than before. Not that Ken asked me to give up my career. He wouldn't. Every now and again I'm on his TV show and any radio or television work that's around, I do. And enjoy doing — but if you have a husband who's successful you enjoy watching his work and also you have quite a bit of homework to do. His clothes, for instance. Ken is not too sharp about his clothes. But finicky. He loves soft fabrics. Likes silk shirts. Will not wear wool. Wears the clip bow ties (except on the show) and rubber-soled shoes. I buy them and dye them so they won't look quite so awful. He gets a run on one suit, too, wears it forever, then says "Honey, will you send this suit to the cleaner's today — but just ivhen can I have it back?" There are only two things about Ken that really drive me crazy — the way I told you that he acts about his clothes and the fact that he just won't go to bed at night. Never before three-thirty. Wakes up at six in the morning. Then he gets up, starts to talk the next day and night through. He gets a new idea, he tells anybody he happens to meet the whole thing. The thing he's doing at the moment, that's all he talks about. He'll talk to me. Or to our guest. Or he'll get on the telephone on Sundays and just talk and talk about what happened on the Saturday night show. When I kid him about his talkie marathons he says, "Look, honey, some husbands go out and gamble and drink. I just like to talk." At this, I say no more. Just liking to talk is a very minor fault and Ken. great showman and sweetest husband any girl ever had or will ever have, hasn't any other.