Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1951)

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At all drugstores. DELECTABLE DARLA (Continued from page 60) career for her daughter. After seeking in vain for a suitable teacher among their five hundred neighbors in tiny Leedey, Oklahoma, she began driving Darla one hundred and fifty miles to Oklahoma City every week to study with Miss Katherine Duffy. After a year and a half of faithful work, Darla was invited to accompany Miss Duffy on her New York vacation. Learning that Hollywood producer Hal Roach was in town looking for a new "Our Gang" sweetheart, Miss Duffy quickly taught Darla a little song and speech for a screen test. The minute the cameras stopped whirring, Roach rushed up with a sevenyear contract, bundled them in a car, and dispatched them to Hollywood in such a hurry they couldn't even stop in Oklahoma to see her mother and father. Darla was soon to learn that fame, to a youngster, is another word for loneliness. It's being in a foreign country where you can't speak the language, and no one can speak yours. It's peeking quietly from the window of a shiny car at a noisy crowded sandpile of little strangers with wonderful tattered rag dolls. It's having a day full of adult activities impossible to translate into a normal juvenile conversation. It's a feeling of not belonging anywhere. As a by-product of prominence, inevitably child stars become precocious. In a film called "Born to Sing" with Virginia Weidler, Darla was a quiz kid and sang a song based on one of her chance remarks, "Here I am eight, and what have I done?" To Darla, who shudders at the recollection, precocious youngsters and child prodigies aren't funny. They are sad. Darla's mother came west to be with her, and although skeptical about Hollywood, her father later transferred to the Bank of America in Los Angeles so they could all have a home together. Darla being a movie personality as well as an only child made them afraid she would become spoiled and temperamental; they forced themselves to be strict with her. Darla cites this as another liability of being a professional child — the need for continuous rugged discipline. She yearned to attend a public school, to get away from "Our Gang" so she could have her gang. Her one experiment at Rosewood Grammar School was a dismal flop. If she didn't talk to the others, she was snooty; if she did, she was smartypants. She tried to buy popularity with parties; the kids devoured her ice cream, but forgot her the next day. Disconsolate, she returned to the MGM studio school where she shared classes with Virginia Weidler, Susanne Foster, and Connie Russell. Elizabeth Taylor was there too, a tiny thing, although just two years younger than Darla. The school was tolerable, but the future seemed bleak. Her first break came from an unexpected friend, the studio tape measure. Happily for eleven-year-old Darla, she suddenly began to sprout up. After being the sweetheart of "Our Gang" in over one hundred pictures during a record-breaking stretch of nine years, she was now outgrowing them. She was four feet tall and getting longer every breakfast. After her twelfth birthday she was replaced by a four-yearold. Mrs. Hood dreaded breaking the news to Darla about the replacement, but finally was forced to tell her. Darla was overjoyed. That very afternoon she planned a career as a trained nurse . . . no, a waitress handling lovely food ... no, she would be a teacher in her own wonderful noisy school. A hundred lovely possibilities beckoned, best of all was the chance to be a nobody that could at last "belong." But this didn't come immediately. Darla struggled through a dark apprenticeship to normalcy at Bancroft Junior High School re-learning the art of getting along with non-theatrical people. She had braces on her teeth, pigtails, subconscious stage mannerisms, and was generally ignored by the select clique of popular girls. Then magically the dark spell dissolved, and Darla burst into a new and wonderful existence the moment she entered Fairfax High School. Everything picked up, she loved her studies, made the Promethians Honor Society in three semesters. Braces disappeared and boys appeared, in untold quantities. The girls liked her too, and she had more fun every sixty minutes than she had ever had in her whole life. Her parents were delighted. "No more show business for me," vowed Darla. "Next stop, graduation, then college." Her best girl friend was Eleanor Decker, who had a beautiful soprano voice being trained by Dr. Wright, pastor of the Methodist Church. Darla sang in their choir, and helped plan the choir's annual barn dance. At the last minute, her date couldn't go, so Ellie introduced Darla to her older brother Bob, just back from the service. It was a dance Darla will never forget. She wore a new yellow print pinafore with matching yellow hair ribbons — she still has the pinafore, with new lace on the skirt. She'll never part with it, because the dress reminds her of that dance, and it was at that dance that she met Bob. Bob Decker was a beautiful dancer, and Darla's years of studio training made them outstanding among all the couples there. But to Darla, suddenly there were no other couples there, nobody but Bob. When dating other fellows she had often thought "Gee, I want to go out with him, maybe I'll marry him." With Bob, this possibility was so deliriously out of reach she settled for just a whispered prayer "If he'll only ask me out again." After the seventh dance she was thinking "If he even as much as mentions that he likes me, I will explode — it would be the greatest thing that ever happened to me!" Bob didn't say he liked her, but he did tell her she was a good dancer, and asked if she'd like to go to the Palladium some night. "Go to heaven some night" is how it sounded to Darla. On the way home he held her hand, and they had sodas with Bob's brother John and his girl. He didn't call the next week, but Ellie tipped her off to the reason. Bob had been astounded to discover she was only fifteen. Furthermore his mother had suggested he stay away from her to avoid encouraging puppy love from an impressionable young girl. Bob tried to follow