Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

Outstanding service plaque is from organizations of many kinds and creeds. Only at-home meal for Ed is breakfast in bed, prepared and served by Sylvia. Pride of the Sullivans — daughter Betty, beaued at Hollywood Ciro's bv her Dad. MY HUSBAND } I've always chuckled at stories in popular magazines about the "little woman" who is responsible for her husband's success I'm sure it's usually a figment of the imagination — the little woman's imagination. I wish to declare here and now that I am the little woman who is not responsible for her husband's success. We were married twenty years ago, when Ed was a sports writer, twelve years before he became a Broadway columnist. In those years I have never contributed actively to his success as a writer, nor to his more recent success as host of the town on CBS-TV's Toast of the Town, his big Sunday night show at 8 o'clock and on the Little Old New York show, Monday nights at 7: 30 on WPIX. My part has been that played by most other wives — a leader of the cheering section. Mostly it has been roses, but at times there were the accompanying thorns — reading occasional bitter attacks against Ed by other newspapermen, suffering through his disappointments, but always rooting. In twenty years you get to know a person awfully well. After these twenty years I can still say that my husband is a wonderful guy. He has his share of idiosyncrasies, he is a little spoiled, as anyone in his position must be, but he is a fine husband and a wonderful father to our nineteen-year-old Betty. Ed is a liberal in his attitudes on political issues, one hundred percent American in his idealism, and loyal to his friends. He is never jealous of the success of other people and he judges everyone, even those he has cause to dislike, dispassionately. He is Irish in his sentimentality. He has the quick Irish temper and the sudden remorse that follows it, is generous with his emotions and his money and will fight as hard for a lost cause as for a winning one. Certainly he has done things that irritated the blazes out of me, and I've told him so. Remember, we'll soon be celebrating two decades together! We've been lucky, to be sure, enjoying the maximum of happiness and the minimum of tragedy. God has been very good to us, and in my own small way 1 have tried to repay our blessings by working for the Red Cross for the past eight years. I'm a Gray Lady at the United States Marine Hospital, at Ellis Island, in the harbor of New York. Although Ed's ambition and determination have never needed prodding from me, there is one area in which the wife of a busy Broadway columnist and toiler in television might be tremendously helpful to a husband often too busy to cover every new show or motion picture. The "little woman" could step into the breach, rush to the theater, report on the show, and by an accurate analysis of plot and performance values predict the likelihood of success. So I dutifully rush to the theater and sit through the entire action, not budging until the cast has taken the las; curtain call. Thence home, where my spouse awaits my report Once, alas, he waited eagerly, untii the years revealed that my batting average wasn't destined to get me into the Hall of Fame It's a terrifying fact that only twice have I called the turn on a hit: once I declared defiantly that"Oklahoma" was a great musical, and then shuddered through the night, fearful that the morning papers would prove me wrong again. (Continued on page 92) 48 RADIO MIRROR TELEVISION SECTION