Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1941)

■ "No!" I cried. "Can't a girl have a career— can't she even sign a contract — without selling herself?" back Stephen Langley's eyes to their appreciation of me, or noticed until I stopped speaking that they were warm and friendly for a moment. He laughed. "I wish he'd written that in songs," he said. "But no one has. We have to be content with our script writer's idea that our songs must bring results, along the line of each day's program. I mean that if you sing, 'Lover, Come Back to Me,' thousands of letters must come in the next day, saying, 'Last night, after hearing your program, I called up the girl I once was engaged to. I told her I was sorry for whatever it was we had quarreled about. Now we're engaged again.' Could you sing that for us now — in a way to make the man in the control room call up some girl JANUARY. 1941 and say he's sorry about the way he treated her?" That day I could. I sang the song with an emotion I'd never had before. Stephen turned and said to the pianist, "Well — we've found her." But, immediately he realized that I was the girl his program needed, his manner toward me changed and became utterly impersonal. In the days that followed, while we auditioned for sponsors and interviewed advertising agency men and conferred with the script writer and musicians, he was still detached, impersonal. The momentary desolation I had felt, the first day, began to be a mood, a frame of mind, a dim hurt that was settling into my heart. I tried to argue myself out of it. What in heaven's name was the matter with me? I'd wanted a chance at success. Well, I was having it. Stephen Langley was enthusiastic in his praise; the road to fortune stretched ahead of me, broad and clear. All I had to do was work, and I loved to work. These days of preparation should have been the happiest and most exciting of my life. But, somehow, they weren't — simply because a man with brown, skeptical eyes and a purposeful manner chose to pretend that I was not a person, but only a cog in his success machine. INSTINCTS — feminine instincts that had nothing to I do with my desire to sing and be successful at my job — were stirring in me, making me long to see again that look of interest and appraisal that had been in his eyes at our first meeting. Oh, I knew that I'd been disappointed at the time, seeing it there. But it had told me he was a man and I was a woman. It had been heady, exciting, and I couldn't forget it. I don't mean that I reasoned all this out. I didn't. I was too confused and hurt at his brisk unawareness. But I found myself watching other girls in the studio building, trying to dress and act more like them. I borrowed clever clothes, and I persuaded Marion (even now, I can't imagine how) to let me use the credit she could get on her steady job to buy more clothes. When all the tests and proofs were over, and we had agreed on a salary which sounded like a fortune to me, I finally received word that a contract was ready, in his office, to be signed. I used Marion's charge account to buy a special outfit— a tailored suit with a jacket that had soft, fluffy fur along the sleeves, and ten-fifty shoes, and stockings that must have been about one-half-thread, and clever gloves and hat. Now, surely, he'd look at me! He did look. But, as he looked, I saw an expression of amused confidence come into his eyes. Even in my pleasure at being admired, that expression made me vaguely uneasy. Two other men were with us, to see the contract signed. Then they went away. Men were always disappearing out of his office, leaving us alone there. That day, for the first time, I thought I saw that their leaving had been his suggestion. He glanced through my contract again, then folded it and put it into an envelope. In the act of offering it to me, his arm went about my waist. "There it is — the first step to all you want, starring on a nationwide hookup, maybe Hollywood. Is it to be sealed with a kiss?" he said easily. His faint smile was a challenge. It was his world of success and strength mocking me. He expected to buy me, so much for so much, a kiss now, and by and by whatever he might care to claim. I flared up in a fury of disappointment. "No!" I cried, my blazing eyes on his face, like claws unsheathed to scratch its complacent handsomeness. "Can't a girl have a career — (Continued on page 64) 11