Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1941)

The Woman He Adores of an experience he can never have except through me. Alec, on the other hand, will give to the world a music that I could never give it. We're like a team, each with our parts to play." "The first time I heard Alec play over the radio," Julie said, "I knew that somehow, somewhere, some way, our paths would cross. It was an odd feeling, a feeling utterly without reason. You can put it down to woman's intuition . or whatever you want. It's entirely unexplainable." That was four years ago. Julie, then a concert singer, was living in her native Kansas City and Alec was broadcasting from Chicago. The meeting didn't occur until two years later and then Julie was completely surprised when she stood, at last, face to face with Alec. CHE was in Los Angeles for a con^ cert and a vacation, and one day Mrs. Modini Wood, the mother of Mrs. Richard Bonelli and a close friend of Julie's, invited her to a party. That was the summer that Alec was appearing on a radio program with Bonelli. The evening was probably half over when Bonelli introduced Alec and Julie. The talk turned, quite naturally, to music. They talked of Bach and Beethoven and Alec told her about a recent trip to Germany when he had played upon the same spinet that Beethoven had used as a child. She had liked the boyish enthusiasm of his description of that notable event and then, suddenly, he was talking of a number that Hoagy Carmichael had just published. Almost before they knew it, they had made the unbelievable and almost ridiculous jump from Beethoven to boogie woogie. Also, almost before they knew it, the evening had gone and the guests were departing. The next day, Alec called Julie at her hotel and they took up their discussion of boogie woogie from where they had left off the night before with the more tangible result that, that same night, he took her off to a small cabaret in downtown Los Angeles where they could hear some real boogie woogie at first hand. For the first time, Alec had found a companion who could enjoy music — real music, he calls it — whether it is made in Carnegie Hall by a hundred-piece symphony orchestra or by a bass fiddle, a drum and a hot trumpet in some little-known dive where the music has to be good or else. During the next two years, Alec and Julie could be found, often, in the Hollywood night clubs and at the more serious music-fests held in the Hollywood Bowl or the Hollywood Grove, for which Alec is doing the music this year. It was about this time, too, that the Mookels, of Yipsey Ditch, made their appearance on the scene. The Mookels were born to the Templetons during the early months of their courtship. Alec, like many a great creative genius, was perfectly willing to forego all physical exercise despite the fact that he needed exercise to keep him in shape for his strenuous broadcasting and concert season. When Julie would try to get him out for a walk, he was ready to go home at the end of fifteen minutes. (Continued from page 11) That's when Julie thought of the Mookels. She knew that Alec, whose whole life is governed and timed by radio, was a great lover of the daytime serial programs, so she thought up a serial of their own involving a family, the Mookels, who lived in Yipsey Ditch. Everything that ever happened to a family and to a town in a radio serial happened double to the Mookels and to Yipsey Ditch. Alec played all the male characters, Julie the female characters. They acted out their running serial story on their walks about Hollywood. Then, suddenly, Alec was spending an hour, two hours, walking. Before he knew it, he was hating to come home because so many interesting things happened to the Mookels and he hated to leave them hanging out on a limb until next day. To understand the Templeton's and At the anniversary luncheon celebrating Norman Brokenshire's 18th year in radio, Graham McNamee (right) presented him with a bronze bust. how their romance grew and blossomed into the happy marriage it has, one must understand the Mookels. Their appreciation of music — which brought them together and welded them into a happy, single entity — is supplemented by a joint, quick humor and understanding which is evidenced nowhere as strongly as in this running adventure of a very ordinary family which undergoes the most extraordinary happenings. The conversations of the Mookels is wholly extemporaneous, witty and sometimes fairly bubbling with a sparkling wit. At other times, it may be dull and stodgy, but still it's all right because it's their own conversation and the Mookels love to listen to each other and share their ideas and thoughts and experiences. But there is a deeper significance that the Mookels hold for the Templetons. The very origin of the Mookels — to induce Alec to take his muchneeded exercise — is a better insight into the character of Julie Templeton than any other. It is a clever ' and enthralling medium a warmhearted and loving wife has devised to circumvent her husband's habit of not taking care of himself. It is one of the ways in which Julie is caring for Alec . . . and somehow, a very typical Alec Templeton stunt, entirely in character. I asked Julie if she intended to go on with her music now that she was married. "In a way, yes. I'll always sing around the house and for friends. And I hope to be able to help Alec with his composition after we're settled a bit. You know, writing down notes for him and that sort of thing. As far as the concert stage is concerned, the answer is no. I'm going to spend my time looking after Alec." And look after Alec, she does. They live in a seven-room apartment in a downtown apartment hotel in Chicago, where Alec's broadcasts originate. His parents and his secretary, Bob North, live with them, but more and more, Julie is taking over many of the little tasks they used to perform for Alec, and Alec, in his turn, is coming to depend more and more upon Julie for the performance of those little things he is unable to do for himself. For example, as an insight into how Julie cares for him, Alec likes to rise early regardless of whether he got to bed at ten o'clock the night before or two o'clock the same morning. His only ways of telling time are by a clock which chimes, or by radio. Quite often Julie manages to silence the chime of the clock with a handkerchief if Alec has been up late the night before and she feels that he needs rest. WHEN Alec and Julie decided to get married last August, it is interesting to note that they were wed in a beautiful garden ceremony at the Hollywood home of Mrs. Modini Wood, where they first met, almost two years before to the month. Richard Bonelli gave away the bride and Mrs. Bonelli acted as matron of honor. Alec was attended by his father. Among the seventy odd guests were some of radio's great musicians as well as some yet-unknown exponents of swing from cabarets where the couple had gone to hear boogie woogie during their two-year courtship. Stars of the screen were also among the guests. When the ceremony was over, the Templetons boarded a plane for Chicago where the pianist-composer was booked to play a radio engagement the following Saturday and prepare his own fall program series. The newspapers commented that the Templetons hadn't time for a honeymoon. The newspapers were wrong. Visit the Templetons in their home or walk with them along the beach of Lake Michigan or study their faces as they sit, enthralled by the hot music of the Hotel Sherman's Panther Room, where radio celebrities play when their work is done, or at a Negro revival meeting in some ramshackle church in Chicago's Harlem, and you'll begin to understand that for both Alec and Julie, the honeymoon will never be over. 84 RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR