TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1959)

lie fallow. There are some fine actors who have not been able to adapt themselves to it. Radio requires the fast and sure attack. I was lucky to adapt early. And I quickly learned that a part which may take only fifteen minutes on the air must be worked out in microcosm, but just as perfectly, as any role on the stage." Paul was born in Chicago, from which city his parents moved about six months later, and he grew up in a number of cities, principally New York. He became interested in acting when some of his school friends turned to it — but only mildly, because he was then enrolling at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech, stressing engineering subjects. Theater had long been fascinating to him — especially Shakespeare— but he had no intention of making it a career. Along about the second semester, he dropped one engineering subject for a drama course, and gradually drama became dominant. Some stock-company experience finished off engineering entirely. At nineteen, he was making his Broadway debut in a play called "Made in America," which promptly fell apart in New York. Following this, there was a chance to join a company just completing its Broadway run and going on tour. In the cast was a very young ingenue, a stunning hazel-eyed blonde from Texas, recently graduated from New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Six weeks later, while the show was playing Denver, the promising young actor Paul McGrath and the pretty ingenue Lulu Mae Hubbard were married, in nearby Boulder, Colorado. They chose Boulder in an effort at secrecy, because the older members of the cast were clucking their tongues and insisting these two were much too young to know their own minds. "Isn't it dreadful?" they heard one woman comment. "Two such nice kids, but both just beginning— and they hardly know each other. What a chance to take!" That was thirty years ago, this March of 1959. A friend of long standing said of them recently, "You never think of one without the other. It has always been that way. They're always together and, where Paul goes, Lu follows." "Lu has given up her career for mine," her husband says, "except for doing an occasional play. But we wanted to remain together, and separate careers would certainly have kept us apart many times." "I knew from the beginning that one must make the sacrifices," Lulu Mae adds. "And I knew I must be the one to do it. As a rule, it's the wife who should. The husband must be free to go ahead, if there has to be a choice." Paul comments, "The pattern has to be established fairly early. Typical of our married life have been the times when Lu had fine opportunities and gave them up for me. She went into 'Kiss and Tell,' which turned out to be an enormous hit on Broadway — and then, six months later, I got a good offer to play Professor Frame, the male lead in 'Tomorrow the World,' in the national touring company. 'Tomorrow' was scheduled to go as far as the West Coast, which would have meant a long separation for us. Lu left her show, with all its opportxmities for her, to go with me. It just happened that she got the part of the sister in my play, but she would have gone, anyhow." Lulu Mae was in "A Girl Can Tell," and "Goodbye, My Fancy," among other plays. Paul now has a long list of stage successes. Even as a very young actor, he seemed to get into very good plays with top names — Helen Hayes, in "The Good Fairy"; Ruth Gordon, in "Here Today"; Frances Starr, in "Lady Jane"; Ina Claire in "Ode to Liberty"; George M. Cohan, in "Pigeons and People"; Dorothy Stickney in "Small Hours." He moved into Osgood Perkins' role in "Susan and God," opposite Gertrude Lawrence, when Perkins died suddenly during the play's Washington, D. C, run. Later he appeared again with Miss Lawrence in "Lady in the Dark." When he was playing "Command Decision," in New York, he was also doing two radio shows, the second of which was off the air at exactly 8:30. At 8:40, he was due at the Fulton Theater for his role of General Garnett, racing by taxi through the gutted midtown traffic, wearing his general's uniform— only minus the stars, since that would have made him guilty of impersonating an officer! Paul's advent into radio was early and unexpected and happened through a classmate of Paul's at Carnegie Tech, Herb Polesie, now well known as a producer for such performers as Crosby and Sinatra. Herb called him one day and asked, "What about radio? Would you like to try it?" Paul answered, "I think so — but how do you do it?" Herb's reply was brief: "You just stand up in front of a microphone and read from a paper." "I believed him," Paul says now. 'I was too yoting and too dimib to be scared. So that's how I broke in, with a part in what I think was the first serial on radio, a show caUed The Luck Of Joan Christopher." Since then, there have been many parts for Paul in many radio dramas and serials. Frequently, he has played a doctor — a real-life ambition he once thought about seriously. Dr. Wayne in Big Sister; Dr. Allison in My Son Jeep; now Dr. Brent in Road Of Life; and some others in between. He was The Crime Doctor for some time, and in This Is Nora Drake he was Detective Claudhill. His movies include "No Time for Love," with Claudette Colbert, and "This Thing Called Love," with Rosalind Russell. More recently, there was "A Face in the Crowd," in which he played Macy, the advertising executive. A long time ago, Paul made three Charlie Chan pictures, during one of his rare opportunities to take a vacation from radio and get out to Hollywood, and now the films keep popping up on television. "Nelson Case called one night," he laughs, "to tell us to look quick if we wanted to see someone we used to know. There I was, in one of those old Chan epics. It was fascinating to watch." The McGraths like to look at TV, to listen to radio, to read, to enjoy their home. For sixteen years, they have kept the same midtown apartment in New York, always coming back to it and feeling as if they had never been away. Now, as with many btiildings in that neighborhood, business is encroaching steadily and their building will soon be turned into office suites. "We hate to leave," Lulu Mae mourns, looking around the comfortable living room, done in soft greens, with the glow of two handsome ruby-glass lamps reflecting the brightness of a wood fire, the comfortable chairs and the books and pictures and grand piano which seem so much a part of their surrotmdings. "We even have a real dining room here, not the dinette or makeshift 'dining corner' which some new apartments offer. But everything changes, and I suppose we must change with it." They have wanted to live in the country, but that's difficult for an actor as busy as Paul, who sometimes scarcely has time for lunch between rehearsals and shows. "We love New York, anyhow, with its bursting vitality. You feel it the minute you come back to it. We INITIAL and FRIENDSHIP RING STYLE YOUR OWN RING— order this new, swirling beauty with your own Initials ... OR with your initials on one tier and his on the other ... OR with your first name and his first name. It's the newest thing in the newest jewelry style! Either gold or silver plate. They're engraved In beautiful script . . . designed to make fingers and hands look gracefully beautiful. Get them for all your friends with their initials. A greot gift idea. Only $1 per ring (plus 250 handling). Sorry, no C.O.D.'s WORLD WIDE, Dept. ID, OSSINING, New York Yes, now you con destroy unwanted hair ■PERA\ANENTLY,nght in theprivac^ I of your home! 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