Radio-TV mirror (July-Dec 1954)

Record Details:

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She's a Living Doll (Continued from page 46) If you hear Shirley first on radio, with} out having seen her on TV, you're apt to get a false impression of her personality. You might think: Here is a flawless voice 1 and a girl who has lived — the sophistication is undeniable. Later, either on a family-size screen, or in person, you meet her and you are astonished. This can't possibly be the girl who sang last night, with such overtones ; of worldly knowledge. It's the same girl, all right, but without the overtones. Shirley is lovely, sweet, and so seemingly innocent that you can't help muttering the old cliche: "Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice . . ." Shirley is as good and wholesome as a butter-cake, and we don't have to search far to find out why. We just have to look at her family, and the way she was brought up. Shirley's father was an athlete who lost an arm in an accident when he was fourteen. Where many a man would have been discouraged, Mr. Harmer not only married and had six children — three boys and three girls — but managed an engineering job with the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Canada, played championship golf, and umpired local baseball teams. Of such stock is Miss Harmer. She grew up in a big frame house in Thornton's Corners, near Oshawa (which is near Toronto), in a loving circle of family and friends. She went to a two-room schoolhouse and, on Sunday, to Sunday school — and to Red Cross meetings where the boys sat on one side of the room, the girls on the other. Everyone was supposed to contribute some sort of entertainment. Shir . ley sang, of course, with one of the local pianists as her accompanist. Sometimes, as j a very special treat, a boy named Bob i Luke came in from Oshawa and played a trombone solo. To some people, a trombone solo might not be the height of entertainment. But this Mr. Luke was a trombonist for Boyd Valleau's band at the Jubilee Pavilion in s Oshawa . . . Valleau's band was destined to end up in the Casa Loma and the Palais Royale in Toronto . . . and, in consequence of Mr. Luke's hearing our Shirley sing, Shirley was asked to join the band in Oshawa when she was only fifteen. Because of these happenings, Shirley is today a great radio and TV star, with the world before her. Girls as pretty as . Shirley is, with a voice such as she possesses, frequently turn up in the movies. Then — no one knows what background might be devised for her, or what differences might occur in her history and her personality. So, just for the record, this is the way Shirley is now . . . and this is what she was really like, that day in Canada, when , she accepted Boyd Valleau's offer to sing with his band — at two dollars a night, made | up from change contributed by members of the orchestra. (They couldn't afford a vocalist, but Shirley was Shirley.) The first night Shirley appeared with Boyd Valleau's orchestra in the Jubilee, she wore a dirndl skirt, a blouse, and ballet slippers. She was fifteen, and she'd I dared her mother's wrath by sneaking a little powder and rouge. She felt completely worldly and grown-up — until she saw the high heels and the long dresses, the make-up and hairdos of the girls who were dancing past her. She sat on the bandstand, then, feeling suddenly like a little country "square." "The thing about it," Shirley remem bers now, laughing, "was that everybody in the band knew that's exactly what I was, and that I was half-scared, half-silly with excitement. So each member of the band came to me separately, before the evening started, and each one told me he was there to protect me. 'If anything happens and you need any help,' they said, 'just yell for me.' " She knew, then, when she got up to sing, that every member of the orchestra was rooting for her. She sang for the Jubilee crowd much as she sings now, except that then, of course, her voice and delivery were too young and cute. When you hear Shirley now, despite the sheltered, chaperoned life she has led, you know that this is a woman singing. She delivers "My Man," and other such torch songs, in a manner which Dinah Shore and Rosemary Clooney together might envy. Here is the smoothest delivery of such a number on the airways today. Listening, you realize that no naive teenager is doing this. Why? Well, Shirley is twenty-two now, and some things have happened to her. For one thing, she has been in love. It all began like this! She was washing her hair one day when her best girlfriend, Madge, called up. Shirley answered the phone, dripping suds all over. "Oh, Shirley," Madge told her breathlessly, "there's a new boy and he's on the team! He's the catcher! And, Shirley, he's divine! The handsomest thing you ever saw in your life!" "I'm washing my hair," Shirley said. "And, darling," Madge went on, "he's out with the practice squad behind the schoolhouse this very minute!" "Just let me rinse out the soap, I'll be right with you!" Shirley yelled. In this town, a new boy was an event, especially to a seventeen-year-old girl. An hour later, Madge and Shirley were at the schoolhouse, gawking at him. "Isn't he simply terrific?" Madge sighed. "If I wasn't going steady with Dick . . ." "All I can see is a lot of teeth," Shirley said doubtfully. "With that catcher's mask on, he could look like Frankenstein's monster above the smile." But a little later, when the practice session was over, he threw the mask away and Shirley saw that Madge had been right, indeed. iVLadge's steady came over to walk her home, and the new catcher came tagging along, too, ostensibly to be with his friend Dick. But, by the way he kept looking at her, Shirley knew the real reason. In Thornton's Corners, a boy never worked fast lest it be presumed that he considered the girl an easy date. Shirley waited the usual week without misgivings, getting her clothes in shape and experimenting with new hairdos. And she kept going with Madge to watch the practice games — and, incidentally, see "Jimmy" play. When Jimmy finally came over and asked her if he could walk her home alone, without Madge and Dick, she wasn't surprised — only thrilled. The next evening, he asked if he could take her to the corner store for a get-acquainted visit over sodapop, and she discovered that he was all the exciting things a seventeen-year-old girl wanted in a boyfriend. He was not only handsome, he was four years older than she. He had finished school, had a good job, and was seriously interested in finding his girl, marrying her and settling down. Of course, Shirley was by now singing in Toronto at the Casa Loma and, later, at the Palais Royale, both famous night spots in Toronto. 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